Sacrifice Read online

  I pull the single chair in the room closer and sit down. “You should be sleeping.”

  “It feels like I’ve been sleeping for ages.” He turns his head on the pillow and looks at me, eyes red-rimmed. “Am I going to lose my leg?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, even though I don’t know for sure.

  “Am I going to die?”

  “No. Not on my watch.”

  “You aren’t Zelus.” He lets out a rough sigh, looking back at the ceiling. “You can’t control who lives or dies.”

  “Zelus.” I spit the name out like a curse. “Our savior and our reaper.”

  “That’s sacrilege, Sage.” But Nolan’s voice is tired, not judgmental.

  “The way Zelus neglects us is sacrilege.”

  Give sacrifice.

  Not food.

  Sacrifice you.

  A chill runs down my spine, and I shake away the sprite’s words as I reach for the glass of water beside the bed. “Here. Drink.”

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  “You will drink, or I’ll take your other leg,” I tell him in a tone that allows no argument.

  My brother rolls his eyes, but he smiles a little. I help him sit up just enough to drink, then get him comfortable again. And all the while, the echo of the sprite’s insidious voice floats through my head, the words repeating over and over.

  Sacrifice you.

  “Sage? What is it? What’s on your mind?” Nolan asks, his hand coming to rest on my mine. “You’re troubled. More so than usual.”

  “Something happened this afternoon,” I tell him quietly. “You’ll never believe it.”

  “Try me. I never thought I’d step into a bear trap, yet here we are.” He laughs, but it turns into a groan. His breath is short, and I can tell the pain is starting to eat away at him.

  When I place the back of my hand on his forehead, I realize he’s burning up. I cross to the medicine cabinet, hoping maybe there’s some willow bark there, but nothing rests inside except mothballs.

  He needs other herbs. He needs something to fight the fever, to help him sleep and combat the agony. He needs more than I can give him right now.

  But maybe… maybe I can do something better.

  “I went to the woods,” I tell him, turning and walking to my little chest of drawers. I open the top drawer and gaze down at the hunting knife I put there when I returned from gathering herbs in the forest—the same dagger I drove into a bear’s eye this morning. “I saw sprites dancing in the fairy clearing.”

  “Nish, really?” Nolan asks, his excitement overriding his pain momentarily. “You saw fairies? That’s incredible, Sage. I wish I could have seen them.”

  “They told me things,” I go on, lifting the blade from the drawer. “They said Zelus isn’t happy with the sacrifices we’ve given him, and that he wants more.”

  “We already give him so much.”

  “We do.” I huff a bitter laugh. “And still, he doesn’t take care of us.”

  I walk back over to the bed, sliding the dagger into its sheath at my hip. Nolan watches me approach, his brows pulled together and his face pale.

  “What’s going on, Sage?”

  “If you could fix the problems for our village, would you?”

  My little brother squints up at me. “Of course. This village is our family.”

  I nod once and lean over to kiss his feverish forehead. “Me too. I love you, Nolan. More than you’ll ever know. Take care of Mother, all right?”

  Nolan’s voice follows me to the front door. “Sage? Sage, where are you going? What are you doing? Sage!”

  My heart cracks in two at the fear in his voice. I don’t turn around though. If I do, I’ll never have the strength to keep moving.

  I grab two torches from the wall to light the dark night, but I leave my satchel on the table.

  I won’t need it where I’m going.

  4

  The night is black as pitch. If there’s a moon or stars, they’re hidden by a layer of thick, dark clouds that promise rain. Too bad the harvest is already over; the rain would’ve been welcome a month ago, when drought killed half of the village’s fledgling crops. At least the village cisterns will yield water for my people tomorrow.

  Just outside the dim glow of the cabin, I light one of the torches. The pitiful flame barely illuminates the night, but I hold it aloft anyway and then head away from the village, thankful my brother can’t follow. This time, I don’t take the familiar hunting route to the fairy clearing. I take the less trodden path to the south, into the low foothills.

  Most villagers never venture here, where the forest is darkest and the trees seem to have a sentient malevolence. My grandmother called the foothills an in-between place. A place where spirits are rumored to wander, where the dead seek vengeance on those who wronged them.

  The atmosphere is dark and oppressive. I keep my gaze firmly ahead, though I see motion in my periphery. I figure it’s safest if I don’t look at the ghosts directly, if I ignore their presence so they don’t decide to take me before I can do what I came here to do.

  The steep incline continues for a long time, until my legs are burning and my breaths come in short, sharp bursts. I feel as if I’m going mad because of all the strange shifts in the atmosphere around me. At one point, I’m certain cold fingers touch my neck, and at another, I swear I can hear my name whispered in the night. I’ve heard that even if the spirits aren’t specifically out for vengeance on you, they might tangle you up in their web anyway.

  Much like the gods, I suppose.

  Finally, the path levels and I break from the trees into the village’s sacred space.

  Our people have used this place for hundreds of years. It is the seat of our fortune, the place we come to for all of our celebrations.

  It is also where our elders come to make sacrifices in the name of Zelus.

  Of course, when we come here, we come in the daylight, and usually via a different, less direct path that avoids the haunted trail up the foothills. In this complete darkness, I barely recognize my surroundings.

  The sky spits rain. Not enough to soak me, but enough to leave a fine mist on my eyelashes. I walk with purpose over the thick layer of gravel, my torch flickering in the mist. The sacred altar emerges like a shadow from the darkness, and as I catch sight of it, my heart picks up its pace.

  Coming to the altar to celebrate a new birth or to mourn a death is quite a different experience from coming here to witness a sacrifice. The elders handle the sacrifices to Zelus, so most villagers steer clear, but I’m nothing if not overly curious and inquisitive.

  I followed my grandmother to the altar a time or two, fascinated by the whole process of sacrificing to our god. I can still remember the way the animals screamed and the way the blood ran down the porous altar, staining the stone ochre. I can still see my grandmother’s hands holding the animal down while one of her companions slit its throat. I can still hear the elders’ voices raised in song, singing the chant of Zelus.

  Those ghosts haunt this place as surely as spirits wander the woods I just passed through.

  I jam my lit torch into one of the nearby holders, then I light my second torch and place it in the holder on the opposite side of the altar. With both flames glowing, I can see the whole setup: the long, coffin-sized stone table and the ring of river stones inlaid into the grass around it. The altar is bisected with inlets that angle down to the seams running along the edge of the flat stone. The inlets are all stained rust, just as I remember from my last visit. Some is berry juice, I know, but mostly, it’s the blood of innocent animals sacrificed in the name of Zelus, then disposed of in the nearby river rather than given to his starving people to eat.

  Drawing on the memories of when I watched my grandmother do this, I open the heavy stone drawer beneath the altar and extract the bare necessities—a bundle of fragrant smudging herbs and some salt. Stone scrapes against stone as I shove the drawer closed, making my hair stand on end.<
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  Then I begin to prepare.

  First, I light the herbs in the sputtering flame of a torch and smudge the area to cleanse it of all previous energies. Then I purify the sacred circle by lining the river stones with salt. I have vivid memories of watching the elders do this, yet I’ve never done it myself. I find it surprising how easily the motions come to me, as if my hand is being guided by something outside my control.

  Once the sacred space is prepared, I climb up onto the table, though it takes a little effort since the slab of stone sits higher than my waist. The damp cold seeps through my dress, but I ignore it and arrange my skirts around my legs. I lay my hunting knife across my thighs and reach for the buttons at my throat, undoing four of them to expose my chest.

  I’m oddly calm this close to death. I didn’t think I could make it this far without at least a tremble in my hands, but instead, I feel as if I’m seeing clearer than I ever have before.

  “If you could fix the problems for our village, would you?”

  “Of course. This village is our family.”

  Nolan would do this if he could. He would sacrifice himself without hesitation if it meant a better life for our people.

  But right now, I’m glad he can’t. I want it to be me. I want him to live.

  I begin the song of Zelus, my voice hesitant at first but growing in strength after the first verse. I don’t hesitate when I slice my palm open. The pain is sharp but fades to a dull ache quickly, and I continue the song as I dip my fingers in my blood to paint the sigil of sacrifice on my forehead.

  It’s awkward to perform this ritual by myself. After my forehead sigil, I have to paint the sigil using my blood on the four corners of the altar, each facing one of the cardinal directions. I nearly fall off the large stone slab when the hem of my dress gets caught beneath my knee. I manage to keep singing, but the near-miss sends a burst of adrenaline to my heart that doesn’t go away.

  My song and the patter of the rain are the only sounds in the clearing as I lean over to paint the first cardinal sigil.

  But then I hear a new sound.

  Voices.

  I can’t stop singing now that the ritual has started, but I can’t make out what the voices are saying over the song, no matter how hard I strain. Male voices, I think. They sound as if they’re in deep conversation. I don’t think anybody has come from the village, not at this time of night, so I chalk it up to ghosts and firmly shove away the incessant whispers that pull at my attention.

  At last I finish painting the sigils, my hand dripping blood with every movement I make. I made the cut deep because I didn’t want to risk it beginning to clot—running out of blood before I finished painting the sigils would have made the ritual null and void.

  But now I’m growing weak from blood loss. The stone is tacky beneath my legs. Between the rain growing harder and the blood seeping from my body, my dress is soaked.

  The voices still converse just at the edges of my understanding, their words garbled.

  I sit for a moment longer, singing Zelus’s song, clutching the handle of my knife. The altar buzzes with energy, something I’ve never experienced before. I know without needing to be told that it’s the magic of the ritual brought to life by my song and my blood.

  All that’s left now is to complete it.

  I grip the knife between both hands, cognizant of the pain in my wounded palm but so lightheaded it barely registers. I angle the blade up toward my bare chest, my voice growing shaky as I continue to sing. If I don’t do this just right, I’ll hit a lung and my death will be violent and painful as I suffocate on my own blood. As much as our vengeful god might enjoy that, the ritual doesn’t call for pain or violence.

  It just calls for death.

  I close my eyes and picture my brother. My mother. My friends and the rest of the villagers.

  Please let my sacrifice save them all.

  For a brief moment, I’m scared. I don’t know what awaits me on the other side, and I fear the afterworld like most mortals do. But if my death can keep my family safe, it will all be worth it.

  With hands that no longer feel like my own, I plunge the blade into my chest.

  I gasp at the sudden agony.

  It hurts. More than I could’ve guessed it would.

  More than I was prepared for.

  My torso feels as if it has been rent open and laid bare to fire. There’s a rushing sound in my ears, and I fall backward to the altar, my hands slipping away from the knife. The rain is cold on my face, but I feel a comforting sense of the falling droplets washing me free of everything that burdened me in life.

  My senses dim. In the moments before I bleed out completely, I can feel the ritual snap into place—wholly finished.

  My sacrifice is complete.

  Then all is blackness.

  Nothingness.

  Death.

  5

  Even having spent my entire life being told of the afterworld of the gods, where all mortal souls go after death, I didn’t fully believe in it when I gave my life at the altar.

  I could blame Zelus for that. It’s hard to believe in anything when the one being meant to be caring for your people isn’t doing his job.

  So I walked into death believing that to be the end. The true end.

  But it’s not.

  Slowly, I open my eyes.

  I’m lying on soft grass, sunlight dancing warmly across my face, chased by cool shadows and a breeze scented by heady pine. It takes me a moment to claw my way out of the fog in my mind, to reconnect my brain to all of my limbs, and for my senses to come rushing back.

  Trees spread above me, filtering clear sunlight over me in hypnotic patterns. I glimpse blue sky beyond the branches, but it’s bluer and brighter than any sky I’ve ever seen. There’s a strange quality to the sunlight, as well, something I can’t quite put my finger on. The stone altar is gone from beneath me, replaced by grass tickling my hands and arms.

  I reach up, my fingers finding the place where my hunting knife should be buried in my chest. My dress is buttoned, clear of blood, and the knife is gone. I look at my hand, the one I sliced open to paint the sigils, and it too is clean of blood and wound. Not even a scar remains.

  I’m not sure what’s going on, but of one thing I’m absolutely certain—I’m no longer on earth. Which means I’ve arrived in the afterworld I didn’t believe existed.

  As I lie still, trying to make sense of this new development, a new sound penetrates my hazy mind.

  Those voices again. The ones I kept hearing throughout the ritual.

  They’re louder now, more distinct.

  Closer.

  I sit up abruptly, my heart slamming against my ribs. I don’t even have time to marvel at the fact that even though I’m dead, I still have a heart that beats faster than a rabbit’s when I’m frightened. All my attention is focused on my surroundings.

  Thick brush separates me from the space where the voices are coming from, though I see the faintest hint of movement just beyond my natural shield. The movement is followed by deep, hearty laughter.

  “You fool. Don’t you know yet to keep your nose out of his business?” a cool voice asks, a hint of amusement in his tone.

  “His business makes my life worth living,” another deep, sensuous voice responds. “The comedy of it, you know.”

  My fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, and I dive beneath the thickest bush, hoping it will shield me from the men. Afterlife or not, I’m a woman alone in a strange place, with not even my hunting knife to protect me. I wish to god I’d been able to bring it to the afterlife with me.

  I mark the scuff of footsteps on a dirt path that seems to pass directly by the brush where I’m hidden, so I know where the men are as they approach. There are three of them, I think. But something else about them frightens me even more than their presence.

  I can feel… power radiating from them. Something magical and otherworldly. Frightening in its intensity. I cover my mouth to hide the fe
arful breaths that explode from my lungs as the strange men draw nearer to my hiding place.

  They’re still speaking amongst themselves, lost in a comfortable conversation. Whoever they are, they’re close, sharing laughter and mocking each other. Their lighthearted banter does little to soothe my nerves though. They’re friendly with each other, but I have no reason to expect they’ll be friendly toward me.

  They pass, and I lower my hands, letting out a near-silent sigh of relief.

  Suddenly, all footsteps cease.

  “Did you feel that?” one man asks sharply.

  “Yes. Seems we have a lost soul in our midst,” a second replies. “Find it.”

  All three men change course and head in my direction. I scramble backward with the intent of leaping to my feet and running away, but my knees are weak. My body feels like it’s still remembering how to function on this new plane of existence, and all I manage is a painful attempt at standing before I land back on my ass. Footsteps crash through the undergrowth, and then I’m no longer alone in my shelter.

  An inhumanly beautiful man towers above me, framed by the brush, looking down on me with surprise and curiosity.

  Nish! I’m caught.

  My heart leaps into my throat. The man stares at me with narrowed eyes, both of us frozen at the unexpected sight of each other.

  Long brown hair frames a face that’s too starkly beautiful to be real. He’s hardened, built for battle but worn down from it too. I recognize the weariness that hides behind his vividly green eyes because the people in my village carry the same expression—albeit, not as well as this man does. Broad shoulders stretch a clean cotton shirt, the breadth of his muscles clearly visible beneath the off-white fabric. His waist tapers toward strong hips, and a sword clings tight to his belt.

  It’s the sight of the sword that spurs me into action.

  Despite my earlier trip up, this time I leap to my feet like a jackrabbit and take off into the trees with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. I know running into a strange forest is a recipe for getting lost or getting eaten, but even though I don’t know who these men are, I’m certain I shouldn’t let them catch me.