Lackling screamed.
Rage and Sorrow threw back their heads and howled, as at the moon, a long, frantic yipping howl. He grabbed their collars and jerked them back before they could bolt down into the ruins; they stilled instantly. Ai, Lady, what should he do? What could he do? He heard a thin voice raised—not in song but in a sinuous chant that had no end, rising and falling, curling in on itself and then opening outward. Beneath it he heard mewling, the whimpering of a terrified creature.
He hissed out breath through clenched teeth. He shook, he was so terrified. But he must go forward. The hounds growled suddenly. A shadow appeared at the edge of the forest. Rage and Sorrow stood up, bristling, and tried to drag themselves out of his hands to attack the intruder.
“Halt,” he said softly. The shadow moved forward and resolved into Frater Agius. “Sit.” The hounds sat.
“Do not go down,” said Agius. His face was pale and his eyes shadowed.
The mewling went on, a counterpoint to the eerie chanting. The light from within the altar house walls grew slowly brighter, and within its glow he caught sight of a huge shadow, thrown against the sky, which then vanished. The mewling turned into hiccuping yelps of terror. The hounds jerked forward, dragging Alain with them.
Agius grabbed at Alain’s arm to stop him, and Rage spun and snapped at the frater.
“Stop! Sit!” hissed Alain.
Agius took advantage of Alain’s hesitation to grab hold of his arm. The frater had a strong grip. “Do not go,” he said in that same low, somber voice. He appeared oblivious to the hounds, growling near his feet. “She would only kill you as well, and then what would be the point?”
“Then I must go back to the castle and get help!”
“It is too far. You would be too late.”
Held fast, with the awful chanting and those terrible whimpering cries that were all Lackling could manage of words, Alain felt his resolve slipping away. There is nothing you can do. How could he act against a biscop?
Below, light flared with an orange heat, as if new wood or some other unknowable element had been thrown on the fire. Lackling sobbed outright, and his piteous half-formed terror cut Alain to the heart.
“I must try to help him!” He pulled away but Agius caught him again. The hounds, dragging him toward the ruins, jumped back and Sorrow sank his teeth into Agius’ robe, but still the frater did not let go of Alain or even cry out in pain.
“Let go!” Horrified, Alain cuffed Sorrow and, caught up in pulling Sorrow off the frater and in keeping Rage from bolting down into the ruins or attacking the frater as well, he noticed too late when the wind turned and the hounds stilled abruptly, unnaturally.
The smell of smoke and a whiff of something else, herbs, something unclean, wafted up from the stones. There came suddenly a horrible gurgling scream and with it a thin scent like flesh burning. Agius’ hand tightened on Alain’s arm. The hounds, ignoring Agius now, closed ranks in front of Alain, pressing him back as if they, too, meant to stop him from running forward.
“Witness,” whispered Agius. “As St. Thecla witnessed the Passion of the blessed Daisan, so must you and I witness this suffering.” It was obscene to listen to Agius speak so composedly while below, out of Alain’s reach, Lackling was being tortured, murdered, sacrificed in place of the Eika prince. And for what?
Wind gusted. Rain spattered down, drumming across the ruins in a sudden slap of cold air; then all was still … utterly still, except for a haze of smoke rising from the altar house. Uncannily still, except for the thin reed voice that sounded as if it was buried under rock, and a tiny mewling, like a kitten’s, so soft Alain could not understand how he could hear it. But of the normal scuffles and whispers of wind and night birds and the many small animals of forest and glade, there was no sign, as if all had vanished or been struck dumb.
Agius let go of Alain and he knelt, bowing his head. “It is a sign,” he whispered, “that I should go out and preach the true word of His Passion, which was His suffering and sacrifice, and of His redemption.”
A smell rose out of the ruins like the breath of the forge, hot and stinging. The hairs rose on Alain’s arms, on the nape of his neck. Agius lifted his head. The hounds whined and slunk back, cowering, against Alain’s legs.
Alain felt a presence—many presences—at his back. A shimmer ran through the air like the wind made visible. He heard the biscop speak strong words he did not recognize, only that they must be words of power. Below, in weirdly elegant harmony with her voice, sang the formless, hopeless whimpering that was no longer quite human. Alain wept, but he did not move. He had condemned Lackling and was now powerless to save him.