Episode Four: Duel
Boom! Boom! Boom! went the drumbeat again, the chants rising up, and the platoon of men marched along to the rhythm, herding Hamar and the two men ahead. Then they all went down the steep stairs of a tunnel.
They finally halted on a level. One of the adepts swiped his hand across Hamar’s face and the boy blinked at what didn’t make sense for a moment, and then did. He could see!
In front of him was a high doorway whose towering bronze doors were wide open, and all the marchers were flooding around him to go through it.
When the adepts pushed him to go inside, the crowd parted, deferring to him and bowing! A lane was cleared for him as if he was untouchable royalty. But why! Hamar couldn’t reason anything any more.
They came into a great cavern with a ceiling far overhead above a floor that was filling with dark-robed men all jamming together like a winter nest of blacksnakes. Around the walls torches threw light onto tall hieroglyphics and grotesque paintings of god-creatures. The men were lining themselves into rows around something in the center.
The drum blasted behind them all as it entered into the room, booming as hard as Hamar’s heart in his small chest, and again he thought of his mother’s arms, but feeling no shame this time, only desperately wanting to bury his face, – his whole self in her!
The ponderous doors shut with a sound like thunder, the ground rumbling under their feet along with it.
Adept pushed him to keep up the same fast pace toward the thing in the center. With only a few rows of people left in front of them Hamar still couldn’t see what lay ahead, – was it an altar?
Had they come to see him SACRIFICED? He pulled back as hard as he could against Adepts’ grip!
The two adepts shoved him stumbling out on his own in front of the whole assembly.
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