Page 6 of Vows of Sacrifice

I opened my eyes first. I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them. Dovah ignored Paivrin and let out a curious growl as he tried to force the barrier of my lips. He even tightened his grip, and I felt completely trapped.

“Dovah! Come on, that’s not how it’s done!” His friend lectured him angrily.

Suddenly, my now-husband opened his eyes in amazement. He tried to pull away from me in such a hurry that I almost fell over backwards as he released me. This would have happened, had we not been held by a kind of egg-cocoon of grass and branches in which our legs were trapped.

“What is this?” I exclaimed.

“Dovah was a little too enthusiastic, so nature acted as a kind of mirror to his impulse,” Paivrin explained flatly.

“Enough!” roared Dovah, cutting Paivrin off in his explanation. “Do what you need to do to get us out of here!”

To which Paivrin smiled hypocritically.

“It’s all your fault. I thought you were going to . . .”

But Dovah, his eyes black with fury, interrupted him with an index finger pointed in the air.

“Don’t go any further. I mean it.”

His interlocutor did not take his threat lightly and, with a grave expression, struck the ground three times with his staff. It took a while, but the grass, branches, and brambles retreated, as if slowly curling in on themselves.

Once free, Dovah walk away first. I thought he was going to let his friend and me return home alone, but no. He was just waiting much further away.

“Don’t hold it against him too much. He was only obeying orders.”

I didn’t answer, for the simple reason that I understood perfectly well what he was getting at. The fact remained that, wedding ceremony or not, you don’t shamelessly kiss the daughter of the man you’d just slaughtered a few hours earlier. But should we expect a different kind of attitude from the man everyone called the Black Demon?

“Your union was inevitable,” insisted the young man. “You’re going to live together from now on, so try not to let your hatred overwhelm you. It will destroy you . . . both of you.”

“What kind of ceremony was that?” I asked, trying to change the subject. I wasn’t familiar with this religious rite. I also wasn’t ready to discuss my future as a wife, especially today.

“I imagine your religion is that of the One God,” continued Paivrin.

I nodded in confirmation.

“Well, I’d only say that ours evokes the sons of a single god who’s just a little older than yours, and that it’s a religion that’s rather inherent to our ‘particular’ nature.”

We both walked slowly, taking the time to smell the fragrance of the rose gardens. Nature? Particular? What did he mean by that?

“Really? What is its name?” I asked.

“The Cult of the Patriarchs.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. I’d heard about it as a child. The famous Cult of the Four Patriarchs. A devotion to four dragons, the ones who supposedly created our world. Four dragons were said to have emerged from the womb of the Source after its union with the Father of the Universe, all endowed with great powers. There was the ash dragon, the terrible black dragon. He was the originator of earth, volcanoes, and lava. His stone was ruby, and his power was fire. His flames were capable of reducing the whole world to dust. Then there was the jade dragon, who had created nature, flora, and fauna. Then came the sapphire dragon, creator of rivers, seas, and lakes. And finally, the opal dragon, the sky dragon, master of the wind and lord of the clouds. It was an old religion, really. Perhaps even the very first of human beings. However, dragons didn’t exist. No one had seen one for thousands of years. This cult fell into obsolescence, becoming nothing more than a forgotten legend, a myth at best.

I turned to Paivrin.

“I never thought I’d meet anyone practicing this lost religion.”

Paivrin opened his mouth to reply when suddenly, a shrill cry rang out. A feminine scream that gave me goose bumps. The desperate cry was followed by loud laughter. Without a moment’s thought, I rushed to the call for help.

2

DOVAH

The woman who was now my wife in the eyes of the Source ran past me without so much as a glance toward me. By reflex, I followed her. I’d also heard the shouting and laughter of the men, only I was used to it. It happened during wars. Soldiers, excited by the battle and the capture of a castle, often raped the women of the defeated people.

I didn’t condone it, but to prevent it was to run the risk of ending up with a mutiny on our hands. It was common practice to take prostitutes to the battlefield, but Elendur was against the practice.

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