1 Chapter 1

1

The stone altar was cold enough to numb Oisin’s skin. His hands were numb too, where the ropes around his wrists were a little too tight. They weren’t necessary, really. He lay still, without the will to move even if he could have, and his soul seemed to be as numb as his body.

Firas bent over him, the old man’s seamed face lit by the flickering light of the great bonfire. Oisin didn’t meet his eyes, he merely stared blankly past him to the dark, clouded sky above. The sharp scent of burning herbs filled the air. There had been chanting and the sound of drums only moments ago, but that was all over. Now there remained only the sacrifice itself.

Oisin heard Firas calling out to the god, his hands raised to the sky. Firelight gleamed on the knife. Firas was not a shaman or a druid, the little village didn’t have one anymore. But Firas remembered the words. He had told the village children a thousand times about way they’d put a goat on the altar at Beltane in his youth, catching its blood in a copper bowl, and how the god would come out of the night to drink it and bless the crops. “Like a man,” he’d said, “but taller than any man. Stronger than any man. Stranger than any man.”

Standing beside Firas, his wife Ailba held the bowl ready. That too was distant, like the memory of Firas’ stories. All this was a story, something that was happening to someone else, somewhere else, in some other time. The nighttime clouds above were closer, more real, than the knife, the fire, the waiting bowl, and Oisin’s eyes remained fixed there.

Firas brought the knife down.

It halted right above Oisin’s throat, and for a moment Oisin found himself bemusedly wondering why—and how—Firas had stopped that swift downward stroke. Then he saw the long, pale fingers wrapped around Firas’ wrist, and the looming dark form that suddenly stood on the other side of the altar.

A murmur went through the gathered villagers, and Oisin heard it, still distantly. “The god,” they whispered, in tones of shock and fear and awe. “The god, Lord Belinos, the god, the god.”

Their voices faded away, and there was a long, still moment, as Firas stood stock still, staring over the altar at the being who held his wrist in an iron-hard grip. Then the god reached out with his other hand and took the knife from Firas’ trembling fingers.

“I have never asked for human sacrifice.”

The voice was deep and powerful, yet soft. It dropped into the silence of the night like pebbles in a pool, sending rippling murmurs of shock and uncertainty through the crowd.

“L-lord Belinos. Forgive us. But you didn’t come for the goat last year. The crops have failed twice now. We thought…There are tales…”

Firas’ voice quavered with fear. The deep voice of the god was still calm, even. “I have taken men in times past. But I do not take men as I take goats.” He looked down at Oisin then, and their eyes met. The god’s eyes were pale, pale gray, set in a face that was also pale, white as bone and as unlined as a youth’s. Silver lashes framed those eyes, and his brows and hair were silver also, the latter very long, and with strands of strange, bright beads and crystals braided through it.

Oisin’s own eyes were brown, ordinary, as was his dark hair and olive skin. He looked like any of the other villagers, nothing special. Nothing like the strange being whose eyes gazed piercingly into his, seeming to pin him to the altar more thoroughly than the ropes possibly could. He was frozen in that gaze, not even breathing. Suddenly the world was no longer a distant thing, it was real, immediate, and as Oisin drew in a sudden, shocking breath he felt intensely present in it, intensely alive.

I nearly died, and he stopped the knife. Why?

“If we have offended…” Firas still sounded terrified. Oisin felt his heart racing, but somehow what he felt wasn’t fear. He didn’t know what it was, but the whole world was shifting around him. The god reached out and touched the ropes that bound Oisin, one touch at each wrist, each ankle. They frayed away to nothing in an instant. Oisin did not rise. He stayed lying on the cold stone, staring up at the god above him.

“Your sacrifice is acceptable,” said that deep, almost gentle voice, and then the god bent and picked up Oisin, lifting him like a child, though he was seventeen years of age and nearly a grown man. The god turned away from the bonfire with its circle of startled, watching villagers. His body cut off both the warm glow and the staring eyes. A moment later he strode briskly into the night and there was no light but the diffuse glow of the overcast sky above.