Season of Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF

water, and cooled in the air.”
    “Molded from the earth,” repeated the Spirit Councilor who had devoted her life to the Guardians of Earth. Many of the People took up the chant: “Molded from the earth! Molded from the earth!” as if the words would protect them from soldiers brutal enough to use dogs against innocent folk.
    “Cast in the fire,” cried the man who had pledged his life to the Fire Guardians. “Cast in the fire!” One woman’s voice rang out louder than the others, and Alana saw Teresa, the twins’ mother, stagger from the foot of the cliff toward the Spirit Council. “Cast in the fire,” the People echoed, desperate for restored order.
    “Washed in the water.” The People gathered around Teresa, as if she were a bride being presented at her wedding ceremony, rather than a widow, bereft of her husband, newly stripped of her children. “Washed in the water! Washed in the water!”
    “Cooled in the air!”
    As if to mock the praying councilors, a huge wave rose up, breaking above the heads of all four soothsayers. Alana caught her breath as the wave crashed onto the beach, but when it sucked out to the open ocean, she saw that all four of the councilors had kept their feet. Kept their feet, yes, but not their grip on each other’s hands. The councilors stumbled into a rough square, fighting to stand on the shifting sand, to remain steady against the freezing, seething ocean.
    Alana watched the Spirit Council, but she heard other voices in her head. She heard the woodsingers before her, telling the Tree of tragedies, of desperate, unexpected losses among the People. She heard about offerings made when ships were lost, when fishermen failed to return from the open sea. She heard about the gifts that were given to the Guardians to placate their primal forces, to encourage the Guardians to accept the People who stumbled in among them, all unready and unwilling.
    So, with the Tree as her private teacher, Alana was hardly surprised when the Spirit Council shifted its chant from the Creation Hymn to the Song of Sacrifice. Two doves, they cried. Two newborn lambs! Sacrifices on the altar in the Sacred Grove would pave the Guardians’ path for the children. Blood would buy a safe road for the twins, smooth their passage to the Guardians’ world.
    Alana watched in horror as the People spiraled into the Spirit Councilors’ chant, joining the councilors’ acceptance that the children were already lost to the People, were already sacrificed to the inlanders. “Two pure doves!” the foursome cried. “Two white doves! Offer them up for the children!”
    “Two white doves!” rose a jagged cry from the beach, and Alana watched Teresa stumble away from the People clustered on the sand, staggering into the shallows and the center of the square formed by the four councilors. “Two white doves!”
    “Two white lambs!” the councilors changed their chant. “Two white lambs!”
    “Two white lambs!” Teresa cried, and her voice broke like a gull’s, shattered by despair and loss. A wave broke against her, stealing her breath with its icy spray, but she stiffened her spine against the deadly chill. She raised her arms above her head, letting the ocean snag the clammy white of her widow’s weeds like clotted foam. “My two white lambs!”
    Alana shuddered against the hypnotic power that rolled in from the ocean, the force gathered by the Spirit Council as they knit together the People. She heard the voices in her own head, the other woodsingers who had watched other Spirit Councils join together in other times of crisis. She knew, the Tree knew, the other woodsingers knew that the Council could save the People. They would gather the People together, would turn them from one terrifying disaster back to the harsh reality of daily life on the Headland of Slaughter.
    Alana took a step closer to the ocean, closer to the five people who braced their shuddering bodies against yet another frozen wave. She