His master had done it again, an-other conversation about the God-Voice's impending death. How could the Chezru Chieftain be so calm about that? How could he speak in such com-monsensical terms about the end of his life?
Merwan Ma gave a great exhale, thoroughly jealous of his master, of any man who could be so at ease with mortality. Merwan Ma was a dedicated and pious Shepherd, a rank above the common Chezru folk but a rank be-low the Yatols. He prayed every day, and followed every ritual and precept of the religion. He believed in an afterlife, in a reward for his good behav-ior. Truly he did. And yet, how pale his convictions seemed next to the supreme calm held by Yakim Douan!
Perhaps he would come to such a place of tranquillity as he aged, Mer-wan Ma hoped. Perhaps he would find a day when he could so easily accept the inevitability of his own death, when he could be so confident that one journey was ending only so that another journey could begin.
"No," he said aloud, and he fell to his knees briefly and pressed his palms against his eyes, prostrating himself on the floor, an expression of submis-sion, obedience, and repentance for his last thought. He could never find a place as content as that of the God-Voice! He could never come to under-stand the mysteries of life and death as the Chezru Chieftain, and he alone, obviously understood! Not in this life, at least. Perhaps enlightenment awaited him on the other side of that darkest of doors.
With another deep breath, Merwan Ma pulled himself up from the floor and resumed his journey. He was late, he knew, and the others were likely already gathered about the sacred chalice, the Chezru Goblet, in the Room of Forever. Mado Wadon, the overseeing Yatol, had probably already pre-pared the sacrificial knife, filling its hollowed hilt with the oils of preserva-tion. But certainly, without Merwan Ma there, the others had not begun the bleeding.
Yakim Douan continued to enjoy his meal at the northern window, star-ing out at the towering majestic peaks.
He knew what was going on in the Room of Forever, and he knew well the ultimate danger to him and to his secrets whenever the seven gathered for the ritual. But the centuries had taken the edge from the Chezru Chieftain concerning this anxiety. He had watched the bleeding closely all those early years, centuries before when he had instituted the ritual.
No, not instituted it, but merely altered it to cover his secret. Since the beginning of Yatol, the selected group had kept the sacred Chezru Goblet filled with their blood, standing in a circle about it and taking turns slicing their wrists until the deep and wide chalice was full to the appointed line. That ritual of blood-brotherhood and the resultant pool of blood had proven to be a wonderful binding force for Yakim Douan, for embedded in the base of that sacred chalice was a single gemstone, a powerful hematite. When Yakim added his own blood to the pool, every week immediately fol-lowing the bleeding ritual, he somehow created a bond to that embedded hematite that he had learned to exploit from a great distance, from the other side of the palace, even. That was important to Yakim, not because he often utilized the hematite, but because he understood that if a sudden tragedy should befall him - the dagger of a rival, perhaps - he would be able to establish enough of a connection to the hematite to free his spirit from his dying corporeal form.
The only real danger to Yakim, then, came during the process of chang-ing the blood pool, for though all of the attending bleeders would be blind-folded and instructed, strictly so, never to glance into the chalice, one look with the blood level low might be enough to arouse great suspicions. For the Yatols were not fond of gemstones, magical or not, and to see one em-bedded in their most-prized religious symbol, the Chezru Goblet itself, would strike a sour note in the heart of any true Yatol. Gemstones were the province of the hated Abellicans to the north, the source of Abellican magi-cal powers, and for centuries, since before Yakim Douan's first ascension even, the Yatol priests had denounced the enchanted stones as instruments for channeling demon magic.
Seeing a gemstone - and a hematite, a soul stone, at that! - embedded in the base of that