the true way of Yatol! I can show you eternal life!"
"Through a gemstone?" Mado Wadon asked, pausing.
"Yes!"
Mado Wadon stepped forward and plunged the knife into Yakim Douan's chest, then stepped back and calmly handed it to the next Yatol in line. And so it went, around the gathering, until all twenty-three had taken their stab at the old wretch.
Yakim Douan lay there for a long time, stubbornly clinging to life.
"There is no gemstone, God-Voice. Nothing through which your spirit can flee this fate," Mado Wadon said to him, leaning in so that his face might be the last thing Yakim Douan ever saw.
"Sacrilege," Douan whispered.
"Perhaps it is," Mado Wadon answered. ?We will await the coming of the blessed child to tell us of our folly."
Yakim Douan tried to answer, but he could not. Consciousness left him soon after, as his blood continued to pool about him.
The Yatols filed out solemnly later on, with Mado Wadon ordering the guards to go and ring the bells of Chom Deiru, the Cadence of Grief.
PART 4 THE DRAGON OF TO-GAI Epilogue
I have assumed control of Jacintha, as is commanded by the tenets of Yatol," Mado Wadon told several of the more impor-J卤- tant Yatols later on that fateful day.
"But you are not Chezru Chieftain!" Yatol Peridan insisted. Peridan had been viewing all of this with mixed feelings. He had agreed with Mado Wadon's argument that Douan had to die, in light of the revelations, but the practical implications of that action did not shine favorably on him. Mado Wadon was a friend of De Hamman.
"I am not, nor do I pretend to be," Mado Wadon calmly replied. ?We are each brothers in the greater cause of Yatol, with our own areas of responsi- bility. Mine is now Jacintha."
^He didn't say it, but it was well understood that the control of Jacintha meant control of the legions, greater power than any three other Yatols combined could muster.
But that was indeed the tenet of Yatol.
The meeting broke up sometime later, after many speeches of solidarity and common cause to rebuild.
Underneath all the words, though, loomed an unmistakable aura of suspicion and trepidation. Under the Chezru Chieftain, the Yatols united the kingdom of Behren, but that religious grasp over the peoples of the many tribes had always been a tenuous thing.
Yatol De Hamman caught up to Mado Wadon alone a short while later.
"Peridan will move swiftly against me," the man insisted. ?With the Jacintha garrison tied up at Dharyan, he will know that the moment is now, or is never."
"I have already warned Yatol Peridan that the time has come for caution."
"He will not heed your words," Yatol De Hamman insisted. ?Chezru Douan pulled many of my soldiers from me to send off along the road to the west. Peridan knows that I am undermanned, and he will seize this moment!"
Mado Wadon sighed deeply, finding it hard to disagree. He knew that the weeks ahead were going to be quite difficult for Behren, and he honestly expected that the next Chezru Chieftain, when one could be found and brought to maturity, would likely have to rebuild many parts of the dis-jointed kingdom.
That was even if another Chezru Chieftain would be found, for any child now selected, given the believed deception of Yakim Douan, would face a brutal inquiry period. And if that child uttered nothing miraculous - truly miraculous! - he would be rejected and the kingdom would be thrown into even more disarray. On one level, Mado Wadon regretted the decision to kill Douan. Perhaps they should have allowed him to go on with his prac-tice of stealing the bodies of unborn children to use as his own.
Would Behren survive?
Would the Chezru religion survive?
And should it? Mado Wadon had to ponder.
"Yatol Peridan is the least of your troubles," an increasingly frustrated De Hamman stated suddenly, drawing Mado Wadon from his disturbing thoughts. ?Your eyes should focus upon Yatol Bardoh and the legions he commands."
"The Jacintha legions are mine," Mado Wadon said.
"Bardoh commands them. It is no secret that he has used Chezru Douan's inalr'Uty to capture the Dragon of To-gai to foster his own ends. How much more powerful will he become once Dharyan is recaptured and the rebels are all dead."
Mado Wadon winced at the thought.
He went back to the lower levels of Chom Deiru almost immediately, down the cold and wet steps to the dungeons and to the filthy, barred hole in the wall where Pagonel of the Jhesta Tu had been placed.