along. I could hear those who passed us on foot as well as on horseback. Everyone going to the festival of Samhain. I was about to die. I didn't want it to be fire. Mael looked pale and frightened. And the wailing of the men in the prison carts was driving me to the edge of madness.
"What would I think when the fire was lighted? What would I think when I felt myself start to burn? I couldn't stand this.
"`What is going to happen to me!' I demanded suddenly. I had the urge to strangle Mael. He looked up and his brows moved ever so slightly.
" `What if the god is already dead. . . ' he whispered.
" `Then we go to Rome, you and I, and we get drunk together on good Italian wine!' I whispered.
"It was late afternoon when the cart came to a stop. The noise seemed to rise like steam all around us.
"When I went to look out, Mael didn't stop me. I saw we had come to an immense clearing hemmed on all sides by the giant oaks. All the carts including ours were backed into the trees, and in the middle of the clearing hundreds worked at some enterprise involving endless bundles of sticks and miles of rope and hundreds of great rough-hewn tree trunks.
"The biggest and longest logs I had ever seen were being hefted upright in two giant X's.
"The woods were alive with those who watched. The clearing could not contain the multitudes. Yet more and more carts wound their way through the press to find a spot at the edges of the forest.
"I sat back and pretended to myself that I did not know what they were doing out there, but I did. And before the sunset I heard louder and more desperate screams from those in the prison carts.
"It was almost dusk. And when Mael lifted the flap for me to see, I stared in horror at two gargantuan wicker figures -- a man and a woman, it seemed, from the mass of vines that suggested dress and hair -- constructed all of logs and osiers and ropes, and filled from top to bottom with the bound and writhing bodies of the condemned who screamed in supplication.
"I was speechless looking at these two monstrous giants. I could not count the number of wriggling human bodies they held, victims stuffed into the hollow framework of their enormous legs, their torsos, their arms, even their hands, and even into their immense and faceless cagelike heads, which were crowned with ivy leaves and flowers. Ropes of flowers made up the woman's gown, and stalks of wheat were stuffed into the man's great belt of ivy. The figures shivered as if they might at any moment fall, but I knew the powerful cross scaffolding of timbers supported them as they appeared to tower over the distant forest. And all around the feet of these figures were stacked the bundles of kindling and pitch-soaked wood that would soon ignite them.
" `And all these who must die are guilty of some wrongdoing, you wish me to believe that?' I asked of Mael.
"He nodded with his usual solemnity. This didn't concern him.
"`They have waited months, some years, to be sacrificed,' he said almost indifferently. `They come from all over the land. And they cannot change their fate any more than we can change ours. It is to perish in the forms of the Great Mother and her Lover.'
"I was becoming ever more desperate. I should have done anything to escape. But even now some twenty Druids surrounded the cart and beyond them was a legion of warriors. And the crowd itself went so far back into the trees that I could see no end to it.
"Darkness was falling quickly, and everywhere torches were being lighted.
"I could feel the roar of excited voices. The screams of the condemned grew ever more piercing and beseeching.
"I sat still and tried to deliver my mind from panic. If I could not escape, then I would meet these strange ceremonies with some degree of calm, and when it came clear what a sham they were, I would with dignity and righteousness pronounce my judgments loud enough for others to hear them. That would be my last act -- the act of the god -- and it must be done with authority, or else it would do nothing in the scheme of things.
"The cart began to move. There was much noise, shouting, and