Senlas said. “And it won’t never look away until you’re come to where you’re going. We’re bound now. Do you feel it?”
“I feel it strong, Senlas,” I said.
I wish I could say I was lying but I was not. I did feel something not altogether different from what he seen in his dream – like I was held in his hands and was soon to be held into the flame, and my part was nothing but to take what was already decided.
“I know you do,” he says. “I know you do, Koli. My altar boy. My bird of fire.” He looked from me to the hand women, and though he didn’t say a word, they knowed what that look meant.
They come in on both sides of me and took hold of me. For all the warning Senlas give, and for all that he had gathered his people to bear witness, I didn’t know till the women took hold of me that he meant for it to happen right there and then. I seen now that all my chances and all my choosings had come down to this one.
“Oh, Senlas,” I says. “But that’s a strange thing. It’s wondrous strange for us to not see the same.”
A gasp and a murmur run through all the people that was gathered. It run through them, and ended up at Senlas. The hand women was already hauling me up onto my feet, but he lifted up his hand and they stopped, so I sunk down again on my knee and my stretched-out leg. “What’s that you say?” he asks me. “Speak up.”
Well, there was nothing to do but go on with what I started. I had throwed a raw egg in the air and had got to catch it without the meat spilling. “I had the self-same dream, Senlas,” I says. “The exact same, in all ways. I was sitting in your hand, and we had that talk, and I knowed the strength would be in my wings to fly when you let me go. To fly straight, and to fly true, and to light the way for you. And I… I was proud, Senlas. So proud, to think that it was going to be me that went before you.”
Senlas nodded like this was only right.
“But then, in my dream, the sender spoke up in a voice like thunder. He said, ‘What’s that pride you got there? That vainness and glorying in yourself? None is pure, faceless boy, save only Senlas. What are you, that you go before him and… and you light the way for him to come?’ And I said, ‘I’m his chosen, his altar boy.’ ‘Oh, you are that,’ says the sender, ‘and that’s glory beyond what any could deserve. So you got to purify yourself, is what. You got to go one whole day, and one whole night, without food or water. You just got to pray and pray and pray till all the heaviness and the badness of this world is gone out of you. It’s only then you’ll be able to fly, and it’s only then you’ll know your way.’ And by and by I waked up, and you called for me, and I was joyful, for I knowed the time was come. The time for my making ready, I mean. And then, after that, for the fire. But the making ready is first, and is on me, for otherwise I might fail you, which is a thing I could not bear.”
I’m giving you the sense of what I said the best I can, but I said a lot more of it and it didn’t come out so smooth as I’m setting it out here. There was a great deal of stammering, and swallowing, and breaking off, and saying the same thing two and three times over. I heard my voice shake, and the tears starting to come, but I tried my best not to cry. I had got to look like this was joy and excitement in me, and not a bunch of lies welling up out of pure fear and dread of being burned.
Senlas heard me out with a big frown on his face. And after I was finished, there was silence. It was like all the people there had died, almost, for nothing else would explain how there was not a single whisper of sound when the air in that place made even your breath sound like a river rushing.
“You got to be pure,” Senlas