PartOne
The Hanged Man
ChapterOne
“It is time.”
His name was Azaiah. He was tall and slender, with long hair the color of snow and eyes green as new spring leaves. When they came for him, he kissed his mother and sister while they wept, and he promised them that he was not afraid of what was to come.
“I don’t want you to go,” his sister sobbed, clinging to him.
“I know. But it’s all right.” Azaiah kissed her on the forehead, gently disentangling her arms from around his neck. She would miss him, but his death would not be in vain. When they cut his throat on the altar and offered his life’s blood to the Harvester, his sacrifice would bless the village, make certain that his mother and sister lived to see the warmth return with the sun. And it wasn’t only his family that would benefit. Azaiah’s death would keep the plague at bay, bless the crops and the animals. How many could say that their death was so meaningful? With the days short and the ribbon lights twisting in the cold, dark night sky, the Harvester waited patiently to reap the fairest of all the winter flowers.
This year, that was Azaiah. He’d been chosen in the spring by the Oracle, who, in her robes and crown of dried flowers, now stood at the door to his family’s small home while her attendants prepared to take him forth.
“You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” his mother asked.
“Of course,” the Oracle said, not without kindness, for she was long enough in her position that she knew the grief that came to the family of the one chosen for sacrifice. “Your son is a gift. He will be treated as such.”
His mother took him in her trembling arms and held him tight. Azaiah kissed her on the head, felt her tears on his skin. “Be well, Mother. I love you. I am not afraid.”
“Such a sweet boy, my child,” his mother sobbed, and it took the Oracle’s two attendants to gently remove her grip on Azaiah. But the Oracle was smiling. A child well-loved was looked upon favorably by the Harvester.
Azaiah turned and bowed before the low altar of his family’s house-gods, kept neat near the hearth fire. The crudely carved figures’ blank, wide eyes stared at Azaiah as he made one last offering: the pendant with his birth rune etched in a sliver of sea glass, which he’d worn on a leather cord around his neck. When his body burned on the pyre, they would return his pendant to the sea for the Mariner.
It was snowing as the Oracle drew him to the place where he would be prepared. In the morning he would be led to the altar, and the villagers would throw dead flowers at him and sing sacred songs, asking the Harvester to find him pleasing for the reaping to come. Prayers that Azaiah would be willing, wouldn’t fight.
They fought, sometimes, when they were brought to the place where they would die. When Azaiah was ten summers, the sacrifice struggled when the time came for the knife, and sickness took many that spring: babies, the elders, even Azaiah’s own father. A hunting party seeking game fell in the woods that winter; their bones were found in the spring, picked clean by crows and other carrion creatures.
When Azaiah was chosen, his mother wept and was chastised by her own father, who had frowned and glanced nervously at the household gods, as if the little statues might report to the Harvester that the sacrifice was already wilting under his mother’s sorrow.
“It is an honor, Maeda,” Azaiah’s grandsire said. “Our bloodline being chosen, you know what it means. The village will prosper, and our family will be spared for— How old are you, boy? Two-and-twenty, yes?”
“Twenty,” Azaiah said. He thought that was right. He’d taken the oaths and participated in the rites of adulthood in the spring after his eighteenth year, and that was two years ago. He didn’t pay much attention to birthdays, otherwise.
His grandsire nodded. “Twenty years, our family will be blessed by the Harvester. Think of your daughter, Maeda. Her children. The line endures. And I have no doubt your boy will please the Harvester, as willing as he is to bow before the knife.”
His mother had stopped her tears for a time, choosing instead to lavish him with affection Now, as he walked with the Oracle and her attendants, Azaiah imagined he could still hear her weeping, clinging to his sister. He straightened his shoulders as he walked through the village, as familiar as his own name. He would not dishonor the village orhis family. He would greet the Harvester as a good supplicant, a proper sacrifice.
The Oracle led him into a long wooden building that was forbidden to all but her and her attendants. It was warm inside, and Azaiah looked about, wide-eyed, taking in the pots of honey and various oils, the big wooden tub, the hearth, the potted winter flowers. This was the most sacred place in their entire village. There was a sweet scent in the air, from both the flowers and the smoke rising from the braziers newly lit by the attendants. The Oracle dismissed them and clasped her hands before her, bowing to Azaiah.
“Tonight, you will prepare yourself,” she told him. “First, you will bathe in the water there, scented with oils and flowers. Then you may spend your time in quiet reflection and prayer, or you may sleep. If sleep is what you choose, the smoke will give you dreams, kind ones on behalf of the Weaver, and I have been told you will live a full life in them, so that you will not fear or resent what will happen tomorrow. In the morning, you will be dressed in white robes and anointed with sacred oils. We will walk to the altar through the village, so that all may see you and know what you go to do for us. At the altar you will breathe the smoke into your lungs, and it will keep you from feeling pain when the knife slits your throat.”
Azaiah bowed back. “Yes, ma’am. I understand.” He did not know if he wanted to sleep, even with the promise of gentle rest. The longest sleep of all would come at noon, when he bared his neck for the knife. And he would. He would not be like the one who struggled, or the one from his grandsire’s time who had run the night before, trying to escape his fate. They’d found him and dragged him back, and while they’d slit his throat on the altar, it was too late; the plague was merciless that year, and the crops failed, and the villagers still made a warding sign when they spoke of it.
“When the Harvester takes you, your body will rest on the altar for three days. On the fourth, it will be burned on the pyre and the doors adorned with your ashes.” She studied him, serious, her eyes youthful and bright in her lined face. “Of course, if you are taken up to be the Scythe, then there will be no need for ashes.”
Azaiah felt a little throb of desire at the thought of it. No one knew whether it was true, or if it was merely a way to ease the fear of dying.You might enrapture the Harvester so much that you become not a flower for his lapel, but the scythe at his back.Azaiah had heard some say it was a lie told to sweeten the sacrifice, to dull the fear every human felt at the idea of death. But from the moment the flower crown was placed on his brow during the ceremony in which he was chosen, Azaiah had wondered,What if it is true?
There was no point in worrying about it now. What happened after the knife came down would happen. Azaiah bowed his head. “It will be as the Harvester desires, my lady.”
“You are a choice such as we have not had in many years, Azaiah,” she said, and he felt her hand on his head, heard the command in her voice. “Do you know, when I came to your mother on the night you were born, I knew you would be called one day? You were born with the caul over your eyes and the cord around your neck, and you were so blue, almost the color of ice in the winter sea.”
Azaiah glanced up at her. “No one told me that.”
“It’s what made me think you were meant for the altar—not that you were born nearly dead, but that, when the cord was cut and you could breathe, you did not scream or cry. You were calm. Still. I think you’ve always known it, too.”
Azaiah felt his cheeks heat and quickly looked away. “I—suspected. But it seemed as if I shouldn’t say it. To ask to be chosen would be wrong, I think.”
