Song

Figures pressed against the railing encircling the dais at center of the temple, writhing and grasping toward the kneeling figure of the priestess as she wailed, streams of indecipherable prophecy tearing from her lips. Guttural chants rose from the host of worshippers, and in many places, there were patches of the pious who lay convulsing, overwhelmed with holy fervor. As the night wore on, those patches would grow larger, like a plague spreading out from a rotting corpse. Many who fell would never again rise, their spasms too violently dashing their heads against the unsympathetic stone floor.

Crouching perilously, as only a young man does, Kahllin watched from his perch above the seventh row, intensely surveying the pulsating mass of people below. He was wholly uninterested in the scene, having observed the rite of prophecy almost daily for the last six years. It was not the worshippers who were the focus of his gaze, but those among them who did not worship. As cantor, Kahllin's task was to see those who tried to leave. The heretics.

Pupils dilated unnaturally wide, Kahllin swept his gaze across the congregation, his enhanced vision bringing into focus a man who stood starkly in the midst of a swath of shaking, trembling pilgrims; a potential runner. While Kahllin watched, the man raised his hands in supplication toward the priestess. Kahllin scanned the crowd again, this time settling on a woman who had turned sharply away from the spectacle, arm raised to her face. Tensing, he rolled forward onto the balls of his feet. The woman's head jerked forward in a sneeze, then another. As she turned back toward the dais, Kahllin suddenly felt more aware of the dust from the sandals of hundreds of pilgrims, and the sooty smoke from a hundred burning candles. He sharply turned his head to the side and let out his own series of violent sneezes.

Returning his gaze to the congregation, his eyes snapped to a stumbling figure running desperately away from the dais. Cursing softly to himself, Kahllin flung himself from his perch, landing lithely on the chest of a convulsing worshipper, feeling ribs crack and break beneath his sandals. He took off in a dash, the long purple ribbon sewn to the back of his shirt streaming out behind him, the silver bell at its end singing out sweetly as he ran. Three sacristans, called to him by the sound of the bell, fell in behind him as he arrowed nimbly through the mass of bodies, their armored boots trampling the limbs of spasming pilgrims.

Kahllin's eyes focused on the figure as she turned her face toward her perusers. He took in her whole visage at once. She looked to be his age, dirty hair swept over bloodshot eyes, tears streaming down a face flushed red from crying. Around her neck hung a small blue reliquary, the "Kin's relic". A gift containing a bone from the little finger of a priestess who had been chosen to give her life for prophecy, bestowed to the priestess' mother, or in the absence of a mother, her sister.

For the first time since being chosen for this role in his eleventh year, Kahllin felt pity, a sentiment he had long forgotten. This was not heresy, but sorrow and grief. However, since she was fleeing, she would be marked a heretic and struck down by the merciless sacristans with their holy spears. They were directly behind him now, soon they would pass him and overtake their prey. Almost unconsciously, Kahllin allowed himself to stumble over a pilgrim's still body. He felt the wind get forced out of his chest as the first sacristan collided with him, the sacristan's dropped spear confounding the legs of the other two.

The silver bell was abruptly silenced as it was crushed flat by the tangle of armored bodies. Kahllin looked up, wheezing, and saw the young woman stare wide eyed at him for a moment before she turned and fled through one of the temple archways.