The circle was broken and with it the spell. Gaar shook himself. He had learned one thing, to stay outside stone circles.
verhead the stars wheeled. There was the Bear, and there was the Bull. If you could read them rightly the ocean was not trackless. The seasons were there if you could read them.
Tomorrow would be Spring. And tonight men in long black robes walked the great circle, related each of the stones to its constellation in the heavens, canted their hymns to the dark powers that had spawned them.
Tomorrow would be Spring. Tomorrow the sun would slant down between the two tallest stones and fall blood-red upon the Cromlech, upon the altar. Tonight they would burn brighter.
And Be'al would be appeased. Be'al the All-Powerful would taste the blood of the victims, would smell their flesh, and Be'al would know that his sons had not forgotten him.
He was all they had not forgotten. Too long for them to remember, too long since they had crossed the void from their parent planet. The sciences they had brought were gone. Only this residue of blood-lust remained.
"The girl stirs," Cyngled said. His beard was black and thick, his skin white, and whiter still the circular scar on his forehead.
In the sepulchre the air was damp as the high-priest looked down upon the girl. In the light of the flickering yew-torches her eyelids seemed to move. Cyngled's fingers hovered at the hilt of the sacrificial knife.