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Chapter Nineteen

"Will you teach me?"

"If you wish"

Oh, I wished

"You do realize that raising the dead is an act performed only by a bokor?" he murmured

"Yes"

"So if I teach you, and you perform the ritual, you become like me"

I’d known that; I’d just chosen not of think about it for fear I’d chicken out But now, faced with the end to my quest, the prospect of life after death, hope from the ashes, I knew it didn’t "

His s you’d say that"

Unease sparked, a trickle of gooseflesh across reed to a devil’s bargain, and I probably had

"Can you teach me now?"

"The ritual may only be performed beneath the full moon"

Rats I didn’t want to wait another week until the lopsided moon became round, but I doubted even Mezareau could speed up that process

"Until then," he snapped his fingers again, "you will be rabbed me by the arms and hauled me to my hut, about three hundred yards away We had been close

The goons shoved uess Mezareau’s idea of guest and mine were pretty far apart

The day passed, the night, too, and then several more They didn’t starveas nice to Murphy I asked after hi on, going about their duties with silent, stoic precision

My hand punished for allowing me to escape

Punishment around here was probably not pretty

At last the uards supplied me with a robe of red The color orn only in Petro rituals, when the more violent loos were summoned These never took place in a temple but outside at a crossroad in an open field or a forest

They led me to the recently tilled field, surrounded by trees Mezareau stood at the edge garbed in a robe similar to mine, his ason in one hand and a knife in the other Murphy lay gagged and bound at his feet

"What the hell’s going on?" I asked

"You wanted to learn the ritual" He knelt next to Murphy, whose eyes widened at the sight of the knife

More a dagger really--shiny, j eweled, pretty, if it wasn’t going to be used on you "Let’s get started"

"I won’t let you kill hi"

My heart gave a sudden thud and the night turned cold "I don’t understand"

"I think you do You donned the red robe, which symbolizes the blood sacrifice necessary to appease the Petro spirits"

"A chicken or a pig, not--"

"The goat without horns?" Mezareau suggested, using a common reference to a huoat?"

"You think the raising of the dead is a si, without the sacrifice of blood?"

I guess I hadn’t thought that far I shook my head, put my hands out as if to stop him, backed up, and bumped into themyself just as Mezareau raised the knife

"No," I whispered, but he didn’t hear -fast movement, Mezareau slashed doard Black dots danced in front of my eyes