It might be an epidemic, worried Inloth. As the time for the Sixth Hour midday service approached, the ache in his head had grown to a skull-splitting pain. Every joint and bone throbbed. His nose ran with blood.

But outside the tent, more heathens and pagans had gathered. Poor folk oppressed their whole lives by the sway of the Kârnites. I can’t, in good conscience, neglect them.

A great cheer arose as he emerged from the tent. The three women in their dark blue robes praised him. “See how the vile spirits afflict our great master! They bludgeon him! They bruise him! He bleeds! Yet he never surrenders! Belenos sustains him!”

A chant arose from the assembly, “Belenos sustains him! Belenos sustains him!”

Inloth groaned, raised a hand to still their cheers, and forced a smile to his lips. “It brings me joy to see you all here! Great joy indeed to see men grow and thrive, despite the harsh wilderness all about them. To see men strive against weather, famine, disaster—even plague—and grow stronger.”

The blades and hafts of spears rose upright above the heads of the crowd brought the men in white surcoats at the outer fringes of the congregation to Inloth’s attention. Mercenary soldiers in the employ of the village chieftain and the shrine, hired to keep the peace of the fair. Their surcoats and their white-washed round shields of linden wood bore the green and red wreath-of-mistletoe device. The sign of the Goddess Thaynú, mother of the Wild God whose practices held sway in the Five Kingdoms.

Lifting his hands to the light that struggled through the clouds, Inloth went on. “The Rule of Kârn would have us believe that men must live in balance with nature, that we must only take so much as we need to survive. That nature’s other creatures have as much right to live and thrive as do men. Like clouds across the warm sun, they teach us there is little to be done against plague, disease, and the affliction of spirits.” He put his two hands on the head of a sick calf. “But that’s cow-shite!”

Another cheer arose from the crowd. Inloth’s postulants, a handful of young men in hooded black tunics over white-robes, their heads shaved save for a strange tuft of a top-knot at the crown, moved through the crowd. They inspected the livestock one at a time, directed some toward the tent, where the more capable of his junior priests waited to work their magickal cures on them.

Inloth smiled on the owner of the calf. “If that was true, men would scrounge in the woods for berries and roots. We wouldn’t build great cultures like Naricia and Sasana and Aukriath.”

Hands reached out to him from the crowd. Among them were men of Ivea and Celtair, and of Cailech, and traders from Larriocht and even far Muvain. The five penitent men in their blue robes formed a cordon to keep them at bay, but Inloth touched the hands, made signs of blessing on the people.

“Belenos wants to see all land brought under the plow, all creatures of the Abred made useful to men! There is nothing about nature that cannot be improved by the work of men!” He put a fist in the air. “It’s my honor to be the vessel of Belenos! To bring His healing touch to these poor, afflicted animals that give so much of themselves that we might live! To bring order to chaos and bounty to those who have so little!”

The three weyward sisters moved through the crowd, gripped the people by the shoulders and arms, encouraged them to heed his words.

Those sisters are a miracle. He watched as knots in the crowd, encouraged by their suggestions, shouted sooner and louder than any others.

Inloth shook his head and put his hands to his heart. “I tell you, my friends, I detest the suffering of the people!” He counted off their afflictions. “Famine! Flood! And aye, even plague! All these afflictions can be prevented!” He tossed his hands this way and that. “Throw off the barbaric practices of the Kârnites! The intrusion of noble sons, daughters, nephews, and cousins into holy offices! The mockery made of holy matrimony! Cast away Kârnite paganism!”

The commoners hissed and jeered.

He reached for the hidden sun behind the clouds. “Embrace the strict observance of the Súthrhaman Rite! Embrace the reformed Rule of Belenos!” The fiery spirit burned in Inloth’s breast. “Does not the High Oak himself teach that the marriage-ways of Kârn are wicked? Men with many wives! Wives lying with any man they please! Divorce for no cause! Yet you have all come here, to celebrate this wickedness, with your Cétshamain weddings of a year and a day! Shame upon you all, I say! Is it any wonder your stock are afflicted? Any wonder that vile sprites of evil move among you?”

Cries for forgiveness and wails of unredeemed anguish arose.

Inloth clasped his hands together over his chest. “It breaks my heart—Breaks it, I say!—to hear that a fair woman of the Fiatach has been cursed to suffer the old heathen ways! Cursed by acts of wickedness and false oracles to suffer the desecration of an unhallowed matrimony to the hated men of Droma!” He raised his fist to the sky. “That the Lady Eithne would flee from righteousness rather than marry an honest man, why it’s an abomination! An abomination, I tell you!”

His own pilgrims waved their fists and chanted, “Abomination! Abomination!” They urged those around them to take up the call.

Soon all the poor, uneducated folk took up the call. Inloth doubted they knew the meaning of the word, but for the zeal that accompanied their ignorance—he perhaps loved the uneducated most of all.

The weyward sisters had reached the edge of the congregation. They coaxed, cajoled, and exhorted the peacekeepers to redeem themselves, and the mercenary guardsmen soon raised their voices and shook their spears and joined the cry, “Abomination! Abomination!”

“It’s the punishment of Belenos upon you and your livestock that you allow such heathens and infidels to dwell safe among you! Those filthy Droma, with their filthy ways! The heathens of Dolgallu, selling away their loose women for coin!”

Many in the mob raised fists and shouted agreement.

“Down with the Droma! Down with Dolgallu!”

They waved staves and sticks.

“The Gods will it!”

The blue-robed penitents shouted harsh imprecations and pointed long, wicked daggers to the sky.

“Find the Maiden of Dolgallu!”