SACRIFICIAL BLOODLee Ballantine and Bruce Boston
For many days Revan traveled across the salt plain and through the dark forest. He sought the village of demons, and finding it, he fashioned and cast the dream spears that slaughtered the vile creatures one by one. All through the night he dwelt within his trance while the battle raged. It was fresh demon blood that now stained the walls, reddened the well, and curdled the rising sun with clots of scabrous cloud. At last his second sight revealed no visions in the air other than his own.Still Revan felt something, not a true vision so much as a ripple across the depths of his soul. Despite his exhaustion, he centered his thoughts and prepared to face whatever new thing had come to threaten him. Not another demon, he knew, for this thing was small and close to the square in which he stood.
A young girl turned a corner by one of the bloodstained walls. She walked toward him slowly, looking at him as if he were a vision, as if his face were that of a stone idol and her look were not returned. She sank down in the dust at his feet, leaning against the wall, and in that instant the bricks lost their blood shimmer and were once again mere stone. The rising sun broke free from the clouds. Revan could feel its warmth upon his face. The last waves of the dream trance receded and left him trembling in their wake.
Revan accepted the girl's silent tribute, and having accepted it, he recognized her. Both from his dream and from the heart-prophesy his mother Getatak had made for him when he left to do battle. "You shall destroy the demons till their village stands in silence, but one thing shall remain, a girl of eighteen years. On the day of her birth, the demons first came to her people. They shall all have perished by your dreams one day, the last day of her eighteenth year. Then, son, be steadfast, for you shall see blood again." Revan took this to mean that he must sacrifice the girl. The task of a dream master was to cleanse the spirit of all people. He knew that the death of an innocent was often necessary to assure the righteousness of others.
Revan drew the long knife from his belt and cut his arm. Using his thumb, he marked the girl's forehead with the blood. She closed her eyes and shuddered slightly, but did not shy away. Perhaps she knew, Revan thought, that this was her last day. Perhaps she had visions of her own and when the time came for the sacrifice she would obey his wishes.
His marking of the girl had not been an idle gesture. Once he had watched Getatak's brother Geta sacrifice a lamb. His uncle had spoken kindly to the lamb, fed it, and treated it with great respect until sundown. Then he had washed its fleece carefully, placed a wreath around its neck, and cutting himself, marked it with his blood on the forehead. In a stone circle in the trees, Revan had watched Geta soothe the lamb's bleating with regular strokes of his hand upon its back, till the animal closed its eyes and stood stock still. Then his uncle had quickly sliced its belly open. As the red and gray entrails tumbled onto the sand, Geta continued to stroke the lamb's back so it made not a sound. Still soundless, it collapsed to its knees and lay down to die. Revan hoped he would be as skillful as his uncle when the time came for wielding the sacrificial knife.
He knelt beside the girl. "Do not be afraid," he told her in as soothing a tone as he could manage.
The girl nodded, but still avoided his gaze. He was not surprised by her lack of speech. He'd heard of holy women, also silent, who lived in the mountains to the west. It was said that Getatak's great grandmother had come into the valley from such a place, breaking her vows of silence and chastity to found a godly family. "I am called Revan," he said, expecting no reply.
"I am Yana," she answered. Her voice, deep and melodic in the empty square, startled him. He paused and eyed her carefully before speaking again.
"Today was your birth festival?"
"How did you know?" Surprise and fear filled her eyes. Revan seemed to hear a piteous bleating from within his head.
"Do not be afraid," he repeated, and punctuated this by smoothing the girl's hair with his hand. The pleasantness of this touch merged with his prayer for skill with the knife so the sacrifice might be taken quickly. He reflected that he had the entire day to commit the act. "How long since you have eaten?" he asked the girl.
"Two days. Two days ago our priests died suddenly, and the old men decided that we must leave, so all packed their belongings and we followed the river east. On the first day I had a dream." Here the girl blushed a little.
Revan wondered what it was about her dream that caused this slight and very appealing coloration. He was reminded for some reason of stories he'd heard from other boys of the village, snippets here and there about women. As a member of a priestly family, he was not supposed to listen to such tales.
"I dreamed," she continued, "that I was back in the village, and of a man like you, only a bit taller, and... somewhat older," she added. "What is your age?"
"The same as yours," he said with some chagrin.
He had been proud to be the youngest man ever to leave his village to do dream battle. Somehow, though, he felt now as if a year or two of age could have been useful, would have somehow increased his understanding of the situation.
"The next morning I ran away and came back here by myself." Revan nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world to desert your people because of a dream. Yana asked, "Why did you come here?"
"I came to do battle with the demons who lived here, and as you can see, I have vanquished them. It was I who killed your priests two days ago and sent your people away from here." Slung across Revan's back was a lambskin pouch, and out of this he brought a crust and some hard cheese. "Two days makes quite a hunger," he said. He broke off some food for himself and then passed it to the girl. She seemed to relax a little as she began to eat.
"I also caused your dream," Revan went on, "which was of me."
This time Yana flushed deeply, and for a second, Revan wished he could recall the events of his trance in greater detail. The feeling he had experienced when he touched the girl in his dream he couldn't quite remember, but he knew it had been a godly feeling.
"You're a dream novice," she exclaimed.
"A dream master," he corrected her. "I attained mastery last night, in this village. For their own protection, I sent your people away."
The girl nodded. "They'll not be sorry to see the last of this village... nor of me. I have always been different from the others. I was born on this spot and our priests took it as an omen that we should settle. Yet life here has not been easy. Strange gods have come to us and many of our people have been possessed."
"Tell me," he asked, "what happened last night."
"Last night the village was empty, except for you. I slept in the forest last night, in a tree. Around sunset I heard something and was afraid."
"You heard the demons screaming. This spot was filled with demons, many score of them. They had inhabited your village for many years, until they came west to my home seeking victims. My Uncle Geta killed the interlopers, and when the time came I was sent here to battle the rest. And to attain mastery. Last night I located a powerful spot, assumed the trance state, and dreamed into their midst. I cannot remember every detail, but I can see hundreds of them, gathered against me in this street."
Revan made a sweeping gesture as he rose to his feet, excited by the telling of his own tale. "Then they came at me. I was carrying a knife-stave, sharp at both ends. Around and around, their blood splashing the walls, more and more. When the stave broke, I fashioned dream spears and hurled them into their midst as quickly as they came. I killed the last one near dawn." Revan's arms fell back to his sides. He sank down again next to Yana. "And now I am tired."
"But haven't you already slept if you were dreaming?"
Revan laughed. "Don't confuse dream trancing with sleep. I dream for others, and I am with others in their dreams. To put it another way, others dream of me. But I still need sleep of my own. I am no god."
The girl had finished eating. "Whether you are a god or not," she said, "you must surely love the sun, Revan, for we sit long in the heat of it." She looked at him directly now, no longer as if his face were a mask of stone.
The new dream master felt a strange sense of embarrassment, both at her glance and her words. Yet mingled with this was an equally strange sweetness. He had no doubt that this feeling, which was increasing in intensity, filling his chest and his throat, was the grace of some god or other and not to be despised. Whatever its source, he honored the feeling. Rising again to his feet, shielding his eyes from the sun, he took Yana by the arm and led her through a nearby archway.
For a moment he could perceive nothing in the relative dimness of the building they had entered. Colored splotches swam before his eyes. Then, as his vision began to clear, Revan started back. He dropped the girl's arm and reached for his long knife. Ranks of demons surrounded them, hunched and snarling, their eyes ablaze. Several seconds passed before his mind grasped the fact that they had entered the temple of the village. The surrounding figures were carved effigies. Their blazing eyes were nothing more than translucent stones illuminated by beams of light that fell through slits cleverly placed in the temple's ceiling.
Yana laughed. "You are a strange dream master," she said, "who kills demons by the score yet fears their stone likenesses."
Again Revan felt the sense of embarrassment.
To prove Yana wrong, he quickly approached a statue and using the tip of his long knife, prised the stone from one of its eyes. Behind him he heard the girl gasp at what she must have considered a sacrilege. He resheathed the knife and held the small jewel up to the light. He could see that it was less than perfect: several opaque strands marred its amber-red clarity. Yet he could sense no evil within it. The demons were truly gone, Revan thought, as he dropped the stone into his pouch.
Before leaving the village, he would remove all of the demon eyes to return as gifts to his tribe and proof of his victory. He thought again of the sacrifice and the lamb Geta had slaughtered. He knew that before the ritual was over, Yana's eyes must join them.
The girl was close by his side. "They've all gone, and I'm alone," she said huskily.
Tired as he was, Revan tried once again to soothe her in preparation for death. He stroked her hair and smoothed it back from her face... and almost before he knew it, their arms were about one another and they were embracing.
Yana led him to a mat that was placed against one wall -- a prayer mat for the worship of demons, Revan thought -- and pulled him down upon it. They continued to hold one another, and as good as this felt, he slid almost into a state of dreaming, though not quite the same. Through her thin cotton wrap he could feel the girl's breasts pressed against him, and he began to stroke her back to reassure her. His fingers slipped through a rip in the cloth of her dress and as they brushed her bare flesh he felt a charge of unfamiliar energy course up his spine, just as the dream energy did when he breathed as Getatak had taught him long ago. Revan concentrated on the sweetness of this flow, and used his breathing carefully so as not disturb Yana. He again removed the knife from his belt and placed it close by his side so it would be ready when the time came.
The girl's cheek felt warm upon his neck, and without knowing why, he reached to open her garment. He could see all of her now and his hand soon followed the path of his eyes, along the curve of her waist and across her bare breasts. Although he touched her lightly, he saw that she felt it by the way her body began to tremble beneath his fingers. He pressed his lips to her shoulder, and then she was turning on her side, pulling him out of his clothing.
Yana spoke to him as her hands caught him between the legs and Revan began to realize more clearly for what task the gods had appointed him. As he ran his fingers along her thighs toward the darkness he'd seen there, they moved closer. She opened her mouth on his as if to breathe the life from him. He knew this was as it must be, a part of the sweetness of her, and of the gods that joined them. Then she took him into her. Revan went onto his back and his shoulder pressed the handle of the knife. He merely felt it and did not think about it.
Yana pushed against him with his hands holding her waist, opened her legs wider, and pushed again. She went a little pale and cried out as the breath broke from her throat. She slid onto him, falling down upon him, her hair and arms about his face, and Revan was aware only of their motion together. Then he felt the last extension of himself, and the gods released him, gave him joy like he had known before alone in the night, only far greater.
Silence returned to the temple as their breathing slowed. Yana was no longer atop his body but remained by his side. It was then that Revan remembered the knife. He took hold of it, and lay near her with it in his hand. Once more he began to stroke her hair.
"My mother bade me sacrifice you," he said softly. "She foretold your presence, and I serve her..." The girl made no response. "She foretold that I should have your blood."
Yana smiled slowly and pointed to herself and then to him. Both of their thighs were smeared with blood, and it was not his own. He thanked the gods, as if in a dream, and dropped the knife.
Revan understood that the sacrifice had been taken.