Secrets of the Stonechaser (The Law of Eight Book 1) by Nicholas Andrews Page A

in the middle of the night? Was Chalis’s cooking that bad?”
    Nerris pointed at the gathering in the distance. “I heard voices.”
    Rade looked out onto the glade, and his lips pursed. “Ah.”
    “Who are they?”
    “Undesirables.” Rade’s mouth curled. “With those dark robes, they must be cultists.”
    Nerris leaned out further over the edge of the copse. “Cultists?”
    “They’ve been the bane of northern Yagolhan for longer than I care to remember,” Rade said. “They manipulate people’s minds, make them into something that’s not themselves. They pray to a being known as the Tattered Man. New members are initiated by abduction rather than request, and they practice unnatural rites. But what are they doing this far south?”
    “What kind of rites?”
    “Human sacrifice is a popular one,” Rade said. “Murder is everything the Law of Eight stands against.”
    “What are you talking about?” Nerris asked. “What does the Aeternal Council have to do with this?”
    “Nothing,” Rade said. “The Aeternal Council was established thousands of years ago, its philosophy bastardized from a higher purpose to fit the whims of a power-hungry ruler.”
    “What higher purpose?”
    The chanting below picked up volume as more cultists joined in. They brought a man forth. He was naked, his manhood flopping side to side as the robed figures jostled him between them. The man’s captors laid him over a rock, and a figure emerged from the throng. The chanting stopped and became a kind of long gasp as he held up a hand, holding a long, curved knife.
    He approached the naked man and yanked back his hair. The robed figure began to saw through the man’s scalp. Blood ran down the victim’s face, obscuring his features. The captive screamed, long and primal.
    Nerris started forward, but Rade grabbed him. “There’s nothing we can do, Nerris, There has to be fifty of them down there.”
    “The men—”
    “They would be long gone before you came back with any kind of force,” Rade said. “Hard to pin down, these cultists.”
    In the glade, the cultist had finished his gory work and held up his victim’s bloody scalp for all to see. The chanting resumed, and this time mist formed as if called from the air itself. Nerris sucked in his breath. It was the same black mist he had seen in the tent on that last morning he spent with Qabala.
    The cult leader held out his hand at the man, and Nerris felt something, almost like a pull. Then it rushed out, and in the distance, the victim’s chest blew apart, spraying blood and flesh all over the surrounding cultists. The lifeless man fell into a pool of blood, and the cultists around them cheered. Nerris felt ill, but he quickly stymied that reaction and replaced it with fury.
    He drew his blade. “That tears it.”
    Before he could move or Rade could stop him again, the wind picked up in a violent rush. The torches in the glade flickered, and some of them went out. The rush of new voices filled the night air, rapid whispers which sounded like a combination of man and animal. Many shadows darted back and forth across the glade, and the cultists panicked. Chants turned to shouts of fear, and men stumbled over each other in their haste to flee.
    Nerris strained his eyes but couldn’t see anything but shadows and fleeing cultists. The whispering became more coherent, as what sounded like music and laughter mixed in with the wind. The shadows grew more numerous until they covered the entire glade.
    And just like that, the glade stood empty. The wind died down with the same quickness it had come. Only Nerris and Rade were left standing at their hiding place, looking down on a glade where blood had stained the ground moments before. Where the sacrifice had fallen, flowers now bloomed.
    “What in Clystam’s name happened?” Nerris said after a long silence.
    “What needed to.” Rade’s voice had lost its usual joviality, his words coming out solemn. “Come, Nerris.