The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) by H. Anthe Davis Page B

and clothing would interfere with our work.  We are not sorcerers, and thus must minimize the barriers between our power and your bonds.”
    Cob scowled, but shucked off his pack and coat, then his tunic.  Even though it was warm down here, he had not wanted to part with anything, and being bare-skinned in front of a crowd was not his idea of fun.
    He felt the stares of the Trifolders keenly as the tunic came off.  He knew what they were looking at: the silvery exit-scar on his back.  Its mate marked him between navel and hipbone, a patch of discolored flesh where a wraith arrow had struck him through.  He had worn the arrowhead as a talisman of his survival, but like all of his former belongings, it was lost.
    Steeling himself, he swung onto the altar, avoiding the unlit candles as he stretched out.  The draping-cloths were thin and stitched with metallic thread, and through them he felt circular etchings in the stone under his shoulders.  His skin prickled as he looked up at the three women, all too aware of the weapons they held.
    Then his gaze strayed past them to the ceiling, to the metal circles embedded in the plaster there, and his fears of being sacrificed fled before the sensation of being watched.  The simple interlocking rings—one silver, one iron, one bronze—matched the etchings beneath him, but they were more than just symbols.  They felt like eyes.  There was nothing about them to explain why he felt that way, but he knew with certainty that something could see him.
    The women shifted around him, Sister Talla taking up a position at his left shoulder, Sister Merrow at his right.  The Mother Matriarch moved from one corner of the altar to the next, bells chiming softly as she lit the candles in sequence, until she ended at his head.  The flame of the bronze torch bathed her face in warm light and reflected faintly from the metal circles in the ceiling.  At her word, the two Sisters turned Cob’s hands upward to place hammer-haft and sword-hilt in his palms, and he clutched the weapons automatically, no less uneasy for their presence.
    The Mother Matriarch set one hand to Cob’s brow as if testing him for fever, her other lifting the torch high.  The Sisters pressed their hands to his chest, not forcefully but not comfortably either.  Being touched was alien to him even though one wore gloves and the other gauntlets.
    “ Let us begin,” said the Mother Matriarch.
    “ In the name of Breana Eranine, Maiden of Martyrs, Sword of the Defender, I invoke protection upon this vessel,” said Sister Merrow, her voice low and neutral.  “May he be shielded from harm both physical and spiritual, and divided from all that cling to him.  Sei-don Uvadha. ”
    “ Sei-don Uvadha ,” murmured the crowd, then subsided into a soft hum.
    The iron sword became heavy, pinning his right hand to the altar, while above the iron circle glowed with a cherry light.  Heat radiated from the empty etching under him, spreading a stinging sensation across him like flesh thawing from frostbite.  Sweat sprang up on his face with the effort to not move, to not scratch or twitch.  Slowly the sting concentrated in three spots—forehead, breastbone and arrow-scar—and in a sudden wrench, he felt his riders.
    The Guardian was heaviest, wrapped around and inside him like a massive serpent, its head nested at the hollow of his throat and its tail just above his hip, at the scar where it had entered him.  On his brow he felt the lighter touch of claws, and saw phantom wings before his eyes, stark white.  And in his chest—
    It was small and faint, whatever it was.  He could barely feel it beneath the Guardian.
    “ In the name of Brigydde Ecaeline, Mother of Humanity, Prophet of Peace, Keeper of the Hearth and Seer of Souls, I invoke the sight upon this vessel,” said the Mother Matriarch, lowering the torch toward his chest.  “May his bonds be revealed.  Sei-shalassa Uvadha .”
    “ Sei-shalassa Uvadha.