The acolytes surrounded the father and the conjoined children, filling the area with light. The chainmail-clad guards shoved the crowd back from the father, making more room.

Cholik looked at the man and had to force himself to speak. "Will your sons follow the Black Road, then?"

Tears ran down the father's face. "My sons can't walk, Wayfinder Sayes."

"They must," Cholik said, thinking that was perhaps the way to break the moment. Some who wanted to walk the Black Road gave in to their own fears at the last minute and did not go. The chance to walk the Black Road was never offered again.

Unbidden, the snake's obsidian tongue flicked out and coiled around the twin boys. Without apparent effort, the snake pulled the boys into its fanged mouth. They screamed as they approached the curtain of flames that hugged the huge head.

Standing on the platform over the ridge of the snake's heavy brow and peering through the fire, Cholik only saw the two boys disappear beneath him and couldn't see them anymore. He waited, uncertain what would happen, afraid that he was about to lose all that he had invested in.

Meridor stood at her mother's side, watching as the massive stone snake licked her little brothers into itshuge, gaping maw. Mikel and Dannis passed so close to the flames that light the snake's face-she knew they didn't actually have faces because her father told her that, and her older brothers made fun of her when she mentioned it-that she felt certain they were going to be cooked.

Her uncle Ramais always told stories about children getting cooked and eaten by demons. And sometimes those children were baked into pies. She always tried to figure out how a child pie would look, but whenever she asked her mother, her mother would always tell her she needed to stay away from her uncle and his terrible stories. But Uncle Ramais was a sailor for the Westmarch Navy and always had the best stories. She was old enough that she knew she couldn't believe all of her uncle's stories, but it was still fun making believe that she did.

Meridor really didn't want her younger brothers baked or broiled or burned in any manner. At nine years of age and the youngest girl in a household of eight children, she was the one who watched and cleaned Mikel and Dannis the most. Some days she got tired of them because they were always cranky and uncomfortable. Da said it was because each of her brothers was a tight fit living in one body. Sometimes Meridor wondered if Mikel's and Dannis's other arms and legs were somehow tucked up into the body they shared.

But even though they were troublesome and cranky, she didn't want them eaten.

She watched, staring at the stone snake head as it gulped her brothers down. Since no one was listening to her, she prayed the way she'd been taught to in the small Zakarum Church. She felt guilty because her da had told her that the new prophet was the only chance her brothers had of living. They were getting sicker these days, and they were more aware that they weren't like anybody else and couldn't walk or move the way they wanted to. She thought it must be pretty horrible. They couldn't be happy with each other or anyone else.

"Way of Dreams! Way of Dreams!" the people around her yelled, shaking their fists in the air.

The yelling always made Meridor uncomfortable. The people always sounded so angry and so frightened. Da had always told her that the people weren't that way; it was just that they were all so hopeful. Meridor couldn't understand why anyone would want to walk down into the stone snake's belly. But that was where the Way of Dreams was, and the Way of Dreams-according to Da-could accomplish all kinds of miracles. She had seen a few of them over the past year, but they hadn't mattered much. No one she knew had ever been chosen by Dien-Ap-Sten.

On some evenings, when the family gathered around their modest table, everyone talked about what they would wish for if they had the chance to walk the Way of Dreams. Meridor hadn't added much to the conversation at those times because she didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up.

Lying on the snake's tongue, Meridor's brothers wailed and screamed. She saw their tiny faces, tears glittering like diamonds on their cheeks as they screamed and wept.

Meridor looked up at her mother. "Ma."

"Shhh," her mother responded, knotting her fists in the fancy dress she'd made to go to the Church of the Prophet of the Light. She'd never worn anything like that to the Zakarum Church, and she'd always said that being poor wasn't a bad thing in the eyes of the church. But Da and Ma both insisted that everybody be freshly bathed and clean both nights a week that they went to the new church.

Scared and nervous, Meridor fell silent and didn't talk. She watched as Mikel and Dannis rolled in the snake's mouth toward the Way of Dreams housed in its gullet. Over the months of their visits to the church, she had seen people walk into the snake's mouth, then walk back out again, healed and whole. But how could even Dien-Ap-Sten heal her brothers?

The snake's mouth closed. Above it on the platform over the snake's fiery eyes, Master Sayes led the church inprayer. The screams of the two little boys echoed through the cathedral. Knotting her fists and pressing them against her chin as she listened to the horrid screams, Meridor backed away and bumped into the man standing beside her.

She turned at once to apologize because many adults in the church were short-tempered with children. Children got chosen a lot by Dien-Ap-Sten for healing and miracles, and most of the adults didn't feel they deserved it.

"I'm sorry," Meridor said, looking up. She froze when she saw the monstrous face above her.

The man was tall and big, but that was somewhat hidden beneath the simple woolen traveling cloak he wore. His clothing was old and patched, showing signs of hard usage and covered over with road dust and grit. The frayed kerchief at his neck was tied by a sailor's knot that Uncle Ramais had showed her. The man stood like a shadow carved out of the crowd.

But the most horrible thing about him was his face. It was blackened from burning, the skin crisp and ridged as it had pulled together from the heat. Fine, thin cracks showed in the burned areas, and flecks of blood ran down his face like sweat. Most of the damage was on the left side of his face and looked like an eclipse of the moon. There had been one of those the night Mikel and Dannis had been born.

"It's all right, girl," the man said in a hoarse voice.

"Does it hurt?" Meridor asked. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth when she remembered that many adults didn't like being asked questions, especially about things they probably didn't want to talk about.

A small smile formed on the man's cracked and blistered mouth. New blood flecks appeared on his burned cheek, and pain shone in his eyes. "All the time," he answered.

"Are you here hoping to get healed?" Meridor asked, since he seemed to be open to questions.

"No." The man shook his head, and the movementcaused the hood of his traveling cloak to shift, baring his head a little and revealing the gnarled stubble of burned hair that poked through the blackened skin.

"Then why are you here?"

"I came to see this Way of Dreams that I had heard so much about."

"It's been here a long time. Have you been here before?"

"No."

"Why not?"

The burned man glanced down at her. "You're a curious child."

"Yes. I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

"No, it's not." The man stared at the stone snake as the drums boomed, the cymbals clashed, and the pipes continued their writhing melodies. "Those were your brothers?"

"Yes. Mikel and Dannis. They're conjoined." Meridor stumbled over the word a little. It just didn't sound right. Even after all the years of having to tell other people about her brothers, she still couldn't say it right all the time.