"Do you believe they're abominations?"

"No." Meridor sighed. "They're just unhappy and in pain."

The boys' screams tore through the cathedral again. Atop the stone snake, Master Sayes showed no sign of stopping the ritual.

"They sound like they're in pain now."

"Yes." Meridor worried about her brothers as she always did when they were out of her sight. She spent so much time taking care of them, how could she not be worried?

"You've seen others healed?" the burned man asked.

"Yes. Lots." Meridor watched the undulations of the stone snake. Were Mikel and Dannis walking the Way of Dreams now? Or were they just trapped inside the snake while truly terrible things happened to them?

"What have you seen?" the man asked.

"I've seen the crippled made whole, the blind made to see, and all kinds of diseases healed."

"I was told that Dien-Ap-Sten usually picks children to heal."

Meridor nodded.

"A lot of adults don't like that," the burned man said. "I heard them talking in the taverns in town and on the ship that brought me here."

Meridor nodded again. She had seen people get into fights in Bramwell while discussing such things. She was determined not to argue or point out that there were a lot of sick kids in the city.

"Why do you think Dien-Ap-Sten picks children most of the time?" the burned man asked.

"I don't know."

The burned man grinned as he watched the stone snake. Blood wept from his upper lip and threaded through his white teeth and over the blistered flesh of his pink lips. "Because they are impressionable and because they can believe more than an adult, girl. Show an adult a miracle, and he or she will reach for logical conclusions for why it happened. But the heart of a child… by the Light, you can win the heart of a child forever."

Meridor didn't completely understand what the man was talking about, but she didn't let it bother her. She'd already discovered that there were things about adults that she didn't understand, and things about adults that she wasn't meant to understand, and things that she understood but wasn't supposed to act as if she understood.

Abruptly, Master Sayes ordered silence in the cathedral. The musical instruments stopped playing at once, and the hoarse shouts of the crowd died away.

Once when she had been there, Meridor remembered, a group of rowdy men hadn't stopped making noise as Master Sayes had ordered. They'd been drunk and argumentative, and they had said bad things about the church. Master Sayes's warriors had forced their way through the crowd, sought them out, and killed them. Some said that they had killed two innocent men as well, but people stopped talking about that by the next meeting.

Silence echoed in the massive cathedral and made Meridor feel smaller than ever. She clasped her hands and fretted over Mikel and Dannis. Would the Way of Dreams simply tear off one of their heads, killing one of them to make a whole child out of what was left? That was a truly horrible thought, and Meridor wished it would leave her mind. But it would have been even worse, she supposed, if Dien-Ap-Sten had asked her da or ma to decide which child lived and which child died.

Then the power filled the cathedral.

Meridor recognized it from the other times she had experienced it. It vibrated through her body, shaking even the teeth in her head, and it made her all mixed up and somehow excited inside.

The burned man lifted his arm, the one with the hand that was completely blackened by whatever had cooked him. Crimson threads crisscrossed the cooked flesh as he worked his fingers. Flesh split open over one knuckle, revealing the pink flesh and the white bone beneath.

But as Meridor watched, the hand started to heal. Scabs formed over the breaks, then flaked away to reveal whole flesh again. However, the new flesh was still crisp, burned black. She glanced up at the burned man and saw that even the cracks in his face had healed somewhat.

Taking down his hand, the burned man gazed at it as if surprised. "By the Light," he whispered.

"Dien-Ap-Sten can heal you," Meridor said. It felt good to offer the man hope. Da always said hope was the best thing a man could wish for when dealing with fate and bad luck. "You should start coming to church here. Perhaps one day the snake will pick you."

The burned man smiled and shook his head beneath the hood of his traveling cloak. "I would not be allowed to seek healing here, girl." Crimson leaked down his cracked face again. "In fact, I'm surprised that I wasn't killed outright when I tried to enter this building."

That sounded strange. Meridor had never heard anyone speak like that.

With a sigh that sounded like a bellows blast she'd heard at the blacksmith's shop, the snake's huge lower jaw dropped open. Smoke and embers belched from the snake's belly.

Meridor stood on her tiptoes, waiting anxiously. When Mikel and Dannis had entered the snake, she'd never thought that she might not see them again. Or even that she might not see one of them again.

A boy stepped through the opening of the snake's mouth on two good legs. He gazed out at the crowd fearfully, trying in vain to hide.

Dannis! Meridor's heart leapt with happiness, but it plunged in the next moment when she realized that Mikel, little Mikel who loved her sock puppet shows, was gone. Before her first tears had time to leave her eyes or do more than blur her vision, she saw her other little brother step out from behind Dannis. Mikel! They both live! And they are both whole!

Da whooped with joy, and Ma cried out, praising Dien-Ap-Sten for all to hear. The crowd burst loose with their joy and excitement, but Meridor couldn't help thinking that it was because having Mikel and Dannis returned meant that another would soon be selected to journey down the Way of Dreams.

Da rushed forward and took her brothers from the fiery maw of the stone snake. Even as he pulled them into an embrace, joined by Ma, movement at Meridor's side drew her attention to the burned man.

She watched as everything seemed to slow down, and she could hear her heartbeat thunder in her ears. The burned man whipped his traveling cloak back to reveal the hand crossbow he held there. The curved bow rested on a frame no longer than Meridor's forearm. He brought the small weapon up in his good hand, extended it, and squeezed the trigger. The quarrel leapt from the crossbow's grooved track and sped across the cathedral.

Tracking the quarrel's flight, Meridor saw the fletched shaft take Master Sayes high in the chest and knock himbackward. The Wayfinder plunged from the snake's neck, disappearing from sight. Screams split the cathedral as Meridor's senses sped up again.

"Someone has killed Master Sayes!" a man's voice yelled.

"Find him!" another yelled. "Find that damned assassin!"

"It came from over there!" a man yelled.

In disbelief, Meridor stood frozen as cathedral guards and robed acolytes plunged into the crowd brandishing weapons and torches. She turned to look for the burned man, only to find him gone. He'd taken his leave during the confusion, probably brushing by people who were only now realizing what he had done.

Altough the cathedral guards worked quickly, there were too many people inside the building to organize a pursuit. But one man fleeing through people determined to get out of the way of the menacing guards moved rapidly. She never saw him escape.

One of the acolytes stopped beside Meridor. The acolyte held his torch high and shoved people away, revealing the abandoned hand crossbow on the floor.

"Here!" the acolyte yelled. "The weapon is here."

Guards rushed over to join him.

"Who saw this man?" a burly guard demanded.

"It was a man," a woman in the nearby crowd said. "A stranger. He was talking to that girl." She pointed at Meridor.