Chapter 93

Dayen wasn't sure why he had been chosen as the high shaman for the clan on the day of the winter solstice. He was the youngest shaman in the clan, but old Wored had been too tired to perform the rite and had pointed silently to Dayen as his replacement. It was even more worrying that the signs hadn't been good. And now this.

He dressed carefully on the morning of the equinox ceremony, putting on the golden shaman's torque with reverence, and wondered again what the chiefs were thinking to demand a virgin sacrifice. It was true that the winter had been hard, colder than normal, and the clan's food stores were low with a bad augury for the coming season, but they'd been in worse places before within Dayen's own memory, and the chiefs hadn't demanded the rite. Wored had said nothing at the meeting, merely staring into the fire with his heaviest brat around his shoulders. Cord had looked Dayen in the eye when he had pronounced the virgin to be given: Mala.

Mala was outcla