“You will be held, until we are done,” Abnasio informed him. “After that, some period of correctional penance may be required but, as we will be on our journey to defeat Darvezian, armed with Tyrant’s Bane, our Weapon of Righteousness, that will not be our task. We will hand you to the staff of the Potentate before we leave. You are not an evil man, merely misguided.”

Then they swamped him, three or four monks grabbing him, tearing the borrowed robe from him—none too gently—and then frog-marching him out back into the main ritual area, where he was searched thoroughly and set down close to the altar and bound. No sacred shackles for Lief, it seemed, so perhaps they were in short supply, but the rope they used was plenty strong enough, and they seemed suspiciously good at tying knots. Lief let himself speculate about intramonastic fun and games after lights out in the dormitory. It wasn’t much, but he wasn’t really in a position to strike any more significant blow against them.

Worse, the ritual was beginning, with a host of monks coming in to chant and wave around smelly censers and generally line up to be counted. Shortly thereafter, Enth was hauled out, and Lief winced to see them dragging him by his chains, while he scraped and scrambled to keep his feet. Once he fell, and when they hauled him up he let out a thin keening sound of grief and agony that belonged to neither man nor beast.

He was dragged before the altar, and Lief thought, Well, crap, this is it. He had kept a hopeful eye out for a quartet of figures in purloined robes sneaking in at the back, but he was sourly aware that none of his companions were likely to be able to pull off the come-as-a-monk trick in any event, nor would they likely even think of it. The lack of any visible presence from Dion and company did not lend itself to the idea that they had a secret master plan about to be put into action.

After that, with Enth crouched shuddering before the altar of Armes, the ritual continued to go on, with stern sermons, some rather tuneless singing, and a number of sonorous invocations. Despite the overall feeling of peril, Lief felt his eyelids drooping with the raw and unadulterated tedium of it.

And then it was all quiet, and Abnasio had in his hand a long two-pronged blade, and Lief could not help but notice that a couple of monks had a fire going in a little stone-walled forge that was swiftly making the air stifling and hot. They had pots there, such as might be used for the boiling of glue.