Berit coughed nervously and looked around. ‘I’d really rather not say, Sir Kalten, and I don’t think we want Lady Sephrenia to see them. They’ve set up a sort of an altar with a clay idol on it, and they’re doing things people shouldn’t do in public. I think they’re just a group of degenerate peasants.’

‘We’d better tell Sephrenia,’ Sparhawk decided.

‘I couldn’t do that, Sparhawk,’ Berit said, blushing. ‘I couldn’t describe what they’re doing in front of her.’

‘Generalize, Berit. You don’t have to be too specific’

Sephrenia, however, proved to be curious. ‘Exactly what are they doing, Berit?’

‘I knew she was going to ask,’ Berit muttered reproachfully to Sparhawk. ‘They’re – um – they’re sacrificing animals, Lady Sephrenia, and they aren’t wearing any clothes – even in this cold. They’re smearing blood from the sacrifices on their bodies, and they’re – um –’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m familiar with the rite. Describe the people. Do they look Styric, or are they more Elene?’

‘Many of them are fair-haired, Lady Sephrenia.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘that’s who they are then. They don’t pose any particular danger. The idol is another matter, though. We can’t leave it behind us. We have to smash it.’

‘For the same reason we had to break the one in the cellar at Ghasek?’ Kalten asked.

‘Exactly.’ She made a little face. ‘I shouldn’t really say this, but the Younger Gods blundered when they confined Azash to that clay idol in the shrine near Ghanda. The idea was sound enough, but they overlooked something. The idol can be duplicated by men, and if certain rites are performed, the Spirit of Azash can enter the duplicates.’

‘What do we do?’ Bevier asked.

‘We smash the idol before the rite’s completed.’

The unclad Zemochs in the canyon were none too clean, and their hair was tangled and matted. Sparhawk had never truly realized before just how much of human ugliness is concealed by clothing. The naked worshippers appeared to be peasants and herdsmen, and they squealed with fright as the mail-shirted knights burst upon them. The fact that the attackers were disguised as Zemochs added to their confusion. They ran this way and that, bawling in terror.

Four of their number wore crude ecclesiastical robes, and they stood before the altar where they had just finished sacrificing a goat. Three of them gaped in stunned disbelief at the knights, but the fourth, a scraggly-bearded fellow with a narrow head, was weaving his fingers and speaking desperately in Styric. He released a series of apparitions which were so ineptly formed as to be laughable.

The knights rode directly through the apparitions and the milling crowd.

‘Defend our God!’ the priest shrieked, his lips flecked with foam. His parishioners, however, chose not to do that.