“I told myself…maybe she was right. That it would be no worse than any other fate. Boleso wasn't ugly, or deformed, or old. Or diseased.”
Ingrey couldn't help checking himself against that list. At least he did not match any of the named categories, he trusted. Though there were others. Defiled sprang to mind.
“Then what happened?”
“At nightfall, they brought me to his chamber and thrust me within. He was waiting for me. He wore a robe, but under it his body was naked and all covered over with signs drawn in woad and madder and crocus. Old symbols, the sort you sometimes still see carved on ancient wooden foundations, or in the forest where the shrines once stood. He had his leopard tied up in a corner, drugged. He said-it turned out-it seemed he had not fallen in love with me after all. It wasn't even lust. He wanted a virgin for some rite he had-found, made up, I am not sure, he seemed very confused by this time-and I was the only one, his sister's other two ladies being one a wife and the other a widow. I tried to dissuade him, I told him it was heresy, dire sin and against his father's own laws, I said I would run away, that I would tell. He said he'd hunt me down with his dogs. That they would tear me apart as they had the pig. I said I would go to the Temple divine in the village. He said the man was only an acolyte, and a coward. And that he would kill anyone there who took me in. Even the acolyte. He was not afraid of the Temple, it was practically the property of kin Stagthorne and he could buy divines for a pittance.
“The rite was meant to catch the spirit of the leopard, as the old kin warriors were supposed to do. I said, it could not possibly work,