"I am the King who will be," he said. "For the Wise One cleaves to the Keeper-of-Laws."

The Corn King gave a long roar and closed with him. The stone blades flashed in the light of the straw man's burning, until the tall figure collapsed in a shower of sparks. Hands grasped wrists as the men of flesh and blood swayed together, striving chest to chest. Then the Corn King staggered back, a long shallow cut across his breast. Blood runneled down from it, and dropped onto the ground. A sound halfway between a sigh and a moan came from the crowd, and the former King toppled gracefully to the dirt in a mime of death.

"The King is dead!" the four priestesses cried.

Women with unbound hair came forward and lifted the limp form of the Corn King, amid more who wailed grief and beat their breasts. Kilted warriors with their faces painted as if for battle surrounded the new King, circling and leaping, dancing as the razor-edged steel of their spearheads flashed in the firelight.

"Long live the King!" they shouted, and a ululating cheer spread through the crowd.

Pipers struck up, and bodhrans; the hoarse bellow of the long wooden radongs and the wild chill wailing of flutes. Behind the weeping pallbearers who carried his predecessor the new King walked towards the path that led downward to Dun Juniper. The crowd followed, singing:

"I sleep in the kernel and I dance in the rain;

I dance in the wind and in the waving grain;

And when you cut me down I care nothing for the pain;

In spring I'm the Lord of the Dance once again!"

Juniper smiled as they left and the tension ebbed; the young man who took the part of the new King was going to be very popular with the girls until next Beltane; it was one of the perks of the ceremonial role. Then the smile died and she shivered. The Initiates and the High Priestesses remained, and tonight was no ordinary Sabbat; not even an ordinary Lughnasadh Eve. Tonight she planned to ask a question of the Powers.