White Face eyed Egrin up and down. “I will take you to Makaralonga,” he finally said, his words muffled by the grotesque appliance.

He addressed his comrades in their own tongue, and an argument broke out. Boar Tusk seemed strenuously opposed to the plan. White Face’s reply was to rap his spearshaft over Boar Tusk’s head. The blow likely would have felled a bareheaded man, but Boar Tusk staggered, merely stunned.

White Face turned to Egrin. “Do not speak, and when I hold up my hand, look at the ground,” he ordered. The lolling-tongued face came close. “Disobey, and you die.”

Egrin nodded, and they departed.

As they traveled, a quarter-league at least, the throb of drums grew more distinct. Glimpses of blue sky ahead revealed they were approaching a clearing. The redbud, dogwood, and other smaller trees disappeared, leaving only the widely spaced giants of the forest. The ground around the massive tree trunks was bare, packed by the tread of many feet over many years. They reached the edge of a ravine and halted.

The narrow, bowl-shaped gully was lined with crudely cut blocks of native stone. The stones were set in horizontal rows along the ravine’s sides, and these benches were crowded with tribesmen. Hundreds of the Dom-shu, all garbed and masked like Egrin’s captors, sat and stared at a ceremony taking place on the floor of the ravine.

Their attention was focused on two concentric circles of foresters. The outermost ring was made up of drummers, beating a regular one-two rhythm on pairs of skin-covered drums. Within arm’s reach in front of them was a circle of flame, a ring of wood stacked waist-high. Inside this marched a circle of tribesmen wearing tiny breechcloths and a thick coating of ash and grease. They moved in single file. Following the east-to-west motion of the sun, they lifted their knees high and drove their heels hard into the cindered soil. Each dancer whirled a length of cord over his head. At the end of each cord was a slat of wood. This whirling slat was the source of the weird humming Egrin had heard. This close, the sound was deeply affecting. Not just the sheer volume of it, but the quality of the noise. The bass note seemed to penetrate the chest and make the bones shiver.