Priscilla never broke chant but she grasped her left wrist frantically, knowing the while that Moonhawk’s bracelets had been torn away by magic and force—she’d first heard Moonhawk speak to her when she’d grasped the bracelet at Blood-test and had never been without it again until now—

“Look on the moon, youngster. It carries silver and its path is a bracelet about the planet. You have worked hard for me and it has cost you. Think on me…”

Outside, the chanting faded away. But Priscilla’s eyes saw the moon gleam and she continued the chant, felt herself growing warmer.

“You’ll need energy, tomorrow, too. You’ll not be stoned if I have my way of it. If only you could touch the moonlight…”

There was a new sound as the city quieted after Tenth Chant. The bars and taverns were closed now, except at the space port’s foreign zone; the houses were darkening, but there was a new sound—a sound of birds maybe, or rats!

It was not good to dwell on rats. Priscilla knew this. But Moonhawk’s voice had told her to think on Moonhawk…

The last time she’d been truly filled with Moonhawk’s vision and force she’d killed a woman and stunned another senseless. She’d left her post at the Temple and traveled—without permission—to the seedy bar where a Sintian man was about to give stolen Temple secrets over to an outworlder. And when she’d recovered the secrets, she’d let the surviving outworlders, mere spaceship crew—and the thief himself—go.

And she’d given her word—Moonhawk’s word—that they be safe. The single death had been atonement enough, for the dead woman had been the cause of the theft in the first place.

But Circle had wanted more: they’d wanted a show of power. They’d intended to turn the thief or thieves over to the crowds for a proper stoning, to quell the cyclic complaints that the Temple ran far too much of Sintian life.