"We could kill the priests as they go past," whispered Shaun.

     "Then the soldiers would slaughter us," whispered back Drake, "and it wouldn't save the women. Sacrificing oneself to save innocents is noble and good, but we would be committing suicide for nothing." They watched helplessly as the procession passed right in front of them and continued on to the top of the hill.

     Reaching the summit, the six priests and the nine women entered the stone circle and stood around the central stone while the sixty soldiers formed a wide circle outside the stones. Each of the priests then produced a carving of a maggot, carved from human bone. They held them high above their heads in both hands, as if they were ceremonial daggers, and they began to chant in a language the questers didn't understand. The Festival of the Worm had begun.

     The sound of their voices drifted down to where the travellers and Janice were hiding, and the poor girl began to get frantic. "We've got to do something!" she whispered loudly to Drake. "We've got to save them!"

     "There's nothing we can do," replied the priest sadly. "There's too many of them."

     "We can't just sit by and do nothing while they curse my sister! There must be something you can do! You're a priest, and you've got wizards! They could kill them all with a single spell!"

      "I'm afraid we're not that powerful," said Thomas sadly. "We only graduated less than a year ago."

     "Well think of something then! Think of something!"

     She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. Diana tried to comfort her, but she shook her off furiously. "Leave me alone!" she almost screamed. "You're going to stand around and do nothing while they curse my sister! I hate you! I hate you all!"

     "Keep her quiet, for the sake of the Gods!" hissed Shaun, glancing up to see if the soldiers had heard. Fortunately, they seemed to be totally engrossed in the ceremony and oblivious to all else.

     "Maybe there is something we could do," said Thomas thoughtfully.

     "Oh?" said Shaun sceptically. "What?"

     "They're cowards, remember? A priest and four soldiers ran away from just the three of you."

     "There are six priests here and sixty soldiers!" cried Shaun in exasperation. "No matter how cowardly they are, they're not going to run from just the eight of us!"

     "No," said Thomas, "but they might run from fifty."

     Drake looked around with interest. "What have you got in mind?" he asked.

     Thomas beckoned the others to gather around closer, and then he began to speak.

☆☆☆

     The six priests finished their long chant, reaffirming their lifelong pledge of loyalty and devotion to the God of Disease and Corruption. Then, as one, they pulled back their hoods, revealing their faces for the first time. Some of them looked as though they might once have been handsome, but now their faces were running masses of sores and festering boils. What clear skin they had left was a greyish white with prominent blue veins, stretched tight across their skulls. A few wisps of hair still clung to their scalps, which were moving in places as though there were masses of wriggling maggots beneath. Their ears were mere stumps of rotting cartilage, their lips were thin and blue, and when they opened their mouths their gums were black and most of their teeth were missing. Those that remained were black and crumbling, and their tongues were swollen so badly that they almost filled their mouths.

     One of them, their appointed spokesman, stepped right up to the central stone and gazed up at the three moons. Kronos, its motion almost perceptible to the unaided human eye, was passing alongside the largest moon, and the three bodies were now just minutes away from forming a perfect triangle. The cold radiating from the central stone intensified so that the beads of condensation that covered it froze into a layer of frost, and some of the soldiers began shivering.

     The priest spoke, and his voice rasped and wheezed so badly that it was difficult to make out what he was saying. "Mighty Lord Molrot, we, Thy humble minions and devoted servants, bring Thee these..." He stopped suddenly and doubled over in a fit of coughing that lasted almost a full minute, spitting out a globule of phlegm stained with blood before continuing. "We bring Thee these obscene specimens of beauty for Thee to take as Thine own, to cure them of their hideous perfection which is so revolting to Thee, as it is to us, and make them pleasing in Thy sight. Their skins, which are soft and smooth, are repulsive to Thee, as they are to us. Is it not so, brothers?"

     "Yea, it is so," replied the other priests in unison.

     "Their eyes, which are clear and bright, are an obscenity that must be removed from Thy sight, and from ours. Is it not so, brothers?"

     "Yea."

     "Their hair, which is silky and luxuriant, fills Thee with horror and outrage, as it does us. Is it not so, brothers?"

     "Yea.”

     "Such flawless perfection cannot be permitted to exist in Thy world. Mighty Lord Molrot, we are Thy servants in this land. Let Thy power flow through us and into these hosts. Let them become vessels in which part of Thy divine being will make its home. Take them and infect them, make them pleasing in Thy sight, so that they may spread Thy Holy self all across the land, bringing Thy blessings to whomsoever they meet. Let it be so."

     "Yea, let it be so."

     The head priest beckoned to the first woman, who came meekly over to him and stood calmly in front of the centre stone. She lowered her hood to reveal long golden hair, bright green eyes and clear, pale skin with a scattering of freckles across her nose. She smiled shyly, as though she were being introduced to a knight or a nobleman. She was fully aware of what was about to happen to her, but the binding spell that had been put on her made her see it as a great honour and a privilege, which was how the priests thought of it.

     The priest walked forward until he stood just in front of her, and forced himself to look into her face. He reached out a diseased, twisted hand. "The time has come for you. The glorious..."

     He broke off as he became aware of a muttering and whispering among the circle of soldiers. They were glancing around restlessly, and some of them were fingering their weapons. "Silence!" he roared furiously. "This is our most holy ceremony you are disturbing!"

     "There's someone out there, sneaking around," called back one of the soldiers. "Several people."

     "Well then, catch them!" shouted the priest. "We'll invite them to join in the festival."

     Several soldiers broke away from the circle to catch the intruders, and the priest waited patiently while they searched this way and that. "We have guests," he said to one of the other priests. "Isn't that nice?" The other priest gave a hissing laugh that turned into a coughing fit.

     The priest's good humour began to break down, however, as he gradually became aware of a rustling and bustling all around him, the kind of noise made by a great many people trying to move around as quietly as possible and not quite succeeding. In the midst of it came a scream as one of his soldiers was killed. He knew it was one of his men, because the quality of the scream told him that it came from a diseased throat. A sudden anxiety gripped him. "We're under attack!" he shouted. "Soldiers, get them! Kill them all!"

     The soldiers began to obey, but stopped as a voice came out of the darkness, the unmistakable voice of an experienced fighting man. "Drop your weapons!" he said. "You are completely surrounded. Surrender quietly and you'll be well treated. Resist and you will all be killed."

     Panic gripped the priest. He pointed his bone maggot in the direction from which the voice had come and called upon the power of Molrot, invoking the power of the God of Corruption and directing it at the unseen speaker. It was an unholy attack that would kill an ordinary man and cause great injury to even the greatest and best. He heard a cry of pain, which was immediately followed by a burst of four firebolts from a few feet to the speaker's left which hit him squarely in the chest and struck him down. The other priests, now shaking with terror, examined his body and found that he was dead.

     They were all panicking now. They had a wizard! Not only that, but the fact that he could shoot four firebolts at once meant that he was quite a powerful one, capable of using mid or even high level magic! They ran around in circles, not knowing what to do and growing desperate. "Attack!" one of them shouted to the soldiers. "Kill them all!"

     "No!" shouted another. "We surrender! We surrender!"

     "Fool! Do you think they'll spare us?" screamed the third. "Run! Run!"

     "Where too?" screamed back the second. "We're surrounded!"

     The soldiers milled around, not knowing what to do. They had drawn their swords and other weapons, but didn't know what to do with them. They could hear the enemy all around them, but had so far only managed to catch the occasional vague, shadowy glimpse of a figure or two moving around down on the slope of the hill. None of them wanted to be the first to charge down and attack, knowing that the unseen enemy would cut them down the instant they left the shelter of their fellows, so they stood where they were, waiting for their masters to come to a decision.

     The voice spoke again. "Send out the women," it said. "Send them over here to me."

     The figure came into view, approaching the stones from out of the darkness, and to their mounting horror they saw that it was a priest of Samnos, his spiked helmet gleaming in the torchlight. The soldiers made for him, but he gave them a cold glare and they drew back in terror, several dropping their swords onto the sickly yellow grass. Inside, where it didn't show on his face, Drake smiled. Resalintas would have been proud of him. "The women!" he repeated sternly.

     One of the priests had a sudden idea and grabbed the girl that the late high priest had been about to curse. "No!" he cried. "You throw down your weapons and give yourselves up or I touch her!" He held his hand an inch from her face, snarling menacingly.

     Four more firebolts shot out from the darkness, striking him down like the first, and the wizard who'd cast them then stepped forward to join the priest. "Next time it'll be a fireball," said Thomas. "Now do as he says!"

     Reluctantly, the remaining priests ordered the women to leave the stone circle, and the priest of Samnos directed them to where his men waited. "Thank you," he said. "And now I'm going to tell you for the last time. Lay down your arms or we'll kill you with arrows!"

     The priest gave the order with a trembling voice, and most of the soldiers lay down their weapons, backing away from them until they were huddled together in a group, staring fearfully into the darkness as they waited to learn their fate. A small group of braver or more stubborn soldiers held onto their arms, however, and stood back to back defiantly. They were prepared to go down fighting, but the priests screamed at them in purest terror until they too, slowly and reluctantly, lay down their weapons.

     This was the critical part, Drake knew. If there really were fifty Kenestran soldiers surrounding the hill, this was the moment when they would move in to round up the followers of Molrot. Obviously that wasn't going to happen, though, and the moment the priests realised this, it would all be over for them. Everything depended now on Petronax.

     Sure enough, a man's voice was heard off to the east, hissing urgently, obviously not wanting to be heard by those on the hill's summit but his voice carrying further than intended in the still night air. "Get that northern slope covered!" it hissed. "Do you want them all to escape?"

     The northern slope! The four priests acted instantly and dashed off to the north, brushing past their own soldiers who were too stunned by the magnitude of the betrayal to react.

     "Stop them!" roared Drake as the priests vanished into the darkness, and he and Thomas set off in pursuit. As soon as they were out of sight of the soldiers, however, they circled around to the south, on the way collecting Petronax and Jerry, who had supplied the sound effects, and Shaun and Matthew, who had put in the occasional appearance as Kenestran soldiers.

     At the base of the hill they met up with the women, all twelve of them. They mounted up, two to a horse, and galloped away from the confused followers of Molrot before they realised what had happened. Speed was vital now. They had only seconds before the plague priests realised they had been tricked and got their soldiers organised again, and they had to be as far away as possible before that happened. Sure enough, they soon heard a commotion behind them and cries of anger and fury, but by then they were out of range of the priest's death spells and safe, and the eight travellers laughed in triumph as they galloped off into the night.