CHAPTER TEN

The Ritual

III

Two things happened simultaneously. The monster fell, dumped from its cage, and Yellow Guy sprinted into the circle. He sprinted for the altar. He ran like no one Wilburn had ever seen. The monster plummeted, flipping and thrashing through the air. It was enormous—far bigger than its cage. Some awful magic must have been used to make it fit. Now it was free, and freefalling, and the iron cage was gone; where it went, Wilburn never knew, nor did he care. Somebody was screaming—him. His worst nightmare, his very worst, was coming true before his eyes.

It was a giant serpent, midnight black. Its scales glittered in the unobstructed Q-light. It fell, whipping in mighty loops, as Yellow Guy lunged for the altar, for the knife the Girl in Black had tossed there so disdainfully, the knife whose blade was like a fissure in reality. It had looked big enough to qualify as a small sword when the Girl in Black was holding it; now, next to the immensity of the foe, it was clearly no more than a toothpick. Yellow Guy was history. He dove flat onto the altar, stretching to grasp the knife, his hand closing around its hilt just as the giant snake crashed down on top of him.

Rubble sprayed, and a great cloud of dust woofed up. The impact rocked the temple, launching Wilburn off his feet. He didn’t feel the fall. He was in full-blown panic mode. Towering waves of black scales crested overhead and hammered down upon the temple floor in thunderous cacophony. The serpent was a thrashing tangle of lightning-quick motion, beneath which Yellow Guy must be little more than a smear of red.

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But no—a flash of yellow—there he was! Leaping above the raging serpent, a leap no normal man could dream of, raising the black knife high, his hood blowing back to reveal a bald, square head, an open mouth. Unbelievably, Yellow Guy was chanting. His lips shaped the syllables, though his voice could not be heard above the crowd. For a sliver of a second he hung stationary at the top of his arc, poised, a terrible blankness in his face.

Then he swung the knife down in a sweeping slash, and the serpent’s blood sprayed like a fountain. Yellow Guy had cut it clean in two, and both pieces bucked madly, slamming against the floor over and over, flinging blood in all directions. Some splattered Wilburn’s face, hot and metallic-smelling. Yellow Guy was Red Guy now. The knife, oddly, remained spotless. Red Guy sprang nimbly to evade the snapping fangs, each of which was as long as his arm. He flipped backwards and landed with a somersault, rolling his momentum into an upward slash—

Thud.

Red Guy had done it, just like that. The severed head of the great serpent rolled on the floor. The jaws bit viciously at nothing. The awful, tiny eyes glared evilly. The serpent didn’t act dead—but it was. It had to be dead. Yet there was no applause. There were no cheers. There was only, as there had been all along, the chant, relentless, reverberating through the temple.

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…