Free When True Night Falls by C.S. Friedman Page A

made her shiver in revulsion. And in fear. Always, always fear....
    At last the man in front signaled for them to stop. She did so, shivering. They had sent her out with only a woolen smock to guard against the evening’s chill, and it was proving hopelessly inadequate. Perhaps they would have given her more had she asked for it, but how was she to know what she needed? She had never been outside before, save in the Church’s sheltered confines. How could she possibly anticipate the rigors of such a journey—she, who had spent twelve sheltered years behind the high walls of the Church, who knew no more of nightborn dangers than the secondhand tales of cathedral matrons, whispered over the daily chores?
    What does it matter? she thought despairingly. What does any of it matter? I’m not coming back from this, am I? Oh, they had told her otherwise. And she knew that some children did indeed come back from the Hunt, because she had seen them. Empty-eyed. Spirits bleeding. Souls screaming out in ceaseless horror, behind a glassy countenance that had lost all capacity for human expression. That was what these men hoped she might become some day. That was their true goal. They would have denied it had she asked them—had she dared to ask them—but she knew it nonetheless, with the absolute certainty of youth. And that thought frightened her more than all the monsters of the dark combined.
    “This is the place,” the man in front announced. The others murmured their assent—their voices filled with hunger, she thought, a hunger for killing, a hunger for her pain—and urged her forward, into a clearing which Nature had provided for their sport. Suddenly the men at her side seemed far more terrifying than whatever evils the night might shelter, and in a sudden burst of panic she turned and tried to run from them. But strong, cold hands were on her shoulders before she could take three steps, and a chill voice warned her, “Not now, little one. You just wait. We’re not ready for that yet.”
    They took her to the center of the clearing, where it waited. A low granite boulder. A steel ring, driven into it. A chain....
    “Please,” she whispered. “Please take me home. Please.”
    They were too busy praying to listen. Prayers for the living, prayers to conjure wisdom, prayers to consecrate the Hunt. A heavy steel band was set about her slender ankle and snapped shut. It fit her, as it had fit a thousand girl-children before her; the measurements of the Chosen didn’t vary much.
    “Please,” she sobbed. Her voice and body shaking. “Take me home....”
    “In the morning,” one of the men uttered shortly, testing the strength of her chain. As if she could find her way out through some subtle flaw in the steel. “All in good time.” The rest of them said nothing. They were forbidden to comfort her, she knew that—but it was terrifying nonetheless, to have the men she knew so well suddenly transformed into these emotionless statues. Statues who might curse the loss of a bolt or the escape of a night-wraith, but who would not blink an eye if she were torn to shreds before their very eyes.
    Not true , she told herself desperately. They have to care! They’re my people, aren’t they? But it frightened her more than anything that suddenly she wasn’t sure of that. She felt like an animal surrounded by strangers, being sacrificed for something she could barely comprehend.
    Prey.
    They had withdrawn to the shadows of the forest, black and concealing, so that she could no longer see them. The lantern which they had used to light their way through the forest had been hooded now, so that the faint stars of the rim and Casca’s quarter-disk were the only illumination. Hardly enough to see by. Not nearly enough to drive away the hordes of monsters who took shelter in night’s darkness, whose hunger she could sense just beyond those hard-edged shadows....
    “Please,” she whimpered. “Oh, God, please. No.”
    She heard