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"And doth thy ear listen for the footsteps of thy sacred altar's one High Priest?" "Ask me not, my Master ask me not. From my heart I have already lifted the veil too far aside for it is not given woman to speak of her love, though it is her life. Yet love is strange love is holy!"
"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past, Leans on these wrecks that press the sod; They slant, they stoop, they fall at last, And strew the turf their priests have trod. "No more our altar's wreath of smoke Floats up with morning's fragrant dew; The fires are dead, the ring is broke, Where stood the many stand the few."
Not only 'demands' the sacrifice, but 'shall have my soul, my life, my all'. But what does the binding of the sacrifice to the altar mean? The phrase is very significant. The horns were the corner posts, and sometimes the worshipper presenting a living creature would tether it with a cord to the altar's horn, so that the gift could be used either for sacrifice or service.
He saw Gnulemah his wife whom he loved rise from the altar's step against which she had been thrown; stand with outstretched arms and blank, wide-open eyes; grope forwards with outstretched arms and uncertain feet; grope blindly this way and that, moaning, "Balder, Balder, where are you?"
As many people were kneeling on the steps before it as could find room, and most of them, when they finished their prayers, ascended the steps, kissed over and over again the margin of the silver altar, laid their foreheads upon it, and then deposited an offering in a box placed upon the altar's top.
Tarlac cooperated willingly, but his attention was less on what he was doing or the chant Daria had begun than the statuettes on the altar's upper tier. There were eleven of them, images of the Traiti gods three of whom were actually, by his definition, goddesses as exquisitely crafted as a cloudcat-made tapestry.
And when he found the world's wickedness reappearing at the altar's very foot, he had withdrawn still further into himself, giving himself still more to God, to console Him for being forsaken. He did recollect, however, that he had crossed his legs one day in class, and that, when the professor reproved him for it, his face had become fiery red, as if he had committed some abominable action.
After this narration another bard came forward who recited a different story: "When Arthur bowed his haughty crest, No princess veiled in azure vest Snatched him, by Merlin's powerful spell, In groves of golden bliss to dwell; But when he fell, with winged speed, His champions, on a milk-white steed, From the battle's hurricane, Bore him to Joseph's towered fane, In the fair vale of Avalon; There, with chanted orison And the long blaze of tapers clear, The stoled fathers met the bier; Through the dim aisles, in order dread Of martial woe, the chief they led, And deep entombed in holy ground, Before the altar's solemn bound."
Climbing the three steps to stand before them at the altar, he formally identified himself "Esteban Tarlac of Clan Ch'kara, Ranger of the Terran Empire" and bowed, hands crossed over his bare chest. That was as much to the statuettes on the altar's upper tier as to the two rulers. "I ask the blessing of the Circle of Lords as I attempt this final part of the Ordeal they ask of me."
Give me a right, a sacred right to bear thy name, to be thine own, at the altar's foot, by the holy abbot's blessing. Let us pledge our troth, and then let what will come, no man can part us. I am thine, only thine!"
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