'I was pleased to learn you had been persuaded to stay with us, Pietro. An opportunity to interact with a person of your quality and distinction is far too rare a pleasure.'
Dan waited for Rinaldi to speak, but he rudely remained silent.
'Come now, Pietro. It will not imperil your soul to talk to me.'
Rinaldi glared at him before saying, 'Will it not? I know what you are.'
'Ah. Your gift of sight. Your fellow Sylvestrines told me that it was very strong. It must be difficult, always seeing things and never having the experience to truly understand them. You have my sympathy.'
'Spare me,' Rinaldi said. Janice thought the tone of his response was rude. 'I understand your kind well enough.'
'Do you, Pietro. I hardly think we have been rep resented fairly in the arcane libraries in which you have studied. I expect you have seen nothing but biased accounts, half-truths, and ill-informed speculations. But rather than arguing about what you think you know, I'd like to talk with you about something you know very well.
'You see, I know about you, Pietro Rinaldi. I know the facts of your career and numerous small details of your history. But more importantly, I know what kind of man you are. You are a doer, a man of action.
'As I learned of how your gift had been limited, I was saddened. To find yourself only able to watch the magic that makes the world live… such a limitation is a criminal shame. You are not a watcher, Pietro. It must gnaw at you to always see and never do.' 'I have accepted my lot.'
'Fine words, and a noble sentiment. I'm sure your superiors approved and encouraged that attitude. However, acceptance of the inevitable is no virtue. Virtue requires sacrifice, does it not? At the very least it requires voluntary abstention. But your inability to touch the real magic is far from voluntary.''
As her own had been, Janice remembered. She had yearned for the magic, and had despaired when she was told she hadn't been blessed with the ability.
Rinaldi said, 'I learned long ago not to aspire to what cannot be.'
Dan shook his head. 'You mean, what you were told could not be. Are you really sure that you can never have the magic flow through your hands?''
Janice had been sure until she met Dan. He had shown her the way.
'Pietro, your ignorance made things safer for them. With your access to magic limited, you were no threat to them.'
Dan accepted the platter back and forked several juicy chunks onto his plate. 'Knowing what I am, you know that I walk ways different from those of the bulk of humanity. Those paths have taken me to places of arcane knowledge. The power I have touched in those places transcends moral strictures, and 1 have learned how to share that power. 1 can offer you a way to transcend your own strictures. Magic, Pietro! If you accept my ways, the binding can be broken. I can lead you into the realms of power and show you the secret paths. I can give you the magic you long for. All I ask is that you embrace us and our cause.' Dan held out the plate of meat. 'Eat with us.'
Rinaldi kept his hands on the table, but his gaze skimmed along the seated diners. 'I know you better than they do. Retro me, Satanas.
'
Dan lowered the plate and laughed. 'I am a persuasive fellow, but I have never claimed to be that particular silver-tongued devil.' 'But you are a devil none the less.' 'So I have been called, but I am not. I am a creature of the earth, Pietro. No more, no less. The earth is as much a home to me as it is to you, and we each have a place in the grand scheme. I am only attempting to offer you a better place, one in which you can exercise the power that you long for. You are obviously superior to the masses who throng the outside world. The superior are not bound by the conventions of the inferior. It has always been so. Haven't you always known that your destiny was to be a magician? 'Join with us and it can be so.' Rinaldi ignored the newly offered plate and said, 'God is my armor. He offers all the power I need.' Foolish man, Janice thought. God set the natural order on the earth and in that order, one relationship was paramount: predator and prey. If you were not one, you were the other, and the superior preyed upon the inferior. Having made the world as it was, God understood. How could Rinaldi not see that?
'Your vision of God offers you nothing but frustration and privation,' Dan said. 'Knowing no better, you accepted that distortion of reality. But you are no longer an uneducated child, sheltered by a limited view of creation. You have seen magics, great and small. You have seen the spirits moving through the air. How can you just be a bystander? How it must gall you to be unable to partake in the wonders!'
'It is as it must be,' Rinaldi said. Janice thought his voice held less of the obstinate conviction with which he had started. Dan had said Rinaldi was an intelligent man; perhaps he was beginning to see Dan's wisdom. Janice found herself hoping that he would.
'Must be?' Dan questioned. 'Very little must be to a man who has the strength to seize opportunity. You can see that if you just look around you. My companions have partaken of my table, and they are whole. They are better than whole; they are stronger than they were before they joined me. Your gift lets you see that, doesn't it?'
Rinaldi hung his head and said nothing.
'Look at them!'
Rinaldi's head snapped up at the command. He stared at the feasters with eyes as bleak as winter.
Dan sat back, smiled with satisfaction. 'Yes, you can see that their auras are stronger for partaking of my feast. You can be stronger, too. Strong enough to burst the bonds that tie you and touch the face of magic. You want to feel the magic, don't you?' In a very small voice Rinaldi said, 'Yes.' 'Then join us,' Dan said, leaning forward to offer the platter for the third time. 'It's not hard. Partake. Take the power of another into yourself. Make yourself strong.'
Rinaldi's nostrils distended. He began breathing hard, as if he was exerting himself physically. Sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip. His eyes devoured the meat on the platter.
'Come, Pietro. You can't deny me. I'm only trying to help you fulfill your destiny.'
Rinaldi locked his fingers together, elbows resting on the table and lowered his forehead to his hands. He was shaking. Dan snorted and passed the platter to Janice. She took a portion for her plate and passed it on. She felt sorry for Rinaldi. Why was it so hard for him to accept a place among them? How could he not want what Dan offered him?
The platter completed its course and the feasters began their meal. From behind the barrier of his folded hands, Rinaldi watched them. His eyes grew wilder.
At last he shouted, 'Don't you all realize what you are eating?'
Silence descended on the table. Dan smiled at Janice and she smiled back. 'Prey,' she mouthed silently to her lover. Dan's smile grew wider. Glover cleared his throat and spoke.
'Oh, yes. We are quite aware. We partake of the ritual portion. It is necessary for the completion of the ritual. We purify the impure and return them to the holy cycle of the earth. Through us they are cleansed and, through them, we are strengthened.'
'God save you! You're eating human flesh!' Rinaldi seemed verging on the edge of hysteria. 'Give up your sin! Fight off the evil influence of this creature!'
'We partake of a ritual sacrament,' Ashton responded calmly.
'And here I thought the Church had become more broad-minded about alternate religions,' said another druid.
'We do this for the good of the land,' added a third.
Rinaldi tried to get up, but Dan gestured and an invisible hand threw the priest back into his seat.
'It is impolite to leave the table before the meal is finished,' Dan admonished him.
'Let me go! I reject you!'
'I am patient, Pietro,' Dan said, unruffled by Rinaldi's outburst. I'll give you another chance.'
'I will die first.'
'Perhaps. Perhaps not. I am persuasive as well as patient. I'm sure you will come around to my point of view. Soon or late, everyone gets hungry.'
'I've got a line on the priest,' Jenny's synthesized voice announced from the telecom.
Hart considered telling her decker to put her time into higher priority searches, but data was data and Jenny, like any good decker, collected whatever was lying around. Hart knew she should be thankful to be relying on
