Prologue:
A sea of bodies swayed in time to the words that flowed over them. Words that made them forget about their daily lives, if only for a moment. Each word was carefully chosen as if it was a note in a symphony. Each word designed to sway hearts, minds, and ultimately control lives.
The crowd no longer cared about, or had forgotten, the meaning of the words. They were lost in the feelings. Emotions moved through them, first building them up and then letting them down in perfect timing.
They were one organism with one goal, one intent, one ruler, one God. They had no thoughts of their own. They were servants to their new master, and joy filled their hearts because they were a chosen people.
The Preacher was pleased. His plans were working. Years of learning how to manipulate emotions in a crowd were paying off. It was almost effortless now. He was a master at playing the audience with the rhythm and pitch and sound of words as they flowed like honey from his mouth. Or hit like bullets when he wanted them to. Then he would comfort the people, and assure them that he knew what they wanted, what they needed, and he could give it to them.
Sometimes it wasn’t so easy. The Preacher would lose his focus for a moment and project forward into where he knew it would all lead. But it was his focus that was playing the crowd, and the moment he lost it, they would be bewildered until he returned to lead them.
What he said was far less important than how he said it. Standing tall on the platform set in the middle of the Market, he was a beam of dark light. His face hidden inside the cowl of the black cloak he wore, no one in the crowd could have said what he looked like.
But they were always sure when he was near. They knew what he felt like. They knew what he stood for. They knew what he could do, and they loved him for that power. They knew that if they followed him and what he preached, they would be happy forever.
Behind the Preacher stood seven dark columns of men, their faces also hidden so that they too remained anonymous. However, who they were was not a secret. They were the Kai-Via, the Seven. The enforcers.
The Seven scanned the crowd, looking for those who were not swaying in response to the words—looking for the outsiders, the Mages, the ones who hadn’t yet fallen in love with the message.
The Kai-Via’s role as enforcers wasn’t needed as much anymore. The crowds had been tamed. Even this crowd. And when they were finished here, the one true religion would have taken over the planet of Thamon.
Everyone who hadn’t succumbed to the power of the Preacher’s words was being eliminated. They had been banished. Forever.
However, the head of the Kai-Via watched as the Preacher used his words to reinforce and sustain what they had already done, and wondered whose side the Preacher was on. He would be watching.
As the Preacher spoke, the crowd bowed their heads, and fell to their knees in gratitude because everything they wanted was theirs, as long as they followed the God, Aaron.
The wind whipped through the crowd, blowing shawls and cloaks into the air like flags. Many of the converted wore black robes like the Kai-Via, the Seven, but their robes didn’t have hoods. There was no hiding for them. Each face registered in the minds of the seven men scanning the crowd. Looking for those who were too alert. Too interested in things other than the speaker and the words that he spoke.
A sea of black robes was a powerful sight to see, and the Preacher and the Kai-Via reveled in the knowledge that this crowd was theirs as were the thousands of crowds across Thamon. Each crowd full of the young, the old, men, and women, all gathered as one, worshipers of the one God that ruled them all.
The Preacher was the mouthpiece of that one God. He delivered the message. The Preacher gathered them all into the emotions of oneness, togetherness, and sameness. And as his words ebbed and flowed, the crowd roared in approval.
For them, magic was dead. Aaron was the ruler. They were his subjects, and for them life was now glorious. What they had before was gone. All their worries were replaced with certainty. All they had to do was follow their new religion of Aaron-Lem, and all would be well.
Anyone who had resisted the Aaron-Lem doctrines had been killed or rounded up and placed in prisons where everything they ever believed was sucked out of them, and replaced with the laws of the one true religion. Or they had died in protest.
The time of Aaron’s rule was upon them, and they thought they were happy.
At the back of the crowd stood a man and a woman. There was nothing different about them. Their faces registered the same joyful emotions. They swayed in time to the words. They bowed their heads along with everyone else.
But hidden in the folds of their black robes, their fingers touched. They knew something that the Preacher and the Seven did not know, or at least did not want to believe.
Magic was not dead. Aaron was not their God. And they were not alone.
