“Ostel, please,” I said, and all the more desperate because a part of me wanted to take what he was offering. If I just let Sharskin be right in all things, how much simpler life would be. I’d never have to make a decision again. And that thought brought me up short. That was Sharskin’s way, after all. We did what he said because he was the priest. We were like extra hands and bodies for his commandments, and he told us that was the way it had to be, the way the ancestors would have done it before the fall. Except that was the way of the villages, wasn’t it? Do what the ghosts say, bow your
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