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The faithful, most of whom were very young, all with arms uplifted towards the clear blue sky, swayed from side to side in rhythm with the slow, steady, repeated chant of his name: "Joash . . . Joash." Their eyes were closed, their reaching hands waving back and forth resembling ripe heads of wheat in a field ready to be harvested. The simile amused him enormously. Now and then a single figure in the mass of bodies would crumple onto the trampled earth, unconscious; they had been assembled thus for many hours in the thin air of this high mountain meadow. These individuals were left where they collapsed, unnoticed by the rest of the flock, but noted indeed by the Shepherds, those whose job it was to seek out the weak, the feckless who vacillated between their "sordid pasts and their glorious futures," as expounded by Joash. They were noted and would be dealt with as the unworthy ones they had just proven themselves to be, probation for some, expulsion for most. What fate each such individual would experience depended on several factors, not the least of which was his or her possible future use to the Master, Joash. Shaded as he was under his brocaded canopy which sheltered him from the direct sun, he surveyed with grim satisfaction the hundreds of faces lifted into the sun below him; they were his to do with as he chose, to direct however he wished, all willing -- nay, eager to grant every vagrant whim that might pass through his fertile imagination. He felt a genuine visceral pleasure as he listened to their worshipful chant -- "Joash . . . "Joash." The man smiled his broad and essentially meaningless smile, his beard splitting to display the large white teeth, his dark eyes entirely devoid of the warmth feigned in his smile. As he raised his arms in a dramatic and sweeping move, the chant of the flock below became a roar, each throat swelling in a rapturous shout: "JOASH! . . . JOASH!" |