The prayer went on for a long time.
Jin and Haruka watched it from the hilltop as the sun climbed higher over the mountain. The low hum of hundreds of voices rose and fell like waves. Nobody in the town moved. Nobody looked up. The whole place stayed bent toward the peak like a field of grass flattened by the wind.
Then the bowing stopped.
All at once, as if someone had given a signal, the people rose to their feet. They brushed the dirt off their knees. They turned, as one, toward the center of the town. And they began to move.
Jin watched them flow through the streets toward the town's main square. It was a wide, open space just inside the gate, where the road up the mountain began. At the far end of it stood a tall stone statue, three times the height of a man. A figure with its arms spread wide and a great carved circle of gold behind its head like the rays of the sun. Even from the hill, Jin could see the paint on it gleaming.
