By now, she could feel the difference between the two executioners. The strands of one scourge lashed the spots that had already been ripped open, while the other one unfailingly found the most sensitive parts of her body.
“Twenty-seven”
The man groaned while he put more speed into the whip. Lilith looked at the people watching from the side line. The smile on Pavel’s face had disappeared and he looked deathly pale. Lemuel blinked with each blow.
Sweat dripped down Lilith’s forehead and stung her eyes. She closed them, but she couldn’t stop screaming. Her screams reverberated against the walls but couldn’t drown out the sound of the scourge. The swishing, the cracking, it was deafening.
“Please, lord Yvar, make them stop.”
Lilith opened her eyes when the words registered. Her vision was still blurred, but she could see that the veiled woman had turned to the king. He, however, ignored her.
“Please, she has been punished enough.”
Despite the woman’s pleading, the blows kept landing on Lilith’s ripped skin. Sweat was stinging the wounds. Her feet slipped on the mixture of blood and sweat on the tiles. Lilith kept looking at the woman, who was shrouded in an orange, trembling glow. “I have scorched her,” Lilith thought deliriously. She wasn’t aware of the counting any more. “And the flames have spread to me. I have become the victim of the fire that I lighted myself.”
This flogging was justice, even though it could never undo what she had done. Pavel’s brother had survived, but many others hadn’t survived an encounter with her. She had no right resisting this punishment.
So Lilith stopped screaming. The leather thongs swished through the silence; the metal beads slammed into her body. She felt all three of them, but not even a sigh escaped her lips. Almost immediately the whistling sound returned. She pressed her cheek against the cold stones.
“Thirty-eight.”
The executioner yanked the beads out of her flesh. Her shoulder was starting to hurt because it was carrying her entire weight. She thought it was weird that she noticed this now. The rest of her body was hurting so much more. Nevertheless, she tried to pull herself back to her feet, only to immediately get hit in the back of her knees again.
“Enough.”
The word quietly seeped through the sounds of violence. The ensuing silence was instantly supplanted by her own gasps for air.
“That was enough,” the king repeated.
It slowly started to sink in. It was over: no more swishing. The scourge wouldn’t tear her apart any further. The executioners walked up to her. They were panting as well and their red tunics stuck to their bodies due to the sweat. Lilith heard the king say that Pavel and Lemuel would be compensated for the six remaining lashes she hadn’t received. This meant she would have to perform more duties, but she was happy that it was over for now.
Without speaking, the executioners released her from the chains. Their touches were soft compared to what they had done to her earlier. Lilith cast a final glance at Pavel and Lemuel before they left the room. The son held his head bowed and was visibly shaken by what he had seen. Lemuel wasn’t responding to anything, so a soldier had put a hand on his shoulder and was guiding him outside. Suddenly she felt a hand on her cheek and her head was turned sideways. Lilith was carefully laid down on the floor. The tiles were delightfully cold.
Then the veiled woman appeared in front of her. “Good Gods, she’s still conscious,” she stammered.
“She’s very strong. Let’s try to relief some of her pain first,” somebody who Lilith couldn’t see answered. At the same time something was pressed to her lips. Lilith would have recognized the scent anywhere.
“No,” she whispered powerlessly, even though she had actually wanted to scream it out loud.
“It’s all right, this will help you sleep.”
The veiled woman carefully stroked her hair while the other woman poured the liquid into her mouth. Lilith tried to spit it out, but somebody pinched her nose and covered her mouth, forcing her to swallow. When they released her, she growled once more.
“It’s for your own good. Soon you won’t feel anything any more.”
The words sounded farther and farther away. The woman’s voice was distorted as the world around Lilith became blurred. She didn’t feel the hands that were taking care of her any more. She only heard her own heart beating in her temples. A stab of pain went through her body when somebody touched her wounds. She held on to the pain in an attempt to stay awake. Eventually, she had to let go and then there was nothing.
Ghalatea stroked Lilith’s sweat-soaked hair again. She wondered what this young woman could have done to deserve this. The king never told her why somebody had to be punished and she always assumed that he was just, but this girl… When Lilith finally closed her eyes, Ghalatea looked up at Betrys in relief. “She’s asleep.”
The other woman nodded and continued taking care of the marks left by the whip. It was nice that she had taken the initiative to dress the worst wounds, no questions asked. This allowed Ghalatea to focus on Lilith’s left hand, the flesh of which had been stripped off when she had pulled it out of the cuff. While the Ancilla Princeps bandaged the hand, she realized that the wrist was probably broken, so she splinted it. After that, she washed the woman.
“It looks as though she hasn’t had much luck in her life so far,” the Ancilla Princeps whispered while her fingers traced the scars on Lilith’s arms and legs. “She’s extremely undernourished and scarred. What on earth has happened to her?”
Ghalatea immediately rearranged her veil to conceal the scar on her own face even more. Betrys briefly looked at her and then glanced at Lilith. Then she shrugged. She’d always been a bit indifferent, but then again, maybe it only appeared that way because she didn’t speak much.
After a while they wrapped Lilith in a blanket. Putting her on the stretcher wasn’t any trouble at all because she hardly weighed anything.
Ghalatea felt the knot in her stomach tighten as she watched the two soldiers carry the stretcher out of the room. Betrys followed them, and Ghalatea remained behind alone. The king wished to speak to her. He had told her so before he had left the flogging room. Ghalatea knew very well why he had demanded this. She should have kept her mouth shut, like she always did.
Ghalatea looked around one more time. The floor was still covered in blood. Servants would clean the room later, but the Ancilla Princeps knew that the stench would remain. It was as if the pillar absorbed the smell of blood, sweat and pain of everyone who was punished here, mixed it and poured it out again. Their screams slumbered in the silence. Lilith’s screams, however, were drowned out by other voices. Memories of her youth forced themselves upon Ghalatea and she ran from the room.
Breathing deeply, she stood still in the corridor but she couldn’t calm down. Even though the memories of the baptism ritual she had undergone in the name of the Goddess Margal when she was a sixteen-year-old girl always lingered in the back of her mind, the Ancilla Princeps was perfectly capable of keeping them at bay. But not today. Lilith’s flogging had opened the floodgates, and images, sounds and feelings washed over her. Ghalatea sought support against the wall and buried her face in her hands. Through the fabric of her veil she felt the rough edges of her deep scar. The acid that had been used in the ritual had eaten away the flesh on her temple and cheek. She quickly pulled her hands away. Servants came by, so she started walking aimlessly. The king would have to wait a while longer, she had to calm down first.
Suddenly Ghalatea found herself in the flower greenhouse that was an outbuilding of the palace. The flogging room with its harsh, smooth walls wasn’t very far from the greenhouses, but the contrast couldn’t be bigger. The atmosphere was warm and humid, and even in the middle of winter the air was heavy with the sweet scent of flowers. Flights of steps led the Ancilla Princeps down and she walked underneath arches of honeysuckle and passion flower. But today she was blind to their beauty.
“Good af
ternoon, my lady…”
Only when she had passed the two men, did Ghalatea realize that they had greeted her. Even then, she didn’t bother to turn around. This wasn’t a good day anyway. Why had the king thought it necessary for her to attend the flogging? Why couldn’t she have stayed in the kitchen, where it was safe? Then the doors to her memories wouldn’t have been wrenched open this violently. Then her friends’ screams wouldn’t be drowning out all other sounds right now.
Ghalatea fell to her knees near a bed of lavender and whispered their names, “Ghudrun, Marougha, Eligh…” Tears ran down her cheeks now that she saw their faces before her. She pulled a twig off a lavender bush and held it to her nose. It gave off a fresh scent that she had never smelled before she had come to Merzia. She rubbed on the leaves to intensify the scent. It helped her to suppress her memories of the things that had happened a long time ago, and she thought back to the flogging of that afternoon. Who was this woman who had appealed to Jakob so desperately?
She was startled from her thoughts.
“Ancilla Princeps, have you noticed? The peonies are in bloom!”
Vester shared her passion for flowers and he looked elated while he walked up to Ghalatea. She shook her head and got up, happy for the distraction. “This early?” she asked, quickly wiping away her tears.
The man led her to the rear section of the greenhouse where there was a bed filled with large flowers. Double peonies grew next to single peonies and the colours varied from almost white to a dark purple. It was wonderful to see these plants in full bloom while outside the winter still held the world trapped under a blanket of snow. Vester took a sharp knife from his belt and handed it to Ghalatea.
“I’m sure you would like to cut a bouquet of peonies for lord Yvar.”
The Ancilla Princeps, however, declined. It was high time to call on the king. She might come back later.
“You spent a lot of time on the woman,” the king said, at long last breaking the silence. Ghalatea had stood in front of him for several minutes.
“To be honest, my lord, I didn’t come here straight away,” she confessed nervously. “There were a lot of things I needed to think about.”
His expression was gruff. “Do you understand why I want to speak to you?”
“Of course I do, my lord. I’m sorry that I spoke during the execution of the punishment. I shouldn’t have interfered.”
Yvar gave a satisfied nod and rose to his feet. He put his hand on her shoulder and led her to a windowsill. There he scrutinized her with a penetrating gaze. Ghalatea had often witnessed how other people told him things they actually didn’t want to tell him, only because the king looked at them this way. She smiled, he had been like this since childhood.
“Tell me, why did this specific punishment affect you so deeply? You’ve witnessed floggings before.”
The smile immediately vanished from her face and Ghalatea heaved a deep sigh. It didn’t matter how many floggings she attended, she would never feel anything but abhorrence for this form of punishment. For a moment she wondered whether she should say this out loud but she decided to remain silent on the subject. “The screaming got to me. It brought back memories of the day that my friends and I were maimed.”
“I thought as much.”
Yvar put a hand on hers. Again his gaze penetrated her, but this time his eyes were full of compassion. It was just like thirty-seven years ago, when he had sat by her bed as a young boy after she had just arrived in Nadesh. While his mother was looking after the refugees, the young prince had sat by her bed and had held her hand.
Ghalatea nodded, of course he understood.
“How did your friends fare afterwards?” Yvar asked her.
“Eligh was chosen to go with Margal to Emek Jaryi. Other than that, I can’t remember much of what happened after the Purifications. I was scared of being left behind because I didn’t have a family any more, so I followed the other refugees. Sometimes I think I remember at least one of my friends coming with me, but Ghudrun never reached Merzia. She probably died from her wounds during the journey, so we may have left her behind.”
Ghalatea bowed her head and dabbed her eyes with a corner of her veil. Yvar got up but returned moments later with a glass of water that he pushed into her hands.
“I think we just left them where they fell down, because nobody cared about anyone else. That’s what’s eating away at me, maybe I could have saved her. I should at least have stayed with Ghudrun when she died and given her a final resting place.”
“There was nothing you could have done, Ghalatea. I clearly remember that you were in an extremely bad shape when you arrived at the palace. The only thing you could do was make sure you reached Merzia. If you had let anything distract you from that goal, you would have died as well.”
Ghalatea nodded and drank some water. She knew all this, but it didn’t feel that way. All she felt was guilt, because she had left her friends in the lurch.
Yvar gave her another look of concern, but then his expression grew stern. In a cautioning tone he raised the subject of the flogging again.
“Next time I expect you to not interfere with the punishment. You forced me to let the flogging continue longer than necessary. I wanted to tell them to stop, but what kind of king would I be if I followed orders from my Ancilla Princeps?”
Ghalatea’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. She was responsible for the prolonged duration of Lilith’s punishment.
“Let this be a lesson for the future.”
“Certainly, my lord. It will never happen again.”
He nodded approvingly. “I never doubted that. I hope you understand why I’m telling you this.”
Ghalatea took another sip of water. By reprimanding her, he had resumed his role as king. The transition was big and unexpected.
“What else has been weighing on your mind?”
Ghalatea put her glass down and told Yvar about Lilith’s scars.
“Some of them were the result of cuts that she scratched open numerous times, but others were clear evidence of deep wounds, and on the inside of her right wrist there was a thick line. The wounds were administered with terrifying precision.” Lost in thought, Ghalatea shook her head. “Maybe it’s a religious ritual,” she suggested. “I’ve read about certain tribes where scars are a part of their faith.”
The king gave a vague answer as if he didn’t really care. That changed when Ghalatea said, “There is something else. The woman said a prayer during the flogging.”
“You could understand her?”
Ghalatea nodded. “I think she spoke Naftalian. It closely resembles the language of my people. There are only a few differences in pronunciation. She begged Jakob for help.”
There wasn’t much else to say about it, but the Ancilla Princeps knew that this was important. Deep in thought, Yvar stared at his hands for a while before he told her she could leave. Ghalatea jumped to her feet and curtsied.
“I want you to take good care of our prisoner. She still has a debt to repay. If you find out more about her, I want you to inform me.”
“Of course, my lord, I will.”
2
Nadesh was already shrouded in darkness when the gates opened. The man slowed down his horse, but as soon as the metal-bound doors had opened wide enough, he rode through at full speed. The sound of the pounding hoofs on the bridges cut into the silence of the night, but he didn’t care about that. He purposefully rode on to the only single-storey building among the blocks of flats. Given that the capital was built on rock pillars, it was a sign of great wealth when a building didn’t exist of more than one storey.
A stable hand was waiting and took the horse from the nocturnal traveller who hurriedly jumped off the animal. Subsequently, he rushed up the palace stairs and moments later found himself in the king’s room. He had entered without knocking.
Yvar wasn’t surprised by this late-hour visit. He put down the book he had been reading and welcomed the visitor, “Good to
have you back, Ferhdessar.”
Dozens of candles illuminated the room with an orange glow. All other sources of illumination were turned off. This made Ferhdessar smile. He had provided the capital with electricity, but whenever Yvar took some time for himself, he hardly ever used it. Yvar preferred the atmosphere of candle light to the static artificial light. Not so lifeless, he had explained once when Ferhdessar had asked him about it.
“I’m also glad to be back,” the sorcerer answered while he took off his cape. He had walked straight to the fireplace. He glanced at the large vase with peonies that stood in the centre of the mantelpiece. “I don’t think we’ve ever experienced such a hard winter. The hailstorms are horrible, I had to take shelter several times. One would almost say it was a mistake to leave the palace, but my journey wasn’t a waste of time.”
“Have you discovered anything new about the situation in Naftalia?”
“Pontifex Peschi is dead.”
“Murdered?”
Nodding, the sorcerer brushed the snow out of his short hair. “His entire city is destroyed.”
Ferhdessar only wore his hair longer on the sides. The ends of two plaits hanging in front of his pointed ears caused wet spots on his chest. Two other plaits hung behind his ears and reached past his waist.
“First the Pontifex Maximus and now he,” the king muttered, frowning.
Ferhdessar nodded again and took the kettle off the stove. He swirled it to see if there was anything left. “I hadn’t expected the battle between the pontifices to take this long. Peschi’s odds of becoming Maximus were pretty good. It looks as if someone has eliminated a rival.” In the meantime he held up the kettle and looked questioningly at Yvar, who gestured that Ferhdessar could have the last drops of tea. Warming his hands on the glass, Ferhdessar flopped into a chair. The king sat down as well but remained silent.
As Ferhdessar took a sip, he contemplated the situation. The events in Naftalia worried him and he feared that the next Maximus would target Merzia in his hunt for new followers. This meant it was vital to stay abreast of all developments. He tried to get to the bottom of every rumour – no matter how far-fetched – to find out the exact truth behind it. Unfortunately, information coming in from Naftalia was few and far between. Nevertheless, he was convinced that Peschi would have crossed the borders into Merzia if he had seized power.
The Lilith Trilogy Box Set Page 3