Divine Torment

by Janine Ashbless

  ‘Yes. There was an earthquake. The cliff fell.’ His voice was harsh. ‘I thought you were dead. Your temple took dozens of priests with it when it went down the cliff; I thought you’d gone with them. No one knew where you were. The city’s in chaos.’

  ‘I called the earthquake,’ she mumbled. Only his hands were holding her upright. She felt as weak as water.

  ‘No you didn’t. There was a landslide. The Horse-eater camp was hit and they fled. The siege is over!’

  ‘I did it,’ she said.

  He laughed, shaking his head. ‘No . . . you were hit by plaster. How long have you been on the floor? You’re as cold as the stone!’

  She couldn’t answer. She was barely able to recognise the altar stone they were kneeling behind. They must be in the Garbhagria. Why was the Irolian in here?

  ‘Shuga’s fire. You’re like ice.’ He scooped her up in his arms with no apparent effort and carried her through the lurching shadows. Where his body touched hers, it felt as if he was branding her. She realised she must be regaining her senses because she could smell him now; he reeked of smoke and fresh sweat and blood. She recognised the coppery smell of blood without difficulty.

  The room was spinning and it only stopped when he lowered her onto a soft surface. She felt the cloth beneath her folded legs and realised it was her throne at the top of the dais. As he released her she stared at his tunic, which was rusty red and stiff.

  ‘It is not my blood,’ he reassured her and she realised she had put out numb fingers to touch his arm. He was not telling the whole truth, because he was covered in little cuts. He was kneeling over her on the bed of the vast throne, bronze greaves biting into the sanctified fabric, boots scuffing the cloth-of-gold.

  ‘You won,’ she said.

  ‘I came to find you,’ he answered. ‘I thought you’d fallen with the temple. No one knew where you were, that’s why I came in here.’ His hands had not relinquished their grip on her shoulders and she was glad of that because otherwise she would have fallen over. His hair was plastered to his skull and his eyes were burning in his filthy face. His muscles were sharply defined and hard as wood under the stained linen of his uniform. He looked as if he had come straight from the middle of battle.

  She had started to tremble.

  ‘You’re frozen,’ he muttered. He ran his hands up and down her arms, chafing the bare skin. She shut her eyes and felt the shuddering take hold of her whole frame. She heard the slow intake of his breath. ‘It’s a good thing I found you.’

  She nodded dully and watched as he took her right leg in one hand and tucked her bare foot into the warm cave between his thighs. His hand carefully massaged the locked muscles of her calf; it felt as hot as embers. His other hand was on her shoulder, his callused thumb resting on the soft curve of her throat. Perhaps he could feel her pulse.

  From her calf his touch moved slowly up beneath her skirts, testing the crease at the back of her knee, the smooth muscle of her upper leg. She did not protest; she didn’t feel she had the strength to. The shivering was making her teeth chatter softly. His fingers kneaded her outer thigh, his touch strong and sure.

  The breath hummed in her throat, issuing as a soft noise she had never intended to make.

  Veraine’s gaze, which had been avoiding hers, locked searchingly on her face at this. Whatever it was that he found, it was not rejection. He slipped both arms round her waist and folded her in closer to him, so that his arms could reach right round her, his fingers search the knotted braid of her spine. She rested her forehead on his shoulder, feeling the warmth beating out of his body like a caress. She was trembling uncontrollably.

  ‘Shush,’ he whispered, as if gentling a mare. One palm was firm on the small of her back, the other between her shoulder blades. He lowered his face to her hair, breathing in her scent until his chest swelled against her. Gentle pressure tilted her head to one side. She felt his cheek on her bare neck, the rasp of his stubble, the softer touch of lips drawn across her skin. His breath was suddenly hot and moist in her ear. He was barely breathing, but she could sense every flutter.

  Very gently he tilted her head back, cradling it on his arm, exposing the long line of her throat. She closed her eyes. His lips floated down over the edge of her jaw, down to the vulnerable skin of her neck; those lips parted and hungry and scalding. He ran the very tip of his tongue up the length of her throat, and as he did so a groan escaped between his searching lips.

  The door of the Garbhagria groaned too.

  Veraine snatched himself away to arm’s length and for a moment the Malia Shai dangled in his grasp like a doll. She felt pain knot inside her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the voice of Rasa Belit boomed.

  ‘Me? What have you been doing?’ Veraine yelled back. ‘You haven’t been looking after your Malia Shai for certain! She could’ve been dead by now!’

  Rasa Belit, flanked by four lesser priests, came running up the length of the hall faster than she had ever seen him move before. ‘What?’ he demanded.

  Veraine swung his feet off the throne and stood up, still supporting her with one arm. ‘She was injured in the earthquake.’ He paused until Rasa Belit had galloped up the steps to just beneath him and then snarled, ‘She’s been struck on the head and been lying on the floor all night with the strength ebbing out of her and not one of you yellow shit-maggots thought to check on her. I found her.’

  The priest opened his mouth but so great was his fury that no words came out. His chest was heaving.

  ‘Now,’ said Veraine, ‘you look after her. Do your job for a change!’

  ‘And what,’ Rasa Belit, asked, ‘are you doing in here at all, you Irolian bastard?’ His voice was shrill with anger.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m out of here right now. And we’ll be away from Mulhanabin just as soon as my men are packed up. Not a day longer.’ He grabbed the priest’s hand and shoved it onto the Malia Shai’s shoulder, forcing him to prop her up. Then he strode away down the steps.

  ‘General Veraine!’

  The soldier ignored him.

  ‘General Veraine, I want you to confine your men to their barracks until you leave!’

  This did cause him to stop and turn, halfway down to the Garbhagria floor.

  ‘Your men are drunk, General! They’re roaming the streets of Mulhanabin looting buildings and assaulting the people.’ He sneered. ‘You do your job. Get them under control.’

  Veraine’s face grew very hard. ‘Those men just saved all your lives, priest,’ he said. ‘And your temple, and your Malia Shai. They risked their lives for you. Some died in the attempt.’ He shook his head. ‘That doesn’t come for free. You pay. But you live.’ He clenched his jaw. ‘I will not lock my men in their rooms like naughty children. But,’ he added, ‘I will post a guard on the Citadel gate, with instructions that no Irolian except myself comes in. And if the people of Mulhanabin wish to find sanctuary up here then they can.’

  He turned on his heel and walked away. The Malia Shai was the only one who did not watch him go. She had her eyes closed. Her muscles were still mostly clenched with cold, yet inside she nursed, like meltwater under a mountain glacier, a wet and swelling heat.

  Veraine stood in his room, one hand on the stone latticework of his window, and stared at the darkness beyond the jali screen. It was after midnight, but how long after he did not know. The city was still loud with celebrating soldiers, but Veraine had left them to it. He had praised them, walked among them, accepted drinks and listened to both sober reports and outrageous boasts. He had also instructed Sron to quash any burning or wholesale looting of property. Then, when the men were so deep in their cups that they would hardly recognise him, he had left. They no longer needed his presence, and he gained nothing from theirs.

  Although he had changed his tunic and made a hurried attempt at washing hours ago, when he looked at the back of his arm he could still see the green stain left by his bronze vambrace.

  He wanted solitu
de. He had retired to his room because it was the only place where he was not going to be disturbed in the whole of Mulhanabin, and he had filled the room with the light of glimmering lamps. The light made the night beyond the window more opaque, but there was nothing to see out there anyway. Roiling clouds masked the moon and the night was gravid with rain that would not fall. Veraine stared at the blackness outside and within.

  He had triumphed. Against every expectation, by his own efforts and by good fortune – never despised by any soldier – he had pulled off a military victory and broken the back of an invasion that had threatened the Eternal Empire. An earthquake had come to his aid; that only proved he was favoured by heaven, everyone would say. The gods themselves fought on his side.

  During the battle, he had felt like that himself. While on horseback among enemies he had known that he was born to ride with a bloody sword in his hand. Among his men, for the first few hours of celebration, he had felt that. He had gloried in their victory and delighted in the life that was his.

  He knew now what his future held. He would march the Eighth Host back to Antoth with prisoners and spoils in their train. He would be fêted in an official triumphal march through the streets of the capital, and be honoured by the Emperor himself. He would be gifted with an estate, with slaves, and with a fifth part of the spoils of his victory. He would be permitted to marry a wife from among the nobility. He would become a man of influence and some power, with a glorious career laid open before him. Perhaps by the time he died he would be mentioned with the same reverence as his father.

  He had been born a slave, and now he stood on the threshold of greatness.

  It meant nothing to him.

  Over the last few hours, the joy singing in his blood had leached slowly away. He had slipped away from the Eighth Host when he realised he no longer shared their delight, and he had come to a quiet place to face the truth alone.

  The truth was, he now knew, that there was only one thing he wanted in life. It was not power or wealth, freedom or praise. It was the one thing he could not have: a slip of a Yamani girl blessed with neither breathtaking beauty nor obvious sexual allure. A madwoman who thought she was divine.

  It was incomprehensible.

  And yet she was the one thing that filled his mind, that haunted his nights, that made his blood run like fire through his veins. He had never desired anything or anyone the way he desired the Malia Shai. It made him sick with longing. It made his triumph taste like ashes. It made him feel as if his entrails had been torn out and that the hollow within him could never be filled. He would have sold every achievement of his life for her.

  He held on to the carved stone screen and told himself that at least he had discovered what it was he desired from life. Most men do not even know that.

  Then he heard the door creak.

  He turned and saw her standing there in the doorway.

  ‘There were no guards,’ the Malia Shai said.

  He did not reply. Words had failed him. She took a few steps forward into the room. He had never seen her look so hesitant. Slowly she reached up to her headcloth and pulled it free, letting the burden of her thick hair fall loose upon her shoulders.

  ‘I dreamed this,’ he said.

  She was biting her lower lip. ‘This isn’t a dream,’ she whispered.

  He crossed the space separating them between one breath and the next.

  When Veraine pulled her against him it snatched the air from her body; she opened her lips in a gasp and he smothered them with his own, so that their exhalations mingled and it was his breath, the taste of him and of rough red wine, that she drew into her throat. His hand was on her jaw, her cheek, pulling her in closer, the callused thumb smearing the dew of perspiration across her skin. His mouth was on hers, taking possession with a soldier’s brutal efficiency.

  She could not respond. She didn’t know how. She simply gave way before the strength of his lust. His body was hard, harder than she could believe, seeming composed entirely of muscle and bone. His other arm was around her waist, jamming her against the unyielding wall of his torso. The scent of him, as sweet as baked bread, filled her head. She felt her spine loosen in his grasp, her belly moulding itself to his, the bulge at the meeting of his thighs crushing into her soft body. Surely his lingam must be bone, too, she thought – mere flesh could never be that hard.

  He pulled away just as brutally. ‘This time,’ he whispered.

  Then he took her lower lip between his teeth, as if the only way he could express the urgency of his desire was in mimicked violence. His bites printed their way up the line of her jaw to the sensitive lobe of her ear; all hot, promising lips and threatening teeth. But it was when he used his tongue on her neck that she felt a great shudder of weakness run up through her spine and the warmth explode in her belly. It was like being on fire and drowning in deep water, both at the same time, and for a long moment it threatened to overwhelm her, but she dragged herself back from the brink and slid her hands up over his chest. She could feel his heartbeat against her right palm. She braced her shoulders and pushed him away.

  He released her at once, his hands groping to the back of his head, his face twisted with confusion. She ignored his expression and glanced anxiously down at his body where equally obvious evidence of his frustration confronted her, the great knot of his erection marring the smooth front of his tunic. She put one hand out, but not on his cock; gripping his belt instead, holding him tightly like a dog on a leash. She lifted the other hand to his face and laid her fingers on his lips. She needed to possess this moment, though it meant ignoring the agony in his eyes. She felt his breath on her skin, the scab and the swollen patch at the corner of his mouth where he had taken some minor knock in the battle. He quivered at her touch.

  She was used to the inexorable, infallible passion of the gods. But this man was no deity; he was flesh and blood, strong and frightening and yet so vulnerable at the same time. Their connection seemed too fragile, her understanding of him too uncertain.

  Their union was baulked by stupid obstacles like clothes. How did human lovers manage?

  She needed to use both hands to undo the knot at his belt. She bent her head over the task, working at it as seriously as a child. For a moment he let her, then he. took her face in his hands and raised it again, forcing her to look into his eyes. She saw the skin crease around them as he smiled.

  ‘My goddess,’ he murmured.

  He ran one hand through her hair, his fingers pulling gently at the curls, and that made shivers crawl up her spine. She pressed her cheek to his palm. Even his hand felt strange on her face, the scent alien, the fingertips callused. She licked at it, exploring with her tongue while her hands, distracted, worked at his clothes. Veraine gave a shuddering groan as she sucked each of his fingers in turn, tasting leather and metal, the ingrained dirt of a lifetime spent training for battle. Her tongue traced the creases in his palm, the lines of his life. He bit his lip, breath rumbling in his chest, and his other hand tightened in her hair.

  The belt was gone. She released his finger slowly as she moved to concentrate on her next task; the exploration of what lay beneath his tunic. Gathering the fabric to his hips she slid her hand up beneath the cloth, discovering with the lightest touch of her fingers the rough texture of his thighs and the coarse curls of hair peeking from beneath the edge of his loincloth, then the sudden smoothness of the skin around his waist and the broadening expanse of his ribs. There didn’t seem to be an inch of him that was not flat, hard muscle. Nevertheless, he did not have the endurance to stand still beneath her questing hands; without warning he snatched up his tunic, pulled it swiftly over his shoulders and threw it to the floor. She looked at his naked torso for the second time, and only the straining pouch of his loincloth concealed him from her eyes now.

  For a moment all she could think was how much smaller she was than him. Veraine was not particularly tall or broad for an Irolian warrior, but her lips were almost on a level with his
nipples, which stood proud at this moment like brown lentils despite the warmth of the night. Tufts of black hair, soft as carded cotton, peeked from under his armpits. She tried to assimilate the strangeness of his body. Yamani men were as smooth and brown as polished wood, but Veraine’s chest was stippled with dark hairs that overlaid the swell of his pectorals like the shadow of a bird in flight. She licked one nipple curiously and then stood back, seeing the lamplight glisten on his moist skin. He shivered visibly and gripped her shoulders.

  She touched his scars; some old and white, some bloody scabs from earlier in the day. There was a bruised encrustation on his left hip, which she skirted carefully with her fingertips. He submitted to her exploring fingers, watching her, the breath hard and shallow in his throat.

  There was more hair below his navel; a line like a seam bisecting his belly leading down into the hidden places under the loincloth. She traced its path, as straight as an Irolian road across a hard plain, from well to jungle. But where that road plunged into the forest her journeying fingers hesitated. With every step the territory was becoming more unfamiliar. Her fingers were trembling.

  Veraine covered her hands with his own and guided them firmly down over his crotch, so that their anxiety was crushed against the hot and rugged contours beneath the linen. She felt the swollen length of his penis kick under her palms. For a moment he held them there, then he brushed her hands aside entirely, their work done, so that he could pull her whole body against him. He stooped and lifted her, wrapping her thighs around his hips, and she clung to his chest, shocked by his strength. He held her up with one forearm, the hand tight under her splayed arse, as he carried her swiftly to the plinth in the centre of the room. With the other arm he swept it clear, armour and weapons clattering to the floor carelessly, so that he could lay her down on the stone.

  He stood firmly between her parted thighs, her own legs trailing helplessly over the edge of the dais to the floor; and when he leaned forward his crotch ground into hers.