by Sarah Rayne
What would be fun and what would disconcert Kaspar and the elders would be if she could come out with a few nicely depressing prophecies. Prophesying was something that you could sometimes get away with if you were a goddess. There had been quite a famous Touaris around the turn of the century, who had had the much-quoted vision of how the Decalogue would one day be revealed to the world, and how Western Christianity would rock on its tottering throne as a result. She was known as Touaris the Seer (although among themselves the younger ones called her Touaris the Hippopotamus-faced, which was disrespectful but if the embalmed corpse was anything to go by, highly apt), and she had lived about seventy years ago, which meant there were still people whose fathers – well, all right, grandfathers – remembered her. Touaris thought that a seer might be quite a good person to model yourself on, although you would not want the hippopotamus face.
She practised a few suitably sonorous sentences and tried out one or two glassy-eyed trances before the mirror, which they had allowed her to have after she had threatened to burn the palace down. You could exist in captivity for a while, but you could not exist anywhere without a mirror.
In the end the prophecies struck quite a gratifying response, because while no one entirely believed them, no one quite dared disbelieve. She predicted several undignified fates for the elders, described how Tashkara would crumble into ruins, and rounded it off with Kaspar himself being ignominiously toppled by his own bloodline, and being forced to live out his days in a hermit’s cave. It was all very satisfying.
When she ran out of prophecies she substituted being abruptly sick all over whoever brought her breakfast. This was quite a good diversion as well, and she became expert at timing it, but after a while they caught on and simply pushed her breakfast inside the door and beat a hasty retreat.
She was not especially frightened at the thought of punishment, because she did not think the elders would do anything unpleasant to her. Probably there would be some kind of reckoning, and probably Lewis would have to share in it, but once it was all over life would go on very much as before. Except that there would be Lewis and there would be the child.
The birth, when it finally began, jerked her out of her half-dreamlike security, into a cold and dreadful reality. She had known – hadn’t she? – that birth was a painful messy business, but no one had prepared her for the clawing agony that tore through her womb over and over. Between spasms she understood dimly that no one had prepared her because no one had thought it necessary. She was the inviolate incarnate Touaris, the immanent one, the virgin goddess. The relevant adjective was ‘virgin’. Some virgin, thought Touaris, swimming in and out of the pain. Some goddess. If Hippo-face had gone down in the annals as the Seer, she herself would go down as something very different. Touaris the Defiled. Touaris the Whore. Was it better to be remembered as sinned against or sinning? She cried out as another sickening vice clenched her lower body, and when one of the hovering women told her to take deep breaths and try to relax, Touaris shouted at the woman to sod off, which was a very satisfying curse she had learned from an American journalist. Touaris the Shrew.
The pains rose to unbelievable unendurable intensity, and there was the feeling of something tearing deep inside her. The room wavered and grew blurry as if she was looking at it under water, and the voices of the hovering women became faint. This is it: I’m dying. Probably as well, really. Touaris the Martyr. She gave her life for the child of the only man she ever loved . . . The child.
From the far end of a long echoing tunnel she caught the thin wail of a child and somebody murmuring something about a boy. A boy. Lewis’s son.
Be blowed to dying, thought Touaris, struggling back into consciousness.
For a truly dreadful moment Lewis did not recognise the girl half lying, half propped on the litter carried in to the chamber. Touaris’s hair was flattened to her head with the sweat of the agony; her skin was pale after the months of captivity and there were violet smudges under her eyes. And then she looked across at him and his heart lurched in precisely the way it had lurched all those months ago.
He understood that the birth had only just taken place, and he thought: they might at least have allowed her to recover a little. They might have washed her face and brushed her hair free of the sweat. He looked at the child lying next to her, and a slow strong anger began to burn. My son and hers. And they will take him for one of their macabre rituals. Not if I can help it.
The elders had been murmuring together, and several of them had glanced several times at the Decalogue. As they came to stand at the cavern centre their faces were grave and stern, but their eyes, glittering in the leaping light of the bronze fire dishes, betrayed them. The watchers pressed forward eagerly and Lewis’s heart lurched. This is it: they’re about to pronounce sentence. I wish it wasn’t so hot in here; it’s difficult to concentrate when it’s so hot. I wish there weren’t so many eager-eyed people crowded in as well. The cavern was stifling and there was a rising stench of human sweat and of whatever had been set to burn in the bronze saucers. Lewis began to feel sick. He looked across at Touaris, and tried to signal to her to stare them down – although had Touaris ever needed telling to stare anyone down? – but she was looking down at the child lying beside her. Something wholly unfamiliar fastened about Lewis’s heart.
And then Kaspar began to speak.
He spoke first in the Tashkaran language but he spoke swiftly, so that Lewis, who had managed to pick up a very little of the language during his captivity, could not follow. But Touaris had raised her head and was listening with intense concentration, and Lewis watched her and saw the gathering horror in her eyes. Whatever they’ve pronounced it’s terrible. It’s so terrible she never imagined it could happen. There was a drumming in his ears as if he might at any minute faint, but unexpectedly it was the absurdity of this that helped him keep hold of consciousness. I can’t faint just as I’m about to learn how I’m to die!
Kaspar switched to English, directing his words to Lewis, and Lewis felt the hatred of the Tashkarans, whose goddess he had taken and whose sacred Decalogue Chamber they had together defiled.
Kaspar said, ‘Your punishment is twofold, English traveller. It is in strict accordance with the laws of our people which decree that all punishments must be in exact measure to the offence.’
Gilbertian, thought Lewis wildly. In a minute he’ll say something about letting the punishment fit the crime and then I really will lose all grip on reality. This is hell, of course: the real thing. I’m down in the fire-drenched caverns, I’m at the exultant crimson court of agony – no, I’m not, of course I’m not! Damn you, Kaspar, get it over!
Kaspar said with slow deliberation, ‘Since you committed the sin of fornication with the goddess, you will be deprived of the organ that caused the offence, in obedience to the Seventh Stone Tablet.’ He looked at Lewis and Lewis stared at him in disbelieving horror. Kaspar said, ‘You will be castrated.’
The too-hot cavern with its fetid stench of sweating, excited humanity, and the flickering torch flames all began to whirl about Lewis’s head. But Kaspar’s voice cut through the spinning panic.
‘After that, because you have overlooked the Secret Domain of Tashkara – your word would be spying or trespassing – we shall invoke the punishment of the Sixth Tablet, which is a three-fold sentence.’ He paused again, as if savouring the words, and then said, ‘The loss of hands so that the guilty one shall not write of what he has seen . . . The loss of feet so that he shall not walk in the world to tell of what he has seen . . .’
A murmur of horror and triumph went through the cavern, and Lewis, clinging to awareness by a thread now, heard Kaspar continue in the same measured tones.
‘As for the lady who was our goddess, she will suffer with you,’ he said, and Lewis heard his own voice, hard and harsh, saying, ‘Well? What barbarity have you and your savages reserved for her?’ He turned to Touaris, and saw that the colour had drained from her face, leaving it so
white that she looked like a corpse. She knows. He’s already said it for her, but he’s going to say it again, and he’s going to enjoy saying it again. I’ve never seen such cold merciless gloating in any living creature’s eyes.
He waited, and after a moment, Kaspar said, ‘Hers is the greater sin, for she had the awareness of her rank and the awareness of the ancient undying spirit of the goddess. She sinned in the full knowledge of what she did. She sinned against the First Stone Tablet of the Decalogue, which states, The office of the gods shall be inviolate.’
‘That,’ said Lewis, angrily, ‘can be interpreted in at least a dozen different ways. Get on with it, Kaspar.’
Kaspar said, ‘For her, too, the sentence is a form of castration. We shall destroy her womb so that it can never betray her again. We shall force into it the ceremonial phallus of the ancient cat people, which was crafted two thousand years ago and intended for the punishment of any Touaris committing the sin of fornication. Until tonight it has never been used.’ He looked at Touaris, and using their own language, which Lewis managed to follow, said, ‘You are about to create history, my dear.’
Chapter Thirty-two
Touaris was furious with herself for fainting in front of them all within minutes of hearing her punishment, and she was furious with Kaspar for being the cause of it. She held on to the fury for as long as she possibly could, because if you were filled up with fury, there was no room for any other feeling.
She had struggled up out of sick unconsciousness to find herself still in the Decalogue Chamber, and that moment of realisation had been the worst thing she had ever experienced. Still here. Still in the suffocatingly hot Decalogue Chamber with everyone watching, with the faces of the elders stern but excited at what was ahead. Secretly gloating over the punishment.
The punishment. The barbed and cusped phallus: the monstrous rearing symbol made of silkily polished wood, but fletched like an arrow down its sides, so that although the entry would be smooth and relatively painless, the removal would tear cruelly into your flesh. Shredding your womb to tatters. It was at this point that the fury began to drain, like water trickling out of a sieve, and fear began to pour inexorably in.
It was going to happen. A punishment born in some sadistic brain two thousand years ago and never until now invoked, was going to be inflicted on her and there was absolutely no way of escaping it. They were going to do it, and they were going to do it now, with her womb still aching and bruised and unbearably vulnerable from the birth. No one was going to stop them and no one was going to rescue her, because the only person who might have rescued her was here in the chamber with them, held by four of Kaspar’s guards.
She met Lewis’s eyes across the suffocatingly hot cavern, and saw her own horror mirrored in them, and with the horror, bitter frustration that he was helpless to save either of them. Touaris managed a tiny smile. Sorry, Lewis, but it looks as if this is it: they’re going to castrate us both. We might survive and then again we might not. I hope I was worth it for you. You were certainly worth it for me. And there’s the boy. She glanced down at him and for an astonishing few seconds she forgot about the approaching agony, and a brief smile curved her lips. That brief time of undiluted joy with a stranger, and there’s another little life in the world. Except that Lewis had never been a stranger.
Kaspar’s musicians were starting the low beating of the skin-drums, and the sound thrummed relentlessly through the cavern. Some of the younger ones had begun to sway rhythmically, their hands linked, their eyes half-closed, and Touaris hated them. She had managed to drag herself into a half-sitting position by this time, but she felt light-headed and there was a deep ache between her thighs like an open wound.
Into the cavern came six of the ritual dancers – Kaspar’s tribe again. Was Kaspar setting himself up as Tashkara’s ruler? In other circumstances Touaris would have rebelled instantly; she would have enjoyed rebelling as well, perhaps getting together some of the younger ones and challenging Kaspar, and seeing him routed.
The dance was what Kaspar’s people called the Harbinger and it preceded all Decalogue executions – no, not that word! The men wore the obscenely fashioned loin belts and the macabre cat heads; they were thrusting and moving to the drumbeat and working themselves to frenzy pitch. It was the kind of thing that might even give you a slightly warped kick if you were feeling so inclined. If you were waiting for your own punishment you were more likely to throw up on the ground. Touaris wondered if she could still do this to order, and whether if so it would delay the sentence. No, they would simply fetch a pail of water and sluice it away and then get on with things.
The dancers circled her and Touaris shrank back on the makeshift litter, wondering if she could fight them – gouge out their eyes as they approached, bite their hands. And then two of the guards grabbed her arms from behind and jerked her back, and she knew there was to be no fight and no escape.
They pulled the litter to the centre of the chamber, and the flames in the bronze dishes danced and leaped as the current of air stirred them. Above the scent of the burning myrrh was the mingled stench of human sweat and human excitement, and above that was a steadily mounting anticipation, so thick and so real that if you reached out you could plunge your hands wrist-deep into it.
A shadow fell over her and Touaris raised her eyes fearfully and saw Kaspar standing over her, the immense ceremonial phallus held in his hands.
Lewis had been half hoping that Touaris would faint again and put herself beyond most of the pain, but as Kaspar walked towards her with the appalling wooden phallus he saw that she was fighting to remain conscious and she was certainly fighting to stay defiant.
There was absolutely nothing he could do to reach her and he could think of no means of saving either her or himself. He was being forcibly held by three guards and at least six more stood nearby. He considered a sudden bound across the chamber but discarded it almost at once. They would not let him get more than four paces.
The ceremonial phallus with the barbs down its length appalled him, even though he could only guess at the degree of pain it would inflict. Would it be anything like the pain he would shortly suffer himself? Castration and then the hands and feet to be removed . . . And what afterwards? Would they tend his wounds or would they leave him bleeding and mutilated on the floor of the cavern, unable to walk, barely able to crawl? I can’t endure it! he thought. There must be a way out!
They were spreading Touaris’s legs and Lewis felt a knife turn in his gut as he saw how she was struggling against them. Kaspar was looking down at her, the carved phallus grasped between both his hands and Lewis felt the sexual arousal irradiating from the man. Deep hatred flared up. One day, Kaspar, there will be a reckoning for all of this!
The people were crowding forward, craning their necks to see, but from where Lewis stood he had a clear view. As the drumbeats quickened their pace, a low moan, unmistakably sexual in quality, broke from the watchers.
Two of the women moved the child from Touaris’s side, and Kaspar bent down and began to slide the impossibly huge phallus between Touaris’s thighs.
Touaris was clinging to consciousness by a thread so fragile that it might at any minute snap and plunge her into blessed unawareness. But she was hanging on for Lewis’s sake, because when this was over Lewis would be put to his own torture, and it was unthinkable that she should not try to share his pain with him as she thought he was now trying to share hers. She could feel his mind reaching out to her, and there was a faint comfort in the knowledge.
She sensed, as well, Kaspar’s sexual excitement, and as he lowered the phallus between her thighs their eyes met. It was a travesty of a lover’s embrace, a warped version of intimacy. She thought she said, ‘I hate you,’ and she thought Kaspar replied softly, ‘I know,’ but her whole being was so concentrating on staying aware and on not breaking down that the words might only have been inside her head.
The first touch of the phallus was cold and hard, but who
ever had crafted it had polished the wood to a silken finish. As Kaspar began to force it into her, the cramping pains that had been still vaguely ebbing and flowing intensified, and Touaris instinctively tried to hunch over, only to be jerked back by the guards.
Kaspar knew what he was doing. Touaris, fighting the pain, was dimly aware that he was moving with the assurance of one very accustomed to female bodies and this was something that would ordinarily have been interesting – Kaspar a womanizer? But the pain was blotting everything out; it was getting worse by the second: the phallus was huger than any man’s could possibly be; it was a giant’s, an ogre’s . . . Touaris gasped, and then clamped her lips tightly shut because she would not give them the satisfaction of hearing her cry out. She would stifle the cries somehow. Touaris the Stoic.
The pain was building to an impossible level and she could feel soft vulnerable flesh tearing and bruising. Despite her resolve, she began to gasp aloud. But the real agony’s ahead – the moment when they drag the thing out, that’ll be the real torment. Kaspar gave the phallus a vicious push, and Touaris cried out helplessly. It was all very well to be high-minded about stoicism and silent martyrdom but when it came to the reality, you found yourself yelling your head off. A stronger wave of pain clawed upwards, and she gasped. Do it, Kaspar, curse you, do it. Drag the wretched thing out and get it over with! A thick mist was obscuring her vision; sweat was streaming down her face, stinging her lips, and the pain was by now so fierce that she could no longer move. She was shrinking to a single concentrated pinpoint of white-hot pain, and the slightest movement was beyond her.