by Sarah Rayne
Kaspar gave a sudden final thrust – and Touaris moaned in agony. Her sight was blurring, but there was a moment when she focused on Kaspar standing over her, his hands still moving with unbearable intimacy between her thighs, his eyes blazing with lust.
And then he pulled hard on the wooden phallus, dragging it down at last, and pain – excruciating unbelievable pain – swamped Touaris’s entire body. A huge darkness swung down, pressing on her lungs and blotting out the light. From a distance, Touaris heard her own voice trying to scream, making weak mewling sounds like a kitten.
On the other side of the cavern Lewis moved.
Lewis had several times tried to break free, but each time the guards had jerked him back and pinioned his arms behind him. He was almost frantic with the desire to reach Touaris but he was helpless.
Until the moment when the child was moved to a corner by himself, and Kaspar began to force the phallus in.
Lewis made a lightning calculation. The attention of every person in the cavern was focused on what was happening and if ever there was a moment to move, this was it. He looked at Touaris, and knew she was beyond his help; she was bleeding heavily – dark thick blood that flowed down her legs and dripped on to the ground. She was still gasping and crying weakly, but her eyes had filmed over and her skin had taken on a dusky pallor. Dying, thought Lewis, and a bolt of pain slammed into him. No time for that now.
Summoning every ounce of strength and courage, he jerked out of the guards’ hands. It was done so quickly that the guards were taken off balance, and Lewis had a clear run and took it. He snatched up the child, holding him aloft.
‘Come near me and I’ll dash his brains out on the stone floor!’ yelled Lewis, backing towards the stair, his eyes blazing with fury. ‘I’ll do it, Kaspar, so call off your damned jackals!’ On the rim of his vision he saw Touaris scrabble weakly at the sides of the litter. Searching for the child. Even like this, even dying in that appalling agony, blind and deaf with pain, she sensed that the child was gone. The knife twisted in his guts again, and he shouted, ‘Touaris! Listen to me! I have the boy safe! I won’t let them take him!’ He thought she made a half-gesture as if of acknowledgement and acceptance, but the litter was soaked with her blood and she had barely the strength to lift her hand. ‘I’ll take him away and look after him!’ cried Lewis. ‘You have my word!’
He began to retreat to the stone stairs that led up to freedom, holding the child tightly, keeping his eyes on Kaspar, but aware of the others as well. Kaspar had halted the guards with a single imperious lift of one hand but his eyes were wary. He said, ‘This is an absurd and arrogant gesture. And you will not escape us.’
‘Touch me and I’ll smash this child’s skull like an eggshell and spill his brains on the floor!’ shouted Lewis. ‘And then where will your ritual be?’ Kaspar made an involuntary movement and Lewis raised the child above his head. God, don’t let him push me because I could never do it. But he doesn’t know that! He said, ‘A girl to take Touaris’s place; a boy for the Burning Altar – wasn’t that it, Kaspar? It looks as if you’ve lost Touaris, and if you try to stop me now, you’ll have lost your precious sacrifice as well!’ He moved back another step and saw the uncertainty in Kaspar’s eyes. Confidence poured into him. He believes I’ll do it! He wanted the boy for his savage ritual – the sacrifice of the first-born. Oh God, yes of course – and he doesn’t want to lose him! He pressed the child closer to him. Not this one, Kaspar. Not Touaris’s son and mine!
There was a white dint of fury on each side of Kaspar’s thin mouth. He said, ‘You will never get far enough away. Even if you get out of Tashkara we will hunt you through the world!’
‘Do so,’ said Lewis at once. ‘And I’ll see every one of you inside a British prison on counts of murder.’ He glanced behind Kaspar to where Touaris lay silent and still. Butchered to death, and it was my fault. Unbearable. But I’ll grapple with that afterwards. And if I can save her son I’ll have atoned a very little. And I’ll still have something of her—
He had reached the stair and he felt for the first step with his foot. Almost there. Can I turn and run? No, not yet. He ascended two steps and there was a low angry growl from the Tashkarans. Lewis cast a frenzied glance around him, and without knowing he was going to do it, reached up with his free hand and snatched the nearest of the fire dishes from the stone plinths. There was a searing pain as the heat blistered his palm but he flung the dish into the centre of the Tashkarans. There was just time to see it tip and spill licking tongues of flame and sizzlingly hot oil in several directions, and to see the Tashkarans fall back in alarm. Lewis felt a surge of exultation. That’s for Touaris and for Cal and for all the other poor creatures who fall into your paws!
As he raced up the narrow stair angry cries followed him, Kaspar’s voice rising above them, screaming in his own tongue. They would quench the small fires almost at once, but it would take them a few minutes, and those few minutes were all he needed.
He scrambled through the trap door into the Death Temple, gasping for breath. It was lit by more of the bronze, fire-filled dishes and there was the pungent scent of burning oil and the hush of extreme age that he remembered. Lewis, his sight still vulnerable but adjusting, kicked the trap door down into place, and turned to scan the Temple. In another minute they would be swarming up the stair and they would push the trap door open and be on him. Unless he could bar their way.
His body moved ahead of his mind again. He darted across to the doors, and flinging them open, laid the child carefully on the floor. So far so good. Now for the side temple. The sightless eyes of the embalmed goddesses stared implacably down at him and he took a deep breath and reached up to the nearest. It came easily, toppling forward out of the elaborate throne, the dry dead arms falling about his neck, the brittle hair brushing his face. He gasped and shuddered, but set his teeth and carried the grisly thing to the trap door. It felt light and empty, husked dry of life . . . Don’t think about it. And one isn’t nearly enough. He went back a second time and a third. I’m going back and back, I’m defiling the goddesses of at least a century. But I’ve already been found guilty of that, so I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, only they weren’t going to hang me, they weren’t going to do anything so merciful as hanging. Are they coming up the stair? No, they’re still tramping about trying to quench the fire, I can hear them.
The last one he took was one of the half-rotting ones, and Lewis felt his fingers break through the badly mummified skin and sink into soft pulpiness, like too-ripe fruit in autumn. Dreadful! Yes, but if it gets me free it’s worth it! He piled the last body into place, and it was then that the scattering of tiny winking gems fell from the rotting fabric, and spilled over the ground.
Lewis wasted seconds he did not have in staring at the bright droplets of colour. Real? Yes, of course they’d be real, you fool! A fortune – several fortunes, probably! – lying there for the taking. And if you don’t take them you’ll regret it for ever! But if you do take them, you’ll have stepped over one of your own self-imposed boundaries. Like father, like son. Don’t be such a prig, said Lewis to Lewis. Grab the things now and beat it before they come swarming up out of that devil’s cavern!
The feel of the sharp fiery jewels in his hands gave him a kick of such power that it knocked him almost off balance, and the sight of them fastened seductive hands about his mind. Deep vibrant red blazed against glowing sensuous emerald and against warm pulsing amber and fiery diamonds. To do it? To take what he could in these final crowded minutes, and then get out? Or to relinquish it all, and return to England with a clear conscience? Yes, and with empty pockets, and a zero bank balance! And there was the child. If I do it I’ll do it to provide for him, said half of his mind. Oh sure, said the other half, sarcastically.
Be damned to it, thought Lewis furiously. If I’m going to commit the classic plundering of the ancient temple, I’m going to do it in style! He tipped the scattered jewels into his pockets, and div
ed back to the side temple, snatching at the shining jewels on the robes, and the elaborate rings on the dead fingers. His mind was whirling and part of him was shuddering, but his hands were perfectly steady. Like father, like son.
It took minutes only, but during those minutes a kind of madness possessed him, and only the awareness of the Tashkarans below the trap door stopped him from taking far more. He came back to the piled-up bodies, and protecting his hands with a torn piece of one of the robes, he lifted the nearest fire dish and carried it to the tumbled heap of ancient corpses. What had worked once, would work a second time. He threw the dish and its contents into their midst and at once a sheet of flame tore upwards. Lewis dodged back, but not before he had seen the bodies seem almost to rear up in the heat, their blazing hair on end, their gaping eyes starting from their heads. He stared for a moment, and then turned away, and taking up the child, stepped out into the pouring dusk beyond the Temple. The immense city gates were directly ahead – hell’s gates and I’m coming out of hell. Delight began to unfold. I’ve come through and I’m almost free. And with me is Touaris’s son, and also with me are the jewels of a lost civilisation!
He stood for a moment, looking across to the sweep of the mountains, tasting the cold clean night air, thinking nothing had ever tasted and smelled and felt so good in the entire world.
As he walked through the gates, towards the purple and blue horizon, a wry humour rose up without warning. I’m in the middle of the most desolate country in the world, and I’m carrying an hours-old child, and I haven’t a clue of what to do next, or where to go from here.
Yes, but I’m rich once again.
Chapter Thirty-three
Extract from Patrick Chance’s Diary
Tashkara, 1888
If Fenris and the lepers had not stayed with me and with Theodore after they rescued us from Tamerlane’s savages we should probably have died from our wounds. God knows, there were times when I wished that I had died.
It’s difficult, at this distance, to recollect the exact sequence of events after they unchained me from that appalling wooden scaffold; it’s difficult, as well, to separate nightmare from reality.
The reality was what Tamerlane’s butchers did to me – and to Theodore – in that fire-drenched square inside the forbidden city; the nightmare’s now.
The memories are blurred and fragmented, and trying to set down a record is like lifting the lid of a grisly Pandora’s box. Several times since sitting down to complete these diaries, I’ve been attacked by doubt. Isn’t it better to leave the lid tightly closed, and seal the memories up for ever?
But the trouble with memories is that you never do quite seal them, not completely. They have a way of suddenly forcing up the lid – generally when you’re least expecting it as well – and spilling out into the light, as fresh and as hurting as when they were made. No matter how much you think you’ve pushed them into a dark cobwebby corner of your mind they don’t die; they stay in a dry embalmed state like something caught in amber. Like pressing a flower between the leaves of an old book and going back to it years later, and still being able to smell the fragrance. Only my pressed memories don’t smell of flowers: they’re blood-soaked and gore-crusted and they’re gibbering, bleached-bone corpses that won’t die, and that come gibbering and clawing at you in the night watches . . .
I think I feel better for that outburst, which may prove my point: drag the wretched things out, Patrick. Draw their teeth and lay the ghosts once and for all. Here I go, then.
The journey out of the forbidden city and into the leper colony was somehow achieved with makeshift litters, and with the endless patience of Fenris’s people. I was still swimming in and out of consciousness, but I remember the amazing gentleness of Sridevi, whom I thought then, and still think, is one of the most truly beautiful human beings I ever met. It was Sridevi who taught me that the outer covering doesn’t matter: it’s what’s within that counts.
I remember Theo’s appalling agonies as well, and his struggle to come to terms with his mutilation, first by writing on a slate, and later with sign language. It was only afterwards, when we were in England again, that I heard how Sridevi and two of the other women had fed him thin soup and goats’ milk and melted honey: spoonful by patient spoonful because his mouth was so dreadfully wounded that for several weeks he could barely swallow.
And through it all was my own agony: jagged shards of clawing torment splintering my mind. I lay in the small stone room on the outskirts of the leper colony, staring up at the low ceiling and although at the start there was no thought beyond that of the pain, eventually the pain receded, and there was space for bitter despair.
Emasculate. A gelding. A half-man. I thought: I can’t bear it, and knew in the same heartbeat that it had to be borne. I could not begin to imagine how I should feel, once out in the world again. Did the desire die along with the ability? What about all the drivelling old men who married girls a quarter their age and spent their days fumbling and fondling and very little else, regret in their eyes for the whole world to see? And what about the real castrati, what the Ancient Romans had called the spadone? I had seen them as well – the silver-voiced singers. They became coarsened, thickened. Their voices became eternally soprano – Unbearable. Oh God, why didn’t I die in that hell-ridden palace!
For a long time, the stone room was my whole world. I drifted in and out of awareness – occasionally rousing sufficiently to eat and drink. Between times Fenris and Sridevi talked to me. Sridevi had the kind of eyes that made me think of all those lyric poems about wine-dark seas (Homer?) and black and brilliant stars, and tranquillity filling up the wine-cup of the universe. The disease had ravaged her, but she had a gentle irony and the deep unshakeable faith and trust of the true mystic. I think the lepers regarded her as what the East call a twice-born. An old soul in the truest and most exact sense.
‘We spend as little time with you as possible,’ said Fenris on one occasion.
‘But not,’ put in Sridevi, ‘because we would not like to,’ and when I said if it was because of the infection they need not bother because I didn’t give a damn any longer, she said, very severely, ‘Do you think we risked all we did only to see you die? How ungrateful of you. You will not die, Patrick; you will live. I – I order you to live.’ And then she said, ‘What was done to you was truly terrible, but there is no need for anyone in your world to ever know about it.’
‘Who would tell them?’ added Fenris, rather sadly.
‘Become an illusionist,’ said Sridevi, and for a second a grin lit her face.
I stared at them.
‘Listen to me,’ said Fenris. ‘You do not think it now, but one day you will take pleasure from living again.’
‘I can’t begin to imagine how it will be—’
‘But you will do it,’ said Fenris.
And at his side Sridevi said, ‘Patrick, you should remember that we are here to help you, as you tried to help us. You should lean on us until you are strong.’ She paused, and then said, ‘Among my own people we have very wonderful writings of a philosopher and a visionary who lived in Persia many centuries ago. His name has long since been lost, but fragments of his teachings live on. And when he wrote about friendship and love, he wrote these words.’ She paused, and then said, very softly, ‘“Throw me your nightmares, beloved, and watch me spin them like a juggler, and one by one exorcise them of their devils and return them to you with their fangs drawn and their red poison sucked out.’” She paused again, and then went on in her soft voice that the disease had not yet marred, ‘“And then you will see how the nightmares will depart; they will slide back across the silent black waters of the oceans and usher in the light.”’ She smiled at me. ‘Love and friendship drive back all the nightmares, Patrick.’
‘And the world feasts on illusions,’ I said, my own eyes never leaving hers. ‘We have a poet as well, Sridevi, an Englishman who lived nearly a thousand years ago, and who said that life is a thoroug
hfare full of woe, and we are but pilgrims passing to and fro.’
‘That is also good,’ said Sridevi, listening absorbedly. She made one of her rare gestures of taking my hand. The lepers tried never to touch anyone, but her hand lay cool and strong in mine for a brief moment. ‘You will do it, Patrick,’ she said. ‘You will survive and you will drive away the nightmares and you will fool the world and there will be some happiness for you.’
In the face of their patient acceptance of their own lot it’s difficult to argue the point.
We left the colony, Theo and I, after a space of time that might have been several weeks or months, or several worlds.
Sridevi’s words about fooling the world stuck in my mind and lodged there, and I returned to them over and over, using them like a touchstone. No one need ever know. The only other person who knew the truth was Theo, and if I could not trust Theo, I could not trust anyone.
I would become an illusionist, I would wear false colours to the world. Sliding back the nightmares . . . I would even doctor my travel journal to fool people. Edit, wasn’t that the word?
‘Back into the world,’ I said to Theo, and he made the sign that meant Yes, followed by Good. It occurred to me for the first time that I was better placed than he was to throw up an illusion. Let’s face it, even if you’ve been castrated you can still pretend you’re as rampantly capable as the next man (unless, of course, the next man actually demands proof, in which case you’re lost), but you’ve either got a tongue to speak with or you haven’t.