The Burning Altar

by Sarah Rayne

  A man enclosed in a huge steel-mesh, man-shaped cage that had been nailed to an immense oblong of wood, and then raised to face the assembled people. Raffael’s voice said very softly, ‘Dear God, it’s Lewis Chance,’ and pity and fear washed over Ginevra afresh.

  Even through the iron latticing it was possible to see that the lower half of Lewis Chance’s body – from his feet to halfway up his legs – was a heaving mass of twitching brown fur, and as Ginevra and Raffael were pushed to stand alongside him, they saw that blood was already staining the cage.

  Raffael said softly, ‘Rats – rats inside the cage. Dear God, they’re eating him!’

  ‘Section by section,’ whispered Ginevra, beginning to shudder with sick repulsion.

  As Kaspar bent to remove the slotted gate Raffael tried to shake off the guards, but they only held him more firmly. Ginevra was shivering, half with fear, but half with anger, because how dared these people treat any human being like this? She looked about the square, trying to see if it might be possible to create some kind of diversion, and it was then that the drumbeat faltered. A cry of fear rang out and every head turned to the far side of the enclosed square.

  Into the firelit scene, walking slowly, walking as if she had all the time in the world and as if that world was arranged solely for her pleasure, was a small imperious figure, garbed in dazzling emerald green, glinting with diamonds.

  The fearful murmur went through the Tashkarans again, and this time the man overseeing Lewis Chance’s torture stopped in the act of raising the slotted gate. He turned his head and as he saw the small figure, he flung up a hand in front of his eyes as if suddenly dazzled by a brilliant light. Ginevra heard him whisper ‘Touaris,’ and the word was taken up by the crowd.

  Touaris. The reincarnated goddess of the ancient rebel tribe; the immortal female deity whose genesis was older than Christ, whose history was so closely woven with that of the pharaohs that it was no longer possible to separate it.

  As the figure moved forward, the Tashkaran leader fell back, his eyes bolting from his head, and at Ginevra’s side Raffael said, very softly, ‘Ginevra. Get ready to run.’

  Ginevra, her eyes on the glittering figure, said, ‘What—’

  ‘Elinor,’ said Raffael softly. ‘You do know it’s Elinor?’

  ‘No, I – I mean, yes—’

  ‘She’s trying to create a diversion,’ said Raffael, still speaking in a low urgent whisper. ‘Clever. There’ll be a moment when they’ll forget we’re here – any second now. When I give the word, run for your life while I get Chance.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ginevra, who had no intention of running for her life and leaving the others to face these evil creatures, but who was not going to waste time arguing.

  The Tashkarans had fallen to their knees, moaning softly and rocking to and fro. The guards fell with them, their prisoners momentarily forgotten. Ginevra was just drawing breath, because this had to be the moment, when Raffael said, ‘Now!’ and as one they fell on the steel cage, dragging it open.

  The hinges gave easily, and the cage opened, but as Ginevra saw the prisoner inside, there was a brief instant when she thought they were too late: Lewis was so white and still that he was surely dead. And then his eyes flickered open and he looked straight at her. His eyes were pain-filled but they were sensible.

  Ginevra said hastily, ‘It’s all right – we’re friends – we’re going to get you out,’ and cast a hunted glance over her shoulder, and thought: yes, but how?

  The rats had scuttled to the ground, squealing in fury, and crouching malevolently, their little red eyes glaring evilly, their tails twitching. Lewis was alive after all, but his legs were in bloodied tatters and Ginevra caught the white glint of bone. Behind her, Elinor had come to stand between two of the wall torches, half in shadow, and she was raising her hands as if she were about to give some kind of command. Diverting their attention, thought Ginevra. But I don’t think it’s going to be enough. I think that at any minute they’ll see that it’s a trick, and then we’ll all be in the shit—

  ‘Imposter!’ The word rang out harshly, and then was repeated in the strange Tashkaran tongue. Kaspar bounded across the courtyard, seizing Elinor and staring down into her face. He dragged her to the centre of the square and a stream of unintelligible words broke from him. At once the Tashkarans rose and began to surge angrily forward.

  Elinor was fighting Kaspar, but he held her firmly, and two of the guards had already run to his side. Four more had sprung on to Ginevra and Raffael, pulling them away from Lewis and the crowd were shouting and jeering. Some of them were climbing over the wooden benches and starting forward. Ginevra shrank back, staring at them in horror.

  ‘Leave them to us!’ cried Kaspar. ‘Leave them to face punishment, and leave that one –’ his hand was outflung, pointing at Lewis – ‘leave that one to finish the sentence! The Agony of the Ten Gates! He shall suffer it! The Cage! Close the Cage!’ He gestured to the guards, but they were already closing down the hinged cage again, and Lewis was still inside.

  ‘Gather up the rats!’ screamed Kaspar. ‘And then bring in the Burning Altar! Because when we have finished with the creature who murdered Touaris,’ he cried, ‘then we will burn his collaborators!’

  A cry of assent came from the crowd, and Kaspar turned to the prisoners. His eyes were suffused with a mad red glare and spittle flecked his chin. ‘You will burn!’ he cried. ‘All of you, starting with the insolent creature who put on Touaris’s mantle and walked in Touaris’s footsteps! You will die on the Burning Altar! We shall offer you up in the ancient sacrifice of our people on this Feast of Bast, and you will feed the goddess!’

  As the drumbeats started up again, despair slammed into Lewis’s mind so violently that his hold on sanity slipped.

  There had been a space of time when he had felt the cold night air on his skin, and he had seen Raffael without the least surprise; the rara avis, the sui generis I found in London. It seemed entirely natural that Raffael should be here, fighting Kaspar’s people.

  And there had been that other moment – astonishing, unforgettable – when he had stared through the flickering torchlight to where a figure stood half in shadow, half in firelight. The dark half was Touaris, his Touaris, somehow with him again, but the other half – the half caught by the light – was someone else altogether, and Lewis could not bring this someone else quite into focus. It was someone he knew very well and someone whose presence was suddenly immensely strengthening. As Raffael tore aside the cages, Lewis struggled to make the two halves of this person into one coherent whole, but his mind was still awash with pain and it was beyond him.

  It was then that Kaspar screamed that hate-filled cry of ‘Imposter!’ and the guards dragged Raffael and his companion back, and three of them seized the girl who was half Touaris and half not, and Lewis understood that the confused rescue attempt had failed. Sick bitterness swept over him at the cruelty of it.

  As they brought in the Burning Altar a sigh went through the square, and as the guards bent to fire the clay bricks the drumbeat quickened and the Tashkarans began the rhythmic swaying that Lewis remembered. The years splintered and he was once again in the Stone Palace, watching the young guide dragged screaming to the white-hot table and flung on to its surface. But by the time they do that to me I shall be dead! he thought in bitter anguish. And then: but the others won’t!

  The drumbeats stopped and an intense silence fell on the courtyard again. They’re waiting. They know what’s about to happen. The Fifth Gate – Exquisite Torment – the one that no prisoner ever survives! His eyes met Kaspar’s and then Kaspar reached down to draw up the gate. Lewis clenched his fists and into his mind came the ridiculous thought that now he would never know the identity of the firelit Touaris. He was about to die in screaming agony and he did not know who she was, and it was suddenly overwhelmingly important to know—

  As the Gate began to lift, into the square, running hard and brandishing flaming tor
ches and swords and knives, their eyes blazing, came upwards of fifty young Tashkaran men and girls.

  The League of Tamerlane.

  And at their head was Grendel.

  Lewis was swimming in and out of sick unconsciousness, but he was aware that hands were pulling him free of the appalling cage, and he knew that this time it was going to be all right.

  His sight was still blurred with tears and sweat and exhaustion but he could see Grendel, and although Grendel’s eyes were blazing with that astonishing fervour and his face was dust-smeared and his hair sweat-soaked, his eyes were clear.

  Touaris’s son leading the rebel separatists; entering into the ancient land of his people, but doing so violently and angrily, and with murder in his eyes and his heart. This was the final reckoning; youth against age – the dissolving of a once-indissoluble people who had fled for their lives from the Pharaoh Amenemhat a thousand years before Jesus of Nazareth . . . The old order changing, giving place to the new . . .

  There was a brief blinding moment when he felt time slither and dissolve again, and he was aware of a pattern being repeated. I was here like this once before, he thought confusedly; and I was as near to death then as I am now. But there was a rescue that time as well . . .

  He was dimly aware that Grendel’s followers were falling on the Tashkarans and hacking at them with knives and makeshift spears, and thrusting flaming sticks of wood into their faces, screeching some kind of furious battle cry as they did so. The courtyard began to ring with screams of pain and anger as Kaspar’s people scrambled over the wooden benches and fell on the intruders.

  Lewis felt himself being lifted and carried away from the screaming tumbling carnage and he heard someone nearby say, ‘Try not to hurt him.’ Someone else was pressing a wad of cloth against his poor mutilated legs and he cried out in pain, and then a female voice said, ‘Only one thing for it – we’ll have to go into the Temple and barricade the doors.’

  Lewis tried to ask what was happening, but his voice was so weak that he could hardly make himself heard over the shouting and the screams. Raffael bent down and said in his ear, ‘Grendel and his people are fighting Kaspar and the guards, Sir Lewis. But you are safe and we are getting you away. You understand?’

  ‘I – yes.’ Lewis managed to clutch Raffael’s hand gratefully. ‘Thank you. Sui generis – recognised it at once. Can’t talk – say it all later . . .’

  He thought Raffael said, ‘I’ve never been called that before,’ and he thought there was even a note of wry amusement in Raffael’s voice. And then he fell gratefully into blessed unconsciousness.

  As they ran through the darkened streets, leaving the courtyard behind, Elinor wanted to scream at them to run faster. Because we have to get clear, we have to get to safety – to sanctuary. The old word, that had once meant so much more than just a hallowed place, rang through her mind. To enter sanctuary had once meant to step on to sacred ground and be instantly and unassailably protected from pursuers. And there was only one place here that might afford them a temporary respite, and that was the Temple.

  Raffael had wrapped his jacket around Lewis; he had his arms about Lewis’s shoulders and chest, and Ginevra, who had been nearest, had taken his feet, wrapped in the makeshift wadding to stanch the bleeding. Elinor ached to push them both aside and fling her arms about Lewis and cry, but it was not a time for being emotional; it was a time for being practical and quick-thinking and for reaching safety. If they got out of all this – when they got out of all this – she would have the noisiest breakdown ever.

  The ancient Temple with the mummified goddesses was ahead of them, and Elinor conjured up in her mind an image of the immense doors with the huge bolts on the inside. The Temple would not give them shelter for very long – Kaspar and his people would be after them within minutes – but it might give them a breathing space.

  The Temple was cool and dim and the sound of the bolts being driven home from inside was the most comforting thing any of them had ever heard. The bolts were immense iron struts, each one as thick as a man’s forearm, and the doors themselves were massive affairs of solid silver, strengthened with iron staves and inlaid with panels of marble and gold. Raffael, gasping, laid Lewis on the floor and turned to inspect them.

  ‘All right?’ said Elinor, meaning the doors.

  ‘Yes, better than I thought. A battering ram would have a difficult job against these, and I don’t think even fire would get through all that silver and marble. Good girl.’

  Ginevra said, ‘There’re tiny spyholes up there as well – can you see? I can’t imagine why they were put there, unless this was once under seige, but at least we can see what’s happening outside.’

  ‘We’ll hear what’s happening outside,’ said Elinor grimly, as Raffael rummaged in the haversacks for candles and matches. Tiny glad flames burned up, vividly red and orange in the dark vaulted hall, and she dragged a spare shirt out of her own bag and tore it into strips to bandage Lewis’s wounds more thoroughly. There was antiseptic cream in their small medical kit and Elinor spread this thickly on the bandages, strongly conscious of the futility of these measures. She was sick with fear when she thought about the danger of infection and blood poisoning, but for the moment there was nothing more that could be done. The important thing was to get free and get him to the nearest hospital. The overwhelmingly important thing was to get free.

  Ginevra had crushed three aspirin tablets in a plastic cup of Evian water and was holding it for Lewis to drink, and Elinor felt a sharp gratitude to Ginevra who did things without needing to be told. She started to ask about searching for other entrances or exits, when the sound of loud knocking rang through the Temple.

  They all spun round at once, and Elinor’s heart began to thump. The knocking was on the main door, the huge silver doors they had so firmly bolted only minutes earlier, and to hear it through the thickness, whoever it was must be using a metal weapon of some kind. Kaspar. Kaspar and his people trying to get in. Trying to penetrate this flimsy sanctuary.

  Raffael held a finger to his lips and padded silently across the cat-mosaic floor to the tiny glass spyholes halfway up the doors. Elinor felt her fists curling into balls, the nails of her fingers digging into her palms. Don’t let them get in, please let us be safe, please let us escape.

  Raffael said, ‘It’s Grendel,’ and dragged back the bolts.

  Grendel was hunched against the door, bleeding from at least a dozen different cuts, and he fell through into the Temple gasping and sobbing. The stone he had been using to beat on the door fell from his hands.

  Raffael said sharply, ‘Tell us what’s happening,’ and in a perfectly sane voice Grendel said, ‘I ran away. They lied to me—’

  ‘Never mind that. How badly hurt are you?’

  ‘Cut. Only a bit.’ The smile that was so uncannily not his own showed briefly, and Ginevra heard Elinor draw in her breath. ‘They said I would find Touaris,’ said Grendel and for a moment his eyes held the bewildered hurt of a child. ‘That’s why I came with them. But they lied to me,’ he said again. ‘And so I ran away.’

  ‘They’re bad men,’ said Raffael gently. ‘It’s all right now. We’ll talk about it later. But now we have to get away from them, do you understand that, Grendel?’

  ‘Yes. Get away.’ He looked trustfully at Raffael.

  Elinor had been dragging on the discarded trousers and sweater and boots. She passed the remains of the torn-up shirt across almost automatically, and Grendel wiped the blood from his cut arms and hands. There was a moment when he stared down at the blood, and seemed to pause. Something flickered in his eyes, and Elinor felt a lurch of terror. But then Grendel put the cotton strips into a pocket and the moment passed.

  Raffael was walking around the immense Temple, clearly trying to find other exits and it was then that Lewis put a hand out and clutched Elinor’s arm. His skin felt hot and dry and feverish, but when he spoke his voice was weak but perfectly rational.

  ‘We can –
hide in the ruined city,’ he said, and pointed to the corner by the groyned arch. ‘There’s a trap door that leads down to the original city of the Bubasti, and to the—’

  ‘To the what?’ said Raffael sharply. ‘Sir Lewis, what’s down there?’

  Lewis focused on him with difficulty. ‘The Decalogue Chamber,’ he said.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  The frenzied descent down the narrow dark stairs with Raffael and Elinor carrying Lewis was awkward but they managed it.

  Grendel went ahead, using the strongest of the electric torches, and Ginevra brought up the rear with the small pencil-torch.

  ‘And very appropriate too,’ she said, with a touch of slightly too-emphatic flippancy. ‘Anything that comes creeping along after us will get me first. What happened to chivalry?’

  ‘It’s leading the party carrying the best torch,’ responded Raffael shortly.

  Lewis smiled weakly up at Ginevra, who blinked and then smiled back, but thought: hell’s teeth, if he used to look at Nell like that, no wonder she’s come half across the world for him! I wouldn’t have minded knowing him twenty years ago – I mean if I’d been the same age. I’ll bet he could tell some stories. Oh dear, thought Ginevra, unaware that she was mirroring Elinor’s own thoughts about Ginevra herself and Raffael. Poor Nell.

  When they reached the break in the stairs Lewis pointed to the low cobweb-swathed opening with beyond it a Stygian darkness. ‘Through there. The ruined city of the first Bubasti— If you’d put me down for a minute you might find it easier.’

  Ginevra caught the note of angry impatience in these last words and understood that Lewis was fighting the pain, but that he was also fighting frustration at slowing them down. As Raffael and Elinor set him down she scrambled past them to where Grendel was clearing away the fallen stones.