If he was a Flesh-Eater, he had very good manners. He took Lewis through the palace into a small cool room with a breathtaking view of the mountain, and slanting light falling in pure luminous swathes across the polished wooden floor. There was a narrow bed and a chair and a tiny deal table with an old-fashioned copper ewer filled with water. A tranquil-faced Buddha figure with a tiny brass burner beneath it looked down from a small alcove, and there was a drifting scent of something that in a Western church Lewis would have identified as incense.
‘When you have washed and rested you will join us for supper? We shall eat in a little more than one hour from now. Someone will come to show you the way.’
‘I really only intended to ask if I could rest here before going on,’ said Lewis.
‘But tonight we hold one of our feasts,’ said the man, and a smile lifted his lips. ‘You will be very welcome to join us.’
‘Then thank you very much,’ said Lewis. ‘You speak very good English, by the way.’
‘I learned it as a child from an English missionary worker.’
‘Whoever he was he did a good job. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name—’
‘I am known as Kaspar,’ said the man.
‘Then thank you, Kaspar.’ Lewis waited until the man turned to leave, and taking a deep breath, said, ‘Tell me, do you know anything about Touaris?’
Touaris . . . It was as if he had dropped a stone into a quiet forest pool, or scratched a jagged fingernail across thin silk. The name rasped on the air with jarring dissonance. Kaspar stopped abruptly in the act of opening the door and looked back at Lewis. I’ve rattled him, thought Lewis. I don’t think I’ll mention the Decalogue yet; I’ll see how he copes with this first.
Kaspar was regarding Lewis unblinkingly and for an instant it was as if a veil had lifted, and there was a brief vivid glimpse of something alien and cruel. Lewis felt an icy finger trace a path down his spine, but he met the man’s regard levelly and at last Kaspar said, ‘Where did you hear of Touaris?’ He pronounced it almost as Lewis had done, but there was a noticeably different emphasis.
‘I don’t recall,’ said Lewis untruthfully. ‘Perhaps it was mentioned in Lhasa. What is Touaris?’
There was another of the pauses, this time as if Kaspar was considering how to answer. Then he said, ‘Touaris was a tribal queen who ruled over her people in the valley beyond this palace for many centuries. Once the palace was one of the gateways to her realm. You have a word – fortress? Meaning a guarding place.’
‘Bastion, perhaps. But – the same lady ruling for hundreds of years?’ said Lewis disbelievingly.
‘It is a very old legend,’ said Kaspar. ‘But it is possible that as each queen died a selected one took her place.’
‘Like a female Dalai Lama?’ Lewis had said it half flippantly, but Kaspar appeared to take it straight.
‘Yes, that is a good way to explain it,’ he said. ‘The legend tells how she and her ancient religion were very closely guarded and that a terrible punishment was dealt to those who dared enter her realm.’
‘The Forbidden City?’ said Lewis lightly.
‘There are many forbidden cities in Tibet,’ said Kaspar dismissively. ‘But the Tribe of Touaris has long since died out. You will join us for our feast?’
‘I will.’ Lewis did not say that he did not seem to have much choice.
‘I shall send for you in an hour’s time.’
‘I shall be here.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Kaspar. ‘You will be here.’ He paused and added very softly, ‘We shall enjoy having you at our table.’
He went out and Lewis sat down on the bed. Only someone monumentally thick-skinned would have missed the menace in Kaspar’s voice, and only an absolute fool would fail to pick up the dark undercurrents. The fact that the setting had most of the elements of the classic horror story could be disregarded: the lone traveller requesting shelter in the remote mountain fortress: the hints of grisly practices from the frightened guide. And that Parthian shot: We shall enjoy having you at our table. It was all so obvious – it seemed so contrived – that you could say it was stagy, in fact you could very nearly say it was farcical. Look chaps, here comes another sucker, set up the atmospheric lighting and slap on the weird make-up. And then let’s just run through the low-pitched I-am-a-sinister-character voice again, shall we . . .?
Thinking all this made Lewis feel very much better, although none of it altered the fact that there were any number of unpleasant fates that could befall lone travellers: you did not have to enter the fantastical realms of cannibalism or ritual slaughter to visualise them, either. ‘Accidents’ could happen very easily out here where there were no police or embassies or post mortems. A stumble on the hillside, a footing missed crossing the gorge . . . The Englishman has fallen to his death – how very unfortunate. Still, there are a good many valuable things in his knapsack, and there is a large sum of money as well.
Lewis frowned and got up to rinse away the grime of his travels. The water was soft and pure and it refreshed him physically and mentally. He dried his face and hands and moved to the window.
Under his room, some thirty or forty feet below, was a large courtyard enclosed on all sides by the palace walls. The smoky eastern twilight was already veiling the vast palace, but more burning torches had been thrust into the wall brackets and in the flickering light Lewis could see forty or fifty people apparently preparing for a banquet. They all bore a strong resemblance to Kaspar himself and to one another, although Lewis, watching unseen, thought this was to be expected in such a remote district where there would be inbreeding. The men all had straight black hair like watered silk, growing low on the forehead. Widow’s peak? Vampire’s brow? No, you can’t have cannibals and vampires both together, that would be really overdoing it. The women were as tall as the men and well-muscled, and there did not seem to be any of the subservience that Lewis, recently come from the bra-burning women’s libbers in England, had found so noticeable in Lhasa and Delhi.
They were arranging platters of fruit and bread near to what looked like a low stone table, roughly ten feet square, and several of the men were carrying out stone flagons which Lewis supposed contained wine. There was an air of festivity and they were all calling to one another and laughing, and although Lewis had no knowledge of their language he could hear the spiralling excitement. A growing fear tugged at his mind again. I think this is the time to beat a retreat. If I go now, while they’re absorbed in their preparations, I might be able to creep through the palace unseen and out into the night. He remembered the dangers of the Tibetan night – wild animals, parties of marauding robbers, never mind hypothermia from the bitter cold – but he would rather face any of them or all of them than Kaspar’s people.
In the courtyard one of the men began to tap against the sides of a deep-throated skin-drum, producing a steady rhythmic thrumming, so filled with dark throbbing anticipation that Lewis felt his scalp prickle. A death roll: a dirge. Yes, but filled with such potency. It was at this point that the whole thing suddenly ceased to seem stagy and faintly absurd, and became menacing.
Kaspar’s people were assembling on the edges of the courtyard, several of them holding burning torches aloft. Several more had joined the wine- and fruit-carriers, and it was impossible to avoid the impression of an audience gathering to witness some kind of spectacle. The flickering light poured over the scene, showering the watchers with twisting crimson and orange. Most of them wore only a narrow loin cloth made of some dark soft stuff, and the women had a twist of the same material over their breasts. The feeling that something was about to happen mounted, and Lewis’s heart began to pound with fear and anticipation.
And then the women who had been setting up the stone table moved back to take their places, and for the first time Lewis had a clear view. A wave of cold sick horror lashed against his mind, and for a moment the small bare room spun around him.
The stone table was not a table at all; it was a huge open clay oven, fired from below: crude, but effective. Its surface was already throwing out fierce heat, and thick meaty-smelling smoke was beginning to drift across the courtyard. Lying along the centre of the oven was a long narrow terracotta pan, lipped and rimmed and slightly concave, fitting into a shallow depression scooped out of the oven. Even from here Lewis could see that the pan was exactly the shape and size of a human.
Cal had been right all the time. These people were Flesh-Eaters: they were cannibals and down there was their roasting oven. Dear God, I must get out of here before they come for me . . . I shall send for you in an hour’s time . . . Lewis looked at the door. Supposing it was locked? Supposing there was no escape?
There was a flurry of commotion at the courtyard’s far side and a door was flung open. Lewis turned back to see, and through the door came four of the black-haired men, half carrying, half dragging a struggling prisoner. He was naked and his hands were bound in front of him, but he was holding them cupped protectively over his groin in a piteous attempt to preserve a final shred of dignity. A rope halter was about his neck so that if he tried to escape he would be throttled.
Lewis recognised the prisoner at once, even though his features were distorted with terror, the eyes starting from the head with panic. Cal, the guide who had brought him here and then fled into the night. They had caught him. Did they have scouts out for lone travellers? Panic gripped him more fully and he was across the room and turning the door handle. It stuck and resisted at once. Locked. But you knew it would be. He walked slowly back to his post at the window.
Two of the men lifted Cal bodily and carried him shoulder-high towards the terrible oven. Lewis, gripping the sides of the small window so tightly that the stones cut into his skin, felt a violent surge of anticipation from the watchers. This was what they had been waiting for; this was their feast. The drum-beat increased: it built to a pulsating vibrancy, filled with sensual greed and swollen with crude sexual anticipation. Lewis was starting to feel very sick, but also dreadfully compelled by curiosity.
Cal knew what was going to happen to him. He was being carried towards the oven in horizontal native-bearer fashion, his head pointing towards it, and he had twisted round to stare at the glowing clay pan. As they bore him forward, he began to scream: terrible trapped-hare screams, pleading for mercy, fighting his gaolers and bringing up his bound hands in an attempt to claw his way free. But he won’t do it, thought Lewis, in horror. They’ve got him in a grip of iron. Can I get through the window and somehow down the wall to him? But the courtyard was a sheer drop and the wall all around and beneath the window was smooth bland stone.
The watchers were swaying and Lewis caught a low chanting from them, a hypnotic measured resonance that reverberated all around the courtyard. The scene shimmered and blurred in the spiralling heat from the clay oven and the flaring torches, like an ancient portrayal of hell, and Lewis remembered Patrick’s description of the giant gates of hell. I’ve passed through them, and I’ve descended into the fiery caverns. And there at the centre is the burning furnace . . .
The four men reached the oven and hoisted Cal above it, and Lewis saw his skin turn instantly scarlet from the fierce heat. There was a moment when they held him aloft, and when his body began to scorch, blistering and cracking and running with thick colourless fluid: human fat – the subcutaneous fat melting and oozing to the surface. As the smeary fluids dripped down over Cal’s body and on to the hot clay, there was a furious spitting. A low murmur went through the watchers, and despite the belching heat from the Altar, Lewis felt cold sick terror fasten about his vitals.
The men had started to lower Cal: in ten seconds – five – he would be in that grisly clay pan and there was nothing Lewis could do to stop it. Cal was screaming, but his cries were almost drowned by the fierce heat-sizzle and the crowd were pressing forward, swaying with excitement, the chanting louder.
With a final smooth movement the four men dropped Cal straight into the waiting heat of the terracotta pan and a sigh swept the courtyard. The oven spat frenziedly, almost drowning the anguish of the creature already roasting to his death, and a greasy pall of smoke rose up.
Behind Lewis, a key scraped in the lock and as the door of his room opened he turned. Kaspar, with four of the black-haired men, stood there surveying him.
‘Well, Englishman,’ said Kaspar, the cruel curving smile lifting his lips, ‘you have seen a little of our ways.’
‘The Burning Altar,’ said Lewis, still staring down into the courtyard. ‘That’s what that is, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. One of the most ancient rituals in the world.’
‘And,’ said Lewis, turning to regard Kaspar, ‘one of the punishments of the Tashkara Decalogue?’
Kaspar became very still. At last he said, ‘You know the legend of the Decalogue?’
‘I do.’ But please don’t let him ask me how much I do know, thought Lewis in silent entreaty. Because what I know could be written on a postage stamp! Patrick, you bastard, why didn’t you bequeath a bit more about that side of your journey instead of listing all the women you screwed?
But he held Kaspar’s stare, and after a moment Kaspar said, ‘The Burning Altar is the punishment for what we call jackals. Those who guide spies into a forbidden place.’
‘It’s also an echo of the ancient cult of hunting the gods and feasting on their cooked limbs,’ said Lewis. ‘And the roots of that religion are somewhere deep in ancient Egypt. Am I right?’
‘Yes. How do you know that?’
‘How do you?’ countered Lewis.
‘We are descended from a very ancient people. We follow customs that are older than Osiris himself.’
‘How convenient,’ said Lewis politely, ‘that this particular custom fits so neatly with your inclinations.’
Kaspar smiled. ‘All religions can be adapted,’ he said. ‘And we are sworn to guard the secret city of Touaris from intruders. Our reputation is known in Lhasa and only the very inquisitive or the simple-minded ever approach the palace.’ The insult was implicit but it was clear. ‘You preserve your Christian religion,’ said Kaspar. ‘Why should we not do the same with our religion?’
‘Then,’ said Lewis, ‘Touaris still lives.’
‘Oh yes, she still lives.’
Lewis glanced down at the courtyard. Cal was not quite dead; his body was the colour of half-cooked meat but he was still struggling feebly. His legs had curled up helplessly, drawn in by the heat like an insect’s, and his hands were scarlet shrivelled claws.
Lewis turned back to Kaspar, the fragile outline of a plan beginning to form. It would probably be the biggest gamble he would ever take and it would depend on how superstitious these people were. But it was worth a try. He said, ‘How can you be sure that you won’t incur Touaris’s wrath if you sacrifice me on the Burning Altar?’
‘Why should we?’
‘Have you never heard,’ said Lewis, ‘of the prophecy of the Traveller from the West? The One who will come to Tashkara and save it from a great catastrophe?’ I’m very nearly in biblical country now, he thought. Dare I start in about plagues and scourges and seven-year curses? No, you fool, you’ll ruin the whole thing! His heart was racing and his palms were wet with sweat but he met Kaspar’s eyes levelly.
Kaspar said, ‘There is no such prophecy,’ but Lewis caught the note of doubt, and hope sprang up. I’ve rattled him! He doesn’t really think I’m anything other than an ordinary traveller but he isn’t sure. Oh God, I’m walking on ice so thin it’ll probably crack at any minute and then they’ll fling me into that grisly thing and I’ll die in slow screaming agony. But if I keep my head I might just get away with it.
He said, ‘You can’t be sure. How many travellers would know of Touaris and the Decalogue? Remember I mentioned them both before you did.’
‘Prove what you claim!’ said Kaspar challengingly.
‘That my coming here was foretold?’ And now I’m descending into outright blasphemy!
‘Yes,’ said Kaspar. ‘Prove it!’
‘How?’
‘Join our banquet.’
‘As a victim?’ said Lewis sarcastically.
‘As a participant.’
The silence closed down again, and now there was something extraordinarily intimate about it. He knows exactly what I’m thinking, thought Lewis, staring at Kaspar. He knows what I’m thinking and I believe he knows what I’m feeling as well. What the hell do I do?
Several lifetimes ticked away and then he heard his own voice saying, ‘Very well.’
‘You are willing to eat from the table of the Burning Altar? To eat the flesh you have seen cooked tonight?’
Lewis said, ‘I am willing.’