The pounding of feet overhead jerked them both abruptly out of a drowsy half-sleep, and the sudden opening of the trap door rasped against senses still drifting in a hazy half-world between sleep and awareness.
Lewis sprang up at once, dragging at his clothes, but Touaris was still dazed and half-bewitched and she was slower. She stood up, the pale lidless eyes of the Decalogue behind her, the black bars of the cage framing her body. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were slumberous and her hair was tumbled, and even at such a moment, with most of his attention focused on the people plunging down the stair, Lewis had time to register how blazingly beautiful she looked. Incandescent. Don’t think about it now. Concentrate on what’s about to happen.
When Kaspar and six of his people entered the cavern, Touaris was still pulling ineffectually at her gown, but even without that Lewis thought there could be absolutely no doubt about what had taken place between them.
There on the floor, in the dust of God-knows how many centuries, and in the shadow of something ancient and implacable and vaguely menacing . . . I’ve screwed these people’s divine goddess, he thought, and then in the same instant, but that wasn’t screwing, that was making love. Whatever name it’s given, I think there’s about to be a reckoning.
Kaspar regarded Touaris for a long moment, but when he finally spoke to her, he spoke in what Lewis assumed to be their own tongue. The words and the cadences bore no resemblance to any language he had ever heard, but the cold contempt in Kaspar’s voice did not need interpretation.
Touaris heard Kaspar out with sudden regal courtesy, and then looked across at Lewis. He saw at once that the imperiousness was a perilously thin veneer, and that behind her eyes was a very deep fear. ‘Kaspar says we have defiled the Sacred Place of my ancestors,’ she said.
‘How predictable of him.’ Lewis managed to inject a note of cold arrogance into his tone. ‘Well, so what?’ he said.
Kaspar looked at him with angry dislike. ‘You have offended on three counts, Mr Chance,’ he said. ‘You have intruded into the forbidden city of Tashkara, which means you have committed the offence we call overlooking. That we might have forgiven, but you have also committed an offence that has only once before been known here.’
He paused, and Lewis, dredging up every ounce of courage he possessed, said coolly, ‘How annoying that I wasn’t the first. What is the offence?’
‘The defilement of the goddess,’ said Kaspar, and his eyes narrowed with glittering hatred. ‘And for that you will receive one of the most extreme of all our punishments.’
Lewis leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. ‘Do go on,’ he said. ‘You have such interesting customs here, although on second thoughts, archaic might be a better description. You referred to three offences: what’s the third?’
‘Blasphemy,’ said Kaspar. ‘The deceit you practised in the stone palace.’
‘The Traveller from the West,’ said Lewis, regarding Kaspar with cynical amusement. ‘The prophecy of the one who would save Tashkara from a great catastrophe. I thought it was rather good, myself, and I certainly wouldn’t have used the word blasphemy. But perhaps you don’t see it from the same viewpoint. You weren’t really naïve enough to believe it, were you? Ah, I see you were. How astonishing.’
Kaspar said, ‘For blasphemy there is also a punishment.’
Lewis regarded him thoughtfully. ‘You know, one of your weaknesses, Kaspar, is your complete absence of any sense of humour,’ he said. ‘Still, I expect you’ve got any number of barbaric punishments lined up for intruders and blasphemers and – what was the other one? – oh yes, defilers. Don’t let me interrupt you.’ And now shut up, said his mind. Don’t taunt the creature further by suggesting half a dozen possible tortures, because you’ll end up hoist with your own petard! It would be Kaspar’s idea of a very neat vengeance to use your own ideas against you.
Kaspar turned to the men standing with him and there was a brief consultation in the Tashkaran language. Lewis watched Touaris’s expression, trying to guess at what was being said from her reactions, but could not. She was pale and her eyes were huge dark circles in her little white face, but she was composed.
Then Kaspar nodded, as if confirming some agreement, and turned back to Lewis. ‘You will be imprisoned here for one month,’ he said. ‘At the end of that time, you will be brought to the Hall of Judgement at the centre of the city, where you will be tried and sentenced.’ His eyes flickered to the silent stones, and Lewis felt fear crawl across his skin. Ten punishments for ten offences. And every one of them certainly terrible. I wish I’d been able to decipher the hieroglyphs on the Tablets. No I don’t, I’d rather not know. Does Touaris know? Yes, of course she does. He looked at her again, and saw that she appeared to be listening to the interchange with detached interest. He was suddenly immensely grateful to her for maintaining the cool arrogance; he wondered if any of the liberated Chelsea females he knew would have behaved so well or whether they would have crumpled into hysterics by now.
He said, ‘Why the delay? Or is that another part of the punishment?’ and for the first time Kaspar smiled.
‘Now you are the one who is being naïve,’ he said. ‘And for an English traveller and a gentleman of the liberated 1970s that is as astonishing to me as my belief in prophecies was to you.’ He paused, and Lewis thought: get on with it, you bastard!
‘There is surely,’ said Kaspar, ‘the possibility that a child has been conceived.’ He paused and as Lewis stared at him, he said softly, ‘Well, Mr Chance? I am right?’
Lewis, his mind in tumult, thought, what the hell do I say? Could he be right? Yes, of course he could, you fool, you forgot about all the restraints or, if you’re honest, by the time you reached that point you didn’t want to remember them. And you certainly didn’t come down here with your wallet stuffed with contraceptives! My God, if it has happened I’ll have turned their odd remote world upside down, and they’ll probably rend me limb from limb! But I’ll be bloody unlucky if it’s happened on a one-off! he thought. And then, with a small secret spiral of delight – yes, but what a one-off it was!
Kaspar had turned to regard Touaris, and when he spoke again, Lewis heard the dislike in his voice. Kaspar said, ‘Touaris has committed the greater offence. And even though it was never believed that the goddess would demean herself in this way, there is a due punishment.’
Lewis felt the faintest tremor of fear from Touaris, and forcing cold boredom into his voice, he said, ‘It’s pushing it a bit to expect me to believe that none of your goddesses has ever broken out. In three thousand years? Come off it, Kaspar! Who’s being naïve now?’
‘Nevertheless, it is true. The tradition is of a virgin goddess.’
‘More likely they didn’t get found out,’ said Lewis caustically. ‘And what if there is a child? What then?’
‘The punishment would be deferred until after it had been born,’ said Kaspar. ‘We do not kill unborn children.’
‘You surprise me,’ said Lewis politely. ‘In Ancient Greece a little feast of new-born baby was considered a delicacy. I would have expected your cannibals to follow that example with enthusiasm.’ He felt Touaris flinch, and thought: yes, that was a savage thing to say! But this is a savage situation.
‘But this would be the child of a goddess,’ said Kaspar. ‘It might be something to revere.’
‘“Might”? What else “might” you do with it?’
‘If Touaris does not survive the Decalogue’s punishment, and if the child is a girl—’
‘You might train her up for the next Touaris?’
‘It is not necessarily as simple as that,’ said Kaspar. ‘But it could be possible.’ He frowned, and for the first time since Kaspar’s entrance, Touaris spoke, turning to Lewis.
‘Each time the reigning Touaris dies,’ she said, her small face intent and serious, ‘a search is made for a girl child, no younger than two, no older than four years, in whom must be recognised the reappearance of the goddess.’
‘And they say religion is never derivative,’ murmured Lewis.
‘The search for the replacement is nearly always long and complex,’ broke in Kaspar. ‘And the tests are very stringent. There must be the recognition of objects belonging to the original goddess; there must be prescribed similarities of face and feature and above all there must be certain race memories,’ he looked at Touaris, ‘as there were with you.’
‘Yes.’ For a moment the mischief flared in the dark eyes. ‘There was no doubt about me, was there, Kaspar? And it kills you to admit it. But there was never any doubt, for all you tried to promote your daughter.’
‘Did he really do that?’ said Lewis promptly. ‘I’m shocked. Intriguing for power? Dear me, Kaspar, I wouldn’t have thought it of you.’ He grinned at Touaris encouragingly, but his mind was shuddering from the implication that she might not survive the Decalogue’s sentence. Looking back at Kaspar, he said, ‘This is a wholly hypothetical discussion, but – if the child were to be a boy? What would happen?’
‘A boy could be put to interesting use.’ The cold cruel smile curved Kaspar’s mouth. ‘There are certain ceremonies involving the Burning Altar, and use of a newly born boy-child,’ he said. ‘As you foresaw.’
Damn! thought Lewis furiously. But surely I didn’t need to put that idea into their evil warped minds! Isn’t there any way out of this?
He glanced to the guards standing behind Kaspar. Was it remotely possible that he could knock them aside and beat it up the stair and out into the night? But there were six or eight of them, and they were all muscular and strong. They were not armed in the way Lewis, with his twentieth-century outlook, thought of as armed, but they carried glinting knives. And the stair was impossibly narrow and as far as he could see there was no other way out of the Decalogue Chamber. Then I’m trapped. And there was Touaris – it was unthinkable that he should leave her to face this alone. He ground his teeth silently, but when two of the men seized him and began to force him back up the stone stair, he went without a struggle. He would save any struggles for later, for when he had formulated some kind of plan. It was inconceivable that he should submit docilely to these people, and it was even more inconceivable that he should let Touaris do so.
But panic was flooding his mind, and he thought: I’ll never escape from these people! I’ll never be able to fool them, or bribe them, or reason with them—
But Patrick escaped, he remembered suddenly. Patrick eluded them all those years ago, and returned to England.
A tiny voice tapped against the surface of his mind like brittle icicle fingers on a freezing cold dawn, and the memory of Patrick’s strange metamorphosis, so clear from the journal, slid coldly into his mind. A treacherous little voice deep within him, said, Did Patrick really escape?