Divine Torment

by Janine Ashbless

  He saw Rumayn sink his head upon his chest, then he raised his own gaze and watched. His hands gripped tight the stone wall, so that they would not be seen to shake. He watched until the man on the altar had stopped screaming for ever. He watched the Malia Shai stalk back to her throne and disappear again behind the curtain. He watched the congregation burst into a chaos of chanting, arms thrust high towards the throne, some whirling in circles, some falling to the floor and thrashing in convulsions. All around them the Yamani pilgrims shook in the transport of exultation, their faces wet with tears and sweat. The three Irolians clung to their perch and did not dare to move a muscle until the worshippers finally, still singing, filed out of the hall. He watched for what seemed like hours. His gaze followed the movements of the crowd automatically, but in his mind’s eye all he saw was the blood. Blood soaking into the wheat. Blood on her beautiful coppery skin. Blood on her lips.

  Only when the hall was almost empty did he give the order to the other two that they could move out. They slowly descended the steps towards the door. Rasa Belit was waiting there, though whether for them specifically it was impossible to say.

  ‘I trust you found the ceremony educational,’ he said with a lingering smile.

  Veraine stared at him for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat. ‘You know very well that human sacrifice hasn’t been permitted since our conquest. Your balls must be made of brass, priest, wherever they are at this moment.’ His voice was low but cold, as cold as steel on skin, and he was rewarded by the tiniest of flickers in the smirk before him.

  ‘Well, if you intend to take it up with someone then I suggest the Provincial Governor,’ countered the priest. ‘He was the one who supplied us with the sacrifice, after all. And he has done for years. A goodwill gesture to the natives, I believe.’

  Veraine drew breath in through his teeth. ‘I’ll be taking it up,’ he agreed grimly.

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ Rumayn butted in, his voice not quite steady.

  The priest looked at him in mild surprise. ‘I’m sorry?’

  Veraine, who should have silenced his subordinate, said nothing.

  ‘You priests. Your goddess. That girl . . . she’s insane. The gods don’t need to drink human blood.’

  Rasa Belit grinned. ‘She’s the Malia Shai. What offering do you think appropriate to the goddess? Flowers perhaps?’ He snorted derisively. ‘Maybe you Irolians don’t take your gods seriously enough. Malia saved Heaven and Earth from Chaos. She is the rawest and strongest of powers, and no sacrifice less them a human being would be sufficient. What, are we to say no to her?’

  Rumayn made a noise as if he were about to spit.

  ‘That man was already condemned to death,’ explained Rasa Belit. ‘He was a convicted bandit. He’d robbed and raped scores of people. Do you still feel sorry for him?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. What she did . . .’ Rumayn shook his head, grimacing. ‘That was disgusting, beyond belief, beyond words.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She is the devouring earth and we are all her victims. She is famine and she is plague. If you forget that, Irolian, go look in the streets of any city.’

  ‘We’re leaving, Commander.’ Veraine interrupted. He betrayed it by no outward sign, but within him he could feel the anger mounting like a white sheet of flame. He could not listen to Rasa Belit any longer. The ceremony had left Loy discomfited and Rumayn shocked to the quick, but he felt like it had tom his guts out.

  They brushed past the smirking priest and strode towards the doors.

  ‘What are your orders for the evening, sir?’ Loy asked as they emerged into the clean air.

  ‘I need a drink,’ Rumayn muttered.

  ‘See to the men, Commander,’ Veraine answered. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed.’

  I am burning. I have destroyed the demon Sorol Sek, I have saved the gods, but his blood is churning in my belly and my wrath is burning in my veins. My skin is afire. With every step away from the battleground my feet flatten mountains. The froth from my distended lips poisons the seas as I stride over them, and the continents crack beneath my bare soles. My hands still weave their dance of destruction, and all creation hides itself in terror of my passing.

  The gods seize me. Having created me, they must curb what they have let loose, or the earth will never survive. They bind my wrists in the long locks of the Rain’s hair, they pin me beneath the weight of the Sky-Mountain, they pour upon my molten skin the pure waters of the Holy River. Innumerable hands caress me, soothing, distracting, the eight thousand gods and goddesses of the cosmos stroking and tending to me, the starry heavens rippling with music to calm my rage, the sweet kisses of the Sun warm upon my lips. My limbs tighten against their constraining hands, but they are determined and terrible in their gentleness, in their deft and loving manipulations, until my fury curdles imperceptibly to pleasure, and my pleasure shakes my body in every thread. The unbearable pressure of my power flows out of me like water down a sluice, leaving me at last drained of violence and wrapped in peace.

  No one saw Veraine that night; he kept to his room and refused any dinner except a bottle of brandy. It was during weapons practice the next morning that officers and men began to notice that something was wrong. Veraine entered the lists without comment, then proceeded to beat his opponent to a pulp with the wooden stave, leaving the soldier with smashed ribs and a broken arm, continuing to strike at him even when the man was on the floor. Loy was the only one watching who had the courage to run in with a shield and physically intervene. The General threw down his stave and walked away without a word.

  He was walking back to his quarters when the Melia Shai stepped out from an alcove. She had been waiting for him, knowing he was bound to walk down that particular corridor.

  ‘General Veraine,’ she said softly.

  He turned to her. His eyes were as cold as shale. She had never seen him look at her like that. ‘You’ve got blood on your mouth,’ he said.

  She raised one hand halfway to her face before she realised he couldn’t be speaking the literal truth; she had cleansed herself thoroughly since the Drought Ceremony.

  He turned away and walked off.

  Back in his room, he ordered Arioc to prepare his chariot and horses. ‘You won’t be needed to drive.’

  He took the chariot out into the flat desert at a gallop, unheeding of the goatherds who had to leap from in front of the hooves. He drove across the salt-encrusted plain in a plume of dust, whipping the horses to their utmost effort. He circumnavigated the whole hill of Mulhanabin and returned to the city to abandon the team at the gate, the once-fine animals heaving for breath and dripping bloody foam onto their sweat-soaked chests.

  Returning to the Temple, he called for several bottles of brandy and shut himself in his private chamber.

  ‘This isn’t like him at all,’ Arioc complained to his comrades. ‘What’s happened? He hardly drinks, normally.’ And rumours of ill news and impending disaster ran rife among the Irolian host.

  There was a very good reason Veraine only drank to moderation. He had learned long ago that alcohol exposed in him a black lode of bitterness that normally never saw daylight. He could be a vicious drunk, one who did not know when to curb the savage desire to lash out; a liability to himself and others.

  This time he did not care. He sat himself in front of the window and slowly, meticulously, drank his way through the fiery liquor. For a while it dulled the pain, for a while he passed into a daze where he did not have to relive the events of the Drought Ceremony over and over again, but he did not manage to sleep, any more than he had managed to sleep the previous night. Eventually he came back to himself, and the goblets of brandy no longer seemed to have the power to affect his head or his memory. His mind, like a leopard pacing in a cage, could not cease contemplating the thing that tormented it.

  He had been utterly betrayed. By her or by himself, he could not tell. He had imagined he saw in her something he had never recognised in an
y other woman; a purity that had nothing to do with naïvety. An otherworldliness; an inhuman innocence. He had seen it, and for all his cynicism about priests and gods he had wanted so very much to believe in that. He could hardly believe now that he had been such a fool. He had cherished an image of the Malia Shai, and she had smashed it to shards, in performing an act so foul that only a monster or a lunatic could believe it acceptable. Veraine’s stomach cramped with loathing.

  Only an idiot could still desire her.

  As he returned to full awareness of his surroundings he realised that deep night had fallen on the city. No sounds of life or activity filtered into his room from within or without the temple. His room was in almost total darkness. He heaved himself to his feet and walked to the door, carrying with him the small bronze cup of intricate design that had been brought all the way from Antoth with his baggage.

  Outside in the corridor a single Irolian guard was leaning against the wall and he jerked hurriedly to attention when Veraine appeared.

  ‘What watch is this?’

  ‘The third, General.’

  The depths of night, then, when even soldiers and whores slept. ‘Going for a slash,’ Veraine muttered, and set off down the corridor. However, he did not get as far as the latrine room that overhung the cliff-edge. Two junctions away was a niche holding one of the omnipresent statues of Malia, her corpse-features leering in the flicker of a single lamp. Veraine paused mid-stride and glanced around him. There was no one else in sight. He put his cup down carefully, pulled up his tunic and, with great deliberation, pissed on the idol until he could not force another drop. Stepping back, he readjusted his clothing and smiled a sour smile at the goddess.

  ‘Priestess,’ he murmured. The smile died. After a moment he retrieved his cup and, still taking sips of brandy, set off walking.

  Sometime in the afternoon he must have removed his hobnailed sandals. Barefoot, he moved silently across floorboards and flagstones. He met no one and heard nothing; it was as if he moved through a dream. The cup hung loosely from his fingers. Crossing the inner courtyard he glanced up at the sky and saw that the full moon was shining through clouds as if veiled in rags. The stars were muffled from sight, and a heavy feeling had settled like dew on the still foliage. He dipped his fingers in the pool as he passed, little droplets scattering to the old stones of the wall.

  He walked into the Inner Temple and paced without hurry to the door of the Malia Shai’s room. His heart was pounding, but not with fear. If he’d met any Yamani guard he would have struck the man down, but there were no priests in evidence. Perhaps the gods were favouring him. Perhaps this was destiny, or the force of his own will that, hardened by bitterness and brandy, was capable of reordering the world. No light shone from her door. There was only a moment’s hesitation before he lifted the curtain and went in.

  She was asleep on the pallet, he saw at once, and his jaw tightened in parody of a smile. He recognised the shape of her back and hip in the moonlight as she lay turned away on her side, though the shadow of the window sill lay across her head like a veil. He stalked noiselessly to the bedside, looked down at her for a long moment and then squatted on his heels. A thin sheet covered her to the armpits, but beneath that she slept naked. In the moon’s glow it was easy to make out the sheen on her skin, the curve of shoulder and spine, the swell of her hip.

  He placed the cup on the floor. The emptying of his bladder had emptied all the warmth from him, too, and now all that was left in his guts was a great cold hard knot like a nest of snakes. Though he had crouched down and his hand was only inches from her warmth, he seemed to be looking down on her from an infinite height, a frozen bitter mountain top. He wanted to hurt her. He wanted the Malia Shai to feel the pain that she had caused him.

  The only part of him that was not cold was the pulse hammering in his groin.

  Suddenly she rolled over onto her back and his breath shuddered in his throat in anticipation of her waking. But she did not open her eyes; through the shadow over her face he could just make out the delicate strokes of her closed lashes. And her breathing flattened at once, slowing to a calm sigh. She did not know he was there. The sheet still covered her breasts demurely, though the cotton did little to hide the curves beneath. She was completely vulnerable to his touch, and it made the snakes in his belly spasm.

  Wake up, he commanded her silently. Wake up and see me crouched over you, hands about to grab you. See the intent in my eyes, so that I can see the fear in yours. Try to scream; see how far it gets you. I’d like that.

  With infinite care he took hold of the edge of the sheet and folded it back, slowly exposing her breasts and her narrow waist, dark nipples that looked up at him like eyes, the tiny pursed mouth of her navel. Now his hands were clenched into fists. Still she did not wake. He swallowed despite the dryness of his throat.

  She did not look like a goddess, or a monster; she looked like the wanton he had dreamed of on the first night in Mulhanabin. She looked like everything he had ever imagined of her. She was slender and soul-tearingly beautiful and he wanted to possess her more than anything he could name. Her soft, rounded breasts, flattened by gravity, made the palms of his hands burn. Moonlight silvered her flat belly. He could smell the warm scent of her skin and that scent nearly drove him mad. It would be so easy, he thought, to cover her mouth, to pin her beneath his weight, to force his way into her tight sex with a few hard thrusts. She was far too slight to fight him.

  He would make her pay. He would teach her what it meant to mock and shame and hurt him. There was nothing the priests could do to stop it, and nothing that they would be able to do the next day. Who would believe her? Who would defy the might of the Irolian army?

  He could feel the snakes within him coiling and twisting, the terrible lust that was making his hands and legs tremble. He wanted to feel those slim wrists straining under his hands, wanted to bite those tawny breasts, wanted to rip her thighs apart with his hard legs and his cruel cock and feel the slap of his balls that were so full to bursting against her sex. He wanted to break her and impale her and empty the weeks of frustration into the raw wound. He wanted to feel her convulse beneath him.

  He shut his eyes and stood up and walked out of the room.

  Only when back in the garden courtyard did he dare to breathe again. The night spun around him. Now he wanted to howl at the moon like a chained dog.

  There was nothing he could do but start walking, and once he had started nothing he could do but keep going. He walked back through the maze of corridors and right out of the temple, out into the Citadel, following instinct, almost blind. He only stopped when he reached the sacred pool, the great tank where the pilgrims bathed. Even at this time of night there were a few people gathered around it, and lamps dancing on the ripples of the water. Veraine stared at the flames. His head felt like it was going to burst. He wanted to splash the cool water over his face and arms, so he started down the steps, but an accidental glance at one of the pilgrims made him pause. A middle-aged woman was standing in the pool washing sheets. Presumably the sacred waters would cleanse not just laundry but also the souls of those who slept under them. But those cloths were streaked with dirt, and even from the edge of the pool Veraine could tell it was shit and blood he was looking at. He grimaced and jerked away from the water.

  In another part of the tank, oblivious to the filth contaminating the liquid, a knot of aged Yamani men were bathing and drinking from their cupped hands. Veraine felt the brandy aftertaste in his mouth sour. He shook his head and was about to leave when his glance happened to fall upon a lone woman at the far edge, and at once his overheated mind saw with perfectly clarity what he had to do.

  She was dressed in white and her long braided hair was uncovered, though she had obviously left childhood behind her. She kneeled near the edge of the pool, letting the water run through her fingers as she prayed inaudibly. Veraine clenched his fists. There was only one class of Yamani who wore bleached cloth, and that was the S
ajaal sect. They were a community who believed that illumination and salvation came through restraint, through avoiding contamination. They ate no meat or animal product, refused to own slaves and scorned alcohol. They married late in life and only within their own sect. Introverted and notorious for a careful business sense, they were despised and distrusted by the larger society around them.

  But this one did not look rich. As Veraine circled the pool and walked past her, he noted how ragged her scrupulously clean dress looked, how thin her wrists were. He Went and stood in the shadows a little way away. As yet unmarried, this one was certain to be a virgin. He waited until she had finished her prayers, gathered her damp skirts about her and climbed up the pool steps. She set off down the hill. Then he followed.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, as they passed under the shadow of a colonnade. It was a mark of the trust the sect had in the gods that she did not flee at the sound of a masculine voice coming from the dark, but turned and looked at him.

  ‘I saw you praying,’ he said, keeping his voice gentle. ‘Are you troubled?’ He noted her round face and the youthful fullness of her lips with predatory approval. He also saw the desperation in her eyes.

  ‘Everyone has troubles,’ she replied, those eyes wide as she watched him close in on her. ‘My father’s ill with the Kiss of Malia. I was praying for him.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Will he die, do you think?’

  She shrank from him a little, but he had circled her by now, cutting off her exit. ‘If the gods will it,’ she replied.

  ‘What will you do then, without him to support you? You don’t look well off.’

  She flinched. ‘We’ll go to our relatives.’

  ‘We? You have a mother? Younger brothers and sisters?’

  She nodded.

  ‘That’s a lot of people to support. A terrible burden to inflict on your relatives. Who are not so wealthy themselves in these hard times, I would guess.’ He smiled. ‘I could give you money.’