The Burning Altar

by Sarah Rayne

  It was getting harder to see more than a foot or two ahead, but she was just keeping Georgie and the two men in sight. She thought they were definitely following him and although they might easily be – what would be the term – clients? – it seemed a pretty funny way of going about the matter. It was going to be a dreadful letdown if the men turned out to be a couple of punters soliciting Georgie’s services for half an hour.

  As she neared the corner of the road a thick squat shape came up at her out of the mist, and Ginevra gasped and threw out her hands defensively, and then gasped again in relief. A postbox, that was all. She had almost walked into it.

  The trouble with fog was that it played tricks with your eyes, so that you began to imagine faceless beings crouching in its smoky depths, watching you. It played tricks with your hearing as well, and it created queer muffled echoes so that you began to think that someone might be creeping along behind you. At this point, Ginevra brought her thoughts to an abrupt halt and acknowledged what she had been aware of at another level for some minutes. Somebody was creeping along behind her.

  It was a very bad moment indeed. She stopped dead in the middle of the street, and at once the footsteps stopped as well. Her heart began to pound. She went on, deliberately slower, and the footsteps slowed. Somebody genuinely lost, fumbling through the gloom? An echo of her own steps? She did the test again: walk fast and then suddenly very slow. Yes. Exactly in synch. This is someone being very stealthy indeed. Padding through the night – no, that’s a nasty way of describing it. Walking through the night.

  It was almost certainly Raffael or Baz, of course, but it was a bit much of them to creep after her like this. Pursuit through the fog. It sounded like the title of a horror film: Jack the Ripper slinking through Whitechapel brandishing a dripping knife and being chased through the old river buildings, and finally falling into the river. They were not far from the river here, in fact they seemed to be going directly towards it: Ginevra could hear the muffled hoot of a barge.

  It would be better not to think about Jack the Ripper. But Ginevra had long since discovered that thoughts can be stubborn and the more you try to dismiss them, the firmer they lodge in your mind. The more she tried to stop thinking about Jack the Ripper, the more she did think about him. He had cut out his victims’ guts and stomachs and livers and made that macabre little banquet of one victim’s kidneys. Not so very different from what’s ahead of me now. Life’s a circle, kid.

  Georgie and the two men turned a corner and were abruptly hidden from view. There was a sudden shout of fear, abruptly bitten off with a kind of yelp, and then a different voice let out a muffled curse. Ginevra caught the sound of several soft thuds – blows? – and then of a scuffle. Footsteps rang out, not quite running, but going hastily and heavily and awkwardly.

  She ran towards the sounds at once, swimming in and out of the swirling fog, praying not to run smack into postboxes or brick walls, or murderous assailants. She turned the corner into a narrow alley with high buildings on both sides. The road wound steeply down and the river sounds were suddenly much louder; she could smell the indefinable river-smell quite strongly.

  She stood still, feeling rather helpless, wishing that Raffael would appear, and trying to penetrate the swirling mist. And then there was a sudden movement in front of her and the mist parted. A monstrous head, a nightmare head like a huge cat with snarling lips and yellow evil eyes peered down at her, and hands that were not hands, but greedy clawed paws reached out. Ginevra drew breath to scream, and from behind, a second set of hands closed over her mouth.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Lewis struggled up out of misted unawareness to the realisation that he was half sitting, half lying in the back of some kind of large vehicle that was bouncing and jolting over a badly made road. He felt slightly sick and his mouth was almost unbearably dry, and he had absolutely no idea where he was or how much time had passed.

  A voice at his side said, ‘We are about two hours away from Tashkara, Sir Lewis. There is still a while to travel. And you are in the back of a Land Rover.’

  Lewis, struggling for full consciousness, said, ‘How did you—’

  ‘Get you here? It was extremely easy,’ said Kaspar. ‘We took a plane from Heathrow to Beijing Airport. In your day, I think it would have been Delhi. And then from Beijing on to Lhasa.’ A flask of distilled water was held out and there was the chink of ice cubes. Lewis drank gratefully; the iced water soothed his parched throat and helped to push back the drugged mists a little. He lay back trying to assemble his thoughts.

  ‘I have no idea how you managed to get this far,’ he said, and was pleased to hear that his voice sounded perfectly calm. ‘But we shan’t, of course, reach Tashkara.’ The name came out in a kind of angry snarl, and he felt his mind flinch from it. Tashkara – Patrick’s golden haunted road. And I’m going back. ‘This is a kidnapping,’ he said icily. ‘You’ll have been spotted.’

  ‘No,’ said Kaspar, and Lewis, still struggling for full awareness, saw that Kaspar was seated beside him, with two men in the Land Rover’s middle and two more at the front. He thought the driver was the one from the car at Bath, but could not be certain.

  ‘We injected you with diazepam,’ went on Kaspar. ‘Which you perhaps know better as Valium. It induces semi-consciousness and some amnesia. Believe me, Sir Lewis, although you don’t remember it, you have made a very long journey with us, during which you have been perfectly docile. You have travelled in reasonable comfort and you have certainly not given anyone the impression that you were being kidnapped, or that you were making the journey unwillingly – in fact the airport staff and the stewards were extremely sympathetic about your illness. No one was so bad-mannered as to enquire as to its precise nature, but they were all anxious to help you. Especially the women,’ he said. ‘And particularly after they recognised you.’

  ‘Recognised?’

  ‘We took your passport from Chance House, of course,’ said Kaspar, as if this should have been obvious.

  Lewis stared at him. ‘Your people appear to have progressed since I knew them,’ he said at last, forcing a note of contempt into his tone. ‘In my day you were all primitive savages.’

  Kaspar laughed, and the two in front half-turned and smiled. One of them said, ‘Our people were already cultured while your ancestors were still bartering and painting themselves with woad, Sir Lewis.’

  ‘In the West, people are made use of by science,’ said the other one. ‘They become slaves to it, but with us, it’s the other way about. We make science work for us. That enables us to live exactly as we please for most of the time.’

  ‘To pursue the ways of our own people,’ said the first.

  ‘Nowadays,’ said Kaspar, ‘we send a proportion of our young men and women away to school and, if they are sufficiently intelligent, on to university. Therefore we are very familiar with modern medicine and modern travel and modern technology.’

  ‘And Western languages,’ said the one who had talked about the West being a slave to science. He said it sneeringly, as if Western languages were crude and inferior, and Lewis felt a stir of anger.

  He said, ‘I’m surprised to hear any of them come back to your peasant tribe.’

  The man laughed. ‘It’s your religion that says, Give me a child until he is seven, Sir Lewis.’ The dark eyes studied him and Lewis regarded him coldly for a moment before turning back to Kaspar.

  ‘Well? Am I to be given the courtesy of an explanation?’

  ‘Of course. I do not think,’ said Kaspar consideringly, ‘that there is a word, either in your culture or in mine, for the murder of a religion. But it is that crime you are charged with, Sir Lewis.’

  ‘So you said in Bath. Are your heathens capable of setting up a trial? I don’t expect a fair one, you understand; you’ve probably picked the jury and decided the verdict and agreed on the punishment already.’

  ‘Oh, we can arrange the trial of miscreants if we have to,’ said Kaspar,
sounding amused. ‘And if you are found guilty, the punishment will be carried out in accordance with the Decalogue’s ruling.’ He paused and then said, ‘It is also possible that the punishment pronounced over you twenty-five years ago – the punishment you so narrowly escaped – will be revived. You have not forgotten that?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think anyone ever could forget it,’ said Lewis. ‘As an illustration of sheer barbarism it must be unparalleled.’ This was surely the most unreal conversation anyone could possibly have. He wondered how much of it was due to the effects of the drug. He forced his mind to focus, and after a moment he said, ‘Why now? Why have you waited all these years to bring me back?’

  For the first time Kaspar appeared to hesitate. ‘There is some – unrest among the younger people of Tashkara,’ he said at last. And then, as if imparting distasteful but necessary information, ‘Seven years ago a schism occurred within our people.’ His voice was expressionless, but his eyes glinted coldly. ‘It is the first time in our history such a thing has ever happened, and it was then that the stone palace you knew was destroyed by a group of dissidents who call themselves the League of Tamerlane.’

  ‘And who is Tamerlane?’

  ‘The name is taken from one of my predecessors,’ said Kaspar. ‘But the leader of the dissidents is a young man called Timur. He and his followers made certain demands which I – and the elders of Tashkara – refused to accede to.’

  ‘What kind of demands?’

  Kaspar hesitated and then said. ‘They wanted your son, Sir Lewis. They still want him. They want him as a figurehead ruler: a puppet leader to head their rebellion.’

  He paused, and Lewis, his mind racing, thought: then the Tashkarans have got Grendel, only not in the way I thought!

  Aloud he said, ‘So you’re facing a coup d’état. Well, you won’t be the first puny ruler to do that, and your Timur won’t be the first to grab some kind of cheap notoriety, either. Has he many followers?’

  ‘Among the younger people he has many,’ said Kaspar. ‘Seven years ago they threatened to burn down the stone palace if I – if we did not agree to follow their ways.’

  ‘One of them being to acknowledge my son as ruler?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you stood firm and they were as good as their word, and so the stone palace was destroyed,’ said Lewis. ‘Serves you right. I hope this Timur hounds you out for all he’s worth. Is this League dangerous other than to your people?’

  ‘Yes. Its people are about to make use of one of our prophecies,’ said Kaspar. ‘In the last century – during the time of Tamerlane himself – it was foretold that the Decalogue would fall into the hands of Western leaders and Western power.’ He glanced at Lewis. ‘I do not wish to lose the Stone Tablets of my ancestors, and you would not wish it either, I think.’

  ‘Rid yourself of that belief, Kaspar. I don’t give a damn what happens to your bits of rock.’

  ‘Not even if they were used to deal Western religion a lethal blow?’

  Lewis met the dark eyes coldly. ‘You’re overestimating your rebels’ importance,’ he said. ‘Western religion’s taken far worse knocks than your tawdry little uprising could inflict.’

  ‘Your Vatican does not think so.’

  ‘Oh, bullshit. If Timur believes he can topple the Vatican he sounds closer to Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein than a peaceful liberator.’

  ‘Timur intends to make use of the Tashkara Decalogue to bring himself to prominence.’

  ‘In the West?’

  ‘Or the East. He does not care which,’ said Kaspar.

  Lewis’s mind was working furiously. ‘In the Western world,’ he said, after a moment, ‘when men of power are threatened, they cast around for two things: a scapegoat or a diversion. Sometimes both. That’s what you’ve done. I’m your scapegoat, aren’t I?’

  ‘If you are,’ said Kaspar slowly, ‘you have only yourself to blame. If you had not done – what you did all those years ago – this situation would not have arisen.’

  ‘Balls,’ said Lewis at once. ‘You don’t give a sod about Western – or Eastern – politics, or even about your precious Decalogue. You’re protecting your own miserable skin and your own petty power.’ He sat back in his seat. His head was still throbbing from the lingering drug and he was light-headed and dry-mouthed from the altitude, but he was somehow managing to maintain a cold contempt.

  ‘You are not entirely right,’ said Kaspar. ‘But you are right when you say I am going to use you to try to quench Timur’s rebels. But there is also the question of Grendel.’

  ‘What about him?’

  Kaspar said, ‘I would give up my own power for a worthy successor.’

  ‘How altruistic,’ said Lewis.

  ‘But Timur is very unworthy indeed. Also, there is Grendel. And I would do anything in the world to stop Grendel from being given any kind of power in Tashkara.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he is flawed.’

  ‘If he is,’ said Lewis savagely, ‘it’s because of what happened at his birth. And it’s because he inherited your warped lusts.’

  ‘And yet once you shared in those lusts.’

  ‘It was a question of eat or be eaten!’ said Lewis bitterly, and thought: I don’t believe I’ve just said that! He looked back at Kaspar. ‘This Timur—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Exactly who is he?’

  ‘He heads the rebels.’

  ‘So you said. What else?’

  ‘As well as that,’ said Kaspar, ‘he is my son.’ The dark eyes gleamed suddenly. ‘It is an odd circle we complete, you and I. Your son and mine are trying to rule Tashkara, Sir Lewis.’

  ‘I’m not completing any circles with you,’ said Lewis.

  As the Land Rover went deeper into the mountain desert, Lewis felt his courage slipping from him. All around them was nothing but dust and hard-packed roads, and the brooding Himalayas in the distance, smoky violet smudges against the skies. The vehicle would probably pass one or two of the primitive mud-walled farms, or an occasional hermit monk or nomad, but that would be all. The isolation was complete as it had always been out here, and there was no hope of escape and certainly no hope of sanctuary.

  He felt the familiar dark cobweb-strands reaching out to entrap him once more. This is where I took part in that macabre ritual – where I supped on human flesh by leaping firelight – and this is where I entered the forbidden city.

  And now I’m going back to face trial and if they find me guilty I shall certainly die under the ancient and grisly laws of Satan’s Commandments.

  The rope bridge over the gorge had gone, and a sturdier structure had replaced it, clearly intended to take vehicles but still perilously frail. The Land Rover jolted its way across and reached the other side safely, but Lewis, remembering the rough cart tracks leading to the saucer-shaped valley, thought they would almost certainly have to abandon it at some stage and finish the journey on foot. Would that be an opportunity for escape? A tiny shoot of hope unfurled. He would watch his every opportunity, and even if he had to hide in the hills and risk dying from starvation and thirst, it would be a better death than facing the vengeance of the Decalogue.

  As they passed the burned-out ruin that had been the stone palace, he felt a shiver of cold fear, as if something evil and ancient had blown gently on his mind. What had once walked among those blackened and charred walls? And what might still walk, even today? Ghosts did not always come from the past.

  ‘You see that it is quite ruined,’ said Kaspar, following Lewis’s gaze.

  ‘I wish I’d thought of burning it down myself,’ retorted Lewis. ‘Your son and his League made a thorough job of it.’

  ‘It was the protest of mutinous children, nothing more.’

  ‘Whatever it was, it was a very substantial protest,’ said Lewis.

  He had thought he could make some kind of desperate run for the safety of the mountains when the four-track stopped, but he had reckoned wit
hout the lingering effects of the drug, and of Tibet’s altitude to which he was still adjusting. He had reckoned without Kaspar’s men as well. When the Land Rover finally halted they were within a short distance of the once-shimmering city, and the four who had travelled in the front seats gave him no chance to get away. They bound his hands tightly behind his back even before they helped him out, and once he was standing up they looped a halter about his neck.

  He was forced down to the ancient walled city, along the paths with the sheering rockface on each side. Cold dread closed about him as they approached the city gates – Patrick’s fire-drenched gates of hell! Or was that the stone palace? Whatever it was, this time I’m going in as a prisoner.

  As Kaspar’s men half dragged, half carried him towards the shimmering tiered palace with the painted stupa, he said, with icy courtesy, ‘Are you going to lock me up?’

  Kaspar turned back to look at him. ‘Of course we are. No one brought to face the Decalogue ever escapes, Sir Lewis.’

  ‘I escaped twenty-five years ago,’ said Lewis.

  ‘And yet you are here once more.’

  ‘Nearly a hundred years ago my ancestor escaped.’

  There was an abrupt silence. ‘Are you so sure of that?’ said Kaspar.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lewis, meeting the dark stare levelly. ‘Yes, I am sure.’ He thrust down the insidious little voice that whispered: but did Patrick really escape? Didn’t he come out of Tashkara so vastly altered that it was almost as if the real Patrick had died, and something had taken his place? ‘Patrick returned to England,’ said Lewis, ‘and he lived on to write an account of his journey.’

  ‘So he did. But,’ said Kaspar, ‘although you escaped us last time, there was one with you who did not.’

  ‘Touaris,’ said Lewis.

  ‘Yes. She did not escape.’