by Sarah Rayne
Usually the travellers glanced furtively and fearfully inside the hall and then took to their heels. Occasionally, greatly daring, they stepped inside and examined the mosaic floor and tried to make knowledgeable remarks about the workmanship. The few who stayed long enough to discover the Death Temple where the embalmed bodies sat in endless state, generally beat a hasty retreat on discovering that the bodies were mummified corpses. Touaris had never been able to decide if this was simply because the travellers found the sight of so many corpses disturbing, or if it was the disintegrating condition of the Middle Centuries ones, which were admittedly getting a bit unsavoury on account of the embalming processes of that era being a bit slipshod.
The Englishman who had escaped from Kaspar’s clutches did not conform to any of these patterns. He moved around the hall, clearly interested in the carvings and the mosaic floor, and although he was plainly aware of the strange lingering echoes down here, he did not seem to be overly afraid of them. This was unusual, and Touaris, watching from the throne where she would one day sit in embalmed state herself (but not for a very long time!) found him unexpectedly attractive. Something to do with the eyes, which were intelligent but cynical, as if he might have trusted life and been let down by it. Something to do with the mouth, as well: mouths were a far better guide to character than eyes, and the Englishman had sensitive fastidious lips. Part satyr, part sinner, part aesthete. Very interesting.
Touaris waited until he had entered the Death Temple, gave him long enough to realise the truth about the embalmed figures, and then very deliberately turned her head to look at him.
He caught the movement at once and turned to look unerringly back at her. Touaris thought his perceptions were either very acute to start with, or had been heightened by the timeless quality of the Hall of the Goddess. She leaned one elbow on the arm of the throne and cupped her chin in her hand, watching him. He would probably either run out in terror, or shriek in fear, and if he did he was not worth bothering with.
But he did neither. He stayed where he was, subjecting her to a long level scrutiny, and then said, in careful, rather erratic Tibetan, ‘Good evening. I come here only to observe.’
Touaris got down off the throne, and said, in her most down-to-earth voice, ‘Yes, that’s what they all say.’ There was the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen with surprise and then narrow in appreciation. A sense of humour as well! Very good indeed. And he had been courteous enough to take the trouble to learn a few words of the Tibetan language. Her interest, stirred at the outset, now awoke in earnest. This one was going to be worth luring.
‘You speak English,’ said the man. ‘Thank heaven for that, at least.’
‘We are not savages here. I am not fluent but I will mostly understand you. I think you are the traveller who escaped Kaspar.’
‘I am. But whether I’m about to fall into another much worse fate—’ He looked around the Death Temple and then back at her rather quizzically.
Touaris said, ‘Well, not as far as I’m concerned. But you do realise we’re in one of the most forbidden places in the entire city?’
‘I thought we might be.’
His eyes met hers, and Touaris felt a spiralling tingle of desire. Was she picking up his emotions, or only her own? She remembered that some men found danger physically arousing, and so with the idea of testing this, she said very softly, ‘We should not be here. If we are caught we will be punished.’
‘You sound as if you would almost relish it.’
‘I get so bored, you see.’
‘With obeying the rules?’
‘With being a goddess.’
There was a sudden silence. ‘Ah,’ said Lewis, ‘I thought that might be it. Ought I to kneel at your feet or something?’
‘You could. But only,’ said Touaris, slanting her eyes at him, ‘if you think we would both enjoy it.’
Unexpectedly he laughed. ‘I have no idea what I should call you,’ he said, ‘and I certainly don’t believe in immortality. But it’s a pity that my ancestor who came this way about eighty years ago didn’t encounter you, because he might have met his match. I’m Lewis Chance. And you, of course, are Touaris.’
‘Of course I am.’ Touaris regarded him. ‘Did you come here to find the city, or to find me?’
He paused, as if considering his answer and Touaris felt something wholly unfamiliar tighten about her heart. Yes, very attractive. Oh, I can’t let this one go.
Lewis said, ‘As a matter of fact, I came here to find the Tashkara Decalogue.’
The silence closed in again, a thick charged silence, binding them into sudden intimacy. Then Lewis said, ‘Well? Can you show it to me?’ And then, challengingly: ‘Or perhaps you don’t know where it is kept.’
‘Certainly I know.’ Touaris stopped and bit her lip, because of course he had goaded her into the admission. ‘But to enter the Chamber of the Decalogue is the most forbidden thing in all our laws,’ she said, staring into the clear grey eyes – like quicksilver, like frosted water in the bleakest of winter dawns. ‘Only the elders of the city, or the head of Kaspar’s tribe are permitted, and even then only when there is sentence to be pronounced.’ She stopped, and felt the Englishman’s intense concentration. He’s willing me to do what he wants. To take him down into the ancient vaults. A shiver of fear, mixed with excitement scudded across her skin, and without warning a huge recklessness surged up.
She said, ‘We would have to be very quiet and very careful—’
‘We will be.’
‘If we are caught—’
‘We won’t be caught.’
‘If we are caught,’ said Touaris seriously, ‘it will be a very dreadful punishment for us both.’ She studied him again. ‘Will you risk that, Lewis?’
‘Yes,’ said Lewis, staring at her. ‘Yes, I will risk it.’
Chapter Twenty-three
Patrick Chance’s Diary
Tashkara
I’m writing this in a narrow dim room with a wooden floor and a faint scent of sandalwood on the air. Through the window is a view of the jade and ivory palace, infuriatingly remote and impossibly beautiful.
By contrast, I’m in a low-roofed flimsily built structure just beyond the city gates. There’s a table and chair and a kind of rush mat on the floor, and around the walls prance a series of murals that beat anything London’s seamiest brothels ever displayed hands down. Suppose they must be thankas, which is the Tibetan word for the wall paintings that adorn some of the monasteries out here. Apparently a good many thankas are believed to be imbued with such immense power that the lama monks consider them only fit to be exposed on the holiest of holy days. The thankas in here are only fit to be exposed to a roomful of men intent on a bawdy night in a brothel, because they depict several men in astonishing positions with huge cats, most of which I should have thought physically impossible although that might only indicate the paucity of my experience. The men are perpendicular with arousal – the cats are pretty rampant as well – and if the paintings were taken from life it looks as if Fenris hit it square on when he talked about unbridled licentiousness. Halfway around, the pictures change to show a solitary female lying naked on the ground before another of the cat-creatures, plainly waiting to be ravished by it. After that they become progressively more explicit, ending (predictably) with the lady being penetrated, although judging by the size of the beast’s accoutrement, impaled might be a better word. If that’s the legendary Touaris I may have to rearrange my ideas.
All of which forcedly flippant garrulity is designed to put off the moment when I must write down what has actually happened during the last two days, and when I must face how extremely afraid I am. It’s an Englishman’s duty not to show fear under any circumstance, of course, but I’ll bet the Englishman who coined that one was never imprisoned in a stone room with his very own scaffold being built under his window and nothing but painted copulating cats for company! I don’t know yet what these barbarians are going to do to me on
that scaffold, but judging by what I’ve seen so far, they won’t be short of ideas.
In the past half-hour the light has begun to fail, and although shadows are stealing across the floor the small bronze lamps in the wall niches have been lit (yak oil again!) and I can see quite well to write this. I’m trying very hard to ignore the shadows, because they’re beginning to look like black disembodied hands, feeling their macabre way across the floor to where I sit. That’s just nerves, of course; they say that prisoners start to imagine things after a time. Maybe I’m succumbing to gaol fever. To wake up inside Newgate would be the greatest relief ever, in fact just to wake up would do.
I’m locked in. That’s the first thing to admit, and it looks just as awful written down as I thought it would.
The locking in was done with immense courtesy – they’re very courteous, the natives of Tashkara – but it was also done with a silent implacability that was absolutely bone-chilling. I’ve no idea where Theodore is: they took him off somewhere, but I suppose he’s locked in as well. And probably indulging in an orgy of I-told-him-so’s. No, that’s unfair; he’ll be worrying himself into apoplexy.
I’ve been allowed my writing things. A small bamboo table was carried in about an hour ago by two men, and arranged under the window. (More of that granite-faced courtesy.) It might have been a concession to a privileged prisoner, but it felt more like the condemned man being given the tools to set down his last wishes. Write it down in a good firm hand that I bequeath my worldly goods to the ladies of London Town and my body to medical research . . . Or should it be the other way about? They’ve angled the table so that as I sit at it I’m looking straight at the last wall painting: the one showing the cat-thing in the very act of ejaculating fountain-like across the unknown lady’s thighs.
As far as I can make out I’m to be taken at midnight to face something called the Punishment of the Decalogue. I haven’t yet discovered what this is, but it sounds extremely severe and it looks regrettably public: for the last two hours the courtyard below my window has echoed to the sounds of hammering, and if I look out I can see a wooden platform being built. It’s that that bears such a sinister resemblance to a scaffold and if I could place any other connotation on it, I would.
Later. The hammering stopped about twenty minutes ago and the resultant silence is brimful of a very unpleasant expectancy. In the privacy of these pages I admit that I’m by now extremely frightened. There’s a sense of growing menace everywhere, and – worst of all – an impression of excited anticipation. Whatever they’re going to do to me they’re going to enjoy it.
I’ve tried the door at five-minute intervals and I’ve tried smashing the lock as well. All to no avail. The only window is the slit-like affair which is halfway up a sheer stone wall and has a drop of forty feet. Six brass Buddhas, wreathed in yak-oil smoke, are watching me with sphinx-like imperturbability from the alcoves, and all round the walls cats are fornicating with humans. How in God’s name did I get into this?
How in God’s name am I going to get out of it?
There are five hours to midnight.
Entering the walled city was easy enough to make us suspicious, particularly Theo, who’s naturally suspicious to begin with.
The walk down the slopes took longer than either of us had expected – distances out here are deceptive; it’s the pure, thin air – and by the time we stood at the gates the sun was sinking behind the peaks and the walled city was plunged into a sullen crimson glow. Theodore shivered, for which I didn’t blame him, although it was unnecessary to say it was like descending into hell and we ought to turn back. I ignored the rest of his doomful utterances, since could not seriously believe in the practice of clay-potting unwary travellers’ heads in ovens, which Theo swore was standard procedure in these situations. Told him he had read too many Rider Haggard novels and had missed his vocation in life: clearly he should be writing adventure stories for bloodthirsty youths of fifteen.
But when we found that the city gates were ajar, even I stopped in my tracks. We glanced uneasily at one another, but at last, I said, ‘I dare say it doesn’t mean anything other than that they’re always happy to receive travellers.’
‘No, but people who go to the trouble of walling a city and building huge gates to keep the world out don’t normally leave those gates open for enterprising enemies to stroll in,’ said Theo. ‘But still, since we’ve come this far we may as well go on.’
Beyond the gates it was like a small town. There were various buildings, all plainly used for different purposes. Some were quite grand, as if they were occupied by the elite of the community, others were so far from grand as to be shanty-like. Dotted here and there were small temples, each with the characteristic tiered pagoda roof, some with tiny doll-like bell towers. A roughish road wound its way into the city, and as we set foot on it we both felt that we were being watched. The stupa on the palace and on several of the temples are painted with the flat enigmatic eyes intended to symbolise Buddha looking out on the four corners of the world, but as Theo and I entered the forbidden city it felt more as if the eyes were thinking: be blowed to the four corners of the world, let’s concentrate on this pair of adventurers. It was very disconcerting.
By tacit agreement we made for the jade and ivory palace, on the grounds that if Touaris existed at all, she probably existed inside it. Also, I was damned if I was going to get into a forbidden city and then be satisfied with plundering and raiding shanties. If there was any plundering going to be done, it might as well be done in the palace.
‘Although God alone knows what’s in there,’ said Theo, staring up at its soaring walls and pavilion roofs. His tone suggested he would not be surprised to find that the palace housed an army of blood-quaffing murderers still smeared in the gore of their victims, or devil worshippers dancing naked under the full moon.
Once or twice we thought we glimpsed movements, and once Theo stopped dead and turned to peer into the shadows.
‘What’s the matter? What can you hear?’
‘Nothing. There’s no one there.’
‘Well, that’s all right then. And no one’s come out to challenge us, have you noticed that?’
‘I had noticed it, Patrick,’ said Theo. (There may well have been a note of sarcasm in his tone.)
It was getting dark by this time and only the occasional flicker of light from the various buildings enabled us to see our way. It was absurd to find ourselves trying to avoid the stupa’s eyes, but we did. It was mad in the extreme to imagine that the eyes followed us, or that they flashed messages to one another across the pointed rooftops: The intruders are entering your territory now . . . Bait the traps, tighten the tripwires, dig the pits . . . Get ready, they’re almost with you . . .
I started to play that ridiculous childhood game: if we can reach the building on the corner without being seen we shall be all right. And then if we can get past the high wall on the left and not be challenged, we shall be safe.
We were nearing the palace compound, and I was just saying: and if we can cross that inner courtyard we shall be safe, when I caught a slithering movement from the nearest rooftop. I stopped dead and looked up, and the next minute a thick grey net, like a huge mosquito net, was dropped over me.
I fought wildly, but the more I struggled the more entangled I became. The impression of having been neatly and efficiently staked out and captured, in the manner of big-game hunters capturing wild animals, darted unpleasantly across my mind.
Something rapped me sharply across the head with the same neat efficiency, and the last thing I heard was Theo shouting my name before I crumpled into unconsciousness.
I have absolutely no idea of how long it was before I fought back to awareness.
There was a slight dull headache from whatever had hit me, but the smothering layers of net seemed to have vanished, and I was lying on a warm and very comfortable bed. I opened my eyes.
I will admit that I had only a quarter believed Fenris’s tal
es of a vaguely immortal cat goddess and her four score female attendants and I had certainly not given much credence to the veiled hints about licentious ceremonies. But unless I was still unconscious, or unless someone had secretly fed me De Quincey’s opium or Shakespeare’s poppy and all the drowsy syrups of the world, it looked as if I had tumbled straight into Touaris’s lair, or at least that of the handmaidens. And a lair thick with fleshly lusts it was.
(Should here mention that although I might have been drugged then, I’m not drugged now, and I can state with absolute surety that that place was so brimful of sexuality and sensuousness that the very air throbbed.)
The room was long and low-ceilinged, and firelight cast eerie shadows on the walls so that in those first moments of consciousness it felt as if I had tumbled into some kind of subterranean hell.
But hell and its fire-drenched caverns were presumably never furnished with silken cushions strewn about the floor or with low velvet-covered divans. And hell never had the drifting, quarter-soothing, three-quarters-exciting scent of musk and sandalwood and of warm soft femininity.
The leaping firelight came not from conventional brick hearths in the wall, but from scooped-out holes in the floor so that they burned at the room’s centre, the smoke spiralling upwards into smoke-holes cut in the ceiling. Slender sinuous female forms moved in and out of the warm slumberous glow. After a few moments I raised myself carefully on one elbow and looked around. There was no sign of Theodore, but the room was peopled by ten or twelve females, all of them young, all of them extremely good-looking. And all of them watching me.
