The Burning Altar

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Why not?’

  The guide sent another of the furtive, fearful looks about him. Then he said, ‘Tonight in that valley, when the sacred peaks are in darkness, is the celebration of the feast of an ancient time.’

  ‘What kind of feast?’ said Elinor sharply.

  ‘The Feast of Bast,’ said the guide. ‘And when it is dark every person in these valleys will lock his doors and stay by his fireside.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it is told how the people of Tashkara come out into the mountains and the hill farms to catch sacrifices,’ said the guide. ‘People vanish on the Feast of Bast. Young men who are taken to feed the goddess. I will not go into Tashkara on the Feast of Bast if you pay me a million dollars.’

  Elinor stared at him, cold fear clutching her heart. She saw Raffael frown, and then he said to the guide, ‘In that case we must go on without you. We’ll take supplies and fuel to last us for—’

  He glanced at Elinor, who said, ‘Two days? Three?’

  ‘Two.’ Raffael looked at the guide. ‘You understood that?’

  ‘I understand it, but sir and ladies, you should not go on—’

  ‘We have no choice,’ said Raffael curtly. ‘If you won’t come with us, will you return here in two days’ time?’ There was the rustle of money, and Elinor saw the guide’s hands close greedily about the wad of notes. ‘I’m trusting you not to let us down,’ said Raffael. ‘But I’m only half-trusting you because I’m only paying half your fee. You won’t get the other half unless you come back.’

  ‘I understand. I do not like, but I will come back here. In two days I will come back.’

  As the guide began to reverse the Jeep on the narrow rutted track. Ginevra said, ‘What do we do if he doesn’t return?’

  ‘Face a long walk.’

  Elinor, who was looking down into the valley, said, ‘There are lights burning down there, can you see? There’s a cluster of buildings at the centre of the valley – on its floor, in fact. You can just make out the outlines.’

  ‘It looks like firelight,’ said Ginevra coming to stand by her. ‘Is it the Feast of Bast beginning? What is the Feast of Bast?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But I haven’t forgotten how they celebrated the feast of one of their other gods,’ said Raffael grimly, and Elinor turned to stare at him.

  ‘Sekhet.’ It came out in a whisper. ‘They celebrated the feast of the lion goddess Sekhet in England – they were using it to give Grendel his initiation. They set up the Burning Altar – or they set up a makeshift altar.’

  ‘This won’t be makeshift,’ said Raffael. ‘This will be the real thing. If these barbarians really have got Lewis Chance, and if they really do intend to take some kind of mad vengeance for what happened all those years ago—’

  ‘They’ll never miss the chance of doing it on the feast of their pagan cat goddess,’ finished Elinor.

  Lewis felt the heat from the wall torches the minute the guards pulled him into the courtyard, and he felt, as he had felt once before, the hatred and the animosity and the sheer hunger of the Tashkarans focused on to him. As he entered the square the hateful skin-drum was beating its soft relentless tattoo – Yes, yes, you’re going to die . . . and he saw at once that there were at least three hundred people assembled around the square. Standing before them was Kaspar, his eyes glittering with triumph.

  As Lewis was brought forward the skin-drum stopped abruptly as if a signal had been given and silence, thick and stifling, descended. Lewis met Kaspar’s eyes squarely, although the blood was pounding in his ears and icy sweat was sliding down his spine.

  Kaspar said, in his soft accented voice, ‘You are here to have sentence pronounced on you.’

  ‘I thought I was here to stand trial,’ said Lewis coldly. ‘I should have known you’d cheat, you deceitful bastard.’

  A low growl of anger broke from the watchers; Lewis supposed they had not Kaspar’s fluency in English, but they had sufficient understanding to know what had been said.

  Kaspar was unmoved. He said, ‘The trial was held three days ago.’

  ‘While I was kept a prisoner inside the palace?’

  ‘Yes. It was held in our own language, of course, and even if you had been present you would not have understood what was being said.’

  ‘How convenient,’ said Lewis. ‘And the verdict?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  ‘Of course. I didn’t expect anything else. You always intended that I should be found guilty. I’m your scapegoat, aren’t I? By punishing me you hold on to your grubby bit of power.’ He looked at the watchers. ‘Are they all gathered to witness more of your barbarism?’

  ‘You must understand, Sir Lewis, that you are responsible for a situation that we have never before known. The killing of a religion is an offence never until now encountered.’

  ‘I didn’t kill your religion, you stupid savage!’ said Lewis. ‘Your religion died of inanition! It died of narrowness and your own bigotry! It folded in on itself because you wouldn’t look beyond your own tiny valley and your ridiculous legend!’ He felt anger welling up, and he grasped it gratefully. Hold on to the anger because it’s the only thing that’s going to get you through the next few hours.

  ‘With all your so-called civilisation, Kaspar, have you never heard of the principle of dynamism?’ said Lewis. ‘Dynamism is movement: it’s progress and change. Life. Its opposite is stagnation and regression and eventually death. Things have to change to survive, Kaspar, and nothing’s changed here for nearly three thousand years! That’s why your religion’s dead! Not because of what I did twenty-five years ago!’

  Kaspar regarded Lewis coldly. ‘You are the one who does not understand,’ he said. ‘When you left Tashkara all those years ago you had ended the unbroken line of a goddess’s earthly incarnation.’ The dark eyes were unwavering. ‘You splintered a line that had been intended to be eternal.’

  ‘Not intentionally. And nothing is eternal.’

  ‘The intention is irrelevant, it is the deed and its results you have been judged on.’ Kaspar paused, and then said, ‘You will remember how, in each generation, the goddess is selected? The recognition of certain items belonging to the first Touaris of all. The race-memories; the Chant of the Goddess which is guarded in such strict secrecy that only one person in each generation knows it—’

  He broke off, and Lewis said in a bored voice, ‘I suppose you’ll get to the point eventually, will you?’

  ‘After Touaris died,’ said Kaspar, ‘we thought we would find her new incarnation easily. Our people went out and we scoured the hill farms and the valleys. But after several years we had to face failure; for the first time for three thousand years no girl child had been born with the essence of the goddess. And in the end we came to believe that the last Touaris – your Touaris – had been cheated of a great many years of life. That she had died before the goddess was ready for rebirth. You cut her life short, Sir Lewis.’

  ‘Crap. Touaris died because you inflicted that grisly punishment on her!’

  Kaspar said, ‘Touaris died because it was the law. But she died before her time and that was your fault! And ever since there has been dissent among us!’ He swept a hand about him, indicating the majestic ruins and the decaying grandeur. ‘You have brought us to this!’ cried Kaspar. ‘And that is why you must die!’

  His voice rose in shrill frenzy, and behind him the crowd murmured its eager assent. Lewis stared at them and then at Kaspar. He’s quite mad, of course. But he’s sweeping the people along with his madness. I might be looking on an ancient biblical scene: Elijah or Moses or Aaron, whipping up the twelve tribes of Israel, filled with the light and the fire, preaching the Word of their all-powerful God . . . He blinked and shook his head, and reason reasserted itself, because this was very far from the fiery old Testament prophets. This was the shadow-side: it was not the light and the fire, it was the warped underside; the tainted charisma of an Austrian dictator laying greedy hands on half of E
urope . . . the Holy devil Rasputin, mesmerising the Romanovs, bringing about a dark and bloody revolution . . . It was every deceiving power-hungry cult leader ever born.

  Kaspar said, ‘To begin with we considered reviving the original sentence against you – you will remember what it was?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Lewis. ‘Of course I remember.’

  ‘But,’ went on Kaspar, ‘we were agreed that something more was needed.’

  ‘I’ll bet you enjoyed debating that. Get on with it.’

  Kaspar said, ‘In your world – the world of the West – you have only simple straightforward punishments because you are simple straightforward people. The breaking of murderers’ necks, or the gassing or electrocuting or beheading of them. Even your most tyrannical kings could not think beyond breaking bones on the device called the rack, or crushing limbs in vices.’

  ‘Compared to you we’re saints and philanthropists, in fact.’

  ‘My people are not of Tibet, or of the lands adjoining Tibet,’ said Kaspar, as if Lewis had not spoken. ‘But over the centuries something of those cultures has spilled over, and we have absorbed a little of Eastern ways and ancient Eastern methods of punishment. We have adopted some of those punishments, just as we are adopting one for you now.’ He stopped, and Lewis though: dear God, they’re going to come up with some kind of appalling refinement of torture from the Japs or the Chinese! Wild fragments of stories from the Second World War whirled through his brain: the brutality of Japanese soldiers in the jungle; recalcitrant prisoners of war shut into tiny cramped boxes and left to boil in the heat . . . Women raped by bamboo sticks; water tortures and tiny cages, and skins slit and smeared with honey to attract mosquitoes and ants . . .

  Kaspar said, ‘There is a punishment used many centuries ago by high-born Chinese for those found guilty of offences of dishonour. You have been found guilty of the highest dishonour imaginable in Tashkara, and we have decided that the mandarins’ ancient method of execution will be a fitting death for you. It is that which we have spent the last three days preparing. Also,’ he said, softly, ‘this is the Feast of Bast, one of Touaris’s incarnations, and as such a fitting night for your execution.’ He nodded to the waiting guards.

  The twisting flames of the wall torches were blurring before Lewis’s eyes and the blood was pounding so loudly in his ears that he thought he might faint. But he could see that the guards were carrying something in, and although he could not make out its purpose, a shiver of awed horror stirred the crowd. Lewis looked back at Kaspar. The Tashkaran leader was standing in the direct light of the torches, the flames lending him a diabolic appearance, and he was watching the guards’ approach with a half-smile.

  ‘This method of execution,’ said Kaspar, looking back at Lewis, ‘was known to the ancient mandarins as the Iron Cage of Ten Agonies.’ He stepped back and as the guards moved into the light, appalled comprehension began to dawn on Lewis’s mind. As the guards seized him with avid hands, and stripped him of his clothes, sick despair closed down. I think I know what this is, and there’s nothing I can do to escape it: there are no bronze fire dishes to tip up this time, and there’s no new-born child to snatch up and use as hostage . . .

  The skin-drum was beating again, mingling indistinguishably with the blood pounding in his head, and Lewis fought for control. But horror and panic were mounting. The Cage of Ten Agonies . . .

  As the guards moved into his line of vision, his mind began to spin into a half-swoon, and he struggled to plunge into its merciful darkness. Let me faint, let me pass out very early on. Those poor wretched Chinese victims probably counted it an honour to stay aware as long as possible, but I’ll bet it didn’t save any of them! Well, sod honour, if I can go into unconsciousness and miss the whole thing I’ll bloody do it!

  But unconsciousness eluded him, and he watched with growing terror as Kaspar’s guards brought across something so fearsome, and so imbued with horrid malevolence, that a ripple of awe stirred the watching Tashkarans.

  It was an immense man-shaped iron-mesh cage, hollow and hinged so that it opened to admit a man’s body. The device was fashioned intricately and minutely, with curving calf muscles and rounded head portion, and with individual fingers, and shaped genitals . . . The legs were divided, so that whoever was inside would be forced to lie or stand with his legs wide . . .

  As they forced him inside and clamped the hinges shut, Lewis realised that the frame was in fact divided by slotted gates. Ten of them . . . Yes, of course there are ten, Kaspar would never get something so basic as that wrong . . . And I can feel them: I can feel that my feet and calves are divided, and that my knees and thighs, and hips and groin . . .

  He was dimly aware of being carried, and then of the terrible cage being nailed down to a half-horizontal platform, tilted so that it faced the watchers. The sound of the nails being driven into the wood almost broke his resolve, but after it was done, Kaspar said, ‘You are inside the Cage of the Ten Agonies. You begin to understand a little of their purpose now, Sir Lewis?’

  ‘No,’ said Lewis.

  ‘Well, you will be aware that the cage is sectioned,’ said Kaspar. ‘And in a little while, rats – starving rats, deliberately deprived of food for the last three days – will be brought in. At exactly midnight, we will introduce them into the lower sections – the ones holding the feet and calves. The mandarins who ordered this method of execution allotted names to each of the divisions, and the first ones they called the Gates of Dawning Agony.’

  ‘How descriptive,’ said Lewis through sweat-soaked lips.

  ‘After one hour,’ said Kaspar, ‘the second and third gates – called the Gates to Approaching Night, and covering your knees and thighs – will be removed to allow the rats to crawl higher up your body.’ He paused. ‘There is no record of anyone ever surviving beyond the fourth and fifth gates,’ said Kaspar. ‘Those are the sections covering the groin and hips, and the ancients called them the Gates of Exquisite Torment. It will be interesting to see if you are the first person to endure beyond them, Sir Lewis.’

  The cage restricted Lewis’s vision and muffled his hearing, and he could only see the torchlit square through the closely woven mesh – like looking at a fire-soaked hell from behind thin iron bars. I’m trapped. I’m a rat in a cage – oh God, no not that – yes, but in a very few minutes the rats will be trapped in here with me. Starving and deprived of food for three days – Will I die from shock or pain or loss of blood or what? Will they eat into a vital organ? The fourth and fifth gates . . . Well, you’ll see your damned castration sentence after all, Kaspar! But I’d have preferred it some other way.

  He could not see what was happening very clearly, but he was aware of someone standing over him, and of a warm feral stench. There was a sudden high-pitched squealing.

  Rats! Leprous rodent creatures: carriers of disease and filth. Scuttling sewer-dwellers.

  And then he heard the teeth-wincing scrape of metal as Kaspar lifted the first of the gates.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  As Raffael entered Tashkara, he was more strung up than he could ever remember being in his entire life. Nothing, not ordination, not facing the Curia for the dispensing from his vows, had touched him so deeply or stirred his soul so overwhelmingly. I’m entering the Forbidden City of the ancient cat-worshipping Bubasti. I’m approaching one of the most ancient legends in the world’s history: the Ten Tablets revered by the Pharaohs as the Stones of Vengeance, and used by them to mete out justice. The Stones believed to have come to earth at the same time as the biblical Commandments vouchsafed to Moses on Mount Sinai.

  And I’ve got to find a way to destroy them.

  At his side Ginevra shivered suddenly, and Raffael ached to put his arm around her and warm her. He did not – no more physical distractions until all this is over! – but he tightened his hold on her hand. On his other side Elinor was so calm she might have been carved from stone. To an outsider she might have been devoid of all emot
ion, but Raffael could feel emotion irradiating from her, so intense, that he could nearly see it slicing through the darkness like arcing electricity.

  They had been exchanging low-voiced remarks as they walked hand in hand into the valley, but as they passed under the huge stone arch and entered the once-great city they fell silent. Ginevra, staring up at the towering walls, lichen-crusted and jagged-edged, felt a tug of regret that all that remained of Tashkara were these sad dust-strewn ruins. How must it have been to have entered this place before decay overtook it – to come in through the massive iron-sheeted gates that had shut out the world and shut in the inhabitants; to be aware of the endless spun-silver cord of the legend stretching back and back?

  As they went deeper the evidences of decay were everywhere. Most of the houses were empty and rather sad; there were buildings that must have been meeting places or small temples, and what looked to be the equivalent of taverns or wine shops. The silent cautious walk began to take on a dreamlike quality, as if they had tumbled out of the ordinary world with its ordinary problems and loves and hates and petty nuisances, and fallen down and down through a tear in time’s fabric until they were caught in a lost world. The Bermuda Triangle where planes vanished, thought Ginevra; or that patch somewhere in Northern Tibet – oh God, yes! – where travellers disappeared and then occasionally reappeared looking strange. Or am I mixing that up with fiction? I don’t know if I’m through a Tear in the Curtain like that old John Buchan book, or whether I’m through the Looking-Glass or down the rabbit-hole, or even whether I’m in a Stephen Hawking-type Black Hole somewhere in space.

  She was hugely grateful for Raffael’s presence, because if she had to share this with anyone, she would want it to be Raffael. Faithless wench that I am, she thought, remembering the English tutor. But if he had been here, the predictable old bore, he would have been quoting Hassan by now – The Golden Road to Samarkand – or Omar Khayyám, or maybe Southey: The curse is upon thee. For ever and ever . . . Yes, he would certainly drag that one up. Ginevra rather wished she had not dragged it up herself, because if she started to think about curses she really would be frightened. She wondered if Elinor was frightened. Elinor was not showing it, but then she never showed anything. The jacket and boots suited her; Ginevra thought she had never seen her aunt look quite so stunning and she was conscious of a strong wish that they should find Lewis Chance and that Elinor should go on looking like this for him.