Divine Torment Read online

  She could no longer look him in the eye.

  ‘Get the dress off,’ he ordered. When she didn’t obey the two lesser priests, who had struggled so assiduously to dress her just before, came forward to strip her naked. They hauled her to her feet and held her up for Rasa Belit’s inspection. He looked down at her breasts with an expression of loathing. Her nipples were like small pebbles after their dousing. He took up the jar of soap and scooped out handfuls, splattering them on her soft orbs. She thought that the pale slop looked like semen gleaming on his fingers and on her skin. It dribbled down across her belly.

  ‘You need a thorough scrubbing,’ he told her. Beads of sweat glistened over his shaven scalp. He set to work with hands and cloth, smearing the soap over every inch, kneading and mauling her breasts. She was bruised and he was rough. It hurt. She clenched her teeth against the stabs of pain and the deep, throbbing ache of her abused flesh. He squeezed and pinched her breasts, the slippery globes sliding under his palms, the nipples perversely hardening as if offering themselves for torture. She arched her back and shuddered, helpless in the grip of the two eunuchs, jerking under the extremities of sensation inflicted by the third.

  His soap-slathered hand finally slid down between her thighs and thrust into the space between them. There he finally discovered, to her shame, quite how wet she was; slick with neither water nor soap but with her own hot juices. Her labia were swollen and unfurled around the open well of her sex.

  He stared into her face. ‘Whore,’ he breathed, so softly the other priests probably never heard.

  He withdrew his hand. Over two out-thrust fingers he draped the wet silk cloth, and then he dipped his gloved hand deep into the soap. Slowly, watching her every nuance of expression, he sought out the unguarded gate between her thighs and thrust those rigid fingers deep inside her. She took him easily. He twisted his wrist, scrubbing her cunt as he’d scrubbed her mouth, his breath coming hard as he worked his fingers round and up. The lubricated silk was slippery over stiff, splayed digits and he forced her inexorably wider, while at the same time his thumb pounded on her clitoris.

  She came on his hand, unable to resist. Heat flared through her pinned body. She held her face immobile and she let no breath of a whimper escape her lips, desperate not to let the priests realise, but she could not disguise the clenching spasm of her inner muscles, and Rasa Belit knew. She saw it in the narrowing of his eyes, the twitch of his sweat-beaded lip. Her sex mouthed and clenched his hand.

  When she ceased to spasm, he withdrew. She expected him to say something, to spew further abuse, but he only stepped aside and told the priests, ‘Let her down.’ They dropped her and she fell to hands and knees. The stone was awash with milky water beneath her palms. She heard him swirl the rag in the bowl, then he slapped a great gob of soap onto her bare back and followed it up with the wet silk. Water dribbled down her ribs and off the tips of her dangling breasts. He scoured her unmercifully, then put his hand on the small of her back and forced it down, arching the spine, the tilt of her pelvis throwing her arse up and open. Suddenly her wet and gaping pussy, still throbbing with the pulse of orgasm, was displayed to the priests standing behind her.

  Then Rasa Belit raised the silken cloth and slapped it stingingly straight between her thighs, striking her cleft with an audible smack. Shock waves ran up her backbone and across her buttocks, followed by the slower, hotter wash of pain that was somehow arousal too. She bit down on a cry. Her thighs were trembling visibly, her arse aquiver. She felt the soapy water sliding down the burning valley between her splayed cheeks.

  Rasa Belit put one wet finger on her pursed hole.

  ‘He’s had his prod in there, too, hasn’t he? Sodomite. I knew it. I bet that was his favourite position.’

  Veraine hadn’t, in fact, having exhausted his strength before his invention. But she remembered with terrible clarity his strong, clever fingers easing into her, the way they had coaxed her to total surrender. And the memory made her tight muscles dilate to this new touch.

  She heard the stertorous intake of his breath. Then her consternation turned to horror as, after a moment’s muffled preparation, something cold and hard was placed against the offending orifice. Her aroused senses identified the wet slickness of soap and the smoothness of silk but the underlying mass did not make sense to her – too unyielding and cool to be any part of human anatomy – until she remembered the high priest’s staff of office.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, her first word since entering the room. She knew as she uttered it that it was a mistake, and she bit her lip.

  ‘Open for him and you’ll open for this. You will.’ And to make his point, Rasa Belit grabbed hold of her hair and reined her head up tight, so that she was unable to pull away from the invasion about to take place.

  Her muscles clenched against the intruder, but the rigid tip bored into the tight circle with insistent pressure. She tried to swing her hips around out of the way, but he followed her as she circled and she could not escape. Her knees scraped on the rough floor. Then the unseen rod rotated slightly, and with that movement all her body’s resistance collapsed. She felt her arse yield to the staff, and it yielded willingly, admitting the rounded tip and the succeeding slippery inches.

  ‘Shit. You love this, don’t you,’ groaned her violator. He twisted the stick, pushing it from side to side in the tight grip of her orifice, spreading her wider open, but for her all the initial discomfort and the instinctive fear were drowned in a rush of physical pleasure so vast that she couldn’t cope any longer. Thrusting herself back, further on to the ebony staff, she opened her mouth and let the scream of orgasm come tearing from her throat, uncaring of her witnesses, of her dignity, of her spiritual well-being, her whole frame shuddering like an earthquake. She gave vent to every pent-up and disregarded emotion that had ever haunted her body in a howl of bestial abandon, and she finished in helpless sobs.

  Rasa Belit, frozen with shock, held on tight until her crisis was over and then let her head fall limply forward. He pulled out the stave without a word, but he left the silken sheath inside her, the wet fringes dangling down against her sex.

  Then he walked away, out of the room. But she heard his last instruction to the acolytes as he left.

  ‘Wall up the doorway.’

  10 The Mask

  Veraine opened his eyes to absolute blackness and wondered how long it was since he had last opened them. He had not been asleep, he was sure, but the darkness was so complete and his mind had been in such turmoil that it was impossible to tell how much time had elapsed since he’d last been lucid and watchful. He could smell damp stone and feel the cool, still air against his skin, but apart from his own breathing there was no sound. It was as if he’d been buried alive.

  He’d been imprisoned in a chamber beneath the Outer Temple, part of a complex of tunnels and rooms that he and the Irolian engineers had never guessed about. How many other secrets had Mulhanabin kept from them? he wondered groggily. The priests had dragged him here, his arms twisted to breaking point, his mouth stuffed with a rag to prevent any noise. He had a jumbled recollection, painted in lurid colours by anger and desperation, of the route taken behind some insignificant-looking carved screen, down winding stairs into the bowels of the mountainside.

  He cursed himself again for his own overconfidence.

  Before the journey they’d hastily shoved him into a pair of trousers to cover the nakedness which Rasa Belit seemed to find offensive, but his torso was bare and, for the first time that he could remember since getting to the city, he felt cold. And sore: his body ached like one great bruise. But at least they hadn’t managed to knock out any of his teeth or break any bones. The priests of the Malia Shai, in his estimation, were not experts at inflicting damage.

  That would all change, he suspected, when Rasa Belit arrived.

  They had strung him up here in this tiny room, his arms roped to beams over his head, his feet tethered apart to rings set in the floor. The beams
and rings had been carved all of a piece from the living rock. There were no windows. He hadn’t seen much else of the room; the priests had lingered only moments to secure him before they had departed with every source of light.

  He was desperately thirsty. The damp smell of the stones made the craving worse.

  He could bring his hands to within a span of each other but no closer. They were tied up high over his head and at the moment most of his weight hung off them. No chance to pick the knots. He couldn’t move his feet at all. At least he had managed to work the cloth out from behind his teeth and spit the gag from him before he choked on it. But it gave him little hope. He was helpless.

  Alone in the darkness he had chased the same thoughts over and over again; how stupid he’d been to return to the Citadel alone, how reckless to assume that Rasa Belit would never move against him; how idiotic to bed the Malia Shai in his own chamber, where they could be easily discovered, where there was no back-up to call upon. If he’d had the sense to stay near his men, to let the Host loose through the city, if he’d had his sword nearer to hand, if he’d jumped up faster, if he’d anticipated what would happen if they were found, if he’d thought of anything at all except the intoxicating warmth of her body against his . . . Gods, if he’d thought with his wits instead of his balls then he’d never have ended up here waiting for torture and a slow death.

  He would never have lain with her at all, if he’d been smart.

  The cold was seeping into his flesh, and at last he managed to damp down his fury and his fear in order to think more clearly. He rested his head against his right biceps, feeling the firmness of the muscle, the smoothness of the skin against his cheek, the warmth under that skin. He was painfully aware that he was about to die. He had no control over his situation and he could see no way out of it; the moment he had taken her in his arms he had signed both their death warrants.

  He thought of her being walled up in some room or corner in the complex and guilt stabbed him again. But not fear, and not pity. He had infinite faith in her strength and he knew she could never be broken by mere fear or pain. She would face her fate calmly, with detachment and confidence, as she faced everything else.

  Well, not quite everything. In the fragile moments of their time together he had unlocked a secret place in her soul that he had never seen before, and perhaps had never been discovered by anyone. He remembered her breathless, trembling kisses, the wide-eyed wonder with which she had bestowed her caresses, the heat of her yielding; and at the memory he closed his eyes. It made no difference to the blackness, nor to the dancing pictures that his imagination painted on that backdrop. Her full lips. Her breasts soft beneath his hands. The firmness of her backside as he pulled her into him. The sweet wet cleft between those thighs that parted to his touch so trustingly. The honeyed scent of her skin.

  If he had been sensible, he would never have known those things.

  And now they were gone. They were part of the past, lost for ever. He found it hard to believe that it was only a few hours ago – perhaps less; he had lost all track of time down here – that he had been immersed in a physical pleasure close to rapture. Now he was about to pay for it.

  Under his cheek the blood ran warm, his pulse beat, his aching muscles flexed. He was tired beyond words, but he was still young and strong. He was alive, not dying. And yet, though his body worked as it had always worked, though his lungs still swelled to draw each breath into his body, though the scab on his hip was hardening – and itching while it did so – yet in a few hours he would be dead. The body shattered, the blood cold, all these breaths and heartbeats wasted. It seemed to make no sense, and he felt protest coiling in his guts, an aching denial that said that fate was wrong, the gods were wrong, that he was not ready. He clenched his teeth. Didn’t every person that faced execution feel that way? It was infinitely unfair, the childish part of him cried. Yet it happened.

  He wished that he had the Malia Shai’s detachment. He didn’t.

  What he had instead was courage. He was a soldier, and since he was fourteen he had known that it would end this way, or worse. Face down in a pool of his own blood, that was how he had imagined his last moments, when he was being optimistic. He had never had any prospect of dying in his bed, peaceful and happy. How many people did? Civilians got to fool themselves that death was not inevitable, that it wouldn’t hurt, that it would wait until you were ready. But soldiers knew the reality. In his career he’d seen every kind of death in all its rainbow variety of repulsiveness, humiliation and agony. Death was not an option; it was an inevitable encounter. What you had on your side was not hope or defiance but courage. Simply the courage to face it.

  I shall die silent, Veraine told himself. He will not make me scream.

  And after that? He had shone brightly enough in life; perhaps the priests were right and there would soon be a new star in the shimmering heavens. But somehow he doubted it.

  There was one shred of comfort and he wrapped his heart around that thought as round an ember. Every man died, and few in the cause of anything of worth. They lost their lives for trivial reasons; for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, for turning their head to the right instead of the left, or the left instead of the right. For a misinterpreted glance, for an incautious remark, for being too cowardly to act or too brave to run. For lack of money, or for an excess that brought deadly attention. They died by mischance, by bad luck, by stupidity, by ignorance, by the casual malevolence or the cool indifference of others more powerful than themselves. But he, Veraine, was going to die because he had made a choice. He had let the gods know that there was something he wanted more than fame or riches, more than anything else in the world. Something he would sell everything in his life for. His soul’s desire. And for once the gods had listened, and he had been granted that desire – and if now he died for it, what was that in comparison to such an achievement?

  He’d had her. For only a few hours, but with such intense passion that even before the priests had discovered them, he had known that he would not emerge unscathed or unchanged.

  In the darkness, invisible, his dry lips tightened in a fearful smile.

  The ghostly lights that drift behind the eyelids flared and bloomed, then, as if he were pressing his eyeballs. It took him a moment to realise that his lids were in fact open, and that what he was seeing was no illusion, but real light. A warm glow was creeping into the room from where the stairs descended from the ceiling, revealing the hidden details of that ancient chamber, the carved tables and benches, the hooks and beams, even a slab in the far corner that looked to be some kind of trapdoor. Veraine blinked hard and steeled himself, his stomach knotting. The glow, like some holy aura, illuminated a pair of sandaled feet and the edge of a yellow robe descending into view. The figure beneath the robe was rounded and moved with a stately grace born of great girth. He recognised the priestess Muth.

  She glanced at him briefly as she reached the floor, and smiled; a smile as cold and sticky as congealed fat. He looked beyond her at the stairs, but there seemed to be no sign of anyone else coming to join them. Muth carried in her hand a lantern and as soon as she had put this upon the table she used it to kindle other lamps which she set about the room. Only then did she give him her full attention.

  ‘I thought I’d come and take a look, General, before Rasa Belit made too much of a mess of you,’ she said conversationally.

  Veraine hung from his fetters and declined to answer.

  ‘He’ll be on his way shortly, but you must understand he’s had a number of things to deal with. Irritating but inescapable details, mostly, to do with the mourning of the Malia Shai.’ She sniggered. ‘Oh. You hadn’t heard, of course. He announced her death to the temple and the people today; it emerges that she gave up all her mortal strength to the earthquake that defeated the Horse-eaters and has departed this fleshly existence for her next incarnation. A sacrificial miracle. I’m sure you’ll join in offering your respects.’

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sp; She paused, but Veraine kept his face blank, only his eyes moving to follow her as she strolled. She halted in front of him, hands on her broad hips. He hung before her like a carcass on a butcher’s hook; meat on display for her perusal.

  ‘I knew you were trouble the moment I set eyes on you,’ she said in a low voice. She looked him up and down with lascivious care. ‘Too pretty by half for a soldier.’

  Veraine only blinked. He could feel the cold beads of sweat tickling down his spine.

  She licked one fingertip and drew a line from the hollow of his throat, across to his left nipple, then down the old scar over his ribs, to the pit of his navel.

  ‘Rasa Belit didn’t see it coming. He might not have a prick, but he still thinks like a man.’ She showed her teeth. ‘He still doesn’t know what happened, what hit him. Years of the most stringent care and vigorous training, and then the silly bitch opens her legs to the first set of moving parts that come her way. That’s how he sees it.’ She quirked one eyebrow. ‘Might as well have a look at what all the fuss is about.’

  The trousers were held at the front by a cross-threaded linen cord. She slipped the thong unhurriedly, pulled the cloth wide and dragged the garment low down over his hips. He couldn’t move to resist. She reached in and pulled out his sex organs into the light. Veraine stared darkly past her as if she didn’t exist.

  ‘Well, General, no need to be shy,’ Muth breathed. ‘Quite a pretty piece.’ She hefted his balls, cupping their soft weight in her hand, squeezing his prick confidently between her fingers. ‘And a fair size, too, even for a goddess to cope with. I hope she appreciated such a fine set of tackle.’

  He said nothing. In fact, overused and bruised by several blows, his genitals were all but numb.