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wild light and perspiration slicked her face. "Do you take me for a fool?" "No," Grant spit. "A diseased little slut." The baron tensed with rage, her face taut as she raised the infrasound wand, holding it like a rapier, the humming tip circling inches from Grant's eyes. She hissed, "Do you think you can be as uncooperative without the use of your eyes? Don't you know 326 JAMES AXLER how easy it would be? Pop-pop and you're blind for life." Beausoleil had worked herself up to a mad fury, converting it to pleasure, taking almost orgasmic enjoyment in the pain, the fear she caused. "Do you know where you are?" she demanded breathlessly. "Where the cultists put their garbage, their offal! Because that's all you really are, your entire species, only secretions and excrement!" "And what does that make you?" he asked hoarsely, his eyes blurred by pain. "Since you're spending so much time with me, that makes you a sanitation expert, doesn't it? A sewer worker?" Baron Beausoleil's cold marble face didn't alter. She extended the shivering tip of the wand until it touched his forehead. Like a bolt of lightning, pain ripped through Grant's nervous system. His brain seemed to catch fire, electric with agony. He writhed and convulsed and cursed, the links of the chains clinking and rattling. He was only dimly aware of sagging in his chains, the manacles cutting cruelly into his wrists. His head hung loosely. All he could see was the damp ground and the toes of Beausoleil's polished boots. In a tone heavy with mock sympathy, she asked, "How much longer will you allow this to go on until you're blind, crippled, impotent?" Grant had no breath or inclination to answer. He could barely move. Even blinking brought pain, and respiration was an exercise in agony. "As you wish," the baron murmured almost sadly. "As you wish." Sea of Plague 327 The wand's bee-swarm hum grew louder, filling his ears. Then the room seemed to move as if a giant boot had given the foundation a ferocious kick. Grant heard objects falling over, and the ceiling cracked, showering the room with dust and grit. The lightbulb exploded with a crackle and a spray of sparks. Then Grant dared to act. Chapter 24 Avanisa didn't like guns, particularly not the spindly machine guns called SIG-AMTs that had been doled out by the Scorpia Prime's foreign minions. He much preferred his own rawhide twelve-plaited whip as a Page 176 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html symbol and tool of discipline and violence. He took a secret pride in the knowledge that the whip itself marked him as an overseer, not the colored uniform or the face-paint with the scorpion insignia. Unlike most of the Naga people, Avanisa was a gnarled, knot-muscled little man, stringy and lean, like a half-starved cat. A shag of iron-gray beard clothed his lower face. His hair was just as gray, but at least the red-and-black turban covered that. His skin was as dark and tough as cured leather, and his obsidian eyes glinted from nests of wrinkles. As much as he prided himself on the whip, he took a great deal of satisfaction in believing his eyes saw everything. In the hour preceding dawn, Avanisa roused the slaves from their barracks, ordering them down to the riverbank to bathe and make themselves presentable for the weekly benediction performed by the high priestess of Shakti. The blessing bestowed by the servant of the Scorpia Prime was meant to inspire the workers to labor with more dedication in the restoration of the temple. Sea of Plague 329 As far as Avanisa was concerned, more food and fewer hours toiling in the brutal heat would accomplish that, with no man-hours wasted on pseudoreli-gious ceremonies. A bit of consideration given to the limitations of human endurance would greatly improve morale. At the moment, morale was in a precarious balance. Two of the young slaves had escaped from the barracks the evening before, stealing a canoe and taking it down the Brahmaputra. He had dispatched a retrieval party, but they had yet to return. Although he didn't find their absence particularly significant, since he knew they wouldn't try to come back upriver at night, he knew the other slaves were anxiously waiting to learn if the escapees would be returned after daybreak. If they were not, then Avanisa feared the pair of young people would become heroes, sources of inspiration. As it was, he had already heard murmurs among the laborers that Shiva was greatly displeased by the defilement of the temple of Shakti and would soon intervene. Those murmurs had become pronounced after the strange events of only a few hours before, when the spear of the Scor-pia Prime pierced a flying machine, like Shiva's Vi-mana mentioned in the Ramayana, and brought it to earth. Avanisa wasn't a superstitious or religious man. He didn't necessarily disbelieve in the gods or the old ways, but by the same token he had a great appreciation for reality. And at this point, the simple reality was that the Scorpia Prime held the reins of power in Goalpara. She saw to the feeding and clothing of the 330 JAMES AXLER people and their entertainment. Whether she was really an incarnation of Shakti or not, all Avanisa cared about was whether he ate and was laid on a regular schedule. So far, the Scorpia Prime hadn't let him down. Avanisa and three of his fellow Nagas watched as the people clustered at the Page 177 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html water at the riverbank, washing and grooming themselves so their stench wouldn't be an affront to the Scorpia Prime's high priestess, a tall foreign bitch who behaved as if everything in Assam was an affront to her. So he waited in the predark murk for the twenty-eight people to complete their ablutions. When it seemed they were taking an inordinately long time, he barked a command and cracked his whip in the auto catch their attention. Slowly but obediently, the slaves began trudging up the slight incline, the women drawing closed their saris and the hoods of their robes. In a tight mass, they marched toward the temple. Avanisa led them past the irrigation ditches and the worktables. The eastern horizon glowed with red-gold bands when they entered the temple through a courtyard full of shadows and overgrown shrubbery. Cracked pillars thrust up their pinnacles into the sky, some of them topped by eroded, horrific faces of demons and rak-shahas. The entrance foyer was partly fallen in, but the portico, upheld by four marble columns, was still intact. Along the edge of the roof a row of horn-headed stone gargoyles leered down statues of monsters of bygone epochs, half human and half beast. Sea of Plague 331 Inside the temple, Avanisa followed the distant thumping of drums and the people followed him. From a wide corridor, they walked into the vast central hall serving as the temple of Shakti. The area was illuminated by flaming braziers and lanterns that threw a shimmering veil of color over the walls, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |