Priests, welcoming her into their midst, had made a little lane on each side of her. She entered this and her form was hidden from him, save for a flash of white peering between each two of them as she moved along. But they were old and curved, no longer held themselves straight, and her head still topped theirs for the brief span that remained before she reached the entryway.
A moment longer he saw her like this, a moment only. He saw the side of a face that he thought had been that of a wife. Familiar in its strangeness, strange in its familiarity. Eyes that he knew so well, that didn’t know him any more. Mouth that he’d kissed a hundred times, dark scintillating hair that he’d caressed. What were they, what had they been? A moment longer, and then she was gone. The stone lips of the temple entry had swallowed her whole. A peculiar empty feeling took hold of him, the sort of sensation one has at a final, irrevocable parting-
That isn’t Mitty, he thought, who just went in there. Where is Mitty, what became of her? Where did I lose her?
The priests turned and filed in after her, the last two dragging between them the resisting, cowering little form of Chris, who had been freed from her bondage beside the litter and turned over to them by the warrior escort.
The forbidden entryway gaped empty once more. The daughter of the sun had returned to her own.
Chapter Twenty-three
A murky grotto-green twilight was the most that ever entered their dungeon, even at high noon on the brightest of days. It was below ground level for about three quarters of its height, with just a single squat orifice, a sort of horizontal slit, high up on the wall near its juncture with the ceiling. This was on the outer side. Then on the opposite side, the inner side, there was a wooden barrier or side arrangement that was lashed fast when it was secured, and heaved aside (they did not seem to have discovered the use of hinges or the wheel or pulleys) when entry was desired to bring them food. In this there was in turn a small squared opening through which they could be watched without the necessity for dislodging the entire cumbersome panel.
Here to this place they were brought, and here in this’ place they were left to their misery and despair.
“But why’d they bring us here?” Mallory kept asking over and over, the first few days. “Why didn’t they kill us right away, down at the finca? What are they saving us for? What are they going to do to us, now that they’ve brought us all the way back?”
After a while he stopped asking. Jones couldn’t give him the answer; he didn’t know it himself. He used to sigh patiently and turn his face away against the wall, as a mute hint to the other to stop tormenting the two of them.
He knew the thought that was in the back of Mallory’s mind, because it was also the thought that was in the back of his own mind: torture. But he didn’t dare to bring it forth into the open between them. That was why he didn’t answer the questions; that was why Mallory finally stopped asking them, too. Sooner or later, something unspeakable—
Each was lashed by his left wrist, by means of thongs, to iron rings bedded in the solid masonry of the walls. These rings or hoops had already been there when they were first thrust into the place, showing that it must have formerly been used for keeping captives in, just as it was now being used once more. There were about a dozen rings all told, riveted about three sides of the enclosure. All but the two they were affixed to were idle. Looking at them, he used to wonder how many human lives, trapped, held fast, as they were now, each one of them had to its credit.
They could stand upright, it was true, and even advance a short distance out from the wall toward the center of the cell, but only by dropping one shoulder lower than the other, for the hoops were imbedded at a low level, so that the only position they were allowed to maintain without bodily distortion was sitting, backs to the wall. At night they could lie down flat on their backs, but only so long as they stretched their legs out toward the center, at right angles to the wall. If they attempted to he parallel with it, they interfered with one another, the hoops being set too close together.
They were fed liberally, if monotonously, on an unvarying diet of baked maize cakes, and water was given them to drink from a brackish-tasting pottery bowl. This was done twice a day, at about the time the slit up on the wall first started to glow greenish-blue with daylight, and again at about the time it began to darken over with night. The wooden barrier blocking the inward cell entrance, on the side opposite the vent, was slanted back at such times and the warrior who seemed to be on guard outside it at all times would come in. The actual carrying in of the food was done by a second person, the feeding of captives being perhaps beneath the dignity of one who made war. This food-bearer was a wizened old man, his head completely shaven, weaponless, and garbed in clinging linen garments, who gave them the impression of being a priest or religious attaché of some sort. The warrior simply stood guard in the doorway. Then both would go out again, and the barrier would be shunted back and lashed secure on the outside.
“I don’t like the way that old one looks at us,” Mallory complained one time in a low voice, immediately after the two had gone. “The fighter, he just stands back there and scowls and looks grim; that’s all right. But the old one, he squats down close, right in front of us while we’re eating, and keeps eying us and seems to be licking his lips the whole time.”
Jones had noticed a sort of avid, unhealthy interest too, but he tactfully refrained from saying so.
“Did you see him reach out and grasp my biceps just now?” Mallory went on with a quaver in his voice. “They’re not cannibals, are they? That’s not what they’re—”
“Of course not,” Jones answered curtly. “Don’t be a fool.” Someone had to keep a stiff upper lip. He would have liked to feel as sure about that, or anything else, as he sounded.
They kept count of the days, as all prisoners have, from time immemorial. They had nothing to make marks on the wall with, so they kept count in their heads, keeping score with one another aloud, as day followed day. “Twenty-two today,” Jones would grunt. “That what you get?”
“Yeah, that’s what I get too,” Mallory would answer bitterly.
It was still easy enough to do it that way, while their captivity was young and before the passage of time had begun to fog their ability to calculate.
On the twenty-fourth day of their imprisonment a spasm of fright coursed through both their chests simultaneously. The wall slit was glowing peacock green with advanced daylight, the barrier was freed and dragged back, the usual entry was made — but this time by double the customary number of persons. There were two warriors, and two of the shriveled-up priests. The platter of cakes and the bowl of water were conspicuously lacking. They hadn’t come to feed them.
Both of them realized at once that some sort of climax was at hand.
Jones could hear Mallory’s breathing begin to come faster, beside him. “Take it easy,” he muttered, trying to steady him with a brief touch of the hand.
The four drew up before them and stood there studying them inscrutably, die warriors in the background. One of the priests suddenly raised a bony finger and pointed to Mallory. The warriors immediately stepped forward, a knife was plied, and the thong attaching him to the wall was sliced apart. They stood him up on his almost unusable legs and led him to the center of the cell. They stripped him of the moldering rags that were all that remained by now of his former garments. Some sort of ceremonial kilt, like a sash of fine linen, was wound around him at the waist. His wrists were bound behind his back, and the heavy pressure of the warriors’ hands upon his shoulders forced him down to a kneeling position. Then water and moss were brought in, and there was an ominous cleansing and symbolic purification of his left breast, about the region of the heart.