comparison with Hassan al Sabah's 'Paradise' — which looked like a brothel — this 'private brothel' looked more like an anteroom to Paradise itself.
Except, hell! Casca knew it was not going to be Paradise for him, not after the three with the knives came after him. He wondered which of the three was the Jasmine Lady, but he had no way of knowing. These three were clothed differently from the other women. Each wore only a single filmy, gownlike garment woven of such thin threads that the cloth was almost transparent — or maybe seemed so because it clung so closely to their bodies. The curves… the hard tits… the triangular bush… These did shout sex! But it was unpleasant sex, twisted, dark sex, though the gowns themselves were white. Like priestesses in some diseased cult… Sweat was beginning to form on Casca's face, and not just from the heat of all the burning lamps and torches, either. There was something perverse and sick going on here. The cloth that covered the table, for instance. White cloth of Chin. Incredibly expensive. For a torture room? And the charcoal braziers that heated the pots of boiling oil. One was gold. Another silver. Anyone throwing wealth around that way had to have something wrong with him. Casca had lived long enough in this world to know that, when you got right down to it, it was ultimately riches that made a man respectable. A pervert who didn't respect gold… Shit! He could expect the worst. It must be the Sultan himself they were waiting for.
There were two great, carved wooden doors at the far end of the room. These now opened, swinging back to the other side, and through them walked someone in a scarlet burnoose, wearing a black mask of cloth of Chin and black leather boots. The person was flanked by two Nubian slave eunuchs who carried no weapons. Their skin was oiled until it shone, and they each wore only a black loincloth. If this one in the scarlet burnoose was the Sultan, he sure as hell had kinky tastes — and the Jasmine Lady Casca had seen in the streets must be very, very close to him; it was his clothing she had copied.
The one in the scarlet burnoose stopped just short of Casca and the three women. The two Nubian eunuchs stepped forward and loosened the burnoose, pulled it back, and slipped it from the shoulders of the one in the mask. The slaves bowed in deep abjection, turned and marched back through the doors which were then closed and barred. The sound of the heavy wooden bar falling in place echoed like very distant thunder in the room, and the one who had just come in now walked to the table, selected a knife, and approached Casca.
It was not, of course, the Sultan, but a perfectly nude woman who smelled of jasmine. She leaned across the bound Casca, the tips of her breasts brushing provocatively against the hair of his chest, and tested the ropes that held him to the table. Then she took the knife, holding it in the odd way she had in the street, and carved a single Arabic letter on the flesh of his forearm.
'So…' she said. 'We begin…'
What they did to him he tried to erase from his mind, and after the pain had become totally unbearable it seemed that he had no mind left. There was only pain. And his screams. All the years of conditioning as a soldier, all the courage to bear pain, all that went for naught. And they deliberately prolonged his agony, working slowly
… slowly… slowly.
There came a time when the pain had become so great that it went beyond feeling. He no longer felt it. The nerves had been shocked beyond their endurance… or… that strange healing power in his body was in balance with what they were doing to him. The four women had overreached themselves. In their desire to make him suffer the greatest length of time they had unwittingly slowed their torture to the point that his healing power was taking over. Besides, it was obvious that the three women in the white gowns were turned on sexually by his suffering, and they were taking every opportunity now to bump into each other, to rub close to each other. They wanted sex with one another.
The Jasmine Lady, though, was not so easy to decipher. It was his body she rubbed her naked flesh against, not the three other women. In fact, she kept a distance between herself and them. From time to time she amused herself by leaning over him and cutting more letters in his bloody forearm. So far he could make out no word that made sense, but each time she leaned across him those pendulous breasts, the nipples puckered and hardened, came closer and closer to him, once even brushing across his lips as he lay screaming.
Now, with the pain no longer blinding his mind, he did not have to scream, but he continued to do so while something formed slowly in his mind. Something — it was not yet a plan. But the healing power was bringing his thinking back into play.
There was no hope that the other women in the harem might help, though most of them plainly found what the gang of four were doing so repulsive that they refused to watch. Early on the young slave, Ruth, had thrown up. Later some of the harem women followed suit.
What was strange was the silence. Except for his screams there was no human sound. When he slowed his screams and made them sound as if he were getting weaker and weaker, he could hear the breathing of the women with the knives, could, it seemed, even hear the faint whisper of sound the burning torches on the wall made.
The Jasmine Lady bent over him again, and suddenly he had the plan
…
Casca waited for his chance. The next time she came over him, breasts hanging mockingly just above his face, the gleaming knife in her right hand catching the light, razor-sharp edge held in that flat, odd way that made the knife seem an extension of her hand — or the single deadly steel claw of a beast — he tried to gauge the angles involved, to time the right moment to act. But the effort was almost more than he could manage. By now the pain, though beyond actual feeling, was in some dark region of his brain affecting his thinking and vision. He felt that he was going mad. He fought the silent storm in his brain, knowing that he might be just seconds from unconsciousness.
Then…
She halted her movement.
To taunt him.
Casca lunged.
Threw his head upward all that he could move.
He had only inches to work with, but that was enough; the end of her pendulous breast was in his wide- stretched mouth. Immediately he bit down, bit with all his strength. She screamed. Blood spurted, momentarily blinding his left eye. This close he had no depth perception with the single eye, so he had to guess for the timing of the strike with his fingers as her wrist with the knife jerked down. He was off. Only by a little, but off. Desperately he curled his fingertips inward, felt the sharp edge of the knife, and, though he cut as much of his own flesh as he did the silk rope when he forced the blade back, he made the slash. He was now free from the forearm to the fingers.
Immediately he swept his arm in the only arc possible to him, hoping that his fingers would reach the burning lamp. They did. With room to spare. The lamp upset. The hot oil it had held flamed up, lighted by the wick, and the burning oil fired the cloth of Chin on the table where he was bound.
Now, if he could only ignite his ropes…
Clawing with his fingers on the returning sweep of his arm, he did manage to grab the burning cloth and jerk it toward him. He did not wait to see if the oil that spilled on the ropes would burn them through.
He had other things to do. Just as his arm made the return arc, he released the bloody bit of her breast and at the same time got her wrist with his fingers. He had correctly guessed that she would jerk back, and with a rolling motion of his finger grip, he broke the knife free from her grasp and had it in his hand.
The oil was burning. Marching fingers of flame were circling his body, and where they touched the ropes, the ropes themselves caught fire.
Though he had the knife, he could not use it to get at the ropes that held his elbows. And at that moment one of the women bending over his penis dropped her knife. The point cut into his scrotum. The temporary numbness in his mind was overthrown, and he screamed with unbearable pain.
Yet he could still use the knife on the other wrist. He swept the blade across his body cutting the wrist ropes and immediately reached up with both hands, plunging the knife into her unhurt breast. When she grabbed for the breast, with almost a continuation of his movement, he caught both of her wrists and pulled down with all his might.
The leverage was difficult, but her involuntary movement down helped somewhat. He managed to pull her partway across his chest, far enough so that he could force her mask into the fire. The flaming oil caught the black
