drawing out her pleasure, sipping the wine and rolling it noisily around her mouth before swallowing and smacking her gums.
‘Since we have been apart, I have thought much upon what has happened between us,’ Huy admitted, without looking at Tanith.
‘I have thought of nothing else.’
‘As a man whose life is devoted to the service of the gods, I was greatly troubled that we had sinned against them,’ Huy told her.
‘There can be no sin in something which gives so much pleasure and happiness.’
‘I asked the gods to set a test for me, a trial of my sins.’ Huy had still not looked at her, but Tanith glanced at him sharply and her voice snapped.
‘You did not indulge in foolish risk, did you?’
‘The trial was a fair one - the gods were not cheated.’ Huy wanted her to understand, and she understood too well.
‘I forbid you to do these stupid male things. I shiver to think of what madness you committed out there in the wilderness.’ She was angry now.
‘It was necessary. They must have the opportunity to express their wrath.’
‘They could as readily express their wrath with a lightning bolt or a falling tree! I will not have you provoking them to destroy you.’
‘Tanith, please let me—’
‘I can see, my lord, that you will require stricter supervision in the future. I want a lover not a hero.’
‘But, Tanith, the gods’ answer was favourable. Don’t you see, now we need feel no guilt.’
‘I never felt guilt, then or now. But, Holiness, I will feel wrath beside which that of the gods will pale if again you risk your life needlessly.’
Huy turned to her, and shook his head with mock sorrow.
‘Oh Tanith, what would I ever do without you?’ And her stern expression softened.
‘My lord, that question will never arise.’ And at that moment the empty wine bowl slipped from the old priestess’s fingers and spun on one end across the mud floor. Its circles narrowed, until it settled into silence and the priestess let out a long contented snore and bowed forward. Huy caught her and eased her backwards onto the cushions. He laid her out comfortably, and arranged her robe modestly about her. She was smiling and burbling and whistling in her sleep.
Huy straightened up and Tanith stood close beside him. They turned to each other and embraced, coming together slowly and carefully. Her lips had a glossy feeling, cool and firm. Her soft hair brushed his cheeks, and her body pressed boldly against his.
‘Tanith,’ he whispered. ‘Oh Tanith, there is so much I want to tell you.’
‘My Lord, your voice is the most beautiful I have ever heard. Your wisdom and wit are celebrated throughout the four kingdoms - but please do not talk now.’
Tanith pulled gently out of his embrace, took his hand and led him softly from the room.
Over the months that followed, Tanith’s chaperone developed a peculiar taste for Huy’s wine. At the temple feasts she was wont to disparage the quality of the wine served by the Reverend Mother, comparing it most unfavourably against the other, and she would always end with a word of praise for the Holy Father himself.
‘A dear, dear man,’ she would tell her audience. ‘None of the nonsense you find with some of the others. Did I ever tell you about Rastafa Ben-Amon, the Holy Father in the reign of the forty-fourth Gry-Lion when I was a novice? Now there was a one!’ Her old eyes went a little misty, and she drooled a thread of saliva.
‘Drink!’ She said with outraged virtue. ‘Fight! And other things.’ Then she nodded sagely. ‘A terrible, terrible man!’ And she grinned fondly at her ancient memories.
From the leather pipe, with its pitch-sealed joints, feeble gusts of air puffed like the dying breaths of a dinosaur. Driven by the great bellows at the surface, the circulation of fresh air had lost most of its force here, seventy feet below.
Timon leaned against the sweating rock surface, pressing his face to the hose outlet gasping at that scanty trickle of air in the hellish heat and sulphurous atmosphere of the underground workings. He was lean, every rib showed clearly through the black skin, each sinewy muscle was outlined. His head was skull-like, with gaunt cheekbones and deep eye-sockets in which the smouldering fires of his indomitable spirit still burned.
All fat and spare flesh had been burned off him by the ceaseless toil and the heat. Even now a sheen of moisture squeezed from the pores of his skin, highlighting the scars which criss-crossed his back and curled around his rib-cage -scars that patterned his arms and legs, scars long healed into thick ridges and shiny grooves, scars fresh and pink, scars still thick-scabbed and oozing. The chain shackles hung loosely at his neck and wrists and ankles. They had rubbed coarse calloused circles around his neck and limbs, slave marks that he would carry to his grave.
He sucked in the air, his chest pumping, swelling and subsiding, the ribs beneath the skin fanning open and closing. Around him the smoke swirled, dimming the lamp flames. The heat was a violent shimmering thing, and the rock at the face glowed still, although the fires had burned to thick beds of ash.
For five days now they had been attempting to break up this intrusion of hard green serpentine rock which was obscuring the gold reef. Sixteen men had died in the attempt, suffocated by the steam and smoke, struck down by flying shards of exploding rock or merely overcome by the heat to fall swooning onto the glowing floor and to sizzle while their flesh stuck to the hot rock and came away in stinking slabs from the bone.
From the shaft above him, dangling on a plaited reed rope, one of the water-bladders was lowered to him. Made from the whole skin of an ox, carefully stitched and with the joints waterproofed with pitch the bladder contained forty gallons of liquid, a mixture of sour wine and water.
Timon doused his leather cloak in the filthy warm water of the wooden trough beside him, then one at a time he lifted his feet and dipped them into the trough, soaking his leather leggings and the sandals. The soles of the
