Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [90]
For froggin’ sure, the pits were brutal, and he’d never froggin’ get over the first time he’d seen the Hand kill. Not execute, the way they’d executed his mother, but just kill with a backhand clout to a girl’s head. Without trying, Cauvin could still hear the sound of her skull cracking. She never knew.
Honor to the Great Mother, the Hand said, and carried her body to the altar.
Waste not, want not, Cauvin’s own mother had said when she fed him scrapings from her clients’ plates.
He’d gagged at the altar and again at supper, but—the froggin’ truth be told—anything was better than froggin’ fish-head chowder.
The palace gates were barred and guarded by Hands who’d kill you as soon as look at you, but the Hands were teaching Cauvin how to fight, too, and he’d never had any trouble obeying froggin’ rules—provided he and they were pointed in the same direction. He liked to fight and didn’t shirk his lessons.
Bigger, smaller, willing or not, Cauvin fought. The Hand took him out on the streets. When there was froggin’ trouble, he helped take care of it. Froggin’ truth be told, it wasn’t unpleasant, especially when the Hand pointed Cauvin at a merchant who’d used to make his mother’s life miserable.
He’d killed the man. He supposed he’d froggin’ killed more than a few men. He couldn’t be sure. The Hand told him when to start fighting and when to stop, too. They always left their victims behind.
He learned how the Hand had killed the girl with a weighted fist, but except for dogs and a few goats for practice, they’d never asked him to kill with an unsuspected blow—that was an honor reserved for priests. If he’d been thinking straight then, Cauvin might have realized where he was headed when they taught him the trick. He hadn’t been. He liked fighting, and being a brawler served him well in the froggin’ pits when the Hand wasn’t watching close. Weaker sprouts looked to him for protection. They served him like slaves; he’d been as comfortable as you could be in the pits.
Cauvin got used to his life. He didn’t expect it to change, then it did: The Hand introduced him to Dyareela. They gave him wine—more than wine. There was nothing in wine to make the world glow and shimmer the way it did after he’d drank Dyareela’s warm, bloodred wine.
They’d led Cauvin into the palace where he saw the Mother’s statue without its black robes, cock and cunt together. When Chaos came and Dyareela reshaped the world in Her image, they’d all be like that—so said the Hand. Until then, the priests and priestesses did what they could with what lesser gods had given them. There were others at the altar, men and women, naked except for the red silk over their faces, all writhing together. Take off your clothes, they told him. Join your brothers and sisters.
Froggin’ hell—there wasn’t wine enough to get Cauvin that drunk.
He’d said no thanks. Leaving a body in the street, not knowing if it were dead or alive, Cauvin didn’t have froggin’ problems with that, but he wanted no froggin’ part of what was happening around Dyareela’s altar. He’d thought saying no would be enough. As usual, he was froggin’ wrong when it mattered.
Cauvin didn’t know why he hadn’t froggin’ broken. Imprisoned alone in the utter dark for who knew how froggin’ long was bad enough, but it wasn’t the worst. The froggin’ worst came when they dragged him back to Dyareela’s froggin’ altar—not the black-stone fornication altar but another one, far below the palace. He was blindfolded when they slashed his chest; he figured he was going to die without his froggin’ skin, same as his sheep-shite mother. Then they took the blindfold off.
Some thing hung there above him: some thing with too many glowing eyes, too many shimmering teeth, too many everything. It wrapped around him like a snake … or a lover …
“Cauvin!”
Cauvin came back to himself with a shudder.