The Alabaster Staff - Edward Bolme [108]
Massedar led the way through the temple, his accursed Banite gown billowing as he walked. Demok moved behind, carrying the heavy corpse over one shoulder. Despite the bulk of the body, and despite the sweat that trickled down his temples and the breath that labored in his lungs, Demok’s face was calm and placid. Kehrsyn trailed, holding Massedar’s rain cloak. As she passed a convenient lantern alcove, she quickly stuffed it in the nook. She needed her hands free to do her job, and if they were to pass that way again, they’d either have time to search for the cloak or they’d have concerns far more urgent than getting wet.
In the distance, the reflected light of fires danced along the walls like will-o’-wisps. They heard the sounds of a bawdy Chessentan song reverberating through the temple. The regiment was trying to liven up the dreary evening, but the hollow way the tune echoed among the huge walls of slab marble twisted their cheerful lark into a mournful, ghostlike sound.
Near the center of the great structure, Messedar quickly located the ramps that serviced the lower levels of the temple. One level down was the actual Chessentan base camp, a solemn, military place. Messedar led them lower still. On the next level, the Chessentan officers made their encampment next to a platoon of Thayans. Kehrsyn mused that Thaytans had been called in to help ensure the safety of the enclave should Messemprar fall to the pharaoh’s forces.
They continued down, past a prison level left empty by the foreigners, save only for a few rowdies held under guard for infractions. A desultory guard stood watch, in all likelihood a punishment in itself, doubly so for the whispers of the cloying stink of death that skulked around the still air at that level.
Two soldiers in full armor and Zhentish tabards stood at the top of the ramp that continued down.
One of them saluted as the group filed past, saying simply, “Ahegi,” in respectful greeting.
As they descended, the butcher’s smell of the dead grew with every step. They debouched into the bottom level, and Kehrsyn saw that it was dedicated wholly to torture. She realized also that the wide, open ramps would help convey the sounds of the damned to the heart of the temple itself, warping and twisting the screams to provide a macabre backdrop to the worship ceremonies.
The room was very large and open, and lit by a matrix of blood-red candles suspended in black iron chandeliers. The whole of it was filled with a bewildering array of devices of every sort imaginable, and many others of which the operation was so invasive, so cruel, that Kehrsyn's innocent mind could not in the slightest imagine what they actually did.
Between these instruments of torture, the floor of the room was stacked with bodies neatly arranged like firewood. They seemed incongruously peaceful when contrasted with the sinister mechanical shapes of the devices. Two aides staggered at the edge of the stacked remains, carefully placing another corpse.
The torture floor itself was sunken some three feet. A walkway circumnavigated the room, eight feet wide and without a rail. From the walkway the priests of Gilgeam could oversee the torture without having to step in the fluids of the maimed. Steps periodically descended from the walkway to the floor itself, in case a priest saw fit to intervene personally. At the time, though, a large number of Banite priests occupied the walkway, their black-and-green robes whispering and hissing across the stones. None stepped down the stairs, leaving the few workers to finish the arrangement of the bodies.