Blackness fell upon him like a rock.
Chapter 12
The darkness seemed infinite at first; the darkness of death, Pavo was certain. But the furious heat seemed incongruous. And he seemed to be swaying in this black netherworld, swaying to a rhythm of dull and distant crunching boots on dust, spliced by the sharp crack of a whip on raw skin. He longed to see his surroundings, be it Hades or otherwise, but there was nothing.
The burning on his skin abated for a short while, and he heard the distant lapping of waves and the splashing of oars, together with the faraway shrieking of gulls and the jabbering of foreign voices. Finally, the heat of the sun dropped away and there was shade. Not the shade of night, but something else. A stifling, airless shade. He was descending, he realised. Was this the journey to Hades?
It was then that a nightmare came to him. But not the nightmare of the dunes. Now he beheld some vast, vile creature buried in the dust, only its fangless maw visible like a gaping chasm in the ground. He saw nothing but the shadow that filled the depths of the maw, and heard nothing but tortured moans from within the creature’s seven bellies. The maw flexed and chewed as if eager for its next meal. He tried to turn, but could not. He tried to slow his progress, digging his heels into the dust, clawing out, but the maw clamped onto his flesh and drew him down into the darkness of its gut.
In the belly of this beast, he heard nothing but the endless, pained cries of men. But there was something else, something splicing the wickedness; the occasional words of a soothing voice. When the voice spoke, he felt the lip of some vessel at his lips, and liquid trickling into his throat.
One eyelid cracked open, blurry and crusted. The strip of light this cast into his eyes sent shockwaves through his head. He heard himself roar in pain as if miles distant and felt his hands clamp onto his head as if they belonged to someone else. Slowly, his other senses came back to him. He was lying down on some hard surface, dressed only in a loincloth. A constant clink-clink of iron echoed all around. Rasping, rattling coughs came and went, nearby and faraway. The cracking of whips brought forth weak cries. He tried to fill his lungs, but his nostrils stung and the foul air seemed to steal his breath away until he broke down into a coughing fit. His tongue was shrivelled and utterly dry, and a film of something coated it. He felt the urge to retch but did not have the energy. He reached for his eyes with a trembling hand, and rubbed at them gently. Gradually, the blinding strip of light became less painful.
‘That’s it,’ a foreign voice said, ‘let your body waken at its own pace.’
Pavo’s heart jolted. ‘Who’s there?’ he yelped, instinctively trying to sit bolt upright. The effort sent a white-hot pain racing through his ribs and he clutched his midriff with a cry. This in turn sent another wave of vice-like agony through his head.
‘Your rib is still not healed, I see,’ the voice continued. ‘And your head is bound to hurt for some time.’
Pavo drew his bleary gaze around, but he could see nothing other than dull shapes. He touched a hand to his ribs. They had been bandaged with a strip of filthy cloth. ‘You did this?’ He frowned.
‘I am no healer, but I did what I could,’ the voice replied in a wistful tone.
Pavo winced with every burning breath that pressed his lungs against his ribs. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes until he could make out the blurry outline of his surroundings. He was in a small alcove gouged into slate-blue rock. The space was cordoned off by iron bars. The ceiling, floor and walls were jagged and dancing with the shadows cast by distant torchlight from beyond the bars. He was sitting upon a rocky shelf on one side of the cell, while the blurry figure who had spoken sat on the shelf opposite, legs crossed, head bowed.
Pavo eyed the figure nervously, then shuffled towards the bars, clasping them and straining to focus his eyes on what lay outside. He noticed a fine, white powder coating his hands. Indeed, every inch of his skin seemed to be clad in the stuff, with only beads of sweat breaking through the film. The blurriness was fading and he beheld what lay beyond the bars.
A vast, underground cavern yawned before him. The cavern walls were encrusted with glistening, jagged white crystals, some as big as towers, glinting like stars in the night sky. Pillars of this shimmering crystal climbed from the floor of the cavern and huge spikes of it hung from the ceiling. Torches crackled, fixed to the cavern walls here and there, illuminating the cave in an eerie half-light reflected all around by the crystals. Where there was no crystal, a network of walkways had been gouged into the dark-blue and russet-veined rock of the cavern walls, leading to myriad cells like this one. Timber ladders rested here and there, linking the walkways to the cavern floor. The air in the place rippled in a haze of foul heat and everything was coated in the fine white powder.