B. Alexander Howerton Read Online Free Page B

she deftly manipulated the manacles
around his wrists, and they popped open, one at a time.  He barely seemed to
notice as she removed them and massaged his bleeding, swollen wrists.  She
pulled the log out from behind his back, stretched his muscular arms out, and
laid him back on the cushions.  He sprawled and stretched like a kitten as she
lay down beside him.
    “You are special,” she said as she reached out and began
stroking the thick red hairs of his chest.  “I saw it in your eyes, when I
first gazed at you.  You are the one.  I know you don’t understand a word I am
saying, but I have to tell you some things,  In fact, it is probably better
that you do not understand.
    “You see, we had to come find you.  I consulted the great
goddess Inanna, and she told me to seek you in the wooded mountains to the
north. Oh, of course, you do not understand our ways.  Let me explain.  Oh, are
you still thirsty?”  He had lifted his head, glancing around for the urn. 
“Very well.”  She sat up and poured another cup as she spoke.
    “How could you know that our new boy-king, Ulanpazzal, was
very sickly, and died after only a few months, long before he could fulfill his
duties?  Our lineage was broken, our land and crops were in grave danger, for
we were without a king to replenish the land and please our gods.”  She reached
around behind his head, held him up, and helped him sip from the cup.  “Our
rituals must be maintained, or we will all perish.  I prayed to the goddess
Inanna.  That is her likeness, out there behind the altar.   I sat up many
nights before her and burned many goat-lard candles.  After twelve nights of
vigil, Inanna came to me in a dream.”  She lay him back down and put the empty
cup on the table. “She said, ‘Look to the north.  You will find the seed of the
new king there.  You will know.’  I sent a war party north, and they have just
returned with you.”  She once again lay beside him, and resumed stroking his
chest.  “Inanna indicated to me you were the one, so I had you brought in to me
here.  You see, whether you know it or not, you are the present incarnation of
Dumuzi, and you are meant for me.  We must make a new line of kings.”
    Her strokes became more gentle and more suggestive, and her
hand roamed more freely, up to his neck and shoulders and down to his firm
belly.  She noticed stirrings down beneath his loincloth.  “Yes, the wine has
done its work.  You will do just fine.”
    She reached over behind her, grabbed a corded rope that hung
from the wall, and pulled on it.  A bell rang somewhere, and almost instantly
the door to the chamber opened and two guards rushed in.  Without warning they
seized the captive, yanked him to his feet, and hauled him struggling out of
the room.  He stared, wide-eyed, at the priestess, exhibiting a look of terror
and realization of betrayal.  She smiled sardonically back at him as she once
again donned her headdress.
    The guards hauled him back onto the platform and over to the
stone altar, where they threw him down on his back and proceeded to lash him
down.  Despite his frantic strugglings he was able to perceive that the great
hall had filled with chanting denizens of the town, and there were many more
torches than before, casting their light all about the hall.  The mysterious
sounds of mouthpipes, lyres, and drums filled the hall.  As the guards
completed their lashings, securing him firmly to the altar, he was not able to
look anywhere else but straight up at the face of the statue of the goddess
that the priestess had identified as Inanna.  She seemed to gaze down
derisively at him, holding the mysterious blank yet colorful oblong stone high
above her head.  The chanting of the crowd grew to a crescendo as the priestess
stepped out from her chamber, holding her arms up and out in front of her.  The
prisoner could see that her left hand held the urn with the wine, while her
right held a long,