By Desire Bound Read online

  She closed her eyes to try to imagine it; but all she could sense was the bright relentless sunlight reflecting off the river, and the presence of people she couldn't see.

  Buried in darkness. Walking death. Take back your life. The part you can't see.

  She felt someone knock against her shoulder, hard, and she opened her eyes. But whoever had jostled her had merged among the crowd at the rails watching the scenery, except for one lone anonymous figure on the hurricane deck who seemed to be watching her.

  Baghdad in the morning, under the glow of an orange sun. A panoply of mosques and minarets, bridges and boats, golden domes and orange groves, and date gar­dens as the boat steamed slowly into the harbor.

  A phalanx of officials and porters to greet them. Offers of transportation and guides for hire. A swirl of color and noise and crowds so close-packed, it was impossible to see anything.

  "What do we do now?" Darcie whispered under the babble of voices.

  "We go to one of the Mission Houses. We'll have a

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  room for the night, and they'll help with letters of transit and supplies."

  They still had to get past the officials who routinely examined the passengers' baggage, that easily done by offering a bribe, and then they were ferried to shore.

  They passed through the Custom House with no prob­lem and engaged one of the eager young boys who were hawking their services to take them to the Mission House. There, they were provided with accommodations which were little more than dormitories set up in a base­ment beneath the mission, and the price of admission was a donation and their presence at the evening service.

  In the morning, the mission doctor set about helping those who were travelling to the interior obtain the nec­essary papers, equipment and guides.

  "All of which is very expediently done when you have money," Con said wryly as the number of piastre notes and krans diminished drastically.

  "I would kill for a bath," Darcie muttered.

  "I warned you."

  Their guide, Karun, provided the mules they would need for their journey over the mountains to Isfahan. They scoured the market for trunks and tents, sheepskin coats and boots, dhurries to sleep on, cooking apparatus and food.

  "But note, everything of value is brought from the market to the home of the prospective buyer," Con told her. "The upper castes do not come out to shop here." And they travelled, making around fifteen miles a day, over rough roads, camping by the side of mud villages i by night, passing caravans of voyagers like themselves, and bedouins seeking rest, walking into the endless ex­panse of desert toward the mirage of the mountains in the distance.

  And Con saw none of it. He felt the heat of day and the cold of night, and he walked quickly and efficiently,

  for he held in his memory the places he'd travelled all those years before.

  They began the ascent of the mountain two days later, and into the rain, and camping in the mud, and making do with little graces, like having water for tea. They hud­dled at night under their sheepskin coats on their mud­died dhurries, and they hardly slept at all.

  Karun tended mules and set up the tents, took his turn at watch, and was as taciturn as a rock.

  They pressed on. Higher and higher, colder and colder, until nothing could be seen but sand and sky, and mud and brush. And onward, over rock and soil, ravines and hillocks, until they breasted the pass that would bring them to the other side and prepared to go over the bridge.

  Karun took the mules across first, with their gear. The sun was just setting; he stood motionless at the end of the bridge, his body limned against the purpling light.

  "It is safe," he called. "You can come."

  Oh, but the fall on the one side was steep, and twilight was coming fast. It was the end of the world. Darcie felt it in her bones. She stepped onto the narrow edge of the footbridge, with Con right behind her, and slowly eased her way along the rocky ledge.

  There was brush and scrub to hang onto, but it was even more difficult with Con gripping her hand and slowing her as he felt his way.

  And then the wind whipped up with a drizzling rain.

  On the other side, Karun waited as they shuffled cau­tiously across the bridge.

  "Only a little, m'em. Just a little more."

  She looked up as she heard his voice, and she saw him at the other edge, waiting for them, his eyes burning, his hands tensing for the confrontation to come.

  She stopped abruptly. "Oh my God—Con . .. it's him— it's Karun . . ."

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  He heard the terror in her voice. "Darcie—the dag­ger . . ."

  "Oh dear Lord, I can't..."

  "You have to . . ."

  "He's coming toward us."

  "He'll kill us. Darcie—throw the dagger . . ."

  His voice was so calm in her ear, as if he had no idea of the danger. As if a wrong step wouldn't hurtle them over into the ravine, and death.

  Karun paced slowly toward her.

  No words needed. No choices. They couldn't back up, they couldn't go forward. They couldn't escape, one way or the other. It was the dagger or nothing.

  She slipped her hand under her tunic and pulled it from its sheath just as Karun lunged threateningly to­ward them.

  She lifted the dagger.

  He stopped abruptly, balancing himself against the rock wall with his right hand. There was no doubt he recognized it. "Ahh ..." His voice was guttural, cruel, different from the tone of sailor and cabman. "But you know—you cannot kill me ..."

  She felt the horror right through to her bones, and she grasped the dagger in her shaking hand by the tip just the way he had on the train. He watched her, with that feral cunning, looking for that telling moment of hesitation, marking her weakness, sapping her fight.

  "I can try . . ." she hissed but she couldn't steady her hand; she was never going to be able to use it. Not accu­rately.

  And he knew it.

  "Use it." Con's voice in her ear.

  Oh God.

  "Kill him." The desert bandit, merciless at the kill.

  "I can't. "The dagger wobbled in her hand.

  "Do it, Darcie—or we die."

  He couldn't see the man; but he sensed death a foot­step away.

  "You are doomed," Karun intoned. "You won't es­cape. Wherever you are, I will come for you." He started toward her again. "I come for you now . . ."

  "Noooooo. . . .'" she shrieked and hurled the dagger straight at his face, at the burning eyes that reflected the fires of hell.

  He stopped short, shocked, and clamped his hand over his forehead, where the dagger protruded like an­other evil eye. He looked at her disbelievingly, his eyes two dark pools of malevolence and hatred, and he stepped threateningly toward her, blood spurting from between his fingers.

  "No . . ." the word was a gurgle as blood spumed up from his mouth. "No ..." as if he were invincible and it wasn't possible. "NOOOO . . . /"he shrieked, and then he dropped to his knees and with a keening wail, he pitched over the side of the bridge and into the void.

  The rest, after that, was easy. They joined a caravan going through Isfahan to Kandahar, a border town in Afghanistan. They stayed but two days in Isfahan, taking time only to find a place to bathe, to rest their mules, and to buy new rugs, bedding, candles, and a fresh store of food, including tins of preserved meat, tea, flour and rice.

  Now Darcie began feeling again that sense of urgency. She had been numb since she knifed the man with the burning eyes. She refused to believe he was dead, even after that fall off the cliff. Nothing was certain, not after everything they had seen.

  But surely they were less vulnerable among the travel­lers in the caravanserai. Safety in numbers, and among men. The leader of the caravanserai thought her an ef-

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  feminate and managing young man and called her mast—curdled milk—because she was always sour and bossed around the tall malek, her chief.

  It was saner to be in company as they crossed moun­tains and borders and fended off marauding thieves; Con knew just enough of the language to have some conversation, and they found one or two others who were interested in going on to trade in Lahore.

  They stayed three days in Kandahar, and went forward finally, to Lahore, just inside the border of India.

  There they left the traders of the caravanserai, and there, before them, was the end of their journey, and there, suddenly, they were on their own.

  God's tears. Somewhere it was written that diamonds con­tained the essence of God, and that when God created man, his tears of joy embedded themselves in the ground to solidify into gemstones, superior to any other on earth.

  Somewhere, in the vast reaches of all the research he had done, the myths he'd studied, the clues he'd discarded, the theories evolved, he had determined the location of the fabled Valley oj Diamonds, from which Scheherazade spun the tale of the eagles and the sheep and valley walls so steep that no man could climb them.

  There, on the fringes of the magic carpet of her thousand and one nights, did she weave a story for the ages, a valley floor adrift with diamonds and no man brave enough or clever enough to come and take them away.

  And then he had come, and he had seen, but he had not been clever enough to remove them. And because it was a question of balance, penance had to be paid.

  The indomitable force and the unspeakable evil. . . perfect in nature, and blessed in all things . . .

  They caught him in Srinagar, watching for him, wait­ing for the moment he must surface to buy supplies. He should have stayed in the mountains forever, Christ in the wilderness, knowing he was about to be betrayed.

  But he had thought they were far away, and as a man alone, he was safe.

  A man with a secret is never safe.

  In the deep of the night, they came for him in the dak bungalow where he took his rest. They caught him sleep­ing, they caught him off guard, and they caught him as neatly as a spider catches a fly.

  After that, the days and nights were a blur. They'd planned everything; the hell-hole of his prison pit had been prepared beforehand, and when, after induce­ments and torture, he refused to reveal the location of the valley, they incarcerated him without a blink.

  And then time had no meaning at all.

  Somewhere outside of Srinagar. They'd been so wrong.

  Now he was here, everything came rushing back like a tidal wave. He needed to think, to eat, to sleep.

  And so the tall impassive malek and his sour-faced sec­retary who never looked you in the eye took a dak bun­galow along the trunk line to Srinagar, to spend a profitable two days in sleep.

  Darcie was certain she'd never sleep again, even though the hardships of the journey had taken a toll. She was sunburned, she was aching and sore, and the burden of being Con's eyes had taken a lot out of her and she felt exhausted to the core.

  If only she didn't see that man every time she closed her eyes.

  Con had no compunction whatsoever about sleeping. He was dead tired, and not even thinking what awaited them. Two rupees was a small price to pay for a measure

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  of security to obtain some rest. And with that, for a nomi­nal sum, they were served dinner as well.

  Roasted chicken, stuffed eggplant, baked custard—a feast after what they had endured on the trip.

  "How long must I remain Mast-sahib then?" Darcie asked, as she devoured the chicken and custard.

  "We'll continue on with it, I think. Along the border, there are enough traders going back and forth that we won't be conspicuous."

  "And we're going—where?"

  "Up into Kashmir, in the Dhambra Mountains."

  Dear God—more mountains. More climbing. More hard­ships. She was tired of it, suddenly; she wanted desperately to go home.

  Except there was no home, for either of them.

  "When?"

  "In a day or two."

  She hated those words. She hated the waiting. The faster they travelled, the sooner they'd get there, and they'd been travelling for two months at least.

  But time meant nothing here. Not to him. in the dark­ness. And not to her in a place where it was measured by how many miles you could make in a day.

  At least they would be going up to Srinagar by train, travelling third class, wedged among fifty commuting lo­cals, assorted livestock and bundles of all shapes and sizes, going first through Sialkot and along the Jhelum River up into the mountains to Srinagar in the Vale of Kashmir.

  Srinagar was the land of hills and houseboats, where the pukka-sahibs came to escape the summer heat. But in the off-season, there were plenty of houseboats available to rent, and they found one on the Nagin Lake, a short

  distance from the town, that came with a house servant, a cook and a wallah to drive the tonga.

  It was Darcie's idea of heaven: the lulling rock of the boat on the gentle tide of the lake. The views, the vista, the weather, the servants, the conveniences.

  Con however seemed coiled and tense, ready to spring, primed to explode. "Two weeks," he said. "Two weeks at the most is all we'll be here." He was amazingly calm given how close they were to the objective. It was all swirling around him, the agony and the urgency. The time had come. The balance had shifted. He was meant to be there. She'd been right all along.

  "Darcie . . . !" He turned from the window where he'd been staring into his own dark soul.

  "I'm here."

  "Tomorrow, you will go into town and you will seek out the box-wallah called Sidhu Hamil. And you will tell him this: the Chowkidar awaits him. He will know what to do."

  He was an unprepossessing man, an itinerant peddler, and people in the town called him either a beggar or a saint. He was a man who had given his allegiance to Con Pengellis all those years ago. He knew how to appease the gods of the mountains, how to go, what to take, and Darcie was instructed to expend on him one of the small diamonds so he could purchase their stake.

  They were on their way again two days later, up on the snow-covered track toward Gilgit, over the Burzil pass, by mule and by foot, over goat trails and icy rivers, and death defying ravines.

  Up up up to the mystical juncture of four mountains, the Hindu Rush, the Himalaya, the Dhambras and the Nanga Parbat, camping under sheepskin-shrouded

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  tents, warmed by two portable stoves, cradled in the howl of the wind.

  "Jesus was said to have walked here," Sidhu said in his thin high voice as they drank tea after their meager din­ner on the second night, "in the valley, in the grotto where The Eye of God rests, and it is said that this diamond is blessed."

  "But there's no proof He ever passed here," Con said, his tone dry. "It's part of the legend that just seems to grow."

  Sidhu shook his head. "You must believe, sahib, and with that belief will come success."

  "There's a pass four miles ahead that they call the Top of the World, and from there, you can just see the Panput Valley. It looks inhospitable, impossible to negotiate. A steep fall into a thousand trees."

  "The valley?" Darcie whispered.

  "The valley. My Valhalla, Darcie. The palace of TheEye

  of God." ' *

  He had marked the place on an outcropping of rock on the ridge at the Top of the World all those years ago. But seven years had effected many changes, the most discouraging of which was that the marking was almost completely effaced. They spent a frustrating half a day looking for it in the midst of the swirling snow. And then, the growth in the valley looked so thick and impenetra­ble, Sidhu didn't see how they would make it down.

  T
hey waited until the snow abated, and then they de­scended by ropes pulled tight around the rock-bound trees at the edge of the track. Sidhu went first, Con next, and Darcie after.

  Slowly slowly down the face of the valley wall, certain no one could follow them, they levered themselves down thick rough hemp ropes, their legs bouncing against the

  scrub and boulders, sending little rock landslides down into the valley below them.

  The sky darkened over, as if the gods were displeased. Darcie felt her muscles cramp in her legs and arms, and the fear of death invaded her soul. She didn't dare look up, couldn't bear to look down, had no idea whether Sidhu or Con had reached the ground below. And how would they return? she wondered frantically. What if they could never get out? Dear God, she couldn't think this way. She would let go and she would die, and someone else would reap the rewards of finding The Eye.

  It was enough to keep her going in the face of her terror, the cold, the impossible descent, with her grip on the rope her sole lifeline. She had nothing else, only this. She had to come through.

  "Darcie . . . !" Con, below her.

  "I'm here . . . !" She wasn't there; she floated above them, lightheaded, surrounded by angels, heading to­ward the light.

  "Come, memsahib, come." Sidhu's voice slicing through the icy air.

  "I'm coming." She focused on it like a beacon. Just a little bit more. A few feet more. Ever more.

  "Come—" Sidhu's thin musical voice pulling her on, "you are almost here . . ."

  Almost here . . . she could let go, she had nothing to fear-—

  She relinquished her grip, her fingers stiff with the

  cold, and she fell heavily to the ground, she heard Con's

  voice above her: "Jesus God—the baby . . . !" and she

  gave up her soul.

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  Silence. An all-consuming heavenly silence.

  She lay cradled in a bed of leaves and scrub at the base of the valley wall, and contemplated heaven. Sidhu knelt beside her, touching her gently in various places.