Email:
Lespion@msn.com
“It’s time,” Larra whispered,
tapping Rupali gently on the shoulder.
The Indian girl immediately sat
up. She had not been sleeping,
she was far too tense for that. The
harem was lit only by the low light of oil
lamps. Larra had not been able
to determine exactly what the oil was, but suspected that it was derived
from palm trees. Each lamp gave
a weak but steady light. Members
of the harem were not allowed to sleep in complete darkness, probably as
a matter of security, but also because the prince might decide to call on
them at any time.
One thing about the Prahgan that still mystified
Larra was the whereabouts of the king.
Apparently he was so deified that ordinary mortals could not look
upon him; that was reserved for the prince and a few other
notables. Larra supposed that
somewhere in the vast palace was another
harem. Surely the king would
have his proper compliment of female slaves, but she had never encountered
any of the other women.
The harem she was in was large
enough. It consisted of almost
a hundred young women of various Southeast Asian nationalities, although
Larra was the only one with any European
blood. There were also several
hundred female servants, many with
children. Most of these were
slightly older than the young girls the prince regularly called to his bed
and Larra had learned that they had once been members of the harem as
well. Motherhood usually brought
a respite from their conjugal duty of sleeping with the prince, a respite
most of the young women looked forward
to. The prince was renowned and
feared for his cruelty. Pain
was part of his sexual technique and all members of the harem dreaded being
called to his bed. Larra vowed
once again that she would deal with the prince before she ended her stay
in
Right now, however, escape was what she had
in mind. She was almost in her
sixth month of pregnancy and waiting any longer would soon make escape
impossible. She and Rupali had
planned carefully, exaggerating the effects of the brutal beating Larra had
received. At the same time they
had observed the routines practiced by the harem guards until they knew them
to within a few minutes.
Larra had detected one weakness in the harem
security. Escape through the
palace would be almost impossible.
It was far too crowded with guards and servants for anyone fleeing
the harem to escape unnoticed, especially someone as conspicuous as Larra.
However, the garden side of the
palace was much less well guarded.
In part this was because the palace gardens were enclosed by a high
wall and Rupali had learned that on the other side of the wall was a precipitous
drop into a jungle-filled valley.
It was widely held that anyone attempting to escape that way would
be sentencing themselves to death.
Larra, however, was determined to
try. Heavily pregnant, and supposedly
incapacitated from the beating she had received, she was no longer heavily
watched. Larra had helped the
situation by confining herself to her divan and walking with pretended difficulty
whenever she actually had to move.
She spent most of her time being waited on hand and foot by Rupali
and the other servants, a situation that almost drove her mad with boredom,
but which she endured in order to lull her captors into a false sense of
security.
The ruse seemed to have
worked. She and Rupali were now
almost ignored except for those servants who brought them food and attended
to any special demands they made.
At night they were ignored completely, even the prince seeming to
understand that the injuries he had ordered inflicted upon her made her unfit
for his bed.
Rupali too had been left
alone. Considering that the prince
could choose from a hundred bedmates and that Rupali was only one of these,
that was not surprising. Eventually
his mind would no doubt turn to the young Indian girl he had violated, but
they hoped by that time she and Larra would be well away from the
palace.
From under the pile of cushions they slept
on Rupali retrieved their rope. It
was actually nothing more than a number of the sheer harem garments that
had been ripped apart and then braided into a crude
rope. Being made of silk, it
was both light and strong. They
also had several spare outfits which they would no doubt need once they were
beyond the sheltered confines of the palace.
Sneaking from the palace into the gardens
was not difficult. In the tropical
heat many of the residents of the harem slept close to the relative coolness
of the gardens with their dozens of fountains and numerous ponds and flowing
streams. It was a simple matter
of gathering up their few possessions and sliding from the sleeping divan
into the gardens.
Once there they ghosted from shrub to shrub
until they reached the wall. Here
the going was more difficult. The
wall was manned by armed guards; guards who were forbidden to enter the harem
garden, but who nevertheless were able to see into the grounds with ease
from their lofty perch.
Fortunately, however, at night that advantage was
eliminated. Even the fact that
the wall was studded with torches did little to illuminate the garden, actually
making it easier for Larra and Rupali to see the guards rather than the other
way around.
There was no easy access to the walls,
however. No convenient stairway
or ladder led from the garden to the top of the
wall. That was not
surprising. The purpose of the
wall was not to keep people out of the garden, but rather to keep members
of the harem in; and it would have made no sense at all to allow the guards
into a place frequented by the prince’s
harem. As a result, Larra and
Rupali had to time their move exactly or risk their escape being
detected.
They crouched below the wall, their makeshift
silken rope tied around a short length of wood and waited until the guards
moved far enough along the wall that they would not be
detected.
Rupali could barely contain her
breathing. Her heart was hammering
so hard in her chest that she was certain that every guard on the wall must
be able to hear it. She expected
that Larra must feel the same, but she could detect not the slightest sign
of fear or emotion on the Englishwoman’s face; not that is, until she
smiled.
Rupali smiled back, trying to control the
trembling of her body. The
Englishwoman must be made of ice to be so calm, but Larra’s calm confidence
buoyed her spirits.
Finally, Larra
moved. With what appeared practiced
ease she tossed the rope through the crenellations on top of the
wall. The length of the piece
of wood had been measured precisely so that when the rope was drawn taut
it caught in the gap. Larra tested
it by tugging on the rope. Rupali,
almost fainting from tension, waited for a reaction from the guards, who
might have heard the faint “clunk” as the wooden weight made contact
with the outside of the wall.
The rope tightened, and without waiting, Larra
began her ascent, planting her feet against the wall and seeming to walk
straight up the vertical surface.
Rupali marveled at the ease with which the heavily pregnant woman
climbed the rope, hoping that she would do as
well.
Now was the most dangerous part of the escape
attempt. On top of the wall,
Larra was plainly visible to any guard who happened to look in her
direction. Only the poor light
gave her any protection. In broad
daylight, she almost certainly would have been
seen. Moving as quickly as she
dared, Rupali took a deep breath and followed, attempting the same climbing
technique Larra had used. To
her acute embarrassment she found that it as not as easy as it looked and
she almost lost her grip as she neared the top of the
wall. Fortunately, Larra had
anticipated her difficulty and reaching down seized her hand and helped pull
her up to the parapet.
Rupali stood gasping, acutely embarrassed
but at the same time, wondering at Larra’s
strength. She had just performed
a task a normal woman would have had difficulty with, much less someone almost
in her third trimester. However,
Larra gave her no time to think.
Hardly had Rupali gained the top of the wall than Larra was over the
breastwork and moving down the other
side.
Rupali crouched between the crenellations
and looked down into darkness. How
far down the wall dropped she had no
idea. All she knew was that the
other harem girls had told her the wall opened on a bottomless
canyon. She hoped that was simply
a figure of speech rather than the truth.
Larra was already disappearing into the darkness and now it was time
for her to follow.
Her heart in her mouth, and hoping that
Larra’s estimate of the strength of the makeshift rope was accurate,
she swung over the edge and tried to climb down the way Larra had instructed
her.
She gripped the rope with both hands and twisted
one leg about it and followed as best she could, hoping that this time her
strength would not fail. If it
did there would be no Larra to save her, and in fact she would fall and probably
dislodge her companion from the rope as she struck her on the way
down.
Hand over hand she lowered herself, wondering
how far above the ground she was and when it would be safe to let go, and
then her feet touched something.
For a fleeting second she thought she was down and then a calm voice
spoke. What it said was not
particularly reassuring.
“Hold on, Rupali.
We’ve run out of rope.”
Rupali felt her blood
chill. For all she knew they
were still dozens of feet above the
ground. What if the harem gossip
had been right? If it was then
she and Larra were stuck at the end of their rope with no place to
go. Desperately she tightened
her grip and prayed that she would not fall.
Jia Li would have sworn in frustration, but
it was not her nature. James
had done his best, but somewhere they had lost their
way. Everything had gone relatively
well in spite of their relatively slow
progress. As she had feared,
Lin Yao had held them back. The
tiny girl tried her best, but her short legs tired easily and the weather
had not helped. It had rained
one day out of every two making it difficult for the young boy to be sure
that he was on the correct path.
Still, he had guided them well until he had come to the temples site
where he had parted from his mother.
After that all they could do was follow the path of Larra’s
abductors.
That had not been difficult until the terrain
changed. The topography became
increasingly more rocky until they found themselves in a rugged canyon
land. Here the tracks of the
people they were pursuing became more difficult to follow and somewhere they
had made a wrong turn.
Jia Li suspected that they had strayed from
the correct path during one of the heavy downpours that frequently interrupted
their trek. Unfortunately they
had not noticed their error until they had made their way deep into the twisting
maze of steep-sided canyons. Now
they faced a bitter choice; to retrace their steps in the dubious hope of
determining where they had gone wrong; or to attempt to work their way out
from where they were. Jia Li
decided to give it another day or so.
It was just possible that by sheer luck they might find their way
back to where they should be.
And they needed a bit of
luck. They were almost out of
food and even the fact that James was able to find many edible plants in
the jungle did not change the fact that they would soon have nothing to eat
except what they could forage.
It was not a pleasant
prospect. At the very least it
would probably mean that they would have to spend most of their time looking
for food. At the
worst… Jia Li preferred
not to think of that. She had
come to save Larra, not to lead her children into
starvation.
Grimly she set her
jaw. “Let’s go,”
she said to James and Lin Yao.
Resolutely she started forward.
She had to find Larra, but this time she was not so sure that she
could.
“God, do I ever need a
bath.”
“Do y’ reckon?” smiled
Wallace. He grinned at Katie
who was in turn looking longingly at the idyllic scene before
her.
They had emerged from the dense forest into
a scene that seemed to be right out of
creation. Before them a stream
tumbled in a series of waterfalls down the face of a forest covered
cliff. It ended in an inviting
pool about a hundred yards across.
It was all Katie could do not to strip off her filthy clothing and
hurl herself into the crystal water.
However, as the nominal leader of the expedition that would set a
poor example, especially to the male porters that they had hired to pack
most of their gear, and so she restrained
herself. She would bathe, but
she would do it in an orderly fashion.
“My god, this is
paradise.” Melissa had come
up beside her and was looking longingly toward the
water. She stood for a minute
and then added, “I am going to check out the upper
falls. There might be another
more private area where the falls drops over the
edge.”
Katie saw at once what Melissa had
seen. The upper falls seemed
to drop into a hidden pool before spilling into the lower
pool. “Good idea,”
she agreed. “You do that
while I see to setting up camp.”
The next hour more than occupied her time,
but as she finished Melissa returned.
“It’s perfect,” the girl
gushed. “If anything it
is even nicer than this one. And
we can’t be seen.”
“Great, I’ll be right up there,”
Wallace chimed in.
“I don’t think so,” Katie replied,
her hands on her hips. “I
am relying on you to make sure that none of the porters try to sneak up there
while we’re bathing.”
She grinned while she said it, but Wallace
pretended to be highly offended.
“Tell you what,” he
offered. “Blindfold me and
then take me with you.”
“Not bloody likely, mate,” Katie
responded imitating his accent.
“I have a horrible feeling that the blindfold would accidentally
slip.”
Wallace gave his best schoolboy
grin. Katie could not help noticing
that he had the most amazing dimples, however, she countered by adopting
her best schoolmarm expression.
“Don’t even think about it,” she
warmed. “I find you sneaking
up on us and you’ll end up a gelding.”
“Right boss,” Wallace replied, the
grin not leaving his face.
“I’ll make sure you’re not
disturbed.”
Half an hour later Katie and her four companions
stood on the edge of the upper pool.
It was a perfect location, affording complete
privacy. As Melissa had promised,
it was even more beautiful than the lower pool although not as
large. A thirty foot waterfall
roared over a cliff and plunged into the water creating a fairy tale
setting. Growing out of the cliff
and the area around the pool was a wealth of tropical
vegetation. Katie could barely
prevent herself from leaping fully clothed into the swirling
water.
In the lower pool she could hear Wallace and
the porters splashing about. In
many ways the man was like a small boy.
From the sound of things he had started a water
fight. She admired him for the
way that he was able to bond with almost anyone, including the porters they
had hired. Most white men would
have treated them like dirt, but Wallace acted as if they were on the same
social level as he was; something that had helped keep the remaining porters
loyal.
She
began to strip off her filthy clothes.
Like the other girls she had brought everything she had to wear with
her. The dip in the forest pool
was going to be more than just a pleasant swim; it was going to be a chance
to do all of their laundry.
As she stripped Katie went through the daily
ritual of getting rid of any leeches that had somehow managed to get past
the barriers she had erected against
them. Despite the fact that she
wore two pairs of socks and tucked her trouser legs into them, a few of the
supposedly mindless creatures always seemed to get past these
safeguards. This time there were
five. She plucked them off and
tossed them into the shrubbery. She
held no grudge against them; they were after all, simply doing what nature
had designed them to do. As she
finished she noticed that the other girls had completed the same
ceremony.
Finished her deleeching, she picked up her
clothes and went to the edge of the pool.
She longed to just jump in, but wanted something dry to get back into
when she was finished her swim, so she kept herself in check and thoroughly
washed her clothing first. For
that job she and the others had brought along bars of
detergent. She worked the soap
into each garment, and then using the rocks at the side of the pool, scrubbed
them until she was satisfied before rinsing them in the flowing
water. Finally finished, she
spread her clothing on the rocks beside the
pool. The hot tropical sun would
dry them inside of an hour.
She eased herself into the water, luxuriating
in the touch of the cool liquid on her overheated
body. It was the best that she
had felt in weeks. Almost
languorously she breast-stroked out into deeper
water. She was joined by the
other girls. Impishly, Melissa
splashed water in her direction although it made little sense to do so as
she was submerged up to her shoulders.
Laughing, Katie returned the splash and the water fight was
on.
For the next ten minutes the five young women
churned up the pool, ducking one another and generally engaging in spirited
horseplay. Any man chancing upon
the erotic scene would have sworn that he had stumbled upon five wood
nymphs. Finally, Katie swam over
to the edge of the pool and picking up a bar of toilet soap, she shampooed
her hair, finishing with a rinse under the waterfall.
“Best bath I ever had,” she murmured
as she moved to the side of the pool and pulled herself up on the
rocks. She stretched herself
out full length under the hot sun, soaking up its delightful
rays. Tomorrow when she resumed
the hunt for Larra she would be cursing its merciless heat, but for today
it was sheer luxury. She closed
her eyes and dozed.
“How many are there?
“Not many, sir,” the soldier
answered. “I counted only
twenty men, and just a single European, but I suspect there may be a few
more farther on as all I could see was what appeared to be
porters. The tents appear to
be British army issue, but I could see no sign of any
soldiers.”
“And you say they were swimming?”
“Yes
sir. I was able to get quite
close. They didn’t even
bother to post a sentry.”
“Sloppy,”
“But I know nothing of fighting,”
Purwanto protested.
“Nevertheless,”
The stocky sergeant
grunted. It was clear that he
needed little or no help from Purwanto.
However,
Purwanto cursed under his
breath. He had not expected that
“Bastard,” he
thought. He would find some way
of getting back at the arrogant Japanese officer for
this. His mind filled with thoughts
of vengeance, he followed Fujima into the jungle.
Sweat poured from her brow and her hands were
slippery on the rope. Rupali
knew that she was going to fall, but she dared not cry
out. That would send a warning
to the guards who patrolled the wall.
She could clearly hear them talking quietly just above
her. She hoped that they did
not spot the rope that Larra had looped about one of the
stones. It was in plain sight
for anyone whose eye happened to fall upon
it.
Her hands slipped, and then she felt a steadying
grip on her legs. Slowly she
slid down the rope, her feet coming to rest on the narrowest of
ledges. She bit back a gasp of
relief, fearful that she would be
overheard. Larra held her tight,
making sure that she did not topple into the
darkness.
Larra made no sound, but carefully pulled
Rupali down on the ledge beside her.
Using touch alone she guided the girl’s hands and feet into invisible
hand and footholds in the rock face.
How Larra knew they were there, Rupali had no
idea. Breathing a gentle sigh
of relief she clung to the surface of the rock and then she felt a gentle
tug. It took Rupali a few seconds
to realize that Larra was moving.
Incredibly the pregnant woman was descending the cliff in the
dark. Almost shaking with fear,
Rupali gritted her teeth and followed.
PREVIOUS
CHAPTER WIZARD'S
LAIR MAIN PAGE
L'ESPION'S
STORY PAGE
NEXT
CHAPTER