Rukh made no attempt to follow.
He stood and watched her. And when she had gone, he went a few steps, bent, and took up a flower she had dropped, and he drew its stem through the buttonhole of his gray lounge coat. It was a pale pink tea-rose, and its scent was strong and sweet.
CHAPTER XL
Few slept in Rukh that night. Over every mountain path eager peasants came from outlying hamlets and solitary, scattered huts. The horn lanterns they swung as they walked, swarmed the hill-ways like fireflies.
The place of sacrifices was burnished and garnished by the light of great flaring torches that temple girls, stripped to their slim, brown waists, held up, while the priests chattered and chanted, shifting dirt heaps into less conspicuous coigns, dusting the rough-hewn carvings, oiling and sharpening a knife, taking dead garlands down, putting fresher garlands up—bringing the blood-bowls out of the rock-crevice cupboards, shaking vestments out of their creases. The whole great place reeked of marigolds, cocoanut oil and resined torches. To-morrow it would reek of human blood. Yazok rubbed his hips itchingly, and he licked his lips, as he spat in a blood-bowl and rubbed it with a dirty oil-soaked rag till it shone anew.
In every hut-home preparations were making—festival garments being mended and shaken, flowers and feathers and tufts of fur woven into long necklaces, bracelets, anklets and head bands. Nuts and seeds were roasted and chewed, the lewd love songs of the amorous gods were sung by men and maidens, old crones and toddling baby-nakeds.
The palace teemed and throbbed. Servants with rapt, exalted faces moved about on tireless feet. Priests and soldiers crowded corridor and stairs. Savory smells belched up from the kitchens—children, in soft skin sandals, their plump groins and their slim ones swathed in gold, white and green, carried fruit-heaped trays in slim young arms, and on sure-poised heads, from store-rooms to pantries. Musicians cleaned and tuned and fresh-strung their instruments. Accoutrements, carpets and drapery were cleaned, and shaken and scented. The palace was as thick with sandal-wood smell as the sacrificial cave was of the stench of rotting flowers and leaves. Long ropes of blossoms were hung from jut to jut of every high carving. Peacocks’ feathers (carefully garnered in chests and closets—for they’d come from afar, and had cost a great price) were taken out in their splendid, iridescent thousands to deck rooms and corridors; paints and perfumes in lacquered boxes, tinseled and jeweled tissues, rainbow-silk and crêpes from Japan, laces from Ceylon and Persia were heaped and tangled on every harem floor. The children, even the new-born girl baby, had their nails fresh-tinted, and the women’s hands were rouged up to their knuckles.
Every posture-girl had new gauzy, tinsel-weighted garments, and at least one new ornament—nose-jewel or anklet or hair-plaque—and swayed on dancing feet with delight as she tried them on. Of all the palace, perhaps old Ak-kok was happiest. Her wrinkled parchment face was radiant, and in honor of to-morrow’s greatness she herself wrung its head from a young pigeon, tore out its hot heart, still beating, and rammed it into La-swak’s gaping mouth. He made a sick face at first, but then he found he liked it better than he’d thought, sucked it consideringly, then gave a sudden sick gulp, and the bird’s still hot, pulsing heart was down, hot and pulsing in La-swak. And old Ak-kok hugged him to her bony breast in ecstasy; for that the new-slaughtered vital had gone intact into the intestinal keeping of La-swak was unquestionable augury that he would live to be a great ruler, a mighty warrior and a favored priest of the Green Goddess.
Out of their byres and steep pasture-nooks (all the pasture places that the rough-hilled place afforded) the drowsy humped cattle were roused from their sleep by the laughing, shouting children that came to hang blossoms on their wrinkled necks. Two great steers chafed and pawed as agile men gilded their horns, avoiding them, the lowered horns, meanwhile as well as they could. Each horn-gilder had two other men beside him, protecting him with long bamboo poles, cruelly sharpened at one end, with which they prodded and bled the beast’s sides as often as it seemed too inclined to charge. The steers bellowed and lurched and bled, the men gilded and pricked and ran sweat—it ran rapidly down their brown faces—and dodged as skilfully, but not as gracefully as Spanish matadors, and the rabble of children circled about them, waving deodar wands, and posies, screaming and clapping their thin olive hands, applauding and urging on quite impartially the angry bulls and the reeking men. These steers would have great pride of place in the morrow’s spectacle, for theirs the office to trample the still warm sacrifices that were to be laid at the Goddess’s feet, and to drag away between the cheering tight-packed ranks of the worshipers the de-severed trunks of the Feringhis. When the horns shone out through the night gilded and burnished, then the hoof-gilding came, more difficult still, and greatly more perilous; then when the infuriated, switching tails had been paint-coated carmine and blue, the last finishing touch was given—great circles of green on each white heaving side, and the toilet was done. The gilders squatted down with grunts of relief—not too near—and mopped their faces with their sleeves, which they unwound for the purpose, and fell to kernel chewing or the smoking of long, green, Burmese-like cheroots. But the sacrificial steers were not allowed so to rest. The sharp bamboo poles still relentlessly kept them upright and firm on all fours, for they must neither squat nor relax till their fresh finery of gold-leaf and thick paint was quite dry.
Pregnant women in hut and on hillside were drinking hot gingered drams, and praying clamorously: for any child born as the death-horn sounded would bring with it into life great god-promised good-luck and strength and health, endless endurance, assured advancement—even a girl-child; for on her some man of the royal house’s eyes would fall with pleasure one day.