Sanctus

Chapter 143

Liv felt like she was sinking deep into water that was warm and thick with memories that swam before her as she sank; images from her life, flashing and fading like glittering fish. The breeze she had felt rinsing through her was now a current, bringing whispers of forgotten voices and fragments of distant memories with its flow. She sank deeper and the images thinned out, drifting upwards and away as a much brighter light rose up beneath her.

This is death, she thought as she watched it rise from the darkness to meet her. The light overwhelmed her and new images crowded behind her eyelids.

There was a garden, green and lush, and a man walking through it, and the sun shining down, or something like the sun. Then the shadow of a tree rose up and cut out the light, and she was in a cave, surrounded by men with hate in their eyes.

Then there was pain.

An eternity of pain and darkness as her flesh was ripped, and cut with blades, and burned with fire and boiling oils.

And there was the smell of blood.

And an endless, desperate yearning for the sun, to feel it on her skin and walk soft across the cool earth.

And pain was everywhere, flashing out of the darkness, imprisoning and overpowering her, for ever and ever.

Then she saw a face, with eyes full of sorrow and compassion.

Samuel’s face.

She fixed on the image, not wanting it to flit past like the others, holding it with her eyes until more things appeared within it.

She saw his body, naked from the waist up, flowing with blood from cuts deep in the skin. Then a cave, crowded with other men who reached up as one to draw bloody lines round their left shoulders with sharpened blades. And she heard a sound. An echoing chant of low voices bleeding together in an ancient language she somehow understood.

‘The first,’ they said over and over. ‘The first. The first.’

And pain flashed out of the darkness and exploded in her left side along with the sound of shearing flesh. And a new voice rang out, full of anguish and pain.

‘Where is God in this?’ Samuel cried. ‘Where is God in this?’ Then the images fled. And for a moment all was silent, and all was dark.

Then she felt herself starting to rise.