Finally the dance ended, but still the drummers kept to their madly throbbing beat; while in the crowd lesser dances had commenced, not so practised but no less intense and even more lusty. And as the celebrants paired off and fell upon each other, thick pelts were tossed into the pit where the great stone balanced, and petals of spring flowers gathered with the dew upon them, making a bower in the shadow of the boulder; and this was where the chosen couple were made to lie down, while all about the young people of the tribes spent themselves in the ritual spring orgy.
But the pair in the pit—though they had been stripped naked, and while they were drunk as the rest—nevertheless held back and drew apart, and scowled at each other through slitted eyes. Chylos stood at the rim and screamed at them: “Make love! Let the earth soak up your juices!” He prodded the young man with a spear and commanded him: “Take her! The gods demand it! What? And would you have the trees die, and all the animals, and the ice come down again to destroy us all? Do you defy the gods?”
At that the young man would obey, for he feared the gods, but she would not have him. “Let him in!” Chylos screamed at her. “Would you be barren and have your breasts wither, and grow old before your time?” And so she wrapped her legs about the young man. But he was uncertain, and she had not accepted him; still, it seemed to Chylos that they were joined. And as the orgy climbed to its climax he cried out his triumph and signalled to a pair of well-muscled youths where they stood back behind the boulder. And coming forward they took up hammers and with mighty blows knocked away the chocks holding back the great stone from the pit.
The boulder tilted—three hundred tons of rock keeling over—and in the same moment Chylos clutched his heart, cried out and stumbled forward, and toppled into the pit!—and the rune-inscribed boulder with all its designs and great weight slammed down into the hole with a shock that shook the earth. But such was the power of the orgy that held them all in sway, that only those who coupled in the immediate vicinity of the stone knew that it had moved at all!
Now, with the drumming at a standstill, the couples parted, fell back, lay mainly exhausted. A vast field, as of battle, with steam rising as a morning mist. And the two whose task it had been to topple the boulder going amongst them, seeking still-willing, however aching flesh in which to relieve their own pent passions.
Thus was the deed done, the rite performed, the magic worked, the luststone come into being. Or thus it was intended. And old Chylos never knowing that, alas, his work was for nothing, for his propitiates had failed to couple…
Three winters after that the snows were heavy, meat was scarce, and the tribes warred. Then for a decade the gods and their seasonal rites were put aside, following which that great ritual orgy soon became a legend and eventually a myth. Fifty years later the luststone and its carvings were moss-covered, forgotten; another fifty saw the stone a shrine. One hundred more years passed and the domed, mossy top of the boulder was hidden in a grove of oaks: a place of the gods, taboo.
The plain grew to a forest, and the stone was buried beneath a growing mound of fertile soil; the trees were felled to build mammoth-pens, and the grass grew deep, thick, and luxurious. More years saw the trees grow up again into a mighty oak forest; and these were the years of the hunter, the declining years of the mammoth. Now the people were farmers, of a sort, who protected limited crops and beasts against Nature’s perils. There were years of the long-toothed cats and years of the wolf. And now and then there were wars between the tribes.
And time was the moon that waxed and waned, and the hills growing old and rounded, and forests spanning the entire land; and the tribes flourished and fought and did little else under the green canopy of these mighty forests…
Through all of this the stone slept, buried shallow in the earth, keeping its secret; but lovers in the forest knew where to lie when the moon was up. And men robbed by the years or by their own excesses could find a wonder there, when forgotten strength returned, however fleetingly, to fill them once more with fire.
As for old Chylos’s dream: it came to pass, but his remedy was worthless. Buried beneath the sod for three thousand years the luststone lay, and felt the tramping feet of the nomad-warrior Celts on the march. Five thousand more years saw the Romans come to Britain, then the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, and still the luststone lay there.
There were greater wars than ever Chylos had dreamed, more of rape and murder than he ever could have imagined. War in the sea, on the land and in the air.
And at last there was peace again, of a sort. And finally—
Finally…
Two
Garry Clemens was a human calculator at a betting shop in North London; he could figure the numbers, combinations and value of a winning ticket to within a doesn’t matter a damn faster than the girls could feed the figures into their machines. All the punters knew him; generally they’d accept without qualms his arbitration on vastly complicated accumulators and the like. With these sort of qualifications Garry could hold down a job any place they played the horses—which was handy because he liked to move around a lot and betting on the races was his hobby. One of his hobbies, anyway.
Another was rape.
Every time Garry took a heavy loss, then he raped. That way (according to his figuring) he won every time. If he couldn’t take it out on the horse that let him down, then he’d take it out on some girl instead. But he’d suffered a spate of losses recently, and that had led to some trouble. He hated those nights when he’d go back to his flat and lie down on his bed and have nothing good to think about for that day. Only bad things, like the two hundred he’d lost on that nag that should have come in at fifteen to one, or the filly that got pipped at the post and cost him a cool grand. Which was why he’d finally figured out a way to ease his pain.
Starting now he’d take a girl for every day of the week, and that way when he took a loss—no matter which day it fell on—he’d always have something good to think about that night when he went to bed. If it was a Wednesday, why, he’d simply think about the Wednesday girl, et cetera…
But he’d gone through a bad patch and so the rapes had had to come thick and fast, one and sometimes two a week. His Monday girl was a redhead he’d gagged and tied to a tree in the centre of a copse in a built-up area. He’d spent a lot of time with her, smoked cigarettes in between and talked dirty and nasty to her, raped her three times. Differently each time. Tuesday was a sixteen-year-old kid down at the bottom of the railway embankment. No gag or rope or anything; she’d been so shit-scared that after he was through she didn’t even start yelling for an hour. Wednesday (Garry’s favourite) it had been a heavily pregnant coloured woman he’d dragged into a burned-out shop right in town! He’d made that one do everything. In the papers the next day he’d read how she lost her baby. But that hadn’t bothered him too much.
Thursday had been when it started to get sticky. Garry had dragged this hooker into a street of derelict houses but hadn’t even got started when along came this copper! He’d put his knife in the tart’s throat—so that she wouldn’t yell—and then got to Hell out of there. And he’d reckoned himself lucky to get clean away. But on the other hand, it meant he had to go out the next night, too. He didn’t like the tension to build up too much.