Horsemen of Old

by Krishnarjun Bhattacharya

  And he was gone. Gray shook his head, trying to focus. Someone knew. Probably a henchman or assassin, the man looked like a pirate though. Fayne could kill him in the back alley.

  ‘You wanna go and, err, take care of him?’ he asked Fayne. ‘Zabrielle and me, we could carry on our conversation.’

  ‘You have had a tad too much, myrkho,’ Fayne said, shaking his head. ‘Let us go and see what he wants.’ He grabbed Gray by the shoulder and got up, Zabrielle following quietly, her eyes wide and alert, unaffected by the whiskey she had been downing. Gray did not complain as they made their way through the crowded mess and out the back door. A thin alley, lit by a lamp on the wall. The man was alone, sitting on a closed dumpster.

  The frigid air cleared Gray’s senses, and he felt embarrassed immediately. His feet were still a bit unsteady; he leaned against a wall, fighting for normalcy, Fayne and Zabrielle on either side of him.

  ‘We’re out like you said,’ he spoke, trying his best to not let his words slur.

  The man nodded, teeth showing in a grin. He was now wearing a tricorne to keep the snow off. ‘I’m here to help you out, fellas.’

  Help? Out of the blue? Another trap for sure. Then Gray realised he had spoken the words out loud. Goddammit.

  ‘I know how it must sound,’ the man said, shaking his head. ‘But I was sent here to help you.’

  ‘Who sent you?’ Zabrielle asked, taking the reins.

  ‘You already know,’ the man said, looking straight at Gray, his smile gone. ‘If you triggered it, you must have felt the call too.’

  Bang. Gray was focused, every bit of his high gone. ‘Say the name,’ he said.

  ‘Anulekha,’ the man said. ‘You were loyal to her back there, you must have been.’

  Gray nodded. Familiar, somehow warm.

  ‘She sends me,’ the man said. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Charles Ward, and I will do whatever I bloody well can to help you. It is her will.’

  Gray nodded again. ‘Isn’t she dead? Isn’t she but a—’

  Ward nodded. ‘Her spirit lingers on in the Pashan, but you know that already. Our relationship is complex, a story for another time,’ he paused, ‘let’s just get on with it, eh, mate? Bloody weather and all that.’

  Gray nodded at the others. The feeling, the feeling was enough for him to trust Ward. He remembered Anulekha for a second, and realised he was in the city where she had died.

  ‘Zaleb Hel,’ he said.

  Ward was grim, already thinking, hand absently brushing the snow off his hat. ‘Come with me,’ he said finally, and walked off.

  They ate in a tavern which had a special section reserved for Ward, a place where they wouldn’t be eavesdropped upon. Once seated, they were brought the same dish, all of them, an assortment of food on a plate. It was quite late already, and the place had shut down, though for Ward it would stay open all night. Gray gaped at the beautiful waitress as she left, then concentrated on the food like Zabrielle. Fayne wasn’t eating; if anything, the assassin was slowly getting restless.

  Ward was downing coffee and staring at a clock. He called the waitress again and whispered something of importance—Gray catching only the words ‘the readings’—and she nodded and left. They finished eating, finally, and Ward looked at them.

  ‘The problem is the wind speed,’ Ward said. ‘Even if we aren’t sailing into the wind in the morning, even if we aren’t close hauling, there’s no bloody way my ship can beat the beast.’

  ‘What vessel do you own?’ Zabrielle asked.

  ‘A clipper, love, she’s called the Burning Cloud. Three masts, square rigged, peaks at fifteen knots, that’s almost twenty-eight kilometres per hour. She’s the fastest ship on that dock.’

  ‘One has heard of the Burning Cloud.’

  ‘Flattered. It’s been a good ten years, she’s got another fifteen on her at most. But it doesn’t make bloody sense to sacrifice her in a race we can’t win.’

  ‘How fast is the Leviathan?’ Gray asked.

  Ward stared. ‘It’s bad luck to call out its name!’

  ‘How fast?’

  ‘If I had a flutter, I’d guess it can clip twenty-six knots when it isn’t angry. That’s about fifty kilometres per bloody hour.’ Gray’s jaw dropped. ‘Look, it’s not a ship, it’s not a submarine. It’s a living creature, straight from the doors of hell,’ Ward said. ‘Captains have spent years trying to put it down, but it’s immune to cannon fire, resistant to magic. Stays underwater most of the time, so if you’re thinking of hurting it, out of the question. No, we have to bait it. Somehow.’

  The waitress returned and whispered into Ward’s ear. He nodded and thanked her, grim. ‘Wind’s low,’ he said. ‘There was little hope earlier, now we’ve got bugger all.’

  It was a mirthless talk. Ward offered them coffee and they drank quite a bit of it, talking over the same facts again and again. Ward seemed to know the Leviathan’s strengths quite well, and he shot down every prospective plan, every suggestion that might yield something. The only idea that made any sense was flying to the island. There had always been rumours of flying machines, but everyone knew they didn’t exist, that was fantasy. Ward said an Angel could fly them over, one at a time, but none of them knew Angels. There was another thing, another rumour, that of an undersea tunnel leading to the island. Ward did not know if it existed and where the entrance was—besides, the stories also said it was infested with nameless horrors.

  As the night deepened and everyone slowly felt tired, Ward offered them a large room in the same tavern. ‘Sleep the night off,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk again come morning.’

  The room they were shown to was luxurious compared to their previous lodgings. Gray saw Fayne slip out and did not say anything—what had to be done had to be done. Zabrielle stayed awake by the window for a while before she slept, while all that coffee kept Gray awake in bed. There was something missing, something vital, and yet again it had to do with his grandmother and her story of the Leviathan. The night it had happened. The night she had the white eyes.

  Gray closed his eyes and tried hard to remember.

  He was on a plateau, a small cylindrical tower-like piece of land, the sea on all sides, as far as one could see. The sky was blue, Gray marvelled, and the water red. A reversal. Across him, a hundred yards away, sat Melas the Daemon, facing away from him, looking out into the calm waters.

  ‘Not just a dream then,’ Gray said loudly. ‘You’re really here.’

  ‘You learn,’ Melas said. ‘But you do not act. I told you to reach the island soon. It is too late now, a trap has been set.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘The Lich,’ Melas said. ‘He waits for you there.’

  Gray did not feel dread this time, and he did not know if it was because he was in a dream. ‘I will face him when I get there,’ he said. ‘For now, I cannot reach the island.’

  ‘What stops you?’

  ‘The Leviathan.’

  ‘Remember then, what your grandmother told you. Her words were from the Miqra, the Hebrew holy text.’

  ‘Help me remember. It is difficult.’

  ‘Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?’ Melas recited slowly. ‘Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words? Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls? Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants? Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?’

  Melas paused briefly. Then he spoke again, his voice strong and terrible. ‘If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! Any hope of subduing him is false; the very sight of him is overpowering. Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?’

  ‘His back has—his back has rows of shields ti
ghtly sealed together,’ Gray said slowly, remembering. ‘Each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.’

  ‘His snorting throws out flashes of light,’ Melas said. ‘His eyes are like the rays of dawn.’

  ‘When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing. ’

  ‘The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin. Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood. Arrows do not make him flee, sling stones are like chaff to him. A club seems to him but a piece of straw, he laughs at the rattling of the lance.’

  ‘Nothing on earth is his equal,’ Gray said further, ‘a creature without fear.’

  ‘He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud,’ Melas finished.

  They reflected in silence then, man and Daemon, surrounded in every direction by endless water, their reflections travelling through the depths of the abyss, searching for this creature of dreams and legend. The poem was a tribute and an offering, and Gray recalled the wonder he had felt, the pride and the joy of co-existing in a world with such an entity. Yet this free creature had been bound somehow, bound to a seal in the hands of a fiend—Gray slowly understood now, with his nostalgia, that Drake was more of the monster and the Leviathan not just a mere instrument, a mindless beast.

  The Leviathan was more than a sea creature to hunt or evade or bait. The Leviathan was the sea itself, the angry waves and deep silence running through its blood, its very self. It was wild, it was untamed. It exacted its own will and moved of its own bidding, a giant entity beyond anyone or anything, a true leviathan. One could not make it a mere slave. And Drake hadn’t. No, he had done something else. The Leviathan Seal could not control, Drake had lied about it being his pet—

  ‘The Seal,’ Gray said aloud. ‘I need to find out the history of the Leviathan Seal.’

  Melas turned to look at Gray. His eyes twinkled. ‘Good,’ he said.

  When Gray awoke, he hurried out of bed and pulled his cloak on. Ward was on the roof, overlooking the shipyard in the early dawn. Either he had not slept at all, or he was an early riser; he stood a little hunched, a man who did not know what to do, duty binding him in place.

  ‘There might be a way,’ Gray said, approaching him. ‘I need to find a historian, a man who might know of where the Leviathan Seal comes from.’

  ‘It comes from the sea,’ Ward said, his voice giving away his weariness. ‘Bloody thing has always been with the Drakes, works only for them. What good will that do?’

  ‘I can’t explain. But you must help me. Do you know someone?’

  Ward did not have to think. ‘Yes. I’ll take you to her.’

  They started off immediately. A long walk, away from the coast, deeper inland. No vehicles, no trains—Ward led Gray through narrow paths between buildings, then large warehouses and past scrapyards. The factories loomed in the distance and stray dogs barked and fought in the early rays of the sun. They walked for hours. The sky was merciful enough to not snow.

  Then the charred parts began. There was a fence which they crossed, and then the land evened out completely, grass and soil blackened by great fires of long ago. The soil under their feet was unstable, and Ward asked Gray to watch his step—at certain places the ground was too loose, there were hollows filled with light sand, man traps. They saw cottages and mansions completely gutted, ghosts of their former selves, hoardings and signposts destroyed and crooked, sometimes tall and bent over, mostly not standing at all.

  Their destination came into sight soon. It looked like a cylindrical house, incredibly large, its edges caked with dirt. ‘That’s a shell,’ Ward said.

  ‘A shell? From a weapon?’

  ‘From the only time a Sea Lord and MYTH were at war. That’s what happened here. That shell was fired from a MYTH secret weapon. A bad round, it didn’t explode. She cleaned it out, the gunpowder, chemicals, the magic. She lives inside.’

  ‘Wow. Who is she?’

  ‘Her name is Edha. She’s a conspiracy theorist.’

  ‘Conspiracy theorist? They’re bonkers! I had said historian!’

  ‘Keep calm, mate. She knows more than all the old sods calling themselves historians stacked together. Does her research right, I’ll have you know.’

  They neared the shell, and Gray wondered how big the cannon must have been. The shell was dug well into the ground, yet the rest of it still towered above them, specks of metal glinting below the dirt. He saw a door cut into one side, a small rectangle in the immense object, fitted with a lock and a porthole from some ship. Ward knocked loudly.

  ‘Edha! Edha!’ he shouted. ‘Come out, you old bat.’

  A face peered through the porthole almost immediately. Then it withdrew, and Gray heard the whirring of gears, the clangs of locks. There were about ten locks on the door, and when it opened, a surprisingly young woman stood on the other side of it. She had raven black hair cut short like a boy, and she looked like the kind of person who wouldn’t bother with long hair and its caretaking—her face was small and oval, but physically she was tall and extremely slim, giving her the appearance of a child grown up too fast. Her skin was on the darker side, sunburnt and absolutely lacking the cosmetic. She wore a pair of dark, worn out jeans, boots, and a shirt. She had a short, stubby nose and wide eyes which were currently narrow as she stared suspiciously at Gray.

  ‘He’s all right, he’s with me,’ Ward said.

  ‘Oh he’s not all right just because you brought him, Charles,’ she spoke in a low, rather menacing voice.

  ‘I’m sorry about that time!’ Ward exclaimed, half raising his hands. ‘I really didn’t know the truth about that prat. Gray here is a right lad, I can vouch for him.’

  ‘Gray, eh?’ she said, still staring at him.

  ‘Ma’am,’ Gray said. ‘I’ve come to ask you for help.’

  ‘Kid’s got manners,’ Edha said drily, looking at Ward. She was no older than Gray herself. ‘Come on in, but I’ll look at you through my spectroscope first.’

  The large room was crammed, chock full of knick-knacks of all kinds, reminding Gray of Adri’s apartment. Books everywhere, on tables, chairs, on the floor, on makeshift shelves, journals and notebooks, pages open, scribbled in, pens and pencils rolling all over the floor. The wall was covered with paper, stuck and pinned, tiny writing scrawled all over, the den of a conspiracy theorist. There were boxes, padlocked shut, piled in stacks. Mechanical devices and old clothes lay strewn across the floor. A rifle hung conspicuously on the far side, and Edha was near it now, picking up something else, a helmet of sorts.

  She made Gray sit on a chair after knocking odds and ends off it, as Ward watched seriously. The spectroscope was like any other helmet, except it had a very detailed, complicated visor. To Gray it looked like the inside of a watch, cogs and gears and tiny workings that revolved and changed as Edha worked the knobs on the helmet’s side. Then the lenses of the visor started changing with faint clicks, and Gray saw red, blue, green, and yellow lenses come and leave as Edha glared through the helmet.

  Then finally she was done. ‘I have manners too, Gray, but I can’t take chances,’ she said, keeping the helmet aside. ‘This idiot had brought a skinchanger here once. It stole a very rare artefact that was in my possession.’

  ‘At least you killed him proper,’ Ward pointed out.

  ‘After he ate my artefact, Charles,’ she snapped. ‘I’m never finding another one. The Tenoa cipher stays a cipher.’

  ‘You will solve it, love, I’m sure. You keep working on it—’

  ‘The keyword, the keyword is missing. I can’t do anything without the keyword. I’ve been to all the forbidden arches, the clues just don’t add up.’

  Ward opened his mouth to say something else and closed it. ‘We have a problem, Edha,’ he said instead.

  Gray nodded. ‘I want to know more about the Leviathan Seal.’
>
  Edha’s eyes grew sharper with excitement. ‘Now that’s a freaking interesting subject,’ she said. ‘I’ve done some work on it. Not much but some.’ She drew back from both of them, moving her hands as she talked. ‘The Seal is first noticed by a chronicler employed by a Sea Lord, either the first or the second.’

  Then the Seal isn’t something Anulekha brought with her, it wasn’t the object that made her appear human, Gray thought. The Seal had been here earlier. I had heard rumours, but she speaks it like fact.

  ‘This chronicler is none other than Abul Ahad,’ Edha continued. ‘He’s wise enough to not ask the Sea Lord about the seal, but he makes a mention of it in his memoirs. However, Lachina Ibori, the famous slave girl Ahad rescued and set free on his travels—the one he had his infamous love affair with—she supposedly tears that very page out of his memoirs before it is published and distributed. The current editions still miss that one page. That page goes to Western Ahmedabad.

  ‘At that time—this is Ahad’s era we’re talking about—a young boy is growing up in Ahmedabad, a young boy destined to later become one of the bigger names among the fabled Warlocks. Baaligh.’ Gray nodded. ‘As a boy, Baaligh develops a friendship with Lachina as she stays in his city. He runs errands for her, he does everything and she does not step out. He soon figures out that she’s afraid of someone. She is, of course, later found mysteriously dead in the same city. Baaligh visits her grave after two decades—give or take a couple of years—when he is a Warlock himself. He finds the grave desecrated.

  ‘It is not easy for him to track down this page she had torn. Baaligh might have dismissed her murder as a coincidence, but the years have taught him well and he knows a mutilated coffin indicates an object of great value hidden away. Here historians argue that Baaligh searched for the object because of sentimental value,’ Edha rolled her eyes, ‘as if that were of any consequence. Attachment or not, he finds the page buried under the Vastrapur lake. The same night, he is accosted by assassins. He kills them. Then he begins to analyse the page. Now is the most interesting bit—the page holds a sketch of the Leviathan Seal and a few descriptions of how the Sea Lord never lets it out of his sight, wearing it around his neck at all times. Abul Ahad was famous for his incredibly accurate memory, extremely photographic, like his writings, and we can be absolutely sure that this illustration is a completely accurate description of the Seal.’