by Samit Basu
The inevitable had happened. Danh-Gem, learning of the Gauntlet and its powers, had stolen it, making bitter enemies of the people of Xi’en. But their enmity was irrelevant, because he now wielded greater power – the dragons bowed to him, and unleashed their mighty powers in a torrent of war and destruction that changed the very shape of the world. With his armies of asurs, pashans and dragons doubly strengthened by his secret alliances with the Sultan of Artaxerxia and the High King of Skuanmark, Danh-Gem had conquered the west; he had ravaged his way through Vrihataranya, destroying utterly the great cities of the Psomedeans and changing the landscape of most of the southern lands. He had burned even the land of the dead, Elaken, giving the land of pyramids to the Artaxerxians as a reward for their treachery. He had taken the Gauntlet to the north and found to his great delight that even the northern dragons, the terrible flying lizards, accepted the Gauntlet-wielder as their lord. With their aid, he had devastated the entire northwest, humbling the mighty armies of Ventelot with fire, magic and cavalries of ferocious Skuans. Xi’en alone would have opposed him, but could not, because it was torn apart by civil war.
But that was all over now, thought Ombwiri. The castles of Ventelot and the fair cities of Psomedea were now broken, burnt ruins in charred, haunted lands. The dead pharaohs of Elaken slept in their hidden chambers, Danh-Gem had been destroyed and the Gauntlet had been found and returned to Xi’en. But what if the dragons returned?
Ombwiri shuddered. It seemed odd to imagine dragons in the New Age. It was a world ruled by common sense, by money and by trade. It was a world based on co-operation and mutual avoidance of warfare. It was a new world, a world where ravians, rakshases and dragons and words like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ had no place in the adult mind, a world where Artaxerxia had an embassy in Avranti, where asurs and pashans walked the streets of a great human city, the ruler of which, Ombwiri realized with a start, was talking to him.
‘When did this start?’ she asked.
‘Well, the waters rise and fall all the time,’ he said, slowly, ‘but there was a sudden spurt in the fountain a few years ago – eight years, or was it seven? The waters suddenly rose by about six feet. We watched and waited, and when the news came that a rakshas was sighted and killed in Avranti we thought that that had caused the waters to rise, not realizing that the rakshas awakening must have been an effect and not the cause of the rise in magic. We failed in our duty, my Lady. I apologize.’
‘I did not call you here to lay blame, Chancellor. You have come to me now, and perhaps we can solve this puzzle before any serious damage is done.’
‘But the waters have been rising steadily, my Lady. And we can see no way of stopping them, or of understanding why. Why, indeed, is magic rising? Is it anything to do with the Simoqin Prophecies? After all, this is the year they are supposed to come true. Our best decoding spells have failed to help us understand the books that were rescued from Danh-Gem’s tower.’
‘They’re not called the Untranslatables for nothing. What is the problem, unknown symbols?’
‘No. The letters are ravian runes, ironically – a little showing off on Danh-Gem’s part – but the language is not ravian. Our best scholars could not break the code. ’
‘The Simoqin Prophecies. The return of Danh-Gem, and the arrival of the Hero,’ murmured the Chief Civilian. ‘It is certainly all very suitably ominous.’
‘May I ask you something, Lady Temat?’ said Ombwiri rather abruptly.
‘Certainly.’
‘Why is Mantric not here? Would it not be wise to order him to return to Kol? Despite his - eccentriticities, but he is probably the most powerful spellbinder among us all. Why did you send him to study the bunyips of Bolvudis Island? It has been three years now.’
‘Let me make this very clear, Chancellor,’ said Lady Temat in a voice that would have made burning coals freeze, ‘I did not send Mantric to Bolvudis, to study bunyips or other insignificant water monsters. He chose to go on his own, and I do not know why he has stayed there – if, indeed, he is still there. I cannot order him to return to Kol. And since he is, as you say, eccentric, I think he should be left to his own devices. I cannot trust someone who is not completely devoted to the city, no matter how powerful he is.’
She looked at his stunned face, and her voice became less harsh.
‘You, on the other hand, have always been a true friend, Chancellor. I believe that is all; thank you so much for coming.’ Ombwiri, perceiving that he had been dismissed, smiled uncertainly and left fast.
Walking out of the Palace, Ombwiri felt that strange sense of dissatisfaction and confusion that he always felt after talking to the Chief Civilian. The magic thing was worrying, very worrying indeed. But the other things were even more confusing. Why was Temat so angry with Mantric? He’d always thought their bond was unbreakable. When Mantric had turned the Skuan ambassador into a skunk and back ‘to see if he smelled any different’, the Civilian had done absolutely nothing! It occurred to him, as he got on his carpet and started gliding back to Enki, that the Civilian might not have been entirely truthful about everything.
The Chief Civilian, on the other hand, seemed to be entirely at peace, humming a little tune as she stood and watched the sun set over the Kol skyline. Even the arrival, a few minutes later, of a small buzzing black shape that flew down from the sky and landed on her shoulder, did not seem to put her out at all.
She pressed the scarab’s head and the shell popped open. She took out the small piece of paper inside and unfolded it.
‘Asvin arriving tomorrow,’ it said. There was a strange, shiny mark on the bottom left corner of the paper. It looked like a little dagger.
Chapter Ten
There was magic in the air and the sea around the island of Bolvudis. It crackled, tingled and sparkled in the moonlight. The dark waters rippled and broke to show lithe shapes that frolicked and sang in the moon-road across the Psomedean Ocean. Bolvudis by moonlight was misty and dreamlike. Imps flew around the cliffs, sometimes swooping down into the Very Blue Lagoon to slide along the giant tentacles of the placid Picsquids. Soon it would be spring, and the selkies would start migrating, returning to the thawing waters of the north.
It was always warm and merry in Bolvudis. An enormous elephant-makara sat on the beach, its dolphin-tail curled beneath it, politely thanking imps for the fruits they had brought it. Mer-people played tail-blowfish, shouting boisterously. The sirens were quiet – they liked to come out after the mer-men, who made ardent but sadly unrefined swains, had returned below the surface. Two picnicking young bunyips loped around on the beach, bellowing happily as they tried to crush lobsters.
Oster the imp was not a part of the moonlight revelry, though. He had work to do. The scene he had just witnessed was one of the best the Badshah had ever directed. The Badshah had told him to fly as fast as he could to show the Picsquid what he had seen, and what the Badshah said, Oster did.
The Badshah! There was someone the First Eye had surely winked at. It was whispered that he had once been a great spellbinder in the great city of Kol, before he had journeyed far south and west, to Bolvudis Island, and discovered his true calling. For it was the Badshah who had started the wonderful voyage of self-expression and discovery they had all embarked upon together – it was the Badshah who, soon after coming to Bolvudis, had discovered the powers of the Muwi tree, and started the magic of Muwi-vision.
Oster heard the rustling of the palm-leaves of the Very Blue Lagoon and zoomed down, eye tightly shut, navigating through sound like a bat, towards the sparkling waters. Now, to find a clear Picsquid…
The Muwi tree was truly the First Eye’s greatest gift to the world, thought Oster. The Badshah had ground the leaves of the Muwi tree and burned them for some spell, and had discovered their unique power by sheer accident. If an imp inhaled the smoke of burning Muwi Leaf, his eyes glazed over and he was able to remember everything he had seen recently in immense detail, as if whatever he saw was imprinted in his mem
ory–at least while the effect of the wondrous Leaf lasted, after which whatever he had seen would emanate from his eye in a minutely detailed recreation of the real thing, in a beam of light which, if suitably magnified with mirrors and lights, created a truly magical spectacle. Oster loved the feeling that smoking the Leaf gave him–the stunning clarity of vision, the vividness of every speck of living, vibrant colour, the way every drastic movement burned little trails in his mind…
The Badshah had initially simply been amused by his little discovery. He had tried to take the imps and some Muwi saplings to Kol, to aid the spellbinders in their studies, and had found that both the tree and the imps died swiftly and painfully if taken beyond a certain distance from the island. It was after nearly eight months of painstaking and meticulous study that the Badshah had found a way to store the images that the imps saw, using the Picsquids.
And now the Badshah had hired a team of actors from all over the world. He hadn’t needed to hire them, in fact: they had just turned up whenever the Badshah had decided to enact a new play, using the strange homing method known only to out-of-work actors. Now various grim historical plays, squishy modern romances and the tense action-oriented thrillers were being created that would surely enthrall the world – once all the necessary machinery had been built.
Oster skimmed over the sparkling moon-lit waters of the Very Blue Lagoon until he found the Picsquid he sought. He flew down, and felt it reach upwards and grasp him gently but firmly with its two larger tentacles. Then he felt the cold, clammy sensation that meant the squid had closed its largest sucker over his eye. He opened his eye and saw the scene he had seen rush into the strange multi-coloured liquids in the squid’s sucker. He felt the squid change colour, from greyish pink to a deep, mottled green. Then he flew, up and away, while the squid swam to join its brethren, both clear and exposed, in the deeper waters near the mouth of the lagoon.
There were now more than thirty exposed Picsquids waiting in the lagoon, the scenes from the Muwi-vision plays changing their ink forever. The Badshah, having realized the Picsquids’ ability to store light as chemical energy, was using them as a reservoir, a storage medium for his strange new art form. He was now working on a device that would somehow be able to take the squids ink and re-convert the ink into moving images. Oster knew that the Badshah would do it, too. There was nothing the Badshah couldn’t do.
There was magic in the air and the sea around Bolvudis Island. It spun and streamed through the air, filling the islanders with strange, giddy, exhilarating, unrealistic dreams. Udent, Oster’s brother, had told him that it was something to do with the pollen of the Muwi flowers – it caused madness. There was something in the air that made normally shy, reserved men want to wrestle with lions, jump from high buildings, beat up a number of villainous strangers, sip mango juice with dark, sinuous, exotic, scantily clad women and then cause the eyes of all watching imps to glaze over. And actors, who by and large were not particularly shy or reserved, simply went berserk. After eating a little ground Muwi-root, these wild men and women performed spine-chillingly dangerous stunts eagerly and brilliantly. Muwi masala, the Badshah called that potent powder, and Muwi masala was responsible for incredible acts of daring and bravado which had now been immortalized in the ink-sacs of the Picsquids. They all shared a dream – one day those amazing scenes would, surely, compel stunned admiration and applause from audiences around the world, giving the actors the even more exhilarating elixir they craved – stardom.
Wise men all over the world had avoided Bolvudis for ages – there was a nest of dangerous sirens on its rocky southern coast, the island had no military significance, no one was even interested in claiming it for any country, and most people who went there ended up insane. Oster wondered whether the Badshah was mad. He was definitely a little mad, said the actors. But then the actors were mad too. Yes, the Badshah did spend far too much time in his little hut, drawing complex objects, building strange machines, mixing strange potions, reading the books that somehow appeared in his hut –the imps did not know who brought them – and generally behaving like a lunatic, but wasn’t a genius supposed to be like that? And Mantric of Kol, whom the imps of Bolvudis called the Badshah, certainly was a genius.
Bolvudis Island was the northernmost island of the Ossus Archipelago, named after the famous Psomedean hero Ossus of Kol. The Ossus Archipelago was a cluster of small islands a little distance south of Bolvudis, and was one the most naturally magical regions in the world. Every island was the home of at least one dangerous monster: there were hydras, gorgons, cyclopses, and strange and beautiful sorceresses, to name but a few. Most of these had reappeared recently as the Vertical Sea grew taller further south. And since all the treasures that these islands had possessed had been taken long ago by questing heroes, mariners stayed clear of the deadly islands, clashing rocks and living whirlpools of the Ossus Archipelago. Bolvudis, of course, had never had any native monsters–in the eyes of the world it had always been an insignificant part of the archipelago, useful only to leave captains on during mutinies.
The islands had been part of Psomedea, but no one wanted them now. They had, however, played a very important part in Koli history. Ossus had first journeyed through the archipelago on his way back from a war in Elaken. He had lingered in the arms of a beautiful enchantress for many years in the little island he had landed on, and his wife, angered, had gathered a crew of women and searched the entire archipelago, killing monsters left and right until she found him, took him home to Psomedea and then threw him out of his palace, where many suitors courted her day and night. The sad Ossus wandered for many years and ultimately settled down in Kol, which was a very good thing for Kol, because he was a key figure in many glorious wars after that. And though the enchantress joined him there later and they had many children, the historians insisted he never found happiness again Which was why the giant statue of Ossus in Kol faced southwards, yearning forever for his wife to forgive him and take him back.
But in the deep caves of Bolvudis there stood something that was of immense significance, and the man who was its guardian was thinking about it even as he absent-mindedly patted the lion-head of Nimbupani the chimaera, and watched the imps frolic in the Very Blue Lagoon.
Chapter Eleven
Apart from the years Asvin had spent with his kul-guru in a small ashram in Shantavan, he had lived in Ektara all his life. He had heard that Kol was a big city, but as they said, you had to see Kol to believe it. Not that he had seen much of Kol since he had arrived at dawn the previous day, but even the carpet-ride from the gates of the city to the Civilian’s palace had been a mind-boggling experience. The buildings! The traffic! The ladies of questionable virtue! The free-spitting cart-drivers!
This, Asvin decided, biting into the dripping phuchka that Amloki had brought for him, was the good life. And not being a prince was so liberating. Not that Asvin minded being the centre of attention, but it was nice to have conversations with passing pretty young women without knowing that as soon as you’d left, the harem-wardens would surround her, demand to know who her parents were, and decide to either induct her into the harem or threaten her with dire consequences if she didn’t seek employment elsewhere. And Koli women were so wonderful. They looked him in the eye, talked to him as an equal and knew so much more about the world than he did. What puzzled him, however, were the whispers of ‘Is that the new one? Very pretty’ before they came to talk to him. And one dazzlingly beautiful woman had actually felt the muscles on his arm, winked at him meaningfully and passed on without saying a word! He’d asked Amloki about it, and Amloki had smiled and said that was how women in Kol talked to handsome men. But it was not just the women. Many men seemed to be smirking and nudging one another as Asvin passed with Amloki at his side. Asvin had almost lost his temper when he had intercepted a particularly snide look from a helmeted Red Phoenix palace guard, but Amloki had told him to calm down. Asvin decided to let it be, since he was enjoying himself otherwise.
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He had spent most of his day in Kol wandering around the Civilian’s palace with Amloki. The little khudran had proved to be a mine of useful information. He was also very resourceful when it came to getting food from various parts of the city, and Asvin had eaten ravenously, allowing the delicious flavours of spicy Xi’en and Avrantic dishes to sweep away the uncomfortable memories of the last few days. The Civilian’s palace was a wonderful place, and Asvin was perfectly happy roaming through many-pillared corridors and gazing at the priceless sculptures and paintings that filled every hall.
Asvin had been very intimidated by the prospect of meeting the Chief Civilian, but she had been perfectly warm and friendly. She had greeted him in flawless Avrantic, and though Asvin’s Koli was fluent, he loved the Old Tongue much more. They had spoken of Avranti and of Kol, of art, trade and politics, and Asvin perceived that these discussions were not to learn anything about Avranti, for he could tell the Civilian knew the answers to the questions she was asking him. He guessed, correctly, that he was being judged and analyzed coldly and ruthlessly under the keen scalpel of Lady Temat’s gaze. Within an hour of meeting her, he had told her almost everything he knew about himself.
When Asvin had started to talk about what had happened to him, Temat had told him to forget the events of the last few days, and to look forward, for this was not the time for revenge. What quest she had for him and why she had rescued him, she did not say, and Asvin had been perfectly happy to accept her lavish hospitality and prepare for the days ahead. He knew that the (younger) Sun of Avranti was, for the time being, dead, and was prepared to let him lie in peace and see what the future had in store for Asvin, prince in hiding. Amloki claimed he knew why Asvin had been brought to Kol, but also claimed he had been forbidden to speak of it. The five minutes he spent doing so, with explanations of how this did not mean he lacked access to all kinds of important information, had been the least pleasant of Asvin’s Kol stay thus far.
