The Simoqin Prophecies

by Samit Basu

  ‘There is some power guarding the other end of the tunnel, master,’ said Mritik. ‘I could not break through.’

  ‘Probably the Shanti-Joddha’s statue,’ said Kirin. ‘There is another room beside the one where the tunnel ends, Mritik. Dig around until you find it. But don’t break in until I join you.’

  ‘Yes, master,’ said Mritik, and disappeared.

  Kirin looked at Bali, who was still staring at him with a puzzled expression on his face.

  If I were a hero, I would keep my oath or die in the attempt. The word is sacred, once spoken, and so on. But I’m not a hero. And I’m breaking my promise. I won’t kill you, Bali. You were doing what you believed what was right, and I do not have the right to judge you. But I do not want to become like you. And if I had killed you a moment ago, I would have been no better than you.

  ‘Is something wrong, Kirin?’ asked Bali.

  But you’re not going to the Circle of Darkness. I owe Red Pearl at least that much.

  He remembered Red Pearl’s head falling to the ground and felt the same surge of hatred he had felt then. Ravian power welled up inside him, flowing through his veins.

  He suddenly realized that he wouldn’t have needed the Shadowknife to kill Bali…

  ‘What is it, Kirin?’ asked Bali. ‘Should we go down the tunnel?’

  ‘No, Bali,’ said Kirin, his voice as cold as the snow around them. ‘You are not going down that tunnel. This is where we part.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Bali, looking at Kirin, amazed. It seemed to him that Kirin was burning, in a flame blacker than the night. ‘What do you want me to do, then?’

  ‘I want you to run away, Bali,’ said Kirin. ‘I want you to run away as fast as you can.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I am a ravian, Bali.’

  His voice grew stronger.

  ‘I am a ravian. The son of the two greatest ravians that ever walked this world. Danh-Gem’s greatest enemies.’

  Bali, face frozen in a mask of horror, drew his sword.

  ‘You cannot touch me now, Bali,’ said Kirin, as power filled him. ‘I am beyond you now. But I am not going to kill you. I am sparing your life, because you believed in me. You have lost, Bali. Your plans and your dreams have failed. You will never reach the Circle of Darkness in time. You will never see Danh-Gem. I will take the Gauntlet and the Chariot to Imokoi. When Danh-Gem rises, I will slay him. And there is nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Traitor!’ roared Bali, lunging at him. But Kirin raised his hand, and Bali’s sword snapped in half. Bali flew back through the air and crashed down on the snow twenty feet away.

  ‘You cannot fight me, Bali,’ said Kirin. ‘I am too strong for you.’

  Bali snatched his bow from his shoulder and fitted an arrow to it.

  ‘Don’t make me break your bow, Bali,’ warned Kirin. ‘You will need it if you are to have any hope of getting off this mountain. Go now! Don’t try to follow me down this tunnel. Because I will be aware of your presence before you can strike me, and my patience is not infinite. The next time you trouble me, I will not let you live.’

  Bali’s arms sagged limply and the arrow fell to the ground.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ asked Kirin sternly.

  Bali’s eyes were burning with hate, but he nodded. He knew he was beaten.

  ‘You may slay Danh-Gem, Kirin,’ he said. ‘But you will not live to gloat about it. My labours have not been in vain. The armies of Danh-Gem are united. And they will hunt you down. Farewell.’

  He shouldered his bow and took a great leap down the mountain. Kirin turned and walked into the tunnel.

  Dark clouds covered the moon. A storm was coming.

  As the wind started howling loudly, Bali turned and climbed back up the mountain, a maniacal light in his eyes. He crossed the tunnel and leapt upwards, towards the monastery.

  ‘Welcome once again, my child,’ said the statue as the door slid shut. ‘Sit down for a while, and listen.’

  Asvin tried to keep his mind clear but the statue’s voice droned on, drowning his senses and soothing him into a state of unreal calm. He sat down, cross-legged, and listened.

  Chen was watching the trapdoor when he heard a noise behind him. He turned around and saw two gigantic hands thrusting out of the wall behind him. They grasped the solid rock of the wall and tore it apart like paper. A monstrous clay man entered the room.

  Chen was about to raise the alarm when he remembered – the hero was inside, trying to steal the Gauntlet. He whipped out his killing sword and struck at the clay man, who caught it and bent it like a blade of grass.

  Mritik grabbed Chen with his other hand and would have crushed him, but Kirin ran into the room and hissed ‘Don’t.’ Mritik let Chen go and Kirin knocked him out with a well-placed jab.

  Kirin’s ravian eyes saw the silk threads dangling from the wire fixed to the ceiling. He put his hand between them and pulled with his mind, and the key came flying to his hand.

  ‘Go to the chariot and wait,’ he told Mritik.

  He put the key in the keyhole and turned it. The key turned all the way but the door didn’t open. Kirin pushed at it but nothing happened. He put his ear to the door. It sounded as if someone was talking inside.

  He tried the key again, several times, but the door didn’t budge. Exasperated, he threw the key down on the ground.

  It broke.

  That was probably not a very smart thing to do.

  Bali soared into the air and landed by the wall of the monastery. He crouched there for a while, wondering how foolish it would be to jump right over the wall and see what lay inside. Very foolish, he decided. But he would find the Gauntlet or a way to get to Imokoi by full-moon night. The ravian would die a grisly death.

  Snow beganto fall, but through the whirling flakes Bali saw something that made him stop dead in his tracks.

  Four sets of footprints, leading into the wall.

  He walked up to them and looked at the wall. He put his hand on the wall.

  It sank in, and he almost fell into the wall.

  Bali jumped back. Sorcery everywhere! But whoever had made these prints and gone into the wall wasn’t a guard.

  Whoever it was had found a secret way in.

  And would know a way out.

  He sat down in the snow and waited.

  A few minutes later, he heard whispers. There was someone inside the wall. Whispering very softly. No human would have heard those whispers, especially with the wind howling so loud.

  But Bali was no human.

  ‘I’m telling you, something moved back there,’ said Gaam.

  ‘Well, we can’t look,’ replied Mantric. ‘We have to keep our eyes on the courtyard, remember? If Asvin fails again, he’ll be appearing above that trapdoor any minute.’

  ‘It’s dark,’ said Maya. ‘And we heard nothing. You’re imagining it.’

  ‘I’m going out,’ said Gaam. ‘I’m of no use to you here. If there are guards outside, our escape may be cut off.’

  He walked through the wall into the growing storm outside.

  He crouched and walked down the slope to the cave, looking around for any sign of life, but saw nothing. Ten minutes later, he reached the cave and went inside, through the snow-illusion.

  He still felt uneasy, but everything was in place at the cave. The mirror was shining softly. He sat down on a rock and began to hum a mining song.

  ‘No!’ said Asvin, standing up and shaking his head. ‘I will not listen any more!’

  ‘Very well, then. I see it is time for you to take sides again,’ said the statue.

  The white stone and the black stone appeared again on its palms.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked the voice.

  ‘The black one,’ said Asvin.

  The Shanti-Joddha smiled.

  Gaam stared at Yong-gan’s mirror, wondering why it had never been found in all these years with so many sorcerers and mystics building defences so close by.
Was it all an elaborate trap, or did someone in the Wu Sen hierarchy want the Gauntlet stolen?

  There was a soft twang behind him.

  Gaam didn’t bother to look around. He dived, clutching his axe.

  The black arrow that would have pierced his heart from behind grazed his neck, spilling blood, but not wounding him seriously. But the next arrow, shot a second later, bit into his left arm.

  Gaam rolled over and sprang up as the huge vanar lunged at him. He plucked the arrow out of his side and threw it away. But Bali was too fast for him. The vanar’s fist crashed into his face.

  ‘My name,’ said Bali, standing over him, ‘is Bali!’

  ‘And mine,’ replied Gaam, bringing his axe-blade down, hard, on Bali’s foot, ‘is Gaam.’

  ‘Hasty,’ said the statue. It sounded smug.

  Asvin felt sudden terror as the room turned white around him and disappeared. There was a flash of light, a feeling of being dragged through space, and then silence. He opened his eyes.

  He stood in the middle of the courtyard, on top of the trapdoor.

  He was visible.

  Again.

  He closed his eyes and waited for the arrows. He hoped their aim would be as true as the last night, and they wouldn’t miss his chest and hit his head.

  Kirin, who had tried every spell he knew on the door, was sitting on the floor of the outer room, deep in thought, when he saw the door suddenly outlined in a flash of light. He put his ear to the door. The voice had stopped speaking.

  He put his finger, the one bearing the Shadowknife, on the keyhole. He felt the Shadowknife melt and pour into the keyhole, filling the grooves inside. Then it hardened, and he twisted it.

  The door slid open.

  ‘It’s a busy night,’ remarked the statue as he entered. ‘But sit down, my child, for there is much I can teach you.’

  And Kirin found, to his surprise, that it seemed like a good idea. He sat.

  Mantric and Maya had been watching closely this time, and they cast the Blur on Asvin almost immediately. He dodged the swinging blades and raced to the tunnel.

  ‘Where’s the Gauntlet?’ asked Mantric.

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Maya. ‘Some of the guards are running out of the courtyard – they might be planning to search outside.’

  They ran out of the tunnel on to the mountainside. Mantric had several questions, but Asvin couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the wind, so he ran on.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Mantric as they entered the cave.

  ‘Well, I went in, and it talked to me again,’ said Asvin, entering the cave and walking towards the mirror, ‘and when it asked me what I wanted, I said the black one, and then it put me out on the courtyard again.’

  ‘Why is the cave empty?’ asked Maya, but neither of them paid any attention to her.

  Asvin touched the mirror and said ‘Icelosis.’

  ‘Did it say what do you want, or which one do you want?’ asked Mantric.

  ‘It said what do you want.’

  ‘But you told me yesterday it had asked you which one of the stones you wanted!’

  The mirror turned black.

  ‘So? What’s the difference?’

  ‘When people talk to you,’ said Mantric, ‘you should listen.’

  He stepped into the mirror and vanished.

  ‘Come on, Maya,’ said Asvin. He looked at her.

  She stood over a frozen puddle of blood.

  There were huge, bloody footprints leading out of the cave.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that we need to find Gaam.’

  ‘I will ask you once again, slowly,’ said Bali, tightening his iron grip over Gaam’s throat. ‘How were you planning to use the mirror to escape from the mountain?’

  Gaam looked down into the sheer precipice Bali held him over. At least four hundred feet, straight down. Not a nice prospect.

  He looked up, into Bali’s eyes.

  ‘You will not get off this mountain alive,’ he told the vanar. ‘I have broken your bow, and wounded your foot. You cannot jump, you cannot shoot. Your only hope is to let me go.’

  ‘You fought well for a midget,’ said Bali, ‘But if you do not tell me, I will kill you. I need to get off this mountain. How do I use the mirror? Tell me, dwarf!’

  ‘That’s vaman, not dwarf,’ said Gaam through clenched teeth. ‘Would you like it if I called you a monkey?’

  ‘Maybe your friends will prove more talkative,’ said Bali. ‘I do not jest. This is your last chance.’

  ‘I would have thought of good last words, but you wouldn’t understand them,’ Gaam told him solemnly.

  Then Bali let him go and he fell.

  Asvin and Maya raced across the slope, ignoring the stinging snow. Maya was conjuring up fireballs, but the wind was blowing them out. But they moved fast in spite of that. They followed the blood-trail in the flickering blue light, though they knew that sentries in the monastery would see the fireballs soon. If they had not done so already.

  Maya was tired after casting the Blur, but anxiety about Gaam spurred her magical powers on to new heights. She finally succeeded in making a white fireball that resisted the wind. The snow shone around them.

  Then they heard a terrible roar that echoed across the mountain, and saw the huge form of the vanar standing on the edge of the precipice.

  He held Gaam’s axe.

  ‘If you’re looking for your little friend,’ he shouted as he saw them, ‘it’s too late! I don’t want to kill you two as well. Just tell me how to get out of here. Tell me how to use your mirror!’

  Asvin said nothing. He ran on grimly towards the vanar, sword shining in the white light.

  ‘I gave you a chance!’ yelled Bali. ‘If you wish to die, so be it! Death to all humans!’

  Maya slowed down. She looked carefully at the vanar. Yes, it was her old friend from what seemed like centuries ago.

  Asvin and Bali circled for a while, and sprang forward. Sword and axe came together with a horrible clang.

  ‘Thank you for the advice,’ said Kirin, ‘and I would love to listen to more, but I’m in a bit of a hurry.’

  The statue sighed. ‘Very well. If that is the way you wish it to be, if you feel you are ready to make your own decisions…’

  A white stone appeared in one of its palms, a black stone in the other.

  ‘What do you want?’ it asked Kirin.

  Kirin looked into its calm, shining eyes and grinned. At least they hadn’t changed this part.

  ‘I want the Gauntlet of Tatsu,’ he said.

  The Shanti-Joddha smiled.

  Then it split down the middle like a walnut shell, breaking in half. Inside the statue, on a small marble block, was the Gauntlet of Tatsu.

  It was made with bright red dragon-hide, fiery and leathery. The fingers had claws attached to them, steel claws glowing bright. Kirin picked up the Gauntlet and saw his own face in the claws. He was smiling.

  Without thinking, he slipped the Gauntlet on.

  And the world changed.

  The room faded in front of Kirin’s eyes, and he did not know whether it was real or a vision, but suddenly he found himself standing on an immeasurably tall black pillar, far above the ground, in the middle of a cloudless night sky, and he could see the whole world all around him.

  He looked around and saw pinpricks of light appearing on the ground, far below, like stars twinkling in the sky. Fiery orange dots. He looked harder at one of them and suddenly there was a rush of wind and everything blurred around him, then cleared. He now stood in a swamp, and the mud in front of him bubbled ominously. He looked to his left and everything faded again. He felt as if he was being thrown across the world, and then suddenly he was in a long tunnel, and a red glow was growing slowly at the other end. He looked to his right, was hurded forward, and when the wind stopped roaring he was standing on an ice-lake as a huge crack spread, growing bra
nches, in the middle. Steam billowed out from the crack in the ice. I must be dreaming. This is just a vision.

  Then he looked up and saw huge lizard-shapes with bat-wings silhouetted against the moon. He noticed that the Gauntlet on his right hand burned and crackled, but he felt no pain. Then he looked down and saw his reflection on the ice.

  He gave a startled cry as he looked into his own eyes.

  His brown eyes had vanished. His eyes were now completely red, glowing like lava, with a reptilian vertical slit down the middle, like Spikes had.

  He heard a hissing voice.

  We hear and obey, master, it said. We are coming.

  Then Kirin realized what was happening. What he was doing.

  He was waking the dragons.

  He pulled the Gauntlet off.

  There was an angry hiss inside his head as the world swam back into place. He was back in the room with the broken statue. The vision, or whatever it was, had ended. He shivered, but his skin was burning hot.

  He heard the dragon’s voice again.

  We wait, master, it said. We sleep in silence. When you are ready, we will come to you.

  Kirin shuddered.

  His head spun. Not because he had been standing high above the world in his dream, or because he was afraid. He was dizzy because for one moment, one clear moment of realization and discovery, he had felt insanely happy.

  With this Gauntlet, I could rule the world.

  He had felt a rush of power quite unlike the ravian power he was learning to control. He had felt the magic of the dragons, and it was still beating inside him.

  So this is what happened to Danh-Gem.

  Would he be able to kill Danh-Gem? Or would he fail in the end? When the time came to strike he could not kill Bali. But Danh-Gem was different. If he let the rakshas live, people all over the world would die.

  Maya would be in danger.

  And that wasn’t even the main reason. I have to finish my father’s task. And even though he didn’t kill my parents himself, he was responsible for their deaths. He’s the only reason I’m here. When the time comes to kill him, I will be ready.