by Samit Basu
‘This is my plan,’ said the unwaba, completely unmoved by censure or threat. ‘The other gods have not noticed the infant’s departure yet, since those among them who are not completely fascinated by the Game are busy stealing, gambling, drinking or partaking in orgies. But Zivran will have noticed her absence, and mine, and will know we are here. He cannot allow this world to be destroyed while the Infinite Infant is on it.’
‘Then are we safe?’ asked Kirin.
‘No. Over time, the other gods will find out, and then they will take the Infant and destroy this world as punishment,’ said the unwaba. ‘But Zivran and his allies, Stochastos and Petah-Petyi, will do what they can for now to ensure this world’s survival. The Game is going very well – the war is most interesting, and Mantric has begun his journey to the edge of the world, which should be interesting viewing. Since the gods are sufficiently distracted, Zivran will be able to begin the construction of a mirror-world, where he will place this world’s living denizens if he so desires.’
‘But if Zivran knows, won’t he try and steal her back?’
‘That is unlikely,’ said the unwaba. ‘To do so, he would have to break the rules of the Game, and that would be an admission of defeat. Besides, he will be aware of my demands as a kidnapper. I want to live on the new world, and I want to keep the Infinite Infant with me. The Infant will grow up on this new world and sustain it with her powers, and will learn to love its inhabitants. I will teach her to observe and nourish, and not interfere physically with the lives of her subjects unless absolutely necessary. This is something Zivran would find most desirable, as this is a direction of thought he wants all gods to consider, and the Infinite Infant will be very powerful in the eons to come. All the other gods, too, will be quite relieved if the Infant has a world of her own to grow up in; it makes the universe safer for them if the Baby of Destiny does not want the worlds they govern.’
‘I’ll pretend I understood all that,’ said Kirin. ‘Are you saying, then, that we’ve won? This world is safe?’
‘Far from it. But there is real hope now. In a sense, it all depends on Mantric. If his gift satisfies the gods, Zivran might be able to move those still living in this world at the time, including myself and the Baby of Destiny, to the new one and persuade the other gods, and Mantric, that this was the blessing Mantric sought. If Mantric fails, however, we are all destroyed. He must give the gods exciting entertainment, allowing Zivran to finish the task of creating another world. And that is not all Mantric must do. He must offer the gods something when he meets them; it must be something that pleases them greatly, allowing Zivran to move us all to the new world.’
‘What will my father offer the gods?’ asked Maya.
‘I cannot say. I have a confession to make; my omniscience is no longer perfect, though of course I still know more than you could in a thousand lifetimes. It will take me some time to remember how to remember all I forgot. Until then, Mantric’s intentions are a mystery to me. Until the time of our departure for the heavens, however, I was perfectly aware of Mantric’s plans.’
‘Well, what did he plan to give them then?’
‘Nothing. He had no ideas whatsoever.’
‘That’s encouraging,’ said Maya.
‘What is encouraging is that the gods have taken a great fancy to your father and his friend the khudran,’ said the unwaba. ‘While they may not intervene directly in the Game, Zivran has permitted them to exercise a certain amount of… influence over Mantric’s journey. The gods will ensure their own entertainment by making Mantric’s voyage very eventful. This is wonderful as far as we are concerned; it would be unreasonable to expect that they would find anything to sustain their interest if Mantric had been simply sailing towards them through a calm ocean. Given the immense significance and ambition of his quest, it is only just that it should be suitably… epic.’
‘So they’re going to throw a million obstacles in his path? That’s wrong!’ said Kirin. ‘I thought the first rule of this Game was that the gods could not interfere!’
‘The rules of all Games change. Like their creations, the gods tend to make up the rules as the Game unfolds.’
‘Why pretend there are any rules, then?’
‘Be sensible, Kirin. We speak of gods here. In the early days of the universe, when the gods began to Play, they soon realized that infinite knowledge led to the Players knowing all possible outcomes if the Rules were predetermined. This was deemed unexciting, and rightly so.’
‘But you said that gods didn’t know everything, that they forgot things on purpose!’
‘That was one of the rules they made up as the Games unfolded. The system is not perfect. This is intentional.’
‘I give up.’
‘Klllg. Eeeee,’ said the Infinite Infant.
‘Yes, of course,’ said the unwaba. ‘The Infant, observing your despondence, has offered to create a new world for you herself, as she finds this one, and its inhabitants, namely you, interesting. However, that will not work; her powers will only be restored to her when she leaves this world, and then she will forget this world. Which brings me to the task that now lies before you.’
‘Which I’m going to turn down right now,’ said Maya. ‘I do not trust you any longer, unwaba. Even if my father does please the gods with his offering and we escape to the new world, the one who stands to gain the most is you; you will have a world to run with no other gods watching and a very powerful goddess growing up under your control. And we would still have gods controlling our lives. I cannot accept this.’
‘Your views on this matter are not relevant. Here is what you will do,’ said the unwaba. ‘The Infinite Infant, like me, is currently subject to the physical rules of this world. She is vulnerable and must be protected. If she is killed by anyone or anything on this world, the world will be destroyed. If she is taken back to the heavens, we lose everything, and the world will be destroyed. You must, therefore, take good care of the Baby of Destiny.’
Panic slowly enveloped their faces.
‘But we don’t know how to take care of babies,’ said Kirin.
‘Then you must learn,’ said the unwaba. ‘It is a skill that might be useful later on, if there is a later on. Maya, you will take her to your hut now and feed her.’
‘Googaa,’ said the Infinite Infant, pleased to hear this.
‘I will do nothing of the sort,’ said Maya. ‘You cannot barge back into our lives like this and take over again. And I have no idea what to feed her. There’s some rum in the hut, but that might not be a good idea.’
‘If you want the world to be saved, this is what you must do,’ said the unwaba. ‘She must be kept safe, and I would advise you to be wary, because you are in great danger here. There is no escape for any of you; if you do not go out into the world and seek danger, it will invite itself home and find you. Now, Maya, return to your hut, and you, Spikes, must accompany her. Keep the Infant under supervision at all times.’
Kirin held the baby out towards Maya, who regarded her gravely and then shook her haid.
‘I’m sorry, but I simply cannot do this. I’m afraid of babies,’ she said.
She groaned as the baby gurgled and looked peaceful, and a warm, wet feeling trickled down her front. The Baby of Destiny had marked her territory. Defeated, Maya held her arms out stiffly, and the Infinite Infant clambered on board. She snuggled up to Maya confidingly, her head bumping against Maya’s chin, and grabbed her, indicating by the eloquent speech ‘Boop’ that she was now hungry.
‘No!’ said Maya.
The Baby of Destiny, sensing rebellion, began to cry, and Maya, muttering dark imprecations, stalked off with her. Spikes looked for an escape route for a few seconds, and then shrugged and followed them.
‘Now that we are alone, Kirin,’ said the unwaba, ‘I have two things to say that are for your ears alone.
‘First, you are in great danger. I cannot see what it is, but it is strong, and fast, and it wants very badly to kill
you. Protect yourself, and, more importantly, protect the Infant.
‘Second, enjoy every moment of the remaining days of your life as much as you can. If we succeed in this mad venture, you will still have defeated the gods, and you will still have to pay the price.’
‘Before you turned up, unwaba, I was happier than I had ever been before. You had to come along and ruin my holiday, didn’t you?’ said Kirin. ‘I’m just sitting around on the beach, minding my own business. Why kill me? If the world is saved, it won’t be my fault.’
‘Mantric’s story and yours are not inextricably interwoven,’ said the unwaba. ‘He, too, conspires against the gods and will almost certainly have to give up his life in the end. And as for you, you are behind all the events that now shake the world, in one way or another. A few days of inactivity between crimes against the gods mean nothing. Do you have any more questions?’
‘Not really,’ said Kirin.
‘I knew that,’ said the unwaba, and fell asleep.
* * *
Two days later, a Muwi-vision team working around the clock to create the masterpiece The Dark Lord Returns were horrified to find that one of the cast no longer had dates available. Vutton, the giant crocodile, floated into the bay, dead. Her eyes had been gouged out, and her lower jaw had been ripped open, and hung pink and limp, flapping to and fro as waves raced past her corpse. Her body was covered with claw wounds and what looked like wolf-bites, but that was ridiculous. There could not possibly have been a wolf in the Psomedean Ocean.
Chapter Seven
The ravian king drew his sword and pointed it at the unimaginatively named Black Gate, the tall, wide, intricately carved ebony entrance to the Dark Lord’s city fortress, the only weak point in the ring of adamant obsidian that stood between the invaders from New Asroye and the city of Izakar.
‘Choose your destiny,’ he said in a low, thrilling voice.
‘Flawless victory!’ roared three thousand converted asur churls who’d recently been under the impression that they had come from Taklieph, their capital, to the aid of the besieged Dark Tower. ‘Fight!’
‘Excellent,’ said Zibeb.
The asurs raced to the gigantic battering ram Zibeb’s army had created over the last week and, after much groaning and yelling and lashing of whips, hoisted it up. More asurs ran underneath it and lifted it further, filling up the space beneath it with their bodies. The massive pillar of wood and metal shook slightly as it rose, and then crashed thunderously to earth; hundreds of asurs died in the process, but for every asur that fell, two replacements trotted enthusiastically up. It was unthinkable that so massive an object could be carried on the shoulders of beings as small as asurs, but ravian wills held it up, and ravian commands kept asur minds strong even as their bodies broke. On the next attempt, the battering ram rose, and stayed up, creaking loudly and wobbling slightly. The carpet of asurs below it tottered this way and that as they realized and immediately forgot, under the influence of the ravians, that they would never walk upright again.
The front of the ram (named Khanzab the Prayer-Breaker by Omar the Terrible) was shaped like a manticore’s head; the tip was made of bronze and inlaid with death-spells and Willspears. Whips cracked, their wielders yelled tender words of encouraging invective, and the asurs began to walk, gathering speed, until they broke into a bow-legged run, carrying Khanzab towards the Black Gate.
Khanzab tottered on. On the battlements next to the Black Gate stood Katnadev, a songscaper rakshas chieftain, and Alpha Laakon, lord of the werewolves. They showed no signs of panic as they watched the massive battering ram gather speed slowly and move ever closer to the gate beside them.
‘It looks like a big centipede, doesn’t it?’ said Katnadev conversationally. ‘A big drunken centipede.’
Khanzab tottered on. Laakon looked behind him, at vanar and asur archers filling every inch of space of the battlements.
‘Rain,’ he said, and the archers cheered.
The sky darkened as thousands of arrows arced into the air and converged on Khanzab. There were no ravians to divert the arrows; the asurs were no longer under their influence, but unable to stop because of sheer momentum. The arrows landed, skewering hundreds of running asurs, quivering into the battering ram’s surface, building a wall of obstacles in front of the advancing manticore’s head.
Khanzab tottered on. And then faltered as the asurs under it tripped over the bodies of their comrades, and then the gigantic pillar crashed to earth, crushing all those who carried it. It slid along the ground for a while, mowing down forests of arrows, Willspears tearing the ground in front of it, a trail of flattened bodies in its wake, and came to a squelching stop in front of the Black Gate. Rakshases hurled fireballs at it until it exploded in a cloud of splinters.
Laakon yawned. ‘This is boring,’ he said.
‘It looked like a caterpillar before we burst it,’ said Katnadev. ‘A big, hairy caterpillar. Do you know the ones I mean?’
‘I’m going for a nap,’ said Laakon.
The ravian siege of Izakar had lasted two weeks now. The first day had been very dramatic; the vanars had decided, after a few agonizing hours, not to let their queen undergo further humiliation and had swarmed over the battlements to rescue her; most had died within minutes, and then Aciram had succumbed to emotional blackmail and gone to rescue Angda himself. He’d simply appeared on the battlefield at night, disguised as Lord Degin, killed a few ravians, freed Angda’s mind and brought her back. This daring deed had cheered the denizens of Izakar greatly, and they had come to realize over the next few days that even without Omar and Bjorkun, the Dark Tower was well defended.
The ravians had amassed an impressive of siege equipment for the massive task that lay before them; nine concentric obsidian walls, each taller than the last, each fortified by sorcery, bristling with sleepless guardians and commanded by ferocious, well-organized generals. Ladders and siege hooks brought from the north by Bjorkun’s Skuans lay waiting for a grand charge, but until the rakshases patrolling the walls could somehow be destroyed, there was no particular point in sending troops to scale the walls; as soon as they were in range, the rakshases sent expanding walls of fire roaring outwards, consuming everything in their path. The asurs and ravians constructed several huge siege towers and sent them rolling them towards the city to little avail; large numbers of asurs marched in front of the towers to stop the flames with their bodies, but rakshas fires could not be put out easily. The Red Queen had taught the rakshas the spellbinders’ flame-arts, and tower after tower collapsed, spilling the warriors within, in swirling torrents of blue and green flame.
Ravian catapults, mangonels and ballistae kept up a steady barrage of projectiles into Izakar; huge stones, bundles of corpses, balls of Psomedean fire. While many of their missiles caused significant damage, many others never reached the Dark Lord’s city; powerful Vrihataranya rakshases stood on the battlements, turning the ravian projectiles into bales of hay or bouquets of roses; on one memorable occasion, Katnaran, a young rakshas from the western borders of the Great Forest, turned two burning Psomedean-fire bundles into statues of Zibeb and Nenses in compromising positions, winning considerable applause from the assembled defenders. But while Izakar’s walls were immensely strong, they were not unbreakable; on several occasions, powerful ravian Willspears shuddered into the outer wall and sent cracks running along its surface. But the songscaper rakshases, who had built these walls, were defending them with skill and experience, singing stones back into place, sealing walls and adding defensive reinforcements faster than the ravians could destroy them.
Both sides had taken massive losses in battle, and even with the Artaxerxian and Skuan reinforcements, Zibeb did not have enough men to completely surround the Dark Tower and bombard it from every direction. The attack was concentrated on the southern and eastern ends, but Zibeb ensured that the Dark Tower was encircled, and the Dark Lord’s soldiers had no way of breaking through his defences unobserved, at least abov
e ground. The ravians had laboured through several nights, building a wall around the Dark Tower. No ordinary wall, this – it was made of corpses from the battlefield, packed and piled into a gruesome line of circumvallation, watching their comrades ceaselessly with dead eyes. Occasionally, public-spirited rakshases in the Dark Tower would send huge fireballs arcing into the wall, giving their lord’s servants what passed for a cremation. If the ravians had expected this technique to destroy enemy morale, the plan failed; the Dark Lord’s marksmen seemed to take derive a certain enjoyment from their reunion with old friends, and whiled away the long, tense hours between attacks by knocking off the corpses on top of the barricade to see if their friends lay underneath.
Even though the wall of corpses was well protected, it grew thinner every morning; the rakshases had nothing to do with this. Mysterious forces were at work. Green mists would seep out of the ground every night, and corpses would disappear in unguarded sections of the wall. Rumours of sightings of undead lych-lords floated through the ravian ranks, and did nothing to improve the general mood.
The Dark Lord’s army was trapped inside Izakar, and appeared not to mind this too much. Occasionally, when food supplies fell short, the Dark Lord would send out a party of asurs, officially to break the siege but, for all practical purposes, to achieve more efficient food rationing. The ravians ran short of supplies first; tightened belts led to weakened control spells, which led to more asur rebellions. They tried digging under Izakar, only to find asur tunnels full of explosive traps, flooding mechanisms and friendly and very hungry pisacs. The few ravians that did manage to penetrate the maze of asur tunnels ended up in the bellies of dungeon-master Ublyet’s little pets or petrified by Zolaa the reluctant gorgon. Sneak attempts at sapping through the walls had not worked either; the walls seemed smooth and solid, but there were, at regular intervals, machicolations, murder-holes and arrow-slits concealed by illusions of stone, and sappers who managed to escape the notice of the rakshas sentries on the walls were met with boiling oil, arrows, miscellaneous household waste and lewd remarks, and were driven back time and time again.
