‘Something like what?’
‘I can’t really describe it. It’s like a feeling in my gut. Adri is more than he seems to be.’
‘You’ve just met your first Necromancer, I bet you’re just tripping on the whole magic thing.’
Maya threw him a dirty look. ‘I know what I’m talking about.’
‘No, maybe it’s in your subconscious or something, but you’ve just met a guy who can practically summon the very creatures you have spent four years studying about. I would say you’re just thrilled.’
Maya thought over what Gray said instead of retaliating. He was correct. She was quite fascinated by Adri because of his craft, and now, even more so because of her growing realisations of Adri’s knowledge; but that had nothing to do with this feeling. It had clung to her after her first conversation with the Tantric. Something about Adri—the way he walked, the way he began a conversation or chose to reply. It had nothing to do with attraction—she could not quite put a finger on it and argued with her brother about it. Gray agreed to try and notice this thing if he could in the future, but he had to admit that Adri looked perfectly normal to him. As normal as a Tantric could be anyway. He trusted his theory, but did not bring it up again.
They continued walking for a couple of hours and the landscape remained the same—empty roads, boarded up buildings, and a few people scattered here and there, most of them being homeless. They walked on until some water bodies came into view. There were roads that led by them. The water in the ponds was dark and murky and lay perfectly still, the land at the water’s edge choked with weeds. There was no sign of life beneath these waters and they looked dreadfully ominous, even in the morning sunlight. They walked some more. More ponds. And more roads along their edges.
Adri seemed confident about the roads and gave no warning about touching the water, so the siblings were not particularly worried. Not that they wanted to go near the water; Gray stopped to urinate along one such pond at one time, while Maya politely turned away. Adri waited impatiently. He now seemed most eager to reach the house he had talked about. ‘It’s not far now,’ he said. ‘We’re in Patuli already, my house is in the next sector. Just one thing’ —here Adri’s enthusiasm seemed to dampen a bit—‘my father will be home. Don’t get, err, offended.’
‘Offended? Why?’ Maya asked, confused.
‘He’s quite delicate.’
‘That’s not a problem at all,’ Gray said. ‘You should meet our dad sometime. I promise you you’ll live the rest of your days a lot happier, eh sis?’
‘Absolutely,’ Maya smiled. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting your father, actually. It’ll be nice to see your house as well, I guess.’
Adri nodded as they walked on.
‘What does he do?’ Gray asked.
‘You’ll have heard of him,’ Adri replied, rather drily. ‘His name is Victor Sen.’
Gray and Maya stopped in their tracks, their eyes wide in shock.
‘The Victor Sen?’ Maya asked.
‘Yes. Him.’
‘MYTH’s hero?’ Gray asked, not daring to breathe.
‘MYTH’s poster boy,’ Adri said. ‘I told you, yes. Can we walk?’
Maya wondered what was wrong between father and son. It was not just about awkward introductions and the following embarrassments as she had initially thought. There was more to this; there was a reason behind Adri’s reactions. Probably his father’s fame overshadowing his growing up years—Adri might have always been told that he was not as good as his father and of course, there was the bit about his banishment from MYTH. Now that it turned out he was the son of Victor Sen, everything changed. Everyone who had ever heard of MYTH had heard of Victor Sen, the hero, the Tantric said to be the most powerful of them all.
That seemed like the most likely answer, though Maya knew all the answers were perhaps written away in the diary she carried. It gave her curiosity a temporary gratification, knowing that she would soon be able to carry on reading it, and what she had read before made greater sense now that she knew who the father was.
Gray had heard about Adri’s father in equal measures, if not more. He had heard that MYTH’s hero still lived in Old Kolkata, and his mind’s eye had always created visions of an impenetrable fortress of sorts. He was slightly disappointed when Adri, on being literally hounded by him to do so, described his home as a simple duplex with a small garden. Doubtless, Gray consoled himself, the great Necromancer had other unseen forces guarding his house. Gray intended to talk a lot with Victor Sen and was extremely happy he had brought his camera. ‘Adri,’ he began hesitatingly, ‘will your father allow me to photograph him?’
‘Look, you can ask him yourself,’ Adri snapped, a bit tired after all the questions Gray had been asking. ‘You see that building there? My house is right around that bend.’
Maya was feeling extremely tired herself, and was glad they had arrived. She hadn’t slept on the train, and after walking for this long, she now felt her body protest. She would find a bed and sleep off, first thing for sure. She forced herself to walk the last long stretch she would walk in a while. They took the last turn, and it was then that Adri stopped short. The other two followed his gaze, and did not know how to react.
In front of them, at the end of a long road, was a house. It was not in the condition they had expected it to be, however. The entire facade of the house had fallen away, like a cut-out from a cake; debris stood testament. The two floors they could see openly were black, charred beyond recognition. From where they stood, it looked like a house devastated from a bombing run; except in this case, it had evidently been a fire.
They stood looking at the ravaged thing for the longest time. No one spoke. Then Adri started walking towards the house, silently looking at it as it came closer. The garden was gutted, devoid of any plants still alive. Glass crunched beneath Adri’s boots as he neared the house and he noticed the broken windows, their frames hanging loose, remnants of burnt curtains trembling in the afternoon winds. Wordlessly, Adri stepped in through the doorway—there was no door there anymore.
‘The building can collapse, right?’ Gray asked Maya. ‘Maybe he shouldn’t go in there.’
‘He won’t listen,’ Maya replied, still recovering from the shock. Both of them walked towards the house slowly.
Ground floor. Burnt objects. Objects recognisable, objects belonging to Adri’s family, to his father. The library was in ashes, an irrevocable loss. His father, no doubt, would have done anything to prevent this from happening—and Victor Sen was no pushover. Adri carefully crept up the wooden stairs to the first floor; half of the stairway had crumbled away and one had to stick to the wall.
The first floor told a very similar story, but the more important thing was that Adri could not find, try as he might, a burnt corpse. There was still a chance then, he thought. Father might still be alive.
He relaxed, his tense muscles calming for a bit as he slowly began looking for things that weren’t ashes. His father’s wardrobe was completely gone, as were almost all pieces of furniture. Some magical artefacts had survived, but his father had a habit of casting very strong security measures on these. Adri did not try touching them. Possessions did not matter here, most of his own belongings were back in New Kolkata, but Victor Sen had been a connoisseur of a lot of things, and he would never allow them to burn away. Not like this. Adri’s mind drew a possible explanation—captured, but alive.
He looked around and examined the ash. It wasn’t too fresh, but not too old either. Still, he needed to know what exactly had happened here.
He drew a quick pentagram on the floor with a chalk and added runes. ‘Arrive, Familiar of this house,’ he spoke in the Old Tongue. Nothing. Adri had anticipated this. He made his way down to the ground floor once more. Maya and Gray were waiting quietly by the kitchen.
‘He’s not dead,’ Adri said as they looked at him anxiously. ‘It takes more than this to kill my old man.’
‘What happened here?’ G
ray asked.
‘Not an accident, that’s for sure. The house spirit is missing, he must have been removed.’
‘What about your mother?’ Maya asked.
‘She passed away a long time ago. My father lived alone.’
‘I’m so sorry!’
‘You didn’t know.’
There was a pause.
‘Um, so what now?’ Gray asked in a low, polite voice.
‘Right now, I need to know what happened here. We’ll have to wait till nightfall.’
‘How will you know?’ Maya asked. ‘Everything is in ashes, right?’
‘I’m a Pyromancer as well,’ Adri said. Maya’s eyebrows jumped, but Gray was still looking for an explanation. ‘Fire Reader,’ Adri explained further. ‘It’s very much possible you haven’t heard of it.’
‘I have,’ Maya said. ‘The art is said to be lost.’
‘I knew someone who knew it; grew up practicing. I need to wait till dark, however.’ He looked at Maya. ‘Why don’t you get some sleep? I don’t think you slept at all last night, did you?’
‘Yeah, I sort of need to sleep,’ Maya replied.
‘Do that then. Gray, watch her. I’m going to do some asking around. We had neighbours in those buildings’ —he pointed across the pond—‘and I think they should’ve seen something. And please don’t touch anything that might seem remotely interesting. A lot of my father’s possessions are cursed.’
He left. Maya pulled a bed-sheet out of her backpack. She wandered rooms until she saw the spacious library, and lay down, away from the ash of books burnt. She was asleep in seconds.
Gray checked on Maya once before he began to wander the rooms himself, camera in hand. The house was now dead, but had once been home to one of the best Tantrics in the land, and his son, who seemed to have too many surprises up his sleeve. Gray was not cautious about Adri any longer, now that he knew Victor Sen was his father; he had a house to see as well, albeit a devastated one. No, Adri was definitely who he claimed to be, and impressively so. Gray found Adri’s calmness at this turn of events quite inspiring.
His gaze fell on a series of burnt, black frames on a wall. They had once held photographs, or paintings perhaps. Gray started clearing away the bits of brick and rubble near the base of the wall, poking around in the ash until he found what he was looking for—an edge of a photograph, freed as the rest of it burnt. A mere corner it was, the edges of a side burnt. Gray looked at it for a long time before stowing it away in his shirt pocket. He stood up then, dusting his hands, and raising his camera, took a picture of the wall.
Seeing a closed door opposite the wall, Gray opened it. He froze. He could see stairs leading down to what must be a basement. He didn’t think Adri had checked the basement in his hurry; he couldn’t have checked both upstairs and downstairs in that short a while. He looked down at the darkness. Gray hated darkness.
He would wait for Adri’s return, he decided, upon which he would present Adri with knowledge of the basement’s existence. Yes, wait for Adri while Victor Sen might just be bleeding to death down there. He cursed softly. Maya was too tired to be woken up right then; he was sure she wouldn’t even hear him call. Or scream for help from the basement. He cursed again. His imagination wasn’t helping him; but something had to be done. Gray walked to the front of the house and surveyed the long road. Adri was nowhere to be seen, doubtlessly still questioning people. He sighed and walked to the kitchen where his backpack was.
A beam of light pierced the darkness of the basement. Gray played the light around a bit, but all he could see were the wooden steps. The fire clearly hadn’t reached the basement. He tried to dismiss all the scary basement stories from his mind—it was afternoon, for heaven’s sake. He took the first step. The wooden floorboard creaked loudly with a slow drawl to it, and Gray froze again, waiting a full minute before he took the next step. He nervously flicked the light everywhere as he descended—the basement seemed to be fairly large, and his beam of light fell on shelves of what seemed to be books. Gray checked out the walls and the corners of the basement, but shelves blocked his view. He took time to descend, listening for any sound at all, but the basement was dead silent. It didn’t help matters.
‘Mr Sen?’ he called out nervously. ‘Victor Sen? Are you in here?’ He kept descending, finally reaching the bottom. He didn’t move, and chose to stay next to the stairs, calling out into the darkness, slowly moving his light around the room.
‘Your son is here, Mr Sen,’ Gray called further. ‘Hello?’
Something moved rapidly near him. Instinctively, Gray moved the light and caught a glimpse of what seemed to be human skin—before a shelf collapsed with a deafening noise.
‘Aaaah!’ Gray screamed and sped up the stairs, dropping the torch.
‘You will die!’ a voice screamed after him.
Gray almost tripped once, but made it to the door, which he slammed shut behind him and slid the lock in place. Then he lay against the door, panting, but not for long. His uneasiness forced him to move away from that room, and into the library where Maya still slept. He was sure he hadn’t imagined the voice; it had been a male voice, rather strained. Perhaps it was Victor Sen himself, somehow holding him responsible for the destruction of the house. Who knew? All he knew for sure was that he wasn’t going back there. He would wait for Adri.
It was hours before Adri returned. His enquiries had been unsuccessful, difficult. No one had seen anything; they could tell him that it had happened about two days ago, and that was it. No one knew where his father was, no one had seen him during or after the fire. He was thinking about his next move as he made his way through the kitchen—plonking the packets of packed food he had brought on the kitchen counter—into the main hall, at the end of which was the ruined library. It was here that he found the other two, Maya still fast asleep, and Gray looking visibly shaken. Something had happened.
‘Adri, there’s someone in the basement,’ Gray told him as soon as he entered.
‘Basement? What do you mean, basement?’
‘There’s someone in there. Might be your dad, I don’t know.’
Adri reached for his shooter. Opening it, he shook out the mercury rounds onto his palm, then groped in his bag until he found bright blue rounds, with which he loaded the weapon.
‘What bullets are those?’ Gray asked.
‘Take me to the basement,’ Adri replied.
Gray led Adri to the room with the frames and pointed to the door in the wall.
Adri stared at it. He walked over, touched the edges of the wall and felt the burnt plaster there. ‘This door was covered by a layer,’ he spoke, almost to himself. Then he turned to Gray. ‘I never knew it was here.’ Without waiting for a reply, he opened the door almost angrily and walked down the steps, shooter in hand. Gray stared after him, but didn’t follow.
Adri reached the bottom and looked around in the total darkness. He shut his eyes and sensed magic. Basic magic, near what seemed to be the far wall. A torch. The artefact powering it still had juice. Good.
‘Ignite,’ he spoke in the Old Tongue, and the torch burst into flames. It took Adri a moment to adjust to the light, and he stared at what he saw. A man stood metres away from him, holding a torch in both hands, looking at him nervously. He was old and short, and hunched prominently as he looked at Adri. He was bald, but had a huge, unkempt grey beard. He wore rags. An old, moody buzzard with a beard. He was not Adri’s father.
‘You will die as well!’ he spoke in a voice cracked with age. He spoke suddenly; it was more like an outburst, catching Adri off guard. Adri lowered his weapon. ‘Who are you?’
The old man’s eyes shifted rapidly as he nervously contemplated his answer. When he spoke, it was again all of a sudden. ‘It does not matter.’
Adri’s eyes burned with Second Sight. This just seemed to be a harmless old man, he had no other form and Adri could sense no magic from him. The only thing radiating magic in the room was the burning torch on the wa
ll. Adri could see now that it was on a wall mount and had been used before, and there were other torches mounted as well, the magic in them dried up.
‘What are you doing in Victor Sen’s house?’ Adri asked, a bit more forcefully.
‘You do not understand. You do not. What is your name?’
Adri paused before he replied. ‘Adri.’
The old man’s eyes flickered around the room, straying occasionally to the steps where Gray was making his way down.
‘Who in the seven hells is this?’ Gray asked, and was immediately cut off by the old man.
‘Nine, son. Nine hells. Don’t get it wrong. You should know. You’re going there.’ He spoke with a crazy fervour, occasionally pausing and catching up in his speaking, always maintaining the bursts of exclamation. ‘Look, Adri. Look. You cannot possibly know. So yes. So no.’
‘He’s not, er, he’s not mentally . . . stable,’ Gray whispered to Adri.
‘Evidently mad,’ Adri simplified. ‘But he might know something.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Gray agreed. ‘I was thinking the same thing.’
‘What don’t I know?’ Adri asked the old man loudly.
The two parties were still keeping their distance. The old man hadn’t moved from his place. He still didn’t move as he spoke.
‘The end. No one knows about the end. But I do. And I know where you will be.’
‘Where?’
‘One of the hells. And hell will be right here in the Old City.’ The old man’s eyes were wide, frantic, as he spoke.
‘Okay, I got his number,’ Gray whispered. ‘Another Doomsday prophet.’
‘Inevitable, like the great truth. You must believe me,’ the old man ranted.
‘Oh we do,’ Adri replied softly. ‘But come on up, old one. Eat and drink.’
‘But the end?’
‘Surely the end will let you have a good last meal? Come on.’
The old man looked unsure for a while, his eyes flitting between Adri and Gray with dizzying speed. Then his posture slumped, his shoulders sagged. ‘I’m hungry, I am,’ he spoke.
Adri and Gray led him up the stairs. The old man did not react at all on seeing the half-destroyed house. Not a word, not a look. He simply followed Adri into the kitchen and when Adri, after rummaging through the food packet, handed him a paper plate with luchi–torkari, he took it wordlessly and sat down in a corner. Adri sat in the opposite corner and took out his packet of cigarettes, leaning against the wall.
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