The ship Pandora yawed, and crates tumbled off its sides. Waves knocked it against the quayside, smashing up the walkways, and they in turn rent gashes into its low hull. The three other ships were flung against each other and the decks were a mess of rolling barrels and tumbling crates that had broken free of their straps and buckles. Men were tossed overboard or crushed by debris. But there was something else at work. As one wave rose over the decks Ashoka glimpsed something driving it.
“It’s not the waves …” muttered Ashoka. He gazed at the sea along the seafront. The waves were rolling higher and higher, but not because of the winds. There were shapes under the water and they were coming closer.
Cloaked in seaweed and frothing seawater, an immense claw reached out of the pounding waves. Each nail was almost five metres long and thick as a tree trunk. Scales glistened marble, black, green, purple, shimmering and iridescent and ancient.
Dragons crawled from the sea.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ash had rested and eaten. He had his manacles and a crude spear as weapons and the lantern to help him on his way. “Let’s go, Rishi.”
Rishi stayed where he was.
“Rishi?”
Rishi raised his head and faced the direction of Ash’s voice. “What’s your plan? We escape, if we escape, then what?”
“Go after Savage. Stop him.” Wasn’t that obvious?
Rishi nodded. “Yes, but how will we stop him?”
“I’ll think of something,” said Ash.
Rishi sat down. “But when? When it might be too late? No. Let’s think about it now. While we can.”
Reluctantly Ash lowered himself down on the rock beside the sadhu. “This would be so easy if I was still the Kali-aastra.”
Rishi drew his fingers through his tangled beard. “Ah, yes. The Kali-aastra. Killing seems to be the answer to most things, doesn’t it?”
Ash frowned. “It is what I am. Kali made me this.” He scratched his thumb. “I need a Great Death to awaken the powers of the Kali-aastra. Then we’ll be able to deal with Savage.”
“A Great Death? That’s what powers you, is it? You’ll never defeat Savage if this is what you believe.”
“What do you mean?”
“When did you awaken the Kali-aastra the first time? When you died. When you gave your life to save your sister’s. When Rama faced Ravana, who offered his life to awaken the Kali-aastra?”
“Lakshmana. Rama’s brother,” said Ash. Lakshmana had taken off his armour, urging Rama to strike, but Rama hadn’t been able to do it. He couldn’t kill his own brother. “What’s your point, Rishi?”
“Love. It is love. Not death. Death is easy, Ash. Let me tell you a story. One of Kali.”
“Is this going to take long?”
“Shut up and listen,” said Rishi. “You might learn something.” He crossed his legs and got comfortable. “So, imagine a battle. Rakshasas cover the earth, their bodies dead and broken, and who stands, alone and victorious?”
“Er … Kali?”
“That was a rhetorical question but, yes. Kali. She has slain them all. Such is her joy, such is her exultation, that she begins to dance. She dances with such fury that the very foundations of the universe begin to crumble.”
“And that’s a bad thing, right?”
Rishi sighed. “The more you interrupt, the longer this will take. But yes, a very bad thing. The gods are afraid. They entreat her to stop, but she does not hear them. Then her consort, Shiva, has a plan. He places a baby at her feet. It cries and that noise penetrates Kali’s madness. She stops her dance and looks for the source of this sound. She sees the baby and comforts it. The universe is saved by a child. A thing so small, so helpless, so without use, but enough to stop the goddess of death.”
Kali. Loads of rakshasas. A crying baby. “And the point is …?”
Rishi frowned. “If you don’t understand it yet, you will eventually.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t do the brainy stuff. That’s usually Parvati’s department.”
“In this Parvati cannot help you. She is confused between love and hate. I blame her father, obviously.” Rishi took up his staff. “What powers the Kali-aastra is not the death, but the life you take. It is not the hate you feel, because hate is plentiful in this world, but the love you have, something so much rarer. Whose life is great to you? Yours, of course. But then your sister’s, your parents’. Parvati’s too. These are people who mean everything to you.”
“Are you saying I’d have to take their lives to reawaken the Kali-aastra? Well, that’s not going to happen. Ever.”
Rishi shook his head. “Answer me this. Who defines what a great life is? By love? By achievement? By status? Is a king’s life greater than that of a slave? A wise man’s greater than an infant’s?”
“You’re saying it’s the people I care about. My friends and family. Their lives mean something to me.”
“Are they the only ones, Ash?” Rishi gestured to the others in the cavern. “Why not a stranger’s? Are not all lives great? Each person is unique to the world. Their lives flicker only briefly in eternity, but will mean something to someone. They will be a person’s father or mother, someone’s child. Someone will have loved them, will have raised them, and cherished them. Once you understand that, then you will understand the full power of Kali.”
“So what do you want me to do? Give Savage flowers when I next see him?”
Rishi smiled. “It is a paradox, I admit that.”
“You sound like an old hippy.”
“That’s because I am. It doesn’t mean I’m not right.” Rishi stood up. “These are things I should have taught you much earlier. Unfortunately I died before I had the chance. It’s nice to get a second opportunity.”
Ash stood up. “Now, without sounding like a cliché, we need to get going. We’ve only twenty-four hours to save the world. Maybe forty-eight. I’ve kind of lost track. And there’s the time-zone difference I’m not completely clear about.”
Rishi stood up. “No time to waste, eh?”
Ash looked into the cave. “There are three tunnels. Which one?”
“The left one.” He paused and turned to face the other prisoners.
They’d gathered silently, near and listening, forming a circle around the sadhu. He’d tried to get them to come, but they were afraid. They knew how the world would treat them, looking the way they did, being what they were.
“I’m sorry I failed you,” said Rishi. “You came down here, victims of Savage, and needed me. You needed me to help you, support you, tell you that whatever he did, it could be made better, that what he changed didn’t really matter. The soul is immortal, so is goodness, so is evil. These are things we should hang on to, but it’s hard when you feel so broken. Savage beat me. He made me believe hate and rage were stronger than compassion and pity. It’s easy to believe that when you are suffering and hurt and weak. Strength comes not from hands or muscles or having big arms and wide shoulders, but from the heart, and that is what Savage destroyed in me. My heart should have been big enough to take you in. It wasn’t. I’m sorry.”
Someone growled. Another mewed and someone else sobbed. They came forward and touched him. Rishi held out his arms and brushed along the limbs and hands and faces of his people. He lingered, wreathed in them, but slowly they retreated to their alcoves and caves until only Ash and the old man remained in the flickering light of a rusty lantern. Rishi drew a deep breath and straightened. He held up his head and fixed his bamboo stick under an armpit. “Follow me,” he said.
Ash grinned. “Yes, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“I’m sure we’ve been here before,” said Ash. “That lump of rock looks very familiar.”
“I know exactly where we’re going,” said Rishi. “I’m just … getting my bearings.” He tapped the wall next to him. “Most strange. There should be an opening right here. Perhaps Savage has used his magic to change the route. To confound any esca
pe.”
“Or maybe we’re just lost?” Ash added a few clumps of moss to the lantern. The wick hissed and smoked, but then the flame brightened. They’d tried to conserve the oil by walking in darkness, Ash being led by Rishi. But after tripping ten times and bashing his head twenty, Ash decided using some oil for light was better than permanent brain damage. Brittle patches of a white moss grew on the rocks and by the small cold pools that lay in the chambers and passages, and it burnt well enough to replace the now consumed lamp oil.
“How many paces since that last junction?” asked Rishi.
“Three hundred and twelve.” That was Ash’s other job – counting how far they’d gone. Rishi said he’d memorised the route by paces and turns and, so far, he’d been right, more or less.
“Let’s try this—”
A roar trembled down the winding passageway. It was far and faint but deep, and lasted several minutes. The cold air quivered and its icy touch raised the hairs on Ash’s nape. Other sounds, cries, shouts, screams, joined as a chorus of the damned. “What was that? A Balrog?”
“Come, quickly,” said Rishi, and they scurried down the corridor and within a dozen paces saw a side passageway. They turned down it. The roar rose up again, but its echoes died away more quickly. Despite the cold, Ash was sweating, and his fingers ached as they gripped the lantern in one hand and the spear in the other. The labyrinth below the mountain played tricks. He was constantly hearing things, or seeing distant lights, or catching some strange smell. Echoes bounced back and forth irregularly, as if reluctant to enter the darkness, then struggling to escape it.
Sometimes they descended, other times they climbed. They’d go left and left and left for ages, following the curve of one wall, with Ash struggling to keep count as their steps went into the thousands, then abruptly they’d change direction and have to start all over again. Could they backtrack if they had to? He wasn’t sure. He just had to trust Rishi’s memory. Now, after wandering for hours upon hours, doubts were creeping in. Did Rishi really know what he was doing? And was he limping? “Let’s rest,” Ash said.
“No, I can go on,” said Rishi, tapping a wall.
“I can’t.” Ash put the lantern down and took out the last of the mushrooms. “Here. Eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.” The old man was acting like a stubborn mule.
“Fine. All the more mouldy, stinking mushrooms for me. Yummy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with those mushrooms.”
Ash put a clump in Rishi’s palm. “Try them for yourself. I’d rather eat the moss.”
Rishi chewed methodically and struggled to swallow them; the mushrooms were as stiff as leather, but he forced a smile and smacked his lips. “Delicious. Now eat some yourself.”
“I’ll save mine for later.”
Rishi’s face creased in anguished realisation. “You let me eat them all, didn’t you? Stupid boy.”
“I can afford to lose a few grams. You can’t.”
“We need you strong, Ash.”
“A few wrinkly fungi won’t make any difference.” Ash turned the spear over in his hands and jabbed at an imaginary target. “Strange how I can still do all the punching and kicking stuff.”
“They are human skills, ingrained in your muscles, in your blood. It is the preternatural powers, the massive strength, the inhuman speed and the death touch, that you’ve lost, the things that were extensions of Kali’s power and wholly dependent on you still possessing her aastra. Even without it I doubt there’s a mortal alive who can defeat you in combat.”
“Shame the bad guys aren’t mortal.”
“Yes. A shame indeed.”
Rishi didn’t need to say it, but the meaning was clear – if Ash faced any one of Savage’s rakshasas he’d be torn to pieces.
They set off again. As they delved deeper into the mountain, they found remains, piles of bones, partial skeletons and skulls. Some had been cracked open like eggs and others ripped by claws and teeth. The bones looked well chewed, not a strip of flesh left on them, and sucked clean of marrow.
And it was getting hotter, the air stuffier and moist. And the smell. At first it was just a faint odour on the faintly stirring breeze that occasionally rippled down through the passageways, but it didn’t carry any freshness with it, none of the stark, cold mountain air Ash was expecting. Instead it stank of putrescence, of decaying meat and bilious gases, of bodies heaving and sweating. Some passages smelled worse than others, and they hurried past those quietly.
Then, as Ash was dragging himself down another seemingly identical passageway, Rishi grabbed his arm. “This is it,” he said excitedly. “Can you smell it?”
No, he couldn’t. Nothing but his own sweat.
Rishi raised his head high and slowly turned, sniffing. He smiled. “Fresh air. I’m sure of it. We’re getting close, Ash.”
Ash peered down the winding, uneven corridor. Water ran down the walls, dark and glistening in the faint lamplight, and pooled in the indentations in the ground before running off into other cracks and holes. Ash put his hand against the wall and scooped up a palmful of liquid for a drink. He stopped. It wasn’t water.
It was blood.
“The walls are bleeding,” he said. “Which is odd.” He looked back at the puddles they’d walked through and saw the trail of bloody footprints. “And kind of gross.”
Voices cried out. They wailed and howled and the sound of their hunger rolled along the passageways and vibrated through the cracks. The rocks around them split as a shockwave made the entire tunnel quiver. Blood spat and hissed from the walls as great jets spurted over them both. Deep, distant thunder rumbled out of the darkness.
“Well, that’s not good,” said Ash. “Time to move.”
“Too late,” said Rishi. “They’re here.”
Ash spun as a scream blasted his ear. A man, his arms huge and hairy, but his torso ending in long, bony legs and with the hard carapace of an insect, sprang out of a shadow. He’d been lurking within one of the cracks and his body was slick with blood, his eyes white, large and insane. He leaped at Ash’s throat, but Ash blocked with his spear and the teeth clamped down on the stick, snapping it in half. Ash kicked the thing off and spun the two sticks around. He rammed them both into the creature’s chest. It squealed and tried to claw at him, but within seconds its own blood mingled with the flood now pouring from the walls. Ash left it pinned there and gathered up his manacles.
“Run, Rishi. I’ll follow.”
“No,” said the old man. “We fight.”
Ash pushed him ahead. “There’s no room for both of us. The passage narrows here. They’ll have to come at me one at a time.” The ceiling had dropped to less than two metres and at its narrowest point was less than a metre across. “Find the way out; I’ll join you.”
Rishi wasn’t happy, but nodded. “Follow as swiftly as you can.”
Ash picked up a thick, long thighbone and faced the oncoming horde. The lantern sat a metre or two behind him and its light didn’t venture far. It flickered and shook, as though afraid of the overwhelming darkness that waited all around it.
Ash saw the eyes, too many, shine red in the faint light. Slick bodies, oiled with blood, slid and climbed over the rocks and each other towards him. Fang-filled mouths snarled and snapped, and ivory claws scraped across the red ground. They had tentacles, wings; they had tails and snouts; they were deformed, melded together into a seething single worm-like entity comprising dozens of creatures, human and animal. Faces stared out of the quivering worm of flesh as it slithered towards him. Teeth snapped where eyes should have been, and hands reached out from mouths, clawing and grasping at him in hungry eagerness.
The monstrosity had a name. He’d fought one many thousands of years ago, as Prince Rama. Created by the darkest of Ravana’s magic, it was built out of living beings, all merged into a single insane mass of screaming, tormented souls. Hundreds of arms and legs and faces all screaming from a bulbous, ever-mutating sing
le whole. It oozed through the tight passage, splitting and reforming constantly. Ash watched as a dozen torsos pulsed and grew arms, long and short, thin and fat, spindly and massive. Savage really was as powerful as the demon king if he’d been able to create such a monster – a Carnival of Flesh.
Ash couldn’t hear Rishi any more; he was alone. Ahead of him were the hisses and snarls of the people of the Carnival. He steadied himself, firming his grip on the thighbone in his left hand and the iron manacles in his right.
He’d hold them off as long as possible. Rishi would make it, and find Parvati and Ashoka, and together they’d stop Savage. That was good enough for Ash.
The lamplight weakened to no brighter than a match.
“Come on then,” snarled Ash.
The light went out.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Ashoka stared as the dragons rose out of the sea. They raised huge waves before them and the winds howled as they swept their heads into the air and roared, controlling the elements with their fury and their power.
Some guards formed a crude, trembling line across the ruins of the fence, some stared at the beasts with slack jaws, others threw down their weapons and ran, or crumbled and cowered, weeping and soiling themselves.
These were dragons.
First one beast, then another, lifted itself on its mighty legs and shook its long pearl-white whiskers free of seaweed and water. Eyes as large as tables, swirling with a myriad of colours, stared down at the puny defence. Bullets from the bravest guards sparked across their scales, but had no more impact than raindrops.
The first dragon, a hundred metres long, rose up to dance within the winds. It had no wings, but writhed into the storm like a snake. Its shadow passed over Ashoka and his party, scales shining like the skies of eternity. Claws scooped up men and tore open buildings and vehicles and then, over the howling typhoon, it drew breath.
Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness Page 15
