Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness

by Sarwat Chadda

  John frowned. “Who are you?”

  Ash met his confused gaze. What could he tell this other version of his friend? Nothing that would make things clearer. He merely touched his shoulder. “I know the way.”

  Kalari-payit, the world’s oldest martial art. It was here last year that Ash had been taught it, by Ujba. He came to the narrow steps leading to the basement. From below came cries and shouts and the clash of weapons. Heat swept up and with it the heavy smell of sweating bodies.

  They stopped as soon as Ash appeared in the hall. Dozens of boys wearing loincloths, their bodies shining, paused in their fights and exercises to stare at this intruder. The floor was hard-packed earth, a rectangular pit with a walkway on all four sides where the weapons hung and the students rested beside clay jugs of water.

  In the centre of this stillness stood a muscular man, his thick legs planted firmly, his bare chest broad and heavy with blocks of muscle. He had a moustache and a yellow scarf hung across his shoulders. He wiped his face then peered at Ash with small, black, evil eyes.

  Just because they both served Kali didn’t mean they were friends. Ujba was a Thug, one of the sect of killers that believed murder was a prayer to the black goddess. But no one else alive understood the mysteries of Kali better than him.

  “Who are you, boy?” said Ujba.

  “A friend of Rishi’s. I’ve come for the arrow he gave you.”

  “I do not know of this Rishi. Nor any arrow.”

  “The Kali-aastra.”

  Ujba’s jaw clenched and his thick fingers tightened into fists. “Go away, boy. If you know what’s good for you.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Ash watched one boy step forward. Lean, lithe and covered with sleek muscle, he dropped down into the pit halfway between Ujba and Ash. The boy glanced over his shoulder, seeking permission from his guru, his teacher.

  “Namaste, Hakim,” said Ash. How many times had they fought down here? How many days had he stumbled off after a beating? The hard lessons he’d learned from Ujba’s best student. He scratched his thumb.

  “Give me Kali’s arrow,” said Ash. “I need it.”

  Ujba crossed his big arms. “No.”

  “Don’t force me,” said Ash. “It’ll be better if you give it to me than if I take it.”

  Ujba turned his head a jot. “I’d like to see you try.”

  Before the lesson they would have had to complete a complex salutation ritual. It had been more than a mere bow or slam of fists; it had been an intricate pattern of kicks, sweeps and punches. All directed at the corner of the room, at the shrine to Kali.

  Honour Kali. That’s what Ujba said at the beginning of each lesson.

  There she was, a black statue of the goddess. She was skeletal, her body stained with blood and garlands of marigolds around her neck and covering her boyish chest. She stood, ready for battle, glaring, her mouth wide open, her fangs revealed and her long tongue eager for blood. Her eight arms were outspread and she carried a weapon in each. A sword, a spear, a noose and the severed head of a demon. A bow, a discus and an arrow.

  An arrow with a bone-white shaft, black eagle-feather fletching and gold arrowhead.

  The Kali-aastra seemed to pulse with power, shining brightly with a glow from within itself, despite its gloomy setting.

  Ujba sacrificed to it daily. The blood of an animal washed it and it gained power. Small amounts, but Kali was a greedy goddess and all death fed her.

  Ash dropped into the pit, opposite Hakim.

  “How badly do you want it, English?” asked Ujba.

  “Pretty badly.”

  Someone tossed two weapons into the pit. The katars clattered against each other before they came to rest between the two boys. Hakim, his eyes never leaving Ash’s, bent down slowly and picked one up. He kicked the other towards Ash.

  Hakim was a bully. He terrorised the other kids and beat them up mercilessly for the smallest mistakes. Ash knew he made John’s life a hell. No one stood up to him, no one could beat him.

  But Ash could. Easily. Even now, without the powers of the Kali-aastra, Ash knew every move Hakim could possibly make. Hakim had been taught by Ujba, the priest of Kali.

  Ash had been taught by Kali herself.

  Hakim needed a lesson in humility. He deserved it. Ash had the power to break him into a million pieces.

  Ash stepped forward and Hakim rose on to the balls of his feet, limbs loose and katar held low, ready for a strike. Ash walked past him.

  Their eyes met, Hakim’s hot and arrogant and boiling for a fight. Ash just shook his head. “I won’t fight you, Hakim.” He stepped past, his back exposed, and went up to Ujba. “Give me the Kali-aastra.”

  Ujba towered above him. He blocked the way to the statue and his shadow loomed in the weak candlelight that flickered down here. Ujba looked at Ash. He was evil, he was a killer and he was Ash’s guru. A guru deserved respect.

  Ash bent down and touched Ujba’s feet.

  Without looking up, his head bowed, he pressed his palms together. And waited.

  Ujba could kill him easily.

  Ujba grunted. “Take it.”

  The arrow shone. Droplets of blood glistened along the bone-white shaft and on the golden point. Kali held it lightly, poised to place it in her bow. Then Ash reached out and lifted it from her fingers.

  Ash shivered as energy seeped through him. His heart pumped faster, spiking with the thrill of Kali’s power.

  The aastra was awake. It stirred Ash’s senses to new levels and he tightened his grip.

  Of course. Savage had awakened it when he’d first found it. He’d used it to free Ravana, then later to kill him. All that power remained within the golden arrowhead.

  It was the one weapon capable of destroying Savage. And it was in Ash’s hand.

  Ash drew his thumb across its edge. The point was perfect. No broken slivers missing. Unlike the Kali-aastra back in his timeline, whose missing piece was embedded in his thumb.

  He had hoped that when he grasped the arrowhead his own aastra might have responded, maybe even awakened. But Ash felt nothing. It remained dormant.

  Did it matter?

  Not now. Not now I have this.

  They parted silently to let him leave. There was a small nod from Ujba, nothing else. But as he passed by Hakim Ash retrieved the remaining katar and tucked it into his belt. “I’ve a feeling I might need this.”

  Rani wasn’t outside. There were shouts and commotion in the alleyway. Something was wrong. People were milling around doors, and radios were being turned up and groups gathered at open windows, watching the TV sets within.

  Rani was among the audience outside an electrical shop. Ash couldn’t see what was going on, but he sensed the anxiety, saw the grim, set faces. “Rani,” he said, reaching out to touch her. “What’s going on?”

  She stared at the screen, but it was a blur of flames and shadowy figures being filmed via a crude camcorder. “Something’s happened.”

  “Where?”

  “Kampani.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  It took four days for Ti Fun to track down the Lazarus and its destination, the Indian coastal city of Kampani. Ashoka’s response had been, “Never heard of it.”

  And now, after a flight and a two-hour bus ride he was here, and gave Parvati his first impression: “What. A. Dump.”

  It could have been India’s new capital, but instead was the world’s biggest slum. The British government had been based in Calcutta until 1911, then decided to move. The choice had been here or New Delhi. New Delhi had been picked, and while that had risen with elegant buildings and wide boulevards and museums, Kampani had faded out of history. A port city with the mountains of the Western Ghats behind it and the Arabian Sea before it. But ships didn’t come here with cargo and business. They went to Mumbai for that. Ships came to Kampani to die.

  The beaches were a huge, endless graveyard of steel. Ocean liners were stripped down, panel by panel, by workers who
covered the carcass like a million ants, their acetylene torches illuminating the rusty oil-covered frames with pinpricks of white, blue and orange. Bare-footed children and women rummaged around the black sands collecting nails, bolts, small springs and anything else of even the smallest value to be sold to the nearby workshops and factories. As the hull was taken away, the ships lay there, the ribs of their superstructure exposed, dead giants being devoured inch by inch. The city stank of fumes and the evening sunset was painted with brilliant colours thanks to the pollution.

  A seemingly endless wall of cliffs overlooked the beaches. The homes were everything from rickety huts to brick dwellings with a couple of levels built into the cave mouths, and electrical generators powered a whole sub-city that lived within the caverns and tunnels, people too poor even to live in the shanty towns of corrugated iron and beach-washed wood. Parvati had hired a place here for them to stay in, basically a shed. They’d needed somewhere that overlooked the beach and this wasn’t the sort of town that attracted five-star hotels.

  “Home, sweet home,” said Ashoka. “Or should I say, ‘Hovel, sweet hovel’?”

  “Your stay at the Mandarin has spoiled you.” Parvati unlocked the padlock and pulled out the chain wrapped around the door handle. “It’s discreet and near the docks. This is what we want.” She paused. “Just check under the mattress for scorpions.”

  Ashoka spread out his arms and almost touched the walls. A single bare light bulb hung off a length of copper wiring, and two small beds, hardly wide enough to lie flat on, were stacked up against the wall, which was made of washed-up bits of wood and metal sheeting. The roof was a wooden frame covered with black plastic. There was an upturned wooden box to use as a table, on which was a small cracked vase with a few dried flowers in it.

  “This would be so much easier if Ti Fun had come. Or at least lent us some dragons,” said Ashoka. Instead it was just the two of them, again.

  “Ti Fun’s powers are tied to China, as are the others. If he came here, he wouldn’t be able to raise so much as a breeze.”

  Ashoka flicked the switch and the wires hummed and fizzed as the bulb slowly brightened.

  “You have a look about while I set up and pay the rent,” said Parvati. “Just don’t get lost.”

  Oil, salt, frying ghee and the stench of open drains filled the air, but a cool breeze drifted off the sea. They’d chosen well – a hut on the hills that overlooked the beach and docks. Beneath, and above, climbing up the cliffs, rolled an endless shanty town. Buildings packed together, supporting each other, built right on top of each other, with whatever materials the inhabitants had been able to salvage. Old warped wooden planks, plastic sheeting, corrugated iron panels and brick, concrete and even paper, packed into bags. Cables hung and looped from the pylons that ran down to feed the ship-stripping workforce. Seagulls called and picked at the refuse as rats and dogs fought in the alleyways.

  A boy leaned on a windowsill, watching Ashoka. Behind him a cluster of kids sat around a tin bowl eating mashed-up lentils and rice with their fingers. A radio hissed in the background.

  Evening descended, and as the sun dipped below the horizon a blanket of darkness stretched over the city. Huge walls of floodlights burst into life down on the beach. A thousand hammers clanged. Saws screeched and a piece of hull the size of a football field groaned as it was lifted by two cranes, their gears howling with the effort. Generators hummed, chugging out thick black smoke as they powered the various sections of beach, each serving its ship. It was the music of destruction.

  How many people lived here? A couple of million, clinging to the cliffs and the beaches? More? The shanty town went on and on, along the edge of the sea and all the way back to the mountains.

  Thick smoke rolled up the slope, stinking and stinging, drifting through the gaps between the walls and flapping tarpaulin.

  Savage had chosen well. The population density meant even a small burst of RAVN-1 would infect huge numbers.

  The hull panel boomed as it dropped on to the sand, shaking the earth even all the way up here. The dust hadn’t even settled before men were attacking it with their torches, slicing the skin of the panel into smaller, more manageable sections. A new chorus of beats and clangs rose up into the darkening sky.

  “You humans thrive on this.” Parvati sat down and they watched the scene below. “On destruction.”

  “No. It’s death giving life. Look at all these people. All living, growing because of what’s happening down there. I didn’t realise it was possible to live on a diet of steel and smoke, but maybe it is.”

  “You’re a glass-half-full sort of person, aren’t you?”

  “Could do with a clean-up. Can’t imagine all this pollution’s good for anyone, but there’s money to be made, I suppose.”

  Parvati nodded. “It wasn’t that different in London, if you go back a few centuries.”

  Ashoka listened to the beat. “India’s changing. Who knows what it’ll be like in a few years’ time?”

  “Provided we stop Savage.”

  Back to business then. “What’s the plan, boss?”

  Parvati opened up a map. “The Lazarus isn’t a big ship, so it could dock pretty much anywhere. Then he’s got to offload the stuff and get it distributed around the city. Then he’s set. He’ll want to set them off as soon as possible.”

  “Meanwhile we watch and wait?” said Ashoka.

  “We’ll take turns,” said Parvati. “I’ll go first; you get some sleep.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Ashoka yawned and pulled his blanket up to his chin as he sat leaning up against a rock, high on a ledge overlooking the beach. He swilled the soup around in his tin, as if the motion might warm it up, then drank it all. Parvati had done her shift so now it was his turn. Another hour and he would hand over to her again. He picked up the binoculars and searched the sea, as he’d been doing for the last three hours.

  A sea mist swamped the low, sloping cliff, turning the dawn sky grey. Strings of fairy lights, torches and lamps illuminated the narrow paths through the shambolic city of huts and hovels. Bells chimed from the many small temples and incense merged with the acrid smell of burning rubbish and the smoke coming out of the shipping junkyards. Seagulls and rats and human rubbish pickers crawled over the mountains of debris.

  Being on watch was utterly boring. He played games to keep awake, guessing which seagull would win as a pair squabbled over some rotten piece of fruit. Or he’d make up names and stories for the workers still peeling the hulks apart throughout the night. Their shifts were longer than his and he recognised more than one who’d been working the evening before. Ten, twelve hours nonstop.

  Fishing boats bobbed out on the horizon, each followed by a cloud of gulls, chancers looking to grab a fish as the men hauled up their fields of netting.

  A black cloud puffed from the funnel of a distant ship. It rode the waves awkwardly, as if too heavy for its size. Low in the water it pitched unevenly over the sea, the prow sinking one moment before rising up again, spraying water over its decks. It blasted its horn as a fishing boat strayed into its path.

  Ashoka sat up straight and steadied the lens. He tried to match the rolling motion of the vessel so he could read its name.

  His heart jumped as he read Lazarus.

  The Lazarus was a rust bucket. The hull hadn’t been painted in years and long streaks of oil ran like tiger stripes down its orange, corroded panels. Black smoke belched from the single funnel.

  There was something on the decks, all covered in tarpaulin, but even from his vantage point Ashoka could see the crewmen were stepping gingerly around their cargo. Lifeboats swayed on lanyards, a pair overhanging both the port and starboard sides. The bridge, from where the captain watched the route and steered the ship, stood up stubby and smoke-stained at the rear of the ship, its windows catching the glimmering light of the rising sun.

  Ashoka ran down the cliff path and banged on the shed door. Parvati opened up and must h
ave understood the eagerness in his face. They dashed up the slope and he handed the binoculars over.

  “It’s a tramp steamer, looks late-Victorian,” said Parvati. “The seas around here used to be full of them. They’d turn up at a dock looking for trade then and there; take you and your cargo anywhere around the world. It’s not big, a crew of a dozen, no more than that.”

  “We can handle a dozen, can we?”

  Parvati smirked. “I can.”

  Ashoka scanned the decks. “You think Savage is on it?”

  “There’s only one way to find out. Let’s go.”

  They watched until the Lazarus dropped anchor, a couple of miles offshore. Then they returned to the shed, and while Parvati assembled her weapons Ashoka unzipped the bags. He lifted out a black-jade jar, the size and shape of a large Coke bottle. He could just about hold it with one hand. The glossy black surface distorted his reflection, widening and deforming his face. The top was plugged with wax and a paper seal covered in red Chinese writing. There were three more identical jars in his backpack and Parvati had the same.

  Presents from Ti Fun.

  Dragonfire.

  “When we said we were going to destroy the ship, I thought he was going to give us explosives.”

  Parvati put her own binoculars away in her backpack. “You know how to use that stuff?” She gestured at the jar he carried. “It will melt anything. Tear off the seal and smash it open on the deck and that ship will be settled at the bottom of the sea within five minutes. You watch – it will be on fire as it goes down. Dragonfire’s amazing; water doesn’t quench it – it burns in a vacuum. We’re lucky Ti Fun was feeling so generous.”

  “And we’ve got eight jars of the stuff.” Ashoka wasn’t remotely happy lugging it on his back.

  “Best to be thorough. That ship will be filled with RAVN-1. I want to make sure we destroy it all.”

  Gear collected, they headed down to the beach. The sun hadn’t cleared the mountains and the sky hung grey and sombre with the mist rolling off the sea. The city still slept, but breakfast fires shone in a few windows and the early-morning hush was occasionally broken by a cockerel greeting the new day and dogs barking.