Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress (15 page)

sh breathed in deeply – the soft, sugary fragrance of jasmine, lemon and freshly clipped mint. Cool air drifted over him, a low whisper of wind that was the only disturbance of the silence and peace.

Eyes closed and senses not fully awake, Ash lay caressed in soft cotton. It rustled like leaves as he turned in his bed. He slid his palm over the flat, smooth mattress, smelling the freshness of it, the scent of the soap, and feeling the residual heat where his body had just lain.

Ash opened his eyes and took another deep breath.

The air was clear of the damp mustiness of the Lalgur. The lingering odour of too many bodies in too cramped a
space was missing too. Nearby was a table upon which stood a large vase filled with flowers, flooding the room with their perfume. The windows were open, but covered with deep red gauze curtains that billowed in the breeze, diffusing the morning light into a soft pink glow.

Another dream of Rama – or vision, or memory. Ash didn’t know what it was, but he knew it was true. Even now, Mayar’s fury made him shiver, reaching out over the thousands of years since Ravana’s death. How the demons hated Rama. His victory meant the ascension of humankind. Once mighty rulers, the rakshasas became scavengers, lost and leaderless, serving people like Savage.

And he’d seen Parvati, back in her demon days. He had some idea of the torment she’d suffered being the demon king’s daughter.

But he wasn’t in the battlefield now. The scent was of fresh flowers and mint, not corpses and smoke. Ash sat up. His tattered rags were gone and replaced by a pair of light cotton trousers and a loose shirt, both brilliant ivory white. The collar and cuffs bore embroidered patterns in shimmering silk thread.

He looked at his feet. They were clean. Even the grime that had worked its way deep under the nails after weeks of
running barefoot was gone. He checked his hands. They didn’t just look clean, but manicured. His hair had been washed and oiled, slicked back over his head rather than fizzing and spiking everywhere like usual.

What’s going on?

“You’re awake, at last.”

A woman rose from a chair. He hadn’t seen her because she had been hidden behind the floating curtains. She stood before him in the light.

It was the tall, beautiful Indian woman with the web-patterned sari from Savage’s party, the one with the spider-style hair. Now she wore a white outfit similar to his, but covered with red spider-web embroidery. As she came closer, Ash saw that this time her skin wasn’t plastered with make-up, and she wasn’t wearing glasses.

Her eyes were black. Not just the pupils, but all black. Her forehead was cut with a row of scars, four across, and there was a scar on each cheek. These must be what she’d been hiding under the powder.

The scars opened and eight black, shining orbs stared at Ash.

The woman had eight eyes. Like a spider.

“Come,” she said. “It’s time for breakfast.”

Ash gulped. He’d thought, hoped, that Savage just had the three rakshasas: Jackie, Mayar and Jat. Scrub that, two: Jat was dead. But Savage obviously had a lot more where the vulture demon had come from.

The woman snapped her fingers and motioned towards the door.

Where’s Lucky?

Maybe she’d made it back to the Lalgur. Ash couldn’t remember anything after he’d been caught by Mayar.

Please let Lucky be OK.
He didn’t care what happened to him as long as his sister was safe.

Ash stood up, trying hard to cover his nervousness. He looked down at his palm, remembering the searing pain, the agonising energies surging through him the night before. It should be black and burnt, but the skin was unblemished.

Something had awakened the aastra.

What on earth had happened? Rishi said that an aastra made by the fire god, Agni, would be awoken by flames. Ash thought back to last night. He’d been near that huge funeral pyre, felt the heat on his skin. Was it an Agni-aastra? Somehow that didn’t seem right – the aastra hadn’t reacted until much later. The pain had come on suddenly.

When Jat had died.

It hit him hard: the aastra was activated by death. The pain he’d felt, the energies that had wracked his body, must be death energies absorbed from Jat by the aastra. Now Ash knew exactly whose aastra it was. It had been
her
shadow he’d watched creep across the wall to claim the dead demon. He’d seen her hideous, red-tongued, skeletal statue as they’d drifted along the river with Rishi. The sadhu had warned Ash then what the goddess wanted.

What she loves most is death
.

Kali. The goddess of death. The aastra was hers.

Ash licked his dry lips, the one external sign of his fear, then followed the spider woman.

The door led into a long hallway. Cobwebs hung from the corners and fat black spiders sat in the deep recesses, their multitude of eyes glistening. They crept along the wall, following him.

The windows had been bricked up a long time ago, and the furniture was covered in a fuzzy layer of dust. Portraits lined the walls, hidden beneath a century or two of dirt.

Despite the grime, the gaze of one portrait, the first and largest, caught Ash’s attention. Savage looked down at him full height from the long-ago past, one hand on the tiger-headed cane, the other holding the stem of a poppy. It had
been poppies and the opium they produced that had made Savage’s first fortune, selling the drug to the Chinese in the nineteenth century.

The aristocrat’s hair was pale blonde and shoulder length, loose and roguish. In the background Ash glimpsed a set of manacles on a table, a reminder that Savage had been a slaver as well as a drug dealer. His skin was blanched white, without any sign of colour or life. He could just as well have been a corpse but for the fire blazing in his blue eyes. They were bright with power and arrogance.

Ash looked along the line of portraits. There were ten at least, all from different time periods. The most recent showed Savage in the uniform of a British army officer from World War Two. His hair was grey, his back stooped, and his hand resting on his tiger cane. He looked about sixty or seventy, even though he was really over two hundred. But his eyes still held their cold, ruthless light.

“Why has no one guessed he was the same man?” Now, with the portraits all lined up, it was obvious.

“Lord Savage travelled widely. Africa. The Far East. The Americas. He stays away for decades so when he returns, no one is around who might remember him. At least, no one who isn’t in the same business as him.”

Ash paused. “Why do you serve him? You’re a rakshasa. Why do you follow a human?”

“Lord Savage is far more than human.” She smiled and Ash’s skin crept as though one of those spiders was on his back. “And he gives us what we want.”

Light broke into the hallway as she opened the double doors at the end. Ash stepped out on to one of the pavilions on the edge of the Savage Fortress, overlooking the Ganges. A trio of small rowing boats bobbed just where he’d arrived with his uncle and aunt for the party that first night, a lifetime ago.

Above him the sky was brooding grey, heavy with storm clouds. Shining blades of lightning flickered on the horizon. The wind out here, up on the high battlements, was strong and sharp. The monsoon was coming.

They approached a white silk gazebo. The cloth walls had been pulled back and tied to four supporting posts, and a table had been laid with delicate china. There were three seats and two people at the table.

The first was Mayar, back in human form. He stood, arms folded across his chest, eyes reflecting nothing but demonic anger. He ground his jaws together and Ash’s nerves jumped as the teeth slid across each other like scraping razors.

The second sat on a wrought-iron chair. Dressed in a slim-fitting white suit, he waited, hands lightly placed on the silver cutlery.

“Come, my boy.” He raised his hand and Mayar drew back one of the other two chairs. “You must be starving. I’ve had a full English breakfast prepared. Thought you might appreciate some home cooking.” He reached over, picked up a narrow-necked china teapot, and held it poised over Ash’s cup.

“Some tea?” asked Lord Alexander Savage.

sh stood there, facing the man responsible for murdering his uncle and aunt. Every muscle locked; it was the only way to stop himself from ripping out Savage’s eyes. Mayar leaned closer, as if sensing Ash’s rage, eager for him to try. Mayar just wanted an excuse to kill Ash, and Ash was about to give it to him.

No. Ash couldn’t take on Mayar. Or Savage.

Maybe he was just a coward. Standing up to Hakim was one thing, but these guys, like Mayar, had been killing since time began. They were a whole different league of bad. He should attack Savage, even if it meant Mayar would kill him before he’d touched a hair on the man’s head. That’s what a hero would do, wasn’t it?

But Ash wasn’t that sort of hero. He wasn’t any sort of hero.

“Sit down, Ash. It’s getting cold,” said Savage.

Ash sat.

In silence he watched the English lord pour out his tea. The flesh hung off Savage’s fingers, and his skin seemed as brittle as autumn leaves, wrinkled, dry, crisscrossed with cracks. Cancerous black melanomas covered his hairless scalp. The cracks extended to his face, encrusted with blood where they’d dripped through the peeling, torn skin. Each facial movement stretched the thin tissue, opening up more tears and weeping scars.

How had Savage known about the meeting? He’d laid the trap and Ash had thrown himself straight into it.

“What have you done with my dad?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Savage raised his hand in a moment of realisation. “Ah, you want to know why we were waiting at the ghat. Simple, really. I am an adult and you are a child. Did you ever play chess with your father? Or any adult?”

Ash grimaced. Of course he had. He’d played his father loads of times, but never won.

Savage recognised the defeat from his slumped shoulders.
“Yes. And what did you learn? That adults beat children. It’s what we’re best at.”

He continued. “When I heard about your relatives’ tragic accident, I called your parents with the bad news that you were missing. I offered my assistance in trying to find you, assistance which was gratefully received. They even sent me photos of you both for the posters I had put up. Of course your father came straight over here to help.” Savage sipped his tea. “I knew you’d contact your parents sooner or later. And there is no magic to tapping a phone so I heard everything your mother told your father. Last night I merely had him drugged so he wouldn’t keep your appointment and sent my rakshasas instead. They’ve been most eager to see you again.”

So simple. And like a stupid kid he’d fallen for it.

“Mayar’s a little upset. Jat was a close friend of his.” Savage cut into a fried egg. His movements were feeble, and he barely had the strength to lift the silver fork to his lips. Yolk splashed over his chin as he chewed. “And you, Ash, killed him.”

“But he’ll return. Be reincarnated at some point.” Ash looked at Mayar. “Won’t he?”

Mayar’s snarl made the china cups shiver on their saucers. Savage raised his hand and the big demon backed off. “Alas,
not in this case,” Savage said. “There is a single thing in the universe that even the rakshasas fear. She is the ultimate force of destruction.”

“Kali.”

“Kali. You were wearing the Kali-aastra when you killed Jat. It is as though she did the deed herself and there is no coming back from the black goddess, not for rakshasas. It is, how you say, game over.”

This was all about the aastra. Why did Savage need it?

To open the Iron Gates.

What had Uncle Vik said about that Harappan city out in Rajasthan? The city would have libraries, temples, tombs. All with treasure. But that treasure was gold and knowledge.

Savage was rich enough already, so he didn’t need more gold. It was knowledge he was after. Were the Iron Gates guarding some great magical library?

“You want scrolls, don’t you? To learn the other masteries? Is that it?”

Savage laughed. “You think you can learn the ten masteries from text books?” He shook his head. “No, Ash, I am not searching for
something
, but
someone
. A guru to teach me the last few forms of magic.”

But only one being knew all ten sorceries.

“Ravana,” Ash breathed.

Flashes of the dream he’d had when he first found the aastra came back to him. Rama, surrounded by his generals. His loyal brother beside him, holding a second arrow. Everyone kneeling at the feet of Rama, their prince, praying he would kill the demon king.

Rama did kill Ravana.

Didn’t he?

But we come back.

Savage wanted to be able to alter reality, time itself. He wanted to turn back the clock and become once again young, strong and beautiful. But only Ravana knew how to do that. Everything came back to Ravana.

“Didn’t Rama kill Ravana?” Ash said.

Savage’s eyes widened, then a slow smile cracked his face. A drop of blood fell from his chin on to the white table cloth as the skin stretched.

“Rama
merely
killed him,” replied the Englishman.

Ash rubbed his thumb, thinking about Rama, his first dream. Rama had held two aastras – one from Vishnu and the other from Kali. He knew that now. Only Kali offered utter destruction. Only Kali guaranteed total annihilation.

But Rama had fired the Vishnu-aastra. And that meant…

“Ravana can be reborn.” He whispered it, appalled by what it meant. The demon king could come back.

The excavated city had palaces, libraries, temples and tombs.
Tombs
.

Royal tombs were for the great and powerful. For ancient kings.

For demon kings.

“You want the aastra to open Ravana’s tomb.”

Savage nodded. “Did you know he forged his own body? Of gold and bronze and metals dragged out of the very deepest bowels of the earth? No flesh could contain his power. Look at me. Look at how my body withers and decays with just the weakest of spells. Now imagine that power, a million times more powerful. Demons are naturally magical, but Ravana was in an entirely different league. He cannot be reborn into simple flesh.”

“So Rama put his golden body in the tomb.”

“And sealed it with iron gates. The iron prevents the spirit of Ravana from re-entering the only vessel that can contain it. But once the tomb is open…” Savage laughed – or it should have been a laugh. Instead it sounded like he was coughing up a lung. But Ash wouldn’t be that lucky.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” said Savage. “That Kali herself, the goddess born to kill demons, will be the one who releases the greatest demon of them all? Kali is the destroyer. Of mortals, of demons, of cities, of nations, of
everything
. So I will use the destructive powers of the Kali-aastra to smash open the Iron Gates. Imagine how generous Ravana will be to the one who frees him.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Ash glared. “Are you totally insane? What sort of world will it be with Ravana free?”

Ash knew, he’d seen the Carnival of Flesh, the things Ravana did to humans just for his amusement. He thought back to Parvati, and the way she’d talked about her mother, who was made into a monster just to lift Ravana’s boredom.

“I imagine for the likes of you it will become a living hell,” said Savage. “But I will be young again, immortal, and second only to Ravana in power. It will be fun.” He glanced across the table. “I’d put that down if I were you. It is quite blunt.”

Ash looked. He was gripping the butter knife in his trembling hand. He put it down, but it was hard forcing his fingers to open.

“That’s it?” he said. “Just so you can be twenty again and have a full head of hair? All this misery, just to cure your baldness? Haven’t you lived long enough?”

“It can never be enough.” Savage’s eyes darkened. The Englishman’s voice was low and brittle. “To gain what little power I have, I made deals, bargains with creatures more terrible than any rakshasa. When I die, they will want payment in full.”

“So what is waiting for you?” asked Ash.

“You cannot imagine, even in your darkest nightmares.”

“Well, you’re not getting the aastra,” said Ash. “That tomb will stay closed for all of eternity.” Thank God he’d hidden it.

The Englishman scowled. “Do you know how many decades I’ve spent searching for Ravana’s tomb, and the key to open it? The fortunes I’ve spent? What would you give to wield the power of a god? Anything, I’m sure,” Savage said, more to himself than to Ash. “I discovered the tomb last year. But I was still searching for the means with which to open it.”

“The Kali-aastra.”

“Exactly. You see, it had been found after Ravana’s defeat by a priest who recognised it for what it was. Such things
cannot easily disappear. The scrolls your uncle was translating described where the priest had placed the aastra, in a shrine, awaiting a hero to claim it. Instead an ignorant, stupid boy finds it by pure, dumb luck. I can almost hear the gods laughing at me.” Savage twisted his napkin, wringing it as tightly as he could. “They’ll not be laughing once I have freed Ravana.” His gaze locked on to Ash’s. “Tell me where the aastra is.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Ash didn’t doubt it. He breathed lightly, his heart fluttering like a panicked sparrow’s. But he knew he could not let Savage get his hands on the aastra.

Savage shook his head. “I won’t kill you.”

The door at the far end of the pavilion opened. Savage tapped the edge of his cup. “Makdi, if you’d be so kind.”

The spider-woman poured him some more tea.

“Bring some more toast. Our other guest will be wanting breakfast,” he said.

Jackie came out of a door, pulling someone behind her – a young girl also dressed in a long white dress.

Oh no
.

All courage ran out of Ash like water.

They had Lucky.