Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness (16 page)

“Parvati …”

“That’s not my name.”

“Where are you taking me?”

Rani pulled at his chains. “Hurry up.”

Ash stumbled along behind her in the semi-darkness.
What was that?
He thought he heard something up ahead. Who else was down here? What else?

“Why didn’t he send you to get those kids?” Ash asked. He’d heard the tension in her voice when Savage had ordered Jackie to do it. “You were angry.”

“What do I care for some orphans?” she replied tersely.

“You tell me.”

Rani spun around, her eyes blazing. “They are what they are. Demons.”

“They’re kids. How old were you when Savage found you?”

“Younger than them. They should be happy for the time they had being children. That is over now.” She turned back to face down the corridor. “Come on.”

“You don’t like it, Parvati.”

“That is not my name!”

Ash grabbed her shoulder and Rani hissed. Her tongue danced between her fangs and Ash gulped. He’d gone too far. But this was the only chance he had. There was something good, compassionate, deep inside the rakshasa. He knew Parvati, and whatever timeline or world or age she might exist in, she and he had always been friends. No matter what.

“Listen to me. Savage is going to destroy those kids’ lives – corrupt them, twist their minds and feelings and souls … and you can stop him. You’re a demon and you’ve told me that demons don’t have feelings or compassion or love, but that’s not true. Savage feeds the monster in you, but there’s so much more. I’ve seen it.”

She snorted. “So you say, but this other rakshasa, this Parvati of yours, she must be a weak and feeble thing. I am a queen of demons. Who is this other Parvati? Some vagabond? What does she have that I do not?”

“You know what she has.”

“Humanity? Compassion? Love?” Rani’s eyes were murderously narrow. “Those are things I do not want, I do not need.”

“They’re yours for the taking. Just help me. We have to stop Savage.”

She shook her head. “It’s impossible. Savage cannot be stopped.” She raised her lantern and revealed an iron door ahead of them. “He has planned for this a long time.”

A moaning echoed from beyond the door. The sound – low, mournful, trembling with anger – chilled the blood.

Ash stared. “What’s in there?”

Rani unlocked the door and pushed him inside. He fell hard, gashing his knees on the bare rock.

Rani put the lantern inside the cell. “Some light, for what it’s worth.”

Ash couldn’t see far in. The cell was some natural cave. The walls undulated and shimmered with ice. Deep within the endless darkness, beyond the feeble lantern light, he heard feet shuffle. Voices – many – came out of that black void. “What’s in here?”

Rani paused at the half-closed door. “Savage has been experimenting to perfect his drug for ten years. Here’s where he keeps the failures.”

She shut the door and bolted it.

Ash gazed out into the darkness. “Hello …? Who’s there?” He backed up against the wall. “Come out into the light.”

And they did.

T
he first slithered. It dragged itself over the damp rock, through the dripping pool, with spindly white arms that ended not with hands but bony hooks. Its eyes were huge bulbous things: white, sightless. The mouth was a puckered hole with black gums and a few yellow teeth. Weeping sores covered the sallow, sickly skin that sagged over twisted muscle.

Ash, back against the door, stood ready. The chains of the manacles were heavy, dense iron. He swung them from side to side, prepared to fight.

More creatures emerged into the lamplight, each more malformed and grotesque than the last. One had a mangy pelt and a single wing, neither beast nor bird and no longer human, his skull deformed into a beak and pressed sideways so he kept on turning his head at angles, weird glazed eyes blinking and unfocused. A reptilian tongue darted above the curved jawbone. Another lumbered closer in an ape-like gait, a pair of puny bow-legs supporting a massive torso and arms thicker than Ash’s waist. Its head faced almost backwards and patches of a mane sprouted over the cheeks and scalp. A single eye sat in the centre of its brow.

They moaned. They hissed and snarled and spat. Some had no eyes at all and sniffed, their necks stretched long to taste Ash’s scent in among the foulness. Bones lay broken and excrement stank in the alcoves.

Claws scratched the stone. Teeth, fangs, snapped with hunger.

How many were there? Shapes moved beyond the light, further and further into the darkness. The caverns could go on for ever.

A man – Ash thought it was a man – scuttled forward. He had six arms and no legs, so he moved like an ant. A swollen head with tusks jutted from the shoulders, and he snorted as he ran up to Ash, beady red eyes set at odd angles in his face. He stopped a few metres from Ash, watching, salivating.

Ash glanced at the bones nearby. These creatures weren’t fed by Savage. They fed off each other.

The six-armed man charged. He rushed in low and rammed Ash in the guts, crushing him against the iron door.

Ash gasped as a tusk dug into his thigh and he slammed his fists into the creature’s head. He drove a knee into its jaw and its teeth cracked. He did it again and they all fell out. The six-armed man spat them out and ran back, readying for a second attack. Ash struggled to stand, his stomach heaved and a thin tear bled down his leg.

The air oppressed him as the creatures clustered around. They stood upon each other and hands grasped out, bony fingers or talons jabbing at him, trying to snatch a piece of flesh. They cackled and groaned and jabbered with famished excitement.

A long, serpentine tail wound itself around Ash’s ankle. He pulled and beat at it, but it held on. Six-arms charged again, catching Ash in the ribs. He went down and Six-arms pounced on top of him. Cold, strong hands grabbed Ash’s other leg and began to pull. Nails ripped at his clothes and sank into his limbs.

Ash wedged the chain into Six-arms’ mouth. He heaved it back, bending the neck away from him, but the creature was immensely strong and was able to add its weight behind it. Spittle, green and putrid, dripped over Ash’s face. Those red eyes widened, glowing with bloodlust.

A tongue licked Ash’s foot. He thrashed out as he felt teeth on his toes.

Sweating, panting, he pushed. The chain dug into the monster’s mouth, deep into the sides and his tongue thrashed over the iron as Ash forced him further back. The bloodlust gave way to pain, to fear.

Ash pulled his legs free and tucked them under Six-arms’ body. Then, with a kick and shove, he threw him back into the heaving mass of horrors. He scrambled to his feet, crouching low, glaring back at the dozens of eager, hungry eyes.

They came closer. Six-arms vanished into the crowd, screaming, defeated, and they devoured him. A cluster of creatures surrounded him and tore him, literally, limb from limb, flesh spattering the rocks and other monsters.

Ash shivered, trying not to puke. He picked up a splintered bone. It was little better than nothing. “I hope you bloody well get food poisoning,” he snarled. It was all he had left – his defiance. No way could he take them all.

It was a grunt, from somewhere further back. A grunt that was some sort of laugh. Someone clapped their hands and grunted again. “Food poisoning? I like that.” The grunt rumbled out again. It was a deep, rocking sound that shook the air, raising echoes that boomed from the darkness. “Food poisoning!”

The mob of monsters fell silent, but for the odd crunch or slurp.

“Make way!” A stick whacked flesh and Ash watched the crowd part. Some were reluctant, still casting hungry looks at Ash and licking their lips, but make way they did.

“Make way …”

A man came forward. The bones within the wrinkled and scarred oak-brown skin had been warped so that his back curved sharply and his head, matted with dreadlocks and tilted on a scrawny neck, seemed ready to snap at the merest sudden move. His eyes were gone, the face grooved with deep scars running from his forehead, through the empty eye sockets and down to the bearded jaw. He walked towards Ash clutching a bamboo stick.

Ash looked at the scarred eye sockets, and knew those eyes would have been blue.

“Food poisoning?” The blind, mutilated man came to a stop facing Ash. “Funny, boy. Funny.”

Ash reached out and touched him. “Rishi?”

“S
o, you’re the Eternal Warrior? Interesting,” said Rishi. He passed a bowl towards Ash. He must have sensed Ash’s reluctance. “Mushrooms. The only things that grow down here. Perfectly edible. Perfectly vegetarian.”

He couldn’t believe it was Rishi. Not the one from his timeline, of course. He’d died rescuing Ash, but having Rishi back, any version of him, meant they were still in with a chance.

Ash rubbed his wrists. They’d managed to smash off the manacles, but he was bruised and aching. He picked up the bowl and sniffed it. He ate one. Not bad. He ate another. “Yes. In my timeline we defeated Ravana.”

“Now, that I would have liked to see.” Rishi picked up a second bowl. “So I exist in this other timeline also?”

“You saved my life. Mine and my sister’s. It was you who told me about the Kali-aastra and what I was.”

“Glad I did something right.”

Ash looked at the old
sadhu
and, for the first time in ages, felt hope. “What happened?”

Rishi sighed and put the bowl down. One of the others sniffed at it and licked the few specks of left-over mushroom. “Savage returned to India ten years ago. First thing he did was buy that old maharajah’s palace downriver from Varanasi. Renamed it the Savage Fortress.”

“Same in my time. But he didn’t get it ten years ago. He only bought it a year or two back.”

Rishi grimaced. “He started digging and found the Kali-aastra. He knew exactly where to look. Then he headed off to Rajasthan. I followed. Alone.”

“What about Parvati?” asked Ash.

“She was just five, Ash. Her rakshasa soul hadn’t awoken. She was living as a human child with a family who loved her. A few siblings. I’d been keeping an eye on her, watching out for the first signs that she was changing. But I knew I still had a few years. Best let her enjoy them, don’t you think? The nightmares, the old memories would come soon enough, show her what she truly was – whose daughter she was. It was kinder to let her have some happy years first.”

“What happened in Rajasthan?”

Rishi nodded. “I tried to stop Savage, but what could I do by myself? He caught me and let that vulture Jat eat my eyes. I never saw Ravana, but I heard him. I heard the world scream at his rebirth. I wish I’d died that night.”

Ash touched the sadhu’s arm. “Then what?”

Rishi grunted. “Savage held me prisoner at the Savage Fortress for a few months while he studied with Ravana. Then, when he’d learned all he could …” Rishi drew his thumb across his throat. “He used the Kali-aastra to kill Ravana once and for all. There was a lot of confusion that night. I managed to escape, got as far as Varanasi before they caught me. So I was brought here.”

“But what about your magic? Couldn’t you just blast yourself out? I’ve seen you hurl lightning bolts.”

“Powers my god Shiva bestowed upon me. But they are powers of the sky; I cannot access them so far beneath the earth.” Rishi frowned. “Then, as Savage began his experiments, they started to arrive. Poor villagers, lost travellers. He tried out his alchemy on them, and those that didn’t die were left here. I did my best to look after them but, well, you’ve seen. A few hang on to their humanity, but only a very few. By the time Savage has finished with them they are barely human, in more ways than one. What you see here are the … least damaged.”

“You have to be joking.” Ash looked about him. He’d never seen a more gruesome group of monsters. Even when he’d witnessed the demon nations and seen every rakshasa gathered, awaiting Ravana’s rebirth, the horror hadn’t been this great. But those were true demons. These pitiful things were neither one nor the other. No wonder nature rejected them.

“The worst disappeared deeper into the mountain. Sometimes they creep here, steal a few of my people. You can hear them in the darkness, and the screams of the ones they take. The mountain shakes and we lose a few under the collapsing chambers and rockfalls. I cannot imagine what sorts of creatures dwell in the very pits that make even a mountain tremble in fear.”

“How far in have you gone?”

“Not far. Every now and then we search to try to find those kidnapped, but it seems even the shadows are hungry, and members of the rescue party are killed. But sometimes, Ash, sometimes …” he smiled, “… I think I feel the wind on my face. It is cold and fresh and smells sweet, like the breath of a god. Oh, at that moment I feel almost free.” Rishi touched his own cheek. “I dream about sunlight. What it felt like. To be warm again.”

Ash sank back against the wall. His stomach rumbled and protested. It wanted more than a few wrinkled mushrooms. He was too tired, too bruised and too hungry. He looked at the old man. Rishi, the legend. He’d struck a cow the first time Ash had met him. Out on the hot, dusty streets of Varanasi. His eyes had shone bright blue. Now they were gone. Only one man shone now and that was Savage. He’d eaten all their hopes, gorged himself on the lives of everyone who’d tried to stop him, and made himself whole, young, immortal and all-powerful.

“How did Savage awaken the Kali-aastra?” The weapon of the death goddess demanded a great sacrifice before it could be used.

“Himself,” said Rishi.

“What?”

“Think about it, Ash. There are two of you, so there were two of him. The version you knew, who cast the Time Spell, and the version that existed in this timeline.”

“That is seriously messed up. Why didn’t the other demons have their revenge on Savage when he killed Ravana? Why did they let him get away with it?”

“He had the demon king’s heir.”

“Rani,” said Ash. It all made sense.

“Yes, Rani. She is the queen, the
rani
, of all the demon nations. A puppet of Savage’s to be sure, but still, in name, she rules as her father once did. Savage will tire of the arrangement. He was never one to stand behind the throne when he could sit upon it.”