The Place of Dead Kings (56 page)

‘So, he trained you?’

‘He taught me a few powers.’

‘Like Lightning?’

‘No, not that. That one I taught myself. In secret.’

‘You stole it?’

‘One of the servants got it for me.’

Jack nodded. He’d taken a yantra from Jhala’s office himself once.

‘I wanted to kill Mahajan with it,’ Sonali continued. ‘So, I used it on him. Five months ago. That’s how I knew it would destroy his shield for a moment.’

‘Mahajan can’t have been happy about that.’

Sonali looked down. ‘He almost killed me. I was certain he would. He was in a rage.’

‘Why didn’t he kill you?’

‘For the same reason he kept me alive all this time. For the same reason he kept me trapped here in Mar.’ She looked up and met Jack’s gaze. ‘He wanted me to command the Brahmastra.’

Jack blinked a few times. ‘What?’

‘Mahajan was a blocked siddha. He couldn’t learn new yantras.’

‘Of course – he must have been, if he was using powers.’

‘And to control the Brahmastra, he needed to learn a new yantra. He’d worked out the design from the old manuscripts. But he couldn’t use it.’

Jack nodded. Things were becoming clearer now. ‘So, Mahajan needed you.’

‘Yes. He taught me the yantra. I didn’t know what it was. But once I’d learnt it . . .’ She looked down and clenched the edge of her cloak in her fist. ‘It was evil. I sensed it. Like cold metal in my head.’

Jack paused. Sonali looked upset discussing this, but he had to have answers. ‘I understand. You refused to use the power, but Mahajan couldn’t kill you.’

‘Yes. He beat me. But I never gave in. It got worse recently. He was certain he had everything ready. He just needed me.’

‘It was deadlock. You against him.’

‘That’s it. I could break the ankle chain with the Lightning power any time I wanted, but I could never escape the torc. I wouldn’t have helped Mahajan, though. The Brahmastra is evil. I’m certain of that. I would have killed myself first. I thought about it many times. For some reason I didn’t.’

‘You thought you might escape?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so. I couldn’t completely give up hope. Perhaps I was just a coward.’

Jack cleared his throat. ‘I wouldn’t have called you that.’

Sonali went silent. Her eyes reddened and moisture crept into their corners.

Jack ran his fingers through his hair. At least he understood things better now.

He recalled Atri’s death. The siddha had refused to use a power to defend himself, even when an arrow had hit him. He must have known – or at least suspected – he would need to learn a new power to control the Brahmastra. He must have been determined not to become blocked before he found Mahajan.

‘There’s still one thing I’m wondering about,’ Jack said. ‘When I got in the workshop, I didn’t find anything. Nothing that looked like a weapon.’

Sonali frowned. ‘I never went into the workshop. I don’t know what the Brahmastra looks like.’

‘Unless it’s tiny, it wasn’t in there.’

‘That is strange. Mahajan was certain he had everything ready. He kept saying that. The Brahmastra must have been hidden in the workshop. There’s nowhere else it could have been.’

‘I have another idea. I noticed something about the castle. The whole thing looked like a machine for creating avatars, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know. I saw a picture once—’

‘Those metal spikes around the bailey. The circle of stones in the middle. And the workshop underneath. I saw a steel plate in there with a picture on it of a siddha creating an avatar.’

Sonali looked at him. ‘Now that you say it. You think—’

‘The castle was a machine for creating an avatar. The Brahmastra.’

She shivered. ‘Then the Brahmastra would be huge.’

‘Bigger than any avatar I’ve ever seen.’

She nodded slowly. ‘It would make sense. The Brahmastra
is
an avatar. I know that much. When I learnt the yantra for controlling it, I understood all the commands, but there was always one I wasn’t sure about. It was for “calling” the Brahmastra. Calling – that could mean creating, couldn’t it? Bringing it over from the spirit realm.’

‘Seems so.’

‘So, Mahajan didn’t have the Brahmastra after all. He must have been close, though. He just needed me to call it into life.’

Jack shrugged. ‘We’ll never know how close he was. And that’s the way I want to keep it.’

Someone shouted behind them. Jack turned and saw Cormac running up the side of the hill, calling out, ‘Chief dead!’

Jack crossed himself. Domnall had been injured badly during the battle. Although the Mar had tended to him as best they could, Jack had doubted the Chief would survive.

‘Dead.’ Cormac stood panting in front of Jack. His face was pale and his eyes brimmed with tears.

Jack looked past Cormac and saw the remainder of the Mar clustered in an impromptu camp on the edge of the valley. Many had died, many more were so badly injured they wouldn’t survive for long. But, for Cormac’s village, the loss of the Chief would be the worst.

Cormac pressed his hand to his chest and cupped it, as if to catch blood flowing from a wound. ‘Heart bleeds.’

The seer raised the ancient Bible above her head and intoned slowly. The Gaalic words were at times as guttural as grinding rocks and at other times as whispery as the wind. Her voice seemed to be the voice of the land itself.

Finally, she finished, lowered the holy book and handed it to a Mar girl standing nearby.

A wail went up from the congregation. The entire village had gathered for the funeral and now their cries sailed into the sky. Women shrieked and tore at their hair. Warriors wept and beat their chests with their hands.

In the centre of the group, in a freshly dug grave, lay the body of Chief Domnall. He was wrapped in his striped cloak and his spear lay beside him. His eyes were closed and his face was solemn but calm. His long white hair and beard shone softly in the wintry light.

Jack stood with Saleem, Rao and Sonali. All of them wore native cloaks and stared grimly at the dead Chief. Cormac was directly opposite, his arms hanging limply at his sides and his head bowed. Near to him stood the woman the Cattans had abducted twelve days ago. The warriors had discovered her and some of the other kidnapped women in the village beside Mahajan’s castle. At least they were free now.

With great difficulty the seer bent her knees, supporting herself with her staff, and scooped up a handful of dirt. She cast the earth into the grave and it dashed against the Chief’s chest.

The wailing grew louder. Eva screeched, pushed past her sisters and collapsed to her knees beside the pit. She sobbed and clawed at the earth, raking up clods and smashing them against the ground. Two of her sisters huddled beside her and tried to calm her.

The seer straightened again and leant against her staff. The rest of the Mar began grasping earth and scattering it over the Chief.

Slowly, the old man was covered over.

An icy wind swept down from the mountains.

The village was without its leader.

‘I failed,’ Saleem said as he walked up the slope. ‘I came here to make up for Wiltshire and I didn’t do anything.’

Jack shook his head as he strode beside the lad. ‘You did plenty. You helped me fight Wulfric. You survived in Mahajan’s dungeon. And you got us past that skull avatar. I never would have made it without you.’

Saleem glanced across at him. ‘You think so?’

‘I know so. You’ve made up for Wiltshire. Many times over. You have to stop beating yourself up about it now.’

‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Saleem stared at the ground. ‘What about you? And William Merton?’

Jack tensed. It was hard to talk about his friend. ‘What about William?’

‘You have to forgive yourself too.’

Jack was silent for a moment. He couldn’t forgive himself but perhaps he should try. Or at least start to. ‘Maybe one day.’ He looked up and pointed. ‘There he is.’

Above them, on the crest of the hill, stood Rao. He held a burning brand in one hand and the overcast sky swirled behind him. Next to him rose a mound of twigs and branches.

Jack and Saleem trudged up the last few feet to the summit and stood beside the Captain.

‘Thank you for coming.’ Rao turned and thrust the brand into the pile of wood. The flames crept along the twigs and soon engulfed the larger branches.

The three of them watched as the fire grew brighter and the heat intensified. Soon it was so hot they had to step back a few paces.

Rao gave a loud sigh.

The pyre was for Parihar. It had been impossible to retrieve the Lieutenant’s body to cremate it. Instead, according to Rajthanan custom, Rao had made a small effigy out of straw and placed it in the centre of the pile of wood.

Jack had been less than impressed by Parihar. The man had seemed an arrogant idiot during the journey up through Scotland. But he was dead now, and there was no point in thinking ill of the dead.

‘It’s a hard loss,’ Jack said.

Rao nodded. ‘More than twenty years he’d been a friend. Since we were this high.’ Rao held his hand to his waist.

‘Sorry to hear it.’

Rao sighed again. ‘Thank you. Both of you.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Jack said. ‘We both know what it’s like to lose friends. We couldn’t let you hold a funeral on your own.’

‘No. It’s not just that. I meant for everything you’ve done. Jack, you risked your life to free Parihar. And Saleem, you were with him until the end.’

‘You fought too,’ Jack said. ‘We all tried our best to get him out.’

Rao’s jaw quivered slightly but he managed to still it. ‘Yes, we did our best by poor Parihar. No one can say we didn’t try our best.’

Sonali swept her shawl about her and ducked through the hut’s entrance. She crouched beside the embers pulsing in the central hearth.

‘So, that’s all of it.’ She nodded at the papers and folios spread out on the floor.

Jack shifted as he sat cross-legged on his bracken bed. ‘That’s everything we took from Mahajan’s workshop.’

Saleem, sitting nearby, nodded, while Rao stared at the papers, rubbing his moustache.

‘It’s all evil,’ Sonali said. ‘The work of the Kapalikas.’

‘Are there any copies?’ Jack asked.

‘If there ever were, they would have been somewhere in the castle,’ she said. ‘They would have been destroyed with everything else.’

‘Mahajan wouldn’t have stashed copies somewhere else?’ Jack asked.

She shook her head. ‘There was nowhere else he could keep them. And anyway, he wouldn’t dare leave them where anyone else could get hold of them.’

‘Perhaps he had a comrade? Another siddha?’

Sonali snorted. ‘He worked alone. Believe me. He would never trust anyone else with his secrets.’

Rao cleared his throat. ‘So, if I have this right, we have here the only copies of Mahajan’s papers. Also, the castle, machine, whatever it was, has been destroyed. There’s nothing left of it that would allow it to be rebuilt.’

‘I can’t see how,’ Sonali said. ‘I looked at the ruins. There’s almost nothing there.’

‘I agree,’ Jack said. ‘There was just a bit of rubble left. Soon it’ll be covered over by grass. Nothing there anyone could use.’