“Ruhadze. Nice of you to drop by.”
The newcomer was dark-haired and handsome, but slovenly. He wore a wicked-looking, greasy imperial and his jet-black, arched eyebrows seemed as pointed as the mustache and beard. Locks of curling, untamed hair fell over the unnaturally pale brow, and he brushed them back as he smiled. Hesha examined him without comment. Tested by silence, the stranger lost. He hurried on anxiously:
“All right. I’m here to make a deal with you.” He scratched at his chin. “You’re looking for something. I know where it is. I can take you to it.”
“Your name,” prompted Hesha.
“Aren’t you interested? I thought you were hot to find the…”
“Your name,” the Setite ordered.
“Ravana. Khalil Ravana.”
“Go on, Khalil. And call me Hesha, if you would.” His momentum broken, the stranger with the rakshash name hesitated. Hesha filled in the gap. “Why do you believe that I am looking for something?”
“Michel,” Khalil replied. “He came to me asking a pack of questions about…about a place I know. He’d had plenty of time to ask before, but he wasn’t interested until you showed up. Then he gets killed here, on your doorstep. Word has it he didn’t even get to sit down before they got him. So, I figure. You’re looking for what he was looking for. And he didn’t get the info to you before they got him. Now, I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but I can guess. And I have a feeling that I’m not a healthy dead man anymore. I’m here to spill my guts so they can go after you, instead.”
“How kind.” Hesha steepled his fingers. “And what is it that you want from me?”
“Well, I’m not sure yet. Maybe you can owe me one.” Hesha shook his head. “Name your price.”
Khalil shrugged. “Look. I’ll show you the merchandise. I’ll take you there. If it’s what you want, we can work out the deal then. Call this,” he seemed to be listening to someone on his left, “a service done in return for…future considerations.” He wrinkled his mustache. “For one thing, you can get me the hell out of Calcutta.”
“I am capable of doing that,” confirmed the Setite.
“Right. So.” Khalil nodded. “I’ll meet you in here tomorrow, right after sunset, and take you to the spot.” Hesha lifted an eyebrow. “No. Tomorrow, at nine o’clock, we will meet you outside the hotel.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Who are we.” The Setite folded his hands and stared the unlucky Ravnos into momentary silence. “That,” he said, “is my concern. Meet us outside, next to the bookseller, at nine o’clock.”
“I never said anything about—”
“And I did not ask you about other people, either. Still, you will escort me and my followers from the bookseller, not this meat market, at nine o’clock. If you and your friend—” Hesha gestured to Khalil’s left side— “wait for me here, you will find yourselves left behind when I leave Calcutta.”
“Just one fucking minute, you dirty snake.” The Ravnos’s temper, magnified by the anger overlying the city, brought him to his feet, shouting. “I don’t have to put up with this shit from you. There’s no one else can take you to the—I could walk out of here right now, and where the hell would you be?”
“For some reason, Mr. Ravana, I don’t think you can walk away from this. Inform your employer that I prefer to deal with principals; I will make an exception in this case for his or her sake. There can’t be many truly…expendable peons at his disposal at a time like this.” The Setite stood, bowed mockingly to the man he could see, sincerely to the invisible listener, and departed.
Behind him, mixed with the sounds of the music, he heard Khalil kick the table. It flew across the room, breaking glass and heads along the way, and a stream of curses followed it. When the Setite looked back, the younger monster was surrounded by half-formed shapes and blobs of color that had nothing to do with the club’s lights.
Hesha fitted his monocle into place, turned to climb the great Dutch-tile staircase, and permitted himself half a smile.
Saturday, 24 July 1999, 11:03 PM
A back street in Grey Town
Calcutta, West Bengal
Ron Thompson sat, cold and wet, on the backboard of a shuddering donkey cart. His mood was as black as the night around him, which was saying a great deal. The typhoon—a thousand-year storm, by CNN’s reckoning—had rolled in at dawn. If the sun had risen, though, Thompson hadn’t seen it. The clouds were too thick. Despite having hovered over land for eighteen hours, Typhoon Justin showed no signs of slackening. The Himalayas had trapped the rain and wind on their way north. The gales that drove them could not force the system over the mountains, but neither were they giving up the struggle. The water ran three feet deep over the city. The lights in the more civilized portions of the city flickered and threatened to give out. And in the slums the madman with the reins drove them through, the power was gone completely. Visibility: zero. In disgust, Thompson gave up his sentry-post and hunkered down beside the Asp. The water and floating vegetable mess swirled about his ankles, but the bright green boards of the cart’s sides afforded some protection from the wind, at least.
The little green wagon pulled up next to a massive, complicated ruin of an apartment building. Water poured over the cracked walls in sheets, gushed out and around the few rain spouts and tin gutters. Thompson and the Asp waited, looking up at the broken windows, torn awnings, and feeble shutters. When it became clear that the cart had really and truly stopped, they clambered down off the back of it. The Asp took up guard, so far as the rain would allow, and Thompson lent Liz a hand as she jumped into the knee-high brown flood. Hesha stepped out alone, on the opposite side.
Khalil Ravana leapt from the buckboard to the back of the unfortunate donkey. With quick, practiced fingers, he unhitched the animal from the traces. He kicked her flanks—she refused to move—and he whispered horrors into her ears. Wild and white-eyed, the jenny fled the tiger’s roar, up a short flight of stairs and into the half-shelter of an open hallway. He vaulted off, tied the beast to a railing, and turned to hop back down the stairs.
“Aiii!” A high-pitched complaint and a stocky, gesticulating female blocked his path. In Hindustani, she demanded an explanation of the donkey. Khalil snapped his fingers, and a heavily muscled man with an ax crested the stairs behind him. The phantom licked his lips and raised the bloody weapon over his head. “Aiiiiiiii!” Twice as loud and three times as shrill, the screaming woman disappeared behind the corner and into a dark doorway.
Khalil turned a smug face to the four waiting in the street. He sauntered down the steps, opened a thick, surprisingly solid-looking door, and picked Hesha out of the little group by eye. “We’re here. Come on.” All four started toward the open portal. The Ravnos laughed. “No. Just you, Ruhadze.”
The Setite stared wordlessly at his guide.
“What? What? You want to go back to the hotel empty-handed? You come alone or you don’t come at all. I tried to tell you this last night, you cocky ass.”
Hesha stepped closer to the doorway, examining the wood, the crumbling building, and the Ravnos’s sneer. “She comes with me,” said the Setite. His eyes scrutinized every muscle of the younger creature’s face. Khalil’s lids flickered, and a tic began over his right temple. For a moment, Hesha thought the man might lose control entirely—but as he teetered on the verge, the look the Setite expected came over him. Again, Khalil seemed to listen to someone close by, and his expression cleared.
“All right,” he agreed, evidently to his own surprise. “But only her. The others stay here.”
Hesha called out: “Give Miss Dimitros a flashlight and a camera.”
Thompson and the Asp said nothing…so loudly that Elizabeth caught every word. The boss was nuts. The whole thing was a trap. The girl wasn’t ready. The girl, at least, was dressed in jeans and sturdy shoes tonight. The girl wouldn’t go. The girl would go. As their constrained, well-trained faces spoke all this, the two men strapped Liz into
a web belt hung with tools, slung a rugged old camera—waterproof—around her neck, and clipped a fanny pack full of film under her raincoat. The last thing she read from them before the Asp pushed her forward was a kind of commiseration: not to each other, but identical glances, right at her, that said they had been where she was, and they hadn’t liked it, and they wished she were anywhere but there. Oddly comforted, Elizabeth followed Hesha down the passage. She kept her hand on her phone, and repeated Thompson’s list of alarm codes to herself keep her calm.
The dimly lit hallway ended in a staircase up. I am being followed, thought Liz. Seven-two-two. The staircase brought them to a half-balcony, broken at the outer edge. Someone is in the room with me: eight-three-four. Khalil led them into an abandoned apartment and over a roof. The police have arrived: three-zero-six. The roof came to a broken, twisted fire-escape. I am wounded: one-one-one. The guide wrenched a ladder free of the iron wreckage and propped it against a wall. Hesha is wounded: nine-nine- nine. They climbed up, walked along a bastion of old brick between two buildings, and paused at a dead end. Fire: five-two-eight.
Khalil disappeared into the bricks. His head and hands still stuck out above the baked clay. Hesha took hold of the callused fingers, and stepped into the illusion. He reached back for Elizabeth, and she took hold. Inside the bricks, she could see nothing, and so reached for her flashlight. They were on a spiral staircase with a very low ceiling; it led down into the masonry. The bricks gave way to stone, the stone to brick again, and the steps curled away beyond the stifled lamp’s glow. Their feet made little noise on the dusty cleats. Soaked clothing failed to rustle; after a time it stopped dripping, and Elizabeth could hear, very clearly, that hers was the only breath taken in the musty chimney.
I confirm your call, she thought in defense. Four-nine- four.
At long last, the descent stopped, and the three crawled along a tunnel. It kept to the horizontal, for the most part, and wound through ruins that had nothing to do with cement, bricks, or the tenements above them. Between stretches of rubble and blank stone, Elizabeth noticed figure carvings and words written in something like Sanskrit. She would have stopped to study them, but the other two set a pace on all fours she found hard to keep up with.
I have lost eye contact: Eight-one-eight.
Suddenly, the elbow-bruising, knee-scraping passage opened out. Liz unbent, stretched, and played her flash over the path ahead. This place, tall enough to stand in, was a quarter-sphere: one flat wall, vertical; a tile floor, almost at right angles to the wall; and breathing-space carved out of the rubble. Behind them, the hole they had entered by. Ahead, the outline of a door. Its history leapt to the eye: sealed with stone, broken into, filled in again with brick and clay, broken a second time, a third— possibly more often. It was open now between shoulder height and the lintel, and Hesha had just climbed up the rubble and through.
Elizabeth set her foot on a stable-looking chunk of debris, held onto the jamb for safety, and gained the top of the broken seal wall. She crouched there for a moment, rearranging her gear. The flashlight, swinging from its clip, played across the curved, vaulted ceiling. The beam bobbed across Khalil’s cheerful face and laid-back posture; he reclined easily along the top of a carved balustrade at the other end of the room. Liz aimed the light lower, looking for a spot to jump down to, and screamed—
Corpses covered the floor—some fresh, some skeletal, some in putrescent states of decay—and were covered in turn by rats, unhealthy, hairless, lesion-covered creatures that scurried into empty jaws, hollow ribcages, and festering flesh-tunnels at the sound of her cry. After a second’s pause, they showed themselves again. Eyes red in retina-flash turned toward her meaningfully. A handful advanced on her; the rest went back to their feast.
Hesha’s voice carried across the claw-clicking scrabbles of the vermin: “Leave her alone,” he commanded.
Instantly, the horrors disappeared. Elizabeth shuddered. The bare stone floor lay clear now. She fell gratefully to it. Suspiciously, nervously, she took in her real surroundings. The ceiling remained the same; the walls, revealed, were carved rock, not rat-ridden earth. Khalil still lounged on his railing, but his expression lacked cheer. Disappointment lingered on his face. And Hesha, unseen before, occupied the far right corner of the chamber. His forefinger ran along the painted reliefs, not quite touching them, and his brow furrowed in concentration. Liz crouched by the door, watching him.
Khalil, for a good five minutes, had the patience to do the same. Then the Ravnos cleared his throat. “Good?” he asked brightly.
Hesha stopped and faced the Ravnos. “Good. But this is still not the source.”
Khalil clicked his tongue. “Nope.” But he showed no signs of moving.
“What do you want?”
“Well,” Khalil sat up. “You’re hunting for the Eye. It sticks out all over you.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I could be a valuable guy to have along for that ride. It’s our Eye, after all, not yours. So I might know things you’ll need later.” He scratched his chin. “So. If I show you the last room, you take me out of Calcutta with you. And you protect me. And you make nice to me,” he snapped out, losing his genial mask to spite for a moment. “And I’ll help you find that Evil old Eye.”
Hesha considered for a moment, and then spoke—slowly, in carefully chosen words. “I will take you with me,” he intoned, “and protect you,” he paused, “as long as you continue to aid me in my quest for the Eye of Hazimel.”
“Deal,” shouted Khalil. He burst out laughing, and looked up at his new partner in a fit of camaraderie. “Imagine the look on old Abernethie’s face—a gypsy and a snake taking each other’s word for bond. Well, come on. It’s down here.” He tapped the floor with his toe, and a pit opened beneath his feet: rock-cut steps, leading down…filled, at the moment, with floodwater. Khalil dropped into it lightly, waist-deep, and grinned at Elizabeth. “Bring your aqualung with you, sweetheart?”
Hesha caught her eye. “Photograph this room. I want details of the murals.” She nodded, and he followed Khalil down the hole.
Left by herself, Elizabeth propped her flashlight against one wall and began recording the other on film. When all four were done, she cross-lit and started again. With waterproof pencil and notebook, she made notes on the estimated measurements of the room. She waited nervously with the camera and lamp in her lap. The pool of water lay undisturbed. Eventually, she rose, changed the angle of the light again, and took a third set of portraits, this time with her notebook in each shot for scale. The time crawled by.
Am waiting at rendezvous: Two-seven-one.
Sunday, 25 July, 1999 12:34 AM
The burial chamber of an unmarked tomb
Calcutta, West Bengal
Khalil, bored beyond belief, lay full length on the stone lid of a muddy sarcophagus. His companion’s light roved around the chamber like a darting yellow firefly; he himself would rather be back at the disco—better still, loose in New York. There was a city of sin for you. The Ravnos folded his hands over his belt and dreamt of America.
Hesha floated from wall to wall, scrutinizing the symbols, the designs, the scenes, and, finally, rows of script carved into the rock. Satisfied at last, he sighed. The burial chamber, even though he suspected it might be a false one, came from the same culture as the rakshasa statue—some of the work seemed to be by the identical artist, in fact. The few breaths of air he had held in his lungs for talking bubbled away, and his dead body settled more surely on the slippery floor. He kicked his sandals off to gain better purchase, drew his own camera out, and proceeded to go around the tomb in detail.
On the third wall, near the corner, he found the crucial passage. Instructions. Hesha paused, reading them, and stood stock-still for a moment…. He had sought the Eye for more than a century; the shock of success (though the Setite had always been confident of succeeding eventually) gave him pause.
Instructions for the containment, sealing up, and safe transportation of the Ey
e of Hazimel.
Hesha very nearly laughed. The task was tremendously simple…once you knew the secret. It had taken him more skill to translate the old script than he would need to catch the Eye. It was peasant magic, hedge sorcery, literally child’s play—mud pies. Holy river water mixed with earth (silt from the Ganges, he thought, from the Nile) touched to the orb would close the lid. A thick coating plastered around the Eye would put it to “sleep.” The dry and hardened clay would protect the artifact from harm…and the magician from the artifact. The scribe went on to detail a story about the rescue of the Eye from thieves, a tale of a mighty rakshasa who commanded it wisely, an invocation to Hazimel. The inscription continued below another relief, but the additional text was lost. Directly over a legend about the origin of the Eye, some illiterate hand had taken a chisel to the mural. The shallow scratches described a variation of a Bengali folk tale—the destruction of a demon-queen’s heart with a palm-leaf sword. Hesha photographed that section carefully, cursing the graffiti writer. Perhaps he could decipher the broken carvings later. He moved on to the next panel, then the ceiling, and the sides of the sarcophagus itself. He took his time.
Elizabeth loaded another roll of film into the camera. She’d used half the supply already; better, she thought, to save rest of the exposures in case there were more rooms Khalil hadn’t bothered to mention yet. If there were an angle of this chamber she hadn’t caught, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Or time.
She clipped the camera back onto her chest and picked up the light. Curiosity brought her to the first (or last) panel of the series. It was hard to know where the narrative—she was certain the carvings depicted a definite myth, not disjointed scenes—began, but you could start with this corner. Reading left to right, she traced a story in her own mind, at least.
Clan Novel Setite: Book 4 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 21