The Library of Fates

by Aditi Khorana

  Mala had been sitting on the settee, reading a book, but the moment she saw me, she stood up. She stopped short, her face registering alarm at the state Arjun and I were in.

  “Sikander—he . . . the maharaja—” Arjun started. “Soldiers after us. We—”

  Mala nodded. “You need to leave the palace now.”

  She grabbed some things from the top of my bureau—a scarf, a skin of water, bandages, a bag of coins. I watched as she stuffed everything into a satchel. I realized that she had left them out for me. For us.

  She knew. She was the one who had heard us in the courtyard. She knew about our plan. Only, it was going into effect hours earlier than expected, because we had no choice but to run.

  Mala placed the satchel in Arjun’s hands before she turned to me. “Here, girl, take this,” she said, handing me a golden dagger. I glanced at it. There were three rubies on the handle.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the key you need to get out of here. Keep it on you at all times.” She quickly looked from my face to Arjun’s. “Follow the stone markings. They’ll lead you outside the palace.”

  “What stone markings?” I shook my head, terrified sobs escaping my lips.

  “Arjun knows. They’ve always been there, in case of an emergency, so the royal family can make a speedy exit, but sometimes one has to adjust one’s eyes,” she said, before grabbing my shoulders and looking me right in the eye. “Listen to me, girl. We’re going to get you out of here! You need to be brave,” she said just as there was a loud bang against the door. I jumped.

  “They’re breaking in,” Arjun said as we heard an even louder thud.

  “There’s no time, go now!” Mala said, leading us to the back door of my chamber.

  From the doorway, I could see the mango grove. I couldn’t stop to think of all the summers that Arjun and I had lazily wandered among those trees, picking mangoes and eating them with our bare hands.

  Now this grove was the only chance we had at escape from our own home.

  “Be safe,” Mala said to me as she cupped my face in her hand.

  “What about you, Mala?” I asked.

  “I’ll be just fine.”

  “The dagger—the key—I don’t understand—”

  But before I could finish asking my question, we heard the terrifying sound of wood splintering, the door cracking open.

  “Amrita, it’s your duty to warn them,” Mala said.

  “Warn whom?” I asked, but there was no time.

  “The cartographer will tell you everything. RUN!”

  When I saw the tears in her eyes, I knew: We would never see her again. But before I could even fully make sense of it, before I could register that this was our last goodbye, Arjun grabbed my hand and pulled me to the grounds.

  I turned to look back, and I immediately wished I hadn’t. I saw Mala—squirming against the tight grip of a soldier, a knife against her throat. It was Nico.

  My heart felt as though it stopped beating right in that moment.

  “Let me go, you rascal! Who do you think you are?” she screamed.

  “Arjun, we have to help her!” But he kept pulling me along.

  “Don’t worry. Won’t hurt one bit,” I heard Nico say.

  “No!” I shook my head in fear, but before I could even think, I saw a flash of silver, a thin line of red spreading into the shape of a smile across Mala’s neck. Terror in her eyes. She dropped to the ground just as I heard a scream, my own.

  “Run, Amrita!” Arjun cried.

  And I did. Branches and leaves scraping my face as we ran, harder and faster. My lungs burned, my feet ached, but I couldn’t bring myself to look back. Couldn’t bring myself to look at my beloved Mala, now gone too.

  It was only once we arrived at the mouth of the Temple that I turned back to my home, the only home I had ever known. I knew for certain now: I would never see it again.

  “Don’t look back!” Arjun’s voice snapped me back into focus. “Just go!”

  I could hear the sounds of hundreds of feet marching through the grove, twigs and branches breaking. They were right behind us.

  We descended those stairs that we had run down so many times as children, laughing and playing hide-and-seek, until finally, we were in the dark. I felt around the walls with my fingers until I unearthed a lantern and lit it with shaky fingers.

  “The markings . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “Up there.” Arjun pointed to the ceiling, and there they were, right above us. Arrows. I had never seen them before.

  “Don’t worry, Amrita. We’ll get out of here. We’ll be safe,” he said, but his voice was tense.

  Safe. Just the word made me want to cry. Perhaps I would be, but what good was safe when my father was gone? And Mala! I couldn’t believe it. Even if Arjun and I survived this attack, nothing would ever be the same again. I quickly wiped away my tears.

  “And the dagger—Arjun, what did she mean by that?”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “She probably gave it to you for self-defense.”

  “She said to warn someone, that it was my duty—”

  “We’ll figure it all out once we get out of here,” he said to me, his fingers slipping to the inside of my arm. “I know people beyond the palace walls. They’ll be able to help us.”

  He was talking to soothe me. Arjun always knew how to calm me down when I was nervous or scared, but he must have been thinking about his own parents too, whether they were still alive, whether they had somehow managed to escape, whether they would be taken prisoner by Sikander. But if Sikander hadn’t spared my father, what hope was there for Shree and Bandaka?

  Arjun craned his neck, frantically investigating the cavernous space. “This way,” he said, pulling us around a bend. He angled the lantern in his hand as he pointed to the ceiling.

  “All those years that we played hide-and-seek here,” I said, “and we never bothered to look up.”

  My eyes bounced from him to the carvings, disfigured bodies, eroded torsos, faces whose noses had been cut off. This whole place told a story, carried within it so many secrets, but we would never know exactly what those secrets were.

  And what were the secrets around my life? Around my mother? Around the conditions of my parents’ meeting, their separation? What would make Sikander hate my father so much that he would simply . . . I couldn’t even think of what had happened.

  Another thought occurred to me: If there was a secret escape plan in case of an emergency that I had never known about, what other truths had been kept from me?

  What had I failed to observe?

  There was so much I was ignorant of that it terrified me.

  Like these hieroglyphs, these arrows above us—if I hadn’t been told to look for them I might have simply mistaken them for scratches in the rock, but there was a pattern to them, a chain of hints that led out of the Temple of Rain and into the kingdom of Shalingar.

  What was the pattern to my life that I couldn’t yet see?

  “Where will they take us?” I asked.

  “We’re going to find out,” Arjun said. I looked up at his face, lit only by the glow of the lantern, his dark eyes watching me carefully. “Come on, let’s go. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  But I found myself stalling. “I’m afraid, Arjun.”

  “I know. But right now, we just need to stay alive.”

  We followed the arrows, twisting and turning down the stone tunnels, until we came to a part of the Temple that I recognized.

  I tripped over a jagged rock, and Arjun caught me.

  “It’s these shoes,” I said, realizing that I had been running in the platform diamond-studded footwear that Mala had selected for me. I quickly removed them, thinking about how she had painstakingly chose
n them for me. I couldn’t bring myself to leave them behind. I grabbed the satchel out of Arjun’s hand, stuffing them inside.

  It was silly, but they were all I had left of Mala. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I will never see Mala again. Never wake up to the sound of her voice again. Never hear the stories she told me about vetalas and Diviners. Never feel her hands combing my hair.

  Just as I was thinking this, we both heard the tromp of feet in the distance. “They know we’re in here,” Arjun whispered. “Faster, follow the trail!”

  I looked around at the familiar reliefs on the walls. The air in this part of the Temple was filled with dust, my lungs struggling to inhale.

  “Did everyone else in the palace know? About a getaway plan? An exit in case of an emergency?”

  He nodded. “You’ll have to cover your face when you leave the palace. I’ll explain everything,” he said.

  Spiraling farther down into the bowels of the temple, we reached a familiar doorway, wooden, with iron bars. A delicate hand reached out through the bars, and I almost screamed in terror, but Arjun grabbed me, his palm across my mouth.

  “Help me!” she cried.

  “Quiet!” Arjun whispered. “You’ll give us away!” His face was white with fear.

  “Please release me, or I’ll be stuck here for the rest of my days. I’ll die in here!”

  “Keep going, Amrita!” Arjun told me, his voice stern.

  I hesitated. “We can’t just leave her, Arjun.”

  He reached for my face, turned it toward him so I was looking right into his eyes. “My job is to protect you, to make sure you get out of here alive,” he said. “Amrita, listen to me. We can’t take her. She’ll slow us down. Look at her—she’s high on chamak! She’s barely alert.”

  I had seen what Sikander’s men were capable of, and the thought of leaving a young innocent in their hands terrified me.

  But Thala interjected before I could object. “I know what happened to your father,” she spoke quickly, in whispers. “I know Sikander killed him. I’m sorry.”

  At Thala’s words, I inadvertently let out a sob, and Arjun pulled me close. “Amrita, we have to keep moving,” he said gently.

  But Thala must have anticipated Arjun’s reluctance, because what she said next changed all of our fates in ways we could have never predicted. “I know how you can bring him back from the dead,” she whispered. “There’s a way. It can all be undone. Please, free me, and I’ll show you the way.”

  Eleven

  I STOPPED SHORT. “What did you say?”

  “She’s pulling your leg, Amrita. I’m sorry, but he’s . . . gone,” Arjun said to me, touching my face with his hand, his finger tracing my cheek. “It can’t be undone.” There was a tenderness in his voice, but his words jarred me.

  By now I could hear boots pounding on stone, not so far in the distance. I turned to look back. Any minute now, they would find us.

  “It can be undone,” Thala insisted. “In Macedon, there’s a story about reversing fates, changing the past. If you give me a chance, I can help you.”

  “She can’t help you.” Arjun’s voice was frantic now. “She’s trying to trick you, or she’s lying. Please, Amrita, we’re losing time.” I looked at his face. I had never seen such fear in his eyes.

  “Oracles don’t lie,” Thala insisted. “We’re incapable of lies. And I’ve been right before. Ask her,” she said to Arjun.

  It was true. Thala had been right about everything. The animals running loose, fighting in the west. An impending attack. He says he wants friendship. He says he wants an alliance. Don’t believe what he says. It had all come true.

  Maybe she could undo what had just occurred. Maybe she could help me bring my father back from the dead.

  The sounds of feet marching through the tunnels were getting louder and louder. We had seconds to escape. I reached for the large iron key tucked into the waistband of my sari and slipped it into the lock. It jammed, and I struggled to turn it. Arjun took a deep breath, his hands in his hair.

  “Amrita,” he said. “Hurry, they’re almost here!”

  Finally, something gave way and the key turned, creaking loudly.

  Thala breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Let’s go,” Arjun said, and as he did, I saw a single red coat turning a corner, his sword drawn.

  Arjun saw him too, instinctively pulling at his sword just as Thala emerged from the cell. She was out, but the soldier stuck two fingers between his lips, and a shrill whistle pierced the air around us.

  I froze, panicked.

  And then we heard them, hundreds of feet, marching toward us.

  “Go!” Arjun yelled at us, but I had no intention of leaving without him.

  Arjun leapt toward the soldier, swinging his sword with all his might.

  “Take her away from here!” he yelled to Thala.

  Thala grabbed my hand and pulled me away as Arjun fought the soldier to protect us, to protect me. Against the clanging of metal, I heard the scuffle of bodies, the heaving of breaths. And then they came, one after another. Arjun fought them, one by one.

  “No!” I screamed. “I can’t leave him,” I sobbed as Thala dragged me away, deeper into the darkness of the Temple.

  “You have no choice,” she said, hushing me. Her voice was comforting, but her words sliced through me like a knife, gutting me. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  Thala gripped the lantern and, with her spare hand, tugged my arm, and even though I resisted, something snapped within me, some survival instinct that propelled my feet to keep moving.

  I ran, tears streaming down my face, the soles of my feet torn and bloody by now, and yet, I continued to race through those stone passageways, Thala holding my hand.

  He would have never abandoned me. We had a plan. We were supposed to escape together. We were supposed to go into hiding together.

  And I had simply left him behind, my best friend of sixteen years, the love of my life. I had left him to fight for my life with his own. I had saved myself while he battled countless soldiers. What kind of person did that make me? Mala had told me to be brave, to take risks. But the truth was that in the face of a crisis, I was a coward.

  I thought about the other thing Thala had said: Arjun . . . he loves you. He’ll save your life one day soon.

  I ran harder. Mala, my father, Shree, Bandaka, Arjun. They were all gone, or left behind. What was I even doing, trying to survive? What was I surviving for?

  I couldn’t stop the tide of thoughts that threatened to overwhelm me. I had seen too much today, too much violence, too much death. And I couldn’t help but feel as though I might have been able to prevent it. My father telling me to run, Shree and Bandaka with swords against their throats, Mala dying at the hands of one of Sikander’s men, and Arjun stemming the tide of those soldiers so that I could escape.

  We ran and ran and ran for what felt like days, stopping only to make sure we were still on the right path. The arrows continued to lead us somewhere, but where?

  “Come on!” Thala said, still holding tight to my hand.

  By now, we were in a part of the Temple of Rain that I had never seen before. The corridors narrowed, and instead of the high ceilings that I was used to, the walls were beginning to close in on us. All of a sudden, I felt as though I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I choked on my breath, and my hands and feet were clammy and wet.

  “I don’t like small spaces,” I whispered. I stopped, pressing my hand into the wall. “I can’t. I don’t think I can do it. I can’t go farther.”

  Thala turned, looked at me, her eyes a bright blue. “We’re almost there,” she said. Her voice was calm.

  “How do you know?” I felt like I was going to pass out.

  “I know,” she said. “You have to trust me. I’ll get you out of here, I promise. It
’s just a little bit longer. The only way out of here is through this passageway.”

  I hesitantly nodded, knowing I had no option but to follow her. The walls continued to curve in on themselves, and I wondered if anyone had ever attempted to make an escape through this vast network of tunnels before.

  We arrived at a juncture where the tunnel narrowed. Thala put down the lantern.

  “I can’t carry this anymore,” she said. “Go ahead of me,” she instructed me. And I knew what she was saying. We would have to crawl the rest of the way.

  I shook my head, my entire body trembling in fear at the small, dark hole before me. “I can’t.”

  This was it. I knew I simply couldn’t go on. My brain was a blank; the only word I could contemplate was no. I had lost the will to survive. I had lost the will to live. My legs began to tremble. I felt cold sweat on my brow.

  “You can. I’ll be right behind you, I promise,” she said, her voice forceful.

  “No,” I whispered. “You can leave me here. You can go on. But I can’t go.”

  Thala reached for my hand. “Trust me. I’ll be there with you the entire way.”

  I shook my head.

  “Look at me,” she said. “Do you know what I’ve gone through in my life? Do you know the kinds of things I’ve experienced? If I can survive all that, you can crawl through this tunnel. Even if they’re gone, you’re still alive. And your only job now is to try to survive.”

  I don’t know what it was—the bare conviction in her voice, or the fact that I couldn’t think straight, or simply that she was right. I was still alive. And I couldn’t imagine what Thala had lived through, but she was my source of strength in that moment.

  I took a deep breath and got down on my hands and knees, a small whimper escaping my lips.

  “Only a few more paces,” she whispered. I tried to look straight ahead, tried to keep breathing, but by now, my whole body was shaking and tears were flowing freely down my face. Still, I kept crawling, my tears mixing with dirt. The taste of mud and terror in my mouth, flashes of such acute fright that I didn’t know if I could survive it. My hands so cut up from the jagged rocks beneath me that I could barely feel them anymore. My whole body damp with sweat, my thoughts nothing more than a blur of panic.