by Samit Basu
It is time, said Kirin.
What is time? asked his dragon, confused.
It, snapped Kirin. Move.
The dragons nose-dived in unison, their wing-beats thundering out across the lake as they hurtled towards the forest. The machan’s occupants were thrown upwards and flattened into their dragon’s chest. Looking down through the rush of air in his face, Kirin heard screams below; the sentries were good. As his dragons sent sheets of flame into the treetops, he could see his prey, scattering like raindrops, swords in hand, crying out in alarm. In seconds, the camp and the trees near it were ablaze. The dragons arced out of their dives, skimming the surface of the lake. Kirin could see the Xi’en warriors clearly now, gathering together, debating whether to attack the dragons or not. He was puzzled; how did these humans intend to take on dragons?
He got his answer when four Xi’en monks ran to the lakeside, palms outstretched. Brilliant beams of light flew from their hands towards the dragons. They all found their mark; the machan shuddered as its bearer felt the impact of the light-rays, and the dragons screeched in agony, jerking and thrashing in mid-air. Kirin ordered the dragons to climb; they did, coughing and trailing fire.
Signal, said Kirin.
Three short upward flashes of fire from his dragon, and huge crashing sounds announced that the rakshases had grown to giant size, and were closing in on the Xi’en, their heads taller than the trees, their bodies parting the woods as they thundered towards the enemy. The Pimawen assassins shouted in unison and Kirin gasped in wonder as they spun their swords above their heads, until the swords, moving in a blur, seemed to turn into shield-sized spinning discuses. The Pimawen jumped on to these and flew at the rakshases, spare swords appearing as if out of nowhere in their hands; there was magic at work here, thought Kirin, and no magic he’d ever heard of before.
Kirin had expected to feel tremendous pangs of remorse the moment first blood was shed, but he found, looking down at the battleground as his dragons looped and prepared to swoop downwards again, that it all seemed unreal, like a game, and that he was quite enjoying himself. Perhaps it was his physical distance from the combat, or the magical nature of the combat, or perhaps he’d simply changed… he could ponder over these questions at some more suitable time.
The assassins skimmed through the trees on their spinning swords, cutting through branches as they charge the blue giants lumbering towards them. But the rakshases were practiced magic-users too, and knew centuries’ worth of tricks; some teleported, others merely charged ahead stubbornly, and others hurled fireballs. The two sides clashed, and the rakshases’ superior size and strength won the day almost immediately. The assassins cut and stabbed with amazing skill, but it was only a matter of time before massive rakshas hands crashed down on their heads, crushing them like ants. Those Xi’en warriors who managed to escape from their encounters realized, immediately, that destroying these monsters was out of the question – and that running up rakshas legs in order to find more sensitive rakshas bits merely brought them closer to rakshas hands. Escape seemed the smart option, and they dodged and weaved, running up and behind tree-trunks, letting the rakshases crash on towards the lake.
The Wu Sen monks, however, were not so easily cowed. As giant bodies thrashed around them, and the air throbbed with the death-gurgles of their comrades, they drew out stringed instruments from sacks, sat by the burning lakeside, and began to play. Their intention was not, it turned out, to entertain and encourage; each note they played with their long, blurring fingers sent deadly ripples through the air. Trees shattered and fires went out as their music-darts streaked towards the rakshases; the nearest one, a magnificent blue brute the size of a small castle, found his legs ripped into ribbons. Roaring in agony, he crashed to the ground. The next few notes cut him into little shreds.
The Pimawens who’d crossed the rakshas lines and taken to the treetops found, to their dismay, that life was not as sunny as it seemed. This was because thirty vanars, also skimming through the tree-tops, seemed to want to stick arrows into them. The Pimawens had lost their main advantage, their incredible agility. As they leapt from tree-top to tree-top, the vanars kept up effortlessly, and the vanars were naturally better equipped to fight from tree-tops. The Pimawens realized this soon, and died.
Back at the lakeside, the rakshases were playing cat and mouse with the Wu Sens, vanishing and reappearing, dodging the sound-darts, and appearing behind the monks to deliver crashing blows. At a signal from Kirin, the rakshases all vanished. Before the Wu Sens could understand why, the dragons swooped in again, steaming up the lakeside. The Wu Sens gave up their intstruments and fled as three thick walls of fire swept down the shore. A few tried vaulting over trees like the Pimawens and realized soon this was not a good idea – the vanars and rakshases, working smoothly together, butchered them with ease.
And then there were just four Wu Sen monks left. They leapt over the walls of dragonfire into the lake, and rakshases and vanars alike gasped aloud as they jumped smoothly down on the surface, not sinking, and then ran out over the lake, striding effortlessly over the water.
Above them, as the dragons whirled and set their courses for another attack, Kirin looked at the lake closely and realized that if the monks managed to cross the lake, there would be no capturing them; it was too wide for the rakshases to teleport across. His troops had played their part. It was up to him now.
The dragons passed low over the monks at speed, turned swiftly, so they were directly ahead of the Wu Sen, and breathed fire. One Wu Sen leapt into the sky but his robes caught fire; he burned horribly in the air and fell into the water, dead. The other three, though, dived into the water a second before the flames struck them, leaving Kirin and his dragons swerving in mid-air in a cloud of steam.
In seconds, the lake’s surface was calm again. The monks did not emerge.
‘Drowned?’ asked Spikes.
‘No. They can hold their breath under water as long as they want.’
‘We need altitude, then. We’ll spot them, and wait.’
‘No,’ said Kirin. He turned to Mazouq and nodded. The sorcerer extracted a small sealskin pouch with a jade stopper from his robes. He removed the stopper, and tossed the pouch into the lake.
The lake’s surface began to churn and boil. Currents emerged, the water swirled and curved into what looked like upside-down whirlpools, two spinning, twisting cones of water holding themselves above the surface. As they watched, fascinated, the cones began to take human form, transforming into standing, immensely muscular male bodies. The heads were bald, the noses long and curved. The eyes glowed white.
‘Water jinn,’ said Mazouq triumphantly.
The jinns dived into the water.
Minutes passed. If epic battles were being fought in the water, the lake showed no signs of it. The only sounds that could be heard were the dragons’ wings beating rhythmically as they circled above the water, and the splashing sounds of rakshases scooping huge handfuls of water and putting out the fires at the ravaged Xi’en camp.
‘What happened? Did they kill your jinns?’ asked Kirin.
‘No one kills my jinns,’ said Mazouq. ‘Any minute now.’
As if on cue, a jinn burst out of the water, a Wu Sen monk on his back, hanging grimly on to his neck. The monk struck the jinn with his palm, sending bolts of light into his body; the jinn seemed unperturbed by this. He turned around – he flowed around, his water body simply rearranging itself, so he was now facing the monk.
He then stuffed the monk into his mouth, and burped. Kirin turned his eyes away as the monk’s form melted and flowed through the jinn’s body into the lake.
At the far end of the lake, the two surviving Wu Sens leaped out of the water, absurdly high, like divers going backwards. Behind them, the other jinn rose majestically out of the water, reaching out; one blue pillar grasped a monk’s leg, stopping him in mid-air, but the other monk managed to leap clear of the jinn’s other hand. As the jinn disappeared below
the lake with his prey, Kirin spurred the dragons on with his mind, and they pursued the sole survivor over the treetops.
The Wu Sen monk was old and clearly tired, too tired to even try a palm attack on the dragons. His robes were slashed and tattered, he was bleeding from several wounds, and his leaps were growing shorter and shorter. He looked back from time to time, at the great Skuan dragons bearing down on him, and knew death would come soon.
Kirin saw the monk’s face and felt his heart skip a beat; it was him, the monk who’d struck her.
‘Let him go,’ said Spikes.
‘No.’
The dragons had almost caught up with their quarry when the monk tripped on a high branch, stumbled, cried out in pain, and fell into the forest, disappearing under leaves.
‘Don’t burn him,’ said Spikes. ‘You won’t be able to put out the fire. I’ll get out and finish him off.’
‘He’s mine,’ said Kirin, his face colder than Spikes had ever seen before.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Come on.’
Kirin ordered the dragons to stop, and flung open the machan door, ignoring Mazouq’s feeble protests. As his dragon hovered just over the tree, his Shadowknife spread over his hand, forming a gauntlet with claws, identical to the Gauntlet of Tatsu. He leapt on to the nearest tree, and began to climb down, his claws digging into the bark. Spikes waited until Kirin reached lower, thicker branches and began springing lightly groundwards, and then simply stepped off the machan, a great stone crashing through branches, landing on his feet with a huge thud. Seconds later, Kirin joined him, and they stood back to back, scanning the forest for the Wu Sen monk.
A sudden movement to Kirin’s right; he turned swiftly, Shadowknife melting into a sabre.
And then his jaw went slack, and his eyes bulged.
‘You?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Maya.
She stood there, in the morning sunlight, grinning at them, her eyes sparkling. She looked thinner and older, but some things hadn’t changed; her hair was still an unruly mop, and her white robe was stained and tattered.
‘And it is me,’ she continued. ‘Not the shapeshifter you found with Myrdak. Hello, Spikes.’
‘It’s good to see you,’ said Spikes.
‘Do you think Kirin’s going to recover the use of his tongue at any point in the near future?’
‘It seems unlikely.’
‘But how…’ said Kirin.
‘How do I know all this? How did I know you’d be here? How did I get here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which one?’
‘Any one,’ said Kirin. ‘No, wait.’
He strode up to her and hugged her, hard, only letting her go when she croaked for air.
‘It is you,’ he said, a silly grin appearing on his face, threatening to split it in two. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘You’d better,’ she said, hugging Spikes, who patted her back in a gingerly sort of way, taking care not to break her bones. ‘Because the rest is going to be much harder to believe.’
‘Do you still want to kill the monk?’ Spikes asked Kirin.
‘What monk?’
‘Right.’
‘You don’t chase him,’ said Maya. ‘He gets eaten by a wild rakshas in a few days.’
‘How on earth do you know all this?’ asked Kirin, wondering whether it would be polite to hug her again, and whether she would notice if he didn’t let go for a few years.
‘That’s one of the hard-to-believe things,’ said Maya. ‘I know what I know because I have an all-knowing friend.’
‘All-knowing?’
‘Yes. He’s this chameleon who used to be a god.’
‘Too much information. Tell me later. Let me just get used to you being here first.’ Kirin abandoned all thoughts of politeness and hugged her again, his heart thumping crazily.
‘I’ve missed you too. So much,’ she said. ‘But we’d better leave now. Say your goodbyes to your thugs, and call your chariot.’
‘Say goodbye?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid you can’t be Dark Lord any more.’
‘I can’t run away from it, Maya. I chose to be Dark Lord, and I have responsibilities.’
‘Yes, yes, very good. But I need you to help me with something that’s a little more important than your Dark Lording.’
‘What?’
‘The world is ending, Kirin. We have to save it.’
* * *
Aciram paced the floor in his luxurious quarters above the dungeons of Izakar, stealing glances from time to time at the exquisite body of the woman lying unconscious on his bed.
There was a knock on the door. Aciram opened it very slightly and peered out. It was Mazouq the sorcerer.
‘What is it?’ he asked gruffly.
‘The Dark Lord sends a message,’ said Mazouq.
Aciram stepped out slowly into the twisting corridor, careful not to let Mazouq see who was inside his room.
‘What message?’
‘His exact words were “I quit.”’
Aciram considered this, and Mazouq’s troubled face, for a while.
‘Who else have you told?’
‘No one. He told me to tell you, and only you.’
‘So you’ve told me and Omar.’
‘No,’ said Mazouq indignantly. ‘I haven’t told Omar. Besides, Omar isn’t even here. He’s gone to the Free States with Bjorkun to kill spies.’
‘That is true. I apologize. So I am the only one who knows?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ said Aciram. He leaned forward, almost tenderly, snapped Mazouq’s neck and threw him out of a convenient window. Then he smiled a very cunning smile, changed his face to Kirin’s and went back into his room.
He stood by his bed, watching her sleep. He wanted to touch her, to wake her with a kiss, but he couldn’t. Not until she awoke.
He asked himself again why he’d done this; why he’d brought her here, why he’d stolen her from Kirin, risking everything. Why his life had changed the day he’d first seen her and sensed her almost infinite power.
If anyone had suggested to Aciram that he had fallen in love, he would have laughed long and loud before killing them for their insolence. But when he saw her eyes fluttering slowly open and her limbs come haltingly to life, and knew she was healed and they were together and somehow that made him felt happier than he’d ever felt before, he asked himself if he loved her and told himself firmly that nothing of the sort had happened, but without any conviction at all.
She sat up, holding her head, her expression curiously blank. ‘My mind is a mess,’ she said.
‘You survived a very powerful attack,’ he said. ‘You need rest.’
She lay down again, and looked at him with a very strange expression. ‘Everything’s changed, Kirin.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I remember everything. But it’s all just facts and details, just information. The people I was have died.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I feel nothing, beyond the reality of a terrible headache. In this situation, I would expect to feel relief at my recovery, happiness to see you, and a certain mixture of lust and apprehension at being in bed with you standing near me with your stance indicating a high degree of physical excitement. But… no. Nothing.’
Aciram gulped. Truly there was a gap between generations, he thought.
‘Your mind is numb, and that is perfectly understandable,’ he said. ‘Rest, and you will find all your feelings restored.’
‘I do not need rest. Perhaps if you asked me deep, insightful questions, my feelings might reappear.’
Aciram smiled. ‘Let’s start with simple questions, questions I’ve been wanting to ask you since the day we met. Who are you, and what do you desire?’
‘I have no name. I was called Red, once,’ she said, her face still completely blank. ‘And I think the last thing I remember wanting was to rule the world.’
>
The honesty and simplicity of her ambition, the depth of the power hidden within her, and the intoxicating beauty of her eyes pierced Aciram’s crusty, ancient heart.
‘And so you shall. We will take this world and rule it together, if you think that might please you,’ he said. ‘And while Red is a nice name, it needs a little work. I think I shall call you… yes. I will call you my Red Queen.’
The Red Queen, she thought. It did have a certain ring to it. If things had been otherwise, she might have felt extremely elated.
Chapter Four
The light of twin Alocacti cast stark shadows over the Hall of Heroes in the Civilian’s palace. Stern Psomedean faces, frozen in marble, ravaged by time, looked through pupil-less eyes at their fellow conquerors’ images, and at their puny successors, sitting on marble steps at their feet.
The Chief Civilian sat under the statue of the noble Thoseus Feeling a Little Pensive, her striking face half in shadow. Ojanus the ambhisbaena was coiled around her left leg. To her left, Mantric the spellbinder seemed lost in thought as he contemplated the armless figure of the wily Eurekus Playing Catch. The artist formerly known as the Silver Dagger paced lightly near the feet of the mighty Ossus Watching Serpents Devour his Dog, spinning a shuriken through his fingers and looking out at the night sky. Silence reigned, except for the occasional buzz of Red Phalanx vroomsticks flying by the hall, red flares sending blocks of light streaking through the high windows. Two massive Vindiciti minotaurs stood by the entrance to the Hall of Heroes, glowering at its occupants, shooting occasional murderous glances at the statue of Thoseus.
The door creaked open, and Marshall Askesis, Chief Commander of Kol’s armies, strode in, a grizzled, richly dressed, powerful-looking man with grey hair and knife-like features. He greeted Mantric and Amloki briefly, and bowed to the Civilian.
‘What news from the east?’ she asked.
‘Grim news,’ he said. ‘War is upon us. All of Avranti lies in ruins, and our unknown enemies have made incursions through the land between Shantavan and Vrihataranya. Potolpur and Olivya have already been attacked. The speed of this operation is stunning. It has been just five days.’