Bheem

by Jyotin Goel

  Outside the Purana Qila

  4.03 a.m.

  ‘We’ve lost h . . .’

  Talwar glared at his phone. He had just pulled up outside the fort’s north gate and, unsurprisingly, connectivity had crashed.

  ‘Did you say lost?’ he hissed into his phone. ‘Don’t tell me the van’s gone!’

  ‘No, sir. He’s still th . . . It’s the oth . . . one. The Israeli woman. We’ve los . . . her mobile signal.’

  The Antaragata

  4.07 a.m.

  Aviva hurried down the moving, spiralling staircase into an underground chamber, where it terminated. She stepped off the last rung; instantly, the staircase moved again, retracting, folding upward, vanishing into the ceiling far above.

  The warrior had been waiting for her. ‘I will not be with you on the way back, Aviva-Fein,’ Bheem said. ‘Note my steps—their pattern reversed will lower the staircase.’ He shut his eyes and moved, again stepping on the stones in seemingly random order. He stopped, opened his eyes and turned to her. ‘Will you remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A confident, unhesitating answer. Bheem smiled. ‘A task difficult for me. To match the sequence, I have to shut my eyes, follow my instincts. But you do not forget.’

  ‘Eidetic memory, I’ve been told. Unpleasant, at times, but a terrific advantage in my profession.’ An urchin grin flitted across Aviva’s face.

  Something ached within Bheem. Memory stirred . . . Sarvaang, joyful, grinning, just fourteen.

  The warrior shook himself. ‘Your ability to recall—this is why I asked you to accompany me.’

  Aviva looked at him, mystified.

  ‘The Chakravyuha,’ Bheem said. ‘You know of it.’

  ‘Chakravyuha?’ Aviva was befuddled. ‘You mean a maze? Or . . . the military manoeuvre, the one in which Prince Abhimanyu was trap . . .’ Aviva’s voice faltered, remembering that the man before her was the slain prince’s uncle.

  The warrior’s face did not flicker. ‘That is right. Abhimanyu was trapped and killed in the Chakravyuha, the living labyrinth from which he could not escape.’ He indicated a rough doorway in the far wall of the chamber. ‘We are about to enter that labyrinth ourselves. I need your infallible memory, Aviva-Fein, to find the way out again.’

  ~

  The Antaragata

  4.12 a.m.

  The soldiers stood fifty metres away, unmoving, their powerful metal bodies glistening. Mist hung over them like a veil, allowing glimpses of their serried ranks, cloaking the extent of the massed army.

  ‘The Chakravyuha,’ Bheem said.

  Aviva strained her eyes but the mist defeated her. There was no way to assess the vastness of the subterranean plain on which they stood, or the number of the metal warriors arrayed before them.

  Larger version of the Chinese terracotta warriors, but in bronze, she thought, looking at them in wonder. The archaeological find of the century! ‘How many statues, do you think?’

  ‘A full Akshauhini. And those are not statues. They are the Kaurav warriors themselves.’

  Aviva spun around in disbelief. Was he joking? ‘You mean . . . they’re alive?’

  ‘They are praitha. Not alive, not dead. They are . . . cursed.’ The warrior studied the unmoving figures sombrely. ‘The manner in which they killed Abhimanyu—it was against all laws of dharma. For this they were condemned—slain in the battlefield but denied moksha, tasked with guarding this plain, with forging the Chakravyuha here, a labour that is at once meaningless and unending.’

  ‘I—I don’t understand . . .’

  ‘This Chakravyuha is pointless because at its heart stands a margdarshak, ready to guide a traveller out of the labyrinth.’

  Aviva struggled to make sense of what he was saying. ‘But you . . . you said you needed me to remember the way out. If there is a guide, a margdarshak . . .’

  ‘The margdarshaks answer just one question, Aviva-Fein. They will not answer a second. Which is why I did not permit any of you to speak in the Bhrigu Surang.’

  Aviva’s mind shot back to that lightless tunnel through the mountains, to the sudden voice that had erupted from the dark. She had almost spoken then, biting back an instinctive ‘Who’s that?’ What if she had made that fateful error? The consequences would have been horrific: the margdarshak replying and retreating into the surang’s unfathomed depths. And Nishi, Vineet, Aviva and even Bheem would have been condemned to wander those lightless passages until death took them. Aviva felt her mind fray, hysteria edge closer.

  The warrior’s even voice snapped her back.

  ‘Your ability is indeed needed, Aviva-Fein, to find our way out. I will not ask the margdarshak that.’ Bheem’s eyes bored into hers. ‘For there is another question I intend to ask, another answer I seek.’

  Entering the Chakravyuha was disarmingly simple. There was a fissure in the bronze wall of soldiers, an opening deliberately left in their otherwise packed ranks that led to an invitingly unoccupied aisle through their rows.

  ‘The predetermined entry point,’ Bheem said. ‘Walk backwards, Aviva-Fein, your back against mine. Your eyes must never waver from the view behind, from the formation of their columns. Count your steps and mark when they move. For move they will, to obscure the path back so that we can never return the way we came.’

  Bheem entered the aisle, leading the way past the silent, undead warriors, their eyes empty, metal faces frozen in the final pain of the death that had eluded them. They did not stir, but Aviva could feel a cloud of foul menace rise from them.

  I’m imagining things, she thought, wordlessly continuing to count steps.

  Bheem held her elbow, guiding her as she backed up. The cursed did not move. A dozen steps more—Aviva could still see the fissure, the entry point. Mist closed in, a clammy, dead hand. And then, abruptly, with a great metallic thunk, forty bronze feet moved as one, stepping across the path with clockwork precision. In an instant, the formation behind was altered completely—and the entry point vanished.

  Outside the National Zoological Park

  4.26 a.m.

  ‘Hospital?’ Vineet leaned against the van door, cradling his phone in his working hand.

  ‘Yes. Shifted ten minutes ago. She was still out cold.’ Nishi lay in the spare bedroom of the editor’s apartment. Sleep, though, was elusive and the conversation with Vineet a welcome distraction. ‘Mr Bannerjee made a few calls and had Aradhana collected.’ She smiled. ‘Quite efficient. He doesn’t seem as dazed as he did an hour ago.’

  Vineet grinned. ‘Plenty of fuel in the Old Man yet.’ He realized he enjoyed talking to her. He was glad he’d called. At least it prevented him from tormenting himself about the fate of his companions. He had never felt as lonely as he had this last hour, waiting under that unnerving wall, alone in the deserted, night-shrouded street.

  4.26 a.m.

  ‘The number Nishi Agarwal is talking to,’ the police techie said. ‘We’ve got a name now, sir.’

  Talwar watched the man with the dead arm talk on his cell phone. The van was three hundred metres away, but the night was clear. Talwar had a good view even though he was screened by a copse. ‘So what are you waiting for? A promotion?’

  ‘N—no, sir. It’s Vineet Kumar Sinha. He’s a reporter, sir. With the Clarion.’

  Talwar smiled grimly. A reporter. He wasn’t surprised at all. ‘What about the other phone? In the fort?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. Still unreachable.’

  Talwar disconnected, ran through options. The reporter could wait. The fort, though—it was time to move in.

  The Antaragata

  4.32 a.m.

  ‘The heart of the Chakravyuha,’ the warrior had said. Where was it? Aviva had counted over a thousand steps back and still Bheem led her, ever deeper into the labyrinth. The eerie praitha had moved, and moved again, like a kaleidoscope changing patterns, obliterating every sign of the path they had traversed. Aviva concentrated fiercely. One error, a single repositioning unmarked and
they were doomed. Tired, Aviva lost her footing, and tripped.

  ‘Careful!’ Bheem steadied her. ‘Lose your balance, nick yourself against sword or spear, and we are lost. The undead are bloodless, they seek blood. It unlocks their spirits, drives them mad!’

  Aviva gathered herself, and nodded. She studied the soldiers facing her. Her eyes had left them for a moment when she had stumbled. Luckily, they hadn’t moved— wait, no! There was a minute difference. What she was seeing didn’t quite match the image in her mind of a few moments before.

  ‘They’ve moved,’ she said flatly. ‘Possibly three paces, either right or left. I missed it.’

  ‘Let it not trouble you, Aviva-Fein.’ Bheem’s voice was unruffled. ‘We will string that bow when the need arises.’

  They moved on. The soldiers stood in overlapping ranks all around, an impregnable metal wall, everything beyond them invisible, lost in the misty gloaming. Bheem’s steady step did not falter as he followed the single pathway that stood open through the praitha’s lines, the soldiers in fixed positions, luring the duo farther into the labyrinth’s tangled coils. And as they passed, the soldiers behind moved, adjusted, changed formations, removing all traces of the way back.

  ‘Stop,’ Bheem said.

  Aviva stumbled to a halt. ‘What is it?’ she asked, refraining from looking around.

  ‘We have arrived. No path leads out from here; neither forward nor back.’ Aviva started to turn. ‘Do not move your eyes, girl! The Chakravyuha does not play by dharma’s rules! The praitha always take up new positions when one is not watching.’

  Aviva’s head snapped back. She took a deep breath, focused. The clash of moving metal feet rose again but the soldiers facing Aviva were as still as graven images.

  The guards ahead of us are repositioning, Aviva thought. Those facing the warrior. This was new.

  The metallic footsteps ceased.

  ‘I salute you, son of Kunti!’

  A woman’s voice, sudden, shocking. Aviva crushed her instinctive reaction, held still, kept her eyes locked on the silent troops facing her.

  ‘Greetings, margdarshak.’ Bheem’s voice, unperturbed.

  ‘Your presence is unexpected, though welcome,’ the woman’s voice continued. ‘Use the key, and I shall lead you.’

  The warrior did not hesitate. ‘Krishna Dvaipayan.’

  ‘The key is accepted. Do you seek passage through the Chakravyuha?’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  A moment of silence.

  She didn’t expect that, Aviva thought. The moment stretched out, taut, strained. Is she still there? Aviva rigidly resisted the urge to look around.

  ‘Do you seek another path, warrior?’

  She was there!

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You are aware that, in doing so, you forfeit your right to guidance through the Chakravyuha? That you imperil your life and that of your companion?’

  ‘I am aware of this.’

  ‘Then ask, son of Kunti. One question for one answer.’

  Aviva took a deep breath. The die was cast, whatever it was he asked. Finding their way out now would depend entirely on her.

  Bheem’s voice, though, betrayed no trace of uncertainty. ‘The last remaining descendant of Yajika and her four daughters,’ he said, ‘the inheritor of the sickness shield. Guide me to her, margdarshak. Show me the quickest route.’

  The woman’s voice when she answered was neutral, impersonal. ‘This is the quickest path, warrior, to the remaining inheritor. Krishna Dvaipayan.’

  ‘Krish . . . But that is the key, the command for the margdarshaks. Where am I to use it?’

  No reply.

  ‘Margdarshak! You have not given me the guidance I seek!’

  Despite the underground chill, Aviva felt sweat trickle down her cheek.

  Bheem’s voice rose, urgent, no longer calm. ‘Is there another guide? Another margdarshak I must seek? Answer me!’

  The clang of metal footfalls, moving, halting. And then, silence.

  Aviva shivered. ‘She’s gone, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bheem stepped into view. For the first time since he had crashed into her life, she saw him shaken. ‘I gambled, Aviva-Fein.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘It appears I have lost.’

  Aviva shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t say lost. Just back to square one.’

  ‘“Back to square one.”’ Bheem laughed unexpectedly. ‘I see you are familiar with the game I played with my brothers as a child. You call it “snakes and ladders”. We called it mokshapat. Slide down the snakes of vice, climb up the ladders of virtue—until you achieve moksha.’

  Distracting himself, realized Aviva. Trying to ward off post-failure despondency. Not very different from the psychological defences she had been taught in the army.

  Bheem smiled, keeping his voice light. ‘The game was taught to us by our grandsire, Maharishi Ved Vyas, when he visited our parents in the forest of . . .’ He stopped, a sudden frown creasing his brow. ‘Krishna Dvaipayan,’ he breathed.

  ‘What?’ Aviva risked a quick glance at the warrior. His eyes were suddenly ablaze, burning through the opaque mist, seeing paths that had been invisible a moment earlier.

  Krishna Dvaipayan, Bheem thought. Of course! The margdarshaks never misguide a traveller. It was not the command key; she had not meant that. She was referring to . . .

  Abruptly, Aviva vanished, the Chakravyuha dissolved in the mist, and Bheem was back on the snowbound hill, gazing upon a saffron-clad man, a sadhu, lowering an urn into a stream, transporting four infants in a mule cart. But, miraculously, the wind had dropped and the snow flurries were stilled. The sadhu’s face was no longer hidden—it was dark, framed by a white beard and hair, unusually ugly but lit by an effulgent glow, alive with ineffable wisdom. A face that Bheem knew, and loved.

  ‘Grandsire.’

  The whispered word fell into the silence of the Antaragata like a rock, its sound rippling outward, almost causing Aviva to reflexively turn from the metal warriors to the one of flesh and blood.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘Have you thought of something?’

  ‘The margdarshak answered true, Aviva-Fein.’ The forced lightness that had characterized Bheem’s voice since the encounter with the margdarshak was gone; he sounded eager now, excited. ‘“Krishna Dvaipayan,” she said—the other name of my grandsire, Maharishi Ved Vyas. It was he who sheltered the four sisters; it is with him that the answer lies.’

  ‘Lies? But he lived thousands of years ago! How could . . .’ Aviva stopped, embarrassed. ‘Sorry. I remember the lore now . . . Ved Vyas is an immortal, right? A chiranjivi?’

  ‘He is that and much more. I am hopeful now, more than I was—I think we will unearth the saviour before the enemy.’ Bheem smiled at her. ‘It is your turn now, Aviva-Fein. Lead us out.’

  Outside the National Zoological Park

  4.49 a.m.

  They had been gone an hour and twenty-nine minutes. A minute earlier they had been gone an hour and twenty-eight minutes. Vineet fidgeted. He had lost count of the number of times he had looked at his watch. It was a nervous tic, he knew, a reaction to suffocating tension. Nothing had changed, of course; the road, the zoo behind the wall and the fort on the crest were as silent as graves.

  Graves . . . unfortunate things to think about now. Maybe I should get some sleep.

  He had been attempting it without much success. He tried shutting his eyes; the silence seemed even more intrusive.

  And then the stillness of the night was blown apart. An avalanche of sound cascaded downhill from the fort. The lions responded, roaring their displeasure. Vineet sprang out of the van and gazed at the ancient walls above.

  What the fuck—?

  Purana Qila

  4.51 a.m.

  Talwar would have hit someone if it weren’t unprofessional. Why were orders always bungled? Such simple orders too: turn on every light in the fort, catch the intruder
unawares, give her no time to find cover, to escape. And what had they done instead? The fools had switched on the sound of the fort’s sound-and-light show! Music, pre-recorded voices and sound effects had blared over loudspeakers for three entire minutes before Talwar’s cursing produced results, and sound was replaced by light. With an effort, Talwar reined in most of his temper and concentrated.

  All right, so we’re blown. The Israeli knows we’re here. But there’s no way she’s going to slip away. Not even if she’s a Mossad agent, trained for this kind of stuff! Talwar glared at the illuminated grounds of the fort. Where is she? In the Qila-i-Kuhna? The Sher Mandal? He raised a megaphone and his voice ricocheted around the ancient walls: ‘Police! Give up! You’re surrounded. All exits are cut off. There’s no way out. No escape!’

  The Antaragata

  5.01 a.m.

  ‘. . . 629 . . . 628 . . . 627 . . .’

  Aviva hesitated, stopped. A wall of bronze soldiers faced her, their faces contorted with the pain of non-death. For the first time, though, since they had started their journey back, Aviva was unsure of herself.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  Bheem looked at her, understanding at once. This was where she had tripped and, for a fleeting moment, lost sight of the warriors facing her. And that had been enough. The praitha had moved, shifted subtly, very different from the intimidating, foot-thumping repositioning of ranks that was their pattern. This was a trap set for the wary—into which they must not fall.

  Their return through the spiralling arms of the Chakravyuha had not been easy. Tensely, Aviva had counted her steps, digging into her memory, making the precise choices that needed to be made. Choices . . .

  ‘This is what we face, Aviva-Fein,’ Bheem had said. ‘Unlike the pathway in, no passageway back stands open for us. Walk directly at any group of praitha and they will move aside, opening up a corridor through their lines. If the group of warriors chosen is correct, we may walk down the corridor they uncover freely until we encounter the next rank of soldiers. But if we have selected the wrong set of guards, the corridor they reveal as they move aside is a deathtrap. Enter it and they will cut you down instantly. The weapons they carry are of the world beyond; nothing of this earth can stop them.’