Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress

by Sarwat Chadda

“When you’ve done it as long as I have, you will realise it’s a curse.” She sighed. “Even death is no escape.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think I’m human, at least to begin with. Then my rakshasa soul manifests itself in my early teens, and with it come the nightmares and my old memories. The first sign is these.” She pointed at her eyes. “They change from human to serpent. I have to leave my home because I become a danger to those I love. I am a monster, Ash. A monster living among humans.”

  Ash watched her silently. So that was her life, to be feared and shunned by all she knew, for ever. Parvati slipped the locket back over her neck.

  “And who was the other portrait?”

  “Savage.”

  “What?” How could it be Savage? Ash shot forward, unable to disguise or control his rage. “You knew Savage?” He felt totally betrayed. Of all the people to carry in her locket, Savage!

  “It was a long time ago, Ash.”

  “And how well did you know him, exactly?”

  Parvati responded with icy coldness. “I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.”

  “You’ve got his portrait in your locket,” said Ash, still hot with rage. “That’s usually reserved for ‘extra special friends’, isn’t it?”

  “Listen to me, Ash.” Parvati took his hand. “Listen to me.”

  It took a few minutes for Ash to calm down, but eventually he sat down and leaned against the wall. Still, all he could think of was the portrait in the locket.

  “I hate Savage more than you could possibly imagine,” Parvati said, sitting down next to Ash. “We have the same enemy, you and I. And I promise you this – I will do everything I can to help you avenge yourself against him.”

  That was the truth. He could hear the cold, ancient hate in her tone.

  “What happened?”

  “I was in the court of the maharajah of Lahore, back in the mid-nineteenth century. I helped keep his rivals in line.”

  “How?”

  “I am the daughter of Ravana. I was born to end men’s lives.” Parvati frowned. “I served the maharajah as his assassin, Ash.”

  An assassin. How insanely cool. “So how did you meet Savage?”

  “Savage was part of a diplomatic mission sent by the English to make a peace deal with the maharajah.”

  “Did they?”

  “The treaty was signed, but I was sent to spy on them. I discovered Savage was a magician, a good one. Nothing big, and nothing a thousand sadhus couldn’t do. But he interested me. And he made me an offer.”

  “What?”

  “To make me wholly human.”

  Ash nodded. The way she spoke about her past life, her hatred for her father and sadness towards what had happened to her mother, it was clear Parvati was conflicted; the demon versus the human. He wondered what she was capable of if she gave in to her demon side. As she had said: she was Ravana’s daughter, and Ravana had terrorised the gods.

  Parvati continued. “But he needed my father’s scrolls of magic, scrolls I’d salvaged from the destruction of Lanka. Savage wanted to master the ten sorceries, like my father. He said he’d use them to cure me.” Parvati’s eyes darkened and there was a grimness there. “And like a trusting fool I gave them to him. But the scrolls were incomplete, so he only acquired a few simple magics, like immortality.”

  “Immortality doesn’t sound so simple to me.”

  “There are spells that can alter time itself, Ash. Be thankful Savage never learned those.” She sighed. “But you’re right, it is not simple. Savage ages, but cannot die. So now he’s little more than a grotesque, living skeleton.”

  “So he took the scrolls and fled?”

  Parvati sank her head, still ashamed of how she’d been tricked. “Yes. Something like that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was not your fault, but mine,” Parvati snarled. For a second the demon took control of the girl. “I made Savage. If it hadn’t been for me, he would be long dead. But with my father’s scrolls, he became a powerful sorcerer. The other rakshasas gathered round him. If they couldn’t have my father back, then Savage was the next best thing. All he’s done since, I could have stopped, if I hadn’t been so desperate to be something I’m not.”

  She stood up and walked away down the stairs without even looking at Ash, obviously lost in her own guilt and mistakes.

  Revenge. Pure and simple. That’s what motivated her now.

  But Savage had done so much worse to Ash. He’d taken not just some scrolls but his uncle and aunt. Ash sat there, feeling the hole inside his heart swallow more of him.

  His hand went to the aastra round his neck. Parvati and Rishi thought he was the weapon they could use to defeat Savage once and for all. But they were wrong. He touched one of the big bruises on his torso. If Parvati couldn’t beat Savage, what chance did he have, even with this magic arrowhead? He didn’t even know how it worked.

  Ash felt pity for Parvati, but all of this was way too big a problem for a thirteen-year-old boy. This was a war between gods and monsters, and kids like him had no part in it.

  “Sorry, Parvati,” he whispered. He’d spoken to his mum and that was that. His job was to get him and Lucky home. Back to his parents. Back where they belonged.

  Ash got to his feet. In an ideal world he’d be a hero and go off to fight Savage and have his revenge. But this wasn’t that sort of world. He wasn’t that sort of hero.

  Tonight he’d take Lucky and sneak out of the Lalgur. They’d find Dad and go back to England. They would leave India, Savage, Parvati. They would leave everything.

  For ever.

  ou’ve got five minutes,” said John. “Rajiv’s on door duty, but I told him I’d cover for him while he sneaked off to see Padmi.”

  “Let’s go, Lucks.”

  John went down the stairs first, Lucky next and Ash behind. It was one o’clock and pretty much everyone in the Lalgur was asleep. The door was open to one of the larger rooms, where a whole bunch of kids slept, sprawled over the floor on thin mattresses. A rusty old fan cranked in the corner. If the other kids could sleep through that, then Ash’s soft footsteps weren’t going to wake them. But in a building with about fifty people in it, there was always a chance someone was wandering off to the toilet or to find a midnight snack.

  A mat lay beside the door with a half-finished bowl of plain rice on top of it. Otherwise the small lobby was empty.

  Ash pulled back the heavy iron bolt. The metal screamed. He stopped dead.

  “Shut up!” hissed Lucky, thumping him on the arm. “Why not just bang a gong and tell everyone we’re going?”

  “Sorry.”

  They listened in fearful silence, waiting for the sound of feet on flagstones and expecting Rajiv or, worse, Ujba, to come running in.

  But nothing. Hardly daring to breathe, Ash twisted the bolt further. It squeaked as the metal worked its way against the stone. Then, with a final cry of protest, the door opened.

  Ash took a long deep breath. The air was fresh and cool, rising straight off the Ganges and carried by a soft, night breeze. The sky was clear, but the route John had explained to them would keep them in the alleyways, hidden from the stark eye of the moon.

  “You want to come?” asked Ash.

  John shrugged. “And what then? This is my home.” He smiled. It was sort of sad. “Goodbye, English.”

  “You’ll get in trouble, you know that.”

  “Not as much as you if they catch you standing around here.”

  Lucky embraced John. “Thanks,” she said with tears in her eyes. Then she scurried out into the alleyway.

  “Anything for Parvati?” asked John.

  Ash grinned. “Yes. Give her a huge kiss on the lips. Don’t hold back.”

  “I do that and she’ll tear my face off.”

  Ash hugged the small boy. “Thanks, mate. I owe you.”

  Ash wanted to tell John that he’d been a good friend, a great one. The boy was taking a big, b
ig risk in helping them escape. He wouldn’t be treated gently when their disappearance was discovered. John deserved more than just thanks. He was saving their lives. But before Ash could speak, the door behind him closed and the little light that had spilled through vanished.

  He took Lucky’s hand. Though the last few weeks had been hard, there was something about the Lalgur. It had changed him. The simple food, the hard, brutal training. A strange magic had been worked upon him. He was sharper, tougher than he’d ever been. He felt… awake. India had awakened him.

  Lucky’s fingers tightened round his.

  “Dad’s waiting,” she said.

  Varanasi never truly slept. Even though dawn was hours away, sweepers brushed up rotten vegetables, plastic litter, animal dung. Ash saw the priests at work in the temples. He caught the gaze of one of the holy men, reciting from a brittle, yellow scroll. The old man’s eyes darkened as he saw them, and for a second Ash wondered if he might be one of Ujba’s informants.

  He pulled his sister along. “Hurry up, Lucks.”

  Ash and Lucky moved further into the heart of the old city.

  Neatly stacked piles of logs began to fill the alleys. They wove through more and more of these man-high bundles, heading deeper into the labyrinth, deeper into the grey phantoms of smoke that drifted on to the path leading to Manikarnika ghat.

  The place of burning.

  A queue waited beside a small stall, nothing more than a canvas awning held up by two wooden poles. Inside, a small boy cried as a barber skilfully scraped the hair off the child’s head using a razor. A river of foam and hair ran along the open gutter, forming a black thicket over the half-blocked drain. Ash caught the sweet scent of sandalwood, of incense and of brittle burning wood.

  They stopped just as the alley opened on to a landing beside the river. A thick cloud of smoke swooped over Ash, stinging his eyes and blocking his lungs. He backed away, coughing.

  He found himself overlooking a funeral. The wide, flat stone platform was smeared with soot from centuries of fires, and in the centre was a pyre. The sticks had been piled in neat stacks to a man’s height, making a flat, high bed. On this lay a body, blackened by the raging flames, the skin already burnt away. Ash stared at the skull that gazed upwards in the blazing light. The dry logs crackled and snapped and popped. A wall of fire swung from side to side, fiercely hot on his face and bare skin. Men chanted ancient prayers as a soul soared heavenward in the black smoke. Beyond the flames Ash saw the river, glistening with thousands of reflections of this burning man. It was as if the river itself contained the images of all the cremations it had seen since Time began.

  “Where’s Dad?” asked Lucky. She was hopping up and down with excitement, searching over the heads for a glimpse of him.

  “He’ll be here.” The men were just hazy silhouettes and Ash couldn’t make them out; the light and heat from the flames were too intense.

  But after ten minutes, Ash started worrying. Dad should have arrived by now. Where was he? If only Ash had taken John’s mobile, he could have called again. Had something happened?

  Down in the river, the dark waters rippled as a pilgrim descended waist-deep into the water. The man took a deep breath and, palms pressed together, plunged underneath. In a few seconds he came back up, took another breath and went under again.

  Out of the corner of his eye Ash caught sight of what looked like a floating log, just visible on the edge of the firelight. It must have rolled free from some other funeral pyre. When he looked back up, the log was gone – floated off down the river, most likely.

  There was a splash as the pilgrim came back up. He coughed and loudly cleared his throat, whispered another prayer, then went under a third time.

  Ash watched the bubbles of his breath rise and pop on the surface of the water. The river was still, the colour of dark green marble. Ash idly scratched his thumb and looked down at it, feeling a slight tingle.

  The bubbles stopped.

  Ash shivered. Something was wrong, way wrong.

  “Get up, Lucks.”

  The water did not stir, but a stain began to spread across the surface, just where the pilgrim had dived under, the water turning darker than it had been.

  Lucky sprang to her feet. “Do you see Dad?”

  A figure emerged out of the Ganges. Thick dark crusty scales covered his round head, heaviest over his brow. His shoulders were double-door wide and water ran in sparkling rivulets between the deep crevasses of his muscles. His long arms swung as he strode up the steps.

  There was no sign of the pilgrim, other than the bloody, fresh gristle hanging from the teeth that jutted out at all angles from the man’s – the rakshasa’s – long, crocodile snout.

  “Mayar,” whispered Ash. But how had he known they would be here?

  It didn’t matter. Rishi had warned him to stay in the Lalgur, but Ash had thought he’d known better. Now they were both going to pay for his stupidity.

  “Lucky, run,” he said. “Back to the Lalgur. Quickly!”

  People screamed. One man ran at Mayar, but he swung his sledgehammer of a fist and the man’s skull shattered. The crocodile rakshasa stepped over the body without a glance.

  “Run!” Ash turned, hand in hand with Lucky. They had to get back into the old city. The place was a labyrinth and some of the alleys would be too narrow for Mayar.

  The ground shook as Mayar pounded up the steps behind them. The funeral pyre blocked his way, and Ash thought he had a few more seconds, but Mayar just barged straight through the blazing logs. The wood crackled and the air roared as he trod on the brittle, blackened corpse. It crumbled like a charcoal stick.

  If they could just get into the alleys—

  “Hello, sweetie.”

  Jackie sat hunched on top of a column, her mane fanned by the flames rising off the fires. Her torn clothes ran like streamers from her massive pelt-covered thighs, and a tail swished back and forth as she stared at Ash and Lucky, her long tongue dripping with greedy hunger. She bunched up her legs, then launched herself across the ghat, howling maniacally.

  Ash pushed Lucky ahead of him. Fear and the screaming demons destroyed any thought of a plan. They just ran. He heard Jackie’s snarl and Mayar’s wall-shaking roar. Heavy feet thundered on the flagstones behind them.

  Ash threw himself down lanes and scrambled over a cart that had been left across one of the alleys. He crashed over a group of sleeping pilgrims, scuttling on his hands and knees over the mass of limbs and shouting men. Lucky, far lighter on her feet than Ash, was already way ahead and disappearing down the unlit lanes.

  Ash’s foot slipped on something as he charged deeper into the maze. Jackie’s wild, bone-chilling cackle echoed behind him and he expected her claws to tear open his back at any second. No alley was wider than two metres and none ran straight for long. Red lamps and small fires glowed in the darkness behind the silhouettes of the destitute and outcast of the city.

  A dog snapped at his toes and Ash had to jump to get past. It was still yapping as he disappeared down a side alley.

  Lucky, where was she? Ash ran blind, fingers outstretched and probing the darkness. His breath came in short, desperate gasps, as though the old city was trying to smother him. The narrow cobbled lanes turned in all directions, and Ash’s legs burned as he rounded another corner into a dead end.

  He twisted the nearest door handle, but the door was locked. That dog was still barking somewhere behind him. Then it growled, becoming dangerous and aggressive. But then there was a yelp, a snap, a crunch and no more barks.

  Ash searched the walls. If he couldn’t go back, sideways or forward, he would have to go up. He looked at the drainpipe rising ten metres up the outside of a tumbledown temple. The pipe passed through a net of loose wires; the old city was powered by exposed cable strung along the streets, then carried up further, disappearing into the darkness beyond. It didn’t look good, but he knew he had no choice.

  Somewhere behind him, claws scratched along t
he flagstones.

  Totally stupid.

  Ash tightened his hold on the drainpipe and hoisted himself up. The pipe shook and leaned away from the wall. John had told him he regularly scrabbled up such drainpipes – how hard could it be? But then John was half his bodyweight, even after all the exercise Ash had been doing.

  Ridiculously stupid.

  Arms and legs wrapped round the clay pipe, Ash slowly shimmied upwards. The rough surface of the pipe scraped against his skin, rubbing his belly raw.

  “Insanely stupid,” he muttered. Any second now he’d fall and split open his skull. No need to be killed by demons, he’d do the job himself. Serve him right for being an idiot.

  The cables brushed against his back, and Ash hoped he wasn’t about to be electrocuted. But the cables seemed dead, and he found gaps in the walls and loose cement to dig his toes into and push himself the last few metres. With a grunt he heaved himself over the low parapet, dropping on to the flat roof. Holding his breath and willing his heart to quieten, he heard a deep, threatening growl.

  The drainpipe rattled, then tore off the wall and smashed.

  After a few seconds a door shattered. Ash heard muffled screams from downstairs and the sickening sound of flesh tearing.

  A rakshasa was coming up the stairs.

  He jumped up, ran to the edge of the building, and stopped dead. There was a gap between this roof and the next.

  Parkour. He’d seen it on YouTube: running and jumping and diving over walls, balconies, from roof to roof. He’d tried it once with a few mates, but ended up limping home with two bleeding shins after failing to clear a park bench. And now this.

  Ash peered over the edge. On the ground he wouldn’t think twice. It was probably a couple of metres to the other roof – he couldn’t be sure in the dark. But it wasn’t the gap that bothered him – it was the height.

  There was a growl from nearby and he realised the height wasn’t as much of a problem as the rakshasa right behind him.

  A fist crunched the door. Ash stared as a long crack opened up along the wood. The second punch tore it off its hinges and hurled it across the roof. Mayar, his face and jaws dripping with blood, gave a rumbling, low laugh. He pointed a claw at the arrowhead dangling from Ash’s throat.