The Iron Khan (Detective Inspector Chen Series)

by Liz Williams

  Omi considered. It wasn’t a question of trust — how could he do that? — but he thought he could best her in a fight, even though she was a magician. After all, so was he, and so was Grandfather. It was two against one…

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

  •

  An hour later, flying high over the glaciated summits, Omi was wishing he’d never asked. He’d flown in planes before now, but never on the back of a magical crane, holding tightly to the sinuous waist of an ancient magician and hoping he wouldn’t fall off. It was, he supposed, quibbling to wonder why they both didn’t freeze, although there was a rime of ice along the soles of his boots and an icicle depended from the tip of the bow like a small glass spear.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, but the wind swallowed his words and Raksha did not turn her head. She had bound up her long black hair into a topknot and occasionally her sharp profile turned to the right, staring down into the mill of the clouds. When he dared follow her gaze, Omi caught glimpses of the mountains far below, but they were traveling down the range now, toward the desert: a place he had no wish to go. It seemed, however, that he’d have little say in the matter. The crane, prompted by some invisible or inaudible command of its mistress, was veering south, until the chill of the mountains ebbed and a smack of heat arose from the dry lands below. The clouds were gone, leaving a fierce blue sky. Below, Omi could see a dried-up riverbed snaking across the surface of the desert, and they were following it, still flying high, but close enough for Omi to see the patterns of the rocks and, weaving between them, the almost undetectable tracks left by the ifrits’ infrequent migrations. He thought of saying something but, not knowing where Raksha’s allegiances might lie, decided against it.

  Raksha raised a thin hand and pointed. “Do you see?”

  Omi squinted into the day. There was a smudge of gray-green on the horizon that could have been illusion or oasis.

  “What is it?” Raksha did not reply. But the crane was flying fast and soon he could see the outline of groves of trees lying in the midst of humps of dry brown earth. The earth had split, leaving a cliff face rearing up over the river. Here there was a trickle of water and a series of regular rectangular holes in the face of the cliff, and all at once Omi knew where this must be.

  “This is Dun Huang!” he said. A figure in saffron robes was crossing the river on a narrow bridge and this reassured him: this was a holy place, where monks lived. If Raksha was evil, then she wouldn’t be coming to such a place as this. Beyond the cliff, Omi could see, incongruously, a car park. A bus was trundling out onto the dirt road that ran parallel with the river. The crane glided overhead but none of the passengers looked up, and although they passed close enough to the monk that the beat of the crane’s wings would have been clearly audible, the monk continued on his serene way, smiling gently to himself.

  The crane glided to a landing at the edge of a grove of trees and Omi stepped gratefully down into sudden silence. It was warm, but a breeze stirred the leaves of acacia and oak. A cuckoo called, precise and close at hand.

  “It’s a long time since I’ve been here,” Raksha said. She murmured to the crane and it took off once more and sailed up into the branches, folding itself up like an origami bird.

  “I’ve never been,” Omi said, staring up at the cliff face. “I’ve seen photos. It’s a tourist attraction now.”

  Raksha looked at him, puzzled. “ ‘Tourist’?”

  “Travelers.”

  “Ah. Pilgrims.”

  “More or less.”

  Raksha strode down to the bank of the stream and ran a hand through the clear water. Omi got the impression that she had, in some manner, learned something from it, for her expression when she straightened up was thoughtful. “Interesting,” she said. “They’re still here. I thought they were. I could feel them.”

  “Who?” Omi asked.

  “The old,” she said. “There’s a new religion here now.”

  “This is a Buddhist center,” Omi said. “There are some very famous statues up in those caves.”

  Raksha smiled. “I’ve heard of ‘Buddhist.’ When I was in Hell once, someone told me about the new faith.”

  “It’s not all that new,” Omi said, thinking, Then how old are you?

  “The akashi were here first,” Raksha said. “My cousins.”

  “Akashi?”

  “Oasis spirits. You’ll meet them, maybe. If we’re lucky. Or unlucky.”

  “Tell me,” Omi said, struck by sudden suspicion, “are these akashi the same as ifrits?”

  Raksha laughed. “Oh no. They’re old enemies of the ifrits.” She turned and began walking along the bank of the stream. Her feet were clad in soft leather shoes, Omi noticed, and she left no footprints. He believed her in this, at least: Dun Huang was one of the holiest places of the Buddhist faith — powerful enough, surely, to keep out the ifrits.

  The cuckoo called again from the trees, a clear bell-note. The monk was nowhere to be seen, though Omi glimpsed buildings through the branches. The sun was setting now, going down in burnished bronze behind the wall of the cliff. Raksha was heading toward a narrow walkway that led up to the caves. Omi followed her, not without misgivings.

  ELEVEN

  Zhu Irzh suggested that Jhai remain at the gates of the villa and watch for anyone who might come in or out. He did not tell her that she might also need to raise the alarm if he didn’t return, but Jhai flatly refused to stay behind.

  “I want to see what’s in there,” she said. “Don’t treat me as though I’m in need of protection. It’s very sweet but I’m a demon, too, you know.”

  “A demon who has recently been seriously injured.”

  Jhai snorted. “What, by Lara? My cousin couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag.”

  Zhu Irzh forbore to mention that Lara, tiger demon turned Bollywood star turned, well, tiger, had come close to disemboweling her relative. Jhai didn’t take well to tactlessness and he knew better by now than to argue with her once she’d made up her mind. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll both go.”

  They made their way cautiously down the path to the villa. No alarms sounded, nothing stirred in the dense undergrowth that had once been a formal garden. Roses twined in profusion up through the tangles of bramble, winding their coils around the overhanging branches of trees, but when Zhu Irzh came close enough to smell one, there was no odor at all, only a faint and unpleasant scent of rotting meat.

  Funny, that. In fact, the whole villa had an air of decay. And there must be some reason why this prime piece of Kashgarian real estate had not been snapped up by some rising entrepreneur. The number of Mercs and BMWs cruising the streets near the hotel had told Zhu Irzh that at least some of the residents weren’t poverty stricken.

  When the demon reached the front steps, he paused. The veranda was sagging and the wooden boards didn’t look all that safe. He picked his way gingerly up the steps. The front door was ajar.

  “Want me to go first?” Jhai asked. That decided him; he still had some pride, after all.

  “I’ll go,” Zhu Irzh replied. He pushed the door open and stepped into the hall.

  Anticlimax. There was no sense of any brooding evil, no ghosts.

  “Musty,” said Jhai, close behind. The hall smelled as though whatever freshness might be in the air outside had failed to penetrate the building. Damp, rot, mold. Just as it had been in the dream, the hall was wallpapered in an old-fashioned floral print, interspersed with pale blue panels. But dark red stains spread upward from the skirting board and seeped over the paper like lichen.

  “I can hear something,” Jhai whispered, prodding the demon’s arm. Zhu Irzh listened. There was a faint, low murmuring, coming from a room at the end of the hall. Zhu Irzh’s skin prickled. As in the dream, he couldn’t understand why this place should affect him so badly: he’d grown up in a far more sinister mansion, for Hell’s sake.

  At the door to the room, which was shut, Zhu Irzh stopped a
nd listened. The whispering was louder, a susurrus like the rush and hush of the sea.

  “Are you going to open it?”

  He couldn’t come this far and turn back now. Besides, he was curious. There was no handle, not even a keyhole. Zhu Irzh took a step back, made up his mind and kicked open the door.

  The smell hit him first. It was like opening the door of a charnel house, and even the demon gagged. The room itself was dimly lit, with gas lamps burning along the walls. A long dining table extended the length of the room. Bodies lay slumped in their seats, men in military uniform, their heads shot away. Brains and scraps of flesh spattered the walls. Zhu Irzh had seen worse, but it still froze him for an instant. Then, looking down the table, he saw a man sitting at the head of it. Black eyes, a pointed black beard above a red leather tunic. The man was holding a human bone in one hand and roaring with laughter.

  “Look!” he cried in accented Mandarin. “New guests for my table! Come and sit down!”

  “I don’t think so,” the demon retorted. He grabbed Jhai by the arm and dragged her backward, just as the man reached out a hand and cast a black glowing web through the air toward them. Zhu Irzh slammed the door shut.

  “Jesus!” Jhai said. “What was that all about? Didn’t you like the décor or something?”

  Zhu Irzh stared at her. “Didn’t you see him?”

  “See who? All I saw was another dusty old room in an abandoned house.”

  “We’re leaving,” Zhu Irzh said, and marched her out. He fully expected the door to burst open but it did not. They stumbled out into the early evening light, and the fetid air of the garden was, in comparison, relatively fresh. The demon leaned on the gatepost, laboring for breath.

  “Are you all right?” Jhai asked. Zhu Irzh nodded, unable to speak. “This isn’t like you.”

  “I saw a human head with an apple in its mouth served up at a table in your cousin’s palace,” Zhu Irzh managed to say, coughing. “That’s normal. He’s doing something, I can feel it.”

  “Who’s doing something?”

  “The bloke at the dinner table.”

  “What?”

  “The Khan,” said a voice. Zhu Irzh glanced up and was filled with relief. Nicholas stood at the gate. Despite the heat of the day, he wore a long black coat, old-fashioned in cut.

  “Who are you?” Jhai demanded.

  “My name is Nicholas,” the man said. “Nicholas Roerich.”

  •

  Rather to Zhu Irzh’s surprise, Roerich ordered tea when they got back to the hotel, and drank it.

  “I thought you were a ghost,” he said.

  “In a manner of speaking. I’m no longer alive, put it that way. Then again, technically, neither are you.”

  “I’ve heard your name,” Jhai said. She regarded Roerich narrowly. “Weren’t you an explorer?”

  Roerich laughed. “Yes, I was. You might say I still am, although my field of exploration is rather wider than it used to be. When I was alive, which was in the late nineteenth century and beyond, I made a series of expeditions to Siberia, to Tibet, and to the Himalayas. I am Russian, you see. They used to describe me as a mystic, which is one way of explaining someone who does things you can’t understand. In fact, I made a study of meditative disciplines and had a certain degree of experience in magic, though I kept that as quiet as I could. I painted a few things, as well.”

  Jhai snapped her fingers in realization. “That’s it! More than a few things, I think, Mr Roerich. Your work is famous. I’ve seen some of it in New York.”

  Roerich looked modestly pleased. “Really? Yes, there is a small gallery there. It’s odd, to think of one’s work surviving after one’s lifespan.”

  “Go and see it for yourself,” Jhai suggested.

  “I don’t think that would work… On this plane, the Masters have confined me to the parts I knew in life. There’s always other planes, however.”

  “The Masters?”

  Roerich looked at her. “You’re Indian, I think? And you, Zhu Irzh, are of Chinese origin. Some of the Masters come from your parts of the world, but they don’t participate in your Heavens and Hells. They have their own realm, Shambhala. I wasted a lot of time searching for it in my youth. I should have just waited. I work for them now. I am not, you understand, a Master myself. They are those who have transcended into the other realm without dying first.”

  “I thought they were a myth,” Jhai said, frowning. “I always associate them with dodgy old Victorians in England.”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” said Zhu Irzh, feeling ignorant. “Sorry.”

  Roerich shrugged. “They keep themselves a secret these days, except to initiates. They’ve learned from their earlier experiences.”

  “The man in the villa,” Zhu Irzh said. “This Khan. Who is he?”

  “An old enemy of the Masters. He calls himself a Khan, but he was born centuries before Islam came to Central Asia. He dates from the time of the Tokarians. When you told me that someone had reanimated them, I immediately thought of the Khan.”

  “You came to me in a dream, didn’t you?” Zhu Irzh said. He was aware of the beginnings of a powerful headache, which he resented. Demons don’t get headaches, any more than they are overcome by fear and revulsion.

  “Yes. The Khan’s marked you.”

  “Oh great! How?”

  “He seeks followers, throughout the centuries. Wears down their resistance until they agree to serve him. Ambitious, to try it with a demon of Mandarin Hell.”

  “Why does he need servants?” Jhai asked.

  “Like me, he’s confined to this part of the world — I understand it was a condition of his living on. You see, the Khan is like me: he was granted ascendance by the Masters, but he turned against them. They cannot rescind their gift once it’s given, but that gift had the same terms that my own did — stay in the lands you knew in life. When I was a living man, before I was granted the gift, I was held prisoner here in Kashgar by the Khan. He tried to force me to obey him. I resisted, with the meditative techniques I’d learned from my Tibetan contacts. Eventually I managed to escape, but not without great difficulty. At what would have been the end of my life, the Masters came to me and told me that because of what I had done, they wished to offer me employment, against the Khan.”

  “If you know where he is,” Zhu Irzh said, “why can’t you just — I don’t know, burn the villa down? Dispatch him to a Hell? It didn’t seem all that well-defended to me.”

  Roerich smiled. “If I were to set foot in that villa now, Zhu Irzh, I would find only a deserted house with dusty rooms and a kingdom of mice. So would most people. Whatever you saw, you did so because the Khan wanted you to see it.”

  “I saw the Khan at dinner,” Zhu Irzh said. “Eating human flesh. There were soldiers all around, all of them dead. If I’d come across it in Hell, it would have been less of a shock.”

  “I didn’t see any of this,” Jhai qualified.

  “The Khan relives edited highlights of his existence. He conjures them from the astral — essentially he creates a private hell all of his own. What you saw was an episode back in the late nineteenth century when, posing simply as a local potentate, he invited a Russian general and his men to dine with him and then had them shot at the dinner table.”

  “What did they do — criticize the soup?”

  “They did nothing at all,” Roerich explained. “The Khan has acted on whim for a long time.”

  “And you want me to stop him?” Zhu Irzh asked. “How?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know. A lot of people have gone after the Khan over the centuries but none of them have succeeded and most of them have died in the attempt. The last one was a Samurai, a Japanese warrior who managed to destroy the Khan’s mountain palace, but who died at the hands of the Khan. Initially, like myself, the Khan’s power came from the Masters, but they withdrew their support long, long ago, and now no one knows where he draws his power from.”

  “But wh
y should he mark me?” Zhu Irzh asked. “I’m just another minor demon.”

  “Not anymore, you’re not,” Jhai said. “You’re the stepson of the Emperor of Hell.”

  “I need your help,” Roerich said. “You have access to the Khan now. You can see him, for a start. We need to find out what the Khan is planning.”

  The demon sighed. “You want me to go back to that villa, don’t you?”

  “It was the Khan’s home throughout the nineteenth century. It seems he’s taken up residence there once more.”

  “All right,” Zhu Irzh said, although he wanted to say no. Perhaps it was that Roerich reminded him slightly of Chen, or simply some quality possessed by the Russian that was all his own: a kind of steely serenity. “I’ll do my best.”