King of Lanka

by David Hair

  DAVID HAIR

  King of Lanka

  Book 4

  The Return of Ravana

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE: THE PHOTOGRAPHER

  Part One: In Search of Lanka

  A SECRET WEDDING, AND AFTER

  ISLE OF THE DEMON-KING

  READINESS

  THE BRIDGE OF RAMA

  THE INVISIBLE GIRL

  THE GHOST AT THE CITADEL DOOR

  QUID PRO QUO

  I, RAVANA

  YOU WERE BORN TO PLAY THIS ROLE

  THE HALL OF THE DEMON-KING

  CHAINED QUEENS

  HALIKA: TAINTED LOVE

  HALIKA: SISTERS IN SPIRIT

  HALIKA: THE SIEGE OF LANKA

  I KNOW I AM A MONSTER

  AN ARCHERY DISPLAY

  COURTROOM DRAMA, OLD SCHOOL

  DANCING IN THE RAIN

  MY LEAST SIGNIFICANT LIFE

  TIM SAHIB

  THE AMBUSH

  Part Two: To Reign in Lanka

  FALLING

  HEMANT’S PEOPLE

  LET US BE MARRIED

  DEATH FROM ABOVE

  I NEED MY HEART

  A PARLEY AT THE GATES

  WEDDING PREPARATIONS

  THE FINAL REVELATION

  LOVE AND FIDELITY

  PASHUPATASTRA

  BRONZE AGE DRAINAGE

  HEALING HERBS

  KEKE’S CHOICE

  MOKSHA

  TEMPLE OF LOVE

  DUSSHERA

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Copyright Page

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  KING OF LANKA

  David Hair is the author of Pyre of Queens, Swayamvara and The Bone Tiki, winner of Best First Book at the 2010 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards. The Bone Tiki and its sequels The Taniwha’s Tear and The Lost Tohunga are fantasy novels set in New Zealand.

  David is a New Zealander, who has worked primarily in financial services. He has a degree in History and Classical Studies. He has lived in New Delhi, India from 2007 to 2010, but usually resides in Wellington, New Zealand. Apart from writing, he is interested in folklore, history, and has a passion for football.

  Dedicated to: Kerry, Brendan and Melissa, as always; All the very good friends we made in India during our 2006-2010 stint in Delhi; And Biddy and Cliff, my parents, who let me daydream (after the chores were done!).

  Also in the series

  Pyre of Queens

  Swayamvara

  Souls in Exile

  Prologue

  The Photographer

  Harappa, April 1947

  ‘Mister Tim! Tim-sahib! Chai? Chai?’

  The white man beneath the straw hat shook himself and looked down. He was sitting on a stone platform at the highest point of the excavations. Sweat had plastered his shirt to his back and standing up for too long was dizzying. Grit filled the air and itched its way into the corners of his eyes and the roof of his mouth. It was only April—what would the summer be like? All about him were trenches, and walkways bridging holes and walls. The shape of the buried city was slowly emerging from the earth like dinosaur bones. He’d been desperately thirsty for an hour or more, and now waved urgently at the little chai-walla, who was no more than eleven. ‘Ramesh, I’ll come down!’

  ‘No no, Tim-sahib. I climb! I climb!’ The little urchin swarmed up the rocks like one of the brown monkeys that infested the site, grinning through his white uneven teeth. ‘See, I climb!’ The boy’s English was severely limited, but improving. In seconds he was crouched beside the Englishman in the shade of the pinnacle. He peered down at the view, delighting in being so high up. ‘Like ants,’ he grinned, pointing down at all of the dark-skinned men labouring below.

  Tim Southby nodded, smiling back. ‘Just like ants,’ he agreed.

  The little boy poured a small cup of sweet spicy tea, and handed it to the Englishman, with hero worship in his eyes. Tim didn’t like the look, which he got from too many of the local people. They knew his recent past—he had fought in the war, a ‘hero’ back home and here too. He’d been a fighter-pilot, had won the DFC and bar. A veteran of the Battle of Britain, who fought for two years until an ME-109 got him in its sights and blasted his right leg off below the knee. Now he was just a photographer with a wooden leg, but everyone insisted on treating him like some kind of minor deity.

  History and photography had been his passion growing up, and when the war was over he had needed little persuasion to leave battered, miserable England behind, joining an old school chum here in the Punjab; especially after his sweetheart Annie made it clear she found his one-leggedness repulsive. She had latched on to one of his squadron-mates within weeks of dumping him, he’d learnt subsequently. When the ship sailed, he’d been on the foredeck, looking only ahead.

  Ramesh fished into a pocket and pulled out a little metal disc. ‘Money,’ he said avidly. ‘Old people money.’ He showed it to Southby, who took it thoughtfully.

  ‘Look,’ he said, showing the boy one side of the coin on which was etched the figure of a seated man in profile. ‘It’s another one showing a king.’

  ‘King?’ the boy tried out the word.

  ‘Your word is raja,’ Southby told him, and the boy nodded. Southby looked out over the digs, which extended hundreds of yards in every direction. ‘This place may be the most significant archaeological dig of the era,’ he said, more to himself than the boy, who wouldn’t understand most of the words anyway. ‘Hammond believes these Indus Valley sites may predate Egypt or Sumeria. This may be the place where man first evolved civilization. There are drains and water-courses, walls, streets … it is magnificent. All the stone blocks are regular, precisely placed and fitted. And there is no obvious royal or religious ostentation either! The society here must have been far more egalitarian than later cultures. Before the warlords and priests got their grip on the people,’ he added vehemently, thinking of generals and priests he’d known in the war, men who thought only in terms of ‘acceptable attrition’ and ‘sacrifice for the greater good’. ‘This place must have been a relative paradise, an island of culture in a sea of primitive barbarism.’

  ‘Baa-baa …’ Ramesh echoed, giggling at the last word.

  ‘Barbarism,’ Southby grinned. ‘Actually the word does come from ‘baa-baa’—the noise the Romans heard when the Germanic tribes talked.’ He grunted. ‘Damned Germans, still causing trouble.’ He drank his tea, and patted the boy on the shoulder. A movement below caught his eye. ‘Hey, who’s your friend?’

  ‘Friend?’ Ramesh puzzled over the word as he peered into the shadows. ‘Oh, it’s Kamila! Kamila!’ He waved a hand, and a plump girl his age slunk shyly from behind a rock and stared.

  ‘Hello!’ Southby called.

  The girl shrank back. Ramesh called to her in his rapid-fire Punjabi, and she answered tentatively. ‘Kamila is scared,’ Ramesh reported.

  ‘I won’t bite,’ Southby chuckled.

  ‘Bite!’ Ramesh chortled, snapping his teeth. ‘Bite-bite-bite!’ He called something teasing to the girl in his own tongue, and she took fright and fled. ‘Heh-heh. I say to her: “Sahib will bite you!”’

  ‘For shame! She’ll be scared of me for the rest of her life, now.’

  Ramesh grinned mischievously. Then from below, an impatient voice shouted in Punjabi, and the boy looked down, shouting something back. He quickly reclaimed the empty cup, and with a friendly wave he was gone, clambering back down the pile of ordered stones.

  Ramesh was replaced by the foreman Anand Gupta, a plump fellow who always smelt like he needed a bath. He had an immaculate moustache though. ‘Good evenin
g, Southby-sahib,’ he greeted the Englishman. ‘Is it a good evening for photographs? Is the light good today?’ he asked politely, having little knowledge of the arcane arts of photography.

  Southby shook his head. ‘The air is very hazy today, Anand. Not good for photography, only for pretty sunsets. There is a lot of smoke coming from the cities. More even than during the winter.’ He thought about that. ‘Is there trouble, Anand?’

  Anand Gupta frowned. ‘These days there is always trouble in the city, Southby-sahib. Ever since Jinnah won the right for this new “Pakistan”, this Muslim state. My people are worried. They say Muslims are killing Sikhs and Hindus here in Western Punjab. And Sikhs and Hindus are killing Muslims in Hindustan. It is not good.’

  ‘It is not good,’ Southby agreed, staring into the hazy distance. The closest town was just a village, Harappa. Most of the workers came from there, but they’d brought in others when the need for labour had increased. It was a mixed crew now, from all over the region. Most were Muslims, some were Hindu. There had been trouble between them, fuelled by the rumours. Southby didn’t get too involved. He was just the camera-jockey. The workers were Gupta and Hammond’s problem.

  ‘They say the Muslim National Guard are going from village to village,’ Gupta added. ‘The Guard have been declared illegal, but the army does nothing. You Britishers do nothing,’ he added sullenly.

  Southby could only nod apologetically. ‘Welcome to independence. You have to solve your own problems when you’re independent.’

  ‘You British caused most of those problems!’ Gupta snapped back, then bit his tongue. ‘I am sorry, Southby-sahib. I know it is not your fault personally. I am talking from worry only.’ He hung his head. ‘I am talking too much.’

  Southby inclined his head sympathetically. Gupta wasn’t a bad stick, and he must be worried for his family and himself, a Hindu stuck here in what would be Pakistani territory. ‘We have guarantees from men who will be in the new administration in Islamabad,’ he reminded the foreman. ‘You and your people will be safe here.’

  Gupta looked at him with troubled eyes. ‘I am thinking you are very naive, Southby-sahib.’

  Southby woke with a gun viciously jammed into his cheek. The man wielding it looked like an Afghani tribesman, but he wore a deep green overcoat and the crescent badge of the outlawed Muslim National Guard. His lean scarred face was buried in a spade-like beard, and his eyes were sunken pits. His skin was blotched and pitted all over his hands and face, as if he’s been scalded by boiling water as a child.

  ‘Get up, English,’ the man snarled. He shoved with the gun muzzle. Behind him, two smaller men in the same uniform levelled rifles.

  Southby slowly lifted his hands. He found himself surprisingly calm. His fear of death had been burned away in the skies above England, exorcised by the sound of shredding fuselage and the pumping guns of the Messerschmitt. ‘What is going on here?’ he asked levelly.

  ‘You are leaving, English,’ the big man told him. ‘This is not your land any more. Get dressed, gather your belongings.’

  ‘Where’s Hammond?’ Southby demanded. One of the men behind his captor snarled and snapped something. The scarred man barked back, and the other man subsided.

  ‘Mister Hammond is being packed away also. Now get up, Mister Southby, before I ask my friends here to help you pack.’

  The two riflemen grinned wolfishly at him, stroking their weapons.

  Southby packed quickly, under the gun of the scarred spokesman. ‘Who are you?’ he asked the man, not really expecting a reply.

  ‘My name is Mehtan Ali,’ the man replied. ‘I am a commander of the Guard.’ He was leafing through the photographs with surprising interest. ‘These are fascinating, are they not?’ He examined a shot Southby had taken of Mohenjo-Daro to the south, for comparison purposes to this site. ‘These sites are all from the same period?’

  ‘We think so,’ Southby responded coolly, jamming clothes into a suitcase. ‘Are you a scholar, Mehtan Ali?’

  ‘I have been many things,’ Mehtan replied enigmatically. ‘What are you Britishers calling these places?’

  ‘Harappan, named for this site,’ Southby replied. ‘Look, we have permits and—’

  ‘Your permits mean nothing, Mister Southby. I am moving you for your own protection.’ Mehtan Ali opened a drawer before Southby could reach it, and removed Southby’s revolver. ‘I do not think you will be needing this,’ he said mildly, thrusting the gun into his own belt. ‘My soldiers would take it amiss if they saw it.’

  ‘What about the workers here?’ Southby asked, trying to keep the anxiety from his voice.

  Mehtan Ali scowled, and the thin veneer of civility vanished. ‘This is Pakistan now, Mister Southby. An Islamic State.’

  ‘Not until June.’

  ‘It has always been Islamic, Mister Southby. Even before the Ghori crushed that pig Prithviraj Chauhan, this region bowed to Allah. But it needs to be purified anew.’ He looked at Southby’s closed suitcase, and the bags containing the photographic gear. ‘Is that all you wish to take? Then come.’

  Southby hefted his gear, and walked outside. Dawn had not yet broken. There were green-clad irregulars everywhere, fierce-looking men with rifles and vicious knives. He saw Gupta among a huddled group of workmen, and realized with a chill that they were all Hindu. The Muslim workers walked freely among the fighting men, though they too looked frightened.

  Southby turned back to Mehtan Ali. ‘Now, see here—’ he began.

  Mehtan casually grabbed his throat in a vice-like grip, choking his words. ‘You will be silent, Mister Southby.’ He released his grip, leaving Southby doubled over, fighting for breath. His neck muscles throbbed.

  Mehtan gestured with his head, and his men took Southby’s cases and loaded them on to a jeep. Southby found himself led to a vantage overlooking the dig. Hammond was already there, his cheek bleeding and his eye puffing up. ‘Southby! Thank God! Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m—’

  The words he was about to speak were erased by a sudden volley of fire. He spun, looking back to where the huddle of Hindu workmen had been reduced to a bloody tangle of bodies. Riflemen poked through the fallen, bayoneting those that still breathed, laughing and calling to each other. He turned to Mehtan Ali. ‘By all that’s decent, man, what are you doing? That’s barbaric!’

  The Muslim captain’s face held little discernable expression in the half-light. He ignored Southby’s tirade completely. ‘Harappa. Mohenjo-Daro. I have always been drawn to these places. We knew they were there, long before you British “discovered” them. Sometimes I feel that they call to me …’

  ‘The workers … your men have—’ Hammond stared wide-eyed.

  Mehtan Ali’s eyes gazed into the distance, unfocused. ‘This was the cradle of civilization!’ he said softly. ‘A place of legend! This is the place from which all India sprung! This was a great Bronze Age civilization!’ He turned to them slowly, his voice reverent. ‘Imagine that.’

  Hammond looked fearfully at Southby. Do not provoke him, Southby tried to convey with his eyes. The man is dangerously insane. Southby looked away, and saw something that sucked away his breath, making him choke.

  There were two corpses hanging from a makeshift gallows of tent-poles. Two tiny figures: Ramesh and his little shadow, Kamila. Both had been hung by the neck, then spitted through the belly with spears. They swung slowly in the dawn-breeze. Their eyes were open, their mouths frozen in soundless screams.

  Mehtan Ali followed his gaze. ‘Ah, yes.’ He said with immense satisfaction. ‘It is a momentous day. A day of great victories.’

  Part One

  In Search of Lanka

  A Secret Wedding, and After

  Pushkar, Rajasthan, March 2011

  Amanjit Singh Bajaj rode on a white horse, wearing a heavy sherwani of white. He wore a red turban and a gold-hilted scimitar. About him, a small group of family and friends danced and sang with the band, a loose gaggle of trump
eters, cymbal-bangers, drummers and fire-eaters, as they clamoured through the streets of Pushkar. Before them was the final climb to the Brahma temple, where his beloved awaited him. A Sikh Giani and a Hindu Pandit would be there also. This ceremony was going to be a weird blend of Sikh and Hindu traditions, one to make the traditionalists wince. Not that he cared. He grinned down at his mother, clad in widow’s garb and looking torn between tears and happiness. He smirked at his brother Bishin, who was dancing with an impossibly lovely local girl in a pale yellow sari. He tossed money to the musicians to keep them playing hard. He laughed so hard at the sheer joy of it all that he could almost ignore the strangeness of it all.

  For this wasn’t Pushkar at all. Not the real Pushkar, anyway. This was a secret Pushkar, a Pushkar that few could find. But he was one of those few. So was his soul-brother, Vikram Khandavani, son of his mother’s dead husband. Vikram was here too, flanking the procession. It was he that had met the families in real Pushkar, and then brought them here to this other place, so they could see Amanjit marry his beloved Deepika. Apparently a few in his family had grumbled about this odd site and mixed ceremony, but that was their problem, not his.

  In this hidden Pushkar, the town was still medieval, with no electricity, no cars, and almost all of the buildings of the real world replaced by older and more primitive buildings. There were horses on the streets and far fewer people. If you looked closely, you could see that the moon was a silver chariot driven by a god, not a lump of inert rock orbiting the Earth. This place was part of legend, one of those few places in the world where belief in legend had generated an alternate place, right round the corner from reality. It was deceptively similar to the normal world they dwelt in, but it was not the same.

  So far, his family seemed not to have noticed the lack of power lines or vehicles in the streets and the out-of-time locals. Maybe they thought everyone was in costume for the wedding? They’d pointed laughingly at the armoured swordsmen on the streets keeping an eye out for demons. He wasn’t sure if it were something Vikram had done, but everyone seemed to be pointedly ignoring the subtle strangeness, and just partying. Very Punjabi, he thought with a smile.