Reaching out, Aram grasped the handle of the plain, utilitarian door and pushed it inwards. He had not been sure what he was expecting, but whatever it was, this was not it. The building was a bunkhouse on a grand scale. Well-lit by those high windows, the great shed contained at an estimate sixty or seventy beds in neat rows. They were bare and plain, and without sheets, but they were clearly beds. At one end a rudimentary washroom had been constructed, the stone sinks empty.
Frowning himself now, Aram climbed the stairs and discovered half as many beds again on the second level.
‘Accommodation for a hundred people,’ Aram murmured quietly as he descended once more. ‘Apparently recently constructed and unused. However many monks there were here, it seems unlikely there were a hundred.’
‘Three hundred,’ corrected Mani. ‘Those other two buildings are identical to this from the outside. Let’s check them out, but I’ll be surprised if they’re not exactly the same inside.’
They did so, and proved Mani’s guess correct. Three huge bunkhouses, each capable of housing a hundred people, all, they estimated, constructed within this past year.
‘Why did they feel the need to house three hundred guests?’ Bajaan whispered nervously.
‘Perhaps they had visitors from other monasteries. From the length of the marker line, there must be more than a dozen monasteries across the land. Perhaps twice that.’
‘Whoever they were expecting never turned up,’ Parmesh pointed out.
‘Come on.’
Aram led them on a quick tour of the external structures. During almost an hour’s exhaustive search, they found tool sheds, storage sheds, barns, granaries, workshops, a bath house, laundry house, structures given over to the production of wool, cheese, milk, honey and much, much more. But most interesting were the thing they were not expecting, and the thing they didn’t find.
They did not find a living human, nor any sign of the passing of one, be it a rotting carcass or cremated remains. Unless the monks were to be found in the main complex, then they had not died here, but had left the place. And if that was the case, why had they left their crops unharvested? Even in a rush, the refugees had gathered all the food they could before they left.
And the thing they found that they had not expected: two more sets of three bunk houses in other places around the complex. Housing for a thousand, or near enough.
‘This place is setting my nerves truly on edge,’ Mani said as they completed a circuit and reached the main entrance once more.
‘I think we all feel the same,’ Aram replied. ‘But for all the oddness of this place, there is one thing I have noted here that is different to everywhere since we passed the marker.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It does not feel threatening.’
The others nodded, even Parmesh. With this strange sense of empty abandonment came a certain security after days of feeling wraiths surrounding them in the jungle. It was with a heightened sense of curiosity and jangling nerves that they entered the main complex.
It struck Aram as odd that here in the land of ghosts, the most forbidden place in the world, and in the house of dedicated monks, he was already witnessing more wealth and comfort than the Inda had known in three generations. The wall paintings were still vivid. The silver and the gold remained in place and had not been melted down two decades ago to pay harsh imperial forage parties. They moved through the monastery slowly and with eyes widening with each new discovery.
Aram had visited small monasteries in Initpur and neighbouring kingdoms during his long life. Their organisation was hardly uniform, but all the elements were there in some form or other. The temple, formed of a decorative square building, giving a side to each element and a face to each of the four gods of every circle of the heavens. The monks’ living quarters – ascetic and plain, functional and modest, with the majority of the workshops being kept outside the monastery proper. The sacred pools. The great assembly hall with its inscribed columns and room for the monks to kneel. The stepped symposium, open to the air, where the monks could engage in open and learned discourse.
These components of any Inda monastery were to be found in this place, certainly, and the four men traipsed through them in worried awe. But there were new components here too, features that they had never seen in other such places.
A library.
As they entered the large hall with its rack upon rack of cubbyholes, each designed to hold a precious scroll, Aram’s breath caught in his throat. The Inda had their own language, of course, and many could read and write it – those of sufficient rank in the social scale and those who had devoted their lives to religion, at least. And great tales from the past had been written as sagas to be passed on through the generations, as well as laws and important pronouncements. But never in his life would Aram have dreamed there had been so many things written down as to fill this place. A man could spend his life in the pursuit of naught but reading and still not work through this library.
A quick, rather nervous and reverent search revealed three things of note. The scrolls maintained here were an eclectic mixture of folk tales, legal and religious lore and varied teachings. They were written in more than one language, the large majority being in that ancient tongue decipherable only by the monks who learned it as a matter of course. And not all of the writings were present. There were quite some number of empty holes, though they showed signs of use, all of which suggested that specific scrolls had been removed, probably a few months ago when this place was abandoned.
There was also an exercise hall.
At least, that was what it seemed to be to Aram, and the two soldiers, Bajaan and Mani, confirmed his theory in part. Monks exercised, of course. A body needed to stay healthy and fit to serve the gods, after all. But it was the habit of monks to gather in the open air and practise yoga. This hall might be used for a similar practice, but Mani pointed out the various padded mats and posts with cushioned sides. Though he had trained himself in the use of both sword and spear, Mani recognised the accoutrements of a dojo – a school for the teaching of unarmed combat.
‘What?’ Aram said, his eyes widening.
‘Fighting without weapons. Or at least the forging of fist and foot into weapons,’ Mani replied.
They stared in wonder.
‘Monks do not fight,’ Parmesh said firmly.
‘Evidence suggests that these ones do,’ Aram replied. ‘An elegant solution, wouldn’t you say? It is lethal, supposedly, to bring weapons past the markers. We saw what happened to the Jade Empire patrol who did just that. And yet the monks clearly felt the need to be able to protect themselves, and so they found a way. They became trained with their own body as the weapon.’
‘Monks do not fight,’ repeated Parmesh. ‘It is one of the great laws from time immemorial. It is why no war touches a temple. All the Inda respect priests and monks because they are men of learning, of piety and of peace.’
‘Yet we do not know what the last guru told his monks,’ Aram countered. ‘The messages he bore were for their ears only, and no man has passed the markers to study the monks and their world. Perhaps the guru told these men specifically that they could fight in such a manner. Perhaps they were allowed. All I can say is that if I spent my entire life in the land of ghosts, I would want to be able to protect myself too.’
‘You will be spending your life in the land of ghosts.’
Aram threw a glare at Parmesh. Was he just being deliberately negative? They moved on.
The third surprise came in the form of a map.
Aram was immediately reminded of the faded painting on the wall of his old palace at Initpur. His map had shown all the known lands of the Inda with each kingdom and main city noted, as well as the roads, bridges, passes and chief geographical features. It had been painted by a master generations earlier, and had been one of the best of its kind. But like all the Inda’s maps, past a certain line of latitude the one at Initpur had remained blank. A white mis
t that represented the land of ghosts and the Isle of the Dead hung from the tip like a single teardrop.
Not so the map in the monastery. Aram felt his pulse quicken and his breathing become shallow as he stepped onto the map, which was constructed of twenty or more different coloured stones on the floor. In fact, it was the floor. Aram had heard that the western empire built pictures like this. Mosaics, they were called. He’d never seen one. And what a picture to be greeted with.
The lands of the Inda were all marked, just as his own had been, though in a more rudimentary, less artistic fashion. But past that line, where northern maps ended, this one began. Here, the land of ghosts was a true land. What had to be long-gone settlements were marked, though unnamed. Major roads seemed to be included as long paths of grey. The marker line was there, as were the monasteries behind them. That southern isle was the only part that remained empty and devoid of features. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the image, though, was the bridge.
If only the two great armies fighting at Jalnapur could see this map. There they fought over a marvel of engineering: a great bridge spanning the half-mile-wide torrent of the Nadu River. But there, perhaps a hundred miles south of this very monastery, another bridge was marked. And it was not in the nature of rivers to narrow as they neared the sea. Indeed it was rare for a river not to widen considerably. That bridge, then, could be a mile long. Or perhaps a series of bridges and causeways across a delta. Either way, it would represent another great feat of engineering and a viable alternative to that blood-soaked bridge surrounded by corpses at Jalnapur.
It took only moments for Aram to find Initpur and then trace their route with his feet in tiny steps across the map hall, around the great war zone, past the site of their near destruction at the hands of a scout party, across the boundary and to the monastery that had to be this one.
His eyes strayed on as he came to a halt, following another grey trail down to that bridge and to the distant mystery of the white teardrop at the far side of the room. He shook his head. No. This was far enough. The very nature of this map suggested that the monks had roamed all across the land of ghosts unharmed in order to chart its features, but the white teardrop confirmed that even they had not crossed to the Isle of the Dead. And if the monks were safe, then Aram could convince himself – though not without difficulty – that his people could also be safe. But if the monks would not go there, then neither would he.
‘The monastery is empty,’ Mani said.
Aram nodded. ‘And it feels safe. Or at least safer than anywhere we have been.’
‘Then what happened to the monks?’ demanded Parmesh.
‘I do not know. But they were not killed here, for there is no sign of fighting or death, and there are no bodies. It would appear that they made a purposeful decision to quit the monastery. They took some of their writings with them, but left everything else. I cannot say why, nor can I answer why they constructed so many guest quarters, but I do know one thing: this place could be no more fitting for us if the monks had planned it themselves.’
He felt an odd frisson of energy shiver through him at that thought and he frowned and looked at the others. Their expressions suggested that the same thought had occurred to them.
‘You don’t really believe—?’ began Mani.
‘I don’t know,’ Aram interrupted. ‘But whether this was meant to be or not, it shows that the gods are with us. We have shelter in a place that feels safe. We have abundant food and supplies, space for all our people, and it is safe from both the empires whose boots stamp upon the lands of the Inda.’
Bajaan nodded. ‘If we make better use of the space in the bunk houses, we could probably house almost half the people in them.’
‘And two hundred more in the accommodation of the monks,’ Mani added.
‘And what of the rest?’
They turned irritated looks on Parmesh and Aram waved a hand. ‘There is so much space. So many barns and workshops that could be cleared out and remade as housing. And there were stocks of timber, tiles and bricks in three or four storage sheds. We could build more. Fewer than a hundred monks built these bunkhouses with their own hands. We have many hundreds of builders, carpenters and masons, roofers and more. And of manual labour: thousands. In a week we could have trebled the accommodation here. And we have farmers to gather the crops and tend the animals. We have fishermen to work the lake. We have everyone we need to make this place viable, and this place has everything we need to survive and even thrive. I told you all from the start the gods would protect us as they did the monks.’
‘As long as they don’t throw at us whatever they did to drive the monks away,’ Parmesh grunted.
Aram refused to rise to the bait this time. ‘We will return to the people with this welcome news. The survivors of the Inda have a refuge after all.’ He turned to Parmesh. ‘And we will be of one accord with our happy news. We can no longer afford to be divided. We must work together or we shall fall apart. If you cannot be part of this, Parmesh, then you should leave.’
The dissenter shrugged. ‘I agree with you. I have reservations, yes, but I can see the logic in this, and I can certainly see no better way, so I shall sing the praises of the monastery and hope that no one asks us where the monks went.’
Again Aram glared at the man, but took a deep breath of relief and then smiled. ‘And once we are settled, we shall seek out other survivors, including those we left beyond the border, and offer them sanctuary.’
Sanctuary. In the land of ghosts. Who would have guessed?
Chapter 12
Ravi,
I am sorry. You may believe that you are no longer the brother I once knew, and there seems precious little echo of him in the man I saw when I came here, but I cling to the hope that Ravi, son of Aram, is inside there somewhere, and that you will yet regain your humanity.
When you find this, I know you will be angry. Do not take it out on those who do not deserve your ire. I pray to see you again one day, but not here, and not like this. Take care, and may all the gods – yours and mine – watch over us both.
Dev
Oddly, it was the Sizhad’s army itself that offered Dev his chance. He knew what was required just one day into his captivity, and it was all because of the rigid requirements of the ‘Faithful’.
Dev and his cavalry were kept together in a pitch-black room in the temple, where it would have been impossible to tell day from night and one hour from the next had they not been periodically removed from the stygian gloom. The great room was cold, but dry and clean. Dev had been surprised to note when he was thrust inside – the interior illuminated by the doorway for a brief moment – that the room was not equipped with rudimentary latrine facilities, even in the form of a bucket, and yet was clean and smelled only of cold stone.
The reason for that had become clear shortly thereafter. It was seemingly one of the tenets of the Sizhad’s faith that cleanliness was paramount. The Faithful had to be clean in all their undertakings. It was one of the few positive attributes Dev could see in their creed, but a useful one for him, nonetheless. Four times each day the door was opened and Dev and the other occupants of the room were brought out, marched from the temple complex and escorted to a latrine block, where they were given just enough time to empty themselves and clean up before being escorted back to captivity. Each time they were made to pause and listen to the chanting and the music of religious ceremony. It seemed the four visits were carefully chosen to coincide with the Faithful’s rigid timetable of worship: a song of thanks for the rising of the sun, a song of glory for the sun’s apex, a song of mourning for its setting, and finally a dirge at midnight for the sun’s absence. At the beginning of each ritual, the sons of the Sizhad were required to be clean, and it seemed the same principle was applied to each of the prisoners, given the timing of the visits.
Latrine time was not the only reprieve from the gloom. Every few hours the door was opened again when a man was taken from the room or
brought back. Thus is was that Dev endured his confinement without too much discomfort, though he felt for each of the men taken away, whether they were brought back or not. Each time, he understood, the soldier was taken before the Sizhad and given the chance to recant his faith in the old gods and convert to the worship of the sun. Some did, for men will give up anything, even gods, when faced with certain fates. Those who refused were blinded, as the captain had been, and released back into the dark cell, presumably to remind Dev of the decision he himself would have to make. Or perhaps they were being kept for something else. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine the latter purpose being anything good.
It was now, by Dev’s reckoning, his third week at the mountain fortress, and most of his men were sightless or had deserted to the enemy. The Sizhad was keeping Dev for last, and he would soon face that dreadful choice, but he was prepared now and planned to avoid such a fate. Three weeks of slow, painstaking planning, but he was finally ready, or at least as far as he was able to plan. Some things would always require luck and adaptability, even for a man with a brain like Dev’s.
He could hear the soldiers coming in the distance, and in the pitch darkness of the room he began to strip off his old clothes to the waist and don the new ones.
They had been laboriously collected and made, and he felt sure they were pitiful when seen in the light, but they represented his only chance. It had been slow and dangerous work, but on almost all of those trips to the latrines he had seized the opportunity to tear a strip from the edge of the dirty, wet white towel that hung on a rail by the water trough. Each time he had tucked the strip into his tunic and taken it back to the cell. It had taken him four hours to prise a great splinter from one of the benches in the room, and he had made his fingers bleed over and over again digging a small hole in one end. By the end of the second day he had a rudimentary needle that he spent many further hours narrowing and sharpening, and separating a single thread from his tunic was easy enough. He began to sew in the dark, praying he was doing it right.
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