Emergence (The Infernal Guard Book 1)

by SGD Singh

  Ursala, Kelakha, and Aquila turned to their groups.

  Kelakha stood in front of Nidhan, looking uncomfortable. Studying his shoes, he said, “Okay, we're… let's start outside. Um… follow me.” He turned and moved swiftly in his fluid gait through the garden.

  Thunder sounded in the distance, and Asha hoped it wouldn't start raining on them again as they followed him past rows of papaya trees to the fort wall. A wide path ran along the base, and Kelakha led them along it. He wouldn't make eye contact with anyone, and Asha thought he looked pretty tortured.

  It was about two miles, he told them, all the way around the perimeter of the fort wall, and everyone was expected to run it once a day. He pointed out orchards for pretty much every fruit tree, as well as groves for climbing pepper vines and cinnamon trees. Rounding a corner, they came to a grassy, circular arena with stone benches and what looked like climbing rocks and stacked logs. Kelakha told them it was the outside sparring arena. Lexi grinned at Asha and mouthed Wow!

  About fifteen feet past the arena, a bunch of sugarcane was stuck in the ground at intervals. Kelakha explained it was for chakram throwing. Just beside it, they came to a stone wall with a steel door. The entrance back into the fort. They passed through the door and found themselves on the other side of the veranda, looking at the inside of the elephant door and the kitchen garden near the stairs. A door on the opposite side took them back outside. Rain began pouring down again, and lightning lit up the cloudy evening. Thunder cracked so loud it made everyone except Kelakha jump. He said something they couldn't hear over the rain and pointed them back inside. “So,” he said again, “if you want to run around more than once, just keep going through here. That's pretty much it for outside… okay, any questions?” he looked like he hoped very much that there were no questions, but Nidhan raised his hand.

  “I am still wondering about our families.”

  Kelakha smiled and relaxed. “Oh, no worries, man. Afzal takes care of that. Any families that don't know about The Guard, which is rare, he kind of talks to them. It's a form of hypnotism that Illusionists do. You'll see them on the weekends. During your training year anyway.”

  Nidhan was about to say something else, but Asha elbowed him in the ribs.

  Kelakha waited a few seconds, and when no one else asked anything, he said, “Okay, um… you've been up there. That's the suites. The roof is for Illusionist classes, so you'll see that if you need to. We'll go here next.”

  In the corner of the square was a door that blended seamlessly with the stone wall. Kelakha held his ring up to a steel carving on it, and it clicked open. “So yeah, your room keys also let you open this door.” He held the door open for them and they filed down a steep, dark, winding staircase.

  Just when Asha was wondering why someone didn't put in an elevator, they came out into a wide hallway. The floors, walls, and arched ceilings were all made of soft yellow sandstone. The only decorations were lights. Dozens of silver Moroccan lamps hung from the arched ceiling, and lighted stained-glass wall panels, depicting different animals native to India, lined the walls at about ten-foot intervals.

  Asha was studying a particularly beautiful one of a peacock, when Lexi grabbed her arm. “Training room!” she hissed. She was so excited, she actually jumped, trying to see farther through the doorway.

  “So this is the, um, a training room, obviously,” Kelakha cleared his throat. “It's for our own practice, not for classes with the Masters.” They entered the room about the size of two tennis courts and Lexi squeezed Asha's arm.

  “Oh my God, Asha!” she whispered. “This place has everything!”

  Asha looked pointedly at her arm until Lexi let go, grinning. There were gymnastic mats laid out on one side of the floor, gym equipment along one mirrored wall, and a number of beat up dummies stood around at intervals. The entire far wall was covered with weapons and everyone moved toward it. Kelakha turned toward the door before anyone could touch anything. “We have a lot more to see before lunch, so…”

  Everyone turned to him, Lexi and one of the Asian boys wore matching looks of disappointment.

  “Oh yeah. Whoever gets here first picks the music. In the past there's been…”

  His voice trailed off into the hallway.

  There were three more rooms, numbered in silver Punjabi numerals, very like English. Each large and circular, with stone benches arranged stadium-style around two-thirds of the wall space. At the center of the room sat an empty circular stage about fifty feet across. Weapons covered the wall behind each stage, and carved wooden doors, which Kelakha told them ‘led down to Healing’ At the end of the hallway, the group wound its way down a wider, better-lit staircase that was twice as long as the first.

  “This is the Healing section of the facility,” Kelakha said, still sounding tortured. He pointed left. “Through there is the recovery wing, or hospital. Pretty self-explanatory. I don't think we need to look inside.” He led them right, along a Persian-carpeted hallway to wooden double doors, on which carved fruits and vegetables shone in warm lamplight.

  At first, the smell of mixed herbs was overpowering. Drying plants hung from the ceiling, and a tall man in his thirties hunched over a marble bowl on a massive carved sandalwood table. He was singing softly to himself.

  “Dad?” Kelakha said. “Uma said to show the new Trainees around…”

  The man looked up and smiled at them, coming around the table and wiping his hands on his apron.

  “Welcome!” he said.

  Catching sight of Asha, he held his hand out to her. “You must be Asha,” he said, grasping her hand for a long second, and Asha felt that same calmness as when Duardo had touched her. He moved down the line, shaking everyone's hand in turn. “And your brother, Nidhan? Nice to meet you, Lexi. Himat, good to see you again. And Karan, how's the elbow?” He turned his attention to the two Asian boys. “You must be Wei Feng. It's an honor to meet your father's son. And Li Tsia, I've heard many great things about you.” Li Tsia bowed his head, and tattoos peeked out of his wide collar. “When did you get in from Hong Kong?”

  “Sir, three weeks ago,” said Wei Feng with a slight bow, blue-streaked hair falling over his forehead.

  “Please, call me Senya.” Kelakha's father had a warm smile. “And yes, it means Warrior. My parents didn't expect me to be a Healer.” He laughed, turning to Asha with a twinkle in his eye, but she could only stare back blankly at him.

  Senya folded his hands. “Oh dear. I forgot your grandfather raised you Innocent. Well, the next few weeks should be very interesting for you.” He patted her on the shoulder.

  Asha remembered BapuJi's words. It was your parents' wishes that you be raised in… a completely protected environment. Asha realized that in that moment, he had almost said Innocent.

  “Shukla. What does the schedule say for Healing?” Senya said with mock sternness.

  Kelakha looked embarrassed as he checked the paper. “Twenty-three hundred hours, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”

  “Then I'll see you all later today,” Senya said, walking them to the door.

  Lexi told Asha, “I really need to learn military time. Is that, like, nine? Or…”

  “It's eleven,” Himat sneered, leaning to Karan. “Something they forgot to teach at homeschool.”

  “Shut up, dude!” Karan hissed, pulling Himat down the hall before Lexi could reply.

  Lexi gritted her teeth. “He's not careful, someone's gonna smash those sunglasses right into his pretty face.”

  Once everyone was gathered back in the hallway, Kelakha said, “There's one more level.”

  Without waiting for them, he moved in his fluid gait to the opposite end of the hallway and stopped in front of a metal mural depicting, in intricate detail, ancient Asian weapons in gold, bronze, copper, and silver. Asha glanced at Lexi and saw that she actually had tears in her eyes.

  “Oh my God, Asha! I mean…” she touched her heart and sighed. Asha tried not to laugh as she patted her on th
e shoulder, and she and Nidhan both rolled their eyes.

  “This door,” Kelakha touched his ring to the mural, “goes down to Tvastar training. And laundry.”

  The first thing that hit Asha was the intense heat. The sound of metal scraping against metal echoed through the stone foyer from a staircase to the left. Lexi and Li Tsia both started eagerly toward it, but Kelakha, moving with inhuman speed, blocked their path. “We won't disturb them.”

  It was the first time Kelakha had made eye contact with anyone and the intensity in his expression stopped them in their tracks.

  Motioning with a sweeping gesture to the stairs on the right, he said, “The laundry room is this way.”

  Lexi and Asha looked at each other and mouthed laundry?

  Kelakha said, “Each of us has laundry duty, so every twenty days you'll come down here.” He consulted the schedule. “Today… Monday… okay it's not any of us. They'll post it in the rooms.” He shook his head and mumbled, “Never mind.”

  They entered another brightly-lit room. About twenty washing machines lined one wall and clothes lines criss-crossed it. The heat was intense, and Asha guessed that was what dried the clothes. There were two enormous baskets the size of small Dumpsters under holes in the ceiling, long tables that Asha assumed were for folding and sorting. Books lined a shelf above the tables, and a large, comfortable-looking chair filled the other wall. Against the far wall, wooden drawers revolved slowly upward and into a hole in the ceiling.

  “So after washing and folding the clothes,” Kelakha explained, “you put them in these boxes, which carry them up to the suite level, and deposit them into the sorting room. Then you sort them by name and put them on the shelf next to their corresponding doors. The whole process takes about four hours, give or take, depending how fast you fold.”

  Nidhan had a horrified look on his face, and Asha suspected she knew why BapuJi had always made her do their laundry. “Don't look so worried,” she whispered to him. “It's not a big deal.” Nidhan didn't look convinced.

  Lexi raised a hand, “So there's Healing, Illusions—I'm assuming that includes smells—and Uma said something about active duty… ?”

  “Jodha, yeah,” Kelakha said. “There are five types of Talents. Healers, Illusionists, Tvastars—those are weapons makers, active duty Jodha, and Seers.”

  “And we start manifesting Talents after our seventeenth birthdays?” Nidhan asked. “If we're going to?”

  “You can only have one Talent.” Kelakha was looking tortured again.

  “There's books in our rooms,” Karan stepped in to say. “They explain everything.”

  A large military time clock on the wall chimed, and the lights flickered off and on.

  Kelakha looked relieved. “Twenty-one hundred hours. That means lunch.”

  He was through the door without bothering to wait for them.

  Chapter 10

  “I want to be there for you, Asha, you know that, right?” said Nidhan. “But… if this is the kind of food you expect me to eat on a daily basis, you might as well just kill me now.” He poked his fork at his food. “I mean, what is this?”

  “It's called an artichoke,” Lexi told him. “It's good for you.”

  “Good for you how? I mean the choke part I get—”

  Asha jumped up. “Let me see what else you might like, okay? I'll be right back.”

  They were running out of time to eat. She found some vegetable rice and piled it onto a plate. If nothing else, she hoped Nidhan could fill up on sweet turmeric milk and nuts until the next meal.

  Walking past the other booths, Asha noticed the five kids from Hong Kong were also looking pretty glum as they picked at their food.

  Two exotic-looking Indian girls looked up at her as she passed them. “Hi,” Asha said, smiling, but they just glared and went back to their meals. Ooh-kay.

  Asha glanced around, trying not to be too obvious. Aquila wasn't there.

  “… and it's really not that bad when you get used to the taste,” Lexi was telling Nidhan when she got back. He sniffed at a glass of something green.

  “Wheat grass, Asha. Tell him. Liquid sunshine!”

  He took a tiny sip and gagged. “Liquid something, that's for sure.”

  Asha gave him the rice and he ate it in half a minute, then finished another glass of turmeric milk just as Uma entered the mess hall. “Okay, listen up!” she called. “For the next hour, you will have a training evaluation. Training rooms one, two, and three,” she pointed to each group in turn. “So move it, people. That means now!”

  Everyone made their way to the sandstone door at the corner of the veranda and back down the dark, narrow stairs. Asha and her group were soon all sitting on the stone benches of Training Room One.

  No one spoke as they waited. Five minutes later, the carved wooden door in the weapons wall opened, and a man walked slowly to the center of the circle. He stood, looking at them, and they looked back at him. He was about six foot three and had the widest shoulders Asha had seen on anyone except maybe Dwight Howard. He had long, straight hair, which he wore loose like a Native American. One of his muscled forearms had three long scars across it.

  “My name is Garud,” he said, his voice a deep baritone. “How many of you are already seventeen?”

  Wei Feng and Li Tsai raised their hands. He pointed for them to come down to the front and right of him.

  “And how many of you were raised Innocent?”

  Asha, Lexi, and Nidhan looked at each other and raised their hands. He pointed them to the left and then turned his attention to Karan and Himat.

  “Karan Rai and Himat Pradhan?”

  They stood and bowed slightly, and Garud pointed for them to sit down in front of him.

  Sitting on the edge of a bench, he asked, “Have you started manifesting any Talents yet?”

  Asha thought Himat hesitated, adjusting his sunglasses, but he said, “No sir, Garud.”

  Karan shook his head and mumbled, “No, sir.”

  “Well, you're not seventeen yet, so no need to worry.” He stood and faced the class. “Since today is your first day, we'll start off with some friendly sparring so I can get an idea of your skill level. In general, the first part of your day will be dedicated to practice, and the later part to sparring. Until we move on in about, oh, three months.”

  He walked to the weapons wall and, to Asha's surprise, ignored the more exotic weapons and chose two soti.

  He threw one of the sticks to Feng who caught it smoothly, and Garud motioned him forward into the training circle. Asha thought she heard him say, “Only true forms.”

  Wei Feng nodded, entering the circle, and they began moving around each other. Wei Feng had a fluid grace about him and blocked most of Garud's strikes easily at first, but Garud increased the speed of his attack, his hair shining like silk in the lamplight as he spun and jumped. Finally, with a twist of Garud's powerful arm, Wei Feng's soti flew across the floor, and an instant later, he lay on his back, Garud's bamboo stick gently touching his throat.

  “For those of you who want to make combat duty, speed is essential. You cannot hesitate. A split-second often means the difference between life and death.” He paced the room as Wei Feng bowed and went back to his seat. “In the next few weeks, we will focus on building your strength and speed. Reflexes. Flexibility and endurance.”

  He smiled. “All right, each of you, grab a stick!”

  They all moved to the weapons rack, and Garud paired them up randomly. Lexi was paired with Himat, and Asha cringed. Nidhan was paired with Li Tsia, who happened to be the only other Trainee Nidhan's size. “Stay within your circles, please,” Garud told them. “A friendly spar, people. This isn't a test.” Asha looked at the floor and noticed three circles carved in the stone.

  Asha sparred with Karan, who was too generous until she hit him on the head. “What's the matter, Rai? First time you ever sparred with a girl?”

  He rubbed his head, laughing through his crooked teeth. �
�Okay, Sandhu, you asked for it.”

  After that, Asha didn't notice anything else. For the next forty minutes, she focused on not getting hit on the head herself.

  Finally, Garud said, “Okay, good job everyone.” They returned the soti and sat back down.

  He grinned. “I'm glad to see our Innocents learned something useful after all.” Garud looked at Asha and Nidhan and Lexi, who bowed her head.

  “That's all for today,” he said. “I will see you here again tomorrow at oh three hundred hours. Don't forget to finish your drinks before you go,” he added before disappearing the way he'd come.

  Seven tall glasses stood on a table next to the door, and they each took one. It tasted like ginger rose milk with honey and saffron. Nidhan drank his in huge gulps, giving Asha a thumbs up.

  They walked as a group down the hallway. Karan proudly showed Nidhan the bump on his head. Himat sped up and began talking animatedly with Ursala and Ibha as the other groups poured out of Rooms Two and Three.

  Before Asha's brain had time to register what was happening, Lexi was past her, moving fast on her long legs. The crowd seemed to part as she made a beeline for Himat and, without any hesitation, smashed her fist into his face, knocking him out cold.

  Nidhan bolted down the hall toward her, Asha right behind him.

  Himat lay on the stone floor, his sunglasses broken on the floor beside him. Asha knelt next to him as Ursala and Ibha stared open-mouthed from Lexi to Himat and back. Everyone crowded around them.

  “Lexi,” Asha shouted, “what the hell! I think you broke his nose…”

  Asha couldn't remember Lexi ever looking more furious.

  Asha shook Himat's arm gently. After a moment, he opened his eyes.

  And the crowd took a collective step back, gasping.

  Himat looked down at his hands, but it was too late. Everyone had seen his bright, almost florescent-orange-red eyes, with large pupils and almost no whites. Asha quickly handed him his sunglasses, but they were cracked, and Himat put them in his pocket with shaking hands.