Tantrics Of Old

by Bhattacharya, Krishnarjun

  The Gunsmith awakened Adri early, barely an hour after Maya had gone to sleep. Adri sat up, his mind in a whirl. There were a lot of things to be done today, and he quickly summed up the events so far. The first thing he remembered was the conversation with Maya in the dead of the night; an attempted salve to his conscience. It didn’t really make much sense to him now. He moved his shoulder. Better. He washed up, brushed, and then made his way down to the living room, where Smith was making tea.

  ‘This is good. Thanks,’ he said, sipping.

  ‘Tea isn’t all I made you,’ Smith grinned. He picked up something from a table next to him and walking over to Adri, handed it to him—a pair of dual shoulder holsters from which the handles of something jet-black peeked out. Adri withdrew one. It was a large revolver, a hand cannon; supremely made, a perfect mix of matte and shine. The huge barrel gleamed black, while the handle remained dark. Inscriptions from the handle crept their way up the body, ending halfway up the barrel. Both the hammer and the trigger were beauteously curved and looked persevering. A dark red glow emanated from within; gentle, almost unseen. It had the look and feel of a panther ready to spring. A majestic weapon.

  ‘This is . . . incredible,’ Adri whispered, gazing at the weapon in awe.

  ‘Glad you like it,’ Smith was still grinning as he looked on proudly.

  ‘You made this in one night?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. I worked on the pair for over a couple of months. These damned things need a lot of testing. Didn’t want any to go kaput or blow up in your hand.’

  ‘You were making them for me?’

  ‘One for you and the other for Victor. But you can have both now, you’ll need them.’

  ‘You were trying to resolve our altercations.’

  ‘Hmm. Know your gun. .50 calibre. Powerful bullets, they’ll hold a lot more ingredients. You can maximise damage, deal out more in less.’

  Adri turned his attention back to the gun. ‘Five chambers, that’s excellent. That’s ten shots without reloading if I use both the guns.’

  ‘Yes. It shouldn’t need any servicing for a year or two. The magical artefact is a red alagar; extremely dominant yet doesn’t give out too much light. I’ll give you empty cartridges for these.’

  ‘I’ll need a lot of cartridges.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  The sudden sound of a loud yawn had both of them turning around and looking at the doorway where a sleepy Gray stood scratching his white hair.

  ‘Morning, people,’ he said wearily. ‘I need coffee.’

  Adri turned to the Gunsmith. ‘I need yet another favour. I need you to give him a gun. Something he can use easily.’

  Gray froze. ‘Seriously?’ he asked, his sleep gone.

  ‘I’ll have something for him,’ Smith said, thoughtful.

  ‘Holy yeah!’ Gray exclaimed, grinning wide in excitement. ‘Why the change of heart, Adri?’

  Adri said nothing. He had thought about this. A very simple action had sparked off this decision—it was when Gray had picked up the pipe during the attack of the Dynes. Simple self-defence. If Gray wanted to help, then he should be able to. The Old City refused to forgive mistakes.

  Smith looked at Gray. ‘You ever handled a real firearm?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Gray said blankly.

  Smith walked over and opened a door beneath the staircase, a door that Gray didn’t know existed. Adri knew where it led. He had been to the Gunsmith’s workshop many times in the past. Devices and instruments. Canisters and magical containers. Tools and apparatuses. A place the Gunsmith considered his own, something that couldn’t be defiled with foreign presence. Adri had learned this at an older age and hadn’t gone down there since. Smith hadn’t invited him to.

  Adri poured Gray some tea.

  ‘You didn’t answer me,’ Gray asked him, constantly shifting his glance between Adri and the workshop door.

  ‘Firing a gun is easy,’ Adri said. ‘Aim and pull the trigger, that’s all. If you can help protect yourself and your sister while we’re out there, it’s a bonus.’

  Gray nodded. ‘I can help.’

  ‘Where’s Maya?’ Adri asked after a moment. ‘We don’t have too much time. We’ve got to leave soon.’

  ‘She’s asleep like a log. Doesn’t look like she’ll be up unless shaken awake.’

  ‘We’ll need to.’

  The Gunsmith emerged, and shut the door behind him. Cradled in his hands was a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun, roughly the size of Gray’s entire arm. The weapon looked old, worn out—there were no inscriptions or intricate embellishments of any kind on its surface, and it looked unimpressive. Adri, however, stared at it, and then at the Gunsmith.

  ‘You’re not giving him this,’ he said.

  ‘It’s easy enough to use, and he doesn’t have to be a good shot. I would say yes,’ Smith replied, shrugging.

  Gray had been looking at the weapon with a streak of disappointment, but was immediately curious after Adri’s reaction to it. ‘Why? Why?’ he asked.

  Adri ignored him. ‘This is too . . . treacherous.’

  ‘You need such kind of power against your enemies. This whole business isn’t exactly small, Adri. It doesn’t seem to me that this is about your little problem, or about your father alone. I think the right pieces are being removed from the board.’

  ‘I have suspected a conspiracy from the beginning.’

  ‘And if it is, you will need backup.’ Smith turned to Gray. ‘This is an ancient weapon, handed down to a few. Its immense power is carefully hidden within its innocuous appearances.’ He handed the weapon to Gray, who was surprised at its weight. ‘The Sadhu’s Shotgun,’ Smith said.

  ‘What’s the history of this weapon?’ Gray asked, fascinated.

  ‘Blood. Lots of it,’ Smith said. He proceeded to familiarise Gray with the basic operations of the gun; using both triggers and the tricky reload among them. Adri looked darkly at the weapon, and then looked away. Smith knew what he was doing. Gray would be okay with the weapon; if Gray ignored it, it would, in all probability, stay just that—a magical shotgun; and with the right kind of ammunition created for it, would be a decent weapon to have by his side. Which reminded him, he needed to make bullets. Leaving Gray to Smith, he went up to his room to get his bullet alchemy case, and on the way, caught sight of Maya on her bed, still fast asleep.

  When they finally did leave Smith’s house, it was high noon. The sun was beaming down on the Old City with its usual merciless temperament. It hit them right as they left the house. They turned around to bid the Gunsmith farewell.

  ‘Tread well,’ Smith said. ‘Adri, I will start for your house under the hour.’

  Adri nodded. ‘Do let me know if you find something.’

  After Smith shut his door, they started off, and Adri soon realised it wasn’t going to be easy, this trip in the sun. It irritated him, he sweated easily. He looked at the siblings and was surprised to see them hardly affected; Gray was wearing sunglasses now, looking even more like the musician he wasn’t. Bloody college students. Must be used to tramping around in the sun everywhere.

  Only a few people were out in the heat, walking with umbrellas. No one gave them a second glance as before, though Adri was now wearing his newly acquired weapons in a twin shoulder holster over his shirt and Gray had slung the Sadhu’s Shotgun over his shoulder with a shotgun sling; it gently bumped against his backpack as he walked.

  ‘Where are we?’ Gray asked.

  ‘A few kilometres from Santoshpur. Places here are a lot more spread out than in New Kolkata,’ Adri added when Gray opened his mouth. New Kolkata had been modelled on the blueprints of the original city, but everything was much closer. The Old City was like a small country; the two could hardly be compared.

  The roads were destroyed, long and prominent cracks running in any bit of tar that remained. Everything else, otherwise, was either dirt or pebbles, crunching under their feet as they walked. The lack of maintenance h
ad resulted in a massive growth of the local flora in Old Kolkata, but this was not an area where trees were in abundance. They were few and far between and did not shade Adri as much as he had hoped.

  The Old City was without movement. Old things looked at them as they passed, things that had been lying in wait for decades, things undisturbed. Water did not flow anywhere, and where it gathered, it was murky and dark. The skies were burning, yet there were distant clouds in the horizon, promising rain. The city was unpredictable with its rain, fickle, and only frequenters like Adri knew what the real chances of rain on a day like this were. They travelled for hours, slowly but steadily, Adri explaining as they walked that the area they were traversing through wasn’t really considered dangerous; although danger chose not to restrict itself to fixed places in Old Kolkata. Mostly safe was probably a better word. Nevertheless, he was ready for anything, Adri reassured the two. He would not be caught off guard again. However, he cautioned, they would need to be extra vigilant inside Jadavpur University.

  ‘It might seem oh-so-precious, this reunion with your college, the original institution from where yours originated,’ Adri said. ‘But do not wander off under any reason or circumstance. I mean it. Jadavpur is one of the oldest, and hence, most avoided places in Old Kolkata right now. There are things there that don’t need to know we’re taking a walk through.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ Maya spoke for the first time now. ‘You’re always so vague!’ She had been strangely taciturn so far. Distant. Observant. Adri had felt her gaze burning into the back of his head often, but he’d thought it a little stupid to spin around and check. Her preoccupation had even gotten to Gray. Adri had heard him ask her what the matter was, but she hadn’t answered.

  ‘Isn’t it better if we don’t get to know what things?’ Adri said, raising his arms in mock protest.

  Gray looked nervously at the bandolier he was now wearing, at the shotgun shells lined neatly along its side. Adri had two, slung diagonally below his belt, and looked like a strange modern cowboy. Adri had made bullets for himself and shells for Gray’s shotgun before they’d left the Gunsmith’s house. Bullet Alchemy was another art Tantrics needed to know—an art that had been around for just as long as guns. The details were simple enough.

  ‘Normal bullets don’t hurt supernatural creatures. Not much of a help when practically everything in the Old City is pretty much supernatural,’ Adri had said. Basically, the aura of any creature could be classified broadly into three types: holy, unholy, or neutral. Holy and unholy countered each other—all one had to do to hurt the creature was hit it with the opposite aura(neutral was affected by both). Here’s where alchemy came in; not only did one have to fill the bullet’s interior with holy or unholy ingredients, but there were formulas—specific ingredients which when applied in specific quantities, had certain specific effects. The art of bullet alchemy lay in knowing which ingredients to carry, which ingredients to find and how, which ingredients to put in bullets and how much, and in using the right bullet for the right enemy.

  Like a lot of others things in Necromancy, this needed a lot of knowhow. There were books to be memorised, formulas to keep on one’s fingertips, bullets to be colour-coded so as to remember what contained what—and of course, one had to keep a quick reloading hand in case bullet types had to be changed on the fly. Besides, it was pretty delicate work. Gray had watched with fascination as Adri had brought out his wooden alchemy case, opened it, and taken out all the different layers and tools. He worked fast and intuitively, Gray realised as he saw him at it. Within the hour, Adri had filled in over a hundred bullets of the different varieties that he would need. And that was before he had moved to shotgun shells for Gray.

  Maya had not approved of Gray getting a weapon, even though she knew it would probably protect him more than anything else. She had been persuaded at last, mostly by Gray. She was not in the best of moods, as a result; already having too much to think about from the night before, now her JU plan was getting a lot more complicated than it was supposed to. And Adri talking about the dangers in JU didn’t help.

  ‘I’d rather know,’ she said. ‘So tell me. What things?’

  Adri stopped walking. ‘The mysteries about the Old City’ —he spoke at length—‘are all connected to its age. Things happened here in this city, in every corner and every street. And the things that lurk here are all related to those incidents; unforgotten instances, unfulfilled vows, promises broken, incredible acts of humanity and insanity. What we do is always linked to what has happened. And it is where we fail to discern the reason that we begin to dread, to fear. No one really knows what happened in JU. There are creatures in there which are long forgotten, things whispered about in nightmares, between the yellowing pages of rare books. Those who have combated them have mostly not made it out to talk about them—those that have, consider themselves lucky, and have not dared to make a study of them. Thus there are no weaknesses that we know about in the few creatures that we do know exist. And then there are others that we haven’t seen or heard of yet.’

  ‘Are they Demons?’ Maya asked.

  ‘No. They are other things.’

  ‘Like what?’ Maya snapped.

  Adri glared at her for the first time that day. ‘Like an Alabagus,’ he said shortly.

  ‘The Heart-eaters? Impossible!’

  ‘Believe what you want. I’m in no hurry to meet one either,’ Adri said. He started walking, and Maya hurried after him.

  ‘Wait! But the Alabagus is supernatural!’

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘No! What I meant to say is—it’s legend! Doesn’t really exist! Like the Horsemen of Old Kolkata, for heaven’s sake!’

  Adri almost missed a step. The pendant swung as he walked, and he could feel its cold surface against his chest. He breathed in deeply. ‘There is a grain of truth in every legend,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t give me a stupid old saying as a justification,’ Maya said.

  ‘I’m lucky enough to have not met an Alabagus myself. But I have met people who have. Now, they could be lying. Or not. Me, I prefer to be a little more careful, that’s all.’

  ‘Why are we going through JU anyway?’ Gray asked from behind; he’d been following the two, listening closely. ‘I mean, if it’s so dangerous? Can’t we just go around it or something?’

  There it is, the question. Matters were complicated enough with Maya having borrowed a map from Smith; he could not lie about JU being the only way through. And he did have work there, he couldn’t hide that—they would see what he was up to. Tread carefully, Adri.

  ‘No, I want to see the university,’ Maya said.

  ‘You do?’ Gray asked wearily. He had not taken his camera out of his bag for a long time now.

  ‘Yes, it’s the very place that our ancestors studied in, jackass! You mean to tell me you have no interest in seeing what the old college was like?’

  ‘I have no interest in seeing what an Alabagus looks like,’ Gray muttered.

  ‘Legend! Fairy tale!’ Maya said, her voice shrill.

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  ‘Err, even I have some work in there,’ Adri added casually, and the siblings did not react. Excellent. He had no clue why Maya would be so enthusiastic about wanting to see the old university, but it was fortunate enough for his needs. Who needed to understand why she was eager when this need of hers could be used to shield his guilt?

  Do not feel guilty. You have led them to a dangerous place just for your own needs, yes, but you need to live, and it is because of the only letter your mother wrote for you. All you need to do is make sure Maya and Gray are safe when you lead them, either back to the train or to the Angel. That’s all. They can hate you forever when they find out. It doesn’t matter. You have always been hated. You could never even meet the only person who loved you.

  The heat of the day receded as late afternoon came upon them. The sun began adopting a more golden glow and shadows began to lengthen. They mostly walked
through narrow alleys, cutting through the occasional wide roads as quickly as possible. People lived along the alleys—they could hear distant voices like before; clothes were hung out to dry; dogs sunned themselves lazily outside locked doors; an occasional strain of music, but mostly people talking. Often far away. Often nearby. Gray imagined eyes watching them and every time he would look up to confirm, he would find his intuition mostly correct as curtains behind windows fell back into place and footsteps hurriedly exited balconies. They ran into the occasional traveller who crossed them without a word. A couple of these people, Gray noticed, were carrying rifles slung over their shoulders.

  The city seemed alien to him. It wasn’t clean in the least; all sorts of filth lay in the back alleys they were walking through. Some areas stank so bad he had to hold his nose. He didn’t like it and had no idea why people raved about the greatness of the city. Was it some sort of delusion employed deliberately to make the residents feel better? But there was no question about it, the city could not compare to its new counterpart in terms of either safety, cleanliness or living standards. People seemed much, much happier in the utopia of New Kolkata, and somewhere inside, Gray was glad that when all this was over, he would be going back there.

  He hadn’t photographed anything in the Old City after the witch incident. But he shouldn’t have let it get to him, he now decided. He had come to the Old City fantasising about the photographic opportunities it presented. And maybe his photographs could actually dissolve the urban raving about the Old City. Why obsess over something so desolate and dead? Gray reached into his bag and withdrew his camera, and from then on, he busied himself with taking pictures when he could, jogging lightly to catch up with the other two every time he fell behind—Adri and Maya never waited for him.

  Some more conversation-less travelling later, they stopped. Up ahead in the distance, across the completely deserted road, they could see the twin gates of Jadavpur University. They stood there for a minute, not talking. The road was completely deserted. The wall running around the campus was visible as well, a long brown line in the horizon, the buildings beyond silent, uninhabited. It seemed like a giant trap, the lack of life almost deliberate.