“Stay alive, chief. We are almost there. You need to fight the fever,” the voice seemed to say.
His eyes slowly opened for a brief second before closing again. I am on a horse, he thought. It wasn’t the world that was bumping up and down. It was him.
But there were no reins in his hands. No –Nothing but air. Cool air that seemed to run like a rope through his palms.
Everything seemed cool around him.
There was a chill around that wanted to creep into him. To mate with the glorious heat inside him. But the heat also hurt. A little. It wasn’t comforting like the warmth of Urushi. He was being taken somewhere, he realized. There was something around his mouth, on his face.
“We are at the gate. We will get you in. Just keep quiet, chief,” another voice said.
The world stopped bumping for a moment. The sound of hooves slowed down. “Hello commanders!” A new voice now.
“Hey, Ranjith!” the two men replied. “Pretty early on the guard tonight? How are things going?”
“Same old!” the man said. “Everyone’s upset about the things, you know –that betrayer and his bitch. Will take some time to settle down. Who’s that on the horseback?” the man asked.
“Another of the injured Ashvins,” the voice of a man very near to him said. “One of the runners gave news of him. He strayed away from the group apparently. Lost much of his nose and ears during the attack. You wouldn’t want to see his face. We covered him up. Poor soul’s down with a terrible fever. The infection’s pretty bad. Need to get him to the Avadhanis quick.”
“Goddamn those kinkars,” the man whom they called Ranjith replied. “Go on then.”
The sound of gates opening filled Vikranth’s ears. The world started bumping again. Up and down. The sound of hooves resumed. Where had he heard these sounds before? The sound of those gates. He had heard the sound of those gates before. Not once but many times. Horses and gates. Men and kinkars. All of these things seemed familiar. Yet foreign and distant.
Vikranth drifted out of consciousness again as Eeshan and Triven carried him on horseback through the gates of the towers.
The Librarian was dreaming again. He was sitting on the terrace of an apartment in Kurnool when it started. He had walked along with fifteen of the Forgiven for two continuous days and nights before finally taking shelter in an abandoned five-storied apartment. The gate hadn’t been locked. In fact, it had been wide open.
They had found the first body the moment they had entered in. It had been the corpse of a middle–aged man –his flesh had withered away and stretched tight over his gaunt bones. His eyes had been eaten away by maggots. Two gaping holes bore into his skull where there should have been his eyes. Sangeetha –the middle–aged woman among the fifteen Forgiven, had thrown up on seeing this. The Librarian had ignored her and bent down to look at the corpse. His clothes had seemed old, torn and cheap. He must have been the watchman of the apartment. He had been lying spread eagled in the parking space.
The Librarian had expected this. He had checked the elevator. It looked like it hadn’t worked in years. No power. They had checked the rest of the houses in the apartment. One by one. They had fortunately found only five other bodies. Others seemed to have left or died someplace else. They had gathered whatever supplies they could. The Librarian had suggested that they stay there for the night and see how it would work out. He had insisted on staying on the fifth floor. He liked going to the terrace and observing the stars, he had told them.
He had been strolling on the terrace and had sat down to look at the stars when the dream had come. And it had come suddenly like they always had to him. One moment he would be wide awake, doing something and the very next, he would be dreaming.
And so it was today –one moment he had been observing how the scorched sky had seemed to make the stars look distant, how it looked cloudy and ready to come crying down in a downpour of black rain and then in the next moment he was seeing the caves burn.
A blue-skinned soldier. Fire and flames everywhere. The glowing kid far up north in the fission– red mist in the air.
And then, for the first time –he saw something that had never entered his dreams before. A dark shape. A great corruption. The Librarian was breathing rapidly now. The caves were burning up. The Forgiven were screaming. The dark shape was moving in the west. Others were dreaming like him, whispering and gasping as they saw the corruption.
Come now, Arpit. You know where.
The darkness had called him Arpit. No one had called him that. Not since the day he had started dreaming atleast. Not since the long sleep. His throat was burning in the flames of the cave. The dark one with the eyes of a boar was tightening his grip on his throat.
Someone was violently shaking him now. The Librarian opened his eyes and the dream vanished as he found Sravan standing above him, shaking him by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“What are you doing here?” the Librarian asked.
“Are you all right? It looked like you were choking,” Sravan asked. The Librarian could still feel the tinge of the dark one’s hands on his throat, calling him into the dream, through the dream to the other side. To the side beyond the flames.
“I am fine,” the Librarian lied.
How did it know my name?
“I was looking for you,” Sravan said. “Wanted to know if you have…you know…‘Seen’ anything. Anything about the caves and the Forgiven?” he paused. “That’s what you were doing right, when I came here? ‘Seeing’ –you were not here, were you? What did you see?” It had started drizzling by this time. Tiny drops of black muddy rain were pockmarking the terrace.
What did he see? For the first time, the Librarian didn’t know what he had seen. The dark one? Other dreamers? He wasn’t sure. He told Sravan only the things he was sure about.
“The Forgiven are gone, Sravan. The Sinless have attacked. The caves have been torched,” he said as it started raining heavily.
Sravan’s face grew pale.
“You and your friends are the only Forgiven left now,” the Librarian said.
It was late in the evening and the sun was setting over the towers by the time Vikranth was climbing the stained stairs to the second floor of the third tower. A ring had just been descended over the tower making it seem awfully silent in the wake of the monstrous din that the ring shifting usually created. Vikranth reached the second floor and walked through the Arch of Sin, straight towards the cages.
The hallways were empty except for the cleaning women who washed the cages and the ever-vigilant guard.
The Guard –his biggest problem right now.
He pulled the scarf around his mouth a tad higher as the cleaning woman passed him. He hadn’t been recognized yet. His face remained efficiently hidden and considerably anonymous so far in the shadow of his hood and the plainness of the scarf around his nose and mouth. It was only his dark brown eyes that were visible to the outside world.
He finally reached the cages. The Corridor of Pain –it was called. Guarding it was a young man –tall and muscular, the kind whom you would not pick a fight with. Vikranth knew his name. Jaya was the name given to him when he had joined the Sinless. Vikranth had seen him many times– every time he had been to the Corridor of Pain to check on the security of the cages and the status of the prisoners. Jaya would always step aside on Vikranth’s arrival, with his head bowed and his eyes closed. But then Vikranth had been the feared and respected Dalapathy -the Commander of Ashvins. Now he was a fugitive, a man presumed dead by many, a blasphemer and a sinner. A damned heretic.
There would be no stepping aside this time. No heads would bow down in respect. Only hateful eyes and dangerous hands. Vikranth knew there was only one way he was getting past Jaya once he stopped him. He slowly slid his hand beneath his robe and around the blade which hung by his hip. He walked up to the entrance of the cages. Jaya was quick to react.
“Stop!” the young guard shouted, drew his dagger and the ne
xt moment the sharp edge of the dagger was resting on Vikranth’s neck.
“What in the name of Lord Kalki do you think you are doing?” the guard screamed.
Vikranth almost pulled his blade out and drove it through the kid’s heart. Vikranth knew Jaya was quick but he would stand no chance against him. His hand tightened around his blade but he didn’t draw it out. He lifted his other hand, pushed the hood off his head and lowered the scarf on his face.
Jaya’s eyes widened with recognition. Vikranth could feel his face tighten with shock but the dagger still remained on his neck. Vikranth looked into his eyes and said.
“I need to do this, Jaya. I don’t know what you have heard about me, and frankly I don’t care right now. There are things I need to take care of.” Vikranth knew everything hung on what Jaya would do next.
C’mon Jaya. Do the right thing. Vikranth silently urged though his eyes.
The dagger remained on Vikranth’s neck but hadn’t cut him yet. The young guard’s hand was shaking. His eyes were staring intensely into Vikranth’s eyes, as if searching for some deeper truth. The guard’s jaw clenched and the dagger drew a thin line of blood now. Vikranth didn’t react. He stared into the guard’s eyes as his hand slowly pulled the blade out from his hip.
I am sorry, Jaya. He had no choice.
Vikranth’s hand stopped mid plunge on its way towards Jaya’s abdomen as the young guard suddenly retreated his dagger from Vikranth’s neck. Vikranth watched in silence as the guard slowly backed down, still looking at him with a myriad of emotions.
Thank you, Jaya. Oh God, thank you so much, Vikranth’s eyes said as Jaya slowly stepped aside for his Dalapathy and bowed his head.
UNCAGED
Vikranth inserted the pin into the lock to feel the pins against their springs. He gently pushed them up carefully one after the other. One of the pins was more stubborn than the other as expected. Ex–leader of the horsemen of apocalypse, the resourceful Dalapathy – damned if he couldn’t pick a lock, he thought. He heard the faint sound of the final pin clicking into place. The lock to Urushi’s cage finally fell open.
He pushed the door open and walked inside. And there she was – lying naked on the floor, thinner and weaker than the last time he had seen her, but the resolve on her face was still the same, even when she was asleep. He suddenly remembered why he had fallen in love with her in the first place. He slowly walked up to her and sat down by her side, taking her hand into his.
“Urushi,” he whispered.
That’s all it took. A faint whisper. She opened her eyes and looked at him. Her hand tightened around his – her golden-brown eyes swam in a shallow pool of tears.
“Is this a dream?” she asked.
“I hope not,” Vikranth replied, pushing her matted hair behind her ears.
Her face was sunken and dull. Dirt and grime covered her clear skin. Her eyes looked swollen from all the crying. Yet in that moment she looked more beautiful than ever.
“I am sorry!” he said.
She shook her head.
“No!”
He bent down and kissed her. His lips consumed hers, taking her taste in. He felt alive once again. For a moment, he forgot everything about the kinkars and his capture. He was, for a moment back in his own chamber, with Urushi in his arms.
Her soft lips pressed back into his, like waves crashing onto the beach. And unlike how quickly their lips met, they parted slowly and with much reluctance.
“I am going to get you out of here,” Vikranth promised.
Urushi shook her head again.
“I’ll take care of that,” she replied. “I want you to do a favour for me. I want you to get a present for Shukra from the Yajna mandap.”
“Shukra?” Vikranth didn’t understand. “From the Yajna mandap?”
“Yes!” she replied. “A little present for a special occasion,”
It was the same look she had had, the day Vikranth had seen her for the first time; a look of fierceness and firmness when she had lead the rebellion.
“The occasion of his death!” Urushi said and then she told him what to do.
That night, when Vikranth –The fourth Dalapathy was breaking into Urushi’s cage in the third tower, far below in the second tower, Roy was breaking out of a cage.
Roy was his second name, the name he had inherited from his father –a true blue journalist in the old world who was picked soon enough by the common death.
A journalist, what else can you expect? Many had commented.
“Truth and justice,” Roy’s father had often said were the only things that mattered, despite how others saw him and he had spent his entire life fighting for those two antiquated ideas of fairness.
His second name was not the only thing Roy had inherited from his father. His father’s love for truth and justice ran in his blood too. He had forgotten them for a while, during his time with the Thuggees but he had remembered them again.
That was why he had run away from the Thuggees one fateful night, bleeding all the way till he had found the General.
No one knew Roy’s first name in the End Age, and even if they knew, they had forgotten.
But Roy hadn’t forgotten.
Niv’s death meant that he would never again forget ever in his life. He hadn’t forgotten what truth and justice meant. And they didn’t mean locking up innocent survivors and judging them based on some religious nutjob’s delusions.
They had taken Niv away. They were not going to take away anyone else.
An hour ago, under the drab light of the cell, he had told his fellow cellmates – all of them fellow Forgiven – his plan to escape. They had agreed after a little amount of hesitation. They had to. There was no other hope. They hadn’t had to wait for much longer. A man in long robes had soon entered the cell. His name was Kaling, he had informed them. He had seemed gentle and kind– exactly the type they had wished for. He had come to note down their names and details and then to decide who would be judged the next day. He had been accompanied by a guard. The guard had carried a dagger and a revolver, each hanging temptingly at either side of his hips.
The man in long robes was now examining each and every one of them, knowing their names before asking them to open their mouths and examining their insides with a torch, just like Mishra would often do to see how sick someone was in the caves. Then he did the same with their eyes.
Roy had obediently given his name and opened his mouth. Once the man in the robes was done with him and had moved on to the next one, Roy subtly nodded, looking at Sushant, a young hunter to the far right. The boy nodded back just subtle enough for the guard to not notice. Kaling had finished his examination of two other Forgiven and reached Sushant now. Sushant had given him his name but before Kaling could ask him to open his mouth, the boy's eyes rolled back. He held his throat as if he was choking and suddenly vomited blood all over the tall man in robes.
Kaling jumped back.
“Kalki Commands!” he screamed. “A judgement!”
The guard was taken aback. He quickly recovered and stepped between Sushant and the man in robes. This moment of confusion was all that they needed. Sushant quickly pulled the dagger from the guard's hip and plunged it into the guard's thigh. Blood gushed out from the wound. Roy rushed ahead at the exact same moment and pulled the revolver from the guard's other hip.
He then quickly held the visibly confounded Kaling from behind, put the gun to his head and screamed, “Don't move!”
The others quickly rounded up on the immobile guard and held his arms behind his back and made him kneel. Roy walked out with his hostage, shouting instructions to the outside guards to not move. They didn't. Apparently, the man he had hostage was some one important.
The guards didn’t stand a chance. Not once all of the Forgiven in Roy's cell broke out. Soon they had the keys for the rest of the cages with them. They went from cell to cell, opening them up.
The sound of their anthem “Forgiven, Forever” shook the co
rridor now.
The Forgiven were free.
And thus, began the riots that would change the End Age forever.
Shukra’s blood was racing. Sudam, a young scout with a round face and big eyes had just given him the morbid news. The Forgiven had escaped and they had taken the second tower already.
Fucking savages, Shukra thought.
He had to do something. He needed to buy some time. He pulled out a key from inside his robe and tossed it to Sudam, who caught it like a dog catching a bone thrown at him.
The beast must be freed, Shukra thought.
“Go to the Yajna mandap, a guard will stop you at the prayer hall –an Ashvin. Tell him the exact words ‘Aghos Nivrut’ and he will let you through. Go to the Yajna mandap and in the wall opposite to the entrance of the hall, you’ll find a key hole. Turn the key twice to the right,” Shukra instructed the scout.
“Kalki Commands!”
“Kalki Commands!” Sudam replied and left.
Shukra immediately rushed to his chambers. That was the only safe place for him now.
A few minutes later, in the empty yajna hall, Sudam had turned the key, unleashing a lethal force under the floor beneath his legs. He hadn’t noticed the well-concealed trap door in the middle of the homa kund of the Yajna mandap. He was the kind who wouldn’t put his nose where it doesn’t belong.
He had done it, turned the key twice, just as the Avadhani had instructed. Surprisingly, the guard let him pass through too, when he had spoken those words just like the learned man had said. He felt honoured that the chief Avadhani had chosen him for the task. Sudam would not know the darkness of this task –not when he had turned the key and not even later that night, when his body was being ripped into two by an unholy creature, that he himself had unwittingly freed from its long captivity. All that Sudam knew was that he had done the duty of the Lord Kalki. They key had been turned.
In the dark corridor below the Yajna mandap, the chains surrounding Shukra’s abomination had fallen away and the great beast slowly rose to its feet like a lumbering giant. Right then, in the chilling night air, as Sudam was leaving the Yajna hall, he could hear a faint inhuman growl filled with hunger, but he chose to ignore it. That was the sound of death and destruction that would soon be upon both Sudam and the rest of the Sinless.
Sinners- The Dawn Of Kalki Page 15