Horsemen of Old Read online

  THE TANTRIC TRILOGY

  Tantrics of Old

  Horsemen of Old

  Myths of Old

  Published by

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  Copyright © 2016 Prakash Books India Pvt. Ltd.

  Copyright Text © Krishnarjun Bhattacharya

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise (except for mentions in reviews or edited excerpts in the media) without the written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978 81 7599 409 6

  For Dunna

  The original storyteller

  Beware the Horsemen

  Born lands dark and cold

  Patience eternal, beings eternal

  Beings of the hunt four.

  Eaters of life, life itself, a mere morsel

  Rend to pieces then, little ones

  And no beast may run

  No bird may fly

  Not in their great hunger

  Beware the Horsemen Old.

  PRONUNCIATIONS:

  Adri Sen— O-dree Sh-eyn

  Fayne— Fay-i-n

  Ba’al— Bay-l

  Zabrielle— Zaa-bree-el

  Ghosh— Gh-oh-sh

  Aurcoe— Aww-r-ko

  Mazumder— Mo-joom-daar

  Francois— Fran-so-aa

  Dahouffe— Daa-hoof

  Anulekha— Anoo-ley-khaa

  Asheem Chakravarty— Aw-sheem

  Chawk-row-bowr-tee

  Dhritiman— Dhreet-e-maan

  Jed Alfan— Jade Aal-faan

  Edha— Ay-dhaa

  PROLOGUE

  The boy sat silently, watching the Demon eat.

  He was terrified, but despite his horror he was connecting the dots. Dots lost to him earlier, dots ignored, dots now recollected through the stench of blood, the filth of innards. This was what he was being prepared for. The books, the callsigns, the dead, dead language. This was what a summoning actually felt like, it felt cold. Clammy. Damp, like the last torch that flickered. Damp, despite fire.

  The diagrams of the beasts, the weird scratches, the claws, the horns, the teeth, it was all real. Demons existed. Everyone in the room was dead, everyone but him. It had proceeded to devour the rest. The whole affair had been a hidden ritual, and the boy, even at his age, knew that no help was coming.

  The Demon of Shadow ate with a savage delight. It lowered itself onto the dead bodies and ate. Occasionally it would tear away an arm or a leg and eat it separately. Organs lay strewn across the stone floor, washed in blood. A platter. Lungs wolfed down, livers, kidneys, the brain, sometimes a bone or two, mostly the ribs. Skin. Other bones, mostly vertebrae and the skull, ignored, sometimes briefly gnawed on.

  It would occasionally glance at the boy, as if making sure he was still there.

  The boy did not have a choice but to stay. The door was locked, the key lost somewhere in the pockets of one of those the Demon was devouring. It was in the hopes of spotting the key that the boy watched the Demon eat; it was pulling something new out of a body. A heart.

  ‘Your heart, it beats like a drum,’ it whispered.

  The boy gave a start. The Demon was looking at him. White teeth, sharp. Fang-like, but not quite. The heart, bit into. Blood, black, oozing and running down its hand, black.

  ‘Name,’ the Demon said.

  The boy did not reply.

  ‘Name!’ the Demon hissed.

  ‘A-A-Adri,’ the boy stammered.

  The Demon gnawed at the heart with a disapproving shake of head. ‘Names, they have power,’ it said, mouth full. ‘Tell me your full name, boy.’

  ‘A-Adri Sen,’ the boy whispered.

  ‘Adri Sen,’ the Demon drawled. ‘My name is Chhaya, and I am not going to eat you.’

  The boy did not react.

  ‘Aren’t you . . . glad?’ the Demon asked, its attention back on the feast. Loins. Muscle, often resisting. Chewy.

  Silence, again.

  ‘If you do not speak,’ Chhaya said, ‘then you will never speak again, boy. Your silence makes me impatient.’

  ‘You would break your word?’ the boy asked, slowly.

  ‘What word?’

  ‘You just told me you will not eat me.’

  ‘There is a story about silence,’ Chhaya rasped. ‘About silence fickle, silence eternal. Thin line between death and silence. But the past is in the past. You seem to have found the voice.’

  ‘If you will not eat me,’ the boy said, again with thought, ‘then I can talk.’ His voice was strained. It threatened to break at places. This was costing him every ounce of his courage, courage he never knew existed.

  ‘Ah, old flesh,’ Chhaya said with relish. ‘Tough to chew, but sometimes it has an aftertaste, like a lifelong marination.’ It lowered itself onto a body and breathed in deep. ‘This one was born for me.’

  ‘You killed them all,’ the boy spoke softly, more to himself. This was death, more death in an hour than he had seen in his life, and now, desecration. It was wrong, the way the Demon ate them. It wasn’t supposed to be. There was no—respect.

  ‘This old flesh had a name,’ Chhaya said. ‘He was called Mryttik. Do you know why I was summoned?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘He wanted me to kill someone. An enemy of his. And after hearing your name, I see you will understand. He wanted me to kill Victor Sen.’

  The boy’s eyes twitched. His father. The old Necromancer had wanted to kill his father. He searched for his sympathy for the ones murdered, the ones being eaten. It was still there.

  The Demon was watching him again. ‘How does it feel, boy? This could have been the flesh of your father.’

  ‘Flesh is still flesh,’ the boy replied, unable to believe what he was saying, but transported, his opinions being given temporary freedom.

  ‘Indeed it is. Wise beyond years, boy? If so wise, then tell me the three rules of summoning our kind.’

  The boy snapped himself out of the stupor. A different classroom, a very different teacher. The same questions. ‘Higher Power, The Telephone Call, and Precautions,’ he said with practiced ease.

  ‘Explain,’ the Demon said, biting into a calf.

  ‘Demons belong to a higher power,’ the boy said. ‘They are greater creatures than humans, not servants to be summoned and banished. It is this respect that must be remembered at all times, by every Tantric.’

  ‘Second,’ Chhaya rasped.

  ‘A summoning is like a telephone call,’ the boy continued. ‘The Demon in question always and always has the choice to either reply, thus be summoned, or simply let it ring.’

  ‘Last one.’

  ‘Never summon without precautions. Call a Demon only if you carry the power to send it back, ideally the power to end it if need be.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chhaya hissed. ‘Yes, nice rules, good rules. Keep you safe. After tonight, do you think they work?’

  ‘Mryttik broke two,’ the boy said.

  ‘Yes he did,’ the Demon said. ‘He also called something from a realm which does
not answer to your kind, never has. What do you say to that?’

  The boy did not know what to say. He had just seen death for the first time. These questions did not suit him.

  ‘The answer is stupidity,’ the Demon said with relish. ‘Power is tricky, and Mryttik, lost in his fantasies of revenge, forgot the basics.’

  It was waiting for a reply this time. ‘May he find peace,’ the boy said softly.

  The Demon gave a sharp guffaw and almost choked on something. ‘No tattoo ceremony yet, boy?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Wait for it. They will kill this, this softness. Another question for you, the most important one. Answer this and I will let you leave.’

  An opportunity, unexpected. The boy listened, not daring to breathe.

  ‘How am I inside this circle?’ Chhaya asked.

  ‘Impossible,’ the boy said. He did not know how. The whole thing defied what the books had taught him. He had noticed it earlier, but the shock had been too much to allow thought. He looked at the circle again, the circle on the stone floor. Most of the chalk had been washed off by the blood, but he was sure it had been flawless. And even if the Demon broke the Pentacle—the star within the circle—it could not step inside the positive circle, where the Tantrics had been. Where it was, right now, eating.

  ‘Then how am I here?’ Chhaya had turned to face him now.

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘How am I here?’ the Demon hissed again, standing up. It took a step towards him. Then one more.

  The boy froze. His brain was shutting down once more, fear gripping him. His throat was dry. Chhaya had almost reached him. It stank of the dead, its black shining.

  ‘HOW AM I HERE?’ the Demon roared, teeth gleaming in the dark.

  A rush of fear. The overpowering smell of fear. Death. No promises mattered for this Demon. The answer did, perhaps. The answer.

  ‘Because you’re not!’ the boy shrieked.

  Chhaya’s fangs were inches from his face. It had stopped.

  ‘Because you’re not here. You’re not a Demon of Shadow. You’re the shadow of a Demon.’ The boy paused. ‘Another Demon, who is not here.’

  Chhaya withdrew. It backed away slowly to the centre of the room, face still on the boy.

  ‘Another one,’ Chhaya whispered. ‘After centuries, another one who answers. Wise beyond years, truly.’

  ‘Let me go,’ the boy said.

  ‘Yes,’ the Demon whispered. ‘But the debt of a life is not so easily paid. If I spare you, you have to remember.’

  ‘Remember what?’ the boy asked.

  ‘There is a Game, a Game we must play,’ Chhaya said. ‘There is time, there is a lot of time, but we must play.’

  ‘What Game is this?’

  The Demon opened a palm, something was in it. A small object, gleaming softly in the light of the last torch.

  ‘One in which choice is but an illusion,’ the Demon said. ‘Take this and I will explain the rules.’

  ‘If-if I take that, can I leave?’ the boy asked.

  ‘You will be thinking about the rules all your life, until it is time to play,’ the Demon said. ‘Yes, you may leave afterwards, but listen now, and listen well.’

  The boy nodded and reached out. His fingers trembled. Chhaya dropped the object in his palm, cold and heavy. The boy observed it with interest, reading silently from the inscriptions.

  ‘Why does it say Keeper?’ Adri asked.

  Part I

  The Dead Who Watch Over Us

  1

  The ash was like snow, scattering slowly, like motes of dust floating about in beams of sunlight. A body had been there, just there, a living, breathing, talking person only a minute ago; someone Gray had bonded with over a long, long time. And now that someone was ash, scattered to the winds, scattered in some church where God did not care. The statue of the saviour looked on, silent as ever, as the ash stayed in the air, not flying, not settling, finding a permanence in that moment of horror, that single moment when Adri Sen had burned away.

  Then Fayne spoke, and Gray opened his eyes, disbanding the vision of the ash and the church.

  ‘Not far now,’ Fayne said.

  The three of them stood on the second floor of a building with a missing wall. A wide, wide road stared at them. An abandoned highway. The skies, red, were now dry. The storm was gone. Everything was still wet, the tarmac glistened. Dawn.

  ‘Isolation is a funny thing,’ Maya said. ‘It does things to people.’

  ‘Are you talking about your state?’ Gray asked. ‘When you had gone, you know, all coma on us?’

  ‘I’m talking about him,’ Maya replied, peering at the roads before them. ‘Damn, wish I had binoculars.’

  ‘I see everything,’ Fayne said. ‘Tell me of what you would hear.’

  ‘You are talking about him,’ Gray said slowly.

  ‘He’s not dead, Gray. Get over it.’

  ‘He burned like he was nothing,’ Gray said.

  ‘Is that the tower?’ Maya asked Fayne, pointing.

  ‘Yes. That is the Convergence, where five highways meet.’

  They could see it in the distance, in the haze of the early morning red, something tall, shimmering, a mirage. It was there and then it wasn’t. A trick of the clouds and the light.

  ‘Magic?’ Maya asked.

  ‘Strong magic,’ Fayne replied. ‘Ba’al is a mage.’

  ‘Are we seriously going to sneak into the headquarters of the Free Demons?’ Gray asked.

  ‘We’ll be walking in through the front gates,’ Maya said.

  Gray realised that something had changed about Maya. The cause, of course, had to be Adri Sen. She had gotten progressively grim and moody since Adri’s burning. Just how attached had Maya been to the Tantric? Of course there was the impending Apocalypse and this whole business of stopping it, but Maya’s demeanour did not speak of destiny. It was undoubtedly personal. Not that Gray had a problem with vendettas, but his sister’s seriousness, it was beginning to bother him. The burning had affected him as well, like a bad dream, but Maya clearly intended to do something about it.

  ‘There are going to be Demon patrols. And gargoyles,’ Fayne said.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ Maya replied. ‘It’s best if Ba’al knows we’re coming.’

  The highway dried up sooner than the grass around it. It was unusual, seeing a highway lose itself in the middle of nowhere, while all around there were only grasslands, the occasional swamp. Gray remembered the stories. There had once been many MYTH buildings here. They were meant to be training centres, but with Ba’al’s rise to power, the Free Demons had razed them to the ground. The rumours said that the Demon Commander had done it himself, with one of his most destructive spells, the fabled Godkiller. Gray tried to imagine the raw power it must have taken to devastate an entire landscape.

  ‘He’ll kill us,’ Gray said slowly as they walked. ‘He’ll have us for lunch.’

  ‘Ba’al . . . is different,’ Maya said calmly.

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ he shot back. ‘I met a Demon once. And all he told me was that he wanted to eat me.’

  Maya sighed. ‘Because I have read about Ba’al. And not just in my books.’

  Gray’s silence demanded more. She went on.

  ‘At Adri’s place. His diaries. I took some of them, I’ve been reading them. And yes,’ she continued as Gray’s eyes widened, ‘Adri knows. It was the first thing I told him after I recovered from the coma.’

  ‘You still have them? I can’t believe this!’

  ‘They were in my bag, but when I came to, it wasn’t around. I think it’s still in the cave with the Ancients.’

  ‘Wow, so you trespassed on someone’s memories? Is that how you had those visions in your coma?’

  ‘It’s more, ugh, more complicated than that.’

  ‘Real proud of you, sis,’ Gray said darkly.

  ‘It was necessary. And the only reason I know what to do now is because I
read those diaries.’

  ‘Stop,’ Gray said. ‘Stop walking.’

  They stopped. Fayne did not say a word, contenting himself with maintaining a sharp lookout. Maya looked at Gray questioningly, but she knew what this was about. She had always known that there would come a time when she would be asked this question. She steeled herself.

  ‘Maya,’ Gray began, ‘let me get one thing straight. You do not know Adri Sen. And you do not know who he is. You might know some things about his life now, considering you read up some of the things he decided to write, and we all met his charming father, but you do not know who he is. Right now, and I mean right now, Death is going to see through this deception, this trickery. He’s going to be on our tails, and you know that. The Apocalypse is coming, it’s the end of the world and all that, yes, but that is not why you’re doing this. This, this determination I’m seeing in you? It’s got nothing to do with saving the world, and you know it. So, why are you doing this for Adri?’

  A morning wind blew, no buildings, no trees to stop it. A rush of wind, catching them all unawares, whipping Maya’s long hair around her face as she stood facing Gray. Silent.

  ‘Are you in love with Adri?’ Gray asked.

  Maya’s face was unreadable, even to Gray, with all his experience.

  ‘Gray,’ Maya said slowly. ‘This is not a fucking love story.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked,’ Gray countered.

  ‘He saved me, Gray. My stupidity got me into that damned basement in Jadavpur. My will to become a Sorcerer, my weakness in coming to terms with what MYTH denied me. That got me into that basement. That almost got me killed. That made me a corpse you had to carry for so many days, a bloody liability you had to feed and clean and change. How do you think that makes me feel? Special? Cared for? It makes me feel pathetic. I do not feel strong; I feel indebted. I tricked all of you, didn’t I? I didn’t trust you, or Adri, and it landed me in the arms of an Ancient. Adri saved me, and I don’t want to feel saved, Gray. I am an individual, and I will make my own decisions. As for what I’m doing? I’m not in love with Adri Sen. But he needs a good friend, right now more than ever, and what I’m doing, Gray, is stepping up.’