ASH MISTRY AND THE CITY OF DEATH (19 page)

is mouth tasted of dust. Ash blinked and spat. He lay on the temple floor, the cold stone pressed against his skin. Dimly, he felt the vibrations of the city through the ground, and his ears pricked at the soft breeze moaning through the temple, the creaking of the old wood. Ash lifted himself up and settled down on his haunches. The temple was empty. Sunlight shone through the missing tiles in the roof. A large cockroach scuttled across the floor, pausing for a moment to look at him.

I’m alive. I think.

He touched his ribs, half expecting to find a second – or third – pair of arms sticking out. Nope, no new body parts. On the outside, he was still the human Ash. Good news so far. He stood up, checking that all was normal. Nothing had changed. His muscles weren’t any bigger, and as he ran his tongue over his teeth, he was pleased to find he hadn’t grown fangs either.

He closed his eyes, recalling the many people he’d seen in his vision. Those guys in bronze armour and red cloaks. Ash knew enough of his history to recognise the most kick-butt warriors of the world, the Spartans. If Ujba was right, he should know ancient Greek. What about counting to ten?

“Er… er.”

Hello, in Greek?

“Er.”

Anything, in Greek?

“Er.”

So the Soma had been a big fat fail. He wasn’t any different.

A flutter of cloth caught his attention. A yellow scarf hung from a low beam, pinned in place with a katar. Ash took a firm grip and worked the punch dagger back and forth until it came loose. He took the scarf and wrapped the dagger within it.

Suddenly, pain cramped his stomach, and Ash groaned as black spots danced in his eyes. He put his hand against a stone column, leaning on it as he steadied himself.

A series of cracks flowered out from his palm. Ash lifted his hand. The palm print was a centimetre deep. He followed the line of a crack down the white marble. The crack itself was only a hair’s breadth in width.

Ash put his finger against the minute line. And pushed.

The marble splintered. Ash pushed harder.

The column trembled and jagged tears ruptured along its length. The roof began to creak.

Ash stopped. He drew his hand back and then slammed his palm against the column. It exploded into a million white shards of marble, shooting out and riddling the wall like bullets. Ash glanced up as the ceiling bowed and the wooden beams splintered. He ran.

He was halfway down the alley before he turned and watched. The old temple groaned as the roof fell in. The wooden posts and beams within cracked and snapped; the old plaster shattered, tossing out white clouds of dust. Then the roof caved in with a dull boom.

The hazy morning sky had a hint of rose to it and there was not a single cloud. A light, chilly mist floated on the streets and down the alley. Birds chirped in the rooftops, stirred by the faint dawn light.

Ash looked around.

He felt the brittle bricks in the wall, the pattern of the grain on the door and the cracks along the metal water pipes. A car passed, and Ash’s body vibrated in harmony to the chugging, spluttering engine. He heard the hissing steam coming out of the minute hole in the radiator, and felt how the bald, worn-out tyres bounced over the small stones.

He looked at the driver, smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke out of the open window. Ash could taste the tar that coated the man’s lungs from his breath.

These were all the signs of death and decay. Ash could feel the world rotting around him. And all he needed to make it collapse was to give it a little push. The wall. The door. The car. The man. He gazed at him and a sharp blossom of heat burst right in the middle of his forehead as he focused on the driver.

The driver takes a red packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lights one.
The man shifts gears and rolls forward, searching for a gap in the traffic. He cries out as ash from his cigarette burns his hand. He shakes it and doesn’t see the yellow bus, its horn blaring a warning but the noise lost in the city’s din. The man stares in horror
–

Ash blinked. What had just happened? The taxi hadn’t moved. He looked down the road and there was a yellow bus, but it was still half a mile away. The taxi driver wasn’t even smoking.

Then the man reached into his pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes. The packet was red.

Ash’s heart sped up. He knew
exactly
what was coming next. He was going to light it and drive into the middle of the road. The yellow bus got closer.

The man lit a cigarette and shifted the gears and with a shudder and a cough of smoke, his taxi rolled forward into the junction. Rickshaws and cars and bicycles wove away, but the flow did not slow. The taxi driver, holding his cigarette loosely out of his side window, glanced up and down.

Ash waited. Any second now the ash would fall and burn the driver’s hand.

The driver winced and shook his hand, dropping the cigarette. The car kept moving and was now in the centre of the road.

Ash watched the bus; it wasn’t far now. It was unwinding like an action replay. Each second was identical to what he’d seen in his mind only moments earlier. The future was unfolding before him.

The traffic parted and the bus, battered and yellow, its racks piled high with boxes and suitcases and crates and passengers, loomed out like a whale pushing through a school of fish. The sunlight shone off the dusty front windscreen as the bus driver pushed hard on his horn.

The man, still blowing on his burned hand, did not notice.

Then the driver saw the bus. He stared in horror, then fumbled at his wheel and the gear stick. The bus began to brake and a wall of dust rose up before it.

The taxi reversed two metres and the bus thundered past, missing the car by centimetres and the passengers waved and swore at the taxi as they shot by.

Ash shook his head. He’d seen it all seconds before it actually happened.

He’d glimpsed the future.

He rubbed his forehead, half expecting to feel a third eye there, but found nothing. The Kali-aastra hummed louder than ever within every atom in his body. The Soma had done its work.

He was ready to face Savage.

“
ou look different,” said John.

John had salvaged some stuff from the cemetery, so at least Ash had a clean change of clothes: a pair of baggy trousers and a loose tunic. He’d washed off the dust and mud at a standpipe and got loaned a lump of soap for a rupee. “You mean more handsome?” Ash said.

“More something.”

“I’ve been taking my vitamins.”

“Just as long as that’s all you’ve been taking.”

Ash rolled up the katar and packed it in a rucksack with a shawl and a few other travelling bits and pieces, like a compass, torch and pair of binoculars. John had gone to the train station and found out that the 2841 train went down the western coast of India, all the way to Madras. Ash had no idea why Savage was heading south but, without Parvati around and with no better ideas, he was going to follow. He pulled the toggle of the rucksack. “You know you don’t have to come. There’ll be trouble.”

John packed up his own meagre belongings. “I was responsible for getting you in this mess. Wouldn’t be right if I didn’t help fix it.”

“We have a plan?”

John nodded. “Find Savage. Get the Koh-i-noor back. You do what you do best.”

“And what’s that?”

John waved his arms in a kung-fu-style flourish. “You know, all this.”

Ash slipped the rucksack on and looked around to see if he’d forgotten anything. “How are we getting to the airport?”

“We’re not. Bad news. No Jimmy,” John replied. “Engine failure.”

“How bad?”

“The starboard one fell off halfway across the Indian Sea. He’s sailing back.”

The plan was falling apart and they’d not even started. Ash had hoped to save a day at least by flying down to Madras. He’d never been that far south and had no idea what to expect. Since Madras had been another of the main headquarters of the East India Company, it no doubt was familiar territory to Savage. They couldn’t risk losing him again – though hiding an army of statues, including one twenty-five metres high, wouldn’t be easy. “Then what are we going to do?”

John handed Ash a slip of paper. A ticket. “Take the train too. There’s one at dusk.”

Ash threw down his backpack. The train was delayed by three hours, so there was nothing to do but wait on the platform. The world could be in total peril and he couldn’t save it because of a herd of cows on the track. Harry Potter never had these problems.

So he sat there, waiting, in the Kolkata train station, a grand imperial building that had been the pride and joy of the British Raj. The grandeur was still evident but, like so much of the city, the structure was succumbing to a sort of benign decay. Worn and crumbling, operating with ancient systems and a vast army of staff, the station had the feeling of a home. Life existed here; it was more than just a place to pass through.

Ash gazed across the tracks at a small single building called the Coolie House. A row of porters squatted in the shade, passing around a cigarette. Small children, orphans, runaways, those just lost, darted between the stacks of luggage, across the tracks, and through the stalls collecting trash – mainly empty plastic water bottles – or asking for handouts from the few Western travellers who had decided to see India by rail. A boy, younger than Lucky, balanced a battered tin tray on his head to deliver a dozen small glasses of milky tea to the khaki-uniformed staff at the signal box.

Where was Parvati? Her mobile phone was dead. It wasn’t just that he missed her and was worried about her – he
depended
on her. This was her territory, and he needed her around. The encounter with the Jagannath and Savage’s loha-mukhas still haunted him, reminding him that this wasn’t a game. The stakes were high and he didn’t know all the rules.

Simply put, he was afraid. Afraid Savage had more tricks up his sleeve. That the Soma hadn’t worked properly, that he was out of his league. He’d left a message for Parvati at the cemetery, a letter tucked under the remains of the mausoleum. He had no idea if she’d ever find it, but what else could he do?

Dear Parvati,

Savage is taking his loha-mukhas on the 2841 train down to Madras, just in case you didn’t know. I’ve no idea why he’d be going south, but I’m following with my trusty padawan, John.

I’m sorry for what I said, and even more sorry for not listening to you. You were right and I was wrong. That will have to do as an apology as I’ve a train to catch and the world to save. Again.

Your friend,

Ash

Not the best letter ever. He’d wanted to put in more, about the injustice of Gemma’s death, about trying to do something good and be more than just an instrument of Kali, about how, in spite of all his previous lives, this hero business was still new to him, and hey, who didn’t make mistakes and he’d never said he was perfect, and frankly, Parvati could have done a better job explaining things to him instead of being all superior and stuck-up, and while she was his closest friend and everything, she could be so pig-headed, and if she’d just dialled down her ego a little, she might have heard what Ash had been trying to say and they wouldn’t be in this mess, which, when you really thought about it, was as much her fault as it was his, not that she’d ever admit it.

But Ash had decided not to write any of that.

When Ash had heard he’d be going on the sleeper train, he had entertained ideas of oak-panelled Pullman carriages, white-gloved attendants and small, exquisitely furnished compartments with their own porcelain washbasins. Basically the Orient Express. Instead they approached a carriage that turned out to be nothing more than a big steel crate with bars on the windows. John checked the tickets. “This is us,” he said.

“You’re joking. This is for cattle, not people.”

“I only had enough money for third class.”

Ash sighed and climbed in. The carriage comprised of open compartments along one side of a narrow corridor. Each compartment had a pair of triple-decked bunk beds facing each other. During the day, everyone sat on the lowest bunk, with the upper two folded up against the wall. The attendant came round in the evening to unfold the top bunks, with a sheet and pillow for each passenger, and then it was lights-out.

Old women in fine saris sat while moustachioed businessmen shouted into their mobile phones and mothers wrestled with screaming kids and squalling babies. One boy, forefinger firmly fixed in his left nostril, watched Ash and John settle in.

Ash peered out of the window as the train pulled out of the station. Passengers dashed across the tracks to climb in through the open doors, helped on board by the other commuters. The train ran through grand avenues of steel track lined with the pastel-coloured government buildings. It weaved through gleaming new towers and raced along through the shanty towns that encircled the city.

Then they were running smoothly on raised tracks along endless paddy fields, and Kolkata disappeared behind the wall of swaying palm trees.

That night, everyone slept except Ash. The carriage rumbled and the wheels screeched and rattled endlessly. The fans above him droned like a squadron of mosquitoes. Couldn’t they afford to oil them? The noise put Ash’s teeth on edge.

He thought about Ujba and what he’d said about Ash’s past lives. He thought about all those people he’d seen, faces going back thousands of years from all over the world. Ashoka had been somewhere in that crowd, and Ash wanted to find him and learn more about the Koh-i-noor, especially now that Savage had it. So, with the train rattling along, the fans buzzing and the other passengers snoring, Ash closed his eyes.

He began to blank out the world around him. He let the rocking of the carriage pass through him so he felt as if he was floating, rather than resting on a shaking bunk. The noises around him faded and he lost touch with himself as he sank further inward.

He passed by grey-bearded men and women dressed in thick robes and wearing heavy jewels from ancient times. Ahead and around him there were others, some with swords or spears, some with scrolls and books or pots and quills, and he wondered what their lives had been like. Had they won their battles or lost? Parvati had told him once that the Eternal Warrior could fight for either side, for good or evil, but now as Ash looked further into his past lives he realised it wasn’t so simple. You could be hero and villain, often simultaneously. He’d been Brutus, the Roman who’d murdered Julius Caesar to save the Republic, but instead only brought about the reign of the emperors. By attempting good, his legacy had been tyranny and the era of Caligula and Nero.

Ash had ridden with the Mongols, slaughtering their way from the steppes to the very heart of Europe. But from the bones they’d built the first global empire and allowed the exchange of science, technology and new ideas between the East and West. Such great evil leading to good.

What part would he play? Would he be a hero or a villain? He had no idea. But right now he needed one man, a conqueror who, more than most, had been both.

Ashoka. Where are you?