Tantrics Of Old (25 page)

Storytellers. The men who roamed the land, the walking compendiums of legend and lore alike, Gray had heard about them, but never met one. It was said they could hold one captive for as long as they pleased, simply through their tales.

‘How do you kill them?’ Gray asked.

‘Not an easy task. They attack with their bone claws and their fangs, and if you do cut off a part of their bodies, they tend to regenerate it within hours. To kill an Ancient, one will have to first sever their connection with their bone tails, effectively severing the spine. Once this is done, the creature will writhe and twist, but it will still be just as deadly in this stage and killing it properly and entirely will involve destroying its brain inside its skull, for even the undead body continues to receive commands from the brain. Once there is a bullet or blade through the head, the Ancient will still find time to land one or two killing blows if it finds the prey in its range, and then it shall proceed to be silent forever.’

‘That was a tad more information than I bargained for,’ Gray said.

‘If you happen to be squeamish, I suggest you take that quality of yours and burn it. The Old City is not for those who cringe at the sight of blood.’

‘I
know
the Old City is not for me,’ Gray snapped. ‘Ever since I’ve come here, I’ve had creatures stalk me, had my sister kidnapped, and have been thrown around by Demons. I don’t like it here, and I refuse to see its charm. Do you see it?’

‘It is impossible to understand a place without living there long enough,’ Fayne replied. ‘For me, the only place in the world where I find peace is Ahzad.’

‘Good memories of growing up?’

‘Hardly. I was tortured there.’

Gray stared.

‘But that exactly is my point,
ta yeregee
,’ Fayne said. ‘Feeling a connection with a place, understanding the
soul
of a place, it’s not about how good it’s been to you. It’s about how you connect your memories, both good and bad, to the place. It’s not just about the virtues, but also about the vices. Today, if I was fortunate enough to reach Ahzad, I would remove my mask for a moment and take in the freezing air, and it would feel like home.’

‘I guess New Kolkata is home for me then.’

‘That place is an abomination, a home of puppets forged as an experiment. Your generation grew up as a part of it, thus you will never know what Kolkata actually is and what it was meant to be. The Old City still has all the pieces, but one must pick them up and arrange them to see the whole picture.’

Gray stared at Fayne. He didn’t know what to say. Fayne spoke without regret or fear. Here was a man who spoke his mind completely, and spoke it like fact. Gray didn’t know if that was a good thing, if he preferred things so simply, so directly. Where Adri had been largely reticent, Fayne was giving him a chance to know more about New Kolkata, about why MYTH had created the new city in the first place. Gray opened his mouth, but it was Adri who asked Fayne a question. A different one.

‘So how is it that you’re
protecting
someone? Isn’t your kind hired to do the exact opposite?’

If there was a touch of sarcasm or spite in the question, Fayne completely ignored it. ‘The assassins of Ahzad will do whatever the charge dictates; we do not hold boundaries, only the amount of time involved. I have killed countless women and children, babes in arms. There are no ethics. I could befriend you over a decade and kill you in a moment, without a single impulse of hesitation.’ He turned to look at Adri. ‘Do not toy with me, Tantric. I will slit your throat before you realise you need a spirit for your protection.’

Adri lit a cigarette. ‘No offence meant, assassin. It was, by all means, an honest question.’

‘Your questions are welcome as long as they do not turn and pierce my back. If you have something to say, say it to my face. That is what I would prefer,
pashlin
,’ Fayne said.

‘Not all of you assassins are like this. I once knew an assassin from your place, he had a jolly good sense of humour,’ Adri said. ‘Of course, what I mean by that is that I could not have anticipated your taking offence,’ he added hurriedly.

‘Who did you know?’

‘Kahn of Ahzad.’

‘How did you know him?’

‘I would like to think he is my friend. We had worked together on a series of . . . err . . .
charges
. You know him?’

Fayne nodded. Then all was silent. Gray lost his nerve to ask Fayne anything after his reaction to Adri’s question. He realised Fayne was deadly and remorseless, something Adri had already warned him about. His curiosity could wait, he decided. Who knew what it took to piss the assassin off?

Sunlight crawled down their clothes. A dagger emerged in the assassin’s hand and Gray glimpsed its red blade briefly as it sliced through the chains; the gates swung open and the dagger was gone. Fayne led the way and they followed.

The graveyard was vast and they immediately felt a sense of being enveloped as they entered. It was the last place to be maintained here in the Old City, and like Jadavpur, vegetation had taken over the graveyard as well. The pathways were covered with moss, trees spiralled and grew out of normal proportions, and vines crept all over the tombs, covering their existence. They walked softly and as silently as they could, for it was dead silent, and even Gray knew that one didn’t talk too loudly in a graveyard—it was wise to not interfere with the sleep of the dead. A fog that had been there all night was lifting as the sun came up; it swirled and moved out of the way, near their feet, as they approached. They passed grave after grave and Gray finally whispered, ‘Which one is it?’

‘The church,’ Adri replied.

They moved onward, weaving their way in and out through the cracked, silent stones and the grass that had grown up to their knees. The church’s spire was visible between the branches of a tree ahead of them. When it came into view, they saw it was old, like the graves. The stone was cracking and moss lined the walls. A part of the roof had caved in, the windows dark, desolate, glassless. It was a black, black picture, and did not look like a church at all. Gray looked at it and realised that he was scared of going into the building.

‘How come it’s in the church?’ Gray asked.

‘The Ancients mentioned that the body’s in a crypt. More chances of finding it in the catacombs than elsewhere. Plus, if he was a vampire hunter then the odds are he’d want himself buried in there,’ Adri replied, silently selecting an assortment of bullets from his bandolier.

Fayne was looking pointedly at Adri’s holsters.

‘I’m hoping the underground will muffle the shots,’ Adri replied, defensive. ‘Then again, what is a man to do? I don’t have knives like you.’

Fayne nodded. ‘If you wake the dead,’ he said, ‘I will make sure they go back to
Zahanem
, where they came from.’

‘Am I coming with you?’ Gray asked, as they neared the church.

‘No,’ Adri said.

‘Good.’

The front doors were wood and iron, rusted, rotting; vines spiralled through the carvings and hollows. One door was slightly ajar; Fayne pushed it with a strong arm, and it opened. They crept in. Everything was devastated—the benches had all crumbled and given way to time; one of the support beams of the roof had angled and dropped to the floor. A part of the roof had gutted in, allowing sunlight which lit the hall. Dust swirled lazily in the beam of light. There was no movement anywhere inside the church as they stood near the door, Adri and Fayne checking for any signs of life while Gray took in the moment, the scene in front of him, eyes wide. Then Adri moved towards the fallen support beam, slowly, a revolver in his right hand. He crossed it and saw the slab he was looking for on the floor. He signalled the other two to make their way over to him.

The three of them caught the slab by its handles, picked it up, and put it out of the way. It was carved out of pure granite and was a good three feet long on each side. It was heavy too, as the trio found out; Fayne did not seem to have much trouble with his side though, and he was the first one to look down at what they had uncovered as the other two recovered, wheezing. A small room, right below them, with a door on one side, cut into the stone. With the slab gone, sunlight fell directly into the little room; things were visible clearly. Fayne dropped in gently.

‘Is this the one?’ Adri asked from above, still panting. Gray looked at his palms, red from the lifting.

‘I think yes,’ Fayne’s voice came up from below.

Adri joined him. Recovering from the light drop, Adri looked around the room. There were no plants down here, only stillness. Nothing moved, and it felt like they were already in the tomb. The entrance to the crypt lay a few steps ahead of him. A door as old as the church, if not older, made of stone, with old writing on it, preyed on by time, but Adri could distinguish the endings of the word
Mazumder
. It was, as he had thought, the final resting place of this unheard of vampire hunter. The door bore no other signs, no art, no protective symbols. It was bare, noticeably so, something which gave it a look of immeasurability, of pure strength. A round fixture curved its way out of one side; a handle.

Adri would have wanted Fayne to come along—his weapons had harsh effects on all kinds of supernatural, Adri was sure. But even the Assassins of Ahzad were not taught the mystics of the Necromancer; the dead-talkers had since long protected their art within their inner circles, whispering it in closed classrooms under supervision of the government which they were a part of. No one else knew, and it had to remain that way; and it was for this reason that today Adri Sen would have to walk in alone through a protected crypt. It also was the reason, Adri mused, that Fayne had let them live and was travelling at their pace.

‘Adios, Adri. Hopefully, I will see you soon,
with
the body,’ Gray spoke. He still hadn’t stepped into the pit.

‘I’m off, then,’ Adri said. His stomach felt a bit queasy. He had no spirits, and summoning them would take a while, a luxury they did not have. But then again, maybe he should summon spirits before he entered. He did not know of a single Tantric who had braved a protected tomb without a spirit’s shield; except, of course, his father. Yes, his father had done it. There was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to. Adri walked up to the door. The handle was the first trap and the easiest one to avoid. He pressed a flat hand on the door.
A vampire hunter, eh? Maybe nord
. He moved his fingers on the surface of the door, drawing a certain invisible pattern. Nothing happened when he finished.
Glesh, then
. Adri’s fingers moved again, and nothing happened again. Wait, he thought. Why was he thinking defensive? The most powerful offensive sign against vampires was what he needed to try here. The cross. Quickly he drew it, imbibing it in a circle, and as soon as he finished, a low rumble started. Adri stepped back as the door began to shake, bits of dust and dirt dislodging themselves. Finally the hinges found life, and the door swung open. And then all was still.

Fayne’s eyes darted in every direction, trying to catch sounds of movement, any evidence of anything which might have heard the rumbling. But nothing else was heard, the stillness was back. Adri did not look back, but at the darkness before him. He dropped his backpack, and withdrew his hip flask with the flammable liquid. Fayne understood his purpose and quietly climbed out of the pit. By the time Adri had decided which shirt to sacrifice, Fayne was back with a large dead branch. Adri wrapped the shirt around the dead branch, soaked it with the liquid, and set his makeshift torch on flame. Then, not picking up his bag, he entered the darkness of the crypt.

This whole torch business was so much easier with a spirit around, Adri thought. He walked softly and slowly, being extremely careful before he would plant a step. He was walking through a tunnel which led
down
, into the earth; the sides of the tunnel were cut straight out of rock, roughly, and without detail or workmanship. Adri’s torch burnt fiercely as he burned down old, gigantic cobwebs, but he knew the torch wouldn’t last too long, he had to hurry up. Yet one false step could be his last, and he checked for trapdoors and switches the best he could as he walked gingerly down the tunnel.

Physical traps weren’t the deadliest of things in crypts; magic was. Protectors and protective charms, blood curses and enchantments, these were what he was looking out for. Most crypts, however, weren’t designed keeping Tantrics in mind. It would be the occasional grave robber that the traps were actually meant for. Adri was counting on his ability to sense magic to keep him out of harm’s way as far as magical things were concerned. But one never knew, a lot of buried folk had a fancy for giant spikes, lethal sharp blades and big boulders rolling downhill; Adri would certainly have to be on his toes.

He was slowly getting nervous. For some time he’d been hearing a low grating noise somewhere in the darkness behind him. He suspected the presence of a golem, but as he made his way further and further down into the tunnel, he faced nothing. The queasy feeling in his stomach, however, only increased. Even though he didn’t want to admit it, the absence of any noise, the dead quiet coupled with the apparent absence of any resistance was getting to him. He looked behind him many times, but nothing appeared to be following him. What also plagued him was the thought of how he was going to get the dead body all the way back up. But that was something to worry about later. He was here for the owner of the crypt, and he would not leave without him.

His mental state did not improve as he continued walking downward for the next twenty minutes. The corridor was endless; it stretched, took turns, had slight drops and climbs, all as it headed steadily downwards. The air got thinner, and Adri was beginning to have breathing trouble. He began to wonder if there was even a crypt here. Perhaps that door was simply a decoy of sorts. But he could not go back up, not without the body, not until he could walk no more and Fayne and Gray had to come down to check on him. Adri began to tire as he descended, and slowly his mind began to offer explanations.