We Shall Be Monsters, page 25
Kajal heard heavy, stomping footsteps. She tensed as they grew closer, expecting to find a rakshasa of some sort—a daitya, perhaps, with tusks and a thick, impenetrable hide.
But the figure that came into view was that of a man. A large man, easily close to seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and densely packed muscles along his chest and arms. His dark hair hung loose and unwashed, his clothes thin and disintegrating under stained armor. In one meaty hand, he gripped a heavy gada, the spherical head of the gilded mace crowned with a deadly spike.
The sight of him dried Kajal’s mouth. How were they supposed to get past him and see if he guarded a piece of Advaith’s body?
As he approached their hiding spot, Kajal noticed that his eyes were blank and filmy. Not the disturbing white of the blighted soldiers but instead unfocused, as if he were trapped within his own mind. Even more disturbing was the spot in the middle of his forehead where a small wound rested like a horrific imitation of a third eye, continuously weeping blood. Trickles of it ran down his nose and dripped off his chin.
Tav’s gaze was fixated on the warrior. Not in fear, but in recognition.
“Ranbir,” he breathed. “He was Advaith’s personal guard.” His fingertips paled against the bark of the tree. “My brother is here.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kajal recalled Tav mentioning Ranbir in Advaith’s quarters, when they’d searched for where he’d gone. He explained again for the dakini.
“My father chose his best warrior to be my brother’s guard,” Tav whispered once Ranbir had walked past. “But he was still only human, and Advaith worried he’d get hurt during his asura missions. So he put some of his own power into a ruby that he fused to Ranbir’s forehead to grant him extra protection.” He touched the spot between his brows where Ranbir was bleeding. “Someone must have forcefully removed it, and the loss affected his mind.”
Ruhi gave a thoughtful hum. “Our most skilled have tried to confront him, but they returned heavily injured. One did not survive. But you are the deva.”
The way she said it wasn’t an admission that his power was greater; it was merely an acknowledgment that his power was different, and therefore might have a better chance than they did. Tav took a deep breath and settled a hand on his rusty talwar.
Kajal’s chest ached with foreboding. If they were going to get past Ranbir, that meant fighting Ranbir, and she very much did not like the sound of that. When she took out her scalpel, the dakini nearest her scoffed.
“What are you going to do with that? Prick a couple holes in his boots?” The dakini tugged a sheathed dagger from her belt and handed it to Kajal. “Here.”
The sheath was plain leather, and the blade she drew was gently curved, like a tusk. Its hilt was narrow at the grip and wide at the pommel, and it was unadorned save for a subtle swirling design.
“You know how to use it?” the dakini asked.
“Point the sharp part away from me and hope for the best?”
The dakini’s three eyes narrowed. “Good enough.”
Lasya’s bhuta had materialized in situations of extreme duress. Would it do so again, Kajal wondered, when she faced a huge, mindless warrior who could cave her skull in? But there was that strange, stagnant atmosphere in the forest, the sheer number of dead muting her connection with her sister. Every so often, the breeze carried a whisper in a voice that was not Lasya’s. No one else seemed to hear it.
“There’s a spot in the middle of the clearing where nothing grows,” Ruhi told Tav. “Whatever he guards is buried there.”
Tav quietly unsheathed his talwar. He gave Kajal a look that conveyed she didn’t have to go. She shook her head, and he made a face at her stubbornness before he crept into the clearing. She followed after.
The dakinis stayed behind, their bows primed in case Ranbir decided to break out of the clearing. They had to think of the village’s safety first and foremost, but Kajal wished at least one of them would have come along. As far as backup went, Kajal was the pesky flea to Tav’s hunting dog.
The clearing was large enough that Ranbir didn’t notice them at first. He kept his steady, slow pace, circling the mound in the center. But when Tav took a step toward it, Ranbir’s head snapped up, vacant eyes pinning him in place.
“Ranbir,” Tav whispered, then raised his voice. “Ranbir! Do you recognize me? I am Tavinder Thakar, Advaith’s brother. He—”
Ranbir had no patience for the prince’s speech, raising his gada with a roar before he charged.
Kajal yelped and dove to one side. Tav dodged and held out his hand.
“Sudarshana chakra, enlighten me with the gods’ will,” he said quickly as Ranbir turned. “Sudarshana chakra, grant me the power to defend!”
But like before, the weapon refused to appear.
“Damn it.”
Instead, he covered his talwar in crackling blue energy and rushed at Ranbir. The warrior thumped his mace so hard against the ground that it trembled underneath Kajal’s feet.
While Ranbir was distracted, Kajal scrambled toward the mound and started to dig, uneasily reminded of the Harama Plain as she used the dagger to loosen the soil.
She heard Tav’s yelp of pain before something grabbed her and flung her away. She didn’t have the breath to scream as her elbows and knees banged against the ground until she rolled to a stop at the base of a tree.
Tav attacked Ranbir from behind, grabbing his attention once more. “Stay away from him! Let me tire him out first!”
Kajal struggled to push herself up. “I don’t think he can get tired!”
Ranbir was about to slam the gada into Tav’s chest when an arrow whizzed by and struck the warrior in the neck. Ranbir barely staggered, but he did stop to wrench the arrow out with a spray of blood. In response, the hole in his forehead bled harder.
The dakini’s arrow only made him angrier. He roared again and swung his gada at Tav, who blocked it, impossibly, with his reinforced talwar, his arm pressed against the blade’s blunt side. Tav’s feet made trenches in the earth as he was pushed back, teeth gritted and the tendons of his neck protruding.
Kajal lunged for the mound to start digging again.
“No!”
She stopped at Tav’s cry. Ranbir towered over her, gilded mace hurtling straight for her head. She unthinkingly called for Lasya, but the forest’s protective spells were too thick, filled with the wailing whispers of the dead seeking vengeance.
Tav dove into the gada’s path, stopping it with his body. He grunted as he caught it in his arms.
“Tav!” she yelled.
“I’m all right,” he ground out, his inhuman strength the only thing between him and a broken rib cage. “Hurry!”
But even if she did dig up what they assumed to be part of Advaith, she was sure Ranbir would chase after it. Kajal glanced at her fallen dagger, mind racing while the clearing filled with vehement whispers. Among them came the memory of Dalbir’s voice.
Tamas, then, is the chaos of the rakshasas: turmoil, instability, and death.
She grabbed the dagger and stood, backing away from Ranbir and Tav’s ongoing struggle. Tav was flagging, being pushed down by the warrior’s undaunted force.
There was no halahala here—at least not yet. But there was something else just as restless. And if she could wake the dormant energies within a body, perhaps there were other things she could awaken.
Kajal made a jagged gash in her palm, her blood dribbling into the grass.
“Spirits, awake and come to me.” She invented her own mantra on the spot as she pressed her wound to the bark of the nearest tree. “Spirits, awake and do my bidding.”
All around her, the forest groaned and screeched. The earth trembled harder than it had when Ranbir pounded his mace, and the bark under her hand burned so cold she nearly yanked her arm back.
The whispers grew into a raging crescendo. Kajal gritted her teeth and focused on the lure of her blood. Fissures split the ground, and Tav lost his footing; Ranbir bore down on him with the mace’s spike aimed at Tav’s eye.
But before Tav could be skewered, roots in the shape of human arms emerged from the fissures and grabbed Ranbir.
The warrior swung his gada fruitlessly as the root arms took hold of his shoulders, his wrists, his thighs. They kept piling on, wooden fingers digging into Ranbir’s flesh, until the warrior fell and was pinned to the grass.
Ranbir fought even while the roots snaked over his prone body. Tav dropped to his knees above Ranbir’s head and pressed his fingers to the warrior’s bloodied temples, his thumbs covering the open wound in Ranbir’s forehead.
Tav closed his eyes and lit up with his power. It washed the clearing in an aquamarine radiance, giving Kajal a feeling of unreality. Like she was drifting somewhere at the bottom of a lake, looking up at a sun-dappled surface she could never reach.
“Ranbir,” Tav called, his voice echoing. “Return, Ranbir.”
The warrior struggled against the root limbs, baring bloodstained teeth. But eventually, he calmed down, his breaths coming in great, heaving gasps. He blinked until the filminess left his eyes.
Tav opened his own eyes. The light around him shrank and faded. Kajal pushed her palm harder against the bark.
Go back, she thought. Go and fulfill your punishment.
The whispers snarled and hissed in her ears, raising the hairs on her arms. But the roots let go and retreated into the ground like the vines of blight that had killed the Vadhia. Kajal’s legs gave out, and she sank to the grass.
Ranbir lay dazed and wounded in Tav’s hold. He was staring up at the prince as if it were the first time he’d ever seen the sun.
“A…Advaith,” the warrior croaked, his deep voice so broken Kajal wondered how it worked at all.
Tav’s expression of relief fell into despair. He opened his mouth, then decided against whatever he was going to say. Instead, he nodded. “Yes. You’re safe now, Ranbir.”
But even Kajal could see that wasn’t true. The years of mindlessly guarding this clearing had taken a toll on the warrior’s body that he had been unable to succumb to until now. The spot on his forehead where the ruby had once been fused had stopped bleeding, but his other wounds hadn’t.
“I’m…sorry, Your Highness,” Ranbir rumbled. He tried to raise his arm, but he was too weak even for that. “For whatever…I did wrong.”
Tav took his hand. “You did nothing wrong.”
Ranbir’s eyelids fluttered closed. “I must…have done something. For you to…revoke your protection.”
Tav glanced at Ranbir’s forehead. “What? Why would he— Why would I do that?”
“So sorry, Your Highness,” Ranbir was whispering, his voice fading. “You have…my devotion, even unto the next life…”
“Ranbir? Ranbir!”
Kajal saw the moment Ranbir’s life severed from this world, between one heartbeat and eternal silence. Tav’s power flowed through his hands again.
“Tav,” Kajal called. “He’s gone.”
Unlike when he’d tried to heal the dead yaksha, this time he didn’t need telling twice. The blue light faded, and Tav hung his head, whispering a prayer over Ranbir’s body.
The dakinis cautiously entered the clearing. Ruhi went to kneel beside Tav and offer condolences while the other two gave Kajal strange looks.
Kajal wiped her bloody hand on her kurti before handing the dagger back. The dakini who’d offered it to her shook her head.
“Keep it.” She glanced at the fissures within the clearing, then at the tree where Kajal had pressed her wounded palm. The blood was gone, absorbed by the wood. “You…”
The other dakini gripped her partner’s wrist. Kajal flushed at the thought that they could be scared of her. That someone who had always been called a witch could unnerve an actual dakini.
She stared at her cut palm until a shadow fell over her and two gentle, shaking hands cupped hers.
Tav quietly focused on her wound. The magic flowing into her was warm and sweet: the smell of sunshine on a late spring day, the swirl of pollen in a field of marigolds, the soothing light on a lazy river. Her eyes stung, and she had to squeeze them shut.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “About Ranbir.”
She felt more than saw him shake his head. “He was suffering. Ruhi says they’ll burn his body, so at least he can move on.” He pulled in a shuddering breath. “What you did…”
Kajal stilled, but he didn’t stop feeding power into her, her palm itching and tingling where the flesh knit back together.
“I didn’t know something like that was possible,” he said at last.
She opened her eyes. Her wound had healed into a tender brown line, but he didn’t let go yet. “It’s the forest. It’s sort of like the Harama Plain, but…different. Those bodies were being controlled by blight.”
“And these bodies exude tamas,” Tav guessed.
Her mouth twitched at how fast he’d caught on. “Yes. I thought if I could tap into the body’s sattva for healing, then maybe I could also tap into tamas.”
For a moment, her head rang with the reverberation of Lasya’s scream. Kajal swayed, but Tav kept hold of her. They remained like that as the dakinis stripped the armor off Ranbir’s body.
“He said something about Advaith revoking his protection,” Kajal said. “Does that mean Advaith was the one to remove his gem?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t have done something like that. Not without good reason. I don’t…I don’t understand any of this.”
He didn’t seem to notice the tear that escaped the corner of his eye. Before she realized what she was doing, she lifted her other hand to catch it on her thumb.
“Nothing eludes us forever,” she said. “Not even death.”
He stared at her. His tear clung wetly to the pad of her thumb.
What am I doing?
She lurched to her feet and nearly fell against the tree behind her. But when she turned to the half-dug mound, Tav stopped her.
“I’ll do it,” he murmured.
Tav gradually unearthed a small wooden trunk. He hesitated before undoing the latch and opening the lid. The inside was packed with dirt, and when he brushed it away, he recoiled.
Within the dirt was a head with the same thick black hair and long lashes as Tav. Advaith’s eyes were closed, and unlike the expression of serenity that had been on Tav’s face, his brother bore a small furrow between his brows.
The dakinis fell to their knees and prostrated themselves to the asura’s head. Kajal was the only one who remained standing, the only one who kept her gaze on Tav’s bowed shoulders as she traced the slant of her new scar.
They now had two-thirds of Advaith’s body. They were a step closer to the possibility of the asura and deva walking the mortal plane together once more.
* * *
They set up a pyre for Ranbir in the clearing. Kajal helped them make a firebreak, remembering how the rebels had burned the body of the blighted deer in Kinara’s forest. It felt like centuries ago.
As she brushed the dirt off her hands, Ruhi approached her. “Let us give the deva privacy to mourn.” She nodded at Tav. Holding the box in his arms while fire licked up Ranbir’s body, he looked the embodiment of exhaustion.
“Thank you for your help,” Kajal said hoarsely as the dakini elder led her toward the village. She continued to run her thumb over the scar on her palm, wondering if Ruhi would ask about what she’d done.
“It is our duty to assist the asura and deva.” Ruhi seemed to want to say something else, but she remained silent until they reached the edge of the village.
The elder stopped. The two of them studied each other, Kajal appraising the blue eye upon the dakini’s forehead until Ruhi stepped forward and pressed a cool thumb to the center of Kajal’s brow.
Kajal gasped when a cool sensation traveled through her body while the spot upon her forehead burned. Her eyes prickled as Ruhi stared into them—into her—through bone and tissue and muscle, into whatever fragile, pathetic thing made up Kajal.
The dakini stepped back with a sigh. “You have killed. Your actions took the lives of innocents, and even that of your sister.”
Kajal couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. The cold sat inside her, churning and aching, a storm of her own making. Everything that was the inverse of Tav’s warm light.
“You believe it is your fault,” Ruhi went on. “It’s true that our mistakes often harm others. Sometimes they cause a grief too great to bear. But there are moments when we must take action despite this. There is a difference between making the right choice and having a choice at all.”
The pressure building in Kajal’s throat released in a sob. There was a dark, twisted root inside her like the roots of the forest, made of death and blood and horror. She couldn’t pry it out—had to instead grow around it, forever gnarled and bent.
The dakini held her shoulders and pressed the top of her forehead to Kajal’s. They stood there for a while, saying nothing and saying everything. The tears on Kajal’s face were warm.
“Remember that darkness takes many forms and comes in many shades.”
Kajal sniffed and nodded as Ruhi leaned back.
“Come, you need cha.”
When Tav returned, Kajal was more or less put together, sitting with Ruhi and a couple of curious women—both widows, and both by choice—as she finished her cha. He took one look at her and rushed over, kneeling by the stump she was perched on.
“What happened?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
She was momentarily rendered speechless. Why was he still so concerned over her when he held his brother’s head in his arms? But his attention was on her, not the box, and it gave her newfound satisfaction.
