The Winter Beast and other tales Read online

BLOOD BOND

  When her chamberlain gave her the jade earring, Kalabai stepped out from behind the purdah screen and addressed the eunuch directly, "You could have taken that from my brother's lifeless body." But when the eunuch placed the letter on her tray and she read it, she knew Sidda was still alive. Written weakly in his own hand, it was the hymn to Tara — his favorite one — with a subtle change or two, as was his caprice.

  Entering upon the road, hands and feet reddened

  with the blood of slain elephants, I see you.

  Upon the road I think of you,

  a tiger trampled beneath your feet,

  and thus I pass into the dense forest.

  Those who do not stop on their path of killing,

  O Tara, even they are conquered

  and bow down before you.

  My poor brother, she thought. The poet within you has suffered much.

  She turned to the eunuch. She doubted that even a single hair grew beneath the pagri wrapped around his fat head, for he had no eyebrows at all.

  "Tell Lord Narsya that this affront is unendurable. Tell him that if he does not release my brother at once, I shall have my father's kinsmen raise troops enough to destroy your master's stronghold and add his lands to my own. He shall be blinded, his tongue cut out, and he banished as a penniless beggar." Kalabai tried to swallow her queasiness. This kind of diplomacy was risky, but it just might gain Sidda his freedom in one stroke.

  The eunuch bowed his head slightly, averting his eyes. Gently, in a tone of apology, he said, "My master knows that your kinsmen will not come. They resent you for ruling here as Maharani, refusing marriage for these many years. Some even think your father's illness to be unnatural, because he planned to adopt a son and heir. The only troops at your command are your bodyguard, and they are Pathan mercenaries."

  My life, Kalabai thought bitterly, must be written across the sky for everyone to read.

  "Lord Narsya asks a great sum of gold for my brother's ransom."

  The eunuch bowed his head again, as if it pained him to speak so bluntly to a great lady. "My master bids me to tell you that because the man is your half brother, the ransom named is only half the gold he would usually ask."

  The ransom would by no means break her treasury, but it was more than a Maharaja's bastard warranted. Why did Sidda have to drive such a wedge between himself and the family? She remembered when they were children and lived together here. He would come to her chambers at night and recite poems for his younger sister.

  "Tell your master that the ransom will be delivered."

  “I am to accompany it," said the eunuch.

  Kalabai instructed her chamberlain to arrange it. "And send a heavy guard as escort," she told him.

  "My pardon," the eunuch said, "but my master has strictly forbidden that armed men shall come to his palace."

  Kalabai frowned. "Doesn't he know that the countryside is thick with robbers and practitioners of thugee?”

  "He does. He fears them not."

  "I do. I will not send a chest of gold unguarded along those forest trails where anyone could be hiding." She walked to her balcony and looked out across the jungle spreading toward the distant mountains, massive peaks rising misty from the clouds. "I will go with the ransom myself," she said, turning back to the eunuch. "Surely your master cannot deny a noble lady her bodyguard."

  The eunuch stood speechless, his eyes alight with panic. "Forgive me," he finally said, "but this would be most unwise of the Maharani. My master's instructions were very explicit."

  "He simply did not foresee this. And I will go with you." She nodded to her chamberlain. "Prepare my bodyguard for travel."

  "Please, my lady, please do not come," begged the eunuch. "An illness haunts Lord Narsya's palace. For those of good heart, there is only suffering in that place."

  The forest pressed close to the path, so that Kalabai and the captain of her guard could no longer ride two-abreast. His name, she knew, was Sherkhan, and he drew his tulwar now as he took the lead, letting the blade rest lightly on his shoulder. His mail coat and spiked helmet flashed in the beams of sunlight lancing through the trees. Though he was a foreigner, Kalabai regarded him as Kshatriya — warrior caste, almost equal to her own — and when his shadow touched her person she felt no spiritual defilement. The remainder of the guard, and the porters with the iron-bound chest, followed with the eunuch on foot.

  The eunuch had blinked in surprise, his familiarity with her suddenly colored with a quiet awe, when he saw how she dressed for the journey, in a man's silk jacket and the riding breeches that Sidda had brought back from Jodhpur — even more when she mounted a horse instead of a palanquin. That had been Sidda's gift to her, teaching her to ride and to hunt, and teaching her that she didn't have to be quiet and stay in her place. That had been when they still loved each other, before the day they rode past the river pavilion.

  Nine summers ago she had been fifteen, he almost twenty. Her horse had shrieked and reared. She was thrown to the ground. Something massive, a white streak and snapping noises in the forest. Then the tiger bounding at her. Sidda jumping in front, swinging his sword, screaming for her to run. His sword arm in the tiger's jaws. The sudden silence after, and her brother's blood on the floor of the jungle.

  His wounds healed but somehow he did not. Not that Sidda ever became afraid of the forest. He went there often for solitude. He even developed a sympathy for tigers, crowding his chambers with engravings and sculptures of the great cats. But he no longer sat with Kalabai in the parrot garden, never rode with her. For that matter, he never again rode at all.

  It was an argument over the hunting of tigers that began his growing apart from Father and the family. When their father decreed a bounty on tiger pelts, Sidda had said, "There's not very many of them, and they'll not hurt anyone if you just leave them alone, can't you see that?" Several pelts were brought to the palace that month, none belonging to the white that had attacked them. When, following that, three hunters were found mauled to death, Sidda had foamed with anger. He had stormed into Father's durbar room shouting, "This is your fault. This is what happens when you do not leave them alone!"

  Soon after that, her brother began going to the city, staying days at a time and returning with foul sherab on his breath, his eyes red and his face dark. Father heard rumors of gambling loses, dalliances with questionable women. Many young men took a turn at that sort of thing, Kalabai knew, but even at home he never did much but sleep and brood, never wanted to help manage the affairs of the family, and when anyone spoke to him he only answered with sarcasm or contempt. When Father announced that he would adopt a son as his heir, it only got worse.

  Kalabai and her escort followed the forest path for six days, breaking into the open near a river village. Beyond lay the domain of Lord Narsya. They passed along the dirt streets, stopping at the river where the water ran shallow against a sandy bank. A dozen peasant women squatted there, talking and washing clothes in the late-morning heat. While the horses drank and the guards filled their water jugs, a gang of a hundred sweaty laborers, bare-chested and clad in dhotis, came down from the town.

  The workmen chatted good-naturedly as they splashed into the river to wash their feet or drink, or stand on the bank and call jibes to their friends. But none of them went more than a few steps from where he had dropped his pickaxe. Kalabai began to move away from the filthy men. Some of them looked like the worst kind of badmash.

  "Hey Bhimsha," one of them said to his fellow, rather loudly, "pass the tobacco!"

  Calmly, each man took up his pick or shovel, as if getting ready to return to work. Then, calmly, they set upon the soldiers, five or six to a man, cutting them down with axe blades, driving their picks through the guard's chain mail and deep into their bodies, mostly from behind. Sherkhan pushed Kalabai behind him and stood alone against a handful of the thugs. He felled two of them with his tulwar before a shovel blade
caught him in the back of the neck.

  Then it was over. The assassins sang praises to Kali as they melted back into the town with the treasure chest. Kalabai and the eunuch stood alone at the water's edge. Her bodyguard and porters were dead, their blood a new vein in the skin of the river.

  The eunuch shook his head. "It is sad that the Maharani did not listen to this lowly one."

  "Do you mean that this is Lord Narsya's doing?" Kalabai said through angry sobs.

  "Yes," whispered the eunuch, "as you were warned."

  "What, is your master a beast?" she said hotly. "These men had families. Sherkhan . . . he has five children — one who has never seen his father. And now he never will." Her tears fell upon the dead man's cheek.

  The eunuch looked at her gravely, daring to meet her eye. "Dharma is satisfied, my lady." When she cocked her head at that, he explained. "Were these men not sworn to live and die by your command?"

  "Yes."

  "Then they have done so."

  Lord Narsya's palace had long been known as The Golden Fortress, but when Kalabai first saw it, she thought it looked more like an ancient temple, carved with voluptuous beauties in bare stone and no gold to be seen. It had been built at the top of a low cliff, an enormous shelf of rock that allowed no blade of grass to grow within sight of the palace. Another verse of the hymn came to her mind unbidden.

  A man wise in daily prayer,

  bound captive in prison

  by all the lords of this earth,

  need but think of Tara

  and instantly bursts his bonds.

  The eunuch had advised her to go no further. He had almost begged her. Now that Lord Narsya had his gold, her brother would be released. But Kalabai knew better.

  She wondered if that was how they had taken Sidda unaware — thugs posing as friendly strangers. If they robbed him and still wanted more, he must not have had much silver left. What was it that the eunuch had said? For those of good heart. . . . Kalabai wanted to believe that her brother had a good heart.

  After Father had made it clear that Sidda was not to be his heir, her brother's gambling became excessive, as did his debt. One day, when he went to the bazaar to find gifts for his women, he insisted that Kalabai go with him and bring a few guards. Even so, he kept looking around, staying in her palanquin most of the time, as if he knew that someone was there searching for him.

  He went to the city less often for a time. Then came the killing of a local badmash, something Kalabai would never have heard of, but for the method. The killers had used weapons made of the teeth and claws of a tiger, no doubt to cover their crime. But, foolishly, they had done their murder in the city, in an alley of the prostitutes’ quarter — the city walls were much too high for a tiger to have crossed over. Sidda had seemed more relaxed after that, and more agitated as well. Kalabai began to smell sherab on his breath early in the day.

  Father eventually learned of the huge debt and paid it. He gave Sidda enough silver so that he could live in modest comfort for the rest of his life and told him that there would be no more allowance. If Sidda squandered this and came to poverty, it would be his own fault. Then Father told him that he could no longer live in the palace. He offered Sidda use of the river pavilion.

  Sidda's eyes had turned red with anger, his only answer a low sound in his throat, and Kalabai had been suddenly afraid for her father. But later, when Sidda told her good-bye, he laughed about it. "I suppose that I'm entering my time as a hermit somewhat early in life," he said.

  But he lived in the river pavilion less than a month. His manservant had risen one morning to find him gone. The old fellow told Father that Sidda had become a sannyasi, a possessionless wanderer. Father had snorted, saying that Sidda carried enough silver to feed a hundred beggars for a thousand years. But soon Father's health seemed to fail him, and they never spoke of Sidda. Kalabai had not seen her brother since.

  The durwan at the gate of the fortress was a pock-marked giant, with a hairy face and the nose of a bull. He opened the great iron-strapped doors when he saw the eunuch, and Kalabai passed within. She waited in a room walled with pierced marble while the eunuch reported to his master. He soon returned, his face pinched with hurt.

  "I am to show you to your brother now," he said. "But my master commands you to parley with him as soon as you are refreshed. He is very angry."

  Kalabai pursed her lips. She wished that she could have seen Lord Narsya's face when he opened the chest.

  The eunuch led her down a narrow corridor that looked like it had once been adorned with precious metals, long since stripped away. Kalabai nodded. Lord Narsya’s treasury is empty. That’s why he has turned to abducting royal sons for ransom.

  In a niche behind a beaded curtain the eunuch slid a small panel aside, and through a marble grillwork she saw her brother there in the next room. Surrounded by murals and tapestries, Sidda lay asleep on a divan in the center of a large iron cage.

  Kalabai whirled to face the eunuch, who quickly closed the panel. "He has my brother caged! Why? How could he be so cruel?"

  The eunuch bowed his head. "Lord Narsya has knowledge of many secrets, my lady."

  Kalabai bathed quickly, the perfumed water smelling sickly sweet, then she dressed in the white silk bodice and sari that she had brought for this audience with Lord Narsya. She had never met the man, but clothing that showed her better curves might prove disarming. He was, after all, a man. She placed the jeweled cap on her head and went to the door of her suite. A nod to the eunuch told him she was ready.

  The durbar chamber was a deep room, lush with silk curtains, Persian rugs, ivory, ebony, and a carved ceiling set with green crystals. The air stood thick with pungent incense. In dim light at the far end of the room, a figure sat in a golden chair, speaking with courtiers on gilded stools at his side. As she approached he turned to face her. She took in a short, sharp breath.

  A vampire, his body brown-haired,

  dark as obsidian,

  bound by his very sinews to hunger and thirst

  and the slaughter of men,

  even he is conquered by the thought of Tara.

  Lord Narsya looked older than anyone she had ever seen, his skin a weathered hide, dry and cracked, his eyes deep within their sockets and his hands shriveled to bony talons. A gold tiara rested on his hairless skull. He wore gold bangles at his wrists. Even his jacket and paijama were interwoven with golden threads.

  "So," he snapped, "you've been a clever girl."

  "You may address me as Maharani."

  He squinted at her. "You dally with your brother's life. Why have you come without the gold I demanded?"

  "I only filled the chest with stones as a precaution against robbers. It seems that I was correct to do so."

  "Then you intend to pay the ransom?"

  "Yes. It is nearby, where I can easily call for it."

  Lord Narsya stroked his chin with inch-long fingernails. "Nothing takes place in this domain without my knowledge. If so much gold were on my lands, I would be able to smell it." The courtiers laughed at that, and Kalabai saw that they, too, were ancient, and all of them had had their faces painted gold.

  Through brown broken teeth, Lord Narsya flashed a cruel grin at Kalabai. "If you lie to me again," he said, "I will have your brother brought here and slain before your eyes. Now, where is the ransom that is due to me?"

  Kalabai looked him in the eye and made her question a challenge. "Do you swear by all the gods that you will free Sidda if I produce it?"

  "I swear it," Lord Narsya said, his voice husky with greed.

  Kalabai removed the cap and carefully unbound her hair, taking out the tiny bundle of cloth that lay hidden there. She removed the diamond and held it out in the palm of her hand. "This is worth more than you asked," she said.

  Lord Narsya threw his head back in anguish. "Foolish girl! It was gold that I wanted, gold that I need. That was th
e whole point." He glanced again at the diamond, clenching his fists as he cried, "Too bad, too bad. Oh, too bad!"

  A lady of the court, a skeletal figure whose head teetered on a skin-and-bone neck, croaked in a shrill voice, "Can you not trade the gem for pure gold, my lord?"

  "Yes, yes," said Lord Narsya peevishly. "But it is hard to find someone with that much gold who is willing to spend it on a bauble." He looked at Kalabai, then back to the lady, instantly falling calm. "It will take time, my dear. Too much time for one of us, I'm afraid." He smiled at her.

  The lady took a meaning from him that Kalabai didn't understand. She stood, her eyes bright with green flames.

  "No," she screeched, "you cannot! I know what this is — you mean to bring her into the circle. I appreciate her beauty, my lord, but I am the eldest. Choose another."

  Lord Narsya raised his chin to her. "I choose you."

  She saw that there was no moving him. She fell to her knees, sobbing. "Please, my lord, not me. I have been faithful for centuries. Not me."

  Lord Narsya motioned to one of his bodyguards, a Mongol with a huge sword in his sash. The guard took hold of the woman's sari and dragged her from the room. She whimpered softly as she went, "I am the eldest . . . the eldest."

  "Please," said Lord Narsya, turning back to Kalabai, "sit. Let me offer you refreshment."

  He went to a Chinese cabinet and opened it with a key that hung from his wrist bangle, gingerly bringing out a heavy glass decanter. The courtiers leaned forward in their seats, frowning when Lord Narsya called for only two goblets. He honored Kalabai by pouring with his own hands.

  "The elixir," he said, handing her a golden cup.

  As politeness required, Kalabai took a sip. It was tart, with an aftertaste like blood. She held her cup closer to the light and looked into it, seeing tiny glittering grains suspended in the clear wine.

  "What is this?" she asked. "There's a golden powder in it."

  "Killed gold, to be precise. Pure gold is hammered into leaf, perforated, bathed in a paste of lemon juice and ash of mercury, then roasted a dozen times. It is the key ingredient for the elixir of life. You should feel an increase in vitality almost at once."

  She did feel stronger, and more bold.

  Lord Narsya could see it, and he smiled. "The elixir is more effective," he said, "when one wears pure gold against the skin. Now come and sit at my side as a courtier. And tell me, would you like to keep your fragile beauty for a very long time?"

  "I think not," Kalabai said.

  "No need to commit yourself now," he said. "Spend a little time here as my guest. You should be quite decided in a decade or two."

  Kalabai sat in the guest chambers and stared into her silver hand-mirror. The kohl lining her eyes had smeared, making her look desperate, hunted.

  Discomposed by Lord Narsya's talk of dark alchemy, she had excused herself from the court. The courtiers had laughed for a moment, then began clamoring for a share of her nearly-full goblet. Lord Narsya had allowed her to go, with the eunuch as escort. Even now he stood guard outside her door. Kalabai was as much a prisoner as Sidda.

  She cracked the door. The outer room lay empty but for the eunuch.

  "I must speak to my brother," she said.

  "Do not worry, my lady, the master will release him soon."

  "I know. But Lord Narsya will not tell Sidda that I am here. Take me to him at once."

  The eunuch shook his head sadly. "I cannot. It would be my life."

  "Not even for your lady?" she said softly.

  He took a deep breath. "My lady knows that I worship her, but she must not ask me to do this." Falling to his knees before her, he said, "Please. Let me help you lose your sorrows in pleasure. Let me call for musicians and dancers, wine and delicacies. I am well trained in the art of sensual massage. My fingers can bring you the most exquisite delight. These things I can do."

  Kalabai looked down at him. "Do you have a good heart?"

  "No," he said. "I did once, but no longer."

  She lowered herself to the floor, and reaching out, placed her hand over the eunuch's heart. "I believe it is still good."

  The eunuch closed his eyes against swift tears and said, "I am blinded. I cannot see if my lady comes or goes. Very near, beyond the blue room, there is a white door. . . ."

  Kalabai went softly. A maid saw her before she found the blue room but didn't take any notice. Then she was through the white door, running to the cage, grasping the cold iron bars, and Sidda opened his eyes and smiled weakly at her.

  Slowly, with effort, he said, "To look upon you is lovelier than paradise, my sweet sister, yet I never thought to bring you to this pit of demons."

  Then she saw the binding around his chest, and how it leaked blood. "Sidda, you're hurt! They didn't tell me."

  He propped himself up on one elbow, wincing with the pain. "Bitten by a tooth of Kali."

  Kalabai thought about the river. She remembered those teeth.

  "Sidda, I have paid your ransom. Lord Narsya will release you now, but he means to keep me captive. You must go and find help. Father is too ill — one of our uncles perhaps."

  He shook his head, looking faint for a moment as his boyish face beaded with sweat. "Even if they would see me, my wound is deep. I'm too hurt to go alone." He looked at the old scars on his arm. "I think even the tiger cannot keep me alive now."

  His eyes suddenly cleared. "But if they would have you as one of them, you must not stay one night. Lord Narsya's alchemy is strong." He managed to sit up, leaning against the bars of the cage. "Give me your hand," he said.

  She did so, and he took it, saying softly, "I'm so sorry, Kalabai, but this is the only way. I cannot escape, and you must. I am afraid, because I think I will die, and I am afraid for you, because I know what it will do to you.”

  He smiled at her, a single tear running from his eye. She thought he was going to kiss her hand, but then he suddenly bit into her wrist with savage force, holding it in his jaws, working his teeth deeper into her veins. She cried out in pain and he let go.

  “Try not to be too angry," he said. "It takes anger to summon the tiger, but too much and you will lose control. It will be hard, but try. And remember to flee — do not fight — run away as fast as you can and let no one see you. Try to remember."

  Then he fell away and lay still.

  "Sidda?" She held her hand over his mouth and felt no breath. "No! Please don't die, Sidda. Please don't die."

  And then the rage took her. She beat on the bars of the cage with her fists and cried, "You evil man! You and your court of vampires. I hate you. I hate you all!"

  The bars bent easily under her blows. She knocked them loose, ripped the cage apart, but Sidda did not rise.

  She went to the door, splintering it as she crashed through. One of the Mongol guards came in from a side hall, his eyes going wide as he screamed and reached for his sword. Kalabai knocked him down with one swipe then tore his throat out. Her tail lashed the air noiselessly as she stalked along the passage to Lord Narsya's durbar room.

  Kalabai had licked herself clean of blood before the tiger receded, and she found herself sobbing, naked on the bed of one of the slain courtiers. She borrowed a red sari and went barefoot through the now-empty fortress, glancing into the throne room as she passed.

  Yes, it was as she remembered it. She felt most sorry for the eunuch — her heart would forever suffer for his death, but he had chosen to defend his master, dutiful in the end, his dharma fulfilled.

  Then she saw the overturned Chinese cabinet, one door hanging limply from its broken hinge.

  “Sidda!” she cried aloud. Running to the cabinet, whispering a prayer, she found the glass decanter on its side, cracked, but with a swallow of the elixir still left.

  Going quickly to the room where Sidda lay, she knelt beside him and trickled the golden potion between his lips. He still didn’t mov
e. Am I too late? Is there nothing left but for me to finally give you the compassion you needed so many years ago?

  He drew a ragged breath, his eyes fluttering open. "Y-you are still here," he said.

  Kalabai thought she had no tears left, but her cheeks ran hot and wet as she took Sidda's head in her arms. "I couldn't leave without my brother."

  "There’s no place I can go" he said, his smile darkening. “And now, because of me, it is the same for you. You will see the tiger again. That I can promise you.”

  She smoothed back his hair. "There is one place," she said. "We can go home."