Bheem Read online

  Abruptly, the howling ceased. The mad, raging eyes snapped towards Bheem and focused, losing their maniacal gleam.

  ‘Warrior!’ the greybeard shouted. ‘Listen to me. I do not have much time!’

  Bheem’s lip curled. ‘Another trick, Saragha?’

  ‘No, Bheem! No trick. Maya clouds my mind but loosens its hold when I bleed. Look!’ He jabbed his paw towards the scorched remnants of the arrow symbol. ‘Look!’

  Steam still rose from limestone that had been spattered by gouts of the black-red fluid; it dispersed steadily, allowing glimpses of rock that had lain unseen, lime-cloaked for millennia. The uncovered jigsaw sparkled, the grotto flame glancing off shimmering streaks on the rock.

  ‘The Bhrigushastra,’ Saragha said. ‘The record of humankind from first light to end of days. Limed over at the command of Lord Hanuman himself.’

  ‘Limed over?’ Bheem was startled. ‘Hidden . . . why?’

  Sorrow wreathed Saragha’s face. ‘Bheem, I break my lord’s injunction when I speak with you . . . warn you. Vaanars may not intervene in human affairs, but I am vaanar no more. I am a . . . thing. Without tribe, without friend . . . not even by myself because there is no self in this shell, no Saragha. I am a creature damned . . . for eternity.’

  Bheem looked at the vaanar. This was no act. It was possible that Saragha had betrayed him, but Bheem could feel nothing but compassion for his tortured adversary.

  ‘Self-pity . . . what am I doing?’ Saragha shook himself. ‘Warrior, hear me. The Bhrigushastra—it ends in this era. Mandodari’s curse has taken hold. A turn of the seasons, two at most, and the blood of the asuras will contaminate all mankind. Humans have nothing in their lore to stop this, no defence. For the human race, night has arrived . . .’

  The words were not the ravings of a madman; the greybeard’s face had the grim steadiness of sanity. Bheem was chilled to the core.

  ‘But you defy your lord and warn me,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  Saragha ignored the interruption. ‘The arrow symbol,’ he continued urgently. ‘Four. Four saviours there are, four humans—their blood the remedy, the only hope. Ashvatthama knows of them, seeks them. Should he succeed in destroying them—’

  ‘Vaanar!’ Bheem shouted. ‘Who are these four? Where will I find them?’

  Saragha didn’t answer at once. His gaze had shifted from Bheem to the slowing flow of blood from his wounds at the edges of which scar tissue had started to form.

  ‘Maya,’ breathed Saragha. ‘The madness is returning.’ Abruptly, the vaanar raised his head, eyes locking with Bheem’s. The stability of the previous few minutes had given way to despair. ‘Bheem . . . The arrows . . . the Four . . . the Bhrigushastra . . . on the walls . . .’

  The rumbling voice petered out, drowning in the unceasing roar of the water. Desperately, Saragha clawed at the scabs that formed, broke off a rock and with its jagged edge gouged at his healing wounds. Uselessly. The fluid clotted into fibrous scales, impervious to the vaanar’s frantic blows. Coarse grey fur sprouted from the scabs and spread like fungus, the shredded pelt stitching itself neatly together. The bleeding stopped; the wounds vanished as if they had never existed. And the eyes that looked at Bheem withdrew into themselves to gaze in terror at a harrowing inner world. Saragha threw his head back and shrieked.

  A warrior’s senses are never idle, vigil never relaxed. But despite his supreme combat skills, Bheem was caught off guard by the blinding speed of the vaanar’s assault. The impossibly supple tail whipped out, coiled around a stalactite and the vaanar leapt, swinging in at Bheem from a totally unforeseen angle. Almost too late, Bheem twisted away, evading the razor-sharp teeth and claws by a hair’s breadth. And even as he fell sideways, Bheem’s foot lashed out, arcing towards Saragha’s ribs. The rock-hard heel grazed fur. And then the vaanar was gone, soaring towards the ceiling and vanishing among the massed stalactites.

  ‘Follow me, warrior!’ shouted the guttural voice, entombed once more within the secretive walls. ‘Break the rock! Smash the walls! Too long have I waited for you!’

  Snorts and grunts echoed and gradually died away.

  For a moment, nothing moved.

  Then the massive warrior rose to his feet and gazed at the forest of stone teeth far above . . .

  Yes. I can follow you now, Greybeard. I have the key. What secrets lie buried in your vaanar memory? Do you sing the asura song?

  . . . and then he turned and looked at the woman. Fear knifed through Aviva. She was out in the open, exposed, utterly helpless should the giant decide to attack. But his gaze was strangely unfocused, blank-eyed. Abruptly, the hard, tattooed face crumbled in bewilderment, blood-streaked hands clutched at his head and clawed through locks of wild hair. A tortured grimace, a garbled cry and the great body dropped to its knees.

  Monstrous serpent, breathing blue smoke . . . a slashing whip, no—a tail . . . shredding the beast, fragmenting it . . .

  Images, out of control, overwhelming, roared through Bheem’s mind as it careered down the snarled pathways of Saragha’s deranged memories. Nothing in Bheem’s training as a Kshatriya, no defence learnt from Dronacharya, could have prepared him for this. He would have fought to make sense of what he was seeing but sense itself had fled. Nothing was true, everything was real; Bheem’s mind collapsed into terror.

  Giant hand . . . lake, fog-shrouded, ice-blue . . . vaanars, hundreds, thousands, blood pouring from their eyes, noses, mouths, drowning them . . . not vaanars, humans . . . dying . . . dying . . .

  It wasn’t the pain from his ribs that troubled Vineet the most—it was the stench from his trousers. He had lain among the stalagmites as the vicious battle had swirled around him, helpless, paralysed. Bizarrely, the visceral terror that had gripped Vineet had locked every muscle into stasis except one: his bowels’ sphincter; it had given way, spewing uncontrollably. There was an upside, though, to this acutely embarrassing mess: he was alive. And if he intended to remain so, he had to act. Carefully, he looked around. Madhu lay a few metres away, almost concealed behind a mound of debris, perhaps as wary as Vineet of calling attention to himself. Gritting his teeth, ignoring the slime oozing around his legs and the pain radiating from his ribs, Vineet dragged himself forward, inching towards the guide. He was less than an arm’s length from him when he realized that Madhu was unnaturally still. And then he saw it: the bullet hole in the back of Madhu’s head, just where the spine meets the brain stem. The blood on the ground under the mutilated head was already a gooey, congealing mess. Vineet drew a shaky breath, averting his eyes. What was this madness? Who were these crazed men with guns and explosives? And where had the monster come from, the giant that had wrought this devastation but now reeled like a drunken reveller after a wild party? Vineet looked at the enormous man. He was perhaps thirty metres away, on his feet again, staggering, obviously in distress. But . . . he was moving towards Vineet, closing in on him. Even weakened, the monster could effortlessly tear him apart. Vineet screamed in terror but no sound emerged; the stabbing pain in his chest robbed him of breath, leaving him gasping. The brute was staring at him now, stumbling forward. Terrified, the journalist scrambled back . . . and gasped as pain sliced through his hand. He looked down; his palm had slid across cold, sharp steel—Madhu’s machete. It lay on the ground a foot from the guide’s dead fingers. Vineet stared at the machete and looked up. The brute was almost upon him. Instinctively, Vineet’s bloodied hand closed around the machete’s haft.

  Labyrinth . . . underground canyon . . . a river without end . . . Antaragata, the Internal . . .

  Bheem tottered forward, lost in the Maya-jaal of Saragha’s unhinged mind.

  Voice . . . calling . . . calling . . . Saragha, my friend . . . heed me, Saragha . . .

  Light . . . the lord . . .

  Vayuputra . . .

  Hanuman . . .

  Bheem stopped moving. His face was no longer disfigured by horror; his eyes lost their maniacal intensity. Momentarily, peace suffused Saragha’s
crazed mind and Bheem, welded to the vaanar’s memories by the briefest of touches, was suddenly free. All strength left him as his massive muscles, twisted into steel knots by their link to insanity, abruptly relaxed. Like a felled tree, Bheem dropped to the ground.

  Vineet couldn’t believe it. He had gazed into the face of doom. It had been literally seconds away, but now . . . He had to finish this—there would be no second chance. Madhu’s machete in hand, he lurched to his feet.

  That was when Aviva became aware of him. Vineet—he was alive! But . . . what was that in his hand? The guide’s machete?

  My god! she thought. He thinks the being is helpless! He’s going to attack him!

  The massive body lay face down, spread-eagled across a corpse. Then the huge arms moved, muscles rippling as they pushed against the ground, slowly raising the enormous upper body off the bloody carcass. A spasm of fear jolted Vineet.

  Do it! he thought. Now! While he’s still down.

  Almost involuntarily, Vineet’s arm rose, the machete twitching with tension. And then the great head swung up, eyes spearing Vineet. He couldn’t move. His mind screamed but his muscles refused to respond. The machete slipped out of nerveless fingers and clattered to the ground. And to complete the ignominy of Vineet’s situation, his bowels gave way again.

  Aviva could have sworn nothing had changed but, suddenly, Vineet’s feet were three feet above the ground, twitching spasmodically. The warrior stood erect, holding Vineet in the air, his huge hand wrapped around the reporter’s head, a single breath away from snapping his victim’s neck like a dry twig.

  ‘No!’ Aviva shouted. ‘Tishtha! Stop!’

  Bheem’s eyes flitted towards her with all the attention he’d have given a stray cat.

  ‘Put him down!’ continued Aviva in Sanskrit. ‘That creature . . . the vaanar—I know what its words meant! Put him down and I’ll tell you.’

  Bheem turned to her. ‘I was going to let go, anyway. He stinks worse than the vaanar!’ The giant fist unclenched and Vineet dropped, flopping to the ground and throwing up violently. Bheem looked at Aviva, scepticism clearly visible in his eyes. ‘I have journeyed into Saragha’s mind,’ he said. ‘It is a raging storm, a world of chaos and ruin that almost toppled my own mind. So, Avivafein, tell me, what have you been able to glean from the vaanar that I could not?’

  The Israeli could feel blood pounding in her head. What she said next—how she said it—would determine whether she and Vineet emerged from the cave alive.

  ‘H . . . how do I know . . .’ Aviva started. Her voice was shaking, dammit! She hawked, spat out an oily mixture of saliva and dust and continued, ‘How do I know you won’t kill us after I tell you what I know?’

  ‘The way I am now,’ Bheem said, ‘this is not how I would stand normally before a woman who is not my wife. I am no savage. I am Bheemsen, yuvraj of Hastinapur, prince of Indraprastha, son of Kunti and Pandu, begat by Vayu, the wind god. My word is gold. I will not touch you, Avivafein.’ He looked at Vineet lying helpless in vomit and excreta and wrinkled his nose. ‘And I surely would not want to touch Vineetsinha!’

  So here it was, confirmation that she had not gone mad. From the moment Aviva had seen the Brahmi lipi tattoo on the giant’s wrist, she had entered a surreal universe in which myth had merged with the real world. Denial was not an option. For there he stood—Bheem, demigod, a legend in the flesh. As real as the white rock from which he seemed to have been carved. Aviva knew that nothing would be the same again.

  She drew a deep breath. ‘The . . . the vaanar,’ she said. ‘I didn’t catch a lot of what he was saying, Mandodari, blood curse. And I don’t know what he meant by ‘the four saviours’. But their names . . . I think he was trying to tell you they’re in the Bhrigushastra inscriptions on the limestone, under the arrow symbol . . .’

  Bheem’s eyes shot to the wall opposite the cataract where blistered rock revealed lower layers with scattered markings that gleamed in the firelight. But the inscriptions—were they intact? Would they still make sense? Or had they been obliterated too, along with all hope for humankind?

  ~

  ‘You . . . you can talk to the monster?’ Vineet asked, his breath whistling painfully as Aviva wound the surgical tape she had found in a dead fighter’s backpack around his ribs.

  ‘Not very surprising,’ she said, ‘considering he speaks Sanskrit, Hebrew, Hindi and English. And he’s no monster. Quite the opposite, in fact.’

  ‘Not a monster?’ Vineet waved a weak hand at the corpses strewn about the cave.

  ‘Yes. Men with guns.’ Aviva extracted a serrated battle knife from the backpack. ‘The kind that were willing to use explosives in confined spaces against unarmed people.’

  ‘And Dr Royce? All your colleagues? You think they broke their own necks?’

  ‘No, they didn’t.’ The Israeli cut through the tape and firmly flattened the end against Vineet’s ribs. The reporter hissed in pain. Aviva stood up. ‘There are others,’ she said. ‘Like him.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘You have no clue what just happened, do you?’ Aviva said. ‘No idea what’s going on here?’ She walked to where Madhu lay, gently turned the body around, shut the lifeless eyes. ‘You wanted a story? Well, you’ve got one. Of course, no one’s going to believe it!’

  A distant shriek sounded above the rumble of the cataract. Vineet jerked around, eyes widening in fear. Aviva grabbed a fallen rifle and swivelled, trying to locate the source.

  ‘The vaanar,’ she said, targeting the rock face, switching the toggle on the gun from ‘single shot’ to ‘automatic’. ‘Not that this would be any good against it,’ she muttered.

  ‘Avivafein.’

  The Israeli swung around . . . and managed to hold her fire.

  Bheem stood in the archway, not the slightest whisper of sound having warned her of his return.

  ‘Don’t . . . don’t do that!’ snapped Aviva, shakily lowering the rifle.

  Bheem allowed himself a smile. A rough smock of tent canvas covered his huge body now, a rope around his waist holding the fabric together, leaving his legs and arms free. He lifted his right arm, raising a heavy, steel-banded crate as if it weighed nothing. ‘It was where you said it would be.’

  ‘I said . . . ?’

  Aviva had recognized the crate instantly—the solar-powered photoablation laser, on loan to the expedition from the Museum of Antiquities, Dublin. There had been no discussion about it, though. The moment she had revealed her theory about the arrow symbol, Bheem had disappeared down the passageway. And now here he was, having extracted from the expedition’s storage tent the one piece of equipment indispensable to the deciphering of inscriptions overlain by centuries of sediment and grime.

  ‘How—?’ she began.

  ‘Your memories are mine, Avivafein,’ Bheem said. ‘Everything you have ever experienced, all that you know . . . I know.’

  It was alarming, of course, but also deeply fascinating. Aviva wanted to question him, probe further, but the man from the past was already opening the crate, expertly setting up equipment that he never could have seen before.

  ‘Doom!’ Saragha’s maniacal scream reverberated in the cavern. ‘Doom! The asuras triumph! Death!’

  Aviva swung on ropes twenty feet above the ground, suspended from stalactites, trying to block out the slow creep of hopelessness brought on by the unrelenting chant of the vaanar. ‘The blood of the asuras will contaminate all mankind’, ‘For the human race, night has arrived’—what did the creature mean? Aviva couldn’t shake off her growing unease. And the foreboding she felt was intensified by the unflagging urgency in Bheem’s actions. Swiftly, he had fabricated a cradle for the laser and had muscled the equipment into place opposite the damaged wall. Issuing terse instructions in Sanskrit, he had hoisted Aviva unceremoniously into the air and positioned her at the laser’s controls, ready to power it up at his bidding. And then the warrior had sprung twenty feet upward effortlessly, gripping the wall next to th
e almost erased arrow symbol, finding projections and toeholds where none were visible.

  ‘Now, Avivafein,’ Bheem said.

  The archaeologist fired up the machine. It hummed and a high-intensity UV beam played on the rock face. Carefully, Aviva manipulated the beam, following the natural planes of the surface. Layer by layer, the lime deposits dissolved into plumes of vapour, exposing faint, iridescent markings.

  ‘The Bhrigushastra!’ whispered Aviva, letting out a long breath. Eagerly, she gazed at her scanner’s monitor, scrutinizing the uncovered markings. A minute went by . . . and then she turned to Bheem. ‘The scanner is throwing up digitally enhanced images,’ she said, trying to keep the crushing disappointment out of her voice, ‘but from what I can see, the blast scorched the lower layers too. The inscriptions . . . they’re gibberish now. Marred beyond recognition.’

  But Bheem wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were unwavering, locked on the exposed rock face. ‘An arrow-ladder,’ he muttered. ‘A record of generations.’

  An arrow what? Aviva’s eyes went back to the wall. Of course! A genealogical chart! A family tree! Symbols that looked like incomplete arrow shapes emerged from the chaos, their heads and shafts cut off abruptly by what appeared to be text. Were those words? Names? If so, the markings were in no language she could identify. Moreover, entire letter groups were missing, obliterated by the explosion.

  Abruptly, Bheem broke off a sliver of stone and reached for the wall.

  ‘Don’t!’ Aviva cried, every archaeological instinct horrified at the prospective vandalism. ‘Don’t do that! You’ll ruin . . .’

  The sharp stone slid like a knife over the glittering, illegible characters, extending them, etching bold lines on the wall. And even as Aviva watched open-mouthed, the lines began to acquire form, meaning.

  ‘Brahmi lipi!’ Excitement grew in her. ‘He’s restoring the scarred letters!’