Empire of Bones (40 page)

"God go with you, Rakh," Jaya had whispered. "
Bhagwan tumhara raksha
'tarey
."

He'd smiled. "
Ayushmaanbhav
, Commander."

Live long
. "I'll try." It had sounded too much like a last farewell. But she hadn't been able to bring herself to smile in return, had instead turned abruptly and headed up the path, Sirru by her side. She'd never looked back.

She carried no supplies with her, only the gun and a small bladder of blood from a goat slain the day before, a sacrifice to Durga. She hoped the goddess was listening. Now, as they made their way into the mountains, Jaya shouldered the gun. It felt as though she had regained a lost limb, as if she had been snatched back in time into the body and mind of the per-son she used to be. It was hard going, but she was used to this terrain, and Kamal had taught her how to use it to her advan-tage. As they followed the goat tracks up into the high rocks, she turned to Sirru and said brusquely, "All right so far?"

"All right."

He seemed to have no problem keeping up with her. She glanced down as they climbed, and saw his clawed, jointed toes curling over the edge of the rocks. There was a smear of blood along the side of one foot, and she fought back pity. When they reached the crest of the ridge that ran like a blade above the val-ley, she stopped and looked back. An outcrop hid the convoy from view, but she could see the round tower of the fortress, no larger than a pebble against the vastness of the mountains.

"Come on," Sirru said encouragingly. "It is not very much longer."

She squinted up at him. "How do you know? Are you reading my mind?"

He smiled. "No. I have been here before."

Jaya stared at him. "You've—?
When
?"

"I walked, like this. On the day when you could not find me."

"Why?"

He was gazing toward the lake. "I had a task to do. We should continue."

Ignoring her questions, he led her, slipping and sliding, down the slope to where a narrow stream bisected the thin valley. They followed the watercourse, running fast and cold down from the glacial lake, and after what seemed like an eternity of scrambling over the sharp and ancient rocks, they reached the lip of the valley. The lake stretched below, glitter-ing in the falling sunlight. Sirru gazed at it pensively.

"There?" he asked, and Jaya could tell from the tone of his voice that he was hoping the answer would be no. She smiled.

"Not quite. You didn't get this far, then? We're going round, not over."

She took him down the path that an ancient glacier itself had cut, trying to remember the exact route down to the lake.

After an hour, she estimated, they would cut through the cliff to where the lake rested like a dark eye in the cradle of the mountains. She had not been back here since their last flight down from the heights, after they had sent Kamal to his rest beneath the cold waters of the lake. Reborn, Jaya wondered, or resting with the dead? She didn't know what she believed anymore, and perhaps she never had.

"Jaya? What's wrong?" The alien paused and reached out, touching her arm. She must radiate sadness, she thought, and in her reflection Jaya indeed spread a sense of loss over the desolate landscape. She said, "My husband is buried here."

"Not long ago, I think."

"No, not long. Three years. It seems like forever." She stared at Sirru in the gathering darkness, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking. He took her hand in his long fingers and began once more to walk, up toward the lake and the dead.

15.
/amunotri/
Himalaya

Anand crouched panting on the floor in the shadows as his men continued the search. The sickness, if that was what it was, raged through him. He felt as though he had been splintered into a myriad of sharp shards and scattered across the length and breadth of the country. He saw out of many eyes at the same time, and he shook his head again and again, trying to focus on the two most important voices: those of Nihalani and the alien, like two magnets drawing him to the north. He knew where they had gone—up into the glaciers that swept down from the southern wall of Himalaya. They were hoping that he would not or could not follow them, but Anand had gone too far to draw back now. It wasn't Tokai's threats and insidious prom-ises that spurred him on—it was honor. Now that Kharishma was gone, honor, Anand felt, was all he really had left.

He no longer believed that Tokai had any intention of restoring the slightest measure of his family's lost fortune, and he had been vain and a fool ever to think it. When Tokai no longer had a use for him, Anand knew, he would be killed. The prospect did not seem to matter anymore. It seemed to him that he could still hear Kharishma's voice echoing in his head, as though she hadn't really gone all that far. But nothing mattered now more than Bharat. Kharishma had helped him to see that; her sacrifice was part of his own.

Ir Yth was dead, but the other one remained, and Anand knew that the alien must be killed. He could hear it now, spreading its lies. Perhaps more like it would come, but change had to be stopped, just as it had been before when he'd fought so hard against those who threatened the caste system. The world had to be preserved. Honor demanded it.

The fortress was filled with Nihalani's presence. He could sense her in every corner. Something brushed his face and he sprang to his feet, but it was nothing more than a cobweb, dis-turbed from the rafters by gunfire. He felt as though her hand had reached out and, mockingly, touched his cheek.
Witch-craft
...

He could feel it, enchantment pounding through his head like a storm on the point of breaking. Nihalani's hated voice reverberated in his mind. He stumbled across to the window and looked down at the slope of the hillside. Halfway down lay the body of Satyajit Rakh, sprawled in death. Beyond, he could see the little square of the ATV in which Naran Tokai patiently waited for results, well away from dan-ger.

There was a shout from high in the fortress. Anand made for the stairs and found himself on a small landing in the fortress roof. His second-in-command stepped out, covered in dust and dirt.

"There's someone in there. A woman. I think she's dead."

Anand brushed past him. The woman was lying on a pallet of straw. Her face was pale as wax and she didn't seem to be breathing. Then he detected a faint pulse in her jaw. He slapped her across the face, but she didn't respond. The soldier shone a torch into her eyes and then, to his astonishment, Amir recognized her. It was Rajir'a Jahan. With Kharishma dead, the memory of that visit made him grow hot with shame. Rajira's eyes snapped open, and suddenly he was star-ing at his own startled face. It was the same countenance he saw in the mirror every day—the winged brows and pale eyes—but the expression on his face was not one that he rec-ognized. It was the face of a lost child. Rajira spoke, though her lips did not move. There were other beings somehow present, like points of light across the darkness of an inner plain, but Anand's attention was drawn by one in particular: a lodestone of the north. He was seeing through Sirru's eyes, gazing out at a familiar landscape past Nihalani's shoulder. Nihalani and the alien were at the lake.

16.
/amunotri/
Himalaya

Jaya scrambled down a slope of shale toward the shore. Sirru had already reached the bottom of the slope and now stood gazing out across the water. The light was almost gone now, and only a last ray of sun touched die peaks of the mountains, creating a line of rose, as though the snow had caught fire. A cold breath of wind was crossing the lake and the water ruf-fled against it, lapping along the stones. Jaya stumbled to a halt beside the alien. Somewhere behind them, in this wilderness of stone and ice, Anand was stalking them.

"It's cold," Sirru said.

"Yes, it is." She glanced uneasily behind her, somehow ex-pecting to see the figure of Amir Anand step over the ridge, gun in hand, but the land was silent and nothing moved.

"Where now?" Sirru spoke in a thin, distant voice, as if his attention lay elsewhere entirely.

Jaya shouldered the gun to a more comfortable position and Sirru did the same, mirroring her with unnerving preci-sion.

"There's a pass leading up through the Yamara. Comes out into Shiringri Valley." She was speaking more to herself than to Sirru, reminding herself of the way, but the alien turned and began to stroll along the shore. She felt like shouting at him,
Don't you realize the danger we're in? Don't you care
?— but she had the feeling that Sirru was following a wholly dif-ferent agenda. Frustrated, she headed after him.

She could see a single star, glowing above the faraway peaks of Nanda Devi. It was too bright for an ordinary star; it was undoubtedly a planet. The dusk that surrounded her seemed suddenly immense, as though she were standing above the universe itself. The lake that lay a short distance away was as vast as an ocean, and she could almost hear the dead as they whispered beneath its waters.
Imagination
, she told herself impatiently,
it's running away with you
—but Kamal seemed suddenly very close. She could feel him walk-ing by her side, and though she knew it had to be nothing more than weariness and grieving, she did not dare turn her head.

Sirru stopped and faced her, and his eyes were yellow in the twilight. She didn't know what to think anymore. She strode past him, leaving the ghosts behind, and stopped in dismay— the pass that led up into the Yamara was no longer there. The narrow fissure between the rocks was blocked by a fall of boulders and shale: a landslide from high on the cliff, too steep to climb. Nonetheless, a cursing Jaya started up the slope, but the alien pulled her back.

"You should not. Not safe."

"Hell, Sirru…"Her voice was no more than a whisper as she realized that she had trapped them both.

The only way out was back, or across the cold dark waters of the lake. But it was too far to swim—they'd freeze in minutes.

"We'll have to go back."
Ma'te for the path into the valley
,
and wait. I'll shoot whoever comes over the ridge. Once morning comes…She
shivered, thinking of the cold night ahead. Patiently, Sirru said, "Then we will go back."

As they were returning down the shore path, Jaya stum-bled, and the alien took her arm. She leaned against him. Thoughts spiraled through her tired mind:
Is this the right thing to do? Should I turn him
over to Anand now?
… Then there was a pincer grip around her arm and she was thrown back against the rocks. She gave a small, startled cry, and a long hand closed over her mouth. Sirru whispered, "
Be
quiet
. Up there, on the ridge."

"Where? I can't see, Sirru, it's too dark…"she said, her suspicions about his night vision finally confirmed.

"Can you see who it is?"

"Not
see
. Too far away, and only for a moment. But it is Anand."

Jaya thought so, too. She was halfway in his head, after all, and the sudden glitter before her sight was the starlight on the waters of the lake, seen from above. She could feel the past closing around her and cutting her off.
Anand, we helped to make one another what we are. And you and I are not finished
with each other yet
. Her fingers closed around the gun, tucking it tightly against her side.

"Nihalani!" Amir Anand's voice echoed back from the mountain wall, and inside her mind.
What does he
expect me to do, shout bacX
? "Listen to me. Your people are dead. You've nowhere left to go. You're protecting something that will be the ruin of us all. If you give the alien up, I'll let you go free." Jaya said nothing. The hard edge of Sirru's body was pressed against her own between the protection offered by the rocks.

"What will you do?" the alien said, with soft and careful neutrality.

She took a deep breath. "I've made my decision. I'm stay-ing with you."

She could hear Anand slithering down the shale bank, and risked a shot. It ricocheted away into silence.

Then a bullet whined away from the rock beside her, splintering the granite into sharp shards. She threw herself back, wriggled along the stones to the dubious safety of the escarpment edge. For all his threats, she thought, he was in the same position she was. He couldn't see her any more than she could see him, though they were halfway inside one another's minds. Then Anand's voice said within her head,
Do as I
tell you. Surrender the alien, before he destroys everything we know
.

And Jaya replied with silent anger,
But is that even worth preserving
?

He has lied to you. I am sure of this. Just as the other one did.

Jaya said,
Maybe he has. But I do not think that he intended to lie, and Ir Yth did. That is the
difference
.

She turned to Sirru, but the alien was gone.

Then,
The networks coming on-line
, Sirru's voice said clearly, and she understood with the rush of his thoughts that the death of one of them could now throw the entire network off track, shatter the minds of the nexi, like crashing a com-puter program. Sirru was bending, reaching for the automatic rifle just as Anand swung around. She could hear die alien's thought:
/If I kill Anand, the network cot*ld be
damaged/death at the point of activation/a failed nexus/everything will be ruined/but if not
, Jaya will die/.

Doubting whether Sirru had ever fired a gun in his life, she reached inside her pocket. She had first formed the plan some time ago, on realizing that she and Anand shared thoughts, but she had hoped not to use it. There was too much of a risk that it might not work—but then, conjuring was all about risks and illusion.

The trick would be to shut enough of herself off that Anand could not hear her thoughts. The tranquilizers diat she had palmed in the hospital all those many weeks ago nested in a plastic wrap in her pocket.

Swiftly, deliberately fo-cusing on the scene before her, she swallowed three of the pills. They worked fast. A moment later, her vision blurred. She caught Anand's confusion as her consciousness started to slow down and her thoughts become muzzy. She slid the gun down by her side, her finger on the trigger.