Iron Khan Read online

  When the demon reached the front steps, he paused. The veranda was sagging and the wooden boards didn’t look all that safe. He picked his way gingerly up the steps. The front door was ajar.

  “Want me to go first?” Jhai asked. That decided him; he still had some pride, after all.

  “I’ll go,” Zhu Irzh replied. He pushed the door open and stepped into the hall.

  Anticlimax. There was no sense of any brooding evil, no ghosts.

  “Musty,” said Jhai, close behind. The hall smelled as though whatever freshness might be in the air outside had failed to penetrate the building. Damp, rot, mold. Just as it had been in the dream, the hall was wallpapered in an old-fashioned floral print, interspersed with pale blue panels. But dark red stains spread upward from the skirting board and seeped over the paper like lichen.

  “I can hear something,” Jhai whispered, prodding the demon’s arm. Zhu Irzh listened. There was a faint, low murmuring, coming from a room at the end of the hall. Zhu Irzh’s skin prickled. As in the dream, he couldn’t understand why this place should affect him so badly: he’d grown up in a far more sinister mansion, for Hell’s sake.

  At the door to the room, which was shut, Zhu Irzh stopped and listened. The whispering was louder, a susurrus like the rush and hush of the sea.

  “Are you going to open it?”

  He couldn’t come this far and turn back now. Besides, he was curious. There was no handle, not even a keyhole. Zhu Irzh took a step back, made up his mind and kicked open the door.

  The smell hit him first. It was like opening the door of a charnel house, and even the demon gagged. The room itself was dimly lit, with gas lamps burning along the walls. A long dining table extended the length of the room. Bodies lay slumped in their seats, men in military uniform, their heads shot away. Brains and scraps of flesh spattered the walls. Zhu Irzh had seen worse, but it still froze him for an instant. Then, looking down the table, he saw a man sitting at the head of it. Black eyes, a pointed black beard above a red leather tunic. The man was holding a human bone in one hand and roaring with laughter.

  “Look!” he cried in accented Mandarin. “New guests for my table! Come and sit down!”

  “I don’t think so,” the demon retorted. He grabbed Jhai by the arm and dragged her backward, just as the man reached out a hand and cast a black glowing web through the air toward them. Zhu Irzh slammed the door shut.

  “Jesus!” Jhai said. “What was that all about? Didn’t you like the décor or something?”

  Zhu Irzh stared at her. “Didn’t you see him?”

  “See who? All I saw was another dusty old room in an abandoned house.”

  “We’re leaving,” Zhu Irzh said, and marched her out. He fully expected the door to burst open but it did not. They stumbled out into the early evening light, and the fetid air of the garden was, in comparison, relatively fresh. The demon leaned on the gatepost, laboring for breath.

  “Are you all right?” Jhai asked. Zhu Irzh nodded, unable to speak. “This isn’t like you.”

  “I saw a human head with an apple in its mouth served up at a table in your cousin’s palace,” Zhu Irzh managed to say, coughing. “That’s normal. He’s doing something, I can feel it.”

  “Who’s doing something?”

  “The bloke at the dinner table.”

  “What?”

  “The Khan,” said a voice. Zhu Irzh glanced up and was filled with relief. Nicholas stood at the gate. Despite the heat of the day, he wore a long black coat, old-fashioned in cut.

  “Who are you?” Jhai demanded.

  “My name is Nicholas,” the man said. “Nicholas Roerich.”

  Rather to Zhu Irzh’s surprise, Roerich ordered tea when they got back to the hotel, and drank it.

  “I thought you were a ghost,” he said.

  “In a manner of speaking. I’m no longer alive, put it that way. Then again, technically, neither are you.”

  “I’ve heard your name,” Jhai said. She regarded Roerich narrowly. “Weren’t you an explorer?”

  Roerich laughed. “Yes, I was. You might say I still am, although my field of exploration is rather wider than it used to be. When I was alive, which was in the late nineteenth century and beyond, I made a series of expeditions to Siberia, to Tibet, and to the Himalayas. I am Russian, you see. They used to describe me as a mystic, which is one way of explaining someone who does things you can’t understand. In fact, I made a study of meditative disciplines and had a certain degree of experience in magic, though I kept that as quiet as I could. I painted a few things, as well.”

  Jhai snapped her fingers in realization. “That’s it! More than a few things, I think, Mr Roerich. Your work is famous. I’ve seen some of it in New York.”

  Roerich looked modestly pleased. “Really? Yes, there is a small gallery there. It’s odd, to think of one’s work surviving after one’s lifespan.”

  “Go and see it for yourself,” Jhai suggested.

  “I don’t think that would work … On this plane, the Masters have confined me to the parts I knew in life. There’s always other planes, however.”

  “The Masters?”

  Roerich looked at her. “You’re Indian, I think? And you, Zhu Irzh, are of Chinese origin. Some of the Masters come from your parts of the world, but they don’t participate in your Heavens and Hells. They have their own realm, Shambhala. I wasted a lot of time searching for it in my youth. I should have just waited. I work for them now. I am not, you understand, a Master myself. They are those who have transcended into the other realm without dying first.”

  “I thought they were a myth,” Jhai said, frowning. “I always associate them with dodgy old Victorians in England.”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” said Zhu Irzh, feeling ignorant. “Sorry.”

  Roerich shrugged. “They keep themselves a secret these days, except to initiates. They’ve learned from their earlier experiences.”

  “The man in the villa,” Zhu Irzh said. “This Khan. Who is he?”

  “An old enemy of the Masters. He calls himself a Khan, but he was born centuries before Islam came to Central Asia. He dates from the time of the Tokarians. When you told me that someone had reanimated them, I immediately thought of the Khan.”

  “You came to me in a dream, didn’t you?” Zhu Irzh said. He was aware of the beginnings of a powerful headache, which he resented. Demons don’t get headaches, any more than they are overcome by fear and revulsion.

  “Yes. The Khan’s marked you.”

  “Oh great! How?”

  “He seeks followers, throughout the centuries. Wears down their resistance until they agree to serve him. Ambitious, to try it with a demon of Mandarin Hell.”

  “Why does he need servants?” Jhai asked.

  “Like me, he’s confined to this part of the world—I understand it was a condition of his living on. You see, the Khan is like me: he was granted ascendance by the Masters, but he turned against them. They cannot rescind their gift once it’s given, but that gift had the same terms that my own did—stay in the lands you knew in life. When I was a living man, before I was granted the gift, I was held prisoner here in Kashgar by the Khan. He tried to force me to obey him. I resisted, with the meditative techniques I’d learned from my Tibetan contacts. Eventually I managed to escape, but not without great difficulty. At what would have been the end of my life, the Masters came to me and told me that because of what I had done, they wished to offer me employment, against the Khan.”

  “If you know where he is,” Zhu Irzh said, “why can’t you just—I don’t know, burn the villa down? Dispatch him to a Hell? It didn’t seem all that well-defended to me.”

  Roerich smiled. “If I were to set foot in that villa now, Zhu Irzh, I would find only a deserted house with dusty rooms and a kingdom of mice. So would most people. Whatever you saw, you did so because the Khan wanted you to see it.”

  “I saw the Khan at dinner,” Zhu Irzh said. “Eating human flesh. There were soldiers all
around, all of them dead. If I’d come across it in Hell, it would have been less of a shock.”

  “I didn’t see any of this,” Jhai qualified.

  “The Khan relives edited highlights of his existence. He conjures them from the astral—essentially he creates a private hell all of his own. What you saw was an episode back in the late nineteenth century when, posing simply as a local potentate, he invited a Russian general and his men to dine with him and then had them shot at the dinner table.”

  “What did they do—criticize the soup?”

  “They did nothing at all,” Roerich explained. “The Khan has acted on whim for a long time.”

  “And you want me to stop him?” Zhu Irzh asked. “How?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know. A lot of people have gone after the Khan over the centuries but none of them have succeeded and most of them have died in the attempt. The last one was a Samurai, a Japanese warrior who managed to destroy the Khan’s mountain palace, but who died at the hands of the Khan. Initially, like myself, the Khan’s power came from the Masters, but they withdrew their support long, long ago, and now no one knows where he draws his power from.”

  “But why should he mark me?” Zhu Irzh asked. “I’m just another minor demon.”

  “Not anymore, you’re not,” Jhai said. “You’re the stepson of the Emperor of Hell.”

  “I need your help,” Roerich said. “You have access to the Khan now. You can see him, for a start. We need to find out what the Khan is planning.”

  The demon sighed. “You want me to go back to that villa, don’t you?”

  “It was the Khan’s home throughout the nineteenth century. It seems he’s taken up residence there once more.”

  “All right,” Zhu Irzh said, although he wanted to say no. Perhaps it was that Roerich reminded him slightly of Chen, or simply some quality possessed by the Russian that was all his own: a kind of steely serenity. “I’ll do my best.”

  12

  The houseboat rocked and spun, as if caught on some great tidal eddy, but Inari, holding onto the wheel column for dear life and glancing down the tilting deck, could see the city outlined below them: a map of Singapore Three drawn in lights. Yet though they were high in the air, with the Earth falling swiftly away from them, all around was the sound of the sea. Immense invisible waves broke over the blunt prow of the houseboat, spattering Inari and Miss Qi with cold saltwater that just as suddenly dissipated. There was a strange smell of hollowness. All Inari could think of was the baby, but she couldn’t even wrap her arms around herself to protect it; she had to hold on.

  Then the city was nothing more than a line of light on the horizon and the houseboat started to shudder and shake with such force that Inari was convinced that it would be torn apart.

  “We’ve got to abandon ship!” Miss Qi cried.

  “Where to? There’s no ‘overboard’ left!” Inari shrieked over the noise. She could see only blackness beyond the railing of the houseboat: thick and empty and cloudless. Even mist would have been a relief. But something about it was familiar, all the same.

  Eventually the noise began to subside. The houseboat gave a final groan, as if in protest, and stopped, gently turning on an invisible tide. Inari and Miss Qi struggled to their feet. To Inari’s intense relief, she felt reasonably well, if somewhat bruised. She didn’t know what it would feel like to miscarry, but there were no internal pains. She waited for a moment, to see if anything happened, but she seemed to be all right. Miss Qi was looking at her with concern.

  “Is everything well, Inari?”

  “I think so.” Cautiously, she made her way to the railing and looked over. A swirling cloudy dark was rushing around the sides of the boat. “This is the Sea of Night,” Inari said in dismay. “What are we doing here?”

  “I can’t see a thing,” Miss Qi called from the other side of the boat.

  Inari realized Miss Qi was right. They must be very far out into the Sea: normally one could glimpse the shores of at least one of the worlds. But there was formless nothingness as far as Inari could see. And that wasn’t all that was worrying her.

  “Badger!”

  “I am still here,” the familiar said. It trundled out from behind the wheel-house, took a look over the side, and spat.

  “I know how you feel,” said Inari.

  “But how could an ordinary typhoon take us all the way into the Sea of Night?” Miss Qi asked, then answered her own question. “So it wasn’t an ordinary typhoon.”

  “It remains to be seen whether we’ve been cast adrift,” Inari said grimly. “Or kidnapped.”

  An hour or so later, they were still calmly afloat, though it was difficult to judge here: technically they had been cast outside time. They had seen no other craft and Inari was beginning to feel prickly about this. It looked as though they had been singled out and she did not like it. Besides, the Sea of Night was much closer to Hell than Earth was, and she had no wish to see the shores of her home.

  They’d tried to power up the houseboat, but without success, and Inari had not really expected any. Anger was starting to build, too, an anger that, some years ago, she would have been incapable of feeling. But only a short while ago, she had been beheaded, her spirit kidnapped into another realm, then rescued and restored to what passed for a demon for life. She did not relish the prospect of a similar thing happening again, and she was growing very tired of the fact that she and Chen and the people around them—like poor Miss Qi—were constantly being used as pawns in some greater game.

  How do you think I feel? said a voice from within, and with a start Inari realized it was the voice of her unborn child. You’re not the only pawn.

  Who are you? Inari asked, thinking of transmigrating souls. The assassin Lord Lady Seijin, her own slayer, had died at last, his/her soul fled, but where to? Inside the child that Inari now carried? She did not like the thought that she might be bearing the Assassin of Worlds, Seijin’s ancient title, passed down from carrier to carrier.

  I will be a warrior, the child said. You may be sure of that.

  Not reassuring in any sense. A warrior, or just another of those pawns? Inari asked, but the child was silent and she could feel its spirit withdrawing. But it was a legitimate question. Even Mhara wasn’t exempt, and look what Mhara was. Inari fought down futility and turned to Miss Qi.

  “We’ve got to try something. We can’t sit here forever.”

  “I agree,” said the Celestial. “If the engines won’t work, then what do we have? Magic?”

  Inari nodded. “Not much choice, is there?”

  They debated what to use, eventually coming up with a location spell. They already knew where they were, but the Sea of Night was vast and if they could pinpoint their location more accurately, Miss Qi suggested, then they might be able to send out a call for help. This would depend on whether they were closer to Heaven or Hell: Earth wasn’t as yet much good at answering mayday calls from the great beyond.

  “Although things are different now,” Miss Qi mused. “With so many members of the Emperor’s March in Singapore Three, someone might actually hear us.”

  “Someone might actually help, as well,” Inari added. A little more hopeful, they began their preparations.

  A drop of blood, from each. They watched as the Celestial’s silvery life force and Inari’s much darker demon blood hissed and mingled in a bowl borrowed from the kitchen. There was some comfort, Inari reflected, in being abducted along with her own home. They took a drop of night, brought up in a bucket from the Sea below and rolling around in the bottom of the bowl like a bead of thundercloud. Then, together, Inari and Miss Qi spread their hands over the bowl and spoke the spell. Blood and darkness mingled, to form a thin, blurred shape over the surface of the bowl, constantly changing: the Sea of Night itself. A tiny drop of silver showed their position, close to the exact center of the Sea. And there was something else, too, a blacker spot.

  “What’s that?” Inari asked.

  �
��It’s another boat!” Miss Qi said. “Maybe one of the boats that takes souls to their destination—they might be able to help us.”

  They peered at the spot. It was moving. Abandoning the bowl, Inari and Miss Qi ran to the railing and looked out. At first, through the swirling mist which covered the insubstantial waves of the Sea, they could see nothing. But then it appeared, its high prow carving through the mist. Unlike the craft which carried souls, it had no sails, no sign of a crew. Its sides were black and glistening, like wet stone. Traceries of gold snaked over the prow, gleaming in the light of the lantern that hung from it.

  “That’s one of Heaven’s boats,” Miss Qi said. Inari was aware of an overwhelming relief, spared from having to deal with Hell.

  “Hail it—I don’t want to leave the houseboat, but perhaps they could help us, or take a message—you could go, I don’t want you to be stranded here.”

  “That’s very kind,” Miss Qi said. “But I don’t want to leave you, either.”

  “I won’t be on my own—I have the badger.”

  They shouted to the boat, but no one appeared on its deck. It glided in, coming closer and closer, until Inari became uneasy: it did not look as though the boat was going to stop. Maybe it, too, was adrift—perhaps the storm that had snatched the houseboat had stolen away this other craft, also, and its crew was missing. But she was becoming afraid that it would ram the houseboat.

  It did not. Instead, it pulled up alongside, only three or four feet away. Now that she could see the boat more closely, it looked old. The sides were scraped and scarred, shadowy barnacles ornamented its lower reaches. It did not feel like a vessel from Heaven and when Inari stole a glance at Miss Qi’s face, the Celestial’s expression mirrored her own doubts.

  “Maybe they’ve realized we’re in trouble,” Miss Qi said doubtfully.

  “But who are they?” Inari had heard stories of pirates on the Sea of Night. Had some of these stolen a boat, taken it over? No one had appeared on its decks so far.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” the Celestial warrior said. The boats had moved close enough together for her to step over onto the other’s deck.