I was not made, I think, to be a leader of men. I was rajah, yes, of a lesser kingdom in the north, but a rajah is a ruler and it is my belief that a ruler is not the same thing as a leader. To the people of Initpur, I was the ruler, but my vizier was the leader. I made the overall decisions, but it was he who enacted them and turned my decisions into acts. Thus I was a ruler, and not a leader.
All that changed when we left Initpur. My vizier was still with me, but things had changed. I still made the wide-reaching decisions – wider reaching than ever before, in fact – but my vizier was as much a novice in this new situation as I. We were both refugees now, like all those who followed us, and it had become my task not only to make an important decision, but to also enact it.
We had left Initpur to languish under the control of a foreign power, and with it I had left behind the position of ruler. I had become a leader, albeit a reluctant and worried one. And now all I can do it try and lead well, and hope that I am not leading the last of the free Inda to their doom.
During the refugees’ desperate journey south, there had been voices of dissent. It was to be expected in any gathering, particularly one the size of the Inda refugees, and especially considering the terrifying direction they were taking. Aram had patiently weathered all discord and shattered their arguments with logic and the stark truth of their situation. A few of the more recalcitrant had abandoned the column, shunning Aram’s vision of safety in the one place that all Inda knew to be unsafe. As they had passed the derelict sacred markers, though, they had left behind perhaps half their number. It seemed that the reputation of these lands was horrifying enough that even a definite future of war and conquest seemed preferable to the uncertainty of the south.
Not for Aram. And for the thousands who still accompanied him. The journey through the haunted lands beyond the marker had been quiet and nerve-racking. Those who had chosen to continue did so with tight lips and darting eyes, constantly aware of every rustling leaf and every flicker of movement. The sense of unseen presences and of being shadowed as they travelled was all-pervasive.
There had been a horrible incident only half an hour beyond the markers when a terrified woman discovered that her husband had brought a small utility knife with him. Aram doubted that such a thing counted as a weapon, but it caused a tremendous fuss and polarised the group. The old man who owned the knife had had such opprobrium and bile heaped upon him by the others that his heart had given out and he had expired in the heat of debate.
In the aftermath two things had happened: every blade, be it a utility knife, a dining one or even a razor, had been cast aside in a pile with much prayer and apology. And one man had suddenly become the voice of dissent.
In retrospect, Aram should have seen it coming. Parmesh had been the vizier of some lord now trodden under the western empire’s nailed boots. He had been one of the most vocal of the complainers throughout the journey, but his voice had been somewhat lost in the crowd until the incident with the knife. Now, Parmesh was a constant drone of gainsaying. Not direct opposition, mind. Aram would have known how to deal with a clear enemy. But Parmesh was not an enemy and had accepted both Aram’s leadership and his objective. He was just the voice of general background disagreement, and as such had become something of a leader in his own right.
The first night in the south lands had been a night of little sleep and persistent tense silence. A young man had started playing a veena, its ponderous wavering metallic notes ringing out through the jungle, delivering a traditional tune – a haunting melody. He was almost mobbed in an effort to stop him. No one wanted haunting melodies right now. All night, some among the four thousand refugees would raise a quiet but panicked alarm, claiming to have spotted the ghosts or seen eerie movement in the trees, to have heard distant footsteps or muffled breathing in the undergrowth. Each search had produced nothing. Anywhere else, Aram would have put it down to nerves or superstition, but here in these forbidden lands he could feel it too. Three times in that one night his flesh prickled at the sensation of being watched by some unseen observer. Of course, it did not help that the rains had stopped the moment they passed into the dead lands, and had not returned since. Uncanny.
The second day had been as troubling as the first, and Aram had noted how Parmesh was now with him at the front at all times, questioning everything, second-guessing every decision he made. Fortunately, dependable Bajaan and Mani were also ever-present, backing him up and helping him keep control. Thus the four of them became an odd tetrarchy, with Aram the senior. Thus it was that when they found the monastery’s outer marker, it was the four of them who went ahead.
The monastery’s territory was apparently delineated with markers on the approach roads, though the precise meaning of the stones was lost on the travellers. Aram and his people had known about the line of markers that set the boundary of the haunted lands, but no one other than the guardian monks themselves had ever been to their monasteries, and so no one knew anything about them. The sacred images of the gods made it clear the stone by the road was the work of the monks, but the writing on it was in the ancient forgotten tongue and utterly incomprehensible.
The huge mass of shivering, nervous refugees remained in the best area they could find, three large clearings that seemed to be a natural feature of the jungle. Aram and his three companions steeled themselves and began to move forward along the path they had been following for some time.
For the next half mile, Aram was fascinated to see the change in the land around them. The thick jungle receded a little, the verges of the path trimmed back to create a wide grassy swathe. Then the trees and creepers, ferns and bushes disappeared entirely, giving way to cultivated fields. The crops had been planted in season and carefully cultivated patches of wheat and tea were now ready for harvest. A river had been diverted to create heavily irrigated areas where rice was grown in paddies, and that too was now ready for harvest.
Pens of animals were visible from the road – horses, cows and goats, all animals that could live indefinitely on the green pastures they were allotted and the fresh water diverted into their enclosures. A large lake close to the path teemed with fish, several small jetties striding out over the rippling waters and inviting a man to cast a line.
It was idyllic, especially after the perilous journey, and a blue sky punctuated with a few small high clouds only added to the beauty. But it was marred by one thing: neglect.
The crops had been lovingly sown and nurtured, but had been left to go somewhat wild, weeds and saplings springing up among them. Aram was no farmer, but Initpur had been rural enough in its economy that he had learned much of what farmers knew as a matter of course, and he estimated from the condition of the fields that they had not been tended for between two and three months. A similar conclusion could be drawn from the lack of upkeep on the lake jetties and the overpopulation of fish, and from the unkempt appearance of the animals, who had reverted to a wilder nature for all their domestication.
Moreover, the eerie feeling of being observed – or at least of not being alone – was gone. Here the land felt actually deserted. It was most odd that the untouched jungle felt alive with presence, while the one place they had found that showed all the signs of civilisation seemed utterly empty.
‘Where are the monks?’ Parmesh asked quietly, for once his question echoed by Aram’s.
Where indeed?
Leaving the question unanswered, Aram led them on. More fields. Barley and mustard. Coops of near-feral chickens. Sheds covered with moss. Farm implements tangled with weeds. Months. The monks had not worked their lands for months.
The monastery was impressive. Far more impressive than Aram had expected. It had been perhaps two centuries since the monks had first come south at the guru’s instruction, founding their monasteries and maintaining the marker line. One might expect a certain level of ornateness and ornamentation to develop over that time, but what surprised Aram was not the intricacy of the place, but the scale.
The complex was surrounded by a low wall, perhaps five feet high, buttressed in places, with gates that stood open on the various approach paths, of which several others could be seen even from this road. The gathering of structures inside put the palace complex of Initpur to shame. It would dwarf any palace or monastery in the north. Towers and roofs rose above that boundary wall in a huddled collection that filled an area large enough to muster an army.
Mani whistled through his teeth, impressed.
‘I had no idea there were so many monks at these places,’ Bajaan added.
‘There aren’t,’ Parmesh reminded them in flat tones.
‘What now?’ Mani pressed, ignoring the ever-present voice of gloom.
‘Now,’ Aram replied, ‘we search the monastery. Perhaps we will find the monks, or at least their remains. Perhaps we will learn where they have gone if they still live. Come on.’
They approached the walls and passed through the iron gates tentatively. As they did so, Mani grasped one of the swinging portals and gave it an experimental nudge. It shrieked with the tortured sound of rusting metal. The gates had not been closed for months either.
‘This is making me nervous,’ Parmesh muttered.
Aram and the others were nervous too, but they felt no need to add voice to their fears. It was uncanny. It was wrong. The main complex was of ancient construction, begun two centuries ago when the monks first came here and continually updated, embellished and extended over the decades. A huge ornate frontage contained a great doorway, which once again stood open and creepily inviting. A bell hung by the gate and Aram reached up towards it but changed his mind and walked on.
The walled enclosure contained more than the main monastery complex, though. There were orchards with fruit hanging from sagging branches, and vegetable gardens, overgrown but full and thriving amid the weeds, sheds and barns, structures of all sorts. And oddly, in an area that would otherwise have been naught but a wide swathe of open, dusty ground, three enormous wooden barn-like buildings.
‘Let’s look in there first,’ Aram said, pointing at those three great structures.
The four men approached the nearest nervously, slowly. The building was high enough to contain two levels, like a barn with a mezzanine hayloft. It had numerous shuttered windows too high up to peer in without standing on a man’s shoulders. Aram considered that, but decided to circle the building first.
The door was shut. That came as something of a surprise, considering the open nature of every other portal they had seen. Aram glanced at Mani and Bajaan, who both nodded. Parmesh was frowning his usual disapproval.
Reaching out, Aram grasped the handle of the plain, utilitarian door and pushed it inwards. He had not been sure what he was expecting, but whatever it was, this was not it. The building was a bunkhouse on a grand scale. Well-lit by those high windows, the great shed contained at an estimate sixty or seventy beds in neat rows. They were bare and plain, and without sheets, but they were clearly beds. At one end a rudimentary washroom had been constructed, the stone sinks empty.
Frowning himself now, Aram climbed the stairs and discovered half as many beds again on the second level.
‘Accommodation for a hundred people,’ Aram murmured quietly as he descended once more. ‘Apparently recently constructed and unused. However many monks there were here, it seems unlikely there were a hundred.’
‘Three hundred,’ corrected Mani. ‘Those other two buildings are identical to this from the outside. Let’s check them out, but I’ll be surprised if they’re not exactly the same inside.’
They did so, and proved Mani’s guess correct. Three huge bunkhouses, each capable of housing a hundred people, all, they estimated, constructed within this past year.
‘Why did they feel the need to house three hundred guests?’ Bajaan whispered nervously.
‘Perhaps they had visitors from other monasteries. From the length of the marker line, there must be more than a dozen monasteries across the land. Perhaps twice that.’
‘Whoever they were expecting never turned up,’ Parmesh pointed out.
‘Come on.’
Aram led them on a quick tour of the external structures. During almost an hour’s exhaustive search, they found tool sheds, storage sheds, barns, granaries, workshops, a bath house, laundry house, structures given over to the production of wool, cheese, milk, honey and much, much more. But most interesting were the thing they were not expecting, and the thing they didn’t find.
They did not find a living human, nor any sign of the passing of one, be it a rotting carcass or cremated remains. Unless the monks were to be found in the main complex, then they had not died here, but had left the place. And if that was the case, why had they left their crops unharvested? Even in a rush, the refugees had gathered all the food they could before they left.
And the thing they found that they had not expected: two more sets of three bunk houses in other places around the complex. Housing for a thousand, or near enough.
‘This place is setting my nerves truly on edge,’ Mani said as they completed a circuit and reached the main entrance once more.
‘I think we all feel the same,’ Aram replied. ‘But for all the oddness of this place, there is one thing I have noted here that is different to everywhere since we passed the marker.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It does not feel threatening.’
The others nodded, even Parmesh. With this strange sense of empty abandonment came a certain security after days of feeling wraiths surrounding them in the jungle. It was with a heightened sense of curiosity and jangling nerves that they entered the main complex.
It struck Aram as odd that here in the land of ghosts, the most forbidden place in the world, and in the house of dedicated monks, he was already witnessing more wealth and comfort than the Inda had known in three generations. The wall paintings were still vivid. The silver and the gold remained in place and had not been melted down two decades ago to pay harsh imperial forage parties. They moved through the monastery slowly and with eyes widening with each new discovery.
Aram had visited small monasteries in Initpur and neighbouring kingdoms during his long life. Their organisation was hardly uniform, but all the elements were there in some form or other. The temple, formed of a decorative square building, giving a side to each element and a face to each of the four gods of every circle of the heavens. The monks’ living quarters – ascetic and plain, functional and modest, with the majority of the workshops being kept outside the monastery proper. The sacred pools. The great assembly hall with its inscribed columns and room for the monks to kneel. The stepped symposium, open to the air, where the monks could engage in open and learned discourse.
These components of any Inda monastery were to be found in this place, certainly, and the four men traipsed through them in worried awe. But there were new components here too, features that they had never seen in other such places.
A library.
As they entered the large hall with its rack upon rack of cubbyholes, each designed to hold a precious scroll, Aram’s breath caught in his throat. The Inda had their own language, of course, and many could read and write it – those of sufficient rank in the social scale and those who had devoted their lives to religion, at least. And great tales from the past had been written as sagas to be passed on through the generations, as well as laws and important pronouncements. But never in his life would Aram have dreamed there had been so many things written down as to fill this place. A man could spend his life in the pursuit of naught but reading and still not work through this library.
A quick, rather nervous and reverent search revealed three things of note. The scrolls maintained here were an eclectic mixture of folk tales, legal and religious lore and varied teachings. They were written in more than one language, the large majority being in that ancient tongue decipherable only by the monks who learned it as a matter of course. And not all of the writings were present. There were quite some number of empty holes, though they showed signs of use, all of which suggested that specific scrolls had been removed, probably a few months ago when this place was abandoned.
There was also an exercise hall.
At least, that was what it seemed to be to Aram, and the two soldiers, Bajaan and Mani, confirmed his theory in part. Monks exercised, of course. A body needed to stay healthy and fit to serve the gods, after all. But it was the habit of monks to gather in the open air and practise yoga. This hall might be used for a similar practice, but Mani pointed out the various padded mats and posts with cushioned sides. Though he had trained himself in the use of both sword and spear, Mani recognised the accoutrements of a dojo – a school for the teaching of unarmed combat.
‘What?’ Aram said, his eyes widening.
‘Fighting without weapons. Or at least the forging of fist and foot into weapons,’ Mani replied.
They stared in wonder.
‘Monks do not fight,’ Parmesh said firmly.
‘Evidence suggests that these ones do,’ Aram replied. ‘An elegant solution, wouldn’t you say? It is lethal, supposedly, to bring weapons past the markers. We saw what happened to the Jade Empire patrol who did just that. And yet the monks clearly felt the need to be able to protect themselves, and so they found a way. They became trained with their own body as the weapon.’
‘Monks do not fight,’ repeated Parmesh. ‘It is one of the great laws from time immemorial. It is why no war touches a temple. All the Inda respect priests and monks because they are men of learning, of piety and of peace.’
‘Yet we do not know what the last guru told his monks,’ Aram countered. ‘The messages he bore were for their ears only, and no man has passed the markers to study the monks and their world. Perhaps the guru told these men specifically that they could fight in such a manner. Perhaps they were allowed. All I can say is that if I spent my entire life in the land of ghosts, I would want to be able to protect myself too.’
‘You will be spending your life in the land of ghosts.’
Aram threw a glare at Parmesh. Was he just being deliberately negative? They moved on.
The third surprise came in the form of a map.
Aram was immediately reminded of the faded painting on the wall of his old palace at Initpur. His map had shown all the known lands of the Inda with each kingdom and main city noted, as well as the roads, bridges, passes and chief geographical features. It had been painted by a master generations earlier, and had been one of the best of its kind. But like all the Inda’s maps, past a certain line of latitude the one at Initpur had remained blank. A white mist that represented the land of ghosts and the Isle of the Dead hung from the tip like a single teardrop.
Not so the map in the monastery. Aram felt his pulse quicken and his breathing become shallow as he stepped onto the map, which was constructed of twenty or more different coloured stones on the floor. In fact, it was the floor. Aram had heard that the western empire built pictures like this. Mosaics, they were called. He’d never seen one. And what a picture to be greeted with.
The lands of the Inda were all marked, just as his own had been, though in a more rudimentary, less artistic fashion. But past that line, where northern maps ended, this one began. Here, the land of ghosts was a true land. What had to be long-gone settlements were marked, though unnamed. Major roads seemed to be included as long paths of grey. The marker line was there, as were the monasteries behind them. That southern isle was the only part that remained empty and devoid of features. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the image, though, was the bridge.
If only the two great armies fighting at Jalnapur could see this map. There they fought over a marvel of engineering: a great bridge spanning the half-mile-wide torrent of the Nadu River. But there, perhaps a hundred miles south of this very monastery, another bridge was marked. And it was not in the nature of rivers to narrow as they neared the sea. Indeed it was rare for a river not to widen considerably. That bridge, then, could be a mile long. Or perhaps a series of bridges and causeways across a delta. Either way, it would represent another great feat of engineering and a viable alternative to that blood-soaked bridge surrounded by corpses at Jalnapur.
It took only moments for Aram to find Initpur and then trace their route with his feet in tiny steps across the map hall, around the great war zone, past the site of their near destruction at the hands of a scout party, across the boundary and to the monastery that had to be this one.
His eyes strayed on as he came to a halt, following another grey trail down to that bridge and to the distant mystery of the white teardrop at the far side of the room. He shook his head. No. This was far enough. The very nature of this map suggested that the monks had roamed all across the land of ghosts unharmed in order to chart its features, but the white teardrop confirmed that even they had not crossed to the Isle of the Dead. And if the monks were safe, then Aram could convince himself – though not without difficulty – that his people could also be safe. But if the monks would not go there, then neither would he.
‘The monastery is empty,’ Mani said.
Aram nodded. ‘And it feels safe. Or at least safer than anywhere we have been.’
‘Then what happened to the monks?’ demanded Parmesh.
‘I do not know. But they were not killed here, for there is no sign of fighting or death, and there are no bodies. It would appear that they made a purposeful decision to quit the monastery. They took some of their writings with them, but left everything else. I cannot say why, nor can I answer why they constructed so many guest quarters, but I do know one thing: this place could be no more fitting for us if the monks had planned it themselves.’
He felt an odd frisson of energy shiver through him at that thought and he frowned and looked at the others. Their expressions suggested that the same thought had occurred to them.
‘You don’t really believe—?’ began Mani.
‘I don’t know,’ Aram interrupted. ‘But whether this was meant to be or not, it shows that the gods are with us. We have shelter in a place that feels safe. We have abundant food and supplies, space for all our people, and it is safe from both the empires whose boots stamp upon the lands of the Inda.’
Bajaan nodded. ‘If we make better use of the space in the bunk houses, we could probably house almost half the people in them.’
‘And two hundred more in the accommodation of the monks,’ Mani added.
‘And what of the rest?’
They turned irritated looks on Parmesh and Aram waved a hand. ‘There is so much space. So many barns and workshops that could be cleared out and remade as housing. And there were stocks of timber, tiles and bricks in three or four storage sheds. We could build more. Fewer than a hundred monks built these bunkhouses with their own hands. We have many hundreds of builders, carpenters and masons, roofers and more. And of manual labour: thousands. In a week we could have trebled the accommodation here. And we have farmers to gather the crops and tend the animals. We have fishermen to work the lake. We have everyone we need to make this place viable, and this place has everything we need to survive and even thrive. I told you all from the start the gods would protect us as they did the monks.’
‘As long as they don’t throw at us whatever they did to drive the monks away,’ Parmesh grunted.
Aram refused to rise to the bait this time. ‘We will return to the people with this welcome news. The survivors of the Inda have a refuge after all.’ He turned to Parmesh. ‘And we will be of one accord with our happy news. We can no longer afford to be divided. We must work together or we shall fall apart. If you cannot be part of this, Parmesh, then you should leave.’
The dissenter shrugged. ‘I agree with you. I have reservations, yes, but I can see the logic in this, and I can certainly see no better way, so I shall sing the praises of the monastery and hope that no one asks us where the monks went.’
Again Aram glared at the man, but took a deep breath of relief and then smiled. ‘And once we are settled, we shall seek out other survivors, including those we left beyond the border, and offer them sanctuary.’
Sanctuary. In the land of ghosts. Who would have guessed?