immediately recognized him for what he was.
“Why are you wasting your talents on spying, boy? Only a fool would let the Home Guard use him for espionage. You would be far more valuable doing that from which you are running.”
It had been a casual statement, over pints in the officer’s club in Luxor. A stranger, albeit a superior officer, had simply walked up to him and known. Or had he walked up to Macconnach because he had known? It was never entirely clear.
Grandy had taken Macconnach under his wing almost immediately. He’d spirited the young man off for training in the “unseen arts”, as the colonel called it. Sessions were most successful at night, they quickly found.
Macconnach had his first encounters, with the afreets that lived in and around the funerary complexes in the Valley of the Kings. It was a benefit to discover that most minor spirits were intimidated by Macconnach’s association with death.
The reactions of these lesser demons, when confronted by him, had finally led Macconnach to some greater peace with his gift. He could be of aid to his fellow man. He could forestall death, he found, as well as foretell it. It meant that he could repel the forces of evil which worked against man, if their intent was to kill.
Quickly, he also found that other nations had their own agents who were similar to him. There were men who had skills like his, but more often, they were the ones responsible for calling on forces to be used against their enemies.
There were also numerous Seers, such as Grandy. These ranks included women who necessarily had to disguise themselves amongst the tailing caravans in order to follow an army undetected.
All sorts of vice were sold from those caravans, with the according persons of low virtue and rough backgrounds as their purveyors. These women Seers generally undertook more danger. Macconnach had always marveled at their devotion to duty as well as their resourcefulness.
Now, after more than a decade of service in his peculiar field, Macconnach was one of the first in India to fulfill this role. The Company had declined the services of the RSI for some time, feeling that it would be a violation of some unspoken understanding between them and the Rajputs.
Of late, however, with more and more strange occurrences cropping up, the East India Company had relented. Macconnach had heard that the tipping point was the unexplained death of the son of an MP, with the witnesses describing a “hellish creature” having attacked the young man.
Colonel Grandy liked to describe the RSI as an inquisitor’s worst nightmare. Grandy himself was a colorful eccentric, destined to forever remain in his current rank, owing to a strong attachment to gin and gaming tables.
And at times, Macconnach was not sure whether to be grateful to the man or whether to be embarrassed by him. It was true that the RSI was able to function with a great deal of secrecy, but Grandy was not known for his discretion.
In fact, it was his favorite joke to introduce Macconnach as “Azrael”, the angel of death. It was, fortunately, a jest that often went over most heads. He was often asked whether he was a physician after such an introduction.
If only Grandy could see him now, riding with a ragtag band. One of whom was a young woman masquerading as a male, no less.
Macconnach looked down at his saddle, and twisted the reins firmly around his hand before closing his eyes. He reached out with his mind, in the way that he had learned. It was almost the same as how birds called to seek one another out before roosting for the night.
Grandy had called it the, “I’m here, who’s there,” call. It was supposed to be noncommittal, giving nothing away about the caller. The idea was to lure in a response, and to judge a potential threat by that response.
Sometimes there were mischievous spirits at play, but Macconnach had not felt that the night before. What he had felt, what had danced just out of reach to him, had been something like standing in a room with a dead rat behind the walls, not knowing from whence the smell originated.
He could perceive it at a considerable distance now. In spite of the neutrality of Macconnach’s call, the entity seemed to know what he was; he could feel it mocking him in a way that implied nothing good or easy about the journey yet to come.
Likely the child was already dead, but Macconnach knew that their mission was no longer simply to find a little lost girl. Whatever this was, its presence portended a far greater disturbance than maimed livestock and missing children.
They were on the right heading, he knew that now. Bran seemed to sense the current in the air as well, adjusting himself before Macconnach even twitched at the reins.
ॐ
“All well, Major?” Isabel strove for a tenor of concern. He had been silent for well over half an hour.
“Aye. Just confirming that our direction is true.”
“Perhaps you have some idea what it is that we might find?”
“Not entirely. I’m afraid that I have no detailed inventory of what is likely to be a long list of possibilities, at least not in the local parlance. If we are speaking to generalities, there are tales in every culture of child snatchers. The desecration of animals is something else entirely.”
“It is a parent’s nightmare, is it not? The loss of a child?” She remembered the look on the face of the little girl’s mother.
“It is also a child’s nightmare to be stolen, removed from familiarity. It happens far too often, but the usual environment is in overflowing cities. It’s rarely noticed except by the families there. In small villages, it’s bound to attract far too much attention.”
“Your theory then, is that all these acts were designed to induce us to doing what we are now doing?” A most unpleasant thought, that an enemy might be many steps in advance of them. Isabel looked round into the dark, and shuddered in spite of herself.
“To lure someone, yes. I cannot yet tell whether this entity was seeking a particular person, or simply attempting to reel as many people in as possible.”
“Which is the more likely answer?”
“I should say that there are certainly creatures out there that feed off as many souls as they can possibly obtain. I think, however, that the possibilities of a single target cannot be ignored.”
“Hmph. I might point out the difficulties in such a notion. How could this thing be guaranteed its prey, in that case? We all decided of our own accord to go for our own reasons…oh.”
“Indeed, Miss Alderton. Any one of us could be that person.” Colonel Arpan had pulled back in time to hear the end of the conversation. “After all, I am a head man, someone of value, especially with my background. The major has his own value, not just as a British officer. And you are the daughter of an English general. I do not discount the other men with us, but I chose them, rather than them choosing to come. I posit that we all must be exceedingly cautious.”
“What were the names of the demons you told me of? I have no ear for Hindi, they all left my head as soon as you said them.” Macconnach rubbed his whiskers with some embarrassment. Arpan laughed.
“You need not know their names as much as what they can do. Firstly, there is a whole host of asuras. These are the fallen, deities which are in opposition to the virtuous devas. Asuras embody what you might call the ‘deadly sins’ of man. I believe they work more in a manner which you might say your Satan does, tempting men into lamentable acts. We have, of course, more specific demons and creatures, some with many names which all amount to one thing.”
“Which is?”
“More mischief than evil. I have searched my brain for some answer, but this is entirely unfamiliar to me.”
“Well, it isn’t to my liking, but I suppose we shall just have to wait to learn the identity of our creature until I am able to sense it more clearly.”
Isabel did not add what was certainly on all their minds. Let us hope that we are all still whole and alive at that time.
She thought thoroughly through all the compiled myths and legends she’d read and heard during her years in India. Arpan was certa
inly going to be knowledgeable about his native area, here in Bengal. But she’d been in western India before coming to the east.
Goa in particular had stories of far more wicked spirits, something she had previously attributed to indigestion nightmares. Goans loved their fiery foods; she herself could testify to the aftereffects.
She thought about mentioning it, but decided to wait. She had already behaved badly enough with regard to Macconnach, no need to go for excessive condescension. Instead, she tried to keep to more conciliatory overtures.
“So, Major, how do you, ah, go about your work, so to speak?”
“Is that meant to be a serious question?” He was eyeing her with the same sort of irritation and suspicion she had only recently been displaying toward him.
“No, I suppose not. Trying for small talk, don’t you know?” No, suppose not. “Really, I’m not such a bad sort, once you get to know me. I just…that is to say…oh, drat.”
She was out of her depth with all this human interaction, except in an academic capacity. Wit was her only true weapon. Books and learning from afar. If she had been a man, she could have gone to university like Alex, been a soldier, an explorer, whatever she liked.
Instead, she had to finagle and claw for anything she got, except that this tactic was getting her nowhere of late. Perhaps there was something to be said for the women who used wiles and fluttering eyelashes to get the things they