And now, the general’s daughter had been harmed, if to no serious end.
The next incident might end with far more serious consequences. He was thinking of the other men around him, of course. If he were to meet his end, it would be of no great consequence.
His sons were being safely raised in the halls of England’s finest educational institutions. His daughter was tucked comfortably away in Cornwall, where she was learning to paint, he was told.
They were far better off there, than to be looked down upon here, because he had married an Englishwoman. His sons would follow their father into the military, and his little flower would hopefully find herself an understanding gentleman.
He hoped to be with his wife again one day, if he managed to live through this hunt for strange creatures and a lost girl child.
ॐ
Somewhere in the distance, buried deep in one of the undulating foothills of the Himalayas, there was a carved out stronghold. It had indeed once belonged to the family of a deposed raja.
Many years before, the powerful family to whom the palace had once belonged sent off a working party of men to dig into the hillside. It was meant to be a treasure hold, just as Arras had reasoned.
Wealth won through the labors of others had then been carried in on the backs of many ponies, guarded by men bristling with spears and swords. The digging and building had gone on for months upon months, hidden in what had been heavily forested land at the time.
The family had taken for granted that all was proceeding well, finally sending for news of progress after approximately six months’ time.
The messenger had arrived at the designated spot, only to find it completely deserted. Upon inspection, the hapless lad had found all the gold and jewels exactly where they were meant to be, the digging apparently complete.
Not a single servant or guard was to be found, nor any of the ponies. Even the elephant that had been there to move heavy stone had gone astray. The boy had been quite loathe to share the news of the missing workers and animals, but felt that he had been lucky to leave the place with his life and limbs intact.
Naturally, he was not taken at all seriously by his masters, who had so little faith in him that they assumed he must have crossed paths with the workers and never taken notice. They compelled him to pluck chickens in order to hone his attention to detail.
When the workers and guards failed to ever return, furrowed brows and doubts only pertained as to whether the gold had actually been placed in the vault, as the boy had swore.
Perhaps the family had been robbed, and the boy had been paid to lie about it! The boy was tortured in order to speak the truth; another messenger dispatched to check the vault.
Two weeks later, the disheveled and badly wounded messenger returned, living long enough to affirm that the gold was there, but something evil…. There he died, leaving the raja to decide whether all these strange circumstances were enough to warrant concern.
He chose to shrug it off, feeling that with all the guards and diggers gone, dead perhaps, the location of the vault was quite secure. The second messenger was certainly dead; all that remained was the first, who protested his innocence in the face of lies.
He had seen something, he swore upon Lord Krishna’s honor and his both. He died under the lash, weeping pitifully.
The raja failed to take any of these warnings. His youngest son, once the friend of the boy who had died after first being sent to check on the vault, had listened to his friend’s story late one early night after the boy had returned.
The raja’s son did take the story to heart, and watched his friend die, helpless to intervene. He had been only six years of age at the time, but even he understood the implications of greed and cruelty. Moreover, he knew what his friend had seen, which the second messenger also alluded to before expiring.
Several years later, as the Tipu Sultan led the Marathas against the Redcoats, the raja declined to take sides. In spite of many threats from both sides, the raja knew he had what the English called the “trump card”.
The vaults. And their secure location. He and his family would go, wait out the hostilities, and emerge once they got word of which way victory was bound to go.
The raja’s youngest son was by then ten, nearly eleven, and considered himself a man in his own right. He was no longer the youngest son anymore, and had made his own plans.
When night fell on the appointed day, a long train of litters and pack animals set out, headed into the arms of the jungle. As the accounting of all the children had taken place at the outset, no one observed that younger son breaking away.
He scooped up his youngest twin siblings as he left. He made his way to a village, to meet a family he knew there; the parents of his dead friend. The twins were given into the care of the messenger boy’s parents.
They had never learned what had truly happened to their son, but accepted the chubby toddlers into their household without question. Their older brother was taken into the head man’s household.
There the boy tried to atone for his father’s misdeeds through hard labour. He was content never to have known what befell the rest of his family, and they never came searching for him.
This was because they were all dead.
If one were to speak to their spirits, nothing could be learned of how they met their fates. It had happened so fast, blindingly, sickeningly fast. One moment, smiling upon carefully arranged piles of gold, the family’s wealth.
The next, darkness, terror, oblivion. No bodies recovered. Their surviving children grew up without them, slowly forgetting their former life, to become completely meshed in with the new one.
Through the accumulation of years, hapless wanderers occasionally found themselves in the raja’s vault, or tomb, however one might view it. They never exited.
And then the English came further into Bengal territory, blasting and slashing their way through its jungles. There was dark rich soil to be had in addition to all the other bounties of the region.
By then, the entrance to the vault had fallen in; collapsed under its own weight. The hillside in which it lay was razed, terraced, and planted with the ubiquitous tea plants, camellia sinensis.
Nothing ever grew in that one spot, however, where the raja’s vault had been. Nothing could compel a plant to take root there; everything died, or crept to another location, spontaneously rooting further up the stem.
Tea plants were able to root from cuttings, so this was not viewed as particularly unusual. The shape of the area in which growth was not taking place was not seen as unusual either. It seemed as though it was just an amorphous, natural form.
Perhaps if anyone had been able to see it from above, they might have been more concerned. It bore the mark of old evil, something that probably only a priest would have recognized.
The plantation workers left it alone, without much curiosity. The Company representatives, who thought they owned the land at that time, were not much bothered by it either. Eventually, it was given up on entirely, and allowed to revert.
The raja was long forgotten. His gold was buried back in the arms of the earth, from whence it had come. The earth remembered though, and knew that there were more people on the way, looking for what was there. It trembled at such terrible things.
ॐ
They were on the right trail, Macconnach was certain of that. The closer they drew to the hills, the more he could feel the pulsating presence of whatever wickedness was still ahead of them.
He’d been regretting for several hours that Isabel Alderton and these other men were along for this journey. It had been a mistake to assume that this was merely about missing children. Something far more sinister was at work, so completely beyond what he’d encountered before.
He half considered telling Arpan to direct his men to compel Miss Alderton back to her father. He simply was not certain which was more lethal, her rage or what lay ahead.
Isabel had been remarkably silent for
some time, except for shifting often in her saddle with suppressed groans. He sympathized with her on that account, his back was beginning to speak up and protest as well.
Probably he had not ridden so nearly as often as he ought. Bran was quite content on the other hand. The stallion cantered along as though he had endless reserves, and Macconnach reminded himself to slip something extra to the stable hands for their excellent care.
Miss Alderton’s mount displayed the same stamina. As for the rest of the ponies, even down to Arpan’s excellent filly, they were beginning to tire. He had to admit that they were still many hours away from a destination.
Perhaps it would be best to find shelter and rest. It was a dissatisfying waypoint in the beginning of a strange journey, but he could see no alternative.
Everyone gratefully collapsed on the ground, while the horses watered and fed. Macconnach suggested a private area for Isabel, but she pointedly ignored his overtures, rolling herself up tightly in a wool blanket.
He dared to peek over at her after some few moments. She appeared to have gone immediately to sleep. Just as well. He’d like to have a word with Arpan without her interruptions, for once. He made his way over to the other man, who seemed disinclined to sleep.
“It is a curious thing. Even so long away from life in the field; I can still feel like a young fool on my first watch.”
“Indeed. I always think of the nights I had to bring in