Chapter Thirty-Eight
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Thirty-Eight
Ellie gazed at the softly shadowed interior of the temple with quiet wonder.
Up in the cave, she had found it hard to absorb that she stood in a space that had once been inhabited by a legend. The chamber had simply been a fascinating archaeological discovery in its own right, promising to reveal more knowledge of ancient Hindu ascetic practices.
This was different.
Ellie clung to analysis in the face of the growing feeling that she was somewhere not at all scholarly in nature.
“Based on the similarity between the carved decorations on the exterior of the structure and the colonnades fronting some of the rock-cut chambers, I would estimate that all this dates from roughly two thousand years ago.”
“Quite,” Neil agreed inadequately, adjusting his spectacles as he stared around him.
The space was humble. The single room was broken up by a circle of columns that supported the flat slab of the roof. Windows were set into three alternating walls. The other four held carved niches with holy figures.
Hanuman filled the hollow to Ellie’s left. He knelt with his powerful mace at his side, his hands pressed together in prayer.
Lakshmana stood to her right. Rama’s loyal brother was a straight-backed, youthful figure with a garland of carved stone flowers around his neck.
Across the room, a man with the bearing of a king faced a woman whose body curved with grace and beauty. The details of her face were worn away.
Constance joined Ellie to look at them, her voice softened with awe. “Rama and Sita.”
The rest of the players of the Ramayana were carved into the walls. Giant vultures soared over monkey kings. An army crossed the thrashing waves of the sea. Demons ranged in fearsome troops before a ten-headed monster.
The soft gray light from the windows painted an octagonal slab of stone in the center of the temple. Three objects lay there, held up on small braces of stone.
A recurve bow, still strung. A silk-lined quiver. And a single humble arrow.
The bow was formed of layers of gleaming wood tipped with bone, the grip wrapped with cords of pale sinew.
The head of the arrow was pounded iron, shaped like a leaf. A shaft of unpolished bamboo was fletched with black feathers.
Another storm-scented wind shifted through the temple, tugging lightly at the loose strands of hair at the back of Ellie’s neck.
“If these date to the same era as those caverns, they shouldn’t be this well preserved,” Neil noted uncomfortably.
“Maybe someone brought them here more recently,” Ellie suggested.
The words rang false. This place had the feel of somewhere that had not seen mortal steps in a very long time.
The objects were simple in the way of well-loved things. Ellie could see where the patina of the wood of the bow was darkened by the grip of someone’s hand. “This was used… but I don’t remember Sita having a bow.”
Constance shot a knowing look at Neil. He coughed uncomfortably.
“Maybe she got it from him.” Adam jerked a thumb at the kingly statue that stood behind him.
Ellie studied the arc of polished wood with a surprised reverence. “You think this is Lord Rama’s bow?”
“The bigger question might be whether that arrow is the apocalyptic weapon of the gods,” Adam countered.
With obvious discomfort, Neil crouched by the altar to give the artifact a better look. “It resembles several dozen other ancient arrows I’ve seen, save for some slight regional variations in the style of the point.”
“Well—it would, wouldn’t it?” Ellie retorted. “The astra wasn’t some specially constructed treasure. It was a power you summoned into any object you wanted. Rama would have called it into whatever arrow happened to be in his quiver.”
“Right.” Neil sounded shaky. “Because he knew the mantra. You use the mantra to invoke the astra. But then… if none of us knows the mantra, could we even use this? Assuming we wanted to,” he quickly corrected. “Which we absolutely don’t.”
“If we’re right about this being what we think it is, someone with the mantra already did summon the astra into it. This invocation of it is just…” Ellie trailed off, at a loss for the right word.
“Leftovers,” Adam offered.
Ellie raised her brows at his casual description.
Adam shrugged.
Constance huffed with frustration. “But how do we know whether it’s leftovers or just another arrow?”
Ellie studied the artifact with a deep sense of discomfort. “When Sayyid handed me the Staff of Moses, it felt like a dozen bees were stinging my fingers.”
“Dyrnwyn doesn’t sting,” Neil absently countered.
Adam plucked the arrow from its stone braces.
It glowed, tendrils of light whipping out from the shaft in mingling hues of blue and gold, silver and crimson. The shadows of the temple grew longer and deeper around them, and a dry, strange wind rushed through the close space, making the dead leaves on the ground whirl furiously.
Ellie’s skin tightened. Blood pounded inside her skull like the uneasy pressure of standing near an imminent lightning strike.
Adam very quickly set the arrow back down.
The glow flickered out. The wind died. The shadows went back to normal.
The leaves settled onto the ground with a dry rustle.
“Doesn’t sting,” Adam reported in a tight voice.
Neil had half collapsed behind the altar. He slowly crawled back up, regarding the arrow with a terrified respect.
“It really is the astra,” Constance breathed out.
“If you had dropped that,” Ellie said in a strangled voice, “you might have taken out half of Chhattisgarh.”
“Guessing that means you don’t need to know the mantra to use its leftovers,” Adam deduced uncomfortably.
Constance studied the objects on the altar with bewildered wonder. “Aai has been telling me about Rama and Sita for as long as I can remember—but they were always just stories.” She turned to Ellie, her eyes wide. “Except they weren’t. Because Sita was here. She was here, Ellie.”
Ellie felt the whispering, uncanny awareness that she had once again brushed up against the imprint an extraordinary woman had made on the world.
She remembered golden eyes and a scarred cheek.
You want to know who we were.
Neil’s outburst snapped her back to herself. “But what on earth do we do with it? Borthwick is out in that valley. We can’t take the chance of carrying this with us just to have him take it. And there’s only one way out of this place!”
Ellie recalled the steep, curving walls of the sinkhole. Neil was right. Their only way out of here was to go back through Sita’s cave—and somehow get past Borthwick and his soldiers in the gorge.
“So maybe we don’t carry it out with us,” Adam said grimly. “Maybe we destroy it right here.”
Ellie felt a thrill of horror. “There is no way to destroy it. You can only use it. Which means you’d have to find a target… and that target would be completely obliterated. Even if we just directed it at the ground, we could end up devastating the entire forest.”
“Do any of you know how to shoot an arrow?” Adam asked.
“Don’t you?” Neil pressed back uncomfortably.
“Why would I? I’m usually carrying around a perfectly good Winchester repeater—when someone hasn’t dropped a cave on it,” Adam added with a mischievous look at Ellie.
“I did not drop a cave on your last Winchester,” Ellie tartly corrected. “Borthwick took it.”
“That’s fair,” Adam allowed.
“I know how to shoot an arrow.”
The voice was low, even, and casually threatening.
Ellie whirled toward it to see Jacobs step into the doorway—and level a rifle at her chest.
“And it looks like I have a Winchester as well,” he added darkly.
Jacobs’ shirt was open to the waist, the fabric torn in places. Blood soaked his back and shoulder. A bruise darkened his jaw, his hair wet and disheveled.
Ellie, Adam, Constance, and Neil froze in a tableau where they were gathered around the altar.
She made a rapid, desperate calculation. Adam’s machete was still missing. Constance was out of daggers. The only weapon they had was Neil’s flaming sword—which he had no idea how to use.
“That’s my gun, isn’t it?” Adam nodded to the rifle.
Jacobs answered him with an unapologetic smile.
“How are you even here?” Ellie demanded.
“I followed you lot. You always seem to find your way to what I’m looking for.” Jacobs swung the rifle to point at Constance. “Hand me those items from the altar, Miss Mallory, and I’ll refrain from putting a hole in your friend.”
Constance’s expression blazed with fury. “If you were three steps closer, I promise I could make that much harder for you to do.”
“I don’t need to be any closer to shoot you, Miss Tyrrell,” Jacobs reasonably replied. “Now hurry along, Miss Mallory. Or I can kill your friend right now to show you just how serious I am and still have your brother to threaten.”
Ellie looked to Adam. His expression was grim. “I don’t think this is a bluff we want to call, Princess.”
Carefully, she picked up the arrow. It flared with ghostly, dancing light. A hot wind rose once more, the scent of ozone burning in her nose.
She felt something where her fingers met the shaft—not the uncomfortable sting of the Staff of Moses but an electric, humming sense of unimaginable potential.
The feeling was not comfortable. Ellie quickly dropped the arcanum into the quiver.
The bow seemed warm to the touch as she lifted it, as though someone else had only just let it go.
Jacobs balanced the rifle against his hip from the strap over his uninjured shoulder, his finger still on the trigger. He extended his left hand to Ellie, his jaw twitching with pain as the movement tugged on his wound. “Quiver first.”
She handed it to him. He slowly lifted the strap over his head. The muscles of his cheek tightened with a wince as the quiver fell into place on his back, just below the vicious wound from Borthwick’s whip.
Ellie felt a queasy, involuntary tug of sympathy.
Adam nodded at Jacobs’ shoulder. “That must hurt like hell.”
“Gloating, Mr. Bates?”