Pyre of Queens , livre ebook

‘Riveting! Like its reincarnated heroes, I was drawn again and again to David Hair’s gripping, blood-soaked tale’.
Chris Bradford, author of Young Samurai
Mandore, Rajasthan, 769 AD: Ravindra-Raj, the evil sorcerer-king, devises a deadly secret ritual, where he and his seven queens will burn on his pyre, and he will rise again with the powers of Ravana, demon-king of the epic Ramayana. But things go wrong when one queen, the beautiful, spirited Darya, escapes with the help of Aram Dhoop, the court poet.
Jodhpur, Rajasthan, 2010: At the site of ancient Mandore, teenagers Vikram, Amanjit, Deepika and Rasita meet and realize that the deathless king and his ghostly brides are hunting them down. As vicious forces from the past come alive, they need to unlock truths that have been hidden for centuries, and fight an ancient battle … one more time.
Cover design and illustration by Kunal Kundu
PUFFIN BOOKS PYRE OF QUEENS
David Hair is the author of The Bone Tiki, winner of Best First Book at the 2010 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards. The Bone Tiki and its sequel The Taniwha’s Tear are fantasy novels set in New Zealand.
David is a New Zealander, who has worked primarily in financial services. He has a degree in history and Classical Studies. He has lived from 2007 to 2010 in New Delhi, India, but usually resides in Wellington, New Zealand. Apart from writing, he is interested in folklore, history, and has a passion for football.
Pyre of Queens
Book 1 The Return of Ravana
by DAVID HAIR
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Group (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Puffin by Penguin Books India 2010
Copyright © David Hair 2010
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-01-4333-142-1
This digital edition published in 2011.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-281-6
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.
This book is dedicated to Kerry, my wonderful wife, and to Brendan and Melissa, my children.
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
P ROLOGUE : T HE L OST J OURNAL
1. C ONSPIRATOR
2. W HEN T HREE M EET (A GAIN )
3. O VERHEARD
4. P RIVATE L IFE
5. T HE P YRE
6. T HE P IT
7. P URSUIT
8. M ANDORE
9. T HE S TOLEN Q UEEN
10. O LD A SH
11. A FTER T HE B URNING
12. A NCIENT E CHOES
13. F LIGHT
14. M OVIE S HOW
15. O N T HE H ILL O F B IRDS
16. R ESEARCH
17. A LL I H OLD D EAR
18. D INNER D ATE
19. A NCIENT S HRINE
20. F ROSTED G LASS
21. T HE C HASM A ND T HE B RIDGE
22. B ENEATH T HE F ORTRESS
23. B URNED F LESH
24. B ULLETS A ND R USTED B LADES
25. T HE R OPE -B RIDGE
26. R EMEMBERED L IVES
27. A N H ONOURABLE W AY T O D IE
28. T HE R ETURN O F R AVANA
E PILOGUE : T HE P AST
E PILOGUE : T HE P RESENT
A B RIEF S UMMARY OF THE R AMAYANA
Acknowledgements
With thanks to:
The good people at Penguin India for their faith and guidance in letting this Kiwi write an Indian story in his own way. Mike and Heather for opening doors and shining lights. Sudeshna for her guidance.
Tanuva for road-testing this book.
I’d also like to thank my arbiter on all matters of content and good taste, my wondrous wife Kerry. You are my greatest adventure ever.
Author’s Note
This story was inspired by seeing the hand-prints of the burned queens of Jodhpur in the Mehrangarh Fort, and refined over red wine with Mike Bryan. The entire Mandore section of the story is fictional, but the setting is real—Mandore was abandoned as imperial capital in favour of Avanti in the 8th century AD as noted in the story, and fell into decline for some time. The gardens and fortress remain, a lovely spot and a refuge of green in the harsh and dusty desert. There are no caves under the Mehrangarh that I am aware of, but there was a long tradition of hermitage on the hill where the fortress now stands.
I am a New Zealander currently living in India, and the books of this series have been written here in Delhi. It has been a great privilege to reside here for the past three and a half years. I love it here, and though I may leave, it will never leave me. These books are a gift in return for the gift of being able to live here for a time. They are fiction, rooted in myth and history. I hope you enjoy them for what they are—entertainment, and a little insight into the things that I found most striking about this rich and intoxicating country.
CHAK DE INDIA!
Prologue
The Lost Journal
Jodhpur, Rajasthan, June 2010
The journal was right where he remembered putting it over eighty years ago—two feet below the distinctive stone tablet. It was wrapped in waterproof greased paper and leathers, in a painted wooden box that crumbled with dry-rot when he dug it out. To his considerable relief, it appeared no one had touched it since its burial. The pages smelt musty, tainted by preservatives, and the binding was frail. Some of the oldest pages, the ones at the front, were more than one thousand years old. It was to the first page, the oldest of them all, that he turned. The script was ancient, but he found he knew it, translated it mentally as he traced the lines with one trembling finger that dared not quite touch the page.
If you are reading this work, then you are very likely me. You know what I mean.
I have come to believe that certain stories develop a life of their own. They are so powerful, so widely known, so much a part of our culture, indeed of our daily lives, that they become more than mere words.
Imagine, if you will, a tale that defines a people. It has heroes and villains, good and evil deeds, its very words are sacred to us. It is like a chess set, its pieces inhabited by the same souls, game after game. Or perhaps this tale is a living thing, a script that constantly seeks actors, and when it finds them, it inhabits those actors and possesses them utterly, finding new ways to express and re-express itself, time and time again.
What must it be like, to be one of those souls, doomed time and again to live the same life, over and over? Acting out the tale, glorifying it, enhancing it, though at great cost to themselves. Their whole existence a prison sentence, their fate to again and again live as a play-thing of an idea.
But then, you know what it’s like, don’t you?
Such a story is a tyrannical god, inflicting itself upon its unwilling worshippers.
Can such a thing be? Yes it can, and I know, for I am living such a tale, and am doomed to live it over and over, forever more. And so are you.
Over and over. Again and again.
And again.
And yet again.
He focused on the brief verse that followed, and felt a thrill of unease and excitement which made him almost gasp aloud.
Time is water from the well of life And I must draw that water with only my hands to bear it My thin and frail fingers cupped to receive it, every drop precious But ere I have raised it to my lips, it has drained away One day I will learn not to spill it and I will drink my fill And finally be free Aram Dhoop, Poet of Mandore.
He blinked twice, and realized he’d not drawn breath since beginning to read. He panted now, refilling his lungs though they seemed to be constricting in his chest. The words were exactly those of a poem he had written a year ago in English class that had won him the Poetry Cup for that year. Even though he’d not been able to explain properly to the teachers what he had meant. ‘It’s about reincarnation,’ was as close as he’d come.
Finally he put the book down. He knew though that he would read it fully that night, cover to cover, if he could stay awake that long. Just as surely he knew that each word in it would be as familiar as if he had written them yesterday.
There was one other thing, hidden with the journal. It was a small leather pouch. He opened it, but it was empty. Still empty, after all these years. Strange, he had almost expected it to be full. His hand still remembered what should have been there—a tarnished pendant bearing a pale crystal, veined with burgundy streaks. He remembered the way it used to pulse queasily to the touch. Where the stone was now, he had no idea.
The journal was a history scholar’s dream, but he would never show it to anyone. He himself had begun writing it, over a thousand years ago. He had buried it many times too, most recently only thirty years back. It had been part of his life for centuries, though he was only seventeen years old.
Conspirator
Mandore, Rajasthan, 769 AD
As the winter draws to an e