Chapter 2 : Amaya and the Rakshak Naag

"Here, some water," said Niramya to the girl who shivered in the moonlight by the balcony, sitting with her back against the wall of its entrance. She didn't speak and hardly looked at him. Her hair was tied in with the dark oceanic cloth that covered her head. Her Kasaya, of similar shades, seemed strange and foreign too.

"I've never seen you here before. Why were they taking you away?" she took a fleeting glance at the glass he offered and took it without looking again. She didn't answer.

"Isn't it wonderful. Niramya is just a fool." he said as he shrugged "let him ask questions. Let him be curious. Why answer a fool. Murqaya, these women,the Mayavars..." The girl stomped the glass on the concrete floor. The shrill sound of the vessel startled Niramya.

The girl let out the slight sound of laughter. "Oh, so she laughs."

Niramya retired to his study room whose entrance faced the balcony. His home was a clean ancestral concrete house that had one storey and a small garden, which was typical in Mayavari. In fact most of the subcontinent had these small gardens or angans with the ideal tulsi plant in the centre.

A trail of moonlight from the girl's feet in the balcony followed the open door of Niramya's study room. The moths in the book shelf reminded him of Murqaya, his eyes against the light of the fire.

"What does he mean I have it." he searched through the books. "I thought magic isn't legal here?" said the girl, now leaning at the door, eclipsing the lunar rays. Images of silent predatory animals crossed Niramya's mind before he thought of conversation.

"Oh, so you do speak. Well, it isn't. But what is legal anyway? Under Tyranny there is no fairness." replied Niramya as he shuffled through the various pages he had spread on the table.

"I'm Amaya." 

"Hello Amaya. I am Niramya. The Great Scholar of the…"

"Where is this?" she asked, interrupting him as if he wasn't speaking at all.

Niramya, gathering himself again, "oh, that. Why that's the ancient war. It's a mythical story they all tell children." he said, taking one of his grandfather's maps from her hands. 

"Take me there"

Niramya fell into his chair, laughing and wiping away tears, "There? You want to go there?"

He continued laughing. Amaya stood unaffected, waiting for the rest of his answer, "that place does not exist. It's a myth."

"But you dreamt of it." 

Niramya stood, dumbfounded. He came closer to Amaya, enquiring into her coal eyes, causing her to step back, "who are you?"

Amaya retrieved into the corner where she came from, she looked at Niramya distrustfully, " you have seen it yet you don't believe it." she stood firm. Niramya, in the light of the blazing moon, now saw Amaya's distinct figure.

Her eyes with abysmal darkness circumfered by her raging blood. Her dark skin that cast mystic spells on onlookers and her ultramarine Kasaya shining in the moonlight struck Niramya. His heart seemed to beat violently against his numbing senses that didn't allow him to break the silence.

Suddenly, his dream had begun to fill the spaces of a puzzle he hadn't realized he had entered. Reaching for assurance on the table, he moved his hand through the useless pile of stationary that were hardly respectable weapons. She moved, yet again, closer to Niramya, touching his face with her icy fingertips.

Only a slight wind broke the silence, throwing the pages off the table. Niramya turned calm with warmth and safety. His eyes lost their way in the distance, not noticing Amaya at all now, "I can see"

Amaya withdrew. Niramya sat back in his chair. There was utter silence.

"A thousand years. My father searched for answers for a thousand years. He was ridiculed. Beaten. Threatened by his own people. For a thousand years he left us all to fight for the ones who were wiped out of history. And I despised him. I ridiculed him too. I cursed him for leaving mother. I cursed him when she died here. And now, I am really the fool." Amaya shrugged her shoulders.

"You talk a lot."

Niramya, taken aback, "pardon?" Amaya got up and handed Niramya a chit.

"That is Murqaya's spell. Tomorrow we will go and take the scripture." 

"The scripture cannot be taken out of the.."

Amaya lay in the moonlight and turned away to sleep. Niramya was left overwhelmed with insult and affection all the same. He deciphered the spell and chanted it in his mind as he lay in bed. 

In the light of the morning he found Amaya wide awake.

"Get ready. The spell wears off at dusk." 

"A day spell? But, only the pillars of the East Sun have been known to cast day spells?"

Niramya said as he scratched his head. Within the first hour of dawn, they left their abode to steal a book from the ancient Pustakalaya unaware of the grave dangers they were about to tangle themselves in.

Niramya stole glances at Amaya as they walked. "Don't mind if I ask, how did you get that scar on your neck?" she covered her neck with her head cloth. " don't ask stupid questions." Niramya flushed with anger. "Niramya, a tender heart and soul. He has no place in the cruel world, no love to match his tenderness" he thought to himself as he stole away in fantasy.

Amaya paced to the back of the Pustakalaya touching the walls, listening in for hollow spaces. She stopped at a site and pushed the wall, holding Niramya's hand abruptly who kept pestering her with questions and doubts, they fell into the library. Niramya stood quiet for the first time since they had left his place. 

"This… this is where Murqaya vanished from after he gave me the book. How did you.." 

Amaya, dusting herself from the annoying moth dust "They're all the same. Clumsy magical hags.. Hey, we don't have much time. Show me where he pulled the book from."

" show you? I can hardly see you, is your eyesight cast with spells too or am I the only useless human here?" 

"Shhh! Keep it down!" Amaya fastened her grip on Niramya's arm. She took his hand and put it on the mammoth walls of ancient books.

"Touch and tell me. Smell it. You know this place. You know where it is. And don't make a sound." Niramya flushed red, thanking his ancestors that they were in the dark. He felt the wall, reading the inscriptions carved into its bricks. As his ears were distracted by a sound, his hands turned to ice, "what was that?" He listened for Amaya's breath.

"Hurry Niramya. We don't have much time." he could now feel her back against his. Her arms firm and strong, her back stressed with a rock's posture. She stood just as still. The silence was pierced by the drawing of long sharp iron from a worn leather case.

"Concentrate" she whispered. Niramya, scared and faltering, ran his fingers through the carvings as fast as he could manage to comprehend. He could feel it. He could hear it. There were things wriggling and crawling in the dark. The sounds came from the high wall, the far ends, from beneath and above.

Whatever it was, it was everywhere. His hands trembled with sweat and an uncontrollable pulse, "This, I think this is it" He said this and to his horror he realised he was alone. He backed up against the wall chanting prayers for mercy. In the distance he heard the thick slicing of fluid flesh followed by a gush of outburst.

The high walls were hit by the unforgiving echo of a bellowing creature, like that of a hundred jackals whose throats had torn their chords from screeching. He heard exactly what he was afraid of.

"I will never wish for stories to be real again" he uttered as a cold slimy tentacle shaped shadow slithered over his foot. Before he could jerk it off in disgust, he was thrown off of his feet, he was wild with screaming, a white fever ran through his spine and delirium had caught him by the ankles. Swinging in the air now, suspended, he heard Amaya's thunder voice from the far end in the dark.

"Niramya! Cast the spell you insolent fool! Cast the" the voice was cut off. He could hear the smashing of bodies and iron swords against the concrete, the wall, someone lifted high up to the top of the ceiling and thrown to the ground.

"THE SPELL!" Niramya gathered himself, like a caged rat gathering his last fuels to break free of a trap. He was wrapped till his belly in slimy serpentile flesh. He tried to remember the spell. He stuttered. He stammered.

He could hardly speak. As soon as he felt the ominous breath of the creature on his face, he broke out in chants "पुस्तक भवन्त अज्ञ I अज्ञ भवन्त पुस्तकII"

He fell to the floor with a thud. His head hit the concrete and he looked to the ceiling, that blinked with distant light as if it was a dark sky lit by lightning. And the thunder soon followed. He rushed to his feet with the book in his hands, following Amaya's screams.

He ran in the endless darkness following the sounds and if it weren't for the intermittent flashes of light he would've run for eternity and never found an end. Such was the maze of no walls of the Pustakalaya.

He wouldn't have ever believed any story like this if he hadn't seen it for his own eyes, for there stood the dark woman yielding wide and long crescent swords in each arm.

Without armour, without shield, she was warding off two mighty serpents that seemed to be bound by the vows of love, the Rakshakh Naag demons of the infamous Pustakalaya that he had only ever heard stories of. "Niramya. You jinx." he said to himself as he saw Amaya high in the air bringing down her sword onto the giant serpent's head as the other one slithered like lightning to catch her midway.

One of the serpents fell to the ground howling while the other smashed Amaya mercilessly on the ground that broke and spewed debris all around. She gasped for breath, only armed with one sword now, looking at the towering creature who was about to swallow her alive. Venom corroded through her skin, wherever it dripped on her as she lay on her broken back.

"Amaya, Amaya get up!" Niramya's voice shook with tears. The serpent rose even higher, higher than anyone had anticipated the high ceiling of the Pustakalaya to be. Only visible as two insidious eyes sparkling in the dark sky up high, Amaya could sense the blow that was to come.

Niramya gasped and ran towards her, the serpent, at about the speed of sound, was on his way to crash into Amaya like a meteor, burning with the flames of friction sparking against his slimy skin and demonic spells.

Amaya, lifting her empty hand towards Niramya on one side and lifting her sword over her body on the other, took a fleeting glance at Niramya as the ancient corridor lit up with the violet fires of doom, she chanted a spell as she said "Save the book" and light flashed Niramya blind where he found himself awake under the afternoon sun.

"what.. Here… again…" he collected himself. Anger rushed through his scholarly head. "How dare.. You" he whispered against the door. 

"HOW DARE YOU THROW ME OUT AGAIN!" his indignant protests caught the eyes of merchants in the streets, women giggling at the fool talking to a wall. He hid the book in his vest. He left.

As he sat down in the light of his study's lamp, escaping the creeping night from the rest of the rooms, he threw his head in his hands.

"Where am I going with all this?" he said, as he tried to find his place in the line of events that had caught him in their net. He remembered the voices in the dark.

He recalled his shaking hands. He saw Amaya's face. Her mighty swords.

"Is she.. Could she be.. No. I couldn't have.. I would've seen it… I" tears ran down his face. He was scared. His historical adventure had turned into a nightmare that would traumatize him for years. Somewhere in his heart he knew, he was caught in something that he couldn't untangle himself from now. Or maybe ever? 

He stood up, wiping his tears "no! I won't be weak. I will do this. For Amaya. I will finish her journey for her. Wait… I don't know what she wanted… okay. I will find out what she wanted. Oh! Beautiful mystic, she has given her life for me. My life is now hers. She will live! In my pages of history! The Great Warrior!" he said as he dramatically stepped into the balcony, his voice rising with every sentence, running his hands through his curly dark hair "I will carry your light. Your kindness! Your vigor of life" 

"Stop talking Niramya."

Niramya twisted with surprise, he saw Amaya, her blue Kasaya that seemed to be black at first but revealed to be green goo in the light, "Amaya!" he cried! Rushing to fall to her feet. The stench, however, stopping him short of his praise, he withdrew, gagging and finally throwing up on the balcony. 

Before he could gather himself back and ask Amaya any questions, she had left with the book.

He rushed out of his house, following a trail of green goo into the street. "Wait, where do you think you're going?"

Amaya didn't stop or answer.

"Hey, after all that I did for"

"What you did is forget the one spell I asked you to remember." 

She said, stopping now, glaring her piercing sight into his. She continued walking.

"Let me come with you."

She laughed.

"I can be of great help. I am great with history, I'm great company too!" he said, desperately trying to make his adventure last.

Amaya looked at Niramya now, without sarcasm.

She handed the book to him and said "this is a book. Do you know what's written in it?"

"No I don't"

"Do you know who I am?"

"About that, I have a few theori…"

"You don't." she said, as she stepped closer. "And you were going to die today. For this book. For a whim."

Niramya stood silent. She walked ahead without taking the book. Niramya, once realizing he had the book in his hands, began gleaming with hope. He rushed after Amaya.

"I'll learn! I'll Learn everything!"

"Then I hope you learn to be quiet." said Amaya as she threw her shawl over her marine robe.