The Cave of Memory

The Market

Occasional voices rose above the din of the market crowd. Shopkeepers shouted their prices at passers-by. People haggled for their lives, or at least better deals. A group of middle-aged women made their way to the temple at the end of the street. They wore colorful saris with flowers in their hair. Baskets filled with garlands hung from their arms. A servant to a rich family inspected produce. The man wore a pristine white dhoti with a crisp black kurta, an orange turban wrapped around his head. The crowd split and made way for a troop of soldiers in their chainmail shirts and helmets. Their spears glinted in the bright sun as they marched in step down the street. All this and not one person looked at the cave.

Santhi wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. It was cooler in the alley than in the sun, but that didn’t prevent it from being unbearable. She looked up at the cave once again. Two soldiers guarded the entrance of the cave, one on either side of the narrow dark hole. They seemed bored with their duty. One of them looked down at his feet while the other stared into nothingness. It would be so easy to get past them.

She felt a heavy footfall behind her and turned to see Harivel striding down the alley. He was a huge man, the biggest she had ever seen. He barely fit into the gap between the two buildings. His head was shaven and a thick beard covered his face. “Been staring at it again?” he asked as he reached her. "No one even looks at it," She said. She turned away, observing the people again. "One day a year, it's the center of the town and then, people act like it doesn't even exist."

“Why don’t you get a real job. It’ll keep your mind off the cave for some time,” he said. A job? How dare he! “A job is for sheep,” she said. “I do my work in the night when everyone is asleep. It’s easier that way. Besides, people have too many things to worry about. I help them out by taking their things away.”

“I said a real job, Santhi. I can see if you can get some work at the shop. You can’t continue living on thievery. You’ll get caught!” Harivel said.

“I may,” she said. “But these people haven’t had to deal with a proper thief in years. Some back alley urchin stealing fruit is one thing, Silanagar trained is something else altogether. They don’t know what to do. The guards don’t even know how to investigate.”

“It's been a year since you got here,” Harivel said. “They’ll wise up eventually, and you won’t even know before you get caught.”

“Well, none of this really matters anyway," Santhi said. She had felt the same fears as Harivel. The guards had become a bit more alert, a bit smarter in how they patrolled. "I’ll be able to lie low for quite some time after what I’m planning." She saw one eyebrow lift on Harivel’s face. A hand instinctively went up to his beard, stroking it. “You’ve been staring at that cave every day for some time now,” he said, his voice low, making sure to enunciate every word. “I don’t like what you are thinking, Santhi. The cave is too dangerous.”

“How long has the town been sending people in there?” Santhi asked. “Longer than I can remember,” Harivel said. “Longer than the oldest person I know can remember.”

“Exactly, and each one of those people have carried ten Varahas with them,” Santhi said.

“But none of them have come back!” Harivel said. “Once you go in there, you don’t get out, Santhi!”

“It's always the oldest person in the town that you send in. The poor man I saw go in could barely walk. You sent him into a cave!” Santhi said. “Imagine, ten gold coins every year for longer than anyone can remember. There must be a mountain of gold in there! I only need one night, I’ll grab a bagful and be out before sunrise.”

Harivel shook his head. He had started giving up arguing with her. One year had been enough to teach him that. “You will do as you please,” he said, shaking his head. “Anyway, let's go get some food, my stomach’s been growling for an hour now.”

---

Too Much Talk

The Sabha was a large restaurant, a lunch hall really. You ate what they gave you, there was no choice. Wasting food was met with harsh stares by the matron of the establishment. No alcohol and no meat was on offer. You went there for a cheap, no-frills meal. The food was good most of the time, but there had been the odd occasion when Santhi felt ready to face the disapproval of the matron. She followed Harivel in past the understated doorway. Payment was upfront, the matron sat cross-legged at a counter, judging all who entered and left. She took Santhi’s money and gave her a small blue stone, the sign that she had paid. A server boy took their stones and directed them to a group of waving hands.

“We gave the boy a little extra to save a space for you two,” One of them said. Maanu was a thin man with a strict business-like mustache. He sat next to Kavi, a large woman with bangles up to her elbows. They were both Harivel’s cousins and worked with him at the sweet shop. “I see you found her!” Kavi said. “He was worried you had gone and got yourself caught!” She wagged her finger at Santhi but broke into laughter as soon as she finished.

“What? I never said anything like that!” Hari said.

“You didn’t need to!” Kavi said. “You had something on your mind in the morning, your batch of sweets was a mess! You also left without speaking to anyone. What else could it be?” Maanu nodded in agreement. “Anyway, now that you are here, we can finally get some food!” Kavi said, looking around. A man arrived, as if he had been waiting for Kavi’s signal, and placed four damp banana leaves in front of them. What followed was a barrage of food. Another man came and smacked down dollops of rice onto their banana leaves. More men arrived, carrying vessels with all sorts of curries and soups, assaulted their leaves. A third man carried a copper vessel and a ceramic urn like sacred objects. The copper one held ghee and the ceramic one held a mango pickle. They served with a certain controlled violence as if serving customers was somehow beneath them. In the end, a man came bearing a yellow mush, the dessert. Santhi was not certain she’d be able to stomach anymore, but saying no to dessert in front of people who worked in a sweet shop was surely a crime. She gobbled it down and then sat back, rubbing the sweat on her forehead with the pallu of her sari. “That, was like running,” Kavi said, sounding exhausted.

“Running, except not soul sucking!” Maanu said. He paused for a second. All four of them took a collective breath. Maanu turned drowsy eyes towards Santhi. “What is it that you have been up to that has Hari here so worried?”

All three of her companions looked at her. Their eyelids were heavy, yet they listened eagerly. “Nothing special,” Santhi said.

“She plans to go into the cave,” Harivel said in his monotonous drawl. Santhi’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t believe the emotionless tone. The matter of fact delivery of the words. She stared at Harivel as he pulled at his beard. Maanu and Kavi sat with their mouths open too.

“The cave!” Maanu and Kavi said together. That brought looks from others in the restaurant. The matron stood up and scowled at them. “We should discuss this somewhere else,” Maanu said, dropping to a breathy whisper. “The shop,” Kavi said. “It’ll be empty till Pratheshji is back, and he won’t be back till tomorrow.”

“Two hours before the sun, as always,” Maanu said shaking his head.

Santhi followed the rest to the sweet shop, avoiding the matron’s eyes as she exited the restaurant. They took a path through smaller roads and back alleys. Santhi had come to Anthula a year ago, searching for a place where she could start afresh. Somewhere where people wouldn’t avoid her when they saw her. Somewhere where the taint of her stupid mistake didn't color everything she did. These streets were still largely unfamiliar to her. Anthula was one of the larger market towns on the road from Mathagiri in the east to Uttaragad in the west. A lot of merchants stopped on their way in either direction. A lot of money flowed through the town. A lot of opportunity for a young thief, if she was smart. Most people thought thieves were a result of circumstance. They thought it was people who struggled through poverty and lack of opportunity who looked to crime as a way to a better future. That might have been true in most of Asir, but she was from Silanagar. The thieves there were an institution. The city wouldn’t function without the services they rendered. The sweet shop was a single storied building. It had a large front porch covered by a sloping roof. Every morning, Hari's employer sold sweets from this porch. Inside was the large kitchen and storage area where hari and his cousins made the sweets. The shop stood on a busy street off the main market street. The crowd added to the feeling of suffocation that the heat brought with it. Maanu ushered them to the back and unlocked a small door to let them in. Inside it was much cooler. The shop smelled of sweets. That never failed to surprise Santhi.

“So the cave,” Maanu said. They walked over to a back room and sat on some pillows. “Why, by the burning web, would you want to go into the cave?” Santhi didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to answer to anyone. “She thinks there’s gold inside,” Harivel said. She gave him a glare for answering for her but still refused to speak.

“Well, that is true,” Kavi said. “There must be gold, right? Those walking corpses that they send in there are always carrying it.”

“Do you know why we send people into the cave, Santhi?” Maanu asked. He thought of himself as some kind of amateur scholar. Someone had to pull him down a few rungs on that ladder of his. She decided to make sure to do it someday, but today she would not get pulled into defending her decision. “I don’t know,” Santhi admitted.

“The fort up there on the hill, it's very old. Older than anything else in Anthula. Some people say it goes back to the days of the Sur. If not the very structure that’s up there right now, then there was another fort on that very spot before that. When the Sur sacrificed their physical forms for humanity's sake, they didn’t do it all at once. A Sur who lived in the fort died defending it from the Raki. As the Sur died, it gave up its physical form, killing the Raki in the process. That is what corrupted the web. The corruption stems from the cave at the base of the hill. We offer the cave people and gold to slow the effects of that corruption,” Maanu said. He blinked and looked around as if he had forgotten he was talking to people and was only now looking to see if they were interested in what he was saying. “That sounds made up,” Santhi said. “Aren’t you the one who says to always ask for evidence? So what evidence do we have of the web's corruption? Or that any of that story is true?”

“Santhi!” Kavi said. “That story is what the temple teaches us! If they are not aware of the web, then who is?”

“She is right though. There is no real proof,” Maanu admitted. “I’ve heard whispers. The fort keeps the gold for itself or shares it with the temple.”

“That’s a very small amount for the fort to care about,” Harivel said. “Right, as usual, Hari,” Maanu said. “Well, what we do know is that nobody has come out of the cave. Nobody alive knows what the cave looks like from the inside. Do you want to risk it for some gold? Why not go for another one of these merchants?”

Santhi shook her head. “I’m not going to defend my decision. You can’t convince me to change it. When I come out with pockets full of gold, we’ll know what the temple's priests are.”

“I told you she wouldn’t listen,” Harivel said, shaking his head.

---

The Cave

Santhi crept through the dark alley. She had learned a lot about Anthula from these warrens between buildings. It provided a great view of the market, the temple in the distance, the fort on the hill and, of course, the cave. From here she had understood the people of the city, their beliefs, and their prohibitions. She had learned about the importance of the temple. It represented the Sur and honored their sacrifice, but it bowed to the fort. The Maharathi had not wasted any time setting up control after their conquest. There were no signs of the Maharathi invasion and eventual conquest in Anthula, other than the Maharathi themselves. The buildings were in a good state of repair and trade flowed without a hiccup. The Maharathi controlled the city and Asir itself, but, they ruled with the good graces of the merchants. Many of whom traveled through Anthula on Asir’s most important road. All these people bowed in front of the cave on that one day a year. The cave was one of the many living results of the Sur’s war. One day a year the people of Anthula looked at the cave and revered it. On every other day, they simply looked away.

Santhi reached the entrance of the alley passing the shining eyes that tracked her as she passed. Her black clothing was not enough to throw off their feline gaze, but she hoped the guards would find it harder. The guards stood near the cave entrance as expected. Huddled around the torches on either side of the cave, they didn’t seem to be paying much attention to their surroundings. It was a cold night. The cold nights had forced her to add extra padding to her trusted black overalls. Anthula might have been a furnace during the day, but at this time of night, it froze. It was a half a cycle’s worth of travel north of Silanagar on foot. At least it had taken her that long, walking with a donkey train. Silanagar never got this cold in the summer, but Anthula was much closer to the mountains. One of the guards stood with the help of his spear. She could see his face in the orange glow of the torch. His eyelids were heavy. The other guard seemed a bit more diligent. He stood upright, resting the top of his spear on his shoulder. They did not speak with each other. Santhi decided it would make sense to take a longer route and attempt to run past the drowsy guard. All she had to do was get inside the cave. The guards would never follow her in there. Getting out might be a bit of an issue, but she would worry about that later.

Santhi looked up the street to ensure no one else was around to interfere with her attempt on the cave. The market looked deserted. The stalls were empty and shops shuttered. A few first-floor windows leaked the orange-yellow light of torches. Most shopkeepers lived above their shops with their families. She had spied on a few at night, scouting for a good target and had decided robbing them was more trouble than it was worth. After all, visiting merchants were a much easier target.

Santhi bent down to make some last minute adjustments to her footwear. She didn’t carry any weapons, they made too much noise. If you ended up in a situation where you had to use them, then things had already gone very wrong. They should never go that bad. Some planning ensured escape routes. She took a few deep breaths and looked around one last time. There was no one around other than the guards and her. It was as dark as it was going to get and the guards had been staring at flames for a few hours now. This was the best chance she had. She felt her stomach tie itself in knots. Her stomach always did that before she got into the thick of things.

Santhi set off, running in a crouch along the north side of the market street. The cave was on the other side of the street. Above it on the hill, rose the fortress of Anthula. A few fires burnt up there, the silent guardians of the cave. It was in Maharathi hands now but they had sworn to uphold the old oaths. She would test that tonight. She ran past the cave and then turned towards it, approaching from the side closer to the drowsy guard. The guard was still staring into the flames, lost in thought when Santhi left the market street. Both the guards turned their heads towards her as she neared, but the drowsy guard was too slow to raise his spear. Instead, he swung it like a farmer reaping his field. She jumped but felt the shaft smack against her ankle. Pain flared up before she felt her body pitch forwards. She landed face first on the rough ground near the cave.

For an instant, all she could feel was the pain. The scrapes on her face, hands, and knees burnt. Her ankle throbbed where something had hit her. She willed herself to flip over and opened her eyes, the two guards stood over her pointing their spears right at her face.

“Good swing,” one of them said. Santhi thought he was the diligent guard that she had avoided.

“She could've got past us,” the other guard said. “ We were lucky. What’s wrong with you girl, don’t you know what that is?”

Santhi turned around and noticed that she was lying right at the mouth of the cave. She could not see anything beyond its entrance. It was almost as if some thick black soup was blocking her view. She strained hard to catch a glimpse of anything beyond the blackness and then there was something. A tiny blue spark. It flashed out within an instant.

“Get up girl, we’ve raised the alarm. You’re going to have to answer to the priests and the warden of the fort,” one of the guards said. She turned again, she was close enough to stretch out and touch the inside of the cave within the blackness. “What are you looking at?” the guard said. “No one can see anything in there. Get up!” That may have been true, but Santhi swore she had seen a blue flash. A tiny spark. the guard reached out to grab her. “NO!” she shouted and pushed herself towards the blackness of the cave. She saw her hand disappear inside and suddenly, everything was dark.

Santhi found herself sitting on a cold stone floor. It was hard and flat on top of being cold. Nothing like the dirt covered ground outside the cave. The darkness that surrounded her was absolute. She rubbed her eyes and squinted, attempting to pierce the darkness without much success. There was no light marking the entrance of the cave. She remembered the impenetrable black barrier her hand had disappeared into. After that, well, she was here. I guess this is the inside of the cave then, she thought. Her ankle throbbed where the guard had struck her. That was going to be a problem going ahead. She didn't expect the cave floor to be as flat as it was here further into the cave. She stood up and stumbled, her bad ankle giving way, and ended up resting against the wall of the cave. To her surprise, it was smooth and perfectly vertical. She ran her hands over the vertical face of the wall. It was man made! She was certain about this. The wall was made up of large, identical stone blocks. Her hand caused some powdered mortar to flake off from between the stone blocks. Why would there be a man-made room inside the cave? She remembered Maanu's stories of the old fort on the hill. The older parts of the fort could have stretched down into the cave. This could be a long forgotten part of the fort. Either that, or there could be some truth to Maanu's theory about the fort's fraudulent use of the cave.

A blue flash caught her eye. It had come from deeper in the cave to her left. Santhi was sure this was the same blue light she had seen from the cave entrance. She decided to venture deeper into the cave in the direction it had come from. She used the wall as a guide, resting against it to support her injured foot. The flakes of hardened mortar scraped against her shoulder as she half dragged herself forward. The man-made room turned out to be more of a man-made corridor. She followed it for a little over ten minutes. Her progress was not very fast, but even so, this was a long corridor. After a few more minutes of walking, she came up against a protrusion in the wall. At first, she thought it was a dead end, but it was more like a doorway without a door. The protrusion ran along the full height of the wall and continued along the floor, a few inches off the ground. She followed the protrusion along the floor to the other side of the corridor. She realized, for the first time, how narrow the corridor was. It was wide enough to fit two people shoulder to shoulder with some difficulty. The protrusion ran up the opposite wall and then traced the ceiling back to the side of the corridor that she had followed. A strange structure, but not one Santhi was unfamiliar with. She had seen such construction in many mansions in Silanagar. She had made a living off of breaking into those mansions. Politics of the Adhikari council meant there was always someone willing to pay for stolen letters. Those doorways, however, also contained doors.

Santhi continued on, stepping through the peculiar doorway. When she stepped through the doorway, she saw the blue light flash again. This time, it looked like it had come from a point closer to her. She had been able to see two distinct sources of light. On the other side of the doorway, the corridor continued. She followed it for what she thought was over an hour. The darkness of the cave was truly impenetrable. Her eyes had not been able to adjust. They couldn't adjust where there was no light. She past a number of doorways on the way. Every doorway she stepped through resulted in the blue lights flashing again. The last time, they had almost seemed like they were in a nearby room. She stepped through another doorway and saw the lights flash right in front of her. The flash was bright enough that the had illuminated the chamber she now stood in. The glimpse she had got showed her a small rectangular room. A stone carving on the opposite wall had caught her eye. The room gave her the impression of a high ceiling, but she had not got a glimpse of the roof.

Santhi approached the spot where the lights had been. As she got nearer, the blue lights flashed again. Then they flashed again. The closer she got, the more the time between flashes reduced until finally, they pulsated a pale blue light. Her hunch about the ceiling of the chamber was correct. It looked like the inside of a pyramid and ended in a single stone block at the peak. The two pulsing orbs of light floated in the air in front of her. They hovered in the air, not like some small birds and their frantic flapping wings. Nor like bees, with their quick movements and short periods of rest. They floated in place, like a leaf floating in a pond, bobbing over the ripples. Strange blue strands stretched out from the floating orbs in six directions. They stretched above and below the orbs, to the left and right and towards her and away until they disappeared into the darkness.

Santhi took another step towards them. Sudden motion caught her by surprise, causing her to gasp. The orbs zipped away from her. They now hovered near the opposite wall, illuminating the intricate stone carving. The had zipped away in straight lines and right angles. The moving lights had caused a disorienting shift of shadows in the room. She crept forward, trying to keep her weight off her bad ankle. The two orbs zipped towards her, following their strange path. They started to trace a rectangle around her waist. She observed them for a moment. They seemed curious, more like well-trained dogs than insects. She stretched a hand out to touch one of the orbs. Her hand went straight through the blue orb. The two orbs stopped their rectangular orbits around her, then zipped up next to each other. They hovered in front of her a little above head high. Santhi was sure they could see her as they floated, curious or angry. A blue line shot out of one, following straight paths and turning at right angles, and touched the hand. The same one that had passed through the orb. It felt like a pinprick at first. Then the line started to glow and a burning pain shot up her arm.

Santhi pulled her hand away as she stumbled backward. The orbs zipped towards her in steps, following their awkward path. Her leg caught the protrusion on the ground that marked the doorway. She pitched backward, through the doorway and had to use her leg with the throbbing ankle to stop herself from falling. More pain shot up her leg to accompany her stinging hand.

The orbs gave up their jerking motions and zipped towards her. Santhi panicked and spun on her throbbing ankle, nearly collapsing on it. The pain made her eyes tear up but she managed to hold in a squeal. She hobbled away from the two orbs that chased her. They flew passed her, tracing straight lines and right angle, then matched her pace on either side. Multiple glowing blue strands shot out from the two orbs. They too traced straight lines and right angles as they attached themselves to her. Santhi felt the pinpricks on either side of her, knowing what to expect. The lines burst into a brilliant blue glow and pain filled Santhi's mind. She didn't remember losing her balance and falling to the floor. As the pain receded, she found herself, face first on the remarkably flat floor. She flipped over and saw the two orbs. They floated like they had in the chamber. She was certain the two orbs exchanged a look before staring down at her. That was an absurd thought. These were floating orbs of light, which was not something she expected to see. They couldn't also be living, thinking things. She pushed herself up into a sitting position with the help of her hands. The blue lines were still attached to her, giving out a dim glow. She hadn't noticed that until now. Her eyes went wide as the blue glow of the lines increased in intensity. A scream escaped her mouth as she felt her head hit the floor.

---

The Chamber and Raki

A bright light against her eyelids made Santhi stir. Urgh, morning already, she thought as she turned away from the source of the light. She was used to sleeping on floors, but this one was ice cold on top of being hard. She pulled her legs up to her chest to keep warm as she felt for her blanket. Frustratingly, she couldn’t find it anywhere. She opened one eye and memories came flooding back to her. She faced a wall bathed in a dim blue light. It was made of large, evenly cut stone blocks. She sprang up and sat with her back against the wall. She was in a large circular chamber. The dim blue light in the middle of the chamber caught her eyes. A matrix of glowing blue strands surrounded a dais. They drifted like a spider web in a gentle breeze. The ends of the strands seemed to fade in brightness till they disappeared. Two orbs traced these lines in a rectangular pattern around the dais. They didn’t seem to have noticed that she was awake.

The chamber was the largest thing Santhi had ever seen. She looked up and saw intricate carvings on a pyramidal ceiling. She saw a carving of a fisherman catching a fish, and two men pointing at each other and many more that left her wondering. Female Nymphs lined the edges of the pyramidal roof. Each one had its hands together, fingers pointing up in reverence to the dais. It hadn’t struck Santhi till now that there may be something on the dais. Where exactly am I? She looked around and saw something that finally confirmed what she thought she knew. Bodies lay around the chamber. Sparking coins littered the floor.

Santhi rose to her feet. Her ankle still hurt, but the pain had lessened. How long had she been here? It couldn’t have been more than a few hours, but her ankle was better. She started walking around the perimeter of the chamber. She took out a cloth bag from one of her pockets and started collecting coins that lay on the floor. A few of the coins looked familiar. They had the face of the old king. His own court had murdered him. Other coins were unfamiliar to her. Some had unrecognizable figure stamped onto them. Other were rectangular or had holes in them. She put them all into her bag. They had to be made of some kind of precious metal if not gold. Finally, she mustered up the courage to approach the dais. The two orbs still traced their rectangular path around it.

Santhi started creeping towards the dais. The memory of the pain those orbs had caused was still fresh. She did not want to do anything to instigate them. As she approached the dais, the drifting webs started to whip and snap. It was like someone was swinging them at her. As she got closer, the web went from reacting to a gust of wind to a full storm. It whipped, slapped and snarled violently. The two orbs continued to orbit the dais, adjusting their route to follow flapping strands of webbing. She could now see what lay on the dais. It was an old man. He lay with his hands clasped on his chest. His beard stretched down past his hands. He lay shirtless wearing only a dhoti that looked a brilliant blue in the light cast by the web. Three lines of ash ran across his forehead. He looked alive and the markings on his forehead were recent. Then a thought came to her, none of the bodies looked like they had been here very long either. She was certain the last person had gone in at least four cycles ago. She stopped and looked around at the bodies. They were all in perfect shape. The clothing on most of the bodies that lined the outer perimeter was unfamiliar to her. There were even a few Asiri, which was strange. She had thought only Nagriks held the tradition. None of the bodies should have been there. They should have gone to rot years ago.

She turned towards the dais in time to see the orbs disappear into the old man’s chest. His eyes shot open and he took a deep breath. It sounded like someone had startled him awake. He jerked up, using his hands to support his body and sat breathing heavily on the dais. Then composure came to his face. He swung his feet down onto the ground and looked at her. They stared at each other for a moment, shock holding Santhi in place. He stroked his beard as he considered her. “Um juga,” the man said in a low rumbling voice. “Tm Ktr,” he said looking at her. His voice seemed to change when he addressed her. She shook her head. She did not understand what the man said, but it sounded familiar, like something she had heard before. The man closed his eyes and massaged the ridge of his nose. Then he looked up and muttered something that sounded like a chant. “Who are you?” He said. “We have slept for a very long time. How many years has it been?” Santhi took a step back. The man’s voice shifted between a low rumble and a pleasant tone. He seemed unfamiliar with the Asiri tongue. “I’m...I’m nobody,” Santhi said. The web around the man flapped and cracked with a frantic intensity. He seemed to notice the web and scowl. The brilliant blue lines around him calmed down to their original gentle drifting. “The web reacts to our return,” the man said. “They finally sent us a younger one.”

“Yes they did,” he said in the calmer voice, shaking his head. “Fools.”

The old man hopped off the dais onto his bare feet. The glowing matrix of webbing around him reacted to his motions. He raised his hand in a fist and the room went dark, the webbing retreating into the old man. A brilliant white orb shot up from the old man’s raised hand towards the roof. The chamber was bathed in bright light. Santhi used her hand to shield herself from the sudden assault on her eyes. She stumbled backward, finding herself against the wall. Blinking against the light, she finally got a good look at the chamber. Bodies filled the room. Old men and women lay against the walls of the chamber. Some flat on the floor around the dais. Gold coins were strewn across the floor of the chamber, gleaming in the bright light. The old man stood staring at her. “You cannot get out of here unless we will it,” the old man said in a deep rumble. “Thanks to you we were able to escape the cursed ethereal forms that we were trapped in.”

“They followed my instructions for quite some time,” the man said, shifting to the pleasant voice. He nodded in satisfaction as he looked around the room. “There are too few bodies here to make sense. I had instructed them to send one a year. Child, did the people do as I asked?” Santhi stared at the old man confused. She did not understand what was happening. The man seemed to be having a conversation with himself. What he said was true, there were too few bodies here, and none showed the signs of rot or decay. “They have sent a person every year,” she said trying to hide her growing anxiety. Scanning the room, she was sure there were less than fifty bodies right there. That didn’t make sense. Years of scanning rooms had made her good at judging numbers. The old man seemed to notice the same thing. His eyebrows scrunched together over his nose as he scanned the room. “Looks like something more has happened during our entrapment outside my body,” he said in the pleasant voice. “Just desserts, I think, for trespassing my body.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said in the deep rumble. “We have her, she’ll have enough energy to get us out of this prison.”

“A prison of my construction,” the pleasant voice said. “You can try, but would you want to hurt a poor girl at such a futile attempt?” The old man chuckled to himself. Then roared in frustration and raised his hands. His hands emitted a blue glow as the old man started a low rumbling chant. Santhi pressed herself to the wall of the chamber, looking around for some sort of escape. Then she noticed something about the bodies in the chamber. The ones that did not lay against the wall, pointed in one direction. They seemed to trace a flow around the dais towards the far wall of the chamber. One of the bodies had a hand against the wall, right next to two vertical seams. They were spread wide enough to be a narrow doorway. Hope returned to Santhi but vanished as soon as it appeared. Glowing blue webbing shot out from the old man's upraised hands. He was now chanting in a loud growl. The webbing surrounded Santhi. It circled around her and then tightened like a rope. A sudden feeling fatigue came over her and got worse as the seconds past. She felt her eyes get heavy. She had to find a way to escape from the webbing. The door was a way out. She had to get to it. She had to survive.

“Girl, fight it!” said the old man in the pleasant voice. “I can’t control my body. It has to be because of the sacrifice, but you can control your spirit. Do not let him take what is yours! Resist!” The feeling of fatigue vanished as the old man spoke. The old man roared and started chanting in the low growl again. The fatigue returned. The pleasant voice had said to fight but fight what. She felt so tired, so sleepy. Why had she bothered to enter the web burning cave? Harivel and his friends had warned her against it. If only she could go back to that time and make a different decision. No, that was a coward's path. She had to push on. Survival was all that mattered. Also, no one stole from a thief. There was at least that much honor that they could muster. I will not let him steal from me! He cannot! “You cannot!” she screamed. The fatigue was gone that instant. She saw the old man’s eyes grow wide as he stopped the chant. The glowing lines of webbing disappeared. She hit the ground hard. Her legs felt weak. Her ankle throbbed, every pulse sending pain shooting up her leg. She fought through it and ran past the old man. She felt scalding air buffet her and was thrown off her feet as she landed next to the dais. “I will have your spirit!” the old man said in a low rumble. “I have been trapped here for millennia at least. For no good reason other than being what I am! That cannot stand!”

Santhi tried to stand. She used the dais for support but was buffeted by another blast of scalding hot air. It pushed her off her feet. The old man started his chant once again. The glowing webbing surrounded her and lifted her off the ground. She kicked to try to escape but it was pointless. The fatigue hit her like a brick. “No!” she said in a scream that faded to a whimper. She was so close. This time her head felt heavy. Darkness crowded the corners of her vision, making it look like she was looking at the old man through a pipe. She was ready to give up before her injured ankle cracked against the ground. Pain shot up her leg tearing a shriek out of her throat. She managed to sit up and hold her ankle and saw the old man. He was thrashing about, hands holding his head, screaming. The screams varied between the two voices that had spoken to her. She got to her feet but collapsed as soon as she put any weight on her bad ankle. She decided to crawl to the doorway in the wall. She got to the doorway and stood, using the wall to keep the weight off her injured ankle. She turned to see the old man writhing on the ground clutching his head. She pushed against the doorway. It opened with reluctance, grinding against the stone wall and floor. Beyond it was a blackness darker than pitch. The brilliant light that lit the room seemed to shy away from the black soup that filled the doorway. She stretched a hand out and saw it disappear into the blackness. Then everything succumbed to that blackness.

---

After the Adventure

Santhi expected to end up in front of the cave, causing a commotion in the middle of the market in Anthula. Instead, she found herself looking up at a red moon on some sort of rolling plain. The moon was a massive red sphere in the sky, larger than she had ever seen before. It bathed the plane in red light making the grasses look like black hair blowing in the wind. This was not right. She had chosen a new moon night on purpose. A night that would be as dark as it could get in Anthula. It was at least half a cycle to a red moon. Unless she had spent half a cycle in the cave. That seemed impossible. She had spent some time blacked out in the large chamber, but it couldn’t have been around fifteen days. The black grasses on the plain blew in the wind, drifting like the glowing webbing the old man had been able to control. She had never seen a chanter before, and if that was what they could do, she hoped she would never see a chanter again. She tried her best to push questions to the back, but how could she do anything without understanding what had happened. Or where she was for that matter.

A tree standing upon a rise in the distance was the only variation in her surroundings. It was the only reference to understand the directions, other than the glowing red orb of the moon. Where was this? She had never heard of a plain such as this in Asir. Was she somewhere else perhaps? In Maharath, or in Gondi to the south? It didn’t make any sense. She looked around and saw a man standing right next to her. She jumped away with a start. He stood staring at the moon with his hands behind his back. That left his black kurta free to blow in the wind. He looked old, with short white hair surrounding his bald head. He seemed familiar somehow.

“Ah, so you finally noticed me!” he said in a pleasant, almost kind voice. A very familiar voice. “I worried you had hurt yourself trying to get out of my prison. Hit your head a bit too hard or some other such thing.”

Recognition hit Santhi like a hammer blow to the head. She turned to run, but pain shot up her ankle and she crumpled to the ground.

“Don’t worry girl, I’m not the one who wants to hurt you.” The old man said. “In fact, I assisted in your escape back there. I was one of the voices you see.”

Santhi pushed herself upright, supporting herself with her elbows. “You’re the old man from the chamber?!” Santhi said. “Please, let me go. All I wanted was the gold, not anything else. You were not even using all that gold!”

The old man shook his head. “I don’t care about the gold. Didn’t the priests tell you not to go into the cave? Didn’t people try to stop you? Have they all grown so ignorant over the millennia?” He said looking back up at the moon. “No child, I don’t care about the gold, I care about keeping that monster trapped in the chamber. You were lucky he underestimated the power of my seal. I managed to stop him before he could drain too much energy from your spirit.”

“But, there was only one person in the cave,” Santhi said.

“We share a body. I destroyed his body when we fought all those years ago. And then lost control of mine because of the sacrifice. Funny how things work out don’t you think? What you saw in the cave was an aged version of this,” he said pointing at himself.

“You are a Sur!” Santhi said. She felt cold sweat run down between her shoulder blades. The old man looked down at her from the corner of his eye, like a king looking down at an ant. “I was a Sur. Your people seem to have forgotten a lot over the years. There are no Sur any longer, child. We performed the sacrifice, remember. Warn your people to never let anyone enter the cave again. It could spell disaster if it were to happen.” The old man waved his hand and the scene in front of her seemed to move. It shifted into an instant of the darkest blackness before she found herself staring into the orange disk of the rising sun. She covered her face as the sun shone straight down on her. She was back in the market.

A crowd of people had gathered around the entrance of the cave. Behind them rose the early morning sun over the homes and shops of the merchants. The crowd quietened. Heads swiveled to look at her. For a moment there was absolute silence. A bird chirped in a tree nearby, a man coughed in the crowd. A woman flanked by two orange-clad men stepped through the crowd. The men had their heads shaved and the woman wore a brilliant white sari. The golden trim along the edges shone in the early morning sunlight. She looked at Santhi in much the same way the old man, the old Sur, had before sending her back. Another man joined them. A gruff military man from the look of his uniform. She had seen this man before, the Maharathi fort garrison commander, Nayak Sridha Ro.

The woman spoke first. “Do you know who I am,” she said in a pompous monotone. Santhi shook her head. She let her eyes scan the crowd and spotted Harivel’s head popping out over it. She looked away, shame twisting her stomach. “I am Sela Pitaban. I’m the head priest. I decide the punishments for those who break the rules set by the temple. The Nayak here has come representing of the council of five. They decide the punishment for those who break the rules of our town.” The head priest’s eyes bore into Santhi. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes as if struggling to control her rage. The Nayak stood with his arms crossed. His stony face turned towards her.

“You have broken one of the oldest rules of the temple. A rule that existed before this market was ever built. What gave you the idea that you could do such a thing?” the head priest continued. Santhi remained silent and stared at her feet. She felt exhausted and her ankle hurt, but sitting down in front of the head priest and the Nayak wouldn’t do. She did not wish to dig herself into a deeper hole. “Answer me. I ask questions expecting to hear answers,” the head priest said. “Ma’am, I thought I’d be able to take some gold coins. I thought they’d be easy to take,” Santhi said. The sound of her voice made her cringe. It sounded pathetic. It contained none of the confidence and rebellion she prided herself on. She decided to raise her eyes and face the head priest. “I met someone in there. Someone you might want to hear about. Two people actually.”

The two male priests looked at each other and fished into the sack that each of them carried. They brought out writing pads. So that’s why they were here. Chroniclers, they recorded important occasions. No one Santhi’s age had ever entered the cave. They would record the event for posterity. “Then tell us. Tell us all who are gathered here, what you saw. This way no further rumors can spread about the mission of the temple,” the head priest said.

Santhi recited her experience in as much detail as she could. She noticed the head priest’s expression shift from veiled rage to inquisitive curiosity. By the time she was done, all three priests had worried expressions on their face. “Do you know what you could’ve done, foolish woman! You nearly freed the only Raki to have survived the Sacrifice of the Sur!” the head priest said. “No one can fight the Raki! We would have been enslaved! Or put to death! Nayak Ro, please ask your guards to hold this trespasser in custody. I must hold a council with the other priests of the temple before we can decide what to do with her. Could you also ask one of your men to request the council of five to join the meeting.”

“Yes, Head Priest,” Nayak Ro said. Before he was done, two men had already grabbed her by the arms. “Take her to the holding area up in the fort. I will call for her when she is needed.” They pulled her along away from the cave. Santhi turned around to look at the crowd one more time. Harivel stood with his cousins, shaking his head.

---

Epilogue

Santhi hunched over in the courtyard of the temple, scraping the floor with the rough bristled broom. She held the palu of her white sari back as she swept. A shadow covered the ground as she swept. She looked up to see a smiling Harivel. “I still find it unbelievable,” Hari said.

“What did I do now,” Santhi said.

“Nothing, it's just, I can’t believe you are sweeping floors in the temple,” Hari said.

“It’s part of my punishment. You know that,” Santhi said.

“Yes yes, though it's been over a year and they are still making you do it. They are using you, Santhi.” Hari said.

“For what I did, I’m happy they didn’t hang me,” Santhi said. “It’s also a part of my lessons you know.”

“Ah, our baker friend is here. Its good to see that you’ve become so much more religious over the past year Harivel,” said a woman in a monotone. “Unless...” Harivel bowed low to touch the woman's feet, “Head Priest, I am here for the temple of course, but also to check on Santhi,”

“Yes, Santhi. It’s a pity it took a moment of such amazing stupidity to bring us one of our brighter students,” the Head Priest said. She looked at Santhi with a smile that did not reach her eyes. “I guess a literal encounter with one of the gods will do that to you.”

“Yes, ma’am. It absolutely would,” Hari said, bowing slightly as he spoke. He went to absurd lengths to avoid looking at the Head Priest in the eyes sometimes. “Now don’t bother Santhi too much. She has a lot of work before lessons today,” the Head Priest said. “I wouldn’t even think of doing such a thing,” Hari said. The Head Priest nodded and walked away.

“She’s not scary you know. You can look at her,” Santhi said once the Head Priest had gone. “It never hurts to be careful,” Hari said. “That is probably true,” Santhi replied.