Krishna sympathized with Satyaki’s plight. The boy knew precious little about alchemy, even less about lore. Daevas were just things in dusty scrolls and the stories of bards, heard and forgotten as a child, holding no interest for him even then.

Krishna spoke softly. ‘You are here because the gold may have run out of the Syamantaka, but this is still a dangerous place and it is too risky for me to travel here. I am always watched. I need someone to be my voice here’

‘Why is this a dangerous place?’ Storm asked with the first hint of interest, still unsure, still uncaring about the rest. ‘It shits gold but the gold has run out. Yes, it has strange ghosts, but I see no danger in it.’

‘Come with me,’ Jambavan said to her, his tufts dipping down again. ‘Satyaki, can you take another surprise?’

‘Another friend?’ Satyaki asked sourly.

‘You’ve no idea,’ Jambavan’s eyes glinted with a malice only spied in the mien of a true scholar.

VII

‘Surely this is blasphemous,’ Satyaki whispered to Krishna as they walked into the inner chambers of the ship. ‘You are intruding into what is not supposed to be in the human realm. The Seven should have been made aware of this.’

‘On the contrary, tampering with things we don’t know is the very essence of being a human,’ said Krishna. ‘That’s how we discovered how to make babies,’ he joked, hoping to put Satyaki’s mind at ease.

He needed Satyaki to wrap his head around the tasks Krishna had for him in the Syamantaka, and wrap it around, fast.

‘And you humans already knew about all this,’ Jambavan said. ‘Didn’t you hear him say how the mortals had forgotten. He was right about that. What we are discovering now is essentially a re-discovery.’

‘How does that work?’ Storm asked.

‘Imagine time as a river, girl,’ Jambavan waved his shaggy palm horizontally to symbolize flowing water. ‘Knowledge travels in tiny boats on it. Many start down the river only to be wrecked and lost stranded on the riverbanks and shoals of memory. They have to be retrieved…using the few fragments of knowledge that have endured the ravages of time.’

‘If the gold is depleted, why bother?’ Storm asked. Always the practical one.

‘Gold was just the tip of the bull’s horn. Alchemy, metal-binding, explosives… how do you think we Mathurans became famous for our munitions? Who do you think devised those cursers and bellowers? Ah, here we are.’ Krishna pointed to a long box lying in the centre of the chamber.

Carved with reliefs and hieroglyphs, the ebony and weirwood sarcophagus rested heavily on a limestone bed. The white grains on the sides of the box swirled and twisted in strange interwoven patterns. It was mesmerizing, yet somehow frightening. There was an ice sculpture inside, a body floating in a blue transparent liquid, lying here, if inscription was correctly translated for thousands of years.