They must have simply opened all the kennels. The courtyard was filled with a flood of dogs, the same scaled beasts that had nearly torn the badger apart so short a time before.
"Go, go!" Zhu Irzh shouted, and the badger did not need bidding; he threw himself at the ominous mouth of the gateway on the demon's heels. A dog snapped and caught the hem of Zhu Irzh's long black coat. There was the sound of tearing silk; the badger thought he heard Zhu Irzh cry, "Oh bloody hell! Not again!" The demon took hold of a handful of coat and wrenched it free of the hound's mouth. The badger, feeling the sheer of teeth, teakettled. The dog howled, receiving a mouthful of iron, and the badger bowled himself forward, nearly knocking Zhu Irzh flat.
But the gateway was opening. Zhu Irzh and the badger hurtled through. The badger found himself in a sudden, muffled world, as confining as the bag. It was as though the walls around them had stolen sound; he could still hear the baying of the dogs, but it was stifled, heard through some barrier. As badger again, he cannoned into Zhu Irzh.
They stood at the mouth of a long tunnel and, even under these desperate circumstances, the badger felt a great reluctance to enter it. There was something wrong with it, even to one born in an ancient Hell. Zhu Irzh seemed to feel the same way, for he hesitated, only for a moment, but long enough for someone to coalesce into the air ahead of them.
"Go, then." Agni appeared amused, the gold-rimmed eyes gleaming in the shadows. "See how far you get. Remember, the hunt goes on."
A dog howled, startlingly close, and galvanized Zhu Irzh into movement. He pushed forward, through the insubstantial form of the tiger prince, and into the tunnel. The badger, once more, followed. He glanced back once to see Agni staring after them, smiling gently.
Long and long, and far away. The badger had a short memory for things that did not matter, and even hurt faded, given time. But he found later that this journey back to the world of men remained with him, unfading, as bright and fresh as the first time, emerging in his animal dreams.
A circle of fire, flames rushing and gushing in glittering waterfalls, horned faces grimacing between them. Zhu Irzh ducked as a thick red person raced toward him, swinging a scimitar like a grin. The badger stepped back as Zhu Irzh hurled himself down and up, bouncing on the balls of his feet, but the red person was nowhere to be seen, swallowed into light and fire. Then heat reached out and licked them with a long golden tongue and both the badger and Zhu Irzh cried out, only to find that they were unharmed, although the badger smelled slightly singed.
Somewhere else: another jungle, a temple like a pyramid, its steps covered with monkeys that had the wise, sad eyes of old men. They all stopped their quiet conversation when the badger and the demon stepped into the clearing, staring. At the temple's summit, the badger glimpsed someone very ancient, half-ape, half-man, with a golden gaze. He raised a ringed hand and the green leaves whirled up and through them, carrying them away.
Another forest, different, fresher. Above the treeline, the badger saw a spire of mountain, the glassy shimmer of a glacier wall, and for a moment, was consumed by an unfamiliar longing that in a human might have been called homesickness. Zhu Irzh was frowning. "This is like the Himalayas, or something."
"Have you been to the Himalayas?"
"No. I've seen them on TV."
The sky was as clear as the mountain stream that bubbled up through the rocks on their left. The badger, taking chances, went over to it and drank. It, in turn, was like drinking light. Zhu Irzh eyed him askance.
"Careful."
"I am thirsty. It is very pure."
The demon was still frowning. "I'm not sure this is a Hell, you know. I think perhaps we've been ascending."
"Do you think we deserve that?"
"God knows," the demon said, with a trace of irony. "Does this look like Hell to you?"
It did not. The trees, dark evergreens interspersed with splashes of rhododendron, filled the air with a resinous scent. The earth was russet, crumbling and fertile. Cyclamen pushed its way through the long grass, aconite and aster. Overhead, a faint crown of stars could be seen, even though it was still bright day. The badger agreed.
"But still, it is not where we wish to be."
"No. Although it's a lot nicer than our own Heaven. Not so managed, don't you think?"
"It is wilder," the badger concurred. Somewhere from deep in the woods came laughter and the sound of running feet. A small deer burst out from beneath the fronded branches, a dappled thing, golden-horned and golden-hooved, with knowing brown eyes. The appealing effect was slightly mitigated by a pair of sharp little fangs.
"Oh," it said. "I'm sorry. I didn't know anyone was here."
"We're—visiting," Zhu Irzh said. "Actually, we're also lost."
"Why, how can you be lost? This is the Forest of the Shepherd. All is known here." The deer took a closer look. "Ah, but you are foreigners, aren't you?"
"If we're trespassing, I can only apologize," Zhu Irzh said. The badger hoped that the demon was not about to divulge to this being that they were actually on the run. Heaven it may be, but they could be wrong, and in the badger's experience, not even Celestial creatures were wholly to be trusted.
"No, no, all are welcome. But where are you headed?"
"Earth?"
The deer raised a gilded hoof and delicately pawed the ground, in what the badger thought might have been a gesture of astonishment. "The world of men? A long way from here. How did you get here?"
"A long story for a long way," the demon said.
"The Shepherd loves stories," the deer said. It raised its head and whistled, a curious, birdlike sound. Moments later, a whistle came back, faint on the wind. "I'm to bring you to him."
The sinking sensation the badger experienced was, he knew, shared by Zhu Irzh; he could see it on the demon's face. But Zhu Irzh had been correct: they were lost, they needed help, and better from this seemingly inoffensive being than some of the other individuals they'd encountered lately.
Zhu Irzh appeared to be thinking along similar lines. He said, "Okay."
The deer led them along the stream until it widened, the little mountain brook becoming something closer to a torrent. The deer sprang nimbly across a series of rocks, evidently placed to form a bridge.
"If you don't mind—" Zhu Irzh said, and scooped the badger up. The badger bore this indignity as best he could: his legs were too short to hop from stone to stone as the demon was now doing. Looking down, he saw that the rushing water was full of silver fish, swimming upstream as fast as lightning. On the other side, however, the deer was gazing upward.
"There is rain on the way." And the badger could smell it on the wind, see the clouds gathering. A wilder Heaven indeed. "Never mind, we will soon be at the temple."
This lay a short distance through the trees. There was more laughter, accompanied by singing, and then a single thread of flute music that drifted through the pine branches and silenced all other sound. Beside the badger, a grove of rhododendron released its flowers and the huge white blooms floated through the air, glowing as if candlelit, to light their way. The demon looked impressed.
The temple, when it appeared, was an immediate improvement on the deva's neglected place of worship. This was no ruin, rising in ivory marble from the forest floor and linked with trees that grew up through the stonework as if cultivated, forming a pattern of shadows across the walls and floor. A pool, lily-filled, lay before the temple, reflecting it back. Each one of the blossoms floated in through a small trellised window, disappearing. The flute music went on.
The deer led the badger and Zhu Irzh up the temple steps. Inside, a group of women sat on sequined cushions. They wore saris in every shade of blue and green and silver, shimmering like starlight. Not all of them were young; two of the women were gray-haired, with serene, lined faces. A bronze bowl, filled with water and a single lily, stood in front of the flute player, who sat surrounded by flowers.
The badger nearly ran. Beside him, he saw Zhu Irzh falter, as if unsure whether or not to bow, and then the demon did.
"My Lord."
The flute player was slender and blue-skinned, the color of early morning frost, with eyes as golden as the horns of the little deer, who now curled at the flute player's feet. Curling black hair fell to his shoulders; he wore a sun-colored sarong.
"I am the Shepherd," the flute player said.
"I think," the demon remarked, very politely, "that I might have come across you as Lord Krishna."
"That is one of my names, yes." No invitation to call him by it; the badger knew how much it took to be on first-name terms with gods. It seemed "My Lord" would do.
"We're lost," the demon said. "I'm terribly sorry about all this. We didn't mean to trespass."
"How did you get here?"
"Well, I don't really know. It wasn't our choice. My companion here and I were taken captive on Earth and ended up in one of your lower levels, at a place called the Hunting Lodge."
Here, the deer raised its sharp-toothed head and gave a most surprising hiss. The women's faces became somber and sad, and Krishna himself flushed to the shade of a stormcloud.
"Ah," Krishna said, putting down the flute. "I know of it, of course. Agni's kingdom."
"They came here," the deer said. "With dogs."
Zhu Irzh's eyebrows rose. "That's a bit ambitious, isn't it, for a lord of Hell?"
"Agni has always been ambitious," Krishna said, "and with his tigress harem spurring him on, that ambition has been honed."
"What happened?" Zhu Irzh asked.
"They were sent away. We drove them out. No creature of this land wants their kind here; all live in harmony. There are tigers here, too, who lie down with the deer at night, with the small creatures. This is a place of peace.
"This is a heaven for beasts," Krishna explained. "And that is not popular among Agni's tiger tribe."
"You'd think, wouldn't you . . ." the demon began, and Krishna smiled.
"Yes, you would indeed. But they say: the spirits of dead animals, often cruelly slaughtered, are kept here as if it were a game reserve, a wildlife park. They do not leave, because they do not wish to, but Agni's tigers cannot understand that, wishing to have full range across the worlds, to make every realm of Heaven and Hell their personal hunting ground."
"Was this why we were captured?" Zhu Irzh enquired. "As a bit of big-game hunting?"
"I am afraid, my dear demon," the Lord Krishna said, "that you are rather too small a game for Agni."
"Oh."
"And yet you were captured nonetheless . . . Curious. I've heard nothing of Agni's activities of late; it is though he is biding his time. Though one of his harem has gone to live among men."
"She has?"
"In China. She became an actress, in the movies." Krishna pronounced the word carefully, as if not entirely familiar with it. "Her name is Lara Chowdijharee."
"Lara C's a tiger demon?" Zhu Irzh's mouth fell open.
"I have not heard of this person," the badger said.
"You're not really much of a cinemagoer, are you?"
"I see no point in it. The people are too large and they live in dark houses."
"Just think of him as a critic," the demon said to Krishna. He went on: "I know of her. I've no connection with her."
"And yet your lover is her cousin."
"How do you know about Jhai?"
"We are all family," the god said. "Even if some of us live in Hell and others do not, even if some of us choose to inhabit Earth. I know who you are, Seneschal Zhu Irzh. I know what a role you have played, in the saving of your world. I think that if you had not done so, you would not be standing here now; Heaven would have spat you out."
"My Lord," the demon said, "you are a god and you know what gods know. Do you have an opinion on why I was taken to the Hunting Lodge?"
"Yes," said Krishna. "As a matter of fact, I do."