RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA Read online

  Dheeraj Kumar was a direct and forthright man. There was no place in his lexicon for apologies or explanations. “Just so,” he replied in his characteristic no-nonsense way and executed a swift, polite namaskara with just the right inclination of his leonine head and whitened mane to convey dutiful respect. “Please, follow me.”

  Rishi Valmiki did not respond at once. He looked at Hanuman and their eyes met in another soul-searching glance tempered by that faintly mocking expression that Hanuman felt sure was more than just the result of the rishi’s old bear-claw scar. Not too far away, an elephant trumpeted impatiently and emptied its bowels – the rank odour drifting downwind caused Hanuman’s nostrils to twitch involuntarily; there were certain things a vanar couldn’t help, no matter how well he learned human customs and language.

  He waited for the rishi’s response.

  FOUR

  At last, after what seemed like long minutes of waiting but were in fact mere seconds, Rishi Valmiki nodded and said quietly, “Very well. Lead the way.”

  Hanuman’s reluctant respect for the human grew another tiny notch. The man was not one to hold a grudge, it seemed. Despite the intense hostility with which he had been treated thus far, he was still able to accept the hand of conciliation. It was not a quality to be sniffed at. Vanars were not known for their ability to forgive; it was one of the things Hanuman had come to admire in the human race – one of the very few things, no doubt, but still one that had no counterpart in his own race. The ability to prioritize, to start afresh, to put the past aside and begin anew. To forgive if not forget. Vanars, on the other hand, were more apt to forget than forgive! He nodded at the rishi as the bearded sage lowered his staff and stepped after the senapati.

  “I shall lead you to my lord Rama,” Hanuman said. “He has instructed me to bring you to him at—”

  His last word was drowned out by an eruption of noise and chaos so sudden it took even his prescient senses by surprise.

  Without warning or indication, the avenue rose up and attacked them.

  Rama stopped pacing and stood still. Sita frowned, trying to make out what had alerted him but she could neither hear nor sense anything. She thought she heard something from the North when Rama shot her a look and moved to the entrance.

  “At the gates!” he said and began running.

  She followed close on his heels. Out the sarathi shed where the royal chariots were neatly lined up in rows, past the royal stables where familiar snouts snorted and heads were tossed in brief alarm as their mounts scented their still-unfamiliar odours. She had been saddened to know that almost all the Mithila mounts – elephants as well as horses – that had accompanied her to Ayodhya as part of her wedding trousseau had been stricken down in either one of two epidemics over the period of exile. She had seen several of those beautiful beasts foaled and calved and watched them grow to adulthood; she had known them individually as well as she knew people. After her sisters, she had missed them the most. Past the guards shed which lay unusually empty and that itself was evidence that something was wrong. Past the lotus pool and fountain bordering the towering, seventy feet-high statue of Suryadeva standing at his chariot gripping the reins of his magnificent Kambhoja stallions. The early morning light slanted across the rounded silhouette of the Garhwals, flashing through the tall sala trees that lined the periphery of the inner wall.

  And then they were moving through a small army of PFs – mounted and on foot – spearmen and archers, elephant quads and chariot-archer teams, all in defensive formation forming a formidable inner wall of last defence in the unlikely event that any intruder was able to pass through seven heavily guarded gates set in seven unclimbable ring-walls, encircling seven deep and wide moats teeming with deadly predators. They were all facing outwards, as they should, and Rama had to bark terse words of command to alert them: to their credit, they responded with perfect reflexes, swinging aside smartly to allow both Rama and Sita room to pass through. They sprinted through the massed rows upon rows, Sita feeling as if she was approaching the frontline of an army on a battlefield rather than simply exiting her place of residence through the front gate, and then they were at the vaulting iron gates and out through a sally port and on the avenue proper.

  It took her only an instant to take in the archers on the rooftops, the quads standing at precise intervals in wave-attack formation, the elephants trumpeting and stamping their feet farther down and up the avenue, two men on horseback about a hundred yards up Raghuvansha just about where it was crossed by Harshavardhana, and in the centre of this tableau, three figures: Hanuman’s distinctive furry long-tailed form, the bearded, burly shape of Saprem Senapati Dheeraj Kumar and a long-bearded tapasvi sadhu she assumed was Maharishi Valmiki but would never have recognized on her own.

  All three lay on their backs, like straw puppets flung to three corners of a box stage in some festival puppet show. The avenue beneath them was cracked and sharded, jagged ends of rock pointing at upward diagonals. The three prone figures had been separated by three large chunks of earthrock that stood out of the ground, leaving a gaping irregular hole, but there was a network of cracks radiating outwards from the hole itself and numerous pieces and chunks of the avenue lay strewn around. A sizable dustcloud was still wafting across the scene, and the neighing, white-eyed horses and trumpeting elephants indicated that whatever had occurred had only just occurred. All three were already leaning on elbows and peering around through the wafting cloud of dust, which told her they were unharmed, merely thrown off balance and stunned by whatever the event had been.

  Her first thought was that some kind of earthquake had just struck – a very odd earthquake that had struck only one area of the avenue.

  Her next thought was a memory of the last days in Lanka, after Rama’s forces had landed upon the island-kingdom, and the entire island itself had seemed to heave and rise and crack and roar in protest. She recalled how she had trembled with fear, not for herself alone – although she was by no means immune to fear – but for the unborn life she carried within her womb. A shudder passed through her as she recalled the violent power of Ravana’s maya sorcery. Surely this could not be his work? Ravana was dead!

  Even as she thought this, the avenue heaved again. Her arms shot out instinctively as she backed up, coming up short against the raised shield of a PF who was too shocked himself to mutter an apology. Before her, Rama stood his ground, his dark silhouette a portrait of readiness and composure even as the animals and soldiers all around reacted with unmistakable horror. Prepared as Ayodhyans were for violent combat, they were not prepared for supernatural warfare. Why only Ayodhyans? All Aryas. The Last Asura Wars had broken the back of her own nation’s army and sent her father into a radical departure from martial ways, seeking succour in spiritual armament to compensate for the immutable memories of the horrors of war against such a vastly superior and alien force of maya-wielding foes.

  The ground roared.

  There was no other way to describe it. The sound burst from the jagged yawning abyss that had opened in the centre of the avenue, just before the palace gates, like a bestial cry ripped from the throat of some unseen juggernaut. It filled the air, surely audible for yojanas around, and Sita felt it strike her body like a physical blow. She felt the growing life within her stir and respond in distress – or was it anger? – to the solid blow of the sound.

  Smoke and light belched out of the crack.

  The gates, ten-yard-high intricate structures of corrugated iron and brass, buckled and crumpled like straw in a child’s fist.

  The ground shuddered and swayed, and a wave of nausea rose in Sita’s gullet, forced down by stubborn will.

  I must stand! I must not lose my footing.

  It took every gram of effort and will to remain standing, firm and seemingly unafraid, beside her consort royale.

  It was not sufficient merely to be a queen. One had to act like one.

  The three prone figures struggled to stand upright. To her dism
ay, none succeeded. Even Hanuman, whom she believed capable of virtually anything he put his mind to, seemed to be unable to maintain his balance. After all, the broken ground beneath them was at the epicentre of the disturbance. The vile effulgence belching forth from the jagged hole almost concealed them from view. The intensity of the sound, terrible at several yards’ distance where Sita stood, must have been unbearable to their ears. Even so, they fought to rise upright, failed, and somehow managed to half-crawl, half-drag themselves a yard or two back before collapsing once more as a fresh wave of sound and vibration assaulted the avenue.

  This time the sound emerging from the belly of the earth was less a roar than a scream. A banshee wail of anguish and anger exploding from the lungs of the unseen force. It throbbed through the skin and nerves to shake the bones of Sita’s body, ringing in her ears like the cry of a dying beast.

  Unable to help herself, Sita threw her hands to her ears, covering them. She no longer cared if she seemed weak. She was still standing, was she not? It was the sound she could not bear. It reminded her of a being in terrible agony…not just a being…a child being birthed. And once the insane thought occurred to her assaulted mind, she could not shake it off.

  “What is it?” she cried to Rama, shouting to be heard above the keening wail. All across the avenue, horses were rearing and screaming in terror. Elephants stamping their feet and tossing their mahouts, some stampeding and crushing their quads. She saw an archer atop a roof drop his precious shortbow and clap his hands to his ears in agony, bending over so far, he lost his balance and tumbled from the roof to fall with a sickening thud on the avenue below where he lay in a motionless heap; even through the cloud of dust that was filling the air, she could see the bright crimson trickle of blood seeping from his ears. Her own eardrums felt as if they had already burst and she half expected to feel the wetness of her own blood on her hands at any moment.

  Rama did not answer. He stood his ground grimly. Glancing around, she saw that he was the only one. Every other person and animal on the avenue was reeling from the continued assault of sound and quake. Through gaps in the billowing cloud of stinking fumes, she could see Bharat and Shatrugan, dismounted and attempting to calm their panicked horses while shaking their heads in reaction to the terrible sound themselves.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the sound ceased.

  The silence that fell in the wake of the sound was almost as shocking as the sound itself had been.

  Sita slowly removed her palms from her ears – she glanced briefly at them and was surprised that they were not smeared with blood – and looked around. Shaken, the royal guard was trying to maintain its composure. Yet the horror on their collective faces was nakedly visible. Whatever their considerable training had prepared them to face, this was not included in it.

  “What was it?” she asked again, touching Rama’s shoulder with her hand. Dust had settled already on his naked body and she tasted and felt the grittiness on her own face as the smoky effulgence from the crack in the avenue settled.

  Rama still did not speak. But in the next few moments, her question was answered anyway.

  With the prescient coordination born of long years of fighting side by side, Bharat and Shatrugan dropped the reins of their horses and sprinted forward as one man. Whatever was happening outside the palace gates, it was not over. They sensed that the closer they were to their home ground, the more useful their weapons and skill would be. They had had enough of being bystanders. It was time to get close to the action.

  Hanuman rose to his feet, still feeling the echoes of that horrendous wailing in the recesses of his mind. He snorted, clearing his nostrils of the dust and grime that hung in the air like a fog. To his right, he glimpsed the hazy form of the senapati also gaining his feet. To his left, he was not surprised to see the rishi was already afoot and holding his stout staff once more in both hands, like a boatman an oar.

  Rishi Valmiki had not expected the first assault. But he was prepared for the second. Unlike all the others gathered on the avenue, he alone knew the cause of the eruption from the ground and the source of the terrible wailing. He sent a silent prayer of thanks to almighty Brahma that he had arrived in time. Ayodhya had no notion of the evil that was about to assault it from within and without, and the proud city-state’s legendary defences were about to be tested to their limits – and beyond. Even through the billowing mass of subterranean dust that clouded the avenue, he could still discern the ramrod-straight form of Rama, standing before the crumpled gates, Sita at his side. He needed to speak with Rama urgently, but he knew that the second wave would begin at any moment, and that needed to be dealt with first.

  He was ready with his staff when it came.

  A blast of heat roared up from the jagged rent in the ground. Like the blow-heat of a furnace stoked with a giant pair of bellows, it seared his skin and instantly caused sweat to pop out of his pores. Yet he stood his ground, knowing that if he did not deal with this threat it would grow in strength and intensity. His only hope – Ayodhya’s only hope – was to strike first and fast and hit as hard as possible.

  Accompanying the heat came a tongue of orange-red flame that resembled nothing so much as a war banner blown on a strong wind. Except that this banner streamed up from the ground rather than sideways on the end of a raised lance. Yet it was no less a war banner, and even though the only emblem it bore was naked flame, it trumpeted the enemy’s arrival just as effectively.

  He had already begun to chant the mahamantras softly as he had stood up. Now, he raised his voice, projecting it as far outward and above the relentless roar of the subterranean fire-banner blazing upwards, so that every PF, quad leader, elephant, horse and prince upon the avenue could hear it. The purpose of the mahamantras would be served even by silent recitation but by making the recitation heard, they would also rouse the morale of the Ayodhyans. And the battle that lay ahead – indeed, the war itself – would depend as much on will and stubborn determination, as on strength and martial skill.

  The smriti shlokas – literally secret verses – expanded into the air, through the space above the jagged crack in the avenue. At the point where the sound of their recitation, performed with a precise diction, enunciation and pace, collided with the sound and heat of the upwards-blazing tongue of flame, a curious effect occurred.

  The fire actually shrivelled.

  And shrank.

  As if the blazing tongue of flame, roaring fiercely several yards high into the air, like a pillar of fire soaring up from the cracked earth, had been doused by a powerful quantity of icy cold water.

  Valmiki raised his voice, using the considerable power of his lungs, strengthened from years of recitation and argument before great gatherings of rishis at the annual convocations and debates in the forest ashrams, to a pitch and level that intensified the shakti of the mahamantras even further.

  For a moment, the Sanskrit alphabets became visible in mid-air, outlined by the asura fire. They hung in the air like solid things carved out of stone, then turned to smoke and evaporated, dousing the flame – absorbing it, then transforming it into the universal essence of life, brahman shakti. The motes glittered blue before fading into ether.

  The fire-banner fluttered once, twice, made a final attempt to blaze through the stream of Sanskrit scripture…then flickered, flagged and died.

  Valmiki ended the final shloka and touched the staff to his forehead, inclining his head in gratitude to Brahma-dev for this small but immensely pleasurable success.

  At least he had shown the enemy that someone stood ready to do battle on their own terms.

  He glanced across the cracked abyss and saw Rama standing on the other side. The king of Ayodhya had moved closer to the edge during Valmiki’s recitation and now they both stood on opposite sides of the hole. In his peripheral vision, the rishi saw Hanuman move up closer from one side, and the senapati take up the fourth position. Excellent. Now all four cardinal directions were manned by determined warrio
rs. And as if they instinctively sensed the need to man the opening in the earth, Bharat and Shatrugan moved in to add their own considerable presence to the circle while the foremost quads moved in as well, no doubt on a signal from the intrepid senapati. Rishi Valmiki smiled grimly. Instead of emerging stealthily and rampaging through the citizen-filled streets before the alarm was raised, the enemy would now find a formidable ring of defence already waiting to greet him the instant he showed himself.

  Almost as if he knew this, the creature from beneath the ground roared his fury. Valmiki saw the eyes of the PFs closest to him widen to show their whites as the sound echoed through the length and breadth of the deserted avenue.

  Then the roar broke off. And something terrible emerged from the crack in the ground. Something that had lain festering beneath the surface of Ayodhya for fourteen long years, biding its time, and which now burst free in a devastating explosion of asura maya.

  FIVE

  “RAMA!”

  Dustclouds boiled high above the rooftops of the avenue, obscuring the sky; foul gases reeked; chaos reigned at the palace gates of Ayodhya. Immaculately behaved horses threw off their riders, impeccably trained elephants trampled their mahouts, Purana Wafadars drilled to face up to any situation including a full-scale invasion milled about in confusion, and even Saprem Senapati Dheeraj Kumar stared in mute fury, his raised fists clenched. Sita controlled the urge to gasp, forcing herself to remain motionless and expressionless. Like Rama. He stood like a pillar in a raging ocean, the only force of still calm among the thousands of armed warriors and armoured beasts standing before the inner sanctum of the greatest capital in the seven-nation Arya world.

  The thing that had emerged from the broken ground of the avenue was like nothing she had ever seen before.

  It had once been a rakshasa, that was clear. Neither less nor more grotesque, malformed, hideously shaped and barbed at unexpected places, like a machine built for war rather than for mere living. It was huge. The Seer’s Eye Tower silhouetted against the morning sun stood mere yards behind it, and its head reached almost as high as the top of the tower. Its strength was evident in the way it flexed its bullish muscles as it freed its wool-ringed feet from its subterranean exit to clump with a bone-shuddering thud upon the avenue. But she had seen rakshasas more hideous and menacing during the long years of exile, while battling them in the forests of Janasthana, and later as an unwilling guest of the Lord of Lanka. This one was no ordinary rakshasa, that was self-evident, but neither was he the fiercest or the most frightening one she had ever seen.