RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA Read online

  “What say you?”

  The silence that followed the last whispering passage of his words through the seemingly endless ranks was deafening. He could hear his heart pounding steadily, like a drum beaten by a drummer tolling a dirge. He could hear the distant, high-pitched lowing of greybacks far out at sea. He could hear birds in the skies wailing for the lost day. And the sun slipped one final time to touch the rim of the horizon, hanging there as if reluctant to take its sight off him, as if waiting to hear the response of his armies, as eager to know the effect of his words upon them as he himself was.

  The answer came with a roar so resounding it shook his body to his very bones. It was accompanied by a stamping of feet that made the earth beneath tremble as well, the grassy knoll shuddering as if stricken by another bout of the earth-moving wrought by Ravana’s asura maya on the first night of their landing. The wind of their shouting made the hairs of his arms and his nape stand on end. It was greater than the war chants they had yelled in battle, greater than the screams of the dying, more determined than the shout of fealty they had pledged to him back at Mount Mahendra when the armies of Hanuman had first assembled before his sight. Hail Rama Husband of Sita.

  “JAI SIYARAM.”

  The sun slipped beneath the rim. He thought he felt it smile one final time before it passed from that part of the world. He smiled as well.

  PRARAMBH

  ONE

  Rama.

  Blackness. As impenetrable as a caul over a newborn’s eyes. As dark as his name – which meant black and was given to male infants darker complected than the average dusky-skinned Arya male. In his case, so dark that the royal artists often used a deep shade of midnight blue to distinguish his skin, back in the days when things such as portraits had been an insignificant yet inevitable part of his life. Back when he was still a prince, a yuvraj, carefree and happy in the first flush of youth. Before life had turned upon him like a hunting hawk upon its handler and ripped that casual innocence to shreds.

  Awaken, Black Prince.

  Crow feather. Night shade. Shyam rang. Or his favourite, Kisna. Although Kisna, or Krishna, as it was pronounced in commonspeak by those unschooled in Sanskrit highspeech, was as likely to be used for a girl as a boy. Unlike Rama, which was always unquestionably a masculine name, he didn’t know why. Nor was he the first of his name: there were at least three previous Ramas in the Suryavansha Ikshwaku dynasty. And any number across the Arya nations, for dark complexions were common across the length and breadth of this land of the relentless sun.

  Enough. I bid you rise…NOW.

  A hand not made of flesh and bone grasped him in a vice and hauled him back to consciousness.

  He woke, choking, gasping for breath, and leaped to the floor. He reached for his sword – missing. His bow, arrow, rig – likewise. His clothing

  – also gone. Weaponless, naked but for a langot, he spun on the balls of his feet, his keenly honed warrior senses alert to attack from any front by any foe.

  He was in his bed chamber, the king’s bed chamber, no less. For he was king now in all but name, and after the coronation on the morrow, the title would be his as well. Although it was and perhaps would always be, his father’s bed chamber. It was larger than he had recalled it, certainly far greater in span and length than his own princely chambers back when he had resided here. Although, after fourteen years of forest exile, constant battle and rough living off the land, even a woodsman’s hut would seem comfortable. This…this was beyond luxurious; never much of a poet, he had no words to describe it now.

  Marbled floors gleamed by the light of moonshafts falling through latticed windows. Alabaster columns marched down the length of the chamber like resolute sentries perpetually on guard. Statuary cast in ebony, ivory, jade and softwood depicted a variety of devas, auspicious animals and Ikshwaku ancestors in a variety of postures, every detail precise and perfect. The fingers, arms, necks and ankles of the kings and queens among them glittered with real ornaments of precious metal and stone, kept polished and pristine over centuries. Immense portraits and epic landscapes adorned the vaulting walls, some aspiring to the ceiling a dozen yards above. Richly brocaded tapestries hung in cul-de-sacs. The lush carpeting yielded to his bare feet like a velvet invitation. Everywhere he turned – seeking, scanning – darkly majestic furnishings gleamed with exquisite artistry and lavish care. The entire vast chamber was redolent of the woody perfume of sandalwood, his favourite aroma.

  Yet it was empty, every yard of it. He completed a full circuit of the chamber and stood, puzzled. He had not imagined it. That grasp that tore him away from his dreamy meanderings had been as real as any rough hand laid on his flesh. So had the voice. He stood there in the moonlight, breathing silently. A gust of night wind parted and lifted the gossamer curtains, and dried the cooling sweat upon his muscled chest. And slowly, like a debt returned too slowly over too long, it came back to him.

  There had been a dream much like this, on a night very similar, a long time ago. Before Lanka. Before the abduction of Sita. Before the rakshasa wars, the exile, the marriage, the battle of Bhayanak-van…before that day, the Holi day, when his life had changed forever, wrenched from its

  course like a river denied its pathway to the ocean.

  A dream of Ravana. Warning him. Threatening. Mocking.

  Abruptly, a terror rose in his blood. He spun on quicksilver feet and in less than a breath’s span, was at the side of the bed he had left only moments ago.

  Sita.

  The bed raiment was strewn on the side where he had been sleeping. Unaccustomed as he had been to the caress of such fine cloth for so long, he had pushed them away impatiently before falling asleep. But on the side where she had laid herself down, they were gathered and overlapped, and now all he could see was the raiment itself.

  A dark dread lay on his heart like a stone. He reached out, willing himself to be steady, and plucked a loose end of the gathered cloth in his hand. Gently, he lifted it and pulled it away from the bed, bracing himself to find nothing more than a rumpled space where she had lain, still faintly warm with her heat. Gone. Again. Taken.

  Instead, he found her. Lying curled beneath the bedclothes like a bird nursing a broken wing. He caught his breath at the sight of her, unable to believe his eyes alone. Still holding the blanket in one hand, he reached down with the other and gently touched the crook of her arm. He could smell the musky odour of her body, feel the heat gathered beneath the blankets. She stirred in the throes of deep slumber, moaned softly, but did not turn over or rouse. Too exhausted, at the end of her tether. His heart went out to her. If only he could have reached Lanka sooner, if only the war had been less complicated, if only he had used his brahman shakti from the very outset…But he had done what had seemed right, and what had been had been.

  He started to lower the cloth, then stopped. He watched her a moment. His heart stuck in his throat to see how thin she had grown over the weeks of her captivity, how pale and bony. Bird-like. Yet, watching her thus, her faced stripped of all self-control in the languor of sleep, there was something about her face and aspect, an inner glow that belied all the recent hardship, defied the preceding years of torturous existence, the blood-smirched struggle for survival that had been their way of life for fourteen long years. A proud dignity that still shone on her features, which could not be hidden. It made him want to take her into his arms, to embrace and love forever. She was still the strong, indomitable woman he had fallen in love with and married, those many years past. Neither exile, nor hardship, nor war, nor Ravana had broken her. Nothing could. A bird with a broken wing…indeed. But a Garuda among birds.

  He lowered the raiment, replacing the blanket as nearly as he had found it. She had always liked to cover her head while she slept, a habit he could not brook. He would feel suffocated to sleep thus, yet she could not sleep otherwise. And now, he thought with a faint smile as he stepped back from the bed, she could certainly afford to cover herself and sleep thusly;
in the finest silks and velvet coverings in the whole wide world.

  But not for long.

  He spun around, scouring the chamber. After the life he had lived, the things he had seen, there was little that could unnerve him, and yet, some part of him could not accept that this was happening. Ravana is dead. I killed him on the battlefield of Lanka, in full view of both our armies. He sliced the air with his open hand, in the manner he had learned from a dark-skinned fighter from the Kerall waterlands who had fought with him in the wilderness of Janasthana. He could leap twice his own height in the air, and strike with a sword in a full circle before touching ground again. But there was nothing to strike here, no foe to defend against.

  “Show yourself,” he snarled, almost beneath his breath.

  Where I am now, your weapons and fists can no longer harm me. Yet I can do to you and yours as I desire. Perhaps I shall start with your wife…

  “Craven!” He started to cry out but choked back the shout. He did not want to wake Sita if he could help it. He must draw the bodiless intruder away from her. He drew upon the steel-edged self-discipline that had earned him his formidable reputation, using a pranayam breathing pattern to calm his ragged nerves and soothe his battle-weary muscles. Old guru Vashishta had taught him the yogic breathing pattern; in another lifetime, it now seemed. A happier, youthful time.

  Coward, he hissed silently, knowing that he did not need audible speech to be heard by his tormentor. Why do you hide from my sight and seek to taunt

  me with words? Face me like a warrior if you dare.

  A sound in his head, like a chuckle with a hundred echoes.

  No.

  Not a hundred.

  Ten.

  Only ten.

  If he listened closely with his now-fully attentive mind, he could even catch the nuances of those ten different voices, voices he knew so well now from hearing them up close on the field in the crystalline hyper-awareness of battle.

  At that moment, the saliva in his mouth began to taste of the coppery tang of blood and he knew then that this was no nightmare; it was indeed Ravana speaking. But how? And more importantly, why?

  Why do you think, King of Ayodhya? We have unfinished business.

  He spun around on the balls of his feet. This time the voice had seemed to come from just behind his left shoulder. He had even felt the faint heat of voice-breath upon his bare skin. But there was still no one there. No one that could be seen by mortal eyes.

  But even the invisible one could be cut by steel if struck at a certain moment, when a particular one of those ten voices was speaking. He did not know how he knew this; he just did. If only he had his sword. He missed it, his constant companion through all his struggles. How could he have let himself be parted from it? Then he recalled. Sumantra had insisted on taking it away, and when he had protested, the aging minister had simply held up the sword in both palms, showing it to Rama. And he had seen, really seen, what a state it was in: blood and gore and bodily fluids and materials had dried and encrusted themselves along its length so many times over that they formed a scabby coating. The hilt was cracked and bent, its jewels long lost in the heat of one of a thousand encounters. The blade was chipped and marred in a hundred places, barely retaining any vestige of its former honed perfection. The once-lethal blade was now little more than a macabre souvenir. That sword, he had realized in an onrush of commingled pride and sadness as he met Sumantra’s heartrending gaze again, told the history of his struggles more eloquently than any court poet. But now its work was done; it needed to be repaired and rested, perhaps retired. Not unlike himself.

  Except that unlike the sword, he was still on call, still required to serve. He breathed, drawing energy from the air, in the way that tapasvi sadhus in the deep aranya drew sustenance from air alone. Breathed and waited.

  Finally, as if realizing that he would not be baited into leaping and flailing about, the voice spoke again, and this time, because he was listening intently, he heard the unmistakable inflection: that doubling of tones, like ten men speaking at once yet not quite precisely in unison.

  Outside.

  He needed no further explanation or command. He moved toward the verandah and exited the royal chamber to find himself upon a patio lined with flowering plants and stone statuary intertwined with vines and creepers. Here beneath the open sky, the nightwind caressed his naked skin, a vetaal’s lifeless breath. From the vantage point of a royal view, he scanned the sleeping capitol city with a glance. Countless house lights still flickered, even though it was long past the midnight watch, and faint sounds echoed and carried even from the farthest reaches of the great city-state: his people, Ayodhyans, all working to prepare for the grand coronation tomorrow, a few perhaps still celebrating the return of their king.

  There was nobody in sight.

  Jump.

  “What?” he asked, startled. His voice would not carry inside to Sita from here.

  Do you still wish to face me like a man? Like a warrior? Then do as I command. Leap from the balustrade.

  He let his teeth show, flashing white in his wine-dark face. Do you mistake me for a fool now, Lanka-naresh? Have you forgotten that I brought you down upon the field of battle? Do you really think I will leap to my death at your bidding?

  A sound of impatience clicked in his mind.

  Mortal unbeliever. If I wanted to kill you by stealth I would have done so at any time I chose. The fact that you yet live is proof enough that I have bigger plans for you than a quick blade in the dark—or a short fall to a brain-crushing end.

  Now it was his turn to chuckle scornfully. “Why should I—?” he began, then stopped. Why should I trust you? he was about to say. But the question was an absurd one. He could not trust the lord of rakshasas at all, of course. And yet. And yet. He sensed the asura spoke truly; what he said was beyond dispute. Simply luring Rama to a suicidal fall might serve a lesser being’s thirst for revenge. It was not Ravana’s way.

  And yet, there was some game here that he could not fathom. Starting with the most startling question of all: How could Ravana be speaking to him if Ravana was dead?

  There was only one way to find out.

  He leaped up to the balustrade, the action as lithe and easy as it had been in his youth, despite his wounds and aches, despite his hardships, despite everything. What he had lost in age and agility, he had made up for in experience, skill and the constant, relentless use of his body and mind, like a well-used bow grew easier to string and draw over time.

  He looked down. The king’s chambers were at the top of the main palace complex, and the drop that lay below him was easily a hundred feet down. At the bottom lay the closely set flagstones of the innermost courtyard, each a quarter ton of solid rock hauled by elephants all the way from the Karakoram principality. The lights of mashaals gleamed dully on the buffed stone, and he glimpsed sentries patrolling diligently, in larger numbers than was usual owing to the presence of so many high personages tonight, most of all, their long-awaited king and queen. The nightwind carried the scents of the city, sometimes pungent, sometimes intriguing. The perfumes of Ayodhya, dressing to celebrate her king’s return.

  “Jump?” he asked. But it was a rhetorical question. He knew the voice that gave the command would not explain or provide reasons; it was a voice accustomed to being obeyed by armies, that spoke to devas and asuras in the same level tone. Jump, it had said. And he grinned wolfishly and decided he would obey. Whatever mystery lay here, it was clear he would not resolve it without taking bold action. As the moments passed and the voice did not speak again, he knew that he had no other choice, no other means of learning what Ravana meant, except to do as he bade and follow this nightmare through to its very end. He resisted the urge to glance back into the chamber where Sita lay asleep. He would not weaken his resolve. Better to draw the asura away from her. Reaching a decision, he nodded once to his invisible foe, inhaled sharply, spread his arms like a bird about to take wing and sprang out from the ba
lustrade, his strong legs carrying him yards out into the empty darkness, high above the solid ground, his body arching like a diver leaping into oceanic depths.

  He hung suspended in the air a moment, then slowly, inevitably, began the long quick fall to the courtyard.

  TWO

  He fell up instead of down. It felt so natural that it took him a moment to realize what was happening. But his senses already knew what his mind had yet to comprehend.

  The weight of the earth, the incessant loving tug of Prithvi Maa, keeping her children close to herself, was gone. In its place was another pull, drawing him up to the sky. He looked down and saw the courtyard far below, receding fast. He saw the balcony on which he had stood a moment ago, diminishing at astonishing speed, then the top of the palace, gleaming quietly resplendent in the moonlight, the Seer’s Tower beside it, then the palace complex whole, and then the entire royal enclave…soon the city itself was falling away far below, reduced to a sprinkling of fireflies upon a green patch surrounded by darkness. The speed at which he was falling— if falling was the right word—was astonishing. He felt the wind rushing past, drumming in his ears, felt the night grow colder around him, enveloping him in its dark embrace, his unclothed skin giving up its hard-won warmth reluctantly.

  He looked up. And saw the sky. But it was not the sky he had seen above the palace only moments earlier. That had been dark in the usual natural way, a deep midnight blue, almost the exact shade used to portray his black skin, a smattering of cottony clouds drifting majestically, backlit by a resplendent moon. That had been placid, peaceful, almost languorously lazy.