RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Read online

  But still he would not move. He remained there, standing silently in the moonlight. Until the seed of doubt that had been planted in her breast took root and grew tendrils of suspicion. She released his arm, certain now that there was hair upon it, where Rama had no hair. And that those eyes, which she had mistakenly thought were Rama’s deep kohl-black eyes, were in fact slitted and cat-like. Not Rama’s. Not human either.

  She backed away, shaken. ‘Who are you? Where is Rama?’

  He sighed, bowing his head, Rama’s head, with its scalp of crow-black hair. ‘It always happens to me. If I lose control of my emotions, it triggers the change. I … slip back into my own shape.’

  He turned to look at her, and a slow, sly smile grew upon his face. ‘But I fooled you completely at first, did I not? You had no doubt that I was Rama! If my brother had not interrupted us with his unscheduled visit … ’

  ‘Brother,’ she repeated.

  He cocked his head, the moonlight catching his left ear and that side of his face. The ear had changed, she saw, grown long and curved at the tip, unmistakably feline. He was some manner of cat, she realised. A very large cat-like asura with the ability to change its shape. And his voice was changing too, gaining a more feminine tone. She knew that voice. She had heard it before, on a night as terrible as this one, in a vale by a pool upon the hill of Chitrakut, thirteen long years ago. ‘Cousin, actually,’ he/ she said. ‘Although we are different tribes.’

  Something shimmered in Sita’s vision. She blinked blearily, thinking herself still nauseated and groggy from the poppy, and struggled to focus on the creature whom she had thought was Rama. Then she realised that the fault did not lie with her vision, it was the creature himself who was shaking, melting, changing …

  The name came to her unbidden, a cursed word, responsible for so much pain and grief and bloodshed. Supanakha. Yes, it could be no other.

  She watched as Supanakha transformed herself back into her natural form. Her face had changed quite dramatically, to its original feminine rakshasi-yaksi one. Ugly though it was, yet it remained unarguably female. Her features melted and ran like hot wax, sloughing off the aspect of Rama’s handsome, mortal masculinity, altering before Sita’s harried eyes into the familiar mutilated form of the rakshasi who had been the bane of her existence for so long, the rakshasi who had coveted her beloved Rama and attempted to kill Sita once, and had been savagely repulsed by Rama and brutally mutilated by Lakshman, and who had waged a war against them in order to seek her revenge. She stood transformed before Sita, a sleek, glossy, furred beauty with razor sharpened talons and teeth who radiated sexual heat and vigour like a Bangla tiger in mating season. Sita stared, barely recognising this beautiful animal as the same bedraggled ear-chewed specimen who had disrupted her and Rama’s lives so brutally thirteen years ago, in the idyllic settlement of Chitrakut. Yet below this newly acquired sleek perfection, there was no mistaking the catlike features. After all, this was the creature responsible for those thirteen years of unassuaged warfare in the forests of Janasthana.

  Sita spoke the rakshasi’s name aloud, hatefully, for she could not feel anything other than hate for this creature. ‘Supanakha.’

  The demoness smiled. Then snarled, like a cat showing her power to a mouse.

  Sita allowed herself no room for fear. If she only had a sword at hand … ‘Why do you disguise yourself as my husband?’ she demanded with barely restrained anger. This rakshasi, she sensed, was more dangerous than Ravana himself. The lord of asuras had a definite stratagem, an intellectually devised scheme to accomplish some masterplan in which she, Sita, was but a pawn. An important pawn, no doubt, but a pawn. Already she had understood that he would play by the rules of his own game, and that he meant her no immediate harm. But Supanakha was a different story: the rakshasi had reason enough to wreak violent vengeance upon Rama and all those he loved. And of all those beloved of Rama, there was none she could despise more than Sita. Her ‘rival’, as she had once put it.

  She stood before Sita, restored to her true form. The ruined, scar-roughened flesh that marked where her nose and ears should have been were coarse reminders of Lakshman’s rash violence. Oh, why had he inflicted such drastic violence upon this asura? Better that he had engaged her in combat and fought her to the death, than to inflict this glaring humiliation. The years fighting rakshasas had given Sita greater insight into the minds and workings of rakshasas, and she knew now what she had not known thirteen long years earlier—that the slicing-off of Supanakha’s nose and ears were more humiliating to the rakshasi than simply being unable to gain Rama’s affections.

  ‘Sita,’ growled the rakshasi softly.

  Sita resisted the urge to back away further. She must not show fear or weakness before this creature. This was not Ravana, with his greater masterplan and stratagems; this was a spurned suitor, still seething with an ancient grudge. Wily and unpredictable. Why had she not shown herself when her cousin Ravana was here moments ago? Why had she disguised herself as Rama? What was her gameplan?

  ‘What is it you want of me?’ Sita asked the rakshasi in a level voice. ‘Have you and your brother rakshasas not spilled enough innocent blood in the jungles of Janasthana?’

  Supanakha purred, her tail flicking up over her furry head, then down again. It moved rhythmically from left to right as she regarded Sita with a tilted head, cat eyes gleaming luminously in the moonlight. Her fur was sleeker than Sita had last seen, her body well-fed and stronger than before. She was a wholly different being from the emaciated mangy, scatty beast that had ranged along with the armies of Khara and Dushana and Trisiras. ‘Nothing much,’ she replied slowly in that soft, rolling purr. ‘Just some of your blood. And the skin and flesh and the bone marrow as well.’

  And before Sita could act or respond, Supanakha had gathered herself up and leaped, all in one smooth oily motion, across the small clearing. The rakshasi was in the air before Sita quite knew what she was up to—her senses were still dulled by the poppy. In an instant, the demoness would have been upon her, tearing her throat and belly open and feeding on her hot, steaming innards. She moved like dark lightning.

  But someone else moved even quicker. Sita barely had begun to turn her face away, choking back the involuntary cry that rose to her lips, when another dark shape flew out of the trees and intercepted Supanakha in mid-air. Both shapes collided and rolled, crashing less than a yard from the stunned Sita. She had a glimpse of Supanakha’s startled face, eyes glinting demonically with rage, then the rakshasi howled with frustration and struck out with her inches-long claws.

  The blows were caught by more nimble hands and the rakshasi’s limbs twisted back by arms far stronger. Supanakha struggled hopelessly for a moment more, snarling and twisting in the grasp of her cousin-brother, until the lord of Lanka spoke a single word, like the crack of a whip on a flank. ‘Enough!’

  Reluctantly, Supanakha subsided. Ravana held her down, forelimbs akimbo, until he was certain that the fight had gone out of her. She writhed briefly, then looked up into the eyes of one of his heads and saw something there that sobered her down at once. She grew still. Ravana used his second—or perhaps it was his third, he had brought all six arms into play—pair of arms to hold her lower limbs down and apart, and at that moment, Supanakha resembled nothing more than an overgrown housecat held down with her limbs splayed. She stared up with dangerous glinting eyes at the lord of asuras, down but not wholly subdued.

  He released her and stood, turning to face Sita.

  ‘You are unharmed,’ he said, stating it as fact.

  Sita nodded, not trusting herself to speak just yet.

  He folded his lower pairs of arms back into their slits in his back. Sita found herself watching with frank fascination; she had never seen such a thing before. She forced herself to lower her eyes to the ground, but before she did so, she caught at least one of his heads watching her watching him with amused interest.

  He looked down at her briefly, as if ensuring that
she was unharmed and well. Some of his heads continued to examine her intently, while the rest swivelled on his massive muscled neck, and glared at the prone form of his cousin. Supanakha lay with splayed limbs on the ground, her belly bared. Yet even in this hapless posture of defeat, she retained an air of threat. Her eyes smouldered darkly. As Sita watched, they closed almost to slits, and her thick lips parted to reveal a flash of tapering fangs.

  Supanakha hissed at her brother. She had thought he had left earlier. That was her mistake. She should have checked to make sure. But she had been so focussed on the mortal female, so overwhelmed by the opportunity that had provided itself, that she had forgotten how canny Ravana could be at times.

  He stood above her now, staking his dominance. For a long moment silence prevailed, broken briefly by the distant sound of panicked roaring. Finally, Ravana broke the silence, this time speaking in a male baritone of exquisite power.

  ‘You were forbidden, cousin,’ he said in clipped, brusque tones. ‘And yet you have slipped past my clansmen to come here. Four of them have died for their inefficiency—or, should I say, sexual indiscretions, for I scented your musk on each one. They are mindless brutes, barely worthy of claiming any link to the Pulastya line; I expected little more from them than to guard the princess well. But from you, I expected much more. Above all, I did not expect such insubordination. I gave you a direct order, which you violated. Worse still, you have been drugging her. While I waited for her to resume consciousness, believing her to be in shock, you have been keeping her in this senseless, mindless state. If I had not been preoccupied with matters of governance these past days since my return, this would never have happened. But now, seeing as it has happened, I wonder. What am I to do about you? An infraction such as this cannot be allowed to go unpunished.’

  Supanakha rolled over, snarling softly. ‘What infraction? So I mated with some of your guards? What of that? This entire tower is little more than a breeding area designed to multiply the numbers of your hordes, is it not? There are countless matings occurring here every hour of the day.’

  Ravana pointed a finger at her in warning. ‘I speak of your attack upon my guest. And of your drugging her these past days.’

  Supanakha licked a spot on the elbow of her right paw in a sly, feline gesture, keeping her eyes on Ravana. ‘That!’ she said scornfully. ‘That was nothing. If I really wanted to harm her, she would have been dead days ago. I was protecting her.’

  ‘Protecting her.’ Ravana’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  ‘Yes,’ Supanakha spat. ‘By keeping her drugged and taking her husband’s form to calm her each time she regained consciousness briefly, I was ensuring that nobody would know the identity of your prisoner. Even mating with your guards was part of the same purpose—to keep them from growing curious and coming to examine her. Why, had I not satisfied some of their mindless lust, perhaps they might have slaked their thirst with your precious princess inst—’

  ‘Impossible,’ Ravana rumbled. ‘They were fools, surely, but loyal fools. You can’t talk your way out of this one, cousin. Those sentries were more faithful to me than you will ever be, ungrateful wench! I know what you intended—you wished to destroy Sita and take her place, become her. But in order for the subterfuge to work, you had to get to know Sita better. Learn her every thought and gesture and habit. That was what you were doing these past days and intended to go on doing. Then, when Rama arrived to claim her back, you would be able to successfully play the role of his wife. But then something happened just now that made you lose control, did it not? That has always been your failing, cousin-sister. The best laid plans come to naught because you lack the temperance to restrain your bestial impulses long enough for the plans to come to fruition.’

  Supanakha was about to counter his accusation with a few choice abuses of her own devising when something registered belatedly upon her vision. She peered around Ravana’s massively muscled right thigh, narrowing her eyes. It was a low-hanging branch, swishing. She snarled softly. ‘Ravana.’

  ‘Do not interrupt me. I will not hear any more excuses from you on this matter.’

  ‘Brother!’ Supanakha roared, rising up to her haunches. ‘See for yourself. She is gone!’

  Quick as a whiplash, Ravana’s rack of heads turned to look at the spot where Sita had been lying moments earlier—and was not any more.

  FOUR

  Sita ran through the benighted woods. The forest blurred past her. Branches loomed like chopped limbs, vines trailed and twined like the hairs of a giantess, gnarled roots snaked across her path. Fear and shock had shaken off much of the effect of the drugs, and her body, bruised and sore though it was, was toughened by over a decade of hard living and incessant fighting in the wilderness; it responded well enough for the nonce. But she was depleted and drugged and would not last long; she knew she must put as much distance between herself and her abductor as possible before her resources ran out. What then? A cranny to hide in perhaps. A place to stow away until she could find a way to get across the ocean to Aryavarta. She had no plan, only the determination to be free. To not have to play the hapless heroine of this nightmarish fairy tale.

  She had said to Ravana, boldly, that Rama would raise an army to come rescue her; she did not doubt he would. It was the massacre that would result that she feared. The killing beyond count, the epic violence of war. If she had understood the lord of Lanka correctly, that was exactly what he desired. Why? She did not care right now. All she cared about was making her escape, perhaps preventing this whole catastrophe.

  Her flight seemed to go on endlessly. As she progressed, sprinting across the benighted landscape, she became aware of the peculiar lack of life in this forest. Never mind rakshasas— even the guards that Ravana and Supanakha had both mentioned in their argument—she could not sense even the smaller wildlife that would be rife in such a place. No sounds disturbed the eerie deathlike stillness of the woods she ran through: not an owl hoot, not a nightbird’s sweet chords, not the chirring of insects … The place sounded as dead as … as any man-made habitation. Even the inevitable bruises and cuts she should have suffered by now from clawing branches, twisted roots, thorny brambles, and the hundred nameless obstacles of a forest at night, were absent. She had been able to run with curious ease through miles of forest at night, virtually unobstructed, her way illuminated by moonlight that was surprisingly bright.

  She slowed to a halt, the nape of her neck prickling from the awareness that her nemesis and his crony might be close on her heels. She did not doubt Ravana’s ability to outpace her, nor Supanakha’s. Yet, even after a long moment of breathless anticipation, listening and sniffing and waiting, there was no sound of pursuit, no sense of any threat from behind. And if she didn’t know better, she would think that in this strangely still and silent wood, she was all alone.

  After several moments, using the benefit of close to fourteen years of forest-sharpened senses, she was ready to believe that she was alone. She could not sense so much as a hare munching clover anywhere.

  There was something wrong with the moonlight.

  It shone too evenly, too perfectly, casting a uniform silvery glow over everything. The angle at which it shone was odd too. She crouched and examined the way it fell upon the top of the leaves of a fenik bush—and the sides and undersides of the leaves as well. The instant her eyes took stock of this unnatural phenomenon, she backed away, as if the bush itself was to blame. Spinning around, she saw that everything around her was lit by this strange all-illuminating moonlight. She ran out of the thicket in which she had stopped, into a clearing filled with flowering bushes of a variety she had never encountered before, and looked up at the moon.

  There was no moon.

  Just moonlight. Beautiful, silvery, perfect. All-illuminating.

  She ran again, sprinting unobstructed and unharmed through the unnatural forest, beneath the unearthly moonlight, across a landscape occupied by no other living creature except herself. She ran and
ran until her lungs could pump no more air, her muscles were tight with fatigue, and the back of her head was throbbing.

  Something was ahead. Something that her senses could not discern as anything natural or comprehensible. Yet it was unmistakably there. She slowed as she approached it, unsure of what to expect or how to guard herself against it. The jungle stopped abruptly at one point, giving way to a lush, green, grassy patch. Looking left and right, she saw that the grassy patch continued in either direction as far as she could see, curving gently backwards like the ends of a bow. Without knowing exactly how she knew it, she understood what that meant: a circle. The entire forest was encircled by this ring of grass. And from the look of it, the ring of grass was a perfect band, as precise in its edging as any band of gold wrought by a Kosala jeweller. Which itself was unnatural. What forest could grow within a perfect circle of kusa grass? This was asura maya at work for certain, like the moonlight that was not moonlight, and the forest that considerately allowed her to pass unscratched and unscathed, and the utter absence of animal life. She was, after all, she reminded herself, in Ravana’s Lanka.

  The patch of grass was several dozens of yards broad. From where she stood, she saw that the grass suddenly ended, like a place where the ground fell off into a cliff or ravine. Except that this edge was immaculate, a perfect rim. And that the grass did not give way even slightly to rocky land or dried gritty patches as would be the case if it were real grass growing upon real earth. It went on in its lush green trimmed perfection, and stopped.

  She went across the grass, feeling its cool softness beneath her bare feet like a benediction. It was hard to believe it was not real grass. Perhaps … perhaps it was real, but controlled by Ravana’s sorcery? After all, the seer-mages of Aryavarta could control the elements, so why not Ravana? Who knew the extent of his powers?