The Palace of Illusions Read online

  I ignored them sternly and continued to read. The book, which described in diligent, morose detail complicated laws concerning household property—including servants and wives—caused my eyelids to droop. But I was determined to learn what a king was supposed to know. (How else could I aspire to be different from these giddy girls, or from my father's wives, who spent their days vying for his favors? How else could I be powerful in myself?) So I ignored summer's blandishments and battled with the book.

  But I was fated never to finish learning nyaya shastra. For even as I turned the page Dhai Ma came from the palace, waddling as fast as her bulk would allow. Out of breath and wheezing, her face an alarming red, she shooed my companions away. Then she whispered the news in my ear (but in her excitement she was so loud that everyone heard): my father had decided—Sikhandi's visit must have stirred up a veritable storm of anxiety in him—that I was to be married next month.

  Ever since the prophecy, I'd thought intermittently of marriage—at times with excitement or resignation, at times with dread. I sensed, vaguely, that it was a great opportunity—but for what I wasn't sure. I'd imagined that it would be similar to the weddings of my father's other daughters: arranged by elders. But Dhai Ma informed me I was to have a swayamvar. Eligible rulers from every kingdom in Bharat would be invited to Panchaal. From among them, my father had announced, I would choose the man I was to marry.

  After the initial shock, I was filled with exhilaration. I ran to find Dhri. “I can't believe I'm going to pick my own husband!” I cried. “Why didn't you tell me?”

  “Don't get so excited,” he replied glumly. “Something always goes wrong in a swayamvar—either while it's happening, or later.”

  I felt a twinge of foreboding, but I refused to let Dhri's words ruin my mood. He was too cautious. Sometimes I told him that the gods must have got mixed up when they pushed us out from the fire. He should have been the girl, and I the boy!

  “I wish Father hadn't made this decision so hastily,” he said.

  “You're just jealous that I get to choose my own spouse when you don't!” I joked. As a matter of fact, Dhri was quite taken with the neighboring princess to whom our father had betrothed him. I'd surprised him a couple of times, gazing solemnly at her portrait, which he kept hidden behind a stack of scrolls. But a question gnawed at me: Why would our father, who delighted in control, allow me so much freedom?

  “Is it really going to happen?” I asked Dhri. “Or is he going to suddenly change his mind?”

  “It'll happen. He's sent out a hundred messengers to invite the most important kings. Pleasure palaces are already being built for them and—”

  But Krishna—when had he entered the room?—laughed, startling me.

  “Oh, it'll happen, Krishnaa, but it may not be what you're imagining. Truth, like a diamond, has many facets. Tell her, Dhris-tadyumna. Tell her about the test.”

  This was what they'd planned, my father the king, along with his ministers and priests, for the good of Panchaal and the honor of the house of Drupad: before the wedding, there would be a test of skill. The king who won it would be the one I'd garland.

  “Why even call it a swayamvar, then?” I cried. “Why make a spectacle of me before all those kings? It's my father, not I, who gets to decide whom I'll marry.”

  Dhri looked unhappy, but he spoke firmly. “No, fate will decide that. It's not an ordinary test that Father's setting your suitors. They must pierce a fish made of metal, revolving high on the ceiling of the wedding hall.”

  His support of our father made me angrier. “What's so difficult about that? Isn't that the first thing warriors learn, how to hit a moving target? Or do your enemies sit on the battlefield, waiting for your arrow to come and find them?”

  “There's more to it,” he explained, his voice patient. “They can't look directly at the target but only at its reflection in a pool of whirling water. They must shoot five arrows through a tiny hole in a shield to hit the target. Nor can they use their own weapons.”

  “They must use the Kindhara, the heaviest bow in existence,” Krishna added helpfully. “Your father borrowed it, after much supplication, from the gods. There's only a handful of warriors in the world today strong enough to lift it up, and fewer still that can string it.”

  I glared at them both. “Wonderful!” I said. “So he's set them an impossible task! Is he mad?”

  “Not impossible,” Krishna said. “I know someone who can accomplish it. Arjun, the third Pandava prince, my dearest friend.”

  “Arjun?” I said in surprise. “You never told us he was your dearest friend!”

  “There are many things I haven't told you,” Krishna said, quite unapologetic.

  Dhri's eyes were eager. “Is he really the greatest archer of his time?”

  “I think so,” Krishna said. “He's handsome, too, and a great favorite with the ladies. I think our Krishnaa will like him!”

  His words had made me curious, though I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing that. “Why would our father want me to marry the man who humiliated him?” I asked.

  “Arjun didn't humiliate him!” Dhri said quickly. “He was only following Drona's orders. A warrior has the greatest respect for the man who defeats him in battle.”

  Men! They lived by strange rules. I wanted to ask Dhri why our father hated Drona so much, then, since Drona had been the mastermind behind that defeat. But I allowed myself to drift to more pleasant thoughts. To be the beloved of the greatest archer of our time. To be the woman whose smile made his heart beat faster, whose frown wounded him almost to death, whose advice guided his most important decisions. Could this be the way I was meant to change history?

  Krishna smiled slyly, as though he knew what I thought. Then he said, “If he should come, if he should win, what a great victory it will be for Panchaal!”

  I didn't like the sound of that. “What do you mean, for Panchaal?”

  “Don't you see?” Krishna said. “Once he's married to you, Arjun can't fight against your father. He can never be Drona's ally again.”

  My mouth filled with ashes. How foolish I'd been, dreaming of love when I was nothing but a worm dangled at the end of a fishing pole.

  “Father designed the test to lure Arjun to Panchaal, didn't he?” I said. “Because he'd been defeated by Arjun, he couldn't send a marriage proposal directly to him without losing face. But the swayamvar—it's the perfect opportunity! He knew a warrior like Arjun wouldn't be able to resist such a challenge. Power—that's all he cares about, not his children.” I'd long suspected this. Still, I was surprised at how much it rankled to articulate it.

  “Panchaali,” Dhri started, “that's not true!”

  “Why won't you ever admit the truth?” I spoke bitterly. “We're nothing but pawns for King Drupad to sacrifice when it's most to his advantage. At least I'm just going to be married off. You—he's willing to push you to your death just so he can have his revenge.”

  As soon as I'd said the words I was sorry—and not only because Dhri looked as though I'd slapped him. Dhai Ma said one could call up a man's death by speaking of it. Had I brought my brother bad luck because I couldn't control my tongue? I said a quick prayer for his safety though I wasn't much for praying.

  Krishna touched my shoulder. “Your father isn't as heartless as he seems, my dear. He's just convinced that your happiness lies in being the wife of Bharat's greatest hero. And for Dhri, he's convinced his happiness lies in avenging the honor of his family.”

  Even as Krishna spoke, I seemed to smell blood and burning. I was ashamed of my petty worries. The future that awaited Dhri was so much worse than anything I'd ever have to face! I wondered if it would break him or harden him, and which would be worse. I wondered if I'd prayed for the wrong thing.

  “As for being pawns,” Krishna was saying, “aren't we all pawns in the hands of Time, the greatest player of them all?”

  At night I considered what Krishna had revealed, and why he'd pricked the bu
bble of my romance no sooner than it had formed. He was trying to teach me something. Was it to be aware of the dark motivations that lay behind seemingly benign actions? Was it to not let myself be carried away by emotion, to see myself instead as part of a larger political design that would affect the fate of Bharat? Was it to teach me how to wear the armor of caution so that no one could reach past it to break my heart?

  Important lessons, no doubt. But I was a woman, and I had to practice them—as Sikhandi had suggested—in my own way. I would approach the problem aslant. No matter what my father's intention, I could still make Arjun's heart beat faster. I could still influence how he thought. Perhaps Time was the master player. But within the limits allowed to humans in this world the sages called unreal, I would be a player, too.

  8

  One morning, the sorceress arrived.

  But why do I call her that? She looked no different from the women who sold their wares in the marketplace, with the pleats of her blue sari tucked, peasant fashion, between her legs. A faint smell of salted fish wafted from her.

  “Who are you?” Dhai Ma demanded. “How did you get past the guards?”

  She had a star tattooed onto her chin and muscled arms with which she moved Dhai Ma—not ungently—out of her way. Dhai Ma stared, her mouth agape at the woman's effrontery. I expected her to shout for the sentry or berate the woman with her usual belligerence, but she did neither.

  “I've been sent,” the sorceress said to me, “to fill some of the bigger gaps in your largely useless education.”

  I didn't protest. (Secretly, I agreed with her estimation of my lessons.) I was interested in seeing what she had to offer.

  “Who sent you?” I asked. I had a suspicion it was Vyasa the sage. He, too, came from fisher-folk.

  She grinned. Her teeth were very white in her dark face, their edges sharp and serrated. “Your first lesson, princess, is to know how to sidestep questions you don't want to answer. You do it by ignoring them.”

  The rest of that week she taught me how to dress hair. She taught me how to wash it, oil it, comb the tangles out of it, and braid it into a hundred different designs. She had me practice on her and rebuked me sharply if I pulled too hard, or snagged a tress. Her hair was kinky and unruly, difficult to handle, so I received many such admonishments. I took them with unaccustomed meekness.

  Dhai Ma puffed out her cheeks in disapproval. “Ridiculous!” she said emphatically (though not, I noticed, in the sorceress's hearing). “Whoever heard of a queen braiding someone's hair—or even her own, for that matter?” But I felt the sorceress had her reasons, and I worked hard until she declared herself satisfied.

  The sorceress taught me other unqueenly skills. She made me lie on the floor at night, with only my arm for a pillow, until I could sleep under those conditions. She made me wear the cheapest, most abrasive cotton saris that chafed my skin until I grew used to them. She made me eat what the lowest of my servants ate; she taught me to live on fruits, then water, and then to fast for days at a time.

  “That woman's going to be the death of you!” Dhai Ma wailed. “She's wearing you down to skin and bone.” But this was not true. The sorceress had taught me a yogic breath that filled me with energy so that I needed no other sustenance. The breath made my mind one-pointed, and I began to glimpse subtleties that had been invisible to me before. I noticed that her lessons went in opposites. She taught me adornments to enhance my beauty. She taught me how to make myself so ordinary that no one would spare me a second glance. She taught me to cook with the best of ingredients and the most meager. She taught me potions to cure illness and potions to cause them. She taught me to be unafraid of speaking out, and to be brave enough for silence. She taught me when to lie and when to speak the truth. She taught me to discover a man's hidden tragedies by reading the tremor in his voice. She taught me to close myself off from the sorrow of others so that I might survive. I understood that she was preparing me for the different situations that would appear in my life. I tried to guess what shape they might take, but here I failed. I failed also in this: though I knew all that she taught me was important, in my vanity I only learned the ones that flattered my ego.

  Toward the end, she taught me seduction, the first role a wife must play. She demonstrated how to send out a lightning-glance from the corner of the eye. How to bite, slightly, the swollen lower lip. How to make bangles ring as I raised my arm to pull a transparent veil into place. How to walk, the back swaying just enough to hint at hidden pleasures.

  She said, “In bed you must be different each day, sensitive to your lord's moods. Sometimes a lioness, sometimes a trembling dove, sometimes a doe, matching its partner's fleetness.”

  She gave me herbs, some for insatiability, some for endurance, some for the days I might want to keep a man away.

  “What about love?” I asked.

  “The stalk of the blue lotus, ground into honey, will make a man mad for you,” she said.

  “That's not what I meant.”

  She gave me the name of an herb to arouse my own desire.

  “No. Teach me how to love my husband, and how to make him love me.”

  She laughed out loud. “I can't teach you that,” she said. “Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you're lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have. I advise you to forget about love, princess. Pleasure is simpler, and duty more important. Learn to be satisfied with them.”

  I should have believed her and modified my expectations. But I didn't. Deep in my stubborn heart I was convinced I deserved more.

  There were two final gifts the sorceress gave me: a story and a parchment. The story was the tale of Kunti, mother of Arjun. The parchment was a map of Bharat's many kingdoms.

  In her youth, the sorceress told me, Kunti was given a boon by the irascible sage Durvasa, whom she'd managed somehow to please. Whenever she wanted, she could call upon a god, and he would gift her with a son. It was a strange boon, not without its drawbacks, but it came in handy when her husband Pandu couldn't provide her with children. Thus her eldest, Yudhisthir, was the son of the god of righteousness, her second, Bheem, the son of the god of wind, and Arjun, the son of Indra the king-god. Once, King Pandu's other wife, Madri, begged and begged Kunti to loan her this boon, and Kunti did. Thus, Nakul and Sahadev, sons of the twin healer-gods, were born.

  “Do you believe that men can be born from gods?” I asked.

  She gave me a look. “As much as they can be born from fire! But my believing is not important, nor yours. That's not why stories are given to you.”

  The sorceress was a good storyteller. She brought Kunti's lonely existence alive so I could look into its lightless crevices. Adopted by her uncle, the childless king Kuntibhoj, she had no brothers to cherish her, no sisters to confide in, no mother to turn to for consolation. Her marriage to Pandu—one of political convenience—wasn't happy. Almost immediately he took the beautiful Madri as his second wife and lavished his affection on her. Soon afterward, Pandu was cursed by a brahmin. He left his kingdom in the hands of his blind brother, Dhritarashtra, and went into the forest to do penance. As faithful wives, Kunti and Madri, too, left the comforts of the court and accompanied him (though perhaps they shouldn't have bothered—the curse stipulated that if Pandu touched a woman in desire, he would perish). Years passed. The children appeared. But one day Pandu, no longer able to resist, embraced Madri. He died. The guilt-ridden Madri chose not to live on. Kunti, devastated though she must have been both by her husband's death and his last act, gathered all her willpower. She brought the five princes back to Hastinapur, making no distinction between her own children and those of her rival. She was determined that no one would cheat them out of their inheritance. For years she struggled, a widow alone and in disfavor, to keep them safe in Dhritarashtra's court until finally, now, they were grown.

  I wanted to tell the sorceress how moved I was by Kunti's sufferings and her courage, but
she forestalled me. “Don't let the waves of your emotion drown you,” she said, fixing me with eyes that were cold as agates. “Understand! Understand what drove a woman like her. What allowed her to survive when she was surrounded by enemies. Understand what makes a queen—and beware!”

  I didn't pay the sorceress much attention. With the arrogance of youth I thought that the motives that drove Kunti were too simple to require careful study.

  Only when we met would I realize how different she was from my imaginings. And how much more dangerous.

  The map was a thick crinkled sheet the color of skin. Before this (though the tutor had spoken of it) I'd never seen the shape of the country I lived in, a triangle that narrowed downward in a wedge that drove itself into the ocean. It was made up of so many kingdoms that I thought I'd never learn them all. The rivers and mountains were easier: I enunciated their names as I traced them with my finger. When I touched the peaks of the Himalayas, my hand tingled, and I knew that those icy ranges would be significant in my life. I looked wonderingly at the kingdom of Panchaal and the dot that was Kampilya. It was a strange feeling, to locate myself for the first time in the world.

  “I had this map made just before I came,” the sorceress said. “But it's already outdated.” She passed her hand over the parchment, and it seemed that the boundaries of the kingdoms shifted, some growing larger, some shrinking. A few disappeared altogether while others changed names.