PRINCE OF DHARMA

by AKB eBOOKS Ashok K. Banker

  A wisp of hair fell across Tataka’s face. It hung there for a moment, obscuring her right eye and cheek, lending her an air of allure. ‘Would you kill me, my prince? A mere woman?’

  Rama looked around, his mind in a turmoil.

  ‘Rama, do not fear her gargantuan size. Even though she has the strength of a thousand elephants, she is no match for you and the shakti of the maha-mantras Bala and Atibala.’

  Rama looked at the giantess then at the sage. He scarcely knew whom to listen to or believe now.

  ‘Gurudev,’ he said. ‘Please, I beg you, do not force me to violate dharma by killing a woman. I have done all you asked and will do all you ask in future. But this command is beyond my ability to fulfil.’

  Vishwamitra brought his staff down in fury. Where it struck the ground, the earth itself split wide open with a blast of light and thunder. The elephants and horses, skittish and wide-eyed in the presence of the Yaksi, reared and trumpeted.

  ‘Rajkumar Rama! Dharma is duty performed for the greater good. This duty you must perform for the welfare of all the four castes, for the sake of all mortalkind. A king must do what serves his subjects best, even if it seems unrighteous and distasteful, for such is his dharma. Hear me well, rajkumar. Lord Indra, most honourable of devas, was compelled to kill the daughter of Virocana because she sought the destruction of Prithvi herself, the very planet we inhabit. Lord Vishnu the Preserver killed Bhrigu’s wife, mother of Kavya, because she plotted to murder Indra. In ages past, other Kshatriya kings and princes such as yourself have committed this painful duty of stree-hatya and they suffered the same doubts and hesitation you are experiencing. You are not the first and you will not be the last warrior to kill a woman. It must be done. Suppress your pity, swallow your misgivings, take up your bow and kill Tataka while the sun approaches its zenith. Kill her now, Rama!’

  Tataka rose to her feet, blotting out the sun again. The giantess awaited Rama’s decision with a passiveness that was almost heartrending. If she was a fanged and clawed monstrosity rushing to tear my heart out, would I have hesitated this long? And yet, something stayed his hand.

  Vishwamitra spoke again, his tone softer and filled with compassion for Rama’s plight. ‘Rama, listen to me, boy. I know your pain. You are noble indeed to have such lofty ideals. But it must be done, and it must be done now.’ The sage paused and then added: ‘If not for yourself and your people, then do it for your brother.’

  Rama frowned. ‘My brother?’

  The sage raised his staff and pointed to an object on the ground nearby. ‘See for yourself and weep, brave prince of Ayodhya. There lies your courageous brother, Sumitra-putra Lakshman, reduced to a heap of shattered bones and tattered flesh, a victim of this same Tataka. Look at his remains and tell me now, do you still believe this demoness to be nothing more than a beautiful woman?’

  Rama was across the clearing and by the side of the corpse with a speed that left the watching Kshatriyas blinking in surprise. He bent and tried to collect the heap of gristle and bones that was all that remained of his brother—my brother in arms. It was less than nothing, neither a whole corpse nor a bone-white skeleton. Even as the maha-mantras worked their feverish power and the shakti flooded his brain and body, he still retained the ability to recall something of his other identity, the Rama Chandra he was when not under the influence of Bala and Atibala. That Rama brought to this moment a sackful of memories, images, emotions, sensations, half-remembered phrases and words that had seemed insignificant at the time and were more precious than a prayer now. Years growing together, scraping knees and bruising hearts, mastering arts both martial and mortal, learning to kill and learning to love, the importance of family, the necessity of duty, the meaning of dharma, the cycle of karma. It all flashed through with the white-hot intensity of a bolt of lightning leaving the heart of a thundercloud. A clap of thunder followed, deafening. The wheel of time, that great samay chakra which stopped for no man, deva or asura, revolved another fraction of a fraction of a notch of a turn. He raised the heap of his brother’s remains and cried his anguish to the skies.

  ‘Lakshman!’

  The Bhayanak-van reverberated with his grief.

  Rama rose and walked with the bundle of his brother’s mangled body in his outstretched arms, an anguished devotee bringing a strange offering to a heartless god. He stopped before the sage, bending his knee. He lowered the remains to the ground carefully, as tenderly as a mother laying down her sleeping infant. Then he bent and touched his forehead to the ground. Grit and dry leaves rubbed against his feverish skin, grinding against the bone of his skull like spices in a silbutta. When he raised his face, his forehead was marked with the grey soil of the haunted jungle, like a Shaivite adorned with ash.

  The rage returned with a suddenness that was terrifying as well as thrilling. Pure emotion surged through Rama’s veins, rising like a flash flood to overcome his anxieties, guilt and doubts. His fist clenched, seeking weapons, any weapons. His nostrils flared, sucking in air greedily, and he lowered his head to allow the blood and oxygen to reach his brain unimpeded, like a bull preparing to charge.

  Even the Vajra Kshatriyas took a step back, frightened at the transformation of Rama. Once again he was a being of Brahman, a tributary of the great river of celestial power.

  ‘Mahadev,’ he said, his voice strange and terrible. ‘You are supreme in your knowledge of the divine shastras. Brahma himself gave you vidya of all mantras governing life, death, rebirth and resurrection. No task is too great for your shakti. I implore you, return my brother in arms to the world of the living.’

  Vishwamitra shifted his hand higher on the staff, gripping the knob of wound thread at the top.

  ‘There is a price to be paid for every spell that alters the balance of life and death. The Lord of Death, Yama, keeps precise accounts. The scales must ever be balanced perfectly. There are no exceptions. If you would have me apply to him to restore Rajkumar Lakshman to his former state, you must pay the price for his life with another.’

  Rama’s eyes flashed blue and gold, burning bright even in the light of high noon. ‘I will pay the price with my own life if need be.’

  ‘That will not be enough. The price for resurrection is dear. One mortal soul will not meet Yamaraj’s bill.’

  ‘Then I will offer a dozen souls. A hundred. A thousand! Name the price, Sage, and I will pay it. I will reap a harvest of blood such as was never seen in all the three worlds.’

  ‘Hear me then. Even all the mortal souls in the world are not enough to satisfy Lord Yama. You could cleanse the world of all mortalkind as Parasurama cleansed Prithvi of every last living Kshatriya thrice over, and yet it would not pay the bill for your brother’s soul. There is only one life that the god of death will accept in exchange for your brother’s.’

  ‘Name the unfortunate wretch and he will not live to see the sun set today.’

  ‘Nay. Even sunset would be much too late. Already, Yama is halfway back to Patal on his red-eyed black buffalo, your brother’s soul cached in his leopardskin pouch. If he consigns Lakshman to one of the many levels of Hell, it will be impossible to buy him back at any price. The exchange must be done quickly enough to make Yama retrace his steps at once. Within moments.’

  ‘It will be as you say, seer. Now name the victim who will pay for my brother’s resurrection.’

  Vishwamitra raised a hand. ‘It is no mystery. There she stands behind you. The one responsible for your brother’s death. Kill the Yaksi demoness Tataka, and I will buy back your brother’s life from the Lord of Death. Do it now, for the sun is at its zenith, or let the moment pass and go about collecting sandalwood for his funeral pyre.’

  Rama stared at the seer. Then slowly he bowed his head once more. ‘So be it. Begin the mantra, rishi, I will fulfil my part of the bargain.’

  He rose to his feet, and turned. He strode to the spot where Lakshman had fallen and picked up his brother’s rig. He slung it over his shoulders and fitted an arrow to t
he cord.

  Then he raised the bow and took aim at the giantess looming above the clearing.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Tataka reared up with a cry. ‘Sage! You seers have been my bane for too long. Today I shall destroy you and your mortal accomplices. Your kind can never resist the might and fury of the Lord of Lanka! In the name of Ravana!’

  Tataka raised her foot, preparing to stamp down on the seermage. Vishwamitra stood his ground impassively, reciting his mantras without heed for the Yaksi.

  Rama loosed his arrow.

  The thin wooden bolt shot up into the sky, and for an instant it was lost to sight, obscured against the blazing noonday sun. Then the giantess cried out with rage and slapped at herself, as if at a mosquito.

  Bejoo saw the tiniest of pinpricks appear on the giantess’s fair skin, high up on her left breast, a faint red dot. She pinched the arrow with her thumb and forefinger and pulled it free. Against her gargantuan bulk, the bolt was a barely visible sliver, like a needle in a grown man’s hand. Tataka tossed it aside.

  ‘Foolish mortal. Do you really believe you can harm me with your weapons? I am Tataka! I have the strength of a thousand elephants. It is not for nothing that I am known as gaja-gamini, the elephant-footed!’

  ‘An elephant can be killed too, as can a thousand,’ Rama replied, notching another arrow. ‘But you can try fleeing with the speed of a thousand gaja if you like. It will not save you, demoness.’

  Something came over her face then, an awareness that the puny human standing before her was no longer the scrupulous dharma-driven prince of Ayodhya who feared committing the mortal sin of stree-hatya, woman-murder. This was a different being altogether, and there would be no arguing with him.

  ‘So be it,’ she said, and raised her hands as Rama lifted his bow again. She spread her arms as wide as she could—wide enough to encompass most of Ayodhya, Bejoo thought—and brought her palms together with all her force. The effect was like the most powerful thunderclap he had ever heard. The wind from the impact blasted him and his men off their feet, throwing some up into the air to slam against trees and elephants. The horses shuddered and fell over. The bigfoot shuffled sideways, struggling to keep their footing.

  At the exact same instant, Rama loosed his second arrow. This one flew straight to the palm of her left hand, piercing the mound of Shukra below the thumb. Tataka hardly seemed to feel it; she was already bending down in preparation for her next move. But suddenly she exclaimed, her voice loud and crashing, no longer modulated gently for their benefit. She raised her left hand and examined it closely. She pinched out the arrow and stared at it for a moment before tossing it aside. Then she rubbed the spot where it had struck, dismissed the prick and turned back to the clearing.

  Rama loosed a third arrow. This one struck her right forearm, Bejoo saw, just above the wrist.

  This time the giantess ignored it, wincing as it pierced her but continuing to reach down into the clearing. She picked up an elephant in one hand, clutched between two fingers like a squirming grub, and raised it to her mouth.

  With a single nip, she bit it in half, letting the front half fall to the ground in a mass of bloodied flesh. The back half she aimed and threw at another bigfoot. It screamed as its dead brother fell on its flank with force enough to crush its hip, going down in a heap, bleating helplessly. The lead bigfoot reared up into the air, his eyes white, trumpeting with fury. This is one battle you can’t win, old friend, Bejoo thought sadly. Even a thousand elephants couldn’t face her and live. Still he gripped his sword tightly, ready to go down fighting.

  The Yaksi raised her foot, causing a riot in the clearing. The horses were reeling and turning, suddenly terrified. They scent the Yaksi’s hostility now. And he smelt it too, a low, sour odour that was as distinct as the earlier fragrant aroma had been. This was the Yaksi’s true body odour, not the sweet scent she had deceived them with earlier.

  Tataka brought her right foot down upon three of the Vajra riders with a wordless cry of rage, just as Rama shot his fourth arrow at the same leg. She hardly seemed to notice this one. But Bejoo observed with a start that something strange was starting to happen at the spot where Rama’s first arrow had struck.

  On the Yaksi’s left breast, where there had been the tiniest of pinpricks and a droplet of blood so minute it was barely visible, there was now a dark red patch the size of the Yaksi’s thumb. A tiny plume of smoke rose from the patch, and as Bejoo watched, the skin itself seemed to pucker and peel away from the centre of the wound.

  What wound? A thistle-poke would cause more harm.

  Yet even as Bejoo watched, raising his free hand to shield his eyes from the overhead sun, he saw the dark patch growing, expanding outward. His first impression of smoke was no sun-haze illusion; the wound was starting to catch fire and burn!

  The Yaksi frowned, distracted from her stomping and smashing of the Vajra Kshatriyas and their beasts. She bent her head and attempted to look at her left breast. She peered at the wound, now the size of her palm and growing with astonishing rapidity, smoke curling up from its puckering edges like a scroll of paper set afire by a piece of glass and sunlight.

  She touched the wound tentatively with her fingertips and cried out as the fire singed her fingers as well. Then a curl of smoke emerged from her left hand and she spread the palm, staring at the spot where Rama’s second arrow had struck. It was growing too, burning blackly.

  Bejoo suddenly began to comprehend what was happening and turned his head to look at the Yaksi’s right forearm where the next arrow had struck, then the left foot and finally the right foot where Rama had just shot his fifth arrow. Each wound was behaving in exactly the same way.

  It’s as if the arrows were pitch-missiles fired into a thatched roof, burning up the skin and flesh like straw. How could such a thing happen?

  He turned to look at Rama again, and saw the answer at once.

  The prince was preparing to fire a sixth arrow, and this time Bejoo watched him closely enough to see everything he did. Just before stringing the arrow, Rama poked it lightly into his own abdomen. Lightly, but hard enough to break the skin and draw blood.

  Bejoo’s eyes widened as he saw the tiny pinprick of fresh blood welling up on the rajkumar’s flat abdomen. Then he saw that there were identical drops of fresh blood on the prince’s arms and legs and chest.

  He dipped every arrow into his own blood before loosing it. Bejoo had no idea how that could cause the arrows to act on the Yaksi the way they did, but he suspected it had something to do with the maha-mantras he had heard spoken of earlier. Somehow the rajkumar’s own blood was filled with the power of Brahman, and by smearing his blood on to each arrow-tip, he was using not just arrows but the very force of the celestial power against the Yaksi.

  Tataka’s scream diverted his attention back to her.

  Bejoo looked up and saw the giantess’s five wounds burning freely now, the fires tinged with edges of unmistakable Brahman blue, literally eating up the Yaksi’s flesh. The one in her chest was a roaring flame now, and Bejoo saw that her chest itself was exposed, the heart and ribcage clearly visible. As she raised her burning left hand in terror and pain, he saw the fire eat right through the palm, exposing sky and a glimpse of the sun on the other side. It was an incredible sight.

  Rama’s blood, rich with the Brahman shakti of Bala and Atibala, is eating the Yaksi alive. And the sun god Surya, progenitor of Rama’s dynasty, is at the peak of his power, giving the rajkumar the combined strength of mortal and immortal shakti.

  Rama loosed his sixth arrow, this time piercing the Yaksi’s belly. She screamed, understanding at last what the puny human was doing to her. She pinched out the arrow at once, but already the pinprick was on fire, spreading as rapidly as water seeping across a sloping floor. And then Rama took a seventh and last arrow and pricked his own forehead with it.

  ‘Now die, Tataka,’ he said. And shot the giantess between the eyes.

  Bejoo sent up a prayer to every
deva he could think of. With a scream that pierced his eardrums, the Yaksi cried out. Then, with a sound like a waterfall striking a rock, she went up in flames, ringed blue at the edges. She fell to her knees, the impact shaking the earth hard enough to rattle every bone in his body and every tooth in his head.

  For one heart-stopping instant, Bejoo was sure she would fall forward, crushing them all.

  But she groaned, her face a blazing candle oozing molten flesh and running blood, and fell sideways, crashing to the ground in an enormous cloud of dust.

  After a moment, the forest began to burn around her, a fitting funeral pyre.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Lakshman opened his eyes, blinking as he found himself looking up at a bright afternoon sky.