PRINCE OF DHARMA

by AKB eBOOKS Ashok K. Banker

  Sumitra was struck by a sudden premonition. She wanted to cry out for help to Bharat and Shatrugan, run to Kausalya, Guru Vashishta, Prime Minister Sumantra, the guards, the servants, anybody. She didn’t want to be alone in this bedchamber with Kaikeyi, but she didn’t want to leave Dasaratha alone with her either.

  Mustering all her courage, she demanded fiercely of Kaikeyi: ‘What have you done to our husband? Get off him! Can’t you see he’s still recovering? This is no way to behave with a sick man!’

  The Second Queen opened her mouth and her tongue emerged from between jagged splinter-sharp fangs. The forked purplish-black tongue flashed out half a foot in the air and vibrated, flicking spittle. The sound was exactly like a cobra hissing.

  Sumitra gasped and took another step back. The table keeled over, the earthen mug of punch smashing noisily on the stone floor. Sticky liquid lapped at her bare feet.

  Kaikeyi’s serpentine eyes glowed with a deep reptilian lust that was as sexual as it was predatory. She spoke again sibilantly.

  ‘It was good of you to do your wifely duty and take care of my Dasa for me. But now he’s in my hands again. You should run along and join your sister-queen Kausalya. You might want to buy a few dozen white saris apiece, the both of you. For all you know, you might be in mourning a lot sooner than you realise.’

  Kaikeyi turned her head to look at Dasaratha. Then she reached down and picked him up as easily as a mother raising her child to her breast. Through her frozen shock, Sumitra glimpsed Dasaratha’s face emerge from the curtain of raven-black tresses. His eyes were glazed and empty, like those of a rabbit mesmerised by a snake. He wasn’t aware of anything that was being said or done. Kaikeyi cradled the maharaja’s face between her blouse-encased breasts, her taloned hands stroking him possessively.

  ‘As for the good king here, I think all he needs to complete his recovery is the attention of a woman who knows how to satisfy his appetites. Fruit punch? I don’t think so, my dear. It’s Kaikeyi flesh he needs now. I have his cure right here and ready.’

  And she opened her jaws, revealing two enormous serpentine fangs, each as long as a short dagger. The fangs were ivory white, and glistened in the sunlight streaming in from the windows. As Sumitra watched in horror and disbelief, a viscous white fluid rolled slowly down one fang, formed a drop at the very tip, and then dropped off. It landed on Dasaratha’s crisp white cotton kurta, which Kausalya and Sumitra had helped him don just this morning. The spot where the venom fell turned yellowish at once, sullying the purity of the white cloth.

  With one final heart-chilling hiss, Kaikeyi raised her head and fell on Dasaratha with the fury of a predator in heat. Her mouth closed over Dasaratha’s neck.

  Like a lamp blown out abruptly in a gust of wind, Sumitra’s entire field of vision blinked out, and mercifully for her she saw no more.

  TWELVE

  Manthara allowed herself a tiny flicker of amusement as she sat before her chaukat, enjoying the havoc she had wrought. The image of Sumitra fainting on to the floor of the maharaja’s sick-chamber wavered then blurred to obscurity.

  Everything had gone just as she had planned.

  Rani Sumitra would awaken in moments to find herself and Dasaratha alone once more in the bedchamber. The maharaja would seem to be unconscious, then found to be comatose. A half-consumed mug of the same fruit punch that lay spilled on the floor - it would be taken from the residue in the pot in the rear room - would be lying by the maharaja’s outstretched hand. Drops of the concoction would be on his lips and chin, and staining his kurta.

  On closer examination, the punch would be found to be faintly malodorous, redolent of an intoxicating herb sometimes favoured by tantriks to bring long deep sleep followed by startlingly vivid hallucinations. The finely shredded herb closely resembled the expensive spice kesar which was loved by the maharaja but was forbidden by the vaids in his present condition. Everyone would assume that docile, malleable Sumitra had given in to Dasaratha’s coaxing but mistakenly added the drug instead.

  Sumitra’s head would be cloudy and confused. She would babble incoherently about bizarre images of Kaikeyi visiting the room and turning into a giant serpent. On further investigation, it would be found that Kaikeyi had not left her private chambers for the past eight days. The guards at the entrance to the maharaja’s chambers as well as the guards outside Kaikeyi’s own chambers would confirm this.

  None of them would even think of mentioning the serving girl, one of several who constantly ran to and fro on various errands, who had entered the maharaja’s sickroom around the time of the incident. Sumitra would be adamant that she had seen Kaikeyi and nobody but Kaikeyi.

  The blame for accidentally sending the maharaja’s delicate physiology into a toxic coma would fall wholly on Sumitra’s slender shoulders. Meanwhile, the maharaja would sleep on in his drug-induced coma for days.

  Manthara nodded, satisfied that she had achieved her goal without any risk of detection. She gestured with her trident. The fire died out instantly. She rose slowly to her feet, her hunchback compelling her to lean on the trident for support. She shuffled out of the secret chamber, con-cealing the entrance to the unholy prayer room with a rare mantra taught to her by her mentor.

  She took a moment to check on Kaikeyi, once her ward and now nominally her mistress although Manthara’s true master was none but Ravana himself.

  The Second Queen lay sprawled bonelessly on her bed, looking much as Sumitra had seen her a moment earlier. With one major difference. The Second Queen’s eyes were glazed and unfocused, her gaze turned inwards. That was the result of the drug that Manthara had kept her on these past days. Kaikeyi wasn’t even aware of her addiction or drugged state. She thought she was simply fasting and praying for Dasaratha’s recovery. When the time was right, Manthara would administer a dose of a harsh antidote that would cleanse Kaikeyi’s system of all traces of the drug, and the Second Queen would regain her senses, attributing her fuzzy memory of the past eight days to the unfamiliar rigours of extreme fasting.

  Manthara left the Second Queen tossing and turning, lost in her hallucinatory world, and returned to her own chambers to find her personal serving girl waiting breathlessly. The effect of the mantra had worn off, leaving the girl with her own form and appearance once more, albeit dressed still in Rani Kaikeyi’s garments and jewels. The girl’s face was flushed and her well-filled blouse heaved as she tried to contain her excitement.

  ‘I did it, mistress! Everything went just as you said. The maharaja and the Third Queen never recognised me. They believed I was Rani Kaikeyi!’

  Manthara spoke coldly. ‘Did you do what I ordered? To the maharaja?’

  The serving girl nodded. A blush crept across her pale complexion as she recalled her illicit encounter with her king. ‘I … kissed him.’ She covered her mouth with her hand, as if ashamed of what she had done.

  Manthara wasn’t interested in the girl’s embarrassment. All she was concerned with was whether the drug had been administered to Dasaratha. She had applied a specially prepared lip paint to the girl’s mouth herself before uttering the mantra that would cause Dasaratha to mistake her for Second Queen Kaikeyi and Sumitra to see her as Kaikeyi as well as a giant serpentine version of the Second Queen. All the girl had actually done was kiss the maharaja, passing on the drug. The toxic venom would do the rest, putting him into a deep coma that would resemble the effect of the forbidden herb. The girl herself had already been given an antidote that made her immune to the drug.

  The girl babbled on about how thrilling her adventure had been and how scared she had been when the Third Queen had come into the room and challenged her. But she had retained her presence of mind and spoken the very words Manthara had made her memorise earlier. She boasted that even performers of the royal Sanskrit Manch could hardly have done better.

  Manthara cut her off curtly, paid her handsomely for her chore, made her strip off the rani’s clothes and don her own cheap garment, then dismissed her, givin
g her the rest of the day off. She watched the slender slip of a girl race out excitedly, undoubtedly heading straight for the city bazaar to spend her ill-won reward on some frivolous new vastra that was currently in fashion. Before the day was through, she would probably end up in a tavern room with some muscled lout who would use her, then decamp with most of her rupees; the girl had deplorable judgement in men. Manthara had already forgotten the serving girl by the time she left the chamber. She wasn’t worried about the wench telling anyone else about these illicit chores she performed for Manthara-daiimaa. A special mantra ensured that if she even tried, she would choke to death on her own tongue.

  Manthara mused on the next stage of her strategy. There was much work yet to be done. She had no time to gloat on the successful completion of this morning’s mission.

  The day of her master’s arrival was at hand. She had already received word of the twice-lifer he was sending with his false message. The imposter would arrive at any moment, setting another sequence of shrewdly planned events into motion. She marvelled at her lord’s brilliant strategems.

  Her role in the whole scheme was a small but critical one. It would take great daring to pull it off. She might even run the risk of being exposed at last. And she knew the consequences of that. Ever since the incident with Kala-Nemi and the encounter in the city dungeons, Guru Vashishta was alert as an owl. It would take only one small slip for him to catch her. And once caught, she would be shown no mercy, either by the mortals she had betrayed so treacherously or by the king of asuras, who despised failure.

  She gathered her resolve, her wizened face crinkling like a crushed parchment. She vowed to herself that she would not fail this time. The Lord of Lanka would find no fault with her efforts on his behalf. She would prove to him once and for all that a single mortal spy in the heart of Ayodhya could accomplish far more than an entire legion of marauding demons. She would wreak havoc in the next few days like a canker in the heart of the mightiest Arya kingdom in existence. And then finally, her lord would grant her the reward he had promised her so long ago.

  She rubbed her twisted hands together, her arthritic nerves screaming in pain. She grimaced, displaying yellowed and blackened teeth. Soon, she promised herself. Soon she would be rid of this wretched cage of flesh and bone.

  ‘Ayodhya the Unconquerable?’ she snarled to herself. Soon enough that would change. It would become instead Ayodhya Destroyed.

  THIRTEEN

  Brahmarishi Vishwamitra was in a fine mood this morning. Outwardly, he was the image of stoic concentration, seemingly intent only on maintaining the stiff pace he had set the procession. As his powerful long strides covered the dirt track, even the Brahmins in their carts had to click tongues and coax lazy bullocks and oxen to keep up with the brahmarishi’s rapid progress.

  Ahead, the Vajra elephants also had to keep up the pace to avoid being overtaken by the seer-mage and his entourage. The mahouts urged their bigfoot on with words of praise and shouts of encouragement. The bigfoot, happy to be mobile after eight days of inactivity, complied enthusiastically, putting their enormous wrinkled heads down and traipsing as smartly as horses on a marching field. Only occasionally did one of them emit a brief bleating call and was allowed by his mahout to swerve off-track for a moment, where he relieved himself quickly and copiously before hurrying to regain his place in the rank.

  As the sun god Surya climbed the eastern sky in his burnished chariot of gold, the procession wound its way northwards, making excellent time. The brahmarishi had warned them all that he intended to reach Mithila by the next evening, covering the three-day journey in two days.

  But it was only after a few hours of the rapid pace that everyone realised just how much effort that entailed. They would not stop for the noon meal, instead taking minimal nourishment while on the move, nor would the Brahmins be able to take their habitual two hours of afternoon aaram. There would be no napping or resting on this trip.

  Still, such was the general air of excitement and anticipation that not a single member of the entourage voiced a word of complaint or protest. Even the young acolytes, some barely seven years of age and not yet sprouting all their permanent teeth, marched along cheerfully, chanting rhymes they had learned at the gurukul, reciting the Sanskrit and Prakrit alphabets, then the ten Vedic numerals, ending with the venerated and mystical Shunya, or zero - that masterful invention of the Vedic mathematician Aryabhatta, who had devised the decimal system of counting now followed universally throughout the Arya nations. The younger ones counted on their fingers as they recited, sticking their thumbs up into the air triumphantly when they yelled out the final ‘Shunya!’

  Their gurus smiled proudly at the lisping eagerness of the little shishyas, while chatting quietly about the seminars and debates they would participate in at the annual philosophical convocation in Mithila. A general mood of cheerful anticipation filled the travellers with all the energy they needed to maintain the seer’s yojana-an-hour pace without a grimace of complaint.

  But the brahmarishi paid little heed to these things. His mind was preoccupied with other matters. Foremost on his mind was the outcome of the mission he had begun that fateful Holi day when he had entered the city of Ayodhya and demanded Rajkumar Rama as his guru-dakshina. The consequences of that event were yet to be fully realised, and even his supremely transcendent buddhi was not complacent enough to take those consequences for granted. He briefly weighed what had been accomplished in these past nine days. It was not inconsiderable.

  The demoness Tataka, a plague on the mortal realm of Prithvi for millennia, had been destroyed at last, and with her had vanished the canker that had been breeding in the Southwoods. All her monstrous miscreations, those wretched genetically engineered hybrids, were destroyed as well. The Bhayanak-van, that section of the Southwoods that had come to be known as the Forest of Fear, had been cleansed by the purifying breath of Agni, the lord of fire.

  Even now, the wind occasionally brought the scent of scorched woods and a few flakes of crumbly grey ash. The Southwood fires had ceased burning only yesterday, coinciding with the end of Vishwamitra’s seven-day yagna, another auspicious omen. In a few seasons, the scorched earth of the Forest of Fear would be ready once more to bring forth new life. When the time was right, he would set his brahmacharyas to planting good fresh stock: oaks, pines, ashwood, banyan, peepal, acacia, neem, palas, teak. And plenty of fruit and flower groves. A new forest would rise in the place of that long-dreaded maze of terror, a forest of hope and new beginnings. The cleansing of Bhayanak-van had been accomplished in the week of Holi, the festival of spring and fertility. The seeding of Ashavan, the Forest of Hope, would be done in Holi too, a full year hence. A generation from today, children would play fearlessly in the groves, travellers rove freely through the woods, and sadhus and rishis would build ashrams and gurukuls in the Asha-van.

  Even before that, the very absence of the Bhayanak-van would open up a whole new world of possibilities for the Arya nations.

  For millennia the Bhayanak-van had impeded the southward progress of the early Arya clans, until its mythic stature had thwarted even the now-mighty Arya nations. Now, that dark wall had been kicked down and ground into ash. Henceforth, the route down the subcontinent would be unbarred. The Aryas would be free to journey to the rich fertile plains of the Deccan, explore the lush vales and pleasing hill ranges of the south, and travel all the way to the tapering point of land where the two great oceans met.

  Vishwamitra’s craggy face darkened momentarily as he thought of that southernmost tip of the subcontinent. It was off that wild and wanton shore where the oceans clashed angrily that the island of Lanka was situated. The very thought of Lanka set his teeth on edge.

  That little island-nation represented a threat far greater than a hundred Bhayanak-vans. Its lord and master, Ravana, king of the asura races, was a thousandfold as dangerous as Tataka. And yet, until Lanka was cleared of its demon hordes, the subcontinent might as well be one enormous Bha
yanak-van. A wall had been breached, but the fortress remained, as unassailable and formidable as ever. If Ayodhya was unconquerable - literally, a-yodha, or the city that was beyond war - then Lanka was its twin in that respect. Even the devas had not dared to invade Lanka.

  Ravana himself had won that fabled island-fortress through treachery and deceit, by attacking his own brother Kubera, lord of wealth, in his peaceful Himalayan retreat, overrunning Kubera’s pacifist yaksi city with brutal violence, and had spared the demi-god’s life only on pain of ransom. The ransom being dominion of Lanka as well as numerous other precious possessions of Kubera - the airship Pushpak, Kubera’s harem of ten thousand wives, and much else. A direct assault on Lanka was beyond the contemplation of any mortal army. And yet, as long as Lanka remained in the grasp of the demon lord, the Arya nations could not hope to explore and settle the subcontinent safely. It was a dilemma that had vexed Vishwamitra for a long time and still he could find no solution.

  Just then a cloud passed across the sun, darkening the day. Vishwamitra sensed the rajkumars glancing up, shielding their eyes against the brightness of the sky. Conversation petered out momentarily in the procession as the brahmacharyas and rishis looked up too, some wondering aloud if there was a possibility of rain. Then the cloud passed by, the warm, nourishing rays of Surya shone down again, and all was as before.

  Lanka was like that cloud, Vishwamitra thought. Lurking off the southernmost tip of the Asian continent like a brooding monsoon cloud in an otherwise clear sky, capable at any moment of occluding the life-giving sun, casting a dark pall across the entire earth. Ravana had dared to invade Swarga-lok a millennium and a half ago, and the devas still hung their heads in bitter shame at the demon lord’s triumph at that encounter. When even the gods feared to confront him, how could mere mortals hope to defeat him?