King of Lanka

by David Hair

  ‘Submit? What do you mean?’ Her voice became ragged.

  ‘If you agree to a betrothal, and accept my ring as a proxy to the heartstone, Padma’s ghost will not harm you, instead it will submit, and join with you amicably, making you whole, removing all of your health issues forever.’

  ‘Never! I will never marry you!’

  He raised a hand. ‘I did not say, “marry”! I said “betrothed”. Engaged. As my fiancée, provided you agree sincerely—it will know, Rasita—you will attain the appearance in its eyes of subservience to me, and it will come to you in peace. If you refuse, or are insincere, it will know, and it will destroy you.’

  She stared. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me.’

  He shrugged. ‘I do not blame your mistrust, Rasita. But I am not lying.’

  ‘Go! I refuse! Let it kill me, I don’t care.’

  He was beside her suddenly in a frightening blur of movement. ‘Rasita! You do care!’ He gestured to the window. ‘You have a perfectly serviceable window here from which to plummet to your death, but never once have you tried. You do not desire death. You only do not believe my explanation of the ghost. You will. As it comes closer, and your dreams worsen, you will understand.’

  Ras stared up at him, trembling. ‘Get away from me! Or I will jump!’

  ‘Don’t make claims you don’t mean, Rasita. It only makes you seem foolish.’

  ‘If I’ve not jumped it is because I KNOW that Vikram and Amanjit are coming to save me!’

  ‘Of course.’ He bowed mockingly. ‘Consider what I said, Rasita. Padma’s spectre is hunting. It won’t take her long to find you.’

  She struggled for a caustic response, but by the time it was formed, he had already left.

  Several days later—she wasn’t sure how many—she received an even more unwelcome guest. It was night-time, and she was alone at a window. Kaineskeya had been dismissed and Rasita was slightly drunk on the wine the maid had left her. The first realization that she wasn’t alone was the chill air that crept into the room. She half-turned and froze. Halika, Ravindra’s chief wife and accomplice down the centuries, was leaning against a pillar, staring down at her with gloating eyes. Tall, curvaceous and sultry, Halika had the cold arrogance of a queen and the sensual pout of a street-girl.

  ‘Get out!’ Ras snapped at once.

  Halika just snickered, picked up Ras’ wine glass and drained it.

  The implication of the act took a few seconds to register. Halika watched her face change as she realized that the ghost-queen had touched an inanimate object, and consumed a fluid.

  Is she still just a ghost?

  ‘Keke,’ she called out, trying to keep the fear from her voice.

  ‘I sent your maid away.’ Halika poured herself more wine from the decanter, and swirled it thoughtfully, savouring the smell. ‘Ahhh … you have no idea how good it feels to finally be able to drink more than just blood.’ She pulled a face. ‘It is so very nourishing, but some variety is nice.’

  Ras felt herself shudder. ‘Wh-what do you want?’

  ‘Why, to see you, my sister.’ Halika half-turned. ‘Come on in, you two,’ she called, and out of the shadows two more of the ghostly queens emerged. They too seemed more solid, though not so tangible as Halika. All three exuded a palpable cold that made Rasita’s skin prickle.

  The taller of the two lesser queens had a lean hungry look to her, with grey hair that fanned about her face weirdly, as if moved by unseen winds. Jyoti, Rasita remembered somehow. Spaced-out, spooky Jyoti, who in Mandore had been so addicted to the opiates they gave her that she barely spoke. Beside her, shorter and plumper, was little Aruna, an earthy lump that had been, after Halika, Ravindra’s most enthusiastic consort. Both the lesser queens stared at Ras as if she were a form of food.

  ‘G-go away!’ Rasita tried to sound calm but her voice almost gave out.

  Halika ignored her. ‘Of course, your Vikram, the Aramreborn, killed the other two in Mumbai by destroying their heartstones. Pretty little Rakhi and silly Meena are dead, their memories and souls gone into Darya. But Darya is dead now too, the little bitch. Her ghost is out there somewhere. The Master has summoned it, and someday soon she will come creeping over the walls with blood on her lips.’

  The thought of Deepika so transformed sucked the strength from Rasita’s limbs. ‘Please, leave me alone,’ she whispered.

  ‘When she comes, then all we need to complete the ritual is your heartstone.’

  ‘Vikram will destroy it,’ she asserted.

  ‘Impossible,’ Halika asserted. ‘And even if he could, it would kill you. He knows that.’

  ‘Better dead than here,’ she countered weakly.

  ‘Really? It’s not so bad, my dear. And all you need to do is give our lord what he wants. Give him your body and your heart and he will heal all your pain. He will elevate us all. We will reign here together forever.’

  ‘I will never do that!’

  ‘Foolish girl! What have you to look forward to in the other world but pain and aging and death? Here, you can have bliss eternal. Forget your foolish Aram and stay here with us.’

  ‘Never!’

  Halika sighed as if Ras were a recalcitrant schoolgirl. ‘Sister, you will learn.’ She crossed the distance between them in an eye-blink, making Ras flinch and almost stumble. Halika caught her in icy hands. ‘You are just a silly little virgin who doesn’t know what she is rejecting. But we have eternity to show you.’ Her icy carrion-breath washed over Rasita’s face. ‘Have you ever even been kissed, little virgin?’ She bent Ras over backwards without effort, and Ras thought for a second that the ghost-queen was going to kiss her … or bite her … or simply cast her from the window …

  ‘Get away from me!’ she whimpered. ‘Go away!’

  Halika’s icy hand slid the strap of Ras’ dress from her shoulder, chuckling lewdly. ‘Haven’t you grown!’ she purred, tittering. Jyoti and Aruna hovered closer, licking their lips.

  ‘Ravindra!’ Ras shouted desperately.

  Halika flinched. The other queens cringed and pulled back.

  In mere seconds, Ravindra stepped into the room. ‘I was already on my way. Keke told me you had visitors.’ He glared at Halika. ‘You were commanded to stay away from here, wife!’

  Halika tipped her head defiantly, but she removed her hands from Ras, who fell to the floor. ‘I am a queen. I may go anywhere!’

  ‘And I am your king! Get out! All of you.’

  The dead queens hissed but backed into the darkness and were gone.

  Rasita huddled beside the window, sucking in tremulous breath. Halika’s frigid hand had left a pink hand-shape on her bared shoulder that was slowly fading. She pulled up the dress strap, turning away furiously, ashamed to have been reduced to calling on Ravindra for protection, but terrified of what Halika might have done if she had not. ‘Go away.’

  There was no reply. He was already gone.

  Readiness

  Pushkar, Rajasthan, April 2011

  Every night they asked each other; ‘Are you ready?’

  When they could honestly answer ‘Yes’, they packed for the journey.

  For Vikram, April was like intense revision—little was new, but he drilled with sword and bow with single-minded determination. He refused to believe that Rasita would ever succumb, and therefore he told himself that they had exactly as much time as they needed to gird themselves for war. But not too long …

  He made breakthroughs of his own, too. One morning, he stood in a field, firing shaft after shaft at a battered target one hundred paces away. He never missed. But he suddenly realized that he was firing astra after astra with greater stamina than ever before. When he realized, he blinked, wiped the sweat from his eyes, and looked about him. The grass at his feet was dead. Lifeless bugs were scattered about. A dead sparrow was lying not far away, and the air was unnaturally cold. He shivered. He had sucked the energy from them to fuel his weapons. He felt briefly nauseated. Then he thoug
ht of Ravindra, pictured his heart as the target, and carried on.

  Some days he worked with Amanjit, but more often he was alone, and Vishwamitra worked with the Sikh youth. Amanjit was packing muscle on muscle, and his sword-work was sight-defying. He was learning how to use manipulations of magical energy too—he could leap as if he were a wire-suspended samurai from a martial arts movie, by pushing and prodding against the forces of gravity and momentum. He could perform most of the basic astras—the ones that were unsubtle and destructive, anyway. He mastered the skills of shooting by sound alone that he had not been able to do since his life as Prithviraj Chauhan. He learnt voraciously, more focused than Vikram had ever seen, in any life. But in the evening, when training ended, Amanjit was able to put everything aside and relax. But then, he had Deepika to help him forget.

  It was the Delhi girl that Vishwamitra spent most time with. ‘She’s much prettier than you two boys,’ the old sage joked. But they all knew the real reasons. She had to master her powers or she would be at Ravindra’s mercy. They now knew that in some of her past lives, Deepika had channelled a fierce and brutal energy that fed on blind rage. It manifested itself like a certain feared avatar of the Great Goddess: the destructive fury that was known as Kali. In Hindu myth, Durga the Queen of the Gods had fought a war against the demons, but they were too many for her. In desperation she had drawn deeper into herself and literally gone berserk, becoming Kali, a persona of pure destruction. In her Kali avatar she had slain the demons, but she had left her rational self so far behind that she had become a danger to the whole universe. Only Shiva, her husband, was able to calm her, by lying prone at her feet, his helpless submission bringing the goddess back to sanity.

  Somehow, Deepika was able draw on that same furious energy. But even in that state, she had not been able to prevent Rasita from being taken by Ravindra. If she had not fallen down a well-shaft that then buried her under the earth, she would have been captured or killed. Ravindra had her heartstone. If she did not learn to control her powers and conceal her existence, then Ravindra would be able to use the heartstone to capture her.

  So Deepika was Vishwamitra’s main focus, in secret lessons that even the boys were not witness to. At times, glimpses of what she had learned showed: she displayed the same lightning reflexes that Amanjit had learnt to cultivate and occasional flashes of strength that stunned them. She could turn nigh invisible, play with fire as if it were a juggler’s ball, or shape stone as if it were butter.

  But she too was able to put all the lessons behind her at day’s end and relax happily into her husband’s arms. Her husband … the word was like a magic spell, she told Vikram one night.

  It was hard for Vikram to watch their happiness. He felt very lonely some nights. All he could do was hold the Padma heartstone, send his love and longing through it, and hope.

  The challenge lay not in lighting the fire. It was putting the fire out she found impossible.

  Deepika Choudhary shaped her hand, struggling to caress the tongue of flame on the candle gently, when all she really wanted to do was RIP RAVINDRA LIMB FROM LIMB FOR WHAT HE—

  The candle exploded, scorching the wall behind it. Vishwamitra tutted impatiently.

  She bit her lip. ‘Sorry, Guruji,’ she muttered. ‘I just …’

  The old sage nodded understandingly. ‘I know, this is difficult for us both. You have a power that you can only draw on when you are angry, but to control it you need to be calm. As soon as you try to calm yourself, you lose hold of the power. If you retain your rage, you lose control. A dilemma.’

  She hung her head.

  ‘Then we are approaching this the wrong way.’ He tapped her on the knee. ‘You must access your powers without resorting to anger.’

  If only. ‘But I can’t,’ she told him.

  ‘Of course you can, my dear. Remember, Deepika, there are many paths to power. Let yours be the desire to protect, not to harm, and you will be stronger.’ He tapped his heart. ‘I feel it, inside me. Anger and Destruction is how you have manifested your power until now, but you are more than this.’

  ‘But all I do is destroy things,’ she replied despondently. ‘It’s the only thing I’m good at.’

  His eyes were kindly, but firm. ‘There is much more, my dear. Think of the times you have manifested power. Yes, there was anger, but it was anger roused in protecting you and yours. You have a strong spirit, a protective spirit. We just have to bring this out in you.’

  His instructions changed after that. He made her protect herself. He would light a taper and make her try to extinguish it with a thought, before it burnt her fingers. More often she made it explode, and scorched herself. Her hand became a pink and blistered bundle of pain, and the guru refused to treat it, forbidding the boys from helping her, even to alleviate the burning. Some night she couldn’t sleep, lying beside Amanjit as he snored contentedly.

  Some days she wanted to thrash the old man for his cruel lessons.

  But pain is also a teacher. After a week of failure, she managed to stop the flame. Not by dousing it, but by forcing it away, back to the already consumed part of the taper, so that it burnt itself out. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a beginning, and after that, other breakthroughs came daily. She learnt all manner of things, tiny skills and subtle tricks, until the world about her felt like an extension of her fingertips. She learnt ways to fool people into thinking she wasn’t there, or to manipulate the elements. Initially her efforts were crude and basic, but they became more sophisticated as she learnt.

  It took weeks and weeks, but she finally felt ready to play her part. She had forgiven the old man for being such a cruel teacher by then, too. But only after she had learnt how to heal her own hand.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Vikram asked.

  Amanjit nodded briskly. ‘Too damn right.’

  ‘Me too,’ Deepika said in a low, determined voice. ‘It’s been too long. We need to get back out there and sort this mess out.’

  Amanjit stroked her shoulder. ‘The only thing I don’t like is this damned splitting up. That’s what got us into trouble the last time.’

  Deepika acknowledged the comment with a nod and a sigh. ‘But we know it’s the right thing, this time.’

  Vikram nodded emphatically, trying to sound more positive than he really was. ‘Not only are we covering the bases in terms of the Ramayana by splitting up, but it makes sense logically. Not to mention the fact that I won’t have to put up with you two canoodling all the time,’ he added with a grin.

  Amanjit groaned. ‘That’s the worst part of the plan. I’m a newly-wed, man! I have needs!’

  ‘So do I,’ Deepika grumped. ‘But hopefully it won’t be for long. According to the Ramayana, Rama and Lakshmana go off to Lanka and rescue Sita. As I’m not in the story, I’m a free agent, but if I go too close to the action, Ravindra will realize I’m around and zap me through the heartstone. So I have to stay away from him.’ She frowned. ‘But this leaves me perfectly placed to deal with the court cases and the police files situation, as I can now slink around unseen, and I have some inkling of the law, unlike you meat-heads!’

  ‘Huh!’ Vikram grunted. ‘I know plenty about the law. I’ve even written laws in my day.’

  ‘Not in this lifetime, kid. Whereas I was right alongside that bitch Meenakshi when she was pretending to be our lawyer, and did most of the donkey work in pulling our case together. I’ll sneak around, and make sure things work out.’

  ‘It could be dangerous,’ Vikram reminded her. ‘Ravindra will still have his people watching things, trying to get a lead on what we’re doing.’

  ‘I can handle it,’ Deepika maintained. ‘If anyone less than Ravindra himself comes snooping round, they better watch out. Especially Meenakshi.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Amanjit nagged. ‘And you’ll join us as soon as you can, right?’

  ‘Of course I will.’ She leant in and nibbled at his ear. ‘I can’t keep myself away from you too long, honey-bunny.’
<
br />   ‘Honey-bunny?’ Vikram smirked.

  Amanjit went red, but Deepika just laughed and stroked her husband’s cheek.

  ‘Will it really be that simple, Master?’ Vikram asked the old sage, as they watched the moon ride across the skies. ‘Just go to Sri Lanka, find their fortress, kill Ravindra, and rescue Ras … it sounds too clean.’

  ‘It will have its complications, I am sure. There will be unexpected setbacks and hard choices before the end, no doubt.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Sri Lanka, Guruji?’

  The old man shook his dreadlocked head. ‘Never. I have only ever dwelt in north India. I have never been so far.’

  ‘But that is where Lanka is, right?’

  ‘We assume so.’

  Vikram rubbed his chin. ‘In all my other lives, Ravindra has killed us when he could. But in this life, which is the closest we have come to duplicating the Ramayana, he seems to be going out of his way to join all the dots, even though in the Ramayana, he loses. It’s strange, like a death wish! Why is he doing this?’

  ‘Perhaps he has no choice. Perhaps his actions are compelled.’

  ‘That’s insane—it’s like saying that we’re just actors reading from a script. I could just down my weapons at any time and walk away from this. So could he.’

  ‘But you don’t. And neither does he. Because you have compelling reasons to continue. I am sure he does too. Maybe the Ramayana itself is telling the players how to act! Or maybe it is just coincidence. Maybe there are deeper reasons that we have not yet exposed. I am not saying you should blindly follow the epic, nor trust that it will see you safe. Bear it in mind in your thinking, that is all I ask.’

  Vikram nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. While I was on the run, after the Swayamavara Live television show, I made a list of the next events in the epic, and you know what, they all basically happened: Dad dying, Surpanakha betraying us, and Ravana kidnapping Sita. So I know we can’t ignore it.’ He placed a piece of paper on the table. ‘Here’s the rest of it …’ He waved a hand over the paper. On it was a list of points—the key action from the remainder of the Ramayana: