KRISHNA CORIOLIS#4: Lord of Mathura (13 page)

This asura combines the powers of all my previous attackers,
Krishna realized. Whoever sent it,
he thought that perhaps if I could defeat each of those asuras individually, by combining all their abilities together, he would be able to defeat me. 

It was an ingenious idea and one that Krishna couldn’t discount as a failure. Not yet. Perhaps not at all. 

For one thing, the serpent was managing to strike home a few times. The sheer number of heads it possessed and the blinding speed with which they attached from every side made it simply impossible for Krishna to deflect or destroy them all. Besides, the asura was shrewd, shrewder than most asuras and better versed at battling gods. Every time he used a maneuver that would have bested a lesser demon, he found himself counterpointed and then attacked again in a new way. Not only was the demon a worthy opponent, it was managing to hurt him! 

He felt the places where the demon had sunk its fangs into his body, albeit briefly. Each place throbbed with pain. The poison was no ordinary toxin intended for creatures of the earth. It was a special Halahala type of venom that could slay gods. He didn’t know how much it would take to kill him but he suspected that if he was struck enough times, it would succeed. After all, even he was subject to the limitations of the human form. His eternal Being would survive of course, but Krishna the mortal infant would perish. And Krishna was what he was in this life and at this time. Losing this body and being forced to take another rebirth or avatara or amsa would itself be a defeat, perhaps a decisive one. Certainly an unacceptable one. 

He could not let that come to pass. 

The main purpose of this descent to earth was to rid the world of the last of the asuras. Those demons that had somehow managed to survive and stay upon the mortal realm despite the repeated species cleansings he had inflicted upon this plane in previous incarnations. 

That was why he had chosen to descend as Vishnu Incarnate. Not an avatar or an amsa. But as God Himself, albeit in a mortal identity. And that identity was Krishna, the closest he had come to replicating himself as he truly appeared, in his own image. Krishna was
He
. It was why he had maintained the black skin, the dark features, the facial similarity, and so many minute details. 

He was Krishna in this life. 

He could not let an asura defeat Krishna. 

Not this asura or any other. 

He roared, the sound audible even deep underwater. 

They were perhaps half a mile beneath the surface of the lake now, the serpent demon seeking to draw him in even deeper, to take him to the bowels of the earth, thence perhaps to transport him to some place where he could bite him to his heart’s content until he lost all resistance and began succumbing to the lethal god-slaying venom. Already, the power of the vortex was enormous, the pressure immense. He roared to give himself courage and struck out. 

Hitting at the serpent with renewed vigour, while grasping hold of the slippery coils and drawing them upwards, He struck out for the surface, forcing the demon upwards, ever upwards, even as he fought and kicked and punched it. 

The demon sensed what he was doing and fought back just as fiercely, striking with several heads at once now, not caring how many he destroyed so long as a few got past his defenses and struck his flesh with their fangs, sinking in a little more venom with each strike before he could react and rip out the offending head, twisting and crushing it. 

Krishna felt his body succumbing to the poison even as his wounds bled openly now, releasing his precious life fluid into the swirling maelstorm. The water around them had turned dark with his own blood, as if night were falling inside the lake. He knew then that if he did not take this battle to the surface and turn his desperate defense into a powerful offense, he would lose. 

And if he lost, then the mortal realm itself would be lost. 

11

RADHA
was relieved when Balarama relented and permitted her to stay. She couldn’t bear the thought of being far away again while Krishna risked his life to battle another demon. 

She knew he was probably not risking his life in the sense that a normal human boy might risk it. But he was still battling an unknown opponent, one that had been sent to kill him. And why else would demons try to kill him if he was truly invulnerable? It must mean that he had some weakness that could be exploited and each successive asura hoped that it could succeed where earlier ones had failed. It meant that remote as the possibility might seem, Krishna could be harmed. She had no wish to be safely away with her family while Krishna fought alone. 

She watched the lake for several moments after Balarama and the last of the rear enders had disappeared down the winding road that led homewards. The water continued to boil and seethe, explode in plumes and geysers, swirl furiously like a maelstorm. But nothing else happened for a long while. She wondered how Krishna could hold his breath this long. Did he even need to breathe? Clearly, he
did
breathe, so that meant his body required air to survive. How then did he survive under water for so long? 

She recalled the legend of Matsya, the fish incarnation of Lord Vishnu. She knew that fish breathed air but they absorbed it through the water itself which they took into their gills. Perhaps that was how Krishna could stay so long underwater: by extracting the air from water. Next, she wondered about his skin and his bones: could they be cut, pierced or broken? She did not recall ever hearing of Krishna being hurt in any way, not so much as the smallest cut. Even after battling those terrible asuras, he had been unscathed. So he was invulnerable then. Which begged the question again: Why send asuras to try to kill an invulnerable god? 

She knew she was ranting mentally, that the inability to know what was happening beneath the lake was driving her insane with worry. She tried to calm herself, to hum the song Krishna had been playing on the flute that evening, only a short while ago. It was so soothing, so calming, like the sound of wind, or water, or birds… 

What was it Krishna had said? 

The song belongs to they who listen. 

He had meant her. 

She
was the listener, he the singer. And so long as he sang, she was content to listen eternally. 

Suddenly, she saw that something was changing in the lake. The maelstorm was still churning madly. But the colour of the water had altered subtly and was continuing to change. 

She squinted, peering intently. 

Yes, there was no doubt about it. The water looked darker now. She looked up. There were no clouds above the lake or any whose shadows could be darkening the surface of the water. No. The change in hue came from the water itself changing colour. She watched as the water grew steadily darker, changing from its usual bluish green to a more reddish brown…

Suddenly, she knew what the change in colour meant. 

The lake was filling with blood. 

Someone—or something—was bleeding. 

She put her fist in her mouth, stifling a gasp. 

She prayed it wasn’t Krishna. Even the thought of him being injured made her sick to the stomach. 

Surely he couldn’t shed so much blood, enough to change the very colour of the lake itself? 

Then again, that was exactly what she had been ranting about just now: the fact that she had no idea what a god incarnate could or couldn’t do. Perhaps he
could
bleed. And if he could bleed, then surely he could bleed sufficiently to disclour an entire lake? After all, he was a god. 

She clenched her fists tightly enough for her fingernails to dig into her palms, praying that the blood swirling about in the lake now was not Krishna’s blood. 

She started to pray to Lord Vishnu to protect her beloved friend, then realized the redundancy of that prayer. 

She settled instead for praying to Lakshmi Devi, eternal companion and consort to Lord Vishnu. 

Somehow, it seemed more appropriate. 

13

Balarama
had done as Krishna had asked: he had escorted all the people back to the village. The head of the long line was reaching the outskirts of the hamlet up ahead. He shouted to Nanda Maharaja and the other headsmen of the clan that he was going back and turned. 

He paused by his house for a moment, only to pick up something. 

It was his plough. 

It was the same one he had kept all these years, the one he had carried in his childhood as well. He liked the way it felt in his hands. It also made an excellent weapon. 

He sprinted like the wind. Being heavy set, Balarama could not sustain a fast pace over long distances, but he could sprint short distances with greater power than all the other boys. The distance to the lake was a mere yojana, barely nine miles away. He could sprint that distance and barely break a sweat. He put his back and shoulders into it, roaring up and over the hills and down the dales, leaving a dust cloud in his wake that was visible for miles. Back at the hamlet, his mother Rohini saw it from her threshold and knew at once that it was her son sprinting back to join Krishna. 

Balarama reached the top of the hill just in time to see Krishna break the surface. Radha was standing exactly where he had left her, staring down with her hands clasped in front, barely breathing. Her eyes were set intently on the lake below. Balarama fell to his knees, forcing himself to breathe steadily rather than gulp in great breaths. He had no trouble bringing his breathing under control in a moment. As he had expected, barely a few beads of sweat had popped out on his forehead and forearms. 

He leaned on his plough and watched as the surface of the lake, now deep maroon from what could only be blood, boiled and seethed, the whirlpool still swirling with insane intensity yet lost for the moment under the chaos of bubbling spurting geysers of water. 

Something
was emerging, something that was so huge it was pushing great quantities of water above and ahead of it. Balarama held his breath as the water finally broke and the beast emerged. 

Radha gasped and cupped both hands over her mouth in that peculiar way that girls had. 

Why do they do that,
Balarama wondered irritably.
Do they mean to stop themselves from crying out? Why not simply cry out then? It wasn’t as if there’s anybody here to mind! 

He rose to his feet, stunned at the sight. 

The asura was a gigantic water serpent, jet black in colour. Its scales were glistening and shiny, a diamond pattern breaking the glossy blackness every few yards. Its torso was huge, though nowhere near as thick as Aghasura. 

The earlier asura had been huge enough to resemble a gigantic cavern. 

This water serpent asura was barely as thick as a few dozen banyan trunks banded together. It could probably swallow a small hillside but it was not a python or boa constrictor like Aghasura had been. This was a water serpent and its neck was slender and shapely, its mouth widening to an immense flattened head some three score yards long and one score yards wide, if Balarama’s assessment was correct. 

The mouth opened to reveal a dark red serpentine mouth with a long forked tongue that slipped in and out, and great fangs, some three yards long apiece, dripping viscous thick green venom. 

But that was only the upper torso and main head. 

As Balarama watched, the serpent continued to emerge from the water, the force of its momentum causing it to rise high in the air. As it rose, its upper body split into a myriad of heads, all identical to the first, all venomous serpent heads, but of varying sizes. 

Some were almost as large as the main head, others much much smaller, probably no bigger than an asp, most comprising inbetween sizes. And there were so
many
of them! 

Balarama tried to assess how many heads there were in all and gave up at once: it was hopeless to even try to count. There were easily a hundred, perhaps several hundreds. A thousand? Quite possibly! 

He had never seen or heard anything like it before. 

A giant water serpent with a thousand poisonous heads. 

And riding atop the largest head was Krishna. 

Balarama grinned proudly as he saw his brother standing on the hood of the great serpent’s biggest head, attacked constantly from all sides by the other heads, lunging, striking, sinuously snaking around to attack from behind, from the sides, from above, from below. 

He lost the grin as he saw that there were wounds on Krishna’s body, several bleeding quite profusely. 

As he watched, another head struck home, sinking its fangs into his brother’s foot. 

Beside him, Radha screamed. 

Krishna bent down, dodging a large head that was lunging to bite his neck from behind, grasped hold of the head that had attacked his foot, crushed its neck, and tossed it away. Balarama saw it hang limply now, dead, and was pleased to see that several dozen other heads were similarly crushed and killed. But how many had struck their fangs into his brother’s precious flesh? How many had injected their venom into Krishna’s body? And how potent was that venom? Was it potent enough to do real harm to Krishna?