‘The princes of Ayodhya were only watching, sage. You know that as well as I. You connived to let them take part to cheat me once again. I allowed that. Now you will not deny me the same licence! I will shoot that bow again and place my arrow in the tail of this young whelp’s. Then I shall wed and bed the rajkumari!’
Rama raised the Bow of Shiva over his head. His eyes were glowing with blue fury now. ‘Ravana!’
The Lord of Lanka turned to look at him.
‘You want this bow?’
Ravana watched him suspiciously. ‘Give it to me, boy. Or die. It’s the same to me.’
Rama took the bow in both hands and bent it. Ravana watched him curiously. ‘What would you do now, boy? That is the Bow of Shiva. The Three-Eyed One himself anointed it with everlasting endurance. It cannot be broken. What do you think you will do?’
‘WATCH, DEMON!’ Rama shouted, his eyes spitting gold and blue fire. ‘WATCH AND LEARN! THIS IS THE POWER OF THE LIGHT!’
And with one massive scissoring of his arms, Rama snapped the Bow of Shiva in two.
The sound that came from the cracking of the bow was monstrous. It rolled through the assembly hall, through the palace, and through the city entire. It swept the streets like a wind with lightning in its breath. Like a rolling tidal wave of thunder, the sound rumbled through Mithila, carrying to the distant fields outside the city, to the Siddhashrama procession arriving just now at the crossroads leading to the capital. It was like a crack of the mightiest thunder ever heard, like the snapping of the backbone of the world itself.
Birds fell from the skies, killed outright by the sound. Small creatures ran gibbering to their holes for safety. Large predators mewled in fear and cowered in dark thickets. Glass shattered throughout the city, cracks appeared in walls and floors, and in the highest point in Mithila, the Sage’s Brow, an enormous bell that had not been rung for twenty-two years sounded a single pealing toll, then was silent again.
***
Sita couldn’t believe her eyes. Rama had outmatched Ravana. And now he had broken Shiva’s bow. Broken it! But that was impossible.
She heard Vishwamitra speak a single phrase: ‘Om Namay Shiva.’ All around her, everyone repeated the invocation, praying to the three-eyed god to forgive the destruction of his weapon.
‘Om Namay Shiva,’ Sita said.
Her father stirred in her lap. She had gone to him while Rama and Lakshman went to try their hand at the bow. She looked at his wan, bloodless face. His eyes fluttered, then opened slowly. He peered up at her with difficulty, groaning.
‘Sita,’ he said, relieved. ‘That monster …?’
‘It’s over, Father. Rama bested him in the contest.’
Janak sat up with difficulty, peering across the assembly hall.
Sita followed his gaze.
Ravana was staring at the two broken halves of the bow in disbelief. He looked at Rama, whose eyes had returned to their normal deer-brown colour.
‘So,’ Ravana said softly, ‘the boy has learned some new tricks.’
‘These were old when the world was young, demon,’ Rama replied.
Ravana laughed. ‘You try to teach me, boy? Me? I was old when the world was young! I!’
‘No, demon. You weren’t even born at the time. You’re no deva, no god. Only an anti-god. That’s easy enough. Far more difficult to be a god. Or even aspire to that divine status.’
Ravana looked startled. Then he recovered, his faces breaking out in a variety of enraged expressions. ‘Enough banter! Do you think by breaking the bow you have ended this? Nothing has ended! The sage said it truly. Already my army masses on the north bank of the Ganga. In hours they will be here, tearing down the gates of Mithila, laying waste to this city. And after we finish raping the city, I will do the same to Rajkumari Sita! Enjoy your ill-won wife while you can. I will be back before nightfall to take her from you. And this time, your puny Brahman tricks will not save you. I will make your nightmares come true tonight. You do remember your nightmares, don’t you, boy? Sita remembers too! Don’t you, princess?’
‘Rama! Cut him down now. Use your shakti and bring him down! Together we can take him! Now, Rama! Now!’ Lakshman sprang forward, his sword ready. ‘Come on, brother. Don’t let him leave alive. He’s alone and unarmed now. We can kill him together. If he leaves, he’ll return with a million of his kind and we won’t even get close enough to strike at him.’
Ravana turned to Lakshman. The demon lord’s eyes glinted and gleamed with dark anger. His mouths snarled silently, fangs bared, dripping saliva as thick and viscous as insect ichor.
‘You mortals. Always dishonourable, yet you pretend that you are the only honourable ones. You would fight me now? Come! Fight me! I will take your odds and to hell with your honour and your so-called eternal souls!’
Rama stepped forward, drawing his sword. The blue light of Brahman flashed in his eyes again. Nakhudi whooped with exultation and leapt down from the dais, ready to join in. Bejoo jumped down beside her. The seer-mage Vishwamitra strode forward, his staff held high, preparing to chant.
‘No,’ Maharaja Janak cried. His voice was cracked and hoarse, but his authority was indisputable. This was his roof, his city. He was liege here.
Everybody froze. They looked at him.
Sita helped her father to his feet. He said hoarsely, ‘You cannot attack this creature under my roof. It violates the law of dharma. A guest is as a god by our Arya traditions. To cause harm to this guest, monster though he may be, would dishonour the Chandravansha dynasty and the Arya people.’
‘But he harmed you, Father,’ Sita said urgently. ‘And if they allow him to leave, he will return with an army! Lakshman spoke truly. We must kill him now and end it. It’s our only chance.’
‘No.’ Janak shook his head, adamant. ‘He knows our ways. That is why he came here alone and unarmed. He knows that Arya law dictates that no guest can ever be attacked beneath his host’s roof. If we kill him, we will put the lie to every Arya tradition. People will stop believing in our nobility and say we are not worthy of the title Arya. What face will we show to the world then?’
Turning to the tableau of warriors and sage in the assembly hall, Janak raised his voice with difficulty, continuing, ‘I command all of you, my own people and visitors from Ayodhya alike. This guest must be allowed to leave unharmed. If he chooses to return with hostile intentions, then he will be answered in like fashion. But for now he has come to attend a ceremonial function and as such he must be permitted to leave safely. Go now, demon king, go and never darken my door again!’
Ravana raised his head and laughed. ‘A fine way to speak to a man you were willing to make your son-in-law a little while ago! But I think it’s for the best. You and I would have had a hard time getting along under the same roof, wouldn’t we? I don’t think you would have liked hearing a rakshasa bed your beautiful daughter every night! It might have tested your Arya honour more than you could bear!’
‘Begone, demon!’ Janak shouted fiercely, his damaged voice cracking with strain. ‘Begone before I rescind my words and turn you over to your enemies.’
Ravana chuckled and began sheathing his arms again, pair by pair. His muscled torso glistened darkly as he strode to the doorway. Citizens watching wonderstruck fled away like rabbits before a wolf. Some spat at the demon’s feet before they ran. ‘I shall go, Janak. But I will be back this very eve. And then we shall see who owns this roof. Or even if you have a roof left, for that matter!’
The rakshasa lord sketched a series of symbol in the air as he walked. A misty sheen formed before him, like an oval doorway, and he stepped through it. Briefly at the edges, over his shoulder, Sita glimpsed a green field of grass and a great body of water flowing beyond.
The Ganga’s north bank. And there, just at the periphery of the portal, the unmistakable dark mass of an alien army.
The portal closed behind the demon lord and the air sparkled briefly before resuming its normal appearance. The laughter of Ravana echoed through the hall.
EIGHT
Kausalya ran down the winding corridor, forcing the leader of her personal guard to run as well. The woman, a short but strapping Banglar named Sengupta, tried to answer a question the First Queen had asked a moment ago. ‘She seems all right, my queen. But she looks like she’s been at a funeral pyre.’
‘A what?’ Kausalya didn’t slow her pace, but her face registered her surprise. ‘I thought you said you found her in the south corridor of the palace.’
‘That we did. But she was wandering around in a daze. And her vastra, her face, her arms … well, she looks like she’s been rolling in ashes.’ Sengupta wrinkled her dark snubby nose. ‘And the stench of her, my queen … How can I describe it?’
Rolling in ashes? What in the world had Sumitra been up to? Where had she been?
Kausalya had got word of Sumitra’s disappearance this morning, when the Third Queen’s maids had taken her some breakfast and had found Sumitra’s bedroom door ajar and the maharani nowhere in sight. Kausalya had been alarmed at the news. She hadn’t stopped feeling guilty and miserable since placing Sumitra under palace arrest the previous day. But she’d had no choice in the matter. She’d done it as much to protect dear Sumitra as to prevent further mishap. Too much was happening to take any risks.
She had hoped to be able to discuss the matter with Guru Vashishta and see if he still felt that Sumitra had accidentally dropped the vinaashe poison in the maharaja’s punch yesterday, or if it had been more supernatural mischief perpetrated by some agent of the Lord of Lanka. After all, if their enemy could reanimate a dead man and send him within strangling distance of Maharaja Dasaratha himself, might he not possess the ability to somehow poison the maharaja as well?
Kausalya reached the place where the corridors bifurcated, heading south and west. She took the former and ran past a clutch of serving girls, maids and daiimaas all trying to catch a glimpse of the latest mishap to befall the House Suryavansha. O Sri, Kausalya prayed silently as she approached the jewelled arch that marked a titled queen’s palace annexe, let Sumitra be okay. Let her not be culpable of any further mischief, deliberate or otherwise.
She entered the Third Queen’s private apartment, slowing to give herself a moment to catch her breath, and breezed past a clutch of Sumitra’s private guards and servants. The alert angrakshaks, the birth-caste of personal bodyguards sworn to live and die protecting the Third Queen, glanced sharply at the First Queen as she entered. It was yet another sign of how much Ayodhya had changed in just a few days. The recent spate of intrusions, attempts, supernatural occurrences and grim news had left the capital city shaken.
The result was that even she, the Maharani of Kosala, was now scrutinised as sharply as anyone else. Distrust and suspicion was visible on every palace guard’s face, and even the servants and daiimaas glanced nervously at her as she strode past. She reached the closed doors of Sumitra’s chamber and was about to knock on them herself rather than wait to be announced and shown in formally, when the doors flew open and an apparition straight out of a tribal folk play appeared before her.
‘Kausalya!’ The apparition oddly resembled Sumitra in its low-pitched voice, tall stature and excessively slender build. ‘I found the witch’s lair!’
‘Sumitra?’ Kausalya stared at the ash-covered face and arms. ‘What happened to you? Where have you been?’ She sniffed the air around the Third Queen. ‘What have you been doing?’
Sumitra looked around the foyer full of women. They had fallen silent and were watching the two queens with open and avid curiosity.
Kausalya saw an uncharacteristic look of caution steal over Sumitra’s ash-smeared features as she took in the huddle of servants.
Sumitra turned and took Kausalya’s elbow. ‘We have to talk privately,’ she said softly. ‘There are surely others in the conspiracy. Come.’
What conspiracy? Kausalya wondered as she allowed herself to be led into the bedchamber. It looked much as it had appeared when Kausalya had left Sumitra here under house arrest the previous afternoon. She watched, puzzled, as Sumitra shut, barred and bolted the door. The precautions themselves had been recently installed in the past few days. Previously, it had been unheard of for any royal family member to need to bar or bolt a door. But since Holi, a great deal had changed.
Sumitra turned to face Kausalya, a grin breaking the powdery grey mask coating her face. ‘You won’t believe what I discovered! The enemy has spies within the palace. They are the ones who poisoned the punch yesterday. And they’ve been working secretly for years, sabotaging a hundred different things. Guru Vashishta could never find them because they were in the heart of the royal family itself, in a place where he never looked. But I know it all now. I know who the ringleader of the conspiracy is and I’ve got her trapped in her own secret chamber! We’ve got to get the guru to confront her and disable her shakti. She’s too powerful for us to face on our own.’
Kausalya held up her hands. ‘Hush, Sumitra. Slow down and tell me everything from the beginning. What conspiracy are you talking about? Who’s this ringleader?’
‘It’s Manthara-daiimaa! She’s an acolyte of Ravana, can you believe it? She’s been loyal to him since before she came to the palace. And she’s recruited a few palace staff over the years, using her ill-gotten shakti to control and manipulate them. Kausalya, it’s horrible, the way she carried on all this time, right under our noses. She beat and tortured people, did you know that? She tried to attack our sons even. Remember the time the royal wheelhouse broke a wheel and almost fell into the ravine at Chindig? That was Manthara’s foul sorcery. The boys were barely five years old at the time and would have been killed. She tried to murder our sons, Kausalya. That’s how heartless she is. She sacrifices little Brahmin boys to appease her lord. In a secret yagna room within her own private chambers, right here in the palace!’