Kausalya’s head was spinning. For a moment, she wondered if Sumitra was suffering from the same delusional state that had afflicted her the previous day. From hallucinations of Kaikeyi as a giant serpent to visions of Manthara performing black magic wasn’t a big leap. But there was something in Sumitra’s voice and eyes that was very convincing.
‘Slow down, Sumitra,’ she said again. ‘Sit down here and explain it to me properly.’
Sumitra did as she was told, although she was too excited to sit calmly. Her hands kept clenching and unclenching, as if she held some invisible object in her fists. Kausalya put her hands over Sumitra’s, stilling them.
‘Calm down, Sumitra. Take deep breaths and slow your heartbeat. You have to calm yourself first.’
Sumitra did as Kausalya suggested. After a moment of breathing deeply in the pranayam yoga method, the Third Queen’s demeanour became less agitated and excited. Her hands stopped twitching. Kausalya released them and looked at Sumitra’s face closely. She rubbed at Sumitra’s right cheek with her forefinger and examined the tip of her finger.
It was unmistakably ash. Not just firewood ash, but the particular grainy particled grey-black ash produced by sandalwood and moonwood with copious amounts of ghee and various ritual condiments. Yagna ash.
‘First of all,’ Kausalya said, ‘before you say anything else, explain this to me. Why in the three worlds are you coated with yagna ash?’
Sumitra took another deep breath, then explained everything. Kausalya listened raptly. Ten days ago, if Sumitra had told her this tale, she would have sent for the royal vaids and had her fellow maharani examined closely for signs of a head injury or mental illness. But too much had happened these past ten days, and in the last day and night, for her to dismiss even such a fantastic tale out of hand.
So she asked calmly, ‘And then what happened? After you leapt back through this … hole, or whatever?’
‘I came straight here to my chambers and sent for you,’ Sumitra said. ‘On the way I told my personal guards to take post outside Manthara’s door and if she emerged then to hold her there and send word to me.’
Kausalya frowned. ‘And that was how long ago?’
‘A few minutes. You came very quickly. All my women,’ Sumitra gestured at the closed door, ‘bombarded me with questions. I told them nothing. Some of them may be working for Manthara for all we know.’
‘I thought you said the serving girl was the only one who did these … things.’
‘That’s what she said. But who knows? Maybe others were secretly in league with the witch without Sulekha’s knowing. Manthara didn’t exactly confide in her, Kausalya. Whatever the girl knew, she picked up by seeing things, hearing things. Besides,’ Sumitra smiled sheepishly, ‘she was very intoxicated, very scared, and not very intelligent to begin with.’
Which was what Kausalya found oddest about the tale. Everything else was within the bounds of possibility, however remote it seemed–even the horrifying notion of Brahmin boys being sacrificed under the very roof she slept beneath–but the serving girl was a loose thread that didn’t fit the overall pattern.
If Manthara was the scheming sorcerous witch-spy of the king of asuras, as Sumitra said, then why would she be foolish enough to have a witness to her every crime? One obvious reason suggested itself: Manthara was bodily incapacitated. She could hardly do some of the more physically demanding things that she would have to if Sumitra’s tale was true.
And even if she could, and had done so herself, with or without the aid of black sorcery, it would have raised suspicions at once. The incident in the maharaja’s sickchamber the previous day was one example. Had it been Manthara who had gone into the room, the guards would have been very curious and would have told Kausalya later. But because it was an ordinary serving girl, one of hundreds, nay thousands, in the enormous royal complex, it had raised no suspicions at all. Still, could Manthara afford to risk her ambitious world-spanning schemes by trusting the loose tongue of a slip of a girl? Loyalty could be bought and sold like any other commodity perhaps, even in the dharmic and honourable nation of Kosala, but no sum of gold could guarantee silence.
Finally, she decided, Sumitra’s entire story rested on just one thing: this girl Sulekha. If she could back up even a tenth of what Sumitra had just told her, or describe a single misdeed that Manthara had committed, Kausalya would bear down on the daiimaa with all the force she could muster. And with the maharaja ill and the princes away, all the force of Ayodhya was at her sole command. Even if the army was not at hand, the PF battalion and palace guard were sufficient to take care of one depraved daiimaa, surely. And if Sumitra had indeed injured her as mortally as she said she had, then even Manthara’s sorcery would logically be diminished, perhaps incapacitated.
Sumitra was watching her intently, an anxious look on her face. Her eyes flickered as she tried to read Kausalya’s thoughts. Kausalya could see that the first flush of excitement had passed and now Sumitra was weighing the pros and cons of her situation. Kausalya didn’t need to explain to the Third Queen that by reeling off such an outrageous story, she had put herself at risk of being thought totally insane.
Which ironically was the most credible aspect of the whole thing. Why would Sumitra make up such an extravagant fantasy when it could be proved or disproved within a few minutes?
Especially when she had been discredited yesterday and fallen under suspicion? No, she didn’t think Sumitra was making this whole thing up, but she might be labouring under another elaborate hallucination again. After all, if the Lord of Lanka could send the re-animated corpse of a Vajra Kshatriya into the very heart of Ayodhya, surely he could delude a sensitive, susceptible, emotionally overwrought maharani?
‘Kausalya,’ Sumitra said shakily, ‘you do believe me, don’t you? It all happened just the way I said it did. I’m not making any of this up. Why would I? What would be the point, when just yesterday you and Guruji refused to believe me?’
Kausalya nodded. ‘That’s true. Why would you make up such a tale?’
Sumitra’s face brightened cautiously. ‘Then you believe me?’
Sri, guide me.
Kausalya took Sumitra’s hands in her own again and nodded slowly. ‘I think I do.’
Sumitra’s smile was as brilliant as a harvest moon. ‘Devi be praised!’
She rose to her feet, pulling Kausalya up. ‘Come quickly then. Let’s go to Guru Vashishta and take him to the witch’s lair. He’ll be able to confront her and cleanse that awful place. The sooner it’s done, the better. Come, Kausalya, we must hurry before she does something.’
‘Sumitra, Sumitra, wait a moment. I’ll have to get Drishti Kumar to get a contingent of palace guards to come with us. It will take a few minutes. Meanwhile, maybe you should cleanse yourself.’
‘There isn’t time! We must go now. We don’t need guards. Guru Vashishta is sufficient. Let’s go call him, Kausalya!’
Kausalya pulled herself away from Sumitra. ‘Guruji isn’t here, Sumitra. He’s gone to Mithila. You probably haven’t heard, but the asuras are invading the Arya nations. Guruji expects the main force to come through Mithila, so he’s gone there to help them make a stand.’
Sumitra stared at Kausalya. ‘He’s gone? But how will we face the witch without him? Rishi Vamadeva and Punditji are strong, but if Manthara is as powerful as I think she is, then they may not be able to confront her. We need a seer-mage of brahmarishi stature. Guru Vashishta or Vishwamitra. Have Rama and Lakshman returned with the sage yet?’
‘No, Sumitra. And Bharat and Shatrugan aren’t here either. So much has happened since last evening, you’ve been out of touch. The army was sent away on false information; it was divided and sent to Gandahar and Kaikeya yesterday. Bharat and Shatrugan went as well. Pradhan Mantri Sumantra is occupied with organising the PFs for a full city defence in case the asuras make it this far. There’s only you and me to take care of this problem now. That’s why we have to fetch Captain Drishti Kumar.’
Sumitra’s face reflected her anxiety and confusion. But to her credit, she didn’t react with hysterics or melodrama. Instead she said, ‘All right. Then let’s get him and go to Manthara’s rooms. We have to act quickly.’
That response, so sure and sensible and logical, impressed Kausalya more than anything else. Now she was certain that whatever the truth might be, Sumitra wasn’t perpetrating a deception. She was either the victim of another elaborate illusion, or she was telling the truth. Even though she wanted with all her heart to believe Sumitra, Kausalya still hoped that it was the former. The alternative was chilling to contemplate and difficult to accept. She would know which one it was very soon.
‘All right,’ she said, moving to the door. ‘I’ll send for Captain Kumar and four quads and ask them to meet us in the south corridor. But we’ll not go inside until the guards arrive, are we agreed on that?’
‘Of course,’ Sumitra said. She shuddered suddenly. ‘You think I want to go in there alone again? I’ll have nightmares all my life about the moment she pushed me through that wall! I thought I was falling into hell!’
Kausalya and Sumitra unbarred and unlatched the doors. When they opened them, a female rakshak guard was waiting outside. She was one of Sumitra’s clanswomen. She saluted both maharanis smartly and addressed Sumitra.
‘Maharani, as you requested, I’ve come to inform you that Manthara-daiimaa has emerged from her chambers.’
NINE
Maharaja Janak reached the top stair of the tower and finished reciting the Gayatri mantra for the thousand and eighty-fourth time, one for each step. He stepped out into the centre of the large domed chamber named the Sage’s Brow. Vishwamitra followed the king, with Rama and Lakshman close behind.
Rama experienced a moment of disorientation as he crossed the chamber. An image from his recurring nightmare flashed in his mind. Himself, standing in the identical Ayodhyan counterpart of this watchtower, there named the Seer’s Eye. Leaning out of the large windowless portals running continuously around the circular chamber, watching with impotent rage as his beloved Ayodhya was ravaged by an enormous asura horde.
He understood now that the nightmare had been implanted in his brain by the Lord of Lanka, Ravana himself. And that it was a vision of the future. Not the only future destined for him, but one of several possible futures that his own karma could lead him towards. A future that the asura king was determined to make a reality.
Right now, as he walked grimly across the bright windswept stone floor of the Mithilan Sage’s Brow, it felt like a very possible, even likely, future.
Already the sun was low in the western sky, its slanting rays warming his right profile as he stood facing the southern side of the Sage’s Brow. In less than two hours it would be dusk, and then night. The almost total darkness of a slender waning moon. Not a moonless night as his nightmare had depicted, but close enough. In the nightmare, he had assumed he was in Ayodhya, but now he knew that it was this very tower he had stood in during that awful vision. He had witnessed the rape of Mithila, not Ayodhya.
From the glimpse they had been given when Ravana had stepped through the supernatural portal in the assembly hall, the demon lord’s threat appeared to be genuine. An asura force was amassing on the north bank of the Ganga.
That would place the invaders within two yojanas’ distance of Mithila. And that had been almost an hour ago. In another two hours or less, but certainly before sundown, the asura armies would be at the city gates. Maharaja Janak had accepted this shattering news and its crushing implications with all the majesty and dignity of a true Arya sovereign. Ignoring his injuries at the hands of Ravana, the maharaja had ordered that the assembly hall be cleared at once, and had called for his council and Senapati Bharadwaj, the general in charge of Mithila’s sadly diminished armed forces.
While the general had been given an immediate order to assemble his entire force, arming all volunteers and retired veterans, the maharaja and his council had debated their next course of action. The flurry of anxiety and dismay that had followed the council’s acceptance of their predicament had been akin to an innocent man’s reaction when told that he had been found guilty of an uncommitted crime and was to be sentenced to death within the hour. Why were the asuras attacking? Why Mithila, now a holy city with almost no military power? Why had they not known of this earlier? How could such an enormous army have been raised by the Lord of Lanka and brought so swiftly and stealthily this far north without the Arya nations knowing?
Vishwamitra had intervened then, cutting short the panicked flurry of comments and queries. These questions were all irrelevant now, the sage had said sternly. They must put aside all discussions and move immediately to prepare themselves for the city’s defence. The council’s silence had been almost as heartrending as their earlier confusion.
Finally, the prime minister of Videha had appealed to the maharaja to in turn appeal to the brahmarishi for advice. Unlike Kosala, Videha had no guru of Vashishta’s stature to guide their governance. This was partly because, unlike Kosala, which was a highly militarised state and required the constant supervision of a spiritual guru, Mithila was itself a spiritually enlightened city. There were more Brahmins in Mithila alone than there were Kshatriyas in all of the Videha nation. The ratio of Brahmins to Kshatriyas in Kosala and its capital Ayodhya was almost equal, but Videha had long since discarded its swords, bows and maces for prayer necklaces, red-ochre robes and wildwood staffs. A military crisis was something this once-martial nation no longer had the knowledge or the manpower to contend with, let alone confront.