Rama was about to say this aloud when the seer-mage slowed ahead of them. For a moment he thought Vishwamitra was stopping to admonish them for their mischievous banter. Both Rama and Lakshman prepared themselves for a tongue-lashing.
But the brahmarishi spoke with surprising gentleness.
‘Rajkumars Rama and Lakshmana, on the south bank of the Sarayu the very hills and trees have ears. We are in hostile territory now. Your innocent banter may be heard by spies of the Lord of Lanka. Keep your tongues in check unless something important needs saying.’
Rama and Lakshman lowered their eyes respectfully. The seer-mage looked at each of them in turn, his white beard stirring slowly in a gentle breeze.
He added in a faintly amused tone: ‘Impossible as it may seem to you now, I was young once too. But keep your chatter for some more suitable time. Now, you need to conserve your energy. We still have a fair way to go to Ananga-ashrama and the daylight fades swiftly.’
He seemed to want to say something further, but turned away without speaking again. He resumed his powerful strides, as precise as the fourstep of a Kshatriya army on the march. Rama and Lakshman glanced at each other briefly, exchanging an identical look of ‘well, that wasn’t so bad after all’, and followed their new guru without speaking another word.
Sarayu’s voice formed a pleasing backdrop to the sounds of their footfalls and the quiet inner sounds of breathing and heartbeats. The perfume of the river enveloped them, keeping at bay the stench of the Southwoods that loomed on the cliffs to their right.
Like an army host lined up ready and waiting … but for what
?
The only thing Rama knew about the Bhayanak-van was that it was a forbidden forest, segregating the mapped Arya territories from the vast unexplored wilderness of the southern subcontinent. No Arya truly knew what lay beyond the dark dense Forest of Fear, which was the literal translation of Bhayanak-van. Even the Arya outposts along the coastline were always visited by ship, the outpost Kshatriyas seldom daring to venture too far into the interior regions. Those who had done so over the centuries had never been seen again.
The fauna was sparser here on this side of the river, the ground rocky and pebbled, unlike its lush northern counterpart. That was strange since the silt should have been as rich, as fertile. Up ahead, Rama saw a solitary tall tree growing out of the smooth red clay of the riverbank. A maharuk, which the common folk called the Tree of Heaven. It was tall for its species, well over twenty yards high. More unusual, it was in full bloom already, its pale trunk capped by a closely woven foliage ablaze with little golden-yellow flowers. Normally the maharuk bloomed well after spring began.
So it’s just another sign of early spring, another good omen.
The tree’s tall trunk, thick foliage and delicately scented flowers provided shade as blessed to a sun-weary traveller as the hand of a deva offering ashirwaad.
As Rama passed beneath the fragrant canopy, a gust of wind rustled the maharuk’s upper branches. With a sound like crisp silks rubbed together, the tree showered the three of them with gaily coloured flowers. At the same moment, a cluster of butterflies—so similar in colouring to the flowers that he mistook them at first—appeared before him, hovered momentarily above his head and danced away gaily.
The road turned to avoid a heap of large boulders which effectively obscured the view of the river and of Mithila Bridge. The terrain began to change almost at once. To their left a steady line of anjan trees rose ominously, effectively obscuring any view of the Sarayu valley. Patches of colour were starting to appear on the anjan trees—colloquially dubbed ‘ironwood’ for their sturdy blackish timber, as dark as the anjan grease used to line one’s eyes—and soon they would burst with a profusion of hues. But right now their dark green foliage and sombre trunks, some as much as eight yards high, made for a grim hedge that loomed over the road, overcasting the bright day with a monsoon gloom. After a moment, Rama realised what else was eerie about this natural avenue: there was no birdsong or insect sounds at all.
Humps of reddish-black boulders began to sprout from the cliff face to their right, like boils on the face of some diseased animal. As they climbed steadily upwards, the boulders grew more profuse until the entire cliff wall seethed with the gnarled dark protrusions. The rusty streaks and gashes in the black stone were signs of raw iron ore, Rama knew, but in the dimness of the ironwood avenue they resembled suppurating pus oozing from the dark boils. He’d heard it said that when the makers of this raj-marg had carted the iron-rich fragments of these boulders down to the city, the Lohars of Ayodhya refused to smelt them in their smithies, believing that Southbank iron was cursed and would not cut asura flesh. He wondered now if this were true or just a superstition, one of the many that centred on all things south of the Sarayu. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch one of the ugly lumps; even the sage was clearly walking in the middle of the raj-marg, staying well away from the anjans at the left as well as the cliff face to the right.
As they reached the top of the raj-marg, Rama’s attention was caught by one particularly large boulder overhanging the road. It was so big it completely shut out the sun for a moment, so when the sage passed into its ponderous shadow, he was swallowed by darkness as smoky as dusk. From this angle it was difficult to be sure, but Rama thought he saw scores running along the top and the sides of the rock. Something crunched underfoot and he looked down to see scrapings of red and black, curled exactly like shavings left by a sutaar’s planing of a wooden plank. What creature or force of nature could have scraped ironstone hard enough to produce
shavings
? Nothing he had ever encountered in his short life, he was certain.
Just when he thought they were approaching the peak of the cliff, the marg grew darker still.
The anjan trees huddled in closer, reaching across the avenue in an attempt to touch the protruding boulders of the cliff face. The boulders were larger and more unruly here, even though Rama knew that the marg-makers who maintained the king’s highway must have cut and planed them smooth.
Maybe they keep growing after they’re cut
. That was ridiculous—boulders couldn’t grow! But he stopped smiling when he saw a swatch of torn cloth caught between a jagged spur of rock and a clawing leafless branch, as if the two had come together like pincers to catch some hapless traveller.
Looking up as he passed below the dangling strip of cloth, he could vaguely make out the sigil of the House of Janaka, belonging to his uncle the Maharaja of Mithila.
There was that Mithila courier who disappeared last month with a message undelivered, Sumantra said.
He could only just make out a faint dark stain below the stag-against-a-full-moon crest and forced himself to look at the road again. He felt a buzzing in his ears and swatted instinctively before he realised that there were no insects.
Must be the damn iron in the rocks; the royal vaids say it affects our individual magnetic force and its harmony with the polarity of the planet.
One final slow curve around a boulder that was far too large for even the tireless marg-makers to shape, and they were suddenly blessedly blinking at soft but still warm sunlight, out of the wretched anjan avenue.
‘Om Shiv Hari Swaha,
Praised be the Name of Shiva
,’ Lakshman said in a whisper beside him, and Rama sent up a brief prayer of his own. It felt as though they had just emerged
from some dark tunnel filled with a thousand watching wild beasts.
But all we did was walk up a byroad of the king’s highway in broad daylight
!
The raj-marg broadened considerably here, providing a respite for wagons and wheelhouses before they attempted the more dangerous downward journey. It brought back memories of his father’s old charioteer Santosha yelling orders to the horse-boys as they scurried about hitching horses to the back of the royal wheelhouse to help control the downward passage of the monstrous luxury cabin, and he was faintly disappointed at the absence of neighing horses, laughing soldiers and his father’s hoarse loud voice, and the overpowering stench of that familiar road perfume, freshly dropped horse dung! All that met them was the tracks of the countless wagons and horses that had passed this way before, and a few dried droppings. To the right, the looming periphery of the woods was kept at bay by a field of kusalavya grass that grew from dark scorched earth.
They have to keep burning the woods as they try to come closer to the road
. Even so, the skulking darkness of the thicket instilled a sense of foreboding that was strong enough to make his head ache.
Like a beast that just sits there, biding its time
. He wondered if the sage would take them into the woods from here. The faint line of a footpath cut across the desolate field, entering the woods through a narrow mouth between two crouching trunks. A fresh mark caught his eye and he knelt to examine a small round impression in the dry earth. Another seer with a wooden staff about the size of Vishwamitra’s had passed this way only hours earlier.
Perhaps it was Vishwamitra himself. After all, he had come out of the Southwoods. The knowledge that the brahmarishi had endured centuries in the dreaded woods and had emerged alive and unharmed gave Rama a sense of reassurance, until he remembered that the seer had mastery of Brahman.
While all I have is my bow and a shortsword
.
He had expected the seer to lead them directly into the woods, across the burnt field. But Vishwamitra was looking the other way, out at the valley, standing on the lip of a jutting promontory that stuck out over the cliff face to provide a scenic view of the Sarayu valley. The spot was popularly known as Ayodhyadarshan or Sarayu-darshan, all important things in Arya having at least two names. Rama and Lakshman stood alongside their new guru and looked down.
The view was breathtaking. The Sarayu valley lay below them, stretching as far as the eye could see in either direction. To the north, the mountains of the Garhwal Himalayas rose steadily, vanishing into the mists of late winter. A thick carpeting of palas trees gave the north bank a rich red texture, like the intricate dense weave of the deep-pile Gandahari dhurries his mother loved to collect. The Sarayu’s white line formed an undulating border at the bottom of this roughly rectangular deep-pile rug. Rama could trace the point at which the river entered the valley, far to the distant left. It then passed out of sight beneath the shooting towers and vaulting arches of Ayodhya, roared down sharply over the twenty-yard drop of Aja-putra Rapids, turning into a foaming, seething bundle of cold white fire that calmed down only slightly as it expanded its width and worked its way steadily to the extreme far right of the panorama, beneath spray-shrouded Mithila Bridge, down the ragged boulder-strewn rapids, finally disappearing into a thicket of mangrove on its way to Mithila.
When next I look upon you, my river-mother, I will have earned the right to be called Rama Rakshas-slayer. Or I will not look upon you again. This I swear.
He looked at Lakshman and saw his brother’s eyes gleaming a little more brightly than before.
Moving at the same time, both placed their hands on each other’s shoulders and squeezed tightly.
When they turned, Vishwamitra was waiting.
The seer-mage raised his staff and pointed silently.
They followed him across the burnt field and into the thicket, turning their backs on their last sight of Ayodhya.
FOUR
Maharaja Dasaratha reached the last turn and paused to catch his breath. It had been a long day and a hard one, and he had eaten and drunk too much, as usual.
Well, it’s Holi
, he thought, trying to shrug it off.
A little extra wine and meat on a feast day never hurt anyone
.
But the leaden weight in his distended belly, the piercing ache in his lower back, the crushing pressure in his neck and the back of his head, all disagreed fiercely. After a moment it dawned on him that he was not going to feel much better any time soon, and with a weary sigh and a muttered curse he climbed the last few steps.
He stood on the red-marble floor of the Seer’s Eye, the star-chamber at the peak of the Seers’ Tower. Seen from without, it was a needle-like protuberance that spiralled upwards, like a talon touching the belly of the sky; from within, it was a circular platform open to the skies, its seven inward-curving pillars shaped like lances representing the Seven Seers who had raised and infused the tower with Brahman power. It was windy here, and the powerful currents yanked urgently at his clothes and hair, calling him to the edge and into the arms of oblivion.
It would be so easy to simply let it carry me over. To float like a bird for a few moments until Prithvi Maa rushes up to embrace me.
It would be an end to all his troubles and ailments, to this long, slow climb up the waterfall of time. He knew he should feel ashamed for even contemplating such a thought; perhaps it was the soma talking. Perhaps.