This circular chamber of the tower’s topmost level, nicknamed the Seers’s Eye, was damp and musty with disuse, the grey flagstone floor frosted over by night dew beneath Rama’s bare feet. He turned and turned again, sword prescribing the arc of the first circle. The elements were wilder here in this edifice of sorcerous architecture, carrying a sense of ancient times when war was a way of life and places like this were all that kept the Arya nations a sword-length ahead of their mortal enemies. He listened carefully, but at first all he heard was the whistling breath of Vayu, the wind god, blowing through the windowless openings and the distant growling of Indra, the god of lightning and thunder, threatening to unleash a storm even though the monsoon season was months away.
Then he heard it.
There. Below the howling of the wind and the distant growling of thunder. A sound like nothing he had heard before in his fifteen years of mortal life. Yet he knew at once what the sound meant.
War.
It was the sound of war.
Within Ayodhya.
For the first time since coming awake, he felt a needle of fear pierce his heart. He started to freeze, muscles locking reflexively; then, with an effort of will, he forced himself to maintain his breathing pattern. He moved forward, towards the dark maw of the windowless aperture, and faced the most shocking sight of his life.
Ayodhya was being raped.
A great war raged in its streets. A huge army of asuras had breached the seven gates and invaded the city. The three defensive moats were choked to overflowing with the corpses of the inhuman races of the asura army as well as the bodies of the city’s mortal defenders. The rich crimson of human blood mingled with the multi-hued life-fluids of the alien invaders, lying splattered in swathes everywhere he looked, flowing into and polluting the sacred life-giving Sarayu herself. The river was dark and heavy with the offal of death, her pristine purity turned into a corpse-gutter.
Asuras of all sizes and shapes butchered Ayodhyans. Rama had heard countless tales of asura atrocities before, nightmare tales from the Last asura War that he knew still haunted his father on moonless awamas nights such as this one—for awamas was the night when evil flourished—but never had he heard of or envisioned such atrocities taking place within the walls of his home city, mighty Ayodhya herself. In a single glimpse, his entire world tilted and went out of balance. A thousand impossible sights filled his vision, threatening to drive him insane.
Rakshasas twice as tall as men, roaring with exultation as they impaled human soldiers on their enormous antlered horns, then using their curved yellow talons to tear open their bellies and suck the steaming entrails into their hungry mouths.
A quad of palace guards encircling a rakshasi, her sagging breasts suckling two hairy infants that clung with tenacious stubbornness to her waist. The guards jabbed the rakshasi with their longspears, trying to contain her and shepherd her away from the palace gates. He guessed that they were squeamish about killing a female, a mother at that. Their moral strength was their downfall. The rakshasi grasped their spears and twisted them around the necks of the soldiers as easily as winding wool. She grabbed a soldier in each hand and held them high in the air. Her infants screamed with delight and tore the guards open, one feeding greedily on dripping intestines, the other sucking the spray of blood jetting from an unfortunate soldier’s throat with relish, as if it were mother’s milk.
Everywhere Rama looked, rakshasas were killing and devouring Ayodhyans with terrifying ease. For every rakshas that fell or was wounded, a hundred of Rama’s fellow countrymen died horrible deaths. Most of those eaten weren’t even killed off properly; he could see hundreds lying with their bellies torn open, crying for merciful death. Rakshasas strode over them, trampling their wounds underfoot as they sought new victims on whom to inflict their terrible butchery. They were the forerunners of the asura army, heading the invasion and leading the rest of the inhumans into the city.
Pisacas followed in their wake, clicking their insectile mandibles as they swarmed noisily through the streets, seeking out and destroying their prey. They inflicted a double violation upon their victims: first tearing open their soft flesh with their razor-sharp claws, then squatting above the agonised Ayodhyans to deposit their loads of greenish-black crystalline eggs. Then they exuded a viscous fluid that instantly sealed the gaping wounds. Only then did they move on to other victims—a single Pisaca impregnating dozens of humans in this manner. Their victims would survive the few hours it took for the eggs within their ruined bellies to hatch and the tiny swarms of crab-like infants to feed on their warm-blooded hosts, eating their way out of their bodies. Most asuras combined warfare with the eating of enemies. Only the Pisacas used their enemy to breed as well.
Nagas, giant cobra-like beings with a human head and torso but with yard-long forked tongues and serpentine lower bodies and long tails. They slithered through the alleyways and up walls, finding the strays and those who tried to flee the more organised invaders. Rama saw a group of Nagas converge hissing on an unarmed Brahmin mother and her two shaven-headed sons. The raised hoods mercifully hid what happened next. When the hoods parted, the three Brahmins lay prone on the street, their skin turning blue from several twin-puckered bites.
Uragas, enormous reptilian brethren of the Nagas, flowed slimily among their cousin species, their enormous python bodies swollen with telltale lumps—the Ayodhyans they’d swallowed alive. Their deceptively human faces were cast in the appearance of beautiful girl-children, a detail that only added to the horror of their violations.
Yaksas, the anthromorphic races. Even though Rama had grown up with tales of their magical antics, he had never heard of Yaksas being openly malevolent. They were generally benign, lovable but mischievous pranksters who used their morphing abilities to tease and entertain, not to kill and maim. Here, their mischief was vicious, their antics deadly. He saw a group of Yaksas morph into a herd of horses as they turned a corner and came face to face with a troop of citizens armed with an assortment of farming implements and kitchen weapons. The Ayodhyans paused to let the horses ride past, realising their mistake only when the Yaksas tore into them like predators rather than the gentle herbivores they were masquerading as. Hooves flailed, smashing skulls like ripe pumpkins. Powerful equestrian teeth ripped necks and bit off limbs. Half-ton heavy battle-horse bodies trampled screaming humans underfoot, shattering bones and smashing organs. Elsewhere, other Yaksas were using their morphing abilities to disguise themselves as elephants, camels, deer, dogs, swine, even an unlikely band of murderous buffalo, loping along with horns dripping blood and gore.
There were other asura races too, committing other unspeakable acts of violence and desecration. Defiling holy icons, demolishing temples, and slaughtering, always slaughtering.
A rumbling sound forced Rama to raise his gaze to the extremities of the city, where he saw the king’s highway boiling with more intruders. The asura forces covered the road all the way to the edge of the Southwoods, a distance of a full yojana. They flowed from the high rises of the Southwoods down to the city like a boiling black river of pestilence. Even at a glance, it was clear that the invaders vastly outnumbered the defenders. And yet, more kept coming in a constant seething flow. There seemed to be no end to their unholy numbers.
A screeching cry startled him from his horrified reverie. He looked up to see the early dawn sky darkening. Great hulking shadows coalesced into the winged shapes of flying bird-beasts, humanoid creatures out of myth and fable. He stared in disbelief at what seemed to be Garudas and Jatayus, named after the gigantic mythic man-eagle and enormous fabled man-vulture of ancient folklore. Their slender, lightly feathered bodies were strikingly humanoid, except for the bird-like eyes and beaks, and the incredible muscular wings growing from their backs. Some had a wingspan as much as ten yards or more. They swooped down to the streets below, down to the killing floor of the slaughterhouse that Ayodhya had become. Rama scanned the sky and saw hundreds, perhaps thousands of the flying creatures, flocking to the carnage, calling to each other exultantly in their proto-human speech. As they reached street level and a new wave of horror began, he shut his eyes and staggered back, away from the aperture, unable to absorb any more.
Now do you see the futility of resisting me and my forces? Would you like to see your kith and kin ravished and slaughtered like your countrymen below? Your brothers, perhaps? Or your birth-mother? Or—
Rama lashed out. This time he struck without discipline or stance. Pure rage fuelled his actions. The sword slashed through empty air. He came to his senses a moment later, at the far end of the tower chamber, sword vibrating in his double-handed grip. He had traced an interweaving mandala pattern that covered every square yard of the chamber. There was no living being here. His eyes misted with impotent rage.
‘Who are you? Why do you show me these monstrous visions? Reveal yourself, damn you!’
Boy. You still haven’t seen the real horrors. The best part comes later, when the survivors are taken back to Lanka as my slaves and whores. Shall I show you that now?
‘What do you want from me, demon?’
The cry was torn from his throat by an emotion more powerful than simple rage. It was an attempt to understand, to make sense of the evil that confronted him.
Now, you begin to learn. Yes, I do want something from you. A vow of allegiance. Bend your knee to me now, this instant, and swear fealty to me. Do this now, and perhaps I shall see fit to spare Ayodhya when my armies lay waste the nations of Arya. Kneel, boy, and live.
He forced his breathing to stay measured, his voice as steady as he could keep it. It took more strength than wielding the sword.
‘The only time I would bend my knee before you is when I kneel to aim an arrow at your cursed brain. Show yourself and face me like the man you claim you are, coward!’
Lightning shattered the sky above the Seers’ Tower. Lightning out of a pitch-black sky. Thunder boomed and echoed an instant later. When the voice resumed, it sounded like giant teeth gnashing in frustration.
Boy. Still just a boy. But you will learn. I will teach you the song of pain and terror. And you will bend your knee then. You will beg and cry for the honour of kneeling to me. Until then, sleep your childish sleep, boy. And remember this well: Ayodhya will fall.
Another blinding flash of white light.
He woke in his bed, chest heaving, sweat-drenched, fever-hot, bone-chilled. He sprang to his feet, stood naked on the cool redstone floor—he had tossed off his loincloth as the night grew warmer. Even as he reached for his sword, he knew that it was still there on the bed where it had lain all night, untouched.
Just another bad dream, he thought, willing himself to calm down. He remembered the perfection of his movements and asanas in the dream, and also how futile all his training had proved. Who was this faceless beast that tortured him this way? This was the third time this week alone that the monster had appeared and shown him similarly horrible dream-visions. Too horrible to discuss with anyone else. He hadn’t even told Lakshman, and he always told Lakshman everything. Just another nightmare. As real and terrifying as all nightmares usually were.
But this time, it felt like something more.
It felt like a prophecy.
THREE
The traveller reached the top of the rise and paused.
Ayodhya.
He was clad in the simple garb of an ascetic. The coarse white dhoti girding his loins, wooden toe-grip slippers on his feet, matted unkempt hair swirling around his craggy face, the long straggly white beard, the red-beaded rudraksh mala around his neck, all marked him for a hermit returning from a long, hard tapasya. His gaunt face and deep-set eyes completed the portrait of a forest penitent, a tapasvi sadhu.
Yet there was something about him that set him apart from any ordinary sadhu or hermit. An indefinable quality that belied the obvious first impression. An alertness in his intense predatory eyes, a sense of banked power in his fluid movements, a hint of hidden strength, and most of all, an unmistakable regal air.
He had been a warrior once. A king even. Lord of an ancient and illustrious northern Arya clan, master of a great throne and monarch of a rich dynasty. He had given it all up millennia earlier to pursue a life of total dedication to the pursuit of Brahman, the life-force that knit the universe. Now, he wielded this wooden staff instead of a sword, voiced mantras instead of royal edicts. His kingdom was the realm of atman and Brahman, spirit and power. His name had passed beyond history, across the boundaries of legend, into the misty realms of myth. A guru among gurus, a seer that other seers looked up to reverentially. A Brahmarishi. Yet the regal bearing and manner had not left him entirely. And at this fateful moment, this cusp of history, as he stood sketched against the sky on that high peak, gazing down at the lush, epic beauty of the Sarayu valley, he looked every inch the king he had once been.