Gone was the odour of scented bath and rose petals. Instead, an alien stench assaulted her nostrils: sharp, pungent, penetrating. It reeked of something ancient and corrupt, of dank dungeons and moulding corpses, of mausoleums and tombs that had not seen the light of day for centuries.
She scanned the chamber urgently, seeing everything, missing nothing. Seeking. Scouring.
The chamber was empty.
No attackers, no assassins. Just the drapes dancing in the wind, undulating like a drunken gypsy naachwaali in a lotus-lust frenzy. And that fetor, like … like … What was it? It was like a Nilgiri stag in musth. Like the stench of a wildcat carcass rotting in nightsoil, remembered from when she was eight and out hunting with her father. Like the smell of her monthly blood-nights, but deeper, more acrid and sour.
Still in the dragon crouch, she moved through the room with the speed of a panther in sight of prey, snatching up the nearest weapon at hand—a curved sword from a brass suit of armour once worn by an illustrious ancestor—and completed a full circuit of the chamber in seconds. The four-footed crouch was impossible to maintain for long stretches but perfect for a quick sweep; it kept her out of the eye-level of any aggressor and enabled her to move lithely and swiftly, turning on four points rather than two.
Nothing, no one. Chamber empty and sterile of risk.
Your beauty past compare, your body a perfect poem composed by Mother Prithvi herself in a paroxysm of divine inspiration.
She whirled, feeling violated. She had been enjoying the breeze, surrendering to the languid relaxation of halfsleep, clad for the privacy of the bedchamber. Not preening for the eyes of some uninvited watcher. She was Rajkumari Sita Vaidehi Janaki, crown princess of Mithila. Her body, her beauty, were for her future husband’s eyes alone, a husband she would choose of her own volition, not for this alien presence who dared not even show himself, the coward.
That is easily remedied, my love. Would you like to gaze upon me? To appreciate the masculine perfection of my body as I have admired your feminine secrets? It would be only fair.
A gust of heat below her left ear, like a sigh released reluctantly. She spun, sword flashing in the moonlit dimness, slashed at empty shadows.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to reveal myself before you, in all my masculine splendour. Soon, I vow, you will look upon me and we will join together in a glorious union. The god of love himself could not orchestrate a more perfect joining.
She lunged out with the sword, guided by her instincts rather than her eyes. Yes, I want to see your body, she wanted to shout, so I can sink this needle-sharp blade into your flesh and free your life’s blood. She wanted to silence the voice that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, inside her and beside her left shoulder, in the veranda outside and inside her wardrobe across the room, all at once. To stop the arrogant presumptuousness of this invader.
‘Show yourself, you craven,’ she said aloud, her voice merging with the loud thrumming of the drapes in the gale-strength wind that billowed now through the chamber. ‘I’ll kill you before you lay a finger on me.’
And yet, before long, you will beg me to lay my hands on you and give you the gift of my seed. It is our fate, my sweet one. It is our karma.
‘It’s your karma to die at my hands,’ she spat. ‘Show yourself if you have an ounce of manhood. Show yourself and face me like a man.’
Girl. Still you do not understand. See then for yourself. See and believe.
A blinding flash of crimson light scorched her vision and she was transported.
THREE
The rain struck her with the fury of a monsoon storm, lashing her face and scantily covered body like a nine-tailed whip. She
resisted the urge to cry out, not wanting to give her oppressor the satisfaction. But her foot slipped on the wet slimy stone floor and she fell to her knees hard. She grasped the wall before her, struggling for a handhold on the slippery blackstone, and found a rectangular slit.
The rain battered her relentlessly, unpleasantly warm and smelling oddly acidic. She tried to avoid swallowing any, but it ran into her eyes incessantly, stinging like brine. A knee-high stream rushed around her feet, pushing her to the right. The rainwash was being sucked down a gaping hole with the force of a swollen river in spate. She recognised it for a siege-bore, a funnel-shaped pit in the floor of the rampart designed for pouring boiling oil on invading armies.
She used a pranayam breathing rhythm to calm herself, slowing her heartbeat from a Holi-dance drumbeat to a measured yagna chant-measure. She felt the moment of panic dissipate with each successive breath.
A thundering sound rumbled low and deep, coming from all around her. She recognised it for the sound of the ocean and knew at once that she was on the rampart of an island fortress. The toxic scent in the air, the warm rain, the faint odour of ash and something that smelled like smelting iron confirmed that the mountains were volcanic, and recently active. The fortress ran along a volcanic ridge, and rose and fell with its gradient. Moss-coated crenellations in the wall told her additionally that this keep had not suffered a siege for a very long time. Not for decades, centuries even.
Suddenly the rain felt as cold as ice, chilling her to the bone.
She knew of only one such island fortress in the subcontinent. And that one was not situated in any Arya nation, or any kingdom friendly to the Arya nations.
The rain had lessened sufficiently for her to venture a glance upwards. The sky seemed to loom just inches above her head, as besmirched as a rust-blackened tin roof that somebody had neglected to clean. Purple-blue clouds boiled and seethed like smoke from a dozen separate fires clashing and colliding. As they parted, the light grew, revealing an ominous and bleak sky. She blinked at the unexpected light. The stormclouds dispersed quickly, their fury spent. The rain died. The sucking, gurgling sound of the rainwash going down the numerous siege-bores faded away at last, permitting a new sound to reach her ears.
It was coming from somewhere far below. Slowly, as she listened and attuned her senses, she realised that it was not new. The sound had been there from the instant she had appeared on this rampart, but she had mistaken it for some effect of the rain and wind. Only now could she discern it as a sound caused by living beings. Once she listened for it, it was unmistakable. She knew that sound. As a warrior-princess of one of the seven greatest Arya nations, it was a sound she was bred to recognise, respect and fear.
It was the sound of an army assembling for battle.
She moved instinctively to her left, the ground sloping upwards. At the end three broad steps were cut into the rock. She climbed the last one and found herself on a promontory that seemed to lunge for the belly of a looming thundercloud. Jagged spokes of crumbling blackstone and rusting iron fused together like the spokes of a giant crown slashing the empty air. She approached the outer edge cautiously, her breath catching in her throat as a gust of wind pushed at her like an invisible hand. The terrible sound grew louder as she reached the lip of the precipice. She looked down.
‘Devi, protect us!’
The exclamation was torn from her lips and shredded by the wind.
An army of asuras lay assembled, far below the thousand-foot-high fortress. Seen from this height, in this murky monsoon light, they seemed little more than ants swarming across a forest floor. Yet the sheer numbers awed her. It was a living carpet of bestial species, covering every square yard of the island-kingdom. Their distinctive shapes and movements were unmistakable even when seen from this great height.
Scores of different species of asuras moved in ragged lines interrupted by inter-species and inter-rank scuffles and brawls. Rakshasas, nagas, uragas, pisacas, danavs, daityas, gandharvas, vetaals, and other species she couldn’t name were pouring out of the fortress atop which she stood.
Roars of outrage, shrieks of fury, ululating cries of anger rose and fell as the belligerent beasts brushed against their alien compatriots. Bellowed commands overrode all other cries, issued by larger, distinctly marked rakshasas who stood on wooden riggings, wielding ten-yard-long whips with knife-tipped ends. She searched her childhood memories of daiimaa tales, seeking the name of those larger rakshasas. It came to her with an ease that surprised her: kumbha-rakshasas.
The kumbha-rakshasas were a giant sub-species of rakshasas; in the complex hierarchy of the asura races, rakshasas reigned supreme, while kumbha-rakshasas reigned over their fellow rakshasas as well as all other asuras. There were similar distinctions between the other demonaic species as well, she saw, a kind of grotesque mirroring of the caste divisions of the Arya peoples. The kumbha-rakshasas towered above the other asura castes, working their whips ceaselessly to administer control and direction. The brutal, slashing sounds of their whip-blades cutting through carapace and flesh and bone added to the chaotic melee. The other species howled in fury at this brutal treatment but continued to move in their sullen lines.
Yet, as she watched in fascination, she understood that it wasn’t just the size of the kumbha-rakshasas that held their fellows in check: the other species combined easily outnumbered their cruel captains and asuras were notorious for their inability to accept order and discipline. Those hulking, snarling beasts down there would sooner feed on the kumbha-rakshasas than obey them. A few hundred ten-yard-tall demons with blade-tipped whips were hardly enough to keep a million ferocious beasts submissive. So why were the asuras so obedient? The answer lay right before her eyes.
Only once before had all the asura species been united, and on that unforgettable occasion, it was said, the three worlds of heaven, earth and hell had trembled with fear. For that host had dared to invade nothing less than Swargalok itself, the plane of the devas. And the asuras had won that war, led by the selfdeclared king of the rakshasas. This sight could only mean one thing: the asura species had been reunited for a fresh assault on one of the two higher worlds. And only one being could be responsible.
The clouds lifted, buffeted onwards by the gale-force winds high above, and suddenly her opinions were confirmed by a panoramic vista as breathtaking as it was awful.
Moored off the shores of the island, stretching out into the open ocean as far as she could see, was the largest fleet of warships ever assembled. At least, it must be the largest, for she had never heard of such numbers before, let alone seen such an armada with her own eyes. The Arya nations were not sea-faring people; the few forays their ancestors had ventured upon the watery deserts of the oceans had not been auspicious. The belief had set in, once mere uneasy superstition, now rock-hard conviction, that they were not meant to cross the large saltwaters of the world. Just as every civilised deva-devout Arya believed in the sacred cleansing powers of the holy River Ganga, so also did they believe in the unholy destructive power of the deserts of brine.
And like a terrible prophecy fulfilled, here was living proof that the oceans could bring death and destruction to mortal civilisation. A fleet of asura warships such as even myth or legend had never described before, assembled here off the shores of this desolate island-kingdom. The sight chilled and seared her soul both at once, causing her to drop to her knees and grip the slippery rim of the promontory in anguish.
Her body pressed to the cold wet stone of the promontory, she peered down intently, seeing the clear pattern in the bestial chaos.
The asuras were being driven to the ships. Endless hordes of different species were emerging from the bowels of the fortress, clambering up the mushy wet black soil and being directed to the dozens of piers that lined the rocky shores. As ships were filled to capacity, they moved away, travelling around the curve of the island, out of Sita’s line of sight. From their careful orchestrated movements she had the impression that they were being lined up on the far side of the island, some kind of holding point where they were to wait before proceeding to their final destination. But which destination was that?
Suddenly, the answer was obvious.
She rose to her feet with a start, the keening wind pushing at her roughly, trying to shove her over the edge. She stood her ground, turning this way, then that, scanning the sky, the ocean, the lie of the winding fortress, judging distances, geographical positions by knowledge and instinct rather than scientific estimation. There were no stars or constellations to tell her for sure, yet she knew where she was with a cold, unshakeable certainty.
Lanka. The island-kingdom the self-declared king of rakshasas had stolen from his brother Kubera, a volcanic island off the southernmost tip of the sub-continent, which, through his perverse use of Brahman sorcery, the lord of rakshasas had turned into a portal to Narak, the hellish underworld. Domain of the king of the asura races and every foul scum that walked, crept, swam, crawled upon or flew above the mortal plane of Prithvi.
She had heard the stories, the terrible nightmarish tales. But she had never understood. Not completely. Not even when her own father and uncles and other survivors of the last asura war had narrated their terrible experiences. Because she was a child of peace, born in an age where demons and monsters were things of the past, things to be forgotten.
And yet here she was, on the mythical island that was the gateway to the underworld itself. Stronghold of the rakshasa king who had once sworn to dominate the three planes of mortals, devas and asuras. Whose original given name was long forgotten in the foggy swamps of race-memory, and who was eternally known by the name given to him by the devas. Three syllables which carried an entire compendium of meaning. He Who Makes The Universe Cry Out In Terror.