Bejoo waited, not daring to speak lest he miss any part of Bheriya’s message. Finally, he heard three words, spoken a little louder than the preceding ones, punctuated at the end by a long, painful sigh, like a man drawing his last breath, then the temple fell silent.
Bejoo raised his head, his eyes meeting the black stone representing Shani. The deva’s effigy glistened, flower petals sticking randomly to the surface of the smoothly carved stone, the three thick horizontal saffron lines on the forehead of the effigy slightly blurred by the daily pouring of oil by devotees.
He looked at the coconut kernel that he had yet to break. He should complete the ritual and consume the sacred food, sharing it with his men to ensure a safe and successful journey today. But somehow, his heart was no longer in the ritual. A cold sense of foreboding had begun to spread through his being, chilling him to his core.
Bheriya’s message rang in his ears like the echoes of the now-silent temple bells. A twice-lifer possessed by a malevolent soul was on his way to Ayodhya, carrying deceit that could disarm Ayodhya’s defence against an imminent invasion. Bejoo couldn’t understand how a solitary man–let alone a walking corpse–could achieve such an ambitious task, but he knew better than to underestimate the power of the Lord of Lanka. His job was not to analyse the situation, simply to report. Which he felt he must do at once, before any damage was done. Ride back to Ayodhya like the wind, speak his message into the king’s ear discreetly, trust that Maharaja Dasaratha would believe his story of messages from a ghost and walking-dead imposters. Expose and dispatch the twice-lifer quickly and help the kingdom concentrate on its real challenge–preparing for the impending invasion.
Just that last thought chilled him further: an all-out asura invasion on the Arya nations? It was true then, what the seermage Vishwamitra had spoken of back in the sabha hall of Ayodhya just nine days ago. Ravana’s army was ready to invade. When? Within days? Weeks? Months? Bheriya hadn’t said, but Bejoo had the impression it would be soon. Perhaps a day or two, at most a week.
So his path of action seemed quite logical and clear. Return to Ayodhya. Expose the imposter. Help prepare the kingdom for the coming invasion.
But Bheriya’s last words had been equally clear. The aatma of his former lieutenant–the man he had come to think of as a surrogate son, the son Bejoo had never had but had yearned for all his life–had not advised him to do any of these things. On the contrary, the ghost had clearly said he must not return to Ayodhya. Bheriya had warned of danger to the rajkumars Rama and Lakshman, whose protection was Bejoo’s sworn duty until their safe return home. And at the very end, the words that Bheriya had managed to convey through the idol of Shani-deva itself–another portentous omen, if Bejoo needed one–were the cause of his current confusion and deep unease.
Bheriya’s last words had been: ‘Go to Mithila.’
SIX
Manthara allowed herself a tiny flicker of amusement. She waved the trident over the images flickering in the unholy fire, the blood-encrusted tines blackening in the flames. The image of Kausalya and Dasaratha embracing in the maharaja’s sick-chamber wavered then blurred to obscurity.
Manthara closed the spell of maya, the mesmerising art of illusion, with an invocation to her master. Once again, she thanked the Lord of Lanka’s immense mastery of Brahman that had cloaked her furtive activities from even the consciousness of the powerful Guru Vashishta. She knew that the ancient seer sensed the use of Brahman in the vicinity–no mantra could mask that–but he was unable to pinpoint Manthara as the source of the flow. Nor was he even suspicious of the ageing deformed wet nurse. Which was because Manthara wasn’t the source–she was merely the channel the Dark Lord used to achieve his ends.
Manthara mused on what she had just seen.
It made her want to vomit.
Kausalya thought she could rouse Dasaratha out of his stupor and talk him into performing miracles overnight.
Her faith in him had even convinced the maharaja that it was possible.
But both of them were about to be thrown off their cloudy perch and brought crashing down to earthy reality again.
It was time to start the final act of this drama. And this time, she, Manthara, would be the heroine of her own epic poem. Not relegated to the sidelines as a mere bit player in the chorus, or typecast as a villainous shrew on account of her birth deformity and misshapen form. No. In the playhouse of the lord of Lanka, maya was supreme. You could be anything you chose to be. Even a deva, if it pleased you. For what was a deva, she mused, if not the highest caste of all, a caste of proto-Brahmins who had arrogantly granted themselves supreme elevation above all others? Yes, she could be a deva if she pleased.
Manthara rose with difficulty and went to the far wall of the secret room. A mantra muttered, a quick gesture, and the wall melted away to provide a portal through which she passed. She had no need to bend over to pass through–her hunchback gave her a natural stoop, compelling her to go through life in a perpetual posture of apparent servitude. It had been the source of great humiliation in her childhood; now, it was the mark that proclaimed her uniqueness among a race of tall, sculpted Arya women.
Ravana had brought this to her attention at the outset of their relationship, when she had only just begun to worship the dark asura lord in a desperate adolescent search for a deity that could hear her angry, fervent pleas for justice and reparation.
Manthara, he had said to her that fateful day, your body is stooped because your mind towers above all others. The devas feared that if they let your physical body reflect the stature of your mind and soul, you would overshadow all other Arya women. Out of jealousy, the devi recast you in this form, bending your spine in the womb of your mother.
Yes, my lord, she said silently as she emerged into her own private chambers, sealing the portal to the secret chamber. She passed out of the traditional pooja room which she maintained for the sake of appearances and into her bedchamber. You spoke truly. And now the time approaches for me to seek redressal for my unfair treatment at the hands of the devas. Soon I will have power enough to bend the spines of all these wretched Aryas who walk so proudly tall and straight; bend them … and break them.
The serving girl started as Manthara emerged from the bedchamber.
‘Mistress!’ she said, dropping the gold drinking vessel she was holding. Manthara cursed and gestured. The vessel froze in mid-air. She gestured again and it rose up and hovered inches before the astonished serving girl.
‘You were stealing from me,’ Manthara said.
The girl stared at the drinking vessel suspended in midair, her fingers instinctively clasped together in a namaskar to the gods. She swallowed, terror making her voice tremble. ‘No, milady! I was only admiring the craftsmanship.’
The gold vessel leaped forward, striking the girl on the forehead with a dull ringing. She gasped and fell back several steps. The vessel followed her, hovering overhead like a cobra stalking its prey. ‘Forgive me, mistress! Yes, I did have impure thoughts! But I would have resisted them. I would never actually steal from you. Forgive me, my lady!’
Manthara gestured impatiently. The drinking vessel flew back to the nightstand beside her bed and came to rest there, making only the tiniest click as it came into contact with solid wood. She shuffled forward, her uneven legs–one was longer than the other–giving her a lurching gait that still made children laugh and sneer when she went by, and struck the serving girl hard on her cheek.
The girl cried out and fell to her knees, fat tears pushing their way out of her large green eyes and spilling down the front of her blouseless garment, rolling down the swelling curves of her bare breasts. She clutched Manthara’s feet, kissing them fervently.
‘I beg you, mistress, do not kill me. I will serve you in any way you desire. Please, only let me live!’
‘Get up, harlot,’ Manthara said quietly. She was perfectly calm. The slap had been only routine discipline. It would not do to let the girl think she could steal from Manthara. Already, she knew more than Manthara would have liked. It was only the special warding mantra that ensured her silence about the dark, unlawful deeds she had witnessed over the years that kept her alive. The day she crossed the line, she would become just another pile of solid fuel for Manthara’s fire ritual in the secret chamber.
Until then, Manthara had use for her.
Especially today.
The girl rose to her feet, blubbering foolishly. Manthara slapped her again, not hard, just enough to make her stop crying and pay attention.
‘Stand straight, don’t slouch,’ Manthara barked. ‘What are you? Hunchbacked? Stand like an Arya!’
The serving girl looked dumbfounded at this unexpected criticism, coming from the most severely deformed hunchback in Ayodhya. She stood straight, thrusting her exquisitely formed bust forward. Her pallo had slipped off, leaving her naked from the neck down to her abdomen.
Manthara poked at her firm belly, then at her ripe high breasts with intense scrutiny. The girl visibly resisted the urge to giggle, tickled by the prodding and pressing. When Manthara’s claw-like fingers brushed her nipples, she stopped giggling and sighed instead. The aureoles turned rosy pink and the nipples swelled to their fullest.
‘Mistress,’ she whispered. ‘Do you wish me to please you? I have much experience in the art of love, and am proficient in loving both men and women. If you wish, I could—’
‘I wish you to stand still and shut your maggoty mouth,’ Manthara snapped. She walked around the girl, continuing her examination with almost clinical detachment. She grimaced at the girl’s offer; how could humans take pleasure from rubbing sweaty bodies against one another, and the violent exchange of bodily fluids? It was a notion repellent to Manthara, and a mystery that she had always found inscrutable.
She told the girl to strip. Wide-eyed and flushed now, the girl did as she was ordered. Manthara finished her examination and nodded to the girl. ‘Be very still now. Whatever happens, you must not move or speak a word until I command it. Understood?’
The girl nodded vigorously, eager to please.
Manthara began the incantation. The words came easily, passing through her like water through a sieve. The Lord of Lanka had infused her brain with the mantras at their last communion, along with the details of the action he wished her to take. All Manthara had to do now was let the mantras speak themselves.
When she had finished, several moments later, the serving girl was gone.
In her place stood the living effigy of Second Queen Kaikeyi.
Manthara stood the girl before a full-length mirror and showed her her new form. The girl gasped in Kaikeyi’s husky tones, touching her naked body in disbelief. She was fleshier now, as befitted a woman who had borne a son and packed a lifetime of carousing and gluttony into the last fifteen self-indulgent years.
‘Mistress,’ she said in awed amazement. ‘Your power is boundless!’
‘Shut up,’ Manthara said absently. She was deciding which garment the girl should wear in her new avatar. If she was to appear to be Rani Kaikeyi, she must wear Kaikeyi’s jewellery and saris. Kaikeyi had her own individually designed saris, gold-inlaid and embroidered so heavily as to weigh more than entire jewellery sets worn by the other titled queens. The girl must wear one of those trademark saris or the guise would be incomplete. And jewellery. Nobody could mistake the jangle of Kaikeyi stalking the corridors and hallways of the palace. Kaikeyi appearing in public without her trademark five or ten kilos of solid gold jewellery would be as noticeable as a plucked peacock.
‘Come with me,’ she said, going to the door.
The serving girl hesitated at the doorway of Manthara’s chambers.
‘Mistress?’
Manthara looked back, frowning impatiently. ‘Come on! I haven’t got all day!’
‘But I’m not clothed! The guards … ‘
‘The guards have seen more happenings on a feast night in these corridors than you’ve dreamed of in your wretched lifetime. Come on, now. We have to go to Rani Kaikeyi’s palace to get you dressed.’
The girl stared stupidly through Kaikeyi’s light brown eyes. ‘But what about Rani Kaikeyi? Won’t she object? And what will she say when she sees me like this?’
Manthara cursed the girl’s parentage, her clan, and her ancestors back to the beginning of time. ‘Rani Kaikeyi is asleep. She has slept eight days and nights and will sleep eight more days and nights if it so pleases me. What did you think? That I would have two Rani Kaikeyis running around the palace? Do you take me for a fool? Enough talk now, you stupid she-goat. Come on!’
The girl went, still blushing furiously as they walked down the winding corridors. Once they were actually underway, however, she began to change her tune, relishing the amused— and amazed—glances and stares from the guards, other serving girls, daiimaas, and other palace staff that they passed en route. The realisation that they were seeing not her, an ordinary serving girl, but Rani Kaikeyi, Second Queen of Ayodhya, gave her a new boldness. She began to strut and roll her hips, deliberately flaunting her nakedness, brushing against the guards, showing off her fleshy nudity.
Manthara gritted her teeth and let the girl have her foolish thrills; she didn’t want to attract further attention by seeming to chastise her mistress publicly. At best, the bemused spectators would assume that the Second Queen had been consuming more soma than she could hold, and was in an unusually carefree mood because of the maharaja’s recovery. News of this last event had already spread through the entire palace, she knew, in the time it had taken her to recast the serving girl in Kaikeyi’s physical form. The crowds waiting eagerly outside the palace gates for word of their king’s condition—some camped for the past eight nights—were cheering hoarsely and asking for their liege to show himself on one of the balconies facing Raghuvamsha Avenue so they could worship their godlike ruler and praise the devas for aiding his recovery. In the flurry of excitement, the brief naked walk of the girl disguised as Kaikeyi would hardly be noticed.