Prince of Dharma (54 page)

‘Yes,’ Kaikeyi admitted. ‘But I hope Dasa won’t really die. I mean, I was angry with him. But if he dies …’ 

Manthara’s voice was as sharp as a whip cracking across the flank of a wayward horse. ‘If he dies, then his successor will become maharaja at once. And that successor will be Bharat.’ 

At the mention of Bharat, Kaikeyi’s face lit up. ‘Yes! I understand that. But how exactly will it happen? I mean, as of now Rama is still crown-prince-in-waiting. And if Dasa passes away without changing his decision …’ 

‘Dasa will live a while yet. Long enough to change his decision.’ Manthara smiled, her lips curling up slowly in contempt. ‘And long enough to see the bloody, broken corpse of Rama laid before his eyes.’ 

Kaikeyi’s eyes widened. ‘Rama? Dead? But how? You don’t mean that we will—’ Then understanding dawned on her face. ‘Of course! The Bhayanak-van. The asuras will kill him. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’ She frowned. ‘But what if he survives? What if he returns home safe and claims the crown? He’ll be a hero then. The people will support him over Bharat. So will the court.’ 

‘The people and the court will support their maharaja. And as I said before, the maharaja will rescind his decision and declare Bharat his successor. Less than two weeks from today.’ 

Kaikeyi reached for another large paan, glancing questioningly at Manthara first. Manthara gestured. Kaikeyi thankfully stuffed the delicacy into her mouth, chewing steadily as she pondered Manthara’s words. 

‘But,’ she said through the mouthful of spices and betelnut, ‘how can you be so sure? I mean, how can you guarantee that Dasaratha will rescind and declare Bharat?’ 

Manthara leaned forward. ‘Because we will make him.’ 

Kaikeyi stopped chewing. ‘How?’ 

Manthara told her. 

Kaikeyi choked on her paan. She went into a paroxysm of coughing, spewing out pieces of paan and juice and assorted flecks and bits of various things. Manthara watched her, wrinkling her nose in disgust yet keenly aware that it was weaknesses such as Kaikeyi’s gluttony that gave Manthara greater control over her. 

Finally, Kaikeyi regained control of her voice again. ‘Manthara,’ she said, hoarsely. ‘You’re a genius. You think the time is right to do it now?’ 

‘Not yet,’ Manthara said. ‘But soon. Very soon.’ 

SEVENTEEN 

Vishwamitra raised his arms over his head, gripped his staff in both fists, and leaped off the raft. He landed in a flurry of dried leaves and dust that rose like a nest of agitated serpents. 

Rama and Lakshman followed his example, leaping together. At the instant their feet were about to leave the raft, it issued a groaning noise and shifted uneasily. Rama corrected himself in mid-leap, landing upright, but Lakshman lost his balance and landed on one foot, stumbling forward. 

Rama caught him just in time to avoid him striking his chin on his bended knee. Lakshman recovered and stood, darting a suspicious look back at the raft. Rama turned to find the seer staring in a southwesterly direction. Dust motes swirled around him, caught in a solitary thin shaft of sunlight that had somehow managed to penetrate the thickly webbed foliage. 

‘Our presence has been sensed already. Soon she will get word of our arrival. At first, she will not deign to come herself, believing her minions to be more than capable of dealing with us. Only when they fail will she take serious note. Even then, we may have to go to her rather than wait for her to approach. Her power grows strongest at midnight, and is weakest at noonday, when the sun reaches its zenith. That is the time you must attack, and cleanse the earth of Tataka forever.’ 

Rama sensed Lakshman’s surprise before his brother spoke aloud. ‘Tataka? Parantu mahadev, just last night Rishi Adhranga told us the story of how Kartikeya killed her.’ 

Vishwamitra glanced at Lakshman. ‘The story he told was of the history of Kama’s Grove, Rajkumar Lakshman. Of how Kamadev and Parvati-devi interrupted Lord Shiva’s grief-stricken meditation to tempt him into creating a son who would be able to destroy the evil Yaksi. That son was Kartikeya and he was indeed created to kill Tataka, which duty he fulfilled to his great honour.’ 

Lakshman looked even more confused. ‘But if Tataka was killed …’ 

Vishwamitra held up a hand, motioning for silence. He listened carefully for a moment. Rama attuned his senses to the seer’s pitch, a level slightly below the normal range of human hearing, and heard what the sage heard: a distant thumping, like a giant hammer being struck on some unimaginably large anvil. But the sound was many dozens of yojanas distant, and was growing fainter rather than louder. Whatever was causing it was clearly travelling away from them. The seer returned his attention to Lakshman’s question. 

‘Tataka is dead. Killed by Kartikeya. But as you know, matter can never truly be destroyed, only transformed. So when she died, she only left this mortal plane and was sent to the next plane, where she now belonged. Where would that be, Rajkumar Rama?’

‘To the netherworld,’ Rama replied. ‘Narak. The third and lowest of the three worlds. Otherwise called Hell.’ 

The seer indicated the forest around them. ‘Behold. Hell.’ 

Lakshman and Rama looked around, baffled. 

‘But, mahadev, we are still on prithvi, are we not? How can hell be here?’ Lakshman pointed upstream in the direction from which they had just come. ‘This is very much our own world, the mortal plane of prithvi.’ 

The seer nodded. ‘This is the sorcerous power of Ravana, king of the asuras, young Lakshman. Listen.’ 

He leaned on his staff as he spoke. ‘After he was banished by the devas to patal, the lowest level of hell, Ravana the Terrible spent many thousands of years performing bhor tapasya so austere and awful to contemplate that even the devas were compelled to grant him many boons. Among those boons was his elevation to the stature of a master of Brahmanical power, a level of shakti comparable only to that which is wielded by the Seven Seers, the brahmarishis like myself who have been ordained by Brahma himself to oversee the smooth functioning and harmony of the three worlds. 

‘But Ravana misused his shakti, performing terrible, barbaric sacrificial yagnas to achieve evil ends. One result of his efforts was the tearing of a hole between the realms of prithvi and patal. This was the very reason why he chose to build his capital, the Black Fortress, over the then submerged island of Lanka. Lanka was in fact not a piece of dry land at all, but a giant extinct volcano used by the devas to plug the entrance to patal deep beneath the Great Ocean. Ravana’s sorcery raised the island, resurrecting the volcano, with whose molten lava he built his impregnable fortress, creating a passageway through the heart of the volcano into patal. Through this, he raises a constant stream of asuras, recruiting them directly from hell itself, to create the largest asura host ever assembled.’ 

The seer pursed his lips tightly. ‘As long as that portal remains open, Ravana has access to unlimited hordes to fling at the Arya nations.’ 

Rama felt rather than saw the seer’s fist clench the threaded knob at the head of the staff. The motes of dust caught in the shaft of sunlight swirled faster, rising in a flurry like a dust dervish although there was not a mite of wind in the still, unnaturally silent forest. 

Lakshman shook his head, bewildered. ‘That is shocking, mahadev. But, pardon my asking, what does it have to do with Tataka and this Bhayanak-van? Lanka is hundreds of yojanas distant from here.’ He corrected himself uncertainly. ‘Or at least, it should be, by the normal laws of geography.’ 

Vishwamitra was patient despite the deep anger that Rama sensed within the seer. ‘What you say is true, Rajkumar Lakshman. But Ravana’s ill-gotten Brahman shakti has grown powerful enough to enable him to punch holes in the fabric that separates realms. He has made another such hole here, releasing Tataka and her berserker sons into this beautiful land, and giving the evil Yaksi dominion over it.’ 

Lakshman looked around, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. ‘Beautiful land, mahadev? This accursed forest?’ 

Vishwamitra leaned on his staff. ‘This accursed forest you see was once the site of two great twin cities, named Malada and Karusha.’ 

‘Malada, Karusha,’ Lakshman repeated. ‘Dirt and Impurity?’ 

‘Indeed. So named because it was at this place that Lord Indra was washed clean of the terrible sin of Brahmin-hatya by the devas using the pure cleansing waters of the holy Ganga. The two places where his dirt and impurities fell to earth he named Malada and Karusha, blessing them with eternal fertility and prosperity for absorbing the detritus of his sin. In time they became two of the most prosperous cities in mortal history, great storehouses of wealth renowned for the fertility of their farmlands. But then Ravana released Tataka and her bloodthirsty sons from Patal and gave them this country to roam and dominate. 

‘The Lord of Lanka did this with shrewd intent. Once, before even Lord Indra washed his sins here, this was the place where the great sage Agastya made his home and hermitage. It was here that originally Tataka was cursed by the sage and transformed by his shraap into the ugly wretched Yaksi she is now. By releasing Tataka into these same lands, Ravana could be certain of controlling her. For she can never leave this tract of forest to enter the world of Prithvi herself. This is her curse, to eternally haunt the Bhayanak-van, which, as you now know, was in fact once the blessed land Malada-Karusha.’ 

The seer pointed at the scummy stream behind them. ‘And that is all that remains of the sacred waters of the holy Ganga which fell to earth when Lord Indra washed his sins.’ 

Lakshman glanced in amazement at the filthy, choked stream. ‘The Ganga? That gutter of filth? It looks more like a Patalganga, the river of hell!’ 

‘Indeed, young prince. That is why the Patalganga is so named, because it is that stage of the holy Ganga that traverses the netherworld. Once that sickly stream you see there was also pure and clear as the Ganga itself. Tataka’s foul presence has made it unclean.’ 

The sage raised his staff and pointed south-west, in the direction he had been staring earlier. 

‘That way lies my ashram, where my fellow rishis await my swift return. Once we have purified this haunted forest and restored it to its earlier glory, it will become a place of the Prithvi once more, reclaimed from patal. The Ganga will flow clear and pure again, and this land will regain its former flowering beauty which it enjoyed after Indra’s blessings were showered upon it.’ 

Lakshman asked his next question in a tone that suggested he suspected what the seer’s answer might be. ‘How will we achieve this great and holy task, Gurudev? How will we convert Bhayanak-van back into a part of Prithvi once more?’ 

The seer looked at him impassively, then glanced at Rama. ‘By killing Tataka, of course. That is why we are here.’ 

Before Lakshman could give voice to his reaction, the sage stiffened, gesturing for silence. He turned his head this way, then that, listening intently. With his new powers, Rama could easily see what the seer saw, hear what he heard. 

‘They’re coming,’ Rama said quietly to his brother, reaching for his bow and stringing an arrow. 

Lakshman dropped to his knee in a shooting stance, drawing bow and arrow in the same action. 

‘Tataka and her sons?’ 

‘If it was them attacking all at once,’ the seer-mage replied grimly, ‘this fight would be over in moments, one way or another.’ 

He glanced up at the faint slices of sky visible through the intertwined branches high above. ‘It will be noonday in a few hours. We would do well to wait and face Tataka when the sun is at its highest point.’ 

He tilted his head, listening once more. 

‘In the meanwhile, we must contend with Tataka’s horde of minions.’ 

‘What are these creatures, mahadev? Rakshasas? Yaksas? Pisacas? Daityas?’ Lakshman licked his lips, his eyes flicking from side to side, bowstring stretched to its maximum. 

‘None of the asuras you name, young Lakshman. Tataka was too proud to ask Ravana for reinforcements to maintain her dominion. Or perhaps she feared that the Lord of Lanka might station a great force here and usurp her power to command. So she created her own fighting force.’ 

‘Created?’ 

‘By crossing the animals of these woods with her own rakshas sons. Mutant beings, neither wholly animal, rakshas or human, but with characteristics of all three. She has been breeding these cross-species monstrosities for a long time now, and only recently, Ravana has commanded her to multiply her stocks as rapidly as possible. He wishes to send them as berserkers and reavers north of the Sarayu to terrorise the farmers in the outlying regions of Kosala and other border kingdoms. In less than a week, he will issue the command for these terror forays to begin. So we are here just in time to foil his plans.’