RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (25 page)

Above the seventh gate, Hanuman floated in an absurd posture, frozen in mid-air like an insect trapped in ancient tree sap. A fly in amber? Possibly. But amber did not float. The vanar lay suspended in mid-air, the air hard enough to hold him aloft.

The rider who had identified himself as Atikaya, lowered the sword in his hand at last. The screaming from his mouth subsided. He brought the sword closer to his face, the hilt clutched in his palm a breath away from his lips and whispered softly. The words were in the ancient rakshasa speech, and had some similarity to Sanskrit highspeech. But the dialect Atikaya used was like none used by any rakshasa now, nor did it correspond precisely to the peculiarly unique grammar of the language of the Vedas. It was a more archaic tongue, and he spoke it fluently, the alien sounds and intonations rolling off his tongue smoothly, mellifluously. He finished the incantation and the light subsided. From a blazing beacon that had illuminated the night-like darkness now enshrouding the city, it reduced in degrees until the sword glowed faintly, like a dying ember, then the white heat receded across the surface of the blade, like ripples of light passing across the gleaming steel strip, to fade finally into the intricate curves and slashes of the icons imbedded in the metal. It glowed one final time, like a just-forged blade, then the last light snuffed out completely and it was just a blade once more, albeit a whitemetal blade of no metal known to mortalkind.

Atikaya sheathed the blade smoothly.

He dismounted his horse.

He glanced back at the ranks lined up behind his position, the lines upon endless lines of armed and armoured soldiers on horseback, stretching as far down the raj-marg as the eye could see. They remained in the same unnatural, stiff postures they had been for the past hour or more, ever since he had called a halt. Their faces stared blankly ahead, eyes fixed on points nowhere in sight, like men and women lost in a fugue. Even the ones who had been sitting on their horses in the frontline with him. Yudhajit in particular bore a frown on his broad face, as if he had been frozen into immobility at the very moment when he began to suspect that perhaps, just perhaps, he and his countrymen had been duped and enrolled in a cause which was not entirely in their own best interests. Atikaya resisted the urge to snarl a grin at the man: it had not taken much to talk the Kekayans into abiding by his scheme; they were always spoiling for a war and always quick to distrust Ayodhya, in particular Rama Chandra, because of whom their own offspring Bharat had not been crowned prince-in-waiting to begin with, and whose exile had rendered Bharat a king in name only for fourteen years. They had seethed and fretted with the perceived insult of these events for all those years, and when an opportunity rose to blame someone for it, especially the man they considered a rival to their own bloodline, they did not need much prodding. But aggressive though they were, they were not fools; Yudhajit had started to suspect that all might not be as Atikaya and his mother had declared back in Kekaya before his grizzled father’s throne. The sheer confidence and authority with which Rama had disputed their assertions was enough to rouse his suspicions. Even the javelin that had struck Mandodhari so shockingly was not enough to remove that suspicion from the simple but stubborn mind of the eldest son of the Kekaya nation.

Speaking of Mandodhari…

Atikaya strolled over to the royal palanquin. Frozen in a tableau like a troupe of dancers at the end of a royal performance, waiting for the lights to be snuffed out so they could make their discreet exit, the rakshasis bent, reached, wailed, clutched, moaned and otherwise exuded horror and outrage at the plight of their mistress. Within their midst, Mandodhari lay sprawled on her back, head lolling sideways on the thigh of one of her servants. Atikaya bent down, crouching on his haunches. He held the sword behind himself so that it didn’t obstruct his crouch, and examined the gruesome wound closely. The javelin had done tremendous damage. His mother’s lungs, liver and other vital organs had been punctured and damaged terribly, her spine had been snapped and the sheer quantity of blood lost was enough to kill her in itself. She was on the verge of death. Only the swordsong had frozen her in stasis, along with every other living being around, thereby prolonging her life. The moment Atikaya sang the swordsong again and broke the spell of maya, Mandodhari would breathe her last. He mused on that a moment. Perhaps he ought to aid her departure. He peered at the wound, seeing inside it and into her body with the extranatural vision he possessed and saw a delicate spot where, if he nicked a damaged vein with a blade’s edge just so, it would be enough to finish her off. She would still remain frozen until he sang the world awake again, but at least once he did, she would die at once. That would leave her no time to speak any last words, to say anything that might be potentially damaging to his plans. It would also be merciful in a sense; she could not be saved, and he would simply be putting her out of her misery.

He did not wish to use Chandrahas for such a meagre task. The moonsword was not needed for such a trifle. He looked around, spied a handblade peeping from the cleavage of a rakshasi aide and tugged at it, easing it from the soft mounds of flesh in which it lay secure. He inserted the point of the blade into the open wound, probed around inside his mother’s gaping ribcage for a moment, then found the right spot. Just as he was about to cut the damaged vein open, she exuded a shuddering gasp and her hand shot out, grasping his wrist in a powerful grip. He almost screamed. Using him as her support, she pulled herself forward with a mighty wrench of energy and whispered hoarsely, blood bubbling from her mouth to run down her neck and disappear into the neckline of her gown.

“Do not forget why your father let you live, Ati. Not to fulfil your own twisted desires. But to complete his great plan. Even after I am gone, he will be watching you. Never think—”
A mess of something thick and cloggy choked its way up her heaving gullet and dribbled stickily from the edge of her lip. She retched, then continued, spattering a spray of blood as she finished:
“— never think he cannot reach out to you even now and admonish you. Remember who he is. Remember your given task. Fulfil your part and never—”

A hoarse, wheezing whistle came from her smashed chest and her eyes bulged, then rolled up into her head. She pitched back, striking her head against the edge of the palanquin’s carrying pole with a sickening sound, and lay still. She had released his hand as she fell lifeless, and he rubbed it ruefully now, smearing the blood and gore she had left on it. He waited in case there was still one last wheeze left in her. But she was gone for good this time. He cursed himself for forgetting momentarily that she would not be bound by the songspell of the sword that held the rest of the natural world in thrall. How could she be? She was a moon-mother as he a moon-child. But she was gone now and there would be no more arm-twisting, ear-bending, rump-paddling, head-rapping, or other forms of ‘admonishment’ as she called it. He took satisfaction in wiping his hands clean upon the hem of her gown, smearing the delicately embroidered rakshas silk. He rose and turned away, feeling a great burden fall from him.

As he walked toward the gate, he realized that he was now an orphan.

It was a hugely liberating feeling. He grinned as he cracked open the barred sally port with a single finger touch and savoured the moment before entering the city of his enemy. An orphan. No Ravana to tell him what to do and how to do it. No mother to ensure that he toed his father’s line, or else…

He was his own master now. And he was about to take charge of his new domain. His
home
, for a long time to come.

He stepped through the gate and into Ayodhya.

KAAND 3

ONE

Ayodhya lay in ruins.

Dense pillars of smoke rose up across the breadth of the city, interrupted by bellows of flame. Damaged houses lost integrity and crumbled into the smoking wreckage. Bodies and body parts lay strewn everywhere, an abbatoir of fresh slaughter. Weeping survivors crawled through the debris, leaving trails of life-fluids. Somewhere a baby howled, elsewhere a dying dog, somewhere else a confused caged beast in the royal menagerie, all mourning the same shared loss. The sky above the city had grown an angry red that was visible for yojanas around.

Ayodhya the proud, the beautiful, the undefeated, the unbesieged, had been vanquished at last. Those high walls, moats, towers, valiant defenders, millennia of military skill and tactical knowledge, all had come to naught in the end. The enemy had stepped through her gates unchecked, uncountered. Had worked his will. Ravaged as he desired. Pillaged. Raped. Brutalized. Using powers greater than any mortal could withstand – not that any had been given a chance to even try. For under the thrall of the moonspell, Atikaya had worked his vengeance in his father’s name. And even the greatest champions – Bharat, Shatrugan, Lakshman, Rama, Hanuman, countless other brave yoddhas – had lain frozen in grotesquely humiliating postures as the son of Ravana had wielded the sword Chandrahas and wreaked the terrible vengeance of Ravana.

Now, it was all over. A unknown measure of time had passed. Hours? Days? Weeks? It might have been months or years. It was impossible to tell from within the circuit of the songspell. For time itself had been frozen and all that transpired after the singing of the moonsword’s spellsong had taken place in some unearthly otherworldly haze. Atikaya had stalked the city’s proud avenues, laying waste to entire structures with a simple sweep of the greatsword. The Seer’s Eye, proudest landmark of the city, lay in a heap of rubble, brought down in a crashing avalanche with a few deft hews and thrusts of Chandrahas. The royal palace lay in shambles. The great trading houses, the mansions of the rich, the hovels of the poor, the ghettos of the less-socially acceptable lower varnas, all lay in battered ruins together, castes and communities commingled in a common devastation.

Atikaya walked upon the rubble, Chandrahas still singing its terrible hypnotic song. A keening sound that rode the uppermost limits of human hearing and would have set animals barking and roaring in outrage had the poor beasts still possessed independent locomotion and voice. It was a terrible, tragic song, for the sword knew what destruction it had wrought, what horrors it had participated in, what misery it had unleashed. It sang now for the dead it had reaved in thousands – nay,
tens
of thousands, lakhs even. For the lives it had ended, cut short, hacked down before their righteous time. The crunching of Atikaya’s boots upon mottled brick and marble grist was the only other sound that could be heard in the desolate byways of the ruined city, a depressingly mundane counterpoint to the supernatural keening wail of the haunted blade. And still Chandrahas sang on: of darkness and glamour, dreams sliced to shreds, nightmares unleashed, rich blood let loose upon satin bedspreads, mute beasts and mortals alike butchered as they lay pinned by the spellsong as helpless as insects impaled upon pins. Chandrahas sang a dirge for them all. And for their way of life. Their code of dharma. Their lives and loves and memories and monuments, their civilization and its itihasa. And yet, even through its wailing heart-breaking dirge, was a note of lustful longing. For its work was not yet done. There were still victims to be despatched.

Atikaya climbed down the side of the heap of rubble that had once marked the Seventh Watch. The ancient building that housed the headquarters of the PFs – the Purana Wafadars. It was the first structure that any visitor encountered on entering the city. Had encountered. It lay, like hundreds of other proud structures, in a pile of shattered stones and broken bricks now. And as he stepped away from it, he faced the seventh gate once more, the one through which he had entered to unleash his father’s vengeance. Outside that gate, the body of his mother lay rotting in the dust of the avenue. The long lines of armed and armoured mortal allies that Mandodhari and he had garnered through clever talk and fervent appeals and brought to Ayodhya also stood frozen still, but remained unharmed yet. He would slaughter them all as well. To send forth the message that
all
mortals were to be blamed for the invasion of Lanka and the death of Ravana. Sympathizers to Ayodhya, or enemies, it made no difference. The vengeance of Ravana was democratic and pervasive; it did not exclude anyone. Once the massacre of Ayodhya was done, he would go on to the other Arya nations, using tactics similar to the ones he had employed here. Unsheath the spellsong, freeze the denizens, then slaughter them like trussed-up fowl. Only a vague memory would remain of the great Aryavarta nations. And smouldering ruins.

After that, he would go on beyond the redmist mountains, to wipe out the vanar tribes and kingdoms. Then into the deep woods and caverns to hunt and destroy the rksaas. Chandrahas’s spellsong worked equally well on all living creatures. By the time his mission was done, not one furry tree-climber, tree-hugger, or tree-cutter would remain on this mortal realm. All three races had conspired to assault his island-nation, his people, his father. All three must be ended, snuffed out as completely as a wax-stick flame in a darkened chamber.

Then all the earthly realm would be his for the taking, Chandrahas the beacon that led him onwards to ultimate success. And after Prithvi-loka, the nether domains of Patalaloka and Naraka, and all the other hellish realms. And then the Swargalokas themselves, dominions of the devas. He would achieve what his father had once achieved: lordship over all three worlds. But unlike his father, he would hold onto that lordship forever. Not lose it through disinterest and self-indulgent wantonness. He, Atikaya, would be god of all worlds, always.

He smiled and raised the sword. Its keening song enthralled him, caused his heart to murmer within its breast, and it took all his will-power not to succumb to its seductive lure. Even though as moon-child he was immune to its power, yet the very affinity he shared with it made him vulnerable. If Chandrahas and its potent song were doom to most people, to him they were a seductive drug, tempting and luring him endlessly. Even now, a mere glance at the blade’s polished length drew him in like a whirlpool, promising sensual experiences beyond imagining, fulfillment beyond measure…

He tore his gaze away and forced his limbs to turn the sword downwards, then, with an exertion of will, he sheathed it. The song dimmed, yet remained at the periphery of hearing, like a silence so great that the mind generated ringing and roaring to fill the absence of stimulus.

He turned and looked at what he had wrought. The toppled towers and structures of Ayodhya lay before him, a wasteland strewn with the corpses of his most hated enemies. Fools. They had thought the resurrection of Kala-Nemi to be the real assault. That was only the distraction needed to permit him to approach close enough to the city gate without a full alarm being raised. As it was, the alarm had been raised, but in the heat of those desperate moments when it seemed Kala-Nemi would destroy the city, the presence of another crisis had been diminished and rendered less urgent long enough to let him get within striking distance. For even Chandrahas had its limits. A physical limit, that could be bounded by excessively high mountain ranges containing sufficient mineral and metal lodes. Or a psychic one, such as could be raised by one of sufficient prowess and spiritual strength. The saptarishis could resist its power, he knew. But where were the saptarishis now? The seven great brahmarishis who had walked the earth since the creation of the mortal plane were nowhere to be seen now. Vishwamitra, who had been such a bane, and who was responsible for the awakening of Rama’s own power, had long since retired to the highest Himalayan peaks, there to continue his long meditation. Guru Vashishta, as he was known – more famous for his teaching in recent decades than for his status as one of the great caucus of Seven – had retired to an unknown location, presumably to pursue meditation as well. It was what all maharishis did; their source of spiritual strength. All that power they wielded came ultimately from the channelling of brahman shakti, and brahman shakti took a great deal of time and sacrifice to accumulate and store. It meant that their downtime was considerably more than their uptime. And right now, not one saptarishi walked the mortal plane. Which meant that nobody could resist the awesome destructive force of Chandrahas.

Atikaya smiled slyly as he walked towards the gate he had entered earlier. It was time now to use the terrible sword upon the last Ayodhyans who survived. The ones he could have despatched the instant he entered the city, had he chosen. But he had chosen not to do so: for by leaving them alive, he had ensured that they witnessed every horrendous deed he inflicted upon their fellow citizens. If not first-hand, then through the screams and rending cries and other terrible sounds and after-effects that had ensued once he went on his rampage of death and destruction. One way or other, they had remained alive, and frozen into impotent immobility by the sword’s spellsong, while he had wreaked the vengeance his father had trained him for, saved him, raised him for. Ever since he was a babe, Atikaya had known that one day he would go forth and do this: today was that day. It was his only purpose in life. And neither Ravana nor Mandodhari had ever let him forget it.

As he walked towards the place where the survivors stood frozen in their absurd poses, he thought that the years of being kept secluded in his underground residence had been worth it. Seclusion so extreme that his skin had lost its pigmentation from lack of sunlight. In his own way, he had endured penitential seclusion too. Except that his years had been spent not in meditating in cross-legged silence upon a Himalayan peak, or subvocalizing the sacred mantra Aum infinite times, but in bonding with the forces that would someday aid in the destruction of his father’s foes. This blade that hung now by his side, had been won through accretions of moon-metal gained ounce by precious ounce over the 17 years of his own existence. The mineral itself had been sweated out of his own blood, after being acquired through exposure to moonlight via a secret well his father had created especially for the purpose – a thousand feet below ground, under the bosom of Lanka, he had lain spread-eagled nightly, naked, absorbing moonlight, while chanting mantras of his scholarly pater’s own composition. Ravana’s mastery of the vedas and knowledge of the smriti texts – the secret lore of Sanatan Dharma – had been poured into the creation of great, immensely powerful mahamantras. And those mantras, when chanted by Atikaya himself while exposing himself naked to the moon night after night – effectively offering up the vessel that was Atikaya’s own being, conceived and birthed under precisely auspicious moon signs and constellations, had enabled him to draw the shakti of the moon itself into his pores. It had been agony indescribable: to draw in moonlight itself and convert it within his body into metal… he still shuddered now as he recalled those torturous nights that seemed to never end. At the end of each moon-cycle, he had felt his entire being luminous with energy, possessed of power indescribable.Then of course had come the draining as, drop by precious drop, the moon-metal had been drawn out of his body, and eventually, they had possessed enough to forge into a sword. And now, here was the sword by his side, and he its wielder. And this the day of reckoning.

He drew the sword now, its song more plaintive, more filled with lust and longing and seductive greed than ever before.

For it knew that it was about to slice the veins and drink the blood and end the lives of its greatest enemies ever.

Atikaya stepped forward, his smile a snarl of anticipatory satisfaction.

It was time to kill Rama, his wife, his brothers, their mother.

Time to end the Suryavansha Ikshwaku line.

And to begin a new line. The race of Ravana upon Earth.

He chuckled. His laughter mingled with the screaming howl of Chandrahas as he approached the place where Rama’s blood-kin all stood frozen and helpless, and he raised the sword to deliver the most crucial part of his father’s vengeance.

TWO

Bharat watched with impotent fury as the glowing moon-sword rose in a high arc. The blade blazed with that same mercurial fire, beyond bright, impossible to look at directly. He was frozen at an angle that enabled him to see the weapon that would end his life, yet bent over in a manner that exposed his bare neck, inclined at an angle. A man sentenced to decapitation could hardly have been better positioned. The instant Chandrahas fell, it would separate his head from his body. Somewhere within the frozen immobility of the spell that held him in check, his shoulder still throbbed faintly. Or perhaps it was the memory of the pain that still remained to torture his imprisoned senses. Either way, he could do nothing but watch at this absurd, twisted angle as the moon-sword fell upon his neck and severed him from life.

He could not see the sword itself. The sheer brilliance of the blazing light emanating from it dazzled his vision, blinding him. All he could see

– like a man caught in a thick fog glimpsing silhouettes and shadows in the haze – was that the roaring screaming brilliance was rising up to hand’s breadth above the Lankan’s head, then pause before beginning its inevitable downward descent.

But before the sword fell and parted him from existence, something thumped to the ground behind Atikaya. Bharat could not see the rakshasa’s features, but from the pause in the smoth movement and the shimmering flickers of the energy-bathed weapon, he could deduce that the son of Ravana was puzzled too. What was that dull thumping sound? What had fallen? And from where?