There was the yaksha, who, according to the bones, was making speedy progress toward Ujjayini. Over his last few visits to the cremation ground, the high priest had cast many potent spells around the banyan, yet he couldn’t be certain any of them would be strong enough to ward off a resourceful and determined yaksha. To know what would stop the yaksha, he needed to see it in person, but try as he might, Shukracharya had failed to deduce a way of sneaking out of the palace and journeying to the cremation ground in broad daylight.
As if the yaksha was not doing enough to keep him on tenterhooks, the bones had made another startling and perplexing disclosure late the previous night. The high priest had wanted to check on what was happening in Devaloka in the wake of the attack on Amaravati – he suspected Indra would be rallying a counterattack. However, to his astonishment, the bones had revealed that Narada was travelling to Patala. Alone.
Shukracharya was still attempting to work out the purpose of the diplomat’s mission as he resurfaced from the pool for the third and final time and joined his palms in obeisance to the sun, concealed behind the clouds. What scheme were Indra, Brihaspati and Narada hatching this time around? He had already dispatched a message to Patala, forewarning Hiranyaksha of the visit; he hoped the message would get through before Narada’s arrival.
Then there was the councilor Kalidasa’s nocturnal visit to his chamber, and his strange request to help him recover his memory from the mists of time.
– when the time comes, the price the Healer will exact from Ujjayini will be severe.
Mounting the bath’s steps, Shukracharya stopped and blinked in confusion. What were these words that had just flashed through his mind, and where had they come from?
– could his treachery be the price that Ujjayini would have to bear?
This time, the words were accompanied by an image. A young girl’s face, lit by a lamp. The girl was speaking, and high priest recognized her as one of the king’s councilors. The one they called Shanku, the one who had miraculously escaped from under the Marut’s foot.
The image vanished.
Bewildered, Shukracharya gazed ahead of him, staring at nothing as he tried to make sense of what was happening. Then, a split second later, he saw another image – an elderly man with a tired, downcast expression, whom he had never seen before. Shoorasena will inevitably receive my letter split second later, he saw another image the man was saying split second later, he saw another image what if he accepts Rukma’s hand?
The next instant, that image disappeared too. In its place, he saw Vikramaditya. The human king was standing and stroking his moustache as he spoke. Dhanavantri. He has a very good reason to make a visit to Chandravardhan’s court – the king’s illness.
Vikramaditya faded, and a series of images came and went in rapid succession. A view of a part of Ujjayini’s outer wall under construction; the king and his councilors in the council chamber, listening to Narada speak – you will benefit greatly by befriending us; the king lying on a bed, eyes closed and looking deathly pale; a curtain of white fog with something vague, large and shadowy concealed in its shifting folds…
Then the girl’s face again – the boatman says he has ferried the Healer many times, raj-guru.
In a flash, the young councilor disappeared and a fresh image implanted in the high priest’s mind. A great, rectangular bath in the shadow of a towering peepal tree, a solitary figure standing on the bath’s steep steps. The figure wore padukas, a wet dhoti and an eye-patch over the left eye. The high priest drew his breath in sharply, jerking his head in surprise and disbelief – and the man on the bath’s steps did likewise.
That is when the significance of what was happening struck Shukracharya like a bolt from the sky.
He was experiencing someone else’s thoughts, he realized with a shock, seeing and hearing things that were registering and playing on the other person’s mind. The doors between their minds had opened, allowing thoughts to flow unhindered.
The high priest could think of only one good reason why those doors were open all of a sudden. Someone had unlocked them with the intention of reading his mind.
Ahi
Someone is trying to read my mind.
Feeling the words wash over him, the Acharya hurriedly pulled away from the window, hugging the shadows and thrusting his spear deeper into the gloom. A faint tremor gripped his body, causing his legs to tremble, and a sense of unease coursed through him, making sweat break out on his forehead and trickle down his temples.
Someone in the palace is trying to read my mind… someone who is familiar with the human king and his council, someone who enjoys their trust.
Sick with fear, the raj-guru listened in on the Healer’s thoughts. He could almost feel the weight of the Healer’s eyes on him, prying into his mind, probing into the dark corners and recesses in an effort to get him to reveal his identity.
Who are you? Where are you?
With a supreme effort of will, the Acharya loosened the hold that the Healer’s mind had over his. Even as the Healer’s thoughts tried to reassert themselves, seeking him out, the raj-guru blinked the sweat from his eyes. Wetting his lips, he uttered a few hasty mantras…
– it is not the physician or Vararuchi –
…struggling to break the links that he had forged with the Healer’s mind.
– the person is trying to escape. Can it be? –
…and suddenly, like the drawing of a curtain, the Healer and his thoughts were gone!
In their place, there was silence, and the panicked and relieved hammering of his heart, accompanied by the voices of his own mind, out of breath and clamouring and irrational, urging him to flee the room so he couldn’t be found out.
Stepping forward gingerly, Vetala Bhatta poked his head around the jamb of the window. The Healer was still on the bath’s steps, erect and alert, head swiveling slowly as he scanned the palace. Seeing the Healer turn in his direction, the raj-guru again ducked out of sight, holding his breath and counting the seconds. He had just begun wondering whether it was safe to risk another peek when the clack of the padukas rose to his ears, briskly receding into the distance. The Acharya stuck his head out in time to see the Healer disappear behind the parijata shrubs that lined the closest entrance to the palace.
The Acharya let his breath out in a long, quivering sigh and relaxed his grip on the shaft of his spear, slick under his sweaty palm. The light had left the skulls, black sockets and cavities now staring and grinning at nothing in macabre mirth.
The Healer had been conscious of what was happening! The Healer had nearly caught him.
The realization alarmed the raj-guru. As a rule, he never attempted reading minds without consent, but in the few rare instances when he had read people in secret, his subjects had never guessed that their thoughts were being laid bare. What had given him away to the Healer? What had he done that had almost exposed him? Even as he searched for answers, the Acharya’s thoughts turned to what he had gleaned from the Healer’s mind.
The mandala. He had seen the Healer use tantric mandalas while working on Vishakha’s cure, but the mandala itself was very different from the one he had observed drawn on the floor of the queen’s bedchamber. The one in the Healer’s mind was much more elaborate, a network of maze-like grids and circles that had felt vaguely ominous. In addition, he thought he had seen pieces of what resembled bones scattered over the mandala, imparting a sinister aspect to the drawing.
Then there was the solitary banyan that had kept flitting in and out of the Healer’s mind. It had taken the Acharya no time to place the tree – it was the one in the cremation ground outside the city. The tree explained what the ferryman had said to Shanku about the Healer’s clothes and feet being covered in ash on his trips across the Kshipra. But what fascination did the banyan – or was it the cremation ground itself? – hold for the Healer?
Yet, what confused and perturbed the Acharya more than the mandala and the mystery of the banyan tree was an image that had fleetin
gly imposed itself in the Healer’s mind. It was a face, barely a flicker, but the raj-guru was inclined to believe it had been Narada’s; the same intelligent eyes, sharp nose and broad forehead he had first seen the day the deva had come to trade Indra’s friendship for the Halahala.
If the face was Narada’s, his and Shanku’s assumption of the Healer being a Huna agent was way off the mark. If the face was Narada’s, the palace was hosting someone infinitely more dangerous and devious than the Hunas, Vetala Bhatta realized.
The councilor opened the door to the room a crack and surveyed the corridor outside, making sure the coast was clear. Stepping out, he shut the door behind him, his mind briefly on Kalidasa.
You have helped the queen remember – will you help me too?
Kalidasa had also come under the Healer’s sway. Shanku had been right. The more popular the Healer became, the more fans and followers he acquired, the more he lived up to his reputation, the harder it would become to shake people’s faith in him and get them to see his darker side, the Acharya mused bitterly.
He had to unearth the Healer’s true identity, and do it soon. Unfortunately, he no longer trusted his ability to spy on the Healer without revealing himself. That left him with just one alternative.
Quickening his pace, the raj-guru went in search of the Mother Oracle.
* * *
The steam rising out of the copper bowl was dense, oppressive and mildly viscous. It hung in the air of the hut, clinging to itself, as if reluctant to escape out of the hut’s narrow door. Dank and mopey, it dripped back over Jayanta, mingling with his sweat and running down his head and shoulders as he sat mouthing the esoteric incantations listed on the palm leaves. It cast ghostly auras around the seven lamps that lit the room; it beaded the hut’s cracked, mud-brick walls in pustules that quivered with suppressed malice.
The steam rising from the bowl was grim and alive and ripe with possibilities.
The prince’s legs had gone to sleep under him, the small of his back hurt from hunching for so long, and the sweat kept getting into his eyes, making them smart, but he didn’t appear to notice the discomfort. His faculties were all pinpointed at summoning Ahi.
So deeply engrossed was Jayanta in the task that it took a while for his mind to register the subtle changes occurring around him.
As the water in the bowl bubbled and roiled, breaking apart and coalescing into shadowy, reptilian currents, the steam escaping from its depths changed to a murky shade of grey. The wisps began rising over the bowl in distinct flows and patterns, a slow dance that harvested more and more steam, fusing air currents to air currents. At first, the forms that emerged out of this lacked substance and shifted around aimlessly, but as the vapours banded together and engorged, a rudimentary serpent took shape, an apparition rearing out of the water and shimmering over the bowl, its plumed head swaying slowly to some primeval rhythm.
Darkness dipped in all around Jayanta as the lamps shrank and guttered in fright, and even the grey rectangle of morning light at the door seemed to withdraw with a gasp. The air within the hut turned chill, causing the cloak of steam to dissipate, and making the moisture accumulated on surfaces turn to frost. A void of silence took possession of the room, a noiselessness as old as time, and in its heart was the hollow, hateful echo of a hiss – not so much a sound audible to the ear as a whisper sensed deep in the marrow.
Shivering with cold and excitement, the prince held his breath and stared at the nebulous form before him. His eyes shone with delight and disbelief at what he had achieved; he had awakened Ahi and brought it into the light, exactly the way it had been said in the ancient texts.
Now to command the fearsome beast to do as he willed.
Uttering mantras all the while, Jayanta nicked his thumb once again with the knife, letting the blood flow so the serpentine form could pick up its scent. The apparition perked its head up, opening its mouth wide to allow a forked tendril of vapour to flicker into sight, seeking out the blood. The musty smell of the ocean floor spilled out of the yawning cavity, and lingering under it, the prince caught the rotten whiff of death. Choking down the bile that was forcing its way up his gullet, the prince extended his hand to the apparition.
“Follow the trail of your blood and mine, follow the hand that guides you,” the prince whispered the memorized lines. “Obey the blood that has given you life, mighty Ahi. Obey, and come to where your blood awaits you.”
The ghost-serpent responded by craning its neck and lunging at his bloodied fingers, its forked tongue in a slavering frenzy. It bent over the rim of the bowl, its moist head coiling around Jayanta’s hand, smearing itself in the prince’s blood. At last, pulling away with a great deal of reluctance, the apparition’s head turned this way and that, its tongue flicking the air furiously, as if searching for something.
Without warning, the form unraveled and came apart, individual strands of vapour springing free and disappearing into the cold currents eddying about the cramped little hut. In a matter of moments, there was nothing left of the ghost-serpent.
* * *
Voices raised in alarm. Men, women and children, shouting and screaming as they abandoned their homes and joined the last, desperate evacuation of Dvarka; the shrill and rushed flow of commands as soldiers were deployed to defend one quarter of the city or the other; the thudding of soldiers’ feet, rushing down lanes and alleyways. And over all this, the plaintive yet ominous lowing of the Huna war-horns, rolling in across the bay in tides, like harbingers of doom.
The din was a deafening swirl around Vararuchi as he strode along the smouldering waterfront, heading for the hillock where the city’s war council had gathered just hours earlier. By his side were three samsaptakas, the only surviving members of the party of fourteen that had raided and destroyed the agnikantakas.
“Are you certain none of the others got away?” Vararuchi looked from one to the other of the men accompanying him.
“It is very unlikely any of them did, your honour,” one of the samsaptakas replied. Pointing at one of his mates, he added, “The two of us were the only ones to get off the ship we had picked.”
“And you…?” the councilor eyed the third samsaptaka, who had a bloodied cloth wrapped around his left fist.
“Everyone else on my ship fell to the Hunas, your honour.” The man’s eyes were haunted with grief and anger at the fate his comrades had met.
“So Udayasanga is also dead.” Vararuchi shifted his gaze briefly toward the bay in memory of the samsaptaka. They had struck up a good friendship during their ride from Avanti, and the councilor had developed a healthy respect and liking for the large, quick-witted warrior.
“I saw him go down, your honour,” said the soldier with the bandaged hand. “I tried my best to help him, but by the time I got to his side… There were half a dozen arrows sticking out of him – but he still demolished the agnikantaka and set the ship on fire, your honour. It was my good fortune to have fought alongside such a valiant warrior.”
The councilor nodded, taking note of the pride and the anguish in the samsaptaka’s voice. Glancing at the man’s hand, he asked, “Is it bad?”
“Two fingers that I never had much use of anyway,” the soldier replied, inspecting the soiled rag. “Also, I am right-handed. Fortunately, the barbarians were too stupid to notice that.”
A faint smile played on Vararuchi’s lips. These were men who wouldn’t break easily, and he was glad to have them with him when the Huna army eventually alighted on Dvarka’s shores.
They reached the hillock, where Yugandhara and two other Anarta chieftains stood in consultation with half a dozen Anarta commanders. Once the fresh fleet of ships had been sighted and its strength assessed, the city’s defenders had ditched the pursuit of the older Huna vessels and returned to the shore in haste. Engaging the much larger Huna fleet was out of the question – even though no one quite knew what purpose could be served by seeking refuge on land, where the Huna army was decidedly more at ease.
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Noticing Vararuchi and the samsaptakas approach, the three chieftains inclined their heads in a silent salutation. Vararuchi reciprocated, casting another glimpse at the bay, amassed with the Huna ships. The strange disturbance in the bay’s waters had abated a bit since the battle, and though the sea was still rough and undulant, the sting had clearly gone out of it.
“How is Chief Manidhara?” he asked, raising his voice over the war-horns.
“He has been evacuated,” Yugandhara replied, training his gentle, brown eyes on the councilor. “The wound is deep, and the physicians fear the spear’s impact may have broken a bone. Of course, he wanted to stay on and fight.”
“Manidhara said you saved his life, brave councilor,” said one of the other chiefs. “For that you have our gratitude.” “When we save other’s lives, we salvage a little bit of our own,” Vararuchi replied with a short bow. He turned to survey the bay. “What do you make of the situation?”
“Bleak,” Yugandhara waved an arm in the direction of the ships. “Their numbers are worrying.”
“How many ships do they have?” From what Vararuchi could tell, there were over two dozen vessels in the bay, plus the ones that had arrived the previous evening. He also observed that a handful of Huna ships had sailed further south, instead of closing in on Dvarka.
“Forty to forty-five, your honour,” one the commanders replied. He pointed further to the north, where more sails had just started showing above the horizon. “With another dozen or so still to join this lot.”
Vararuchi felt his spirits sag. The strategy that the savages were employing was painfully obvious. While their main fleet was stationed in the bay, within striking distance of Dvarka, the Huna commanders were sending vessels south along the Anarta coast, so their warriors could come ashore outside the city. Vararuchi suspected that the ships on the horizon would head for a point north of Dvarka – the whole idea being to spread Dvarka’s line of defence thin, so the city could be taken with minimal effort.
“When are the ships with reinforcements from Bhrigukaksha expected?” the councilor asked. If those ships were nearing Dvarka, they might be able to intercept the Huna vessels heading south, he hoped.
The Conspiracy at Meru Page 23