“Why?” Pralupi’s tone was waspish. “I thought we had an understanding that you would get Chandravardhan to make Ghatakarpara the next king.”
“What understanding?” Vikramaditya stared at Pralupi in amazement. “I had made it perfectly clear that I was not going to tell King Chandravardhan anything to that effect. I had told you that succession to Vatsa’s throne is Vatsa’s internal matter, and I shall not interfere with it in any way.”
“That did not stop you from sending Dhanavantri to manipulate Chandravardhan into naming Shashivardhan as the next king,” the princess appraised her brother with a sneer. “Isn’t that interference in Vatsa’s affairs? You got the Acharya to browbeat King Harihara into breaking off Rukma’s alliance with Shoorasena and have her marry Shashivardhan instead. Isn’t that interference in Heheya’s affairs? Or is Rukma’s marriage no longer an internal matter for her father to decide for himself?”
Vikramaditya flinched inwardly, stung by the truth in Pralupi’s words.
“All this talk about not interfering in your allies’ decisions is just that – talk. You have no qualms about meddling in their lives when it suits you, so spare me the moral high ground.”
“You appear to know a lot about what’s happening in the kingdoms of Sindhuvarta, so I imagine you would be wise enough to appreciate the reasons behind what you term as my meddling,” the king replied. In truth, Pralupi had never cared much about Avanti’s own politics, so the extent of her knowledge of the goings-on in the rest of Sindhuvarta surprised Vikramaditya. “I’m doing what is needed to keep us strong and united in the face of the growing threat from the Hunas and the Sakas.”
Pralupi considered the king for a moment from under arched eyebrows. “The barbarians pose a real threat, yet you choose to keep my son at the frontier instead of recalling him to Ujjayini?” she unexpectedly opened a new front of attack. “You sent for Amara Simha, who has experience in fighting the Hunas, but you leave my boy at the mercy of those savages? How can you do this – he is your own nephew, your own blood!” The princess’ voice rose at the last few words, sharp and hysterical. “Why is he even at the frontier?”
“The frontier makes one hard; the palace makes one soft. Ghatakarpara is learning to be a soldier,” the samrat tried to reason, even as he struggled to control his own voice. “If the Hunas cross into Sindhuvarta, he will have to fight like one, so it is better he equips himself as best as he can. Look at it as a gift from an uncle to a nephew.”
“The uncle could apply himself toward making the nephew the next king of Vatsa,” Pralupi suggested tetchily. “That would be a more welcome gift.”
“That won’t happen. Shashivardhan is Chandravardhan’s rightful heir, and now that…”
“Shashivardhan will squander everything he inherits in wine and dice,” the princess spat harshly. “Everyone in Vatsa knows that. Even those in Chandravardhan’s council don’t trust the son to mend his ways. Only you are blind to that fact.”
“Who doesn’t trust Shashivardhan?” Vikramaditya asked, surprised. Knowing he might not get a straight answer to that, he gave a dismissive shake of his head. “I doubt you would be able to name a single councilor who doesn’t have faith in Shashivardhan’s capabilities.”
“Yashobhavi,” Pralupi took the bait.
Councilor Yashobhavi. That was whom his sister was getting all her information from. The samrat filed the information away carefully. “Does Yashobhavi have a solution to his fears?” he asked, hoping the question seemed nonchalant enough.
“He too believes Ghatakarpara would be the ideal choice as Vatsa’s next king.”
Vikramaditya stared, too stupefied to react. What exactly was he hearing? Was his sister making all this up to somehow nudge him into acting on her behalf, or was this the truth? How far did Pralupi’s influence in Kausambi really extend? Was it just to Yashobhavi, a man whom Chandravardhan trusted implicitly, or were there other councilors in her sway as well?
“See, I told you,” Pralupi looked at the king triumphantly. “Ghatakarpara is the right one to succeed to the throne, brother. It is not too late – he can still be king, if you will it. He will be welcomed by Vatsa’s council, I assure you. And if you are worried about Harihara giving Rukma away to Shoorasena… well, Harihara wants a king as his son-in-law. Would it matter to him if that king is Ghatakarpara instead of Shashivardhan? My son will accept Rukma as a bride…”
“No,” Vikramaditya shook his head, dazed. Then, more vehemently, “No, I can’t do this. Not to King Chandravardhan.”
“You can, but you won’t,” the princess narrowed baleful eyes on her brother. “Because there is nothing in it for you. You want everyone to see you as the good and just samrat, the noble friend. So what if that leads to the fall and ultimate ruination of an allied kingdom? You would rather sit back and watch than muddy your hands trying to save an ally. Your image would remain perfect and untarnished. That is all you care for.”
“You can twist the facts to draw any conclusion you choose, but no…” There was hurt in Vikramaditya’s voice. “This matter is closed.” He turned away, unwilling to prolong the absurd argument. Pralupi, however, stopped him short.
“I want you to call Ghatakarpara back to Ujjayini,” she said. In a challenging tone she added, “Or is that also something you can’t do?”
“It is something I won’t do,” the king corrected, drawing himself to his full height. “My nephew volunteered to go to the frontier knowing the Hunas were coming. I will not insult his courage and self-belief by summoning him back to the palace. He went by his free will. When he returns, it will be by his own free will.”
“Then you should hope nothing happens to him there,” Pralupi warned. “If something does, I shall hold you accountable…”
A flurry of footsteps on the stairway interrupted the siblings. Vikramaditya turned to see a soldier rush up the steps, two at a time, until he made it to the landing and caught sight of the king and his sister.
“Salutations, Samrat… salutations, my princess,” the soldier gasped for breath, bowing.
“We are busy,” Pralupi snapped, impatient.
“Salutations, soldier,” Vikramaditya overruled his sister with deliberate calm. “What is it?”
“Your honour, Councilor Kalidasa…” the soldier hesitated, his eyes shifting between the samrat and Pralupi. Seeing the samrat give a brisk, encouraging nod, he said, “The councilor demands an audience with you and the council in the Throne Room, your honour.”
“The Throne Room?”
“Yes, your honour.” The soldier paused, and his face went pale. “Councilor Kalidasa has invoked the Throne’s Justice over the massacre of his family by the royal court of Avanti.”
* * *
The Throne Room was perfectly still.
Outside the Throne Room, the palace was perfectly still.
Across the lake, the rest of Ujjayini was perfectly still.
Birds had fallen silent on their perches; the horses had stopped snorting and whinnying in the stables. The wind that had been blowing from the north all morning, weaving ceaseless ripples across the lake’s surface, had dropped to a whisper, then died in adherence to everything else. Not a soul moved, not a leaf stirred. It was as if time itself had drawn to a heavy halt and was holding its breath, weighing the import of what Kalidasa had just said.
I am the son of Zho E’rami.
Zho E’rami. Zho the Fearless. Warlord of the x’sa line of Hunas, the most courageous and intrepid of Huna clans, whose warriors had driven a huge, bleeding swathe into Sindhuvarta during the expansion. The x’sa had served at the vanguard of the Huna army, leading with guts, blazing a trail so the rest of the force could follow and consolidate. The x’sa: the first of the barbarians to set foot in Sindhuvarta, and the last ones to be pushed back into the Great Desert.
Somewhere, someone – one of the courtiers, probably – cleared a throat out of nervousness and the enchantment broke. Suspended breaths were expelled in a
collective sigh that rose and tinkled the crystal lamps overhead, and sank and stirred the dust underfoot at the same time. Feet shuffled and whispers erupted and travelled all around the Throne Room like a catching fire until the cavernous chamber was agog with satin-soft voices. Then, with near-perfect synchrony, all eyes sought out Vikramaditya, seated on the black marble throne, its gold and ivory inlays forming Avanti’s sun-crest above and behind his head.
“If you are a Huna by birth, how come you are not adorned with the hriiz, my friend?” the samrat asked, his eyes anguished yet gentle on Kalidasa, who stood in the centre of the chamber, dark and wrathful, facing the throne.
“I would have been, had my family not been killed that day.” The giant paused, and what seemed like a cross between a scowl and a smirk flashed across his face. “I don’t wear the holy hriiz, yet mine was the life it protected that day. It is the only reason I escaped death and am standing here now.”
“I don’t follow you, my friend,” said Vikramaditya.
Kalidasa threw a glance around and saw the confusion in the gathering of faces. “Young Huna boys have the holy hriiz inscribed on the foreheads in their ninth year. Everyone had been preparing for my initiation a whole week before I turned nine. Father would hone the dagger in the sacred fire and priests would propitiate the desert scorpion with prayers and sacrifices. The day I completed nine – the day of the ceremony, before the inscribing of the holy hriiz – I had to go into the forest all alone and hunt three animals all by myself. It is part of the Hunas’ initiation rites. I left at dawn, and before mid¬morning, I had killed a rabbit, a peacock and a mriga calf. I returned home happy and triumphant.” his face clouded with anger, “…to find everything in flames, everyone dead or dying. Burned and butchered by Avanti’s troops. That is what I meant by the holy hriiz saving my life – it led me into the forest, away from certain death.”
A short silence fell over the chamber as everyone waited for the king to say something. Instead, Amara Simha spoke.
“Do you remember exactly when you lost your memory, Kalidasa?” The face behind the flaming red beard was sympathetic, but also distraught.
“My father named me Ga’ur Thra’akha, councilor,” the giant replied coldly. It was as if he had erected a wall around himself to guard against anyone feeling sorry for him. “Kalidasa is a name given to me by Avanti.”
“Not by Avanti,” Varahamihira corrected from the divan where he sat, his crutch propped against one shoulder. “The name was given by the one who brought you to this palace as his friend. Don’t let the bitterness of one past memory distort all other memories.”
Kalidasa shot Varahamihira a quick glance, but kept his eyes averted from the samrat.
“So do you remember when you lost your memory?” Amara Simha asked again, still kind and patient.
“I remember running away. Hiding in the forest, then finding the Kali temple at night.” The giant gave his head a jerk, casting that train of thought aside as something less important. “But that was all later. Much after I saw them kill my father and sister.”
“You witnessed their deaths?” Vikramaditya’s expression was pained and disturbed.
“My father, my sister Ei’hi, my aunt and her daughter… I saw the soldiers push them into the granary and set it on fire. I watched all of them being burned alive.” Kalidasa’s fists clenched. “I also saw the man who gave the soldiers the command, the leader of Avanti’s troops.”
“Who was it, friend?” the king asked.
“Him.” Kalidasa swung an accusing finger across the breadth of the Throne Room, and a muted gasp leaped from the assembly.
Kalidasa stared at the man standing silently to one side, arms folded across his chest, easily overlooked in the crush of courtiers. The horseman.
It had almost struck him the previous morning, just as he had exited the house of the martyred samsaptaka. Coming down the stairs, he had glimpsed the man astride his horse, his back turned to the house, chatting with Amara Simha, and a faint memory had jogged his mind.
The same poise on the saddle. The telltale slouch of the left shoulder.
When Amara Simha had hailed him, the man had turned around to look – and again there had been something vaguely familiar about him, something seen before.
The same jet-black locks, the same shape of the head and the set of the shoulders, the same cocky self-assurance.
Then their eyes had met. Yesterday, Vararuchi’s eyes had smiled at him in greeting. Whereas the eyes that had turned upon him in the burning, smoke-filled valley all those years ago had been cold and hard and remorseless. But there was no doubt they were the same eyes.
Those eyes now appraised him defiantly over the expanse of the Throne Room. They were still hard and wholly unapologetic. The eyes of an unrepentant killer.
* * *
“What Kalidasa says is true. It was me.”
Vararuchi stepped forward and swept a gaze around the Throne Room before locking eyes with the giant. He remembered the day vividly. They had planned for it months in advance, drawing and redrawing strategies, working the manoeuvres in meticulous detail, checking and revising every little aspect of the attack. Everyone had known they had only one chance of storming the Huna garrison in Lava and bringing the dreaded Zho E’rami down.
That method and thinking had paid handsome dividends. They had caught the x’sa battalion flatfooted, and the garrison’s defence had crumbled almost without a fight. Best of all, Zho E’rami, one of Sindhuvarta’s greatest tormentors, had fallen to Avanti’s sword that morning.
Now, as he stood in the Throne Room, Vararuchi also recollected the face looking down at him from the top of the embankment; a small, dark, soot-stained face smeared with mud, big eyes staring at him, horrified. Then the face had disappeared from view, ducking behind the embankment.
The men had later told him it was a small boy, fast and agile. The boy had managed giving them the slip and had disappeared into the smoke. He remembered having shrugged it off. He hadn’t recognized him when, on returning to Ujjayini, Vikramaditya had introduced him as his new friend. Even the fact that the boy had been found hiding in a temple near Lava, with no recollection of his past, had failed to ring any bells.
That kid now stood glowering down at him, a tight mass of muscle and pent-up angst.
“You killed my family in cold blood,” the words rumbled from deep down Kalidasa’s throat.
“Have you ever asked around Sindhuvarta how many families your father killed in cold blood?” Vararuchi answered, not in the least bit intimidated by the giant’s size. “Zho E’rami got what he deserved.”
“But the women…” Vikramaditya looked at his half¬brother, aghast. “Why? What harm had they done?”
“The Hunas and the Sakas never stopped to ask what harm our women and children, our old and infirm had done to them, Samrat. They didn’t let questions of ethics interfere when they were murdering and pillaging their way through Sindhuvarta. Why did the rules have to change when it was our turn to play? The only way of teaching the Hunas a lesson was by paying them back in their own coin.”
“The rules that applied to us and them could never have been the same, brother,” the anguish was plain in Vikramaditya’s voice. “Our fight was not for ownership of a fertile piece of land. It was about defending the sanctity of ethics and fairness and dignity – about defending humanity. Those are the values worth fighting for. If we forsake those very values in war, we become the very thing we are fighting against. We become them. Then what do we have left to fight for?”
“Fine thoughts, my king, but in reality, that is not how battles are won. At least that was not what rid Sindhuvarta of the invaders.” It wasn’t obvious from Vararuchi’s tone whether he was scoffing at the samrat, but the atmosphere in the Throne Room had soured distinctly. “What drove the savages back was fear – fear that we could be exactly what they were. Fear is the currency they traded in, the currency they understood. Fear is how we restored the pride
and dignity of Avanti.”
“There is neither pride nor dignity in taking the lives of innocents, councilor,” the samrat gave a sad sigh.
Vararuchi bowed stiffly, taking note of the shift in the way Vikramaditya had addressed him. When he spoke, his tone was cold and formal. “I don’t dispute the throne, but I wish we could have told that to an enemy who killed every innocent in sight while plundering the kingdoms of Sindhuvarta.” He paused and glanced up at Kalidasa. “Speaking of innocents, ask anyone here who wiped out the entire royal court of the kingdom of Nishada, who killed Queen Vishakha and Kshapanaka’s parents. It was a x’sa battalion. So it may well have been your father who orphaned the queen and Kshapanaka – two innocent children who had nothing to do with your father’s war.”
Kalidasa gave the assembly a once-over. By turning this into an injustice against Kshapanaka and Vishakha, and insinuating that Zho E’rami might have had a direct hand in the massacre in Nishada, the king’s half-brother had cleverly manipulated the sentiment of the court away from him and back against the Hunas. The glance around the room confirmed this. Kshapanaka, who had been standing quietly to Amara Simha’s right, was now assessing him with a mixture of shock, revulsion and suspicion, and the assembly buzzed with the seeds of doubt Vararuchi had sown.
The samrat rose from his seat, stilling the murmurs. He stepped off the raised platform that supported the throne and took two paces toward Kalidasa.
“What happened that day was wrong, and as the king of Avanti, I am deeply shamed by it,” he said, speaking slowly and clearly so he could be heard by everyone present. “I wish I could undo what’s done, but I cannot. I offer you an apology on behalf of Avanti, councilor. I am sorry for the death of your family at the hands of the kingdom’s troops.”
“I don’t want an apology.”
The hiss of sharply drawn breaths, followed by an even deeper silence. No one had missed the challenge in the giant’s words.
“What else can we give you then?” asked the samrat.
“Avanti can offer nothing that will repair what happened that day. Nothing can heal the hurt, so…” Kalidasa plucked the gold sun-crest medallion that hung from his neck on a slender chain. The chain snapped and the medallion came away in the giant’s big fist. Holding the medallion in his outstretched hand, Kalidasa approached the king.
The Conspiracy at Meru Page 35