“Eb’a,” the stranger roared, slipping a massive arm around the leader’s neck, locking him in a tight, choking stranglehold. “Eb’a.”
As the horse struggled to bear the combined weight of the two men, the stranger swung his scimitar in wide arcs at the warriors he had brought down, pushing them back before pressing the sword’s point against their leader’s ribs.
“I could have killed any of your men,” he hissed into the leader’s ear. Flexing his forearm, the giant tightened his grip around the Huna’s neck, squeezing hard. The Huna gasped for air and clawed at the heavy, constricting forearm in desperation, his eyes rolling.
“I can kill you right now, if I want,” the stranger added. “But I have spared them, and I am sparing you.”
Releasing his hold of the Huna’s neck, the giant swung off the horse’s back. As the leader of the band doubled over on his saddle, coughing, drawing in air and rubbing his throat in relief, the grateful mount whinnied and shied away from the stranger, who slipped his scimitar back into its sheath.
“I have spared you because I come as a friend,” he said in an imperious tone, loud enough for everyone to hear. “But friend or foe, never again deny a thirsty man water.” Pointing to the sheepskin flask, motioning with his fingers, he demanded, “Ma rek’e tcha.”
Still coughing and panting, his eyes watering freely, the Huna grabbed the flask and thrust it at the giant. As he tossed his head back and drank deep, satisfying gulps, the rest of the Huna warriors, sore and disgraced, stared with a mixture of wonder, suspicion, fear and dislike at the man who had ridden into their midst and hammered them into submission.
“Zuh te’i go?” the young archer asked in a tone that was sulky yet awed, wincing and feeling his chest gingerly where the blunt edge of the scimitar had rapped him.
The stranger nearly emptied the water in the flask, slaking a burning thirst, before looking at the archer and then at the other faces around him. “Ma’a…” he said, catching his breath, “…ma’a Ga’ur Thra’akha. Duz’ur Zho E’rami. Oi bun unnu zuh’i shy’or.”
‘I am Ga’ur Thra’akha, son of Zho E’rami. Now lead me to your chief.’
Lost
Shukracharya and Jayanta ran into one another on the path that led to the stately pavilion at the centre of the large, overgrown garden. The pathway was narrow, twisting through dense clusters of fragrant parijata and ketaki, so the high priest and the young deva were hidden from each other’s view until they were face to face, almost bumping chests. Jayanta mumbled an apology and tried edging past the stranger, but Shukracharya blocked the way, staring at the boy with one beady eye.
“I didn’t realize there was anyone else in this garden,” the guru of the asuras observed in surprise. Looking mildly flummoxed, he added, “This place is a bit of a maze. Could you be my guide, if you don’t mind?”
Jayanta opened his mouth to remonstrate and beg off, but as he groped for an excuse, Shukracharya took advantage of the deva’s confusion and held him by the shoulder.
“I am tired,” he wheezed and coughed, his head drooping for good effect. “Is there someplace I can sit for a moment, please?”
Left without choice, Jayanta escorted Shukracharya to the open pavilion, its dome held aloft by a dozen fine marble columns. Broad marble steps were laid around an ingeniously designed waterfall that cascaded quietly into a pool where shoals of rainbow-coloured fish darted about. Ferns and creepers were in abundance, swaying in the cool breeze, while overhead, a family of white-throated munias flitted in and out of the recesses in the vaulted ceiling where they nested. On a raised platform to one side of the pool was a jal-yantra — eight small bronze bowls filled with water, placed in a tight semicircle.
“Ah, sweet relief,” said Shukracharya, sinking onto the steps. He watched keenly as the deva left his side and headed for the platform that held the bronze bowls.
Stepping onto the platform, Jayanta sat before the bowls, crossed his legs and picked up a pair of thin wooden sticks, a foot in length. With one, he struck the rim of one of the bowls to produce a clear, liquid note. Then, striking the sticks on the bowls in a rapid sequence, his hands moving with practised ease, the deva created a rhapsody of gently ringing notes and lilting melody that was deeply soothing to the soul. Finishing with a flourish, he looked over to Shukracharya, who was nodding his appreciation.
“Impressive. Who trained you to play so well?”
“Nobody,” the deva shrugged, striking up a fresh set of notes. “I learned it by myself.”
Indeed, Shukracharya thought to himself. You’ve taught yourself lots of clever little things, deva. Like learning how to play the jal-yantra… or awakening Ahi. He smiled benignly at Jayanta, who hadn’t the foggiest idea that this had been a meticulously plotted meeting and not a chance encounter between strangers. The high priest had been stalking the deva — in person, and with the aid of the bones and the mandala — for days now, studying his schedule, probing his weaknesses and devising ways of making contact. With Indra finally departing for Avanti earlier that morning, Shukracharya had decided it was time to move in on the young prince.
“Are you by any chance… Jayanta?” he frowned suddenly. “Heir to Devaloka?”
“Yes.” Jayanta stopped playing and looked up. “How did you guess?”
“I see a bit of Indra in you,” Shukracharya lied. “The Indra of old, the handsome one. In fact, I would say you’re better than he was at your age.”
Seeing Jayanta blush and his chest swell in pleasure, the high priest realized he had done well in appealing to the young deva’s vanity.
“And you… how do you know my father?”
“Ah, look at me, I haven’t even introduced myself. I am Shukracharya.”
The hands holding the sticks over the bronze bowls tensed. “Guru Shukracharya, guru to the asuras?” Jayanta looked warily at the high priest, his tone awed.
“The same. You must have heard that I am a guest of your father’s.”
Jayanta gave his head a doubtful shake.
“Not just me, the asura lord Hiranyaksha was also here until two days ago.” The high priest smiled at Jayanta’s confusion. “We came to discuss matters of peace and mutual interest.”
The deva didn’t know what to say, so he kept mum, wondering whether to continue playing or get up and leave.
“You play the jal-yantra so well, you’re young and handsome — I’m sure you must be good with the sword too. The apsaras must find you quite irresistible,” Shukracharya grinned and winked at Jayanta. “They must be falling over one another for your attention, poor things. And the one who catches your eye… she must know how incredibly lucky she is.” The high priest watched the deva. “Is there such a one?”
The prince did not answer straightaway. He sat looking morose, and the silence grew and wrapped around them like a constricting vine. At last, seeing that the high priest was still waiting for a response, Jayanta offered a half-hearted nod.
“Just as I thought,” Shukracharya clapped his hands in triumph. He walked down the steps to sit by Jayanta. His manner oozing friendliness, he asked, “This apsara… does she realize she is special? Have you told her?”
Jayanta opened his mouth, then shut it, plainly caught in two minds.
“You can tell me,” Shukracharya’s tone was offhand but reassuring. “I’m only a visitor to Devaloka. I have nothing here and won’t be around for long anyway. Once I am gone, what you tell me is also gone for good.”
The deva prince considered this for a moment. “She… she is my father’s mistress.”
“Really?” The bones had already told Shukracharya much of what he needed to know, so he had to work hard at looking suitably scandalized. “You mean… Urvashi?”
Jayanta glanced at the high priest in sudden apprehension, and Shukracharya instantly threw his hands up.
“It’s none of my business. I won’t tell anyone, so don’t worry.” Shukracharya’s voice changed and a sly smile spread across hi
s face. “But it is so obvious — the most desirable of apsaras falling head over heels for a handsome deva like you. How does she even stay with Indra when you’re around?”
“She says she doesn’t love me. She ignores me; she despises me.”
Jayanta’s admission surprised the high priest. He hadn’t been expecting such candour from the deva, but it was good; it showed Jayanta was dropping his defences, opening up to him.
“Look at her, going off without even bidding me goodbye,” the prince’s face twisted in rage, sorrow and self-pity. “I didn’t even know she wasn’t in the palace until I overheard some apsaras saying she’s gone off somewhere with father.”
Shukracharya had been caught off guard too when he had learned that Urvashi was accompanying Indra and Gandharvasena to Avanti. Gandharvasena’s going made sense — he was meant to break the back of the human king’s resistance. But taking an apsara along had never been discussed. The high priest suspected Urvashi had been included on Indra’s impulse, solely to cater to his entertainment.
There was a definite upside to Urvashi’s absence, though. Jayanta was at his lowest ebb, pining away with no one to turn to for support. Shukracharya believed the deva would be susceptible to influence, as long as he could be convinced that he would eventually have the apsara to himself.
“What choice does she have, Prince? She is your father’s mistress. Her job is to obey his wishes and commands. She can’t be caught professing her love to you, can she? She knows your love for each other will incur Indra’s anger; she is protecting you and herself from that anger.”
“You mean she is lying about her feelings for me?”
Shukracharya saw excitement and hope flare in the deva’s eyes. “Isn’t that obvious?”
“I didn’t… she…” Jayanta gazed down at the jal-yantra, grappling with the idea the high priest had planted. “She has been protecting me, and I…” he looked up, a slight smile on his lips. “You’re right. She does love me.”
Satisfied with the progress made, Shukracharya decided to press his advantage. “But you must get her to admit her love for you. Otherwise, how will the two of you ever embrace, how will you make love,” the high priest’s tone changed, “unless you’re quite happy seeing her from afar with your father…”
“No,” Jayanta snapped in frustration. “I want us to be together. But…” he turned to Shukracharya. “How do I convince Urvashi to express her love for me? How can we share our love when father is around?”
The high priest stared thoughtfully at the fish swimming in the pool at their feet. “Give me some time,” he said at last. “I will help you — on one condition. There is something you will have to part with in exchange. Do you agree?”
“What is it you want from me?”
Shukracharya smiled mysteriously as he got to his feet. “There is no point in telling you now, because I have nothing to offer you in return. I will let you know what I want once I have a solution to your problem.”
Watching him climb the stairs and exit the pavilion, the prince was struck by the fact that the guru of the asuras looked neither tired nor at a loss to find his way out of the garden.
* * *
“We are lost, raj-guru.”
Instead of replying, Vetala Bhatta continued gazing over the Aanupa, which lay below and around them. His face was tired but otherwise inscrutable as he fiddled with the vine that was knotted around his waist, binding him to the nine surviving men who comprised his escort to Odra.
Though panoramic in scale, the Ghost Marsh was a study in monotony. It sprawled in every direction from the foot of the hill where the councilor and his guards now stood, a drab and limitless landscape wreathed in drifting curtains of mist with clumps of mossy forest and pools of shimmering swamp visible in the gaps in the mist. The marsh dwindled into a rising steam of haze, and haze and yellow-grey clouds merged such that it was impossible to say where the earth ended and the sky began. Colour had leeched from everywhere, leaving behind lifeless greys and splotches of dull green. The air was humid and still, yet puffs of chill wind that didn’t quite stir the leaves of trees set the travellers from Avanti shivering. Nothing moved in or over the marsh.
“We are truly lost,” the soldier standing at the Acharya’s right elbow repeated with a resigned sigh. He was Kedara, the captain in charge of the escort, a reliable enough soldier whose nerve had deserted him over the course of the last two days.
“Not permanently,” the chief councilor shook his head and pointed towards the horizon. “That’s the sun there, see?”
Vetala Bhatta sensed his escort gather around him, voices exclaiming, fingers pointing at the watery halo of light that had somehow speared through the haze. The light gradually assumed the form of a limpid, pale yellow disc, gaining a modicum of strength to shine a hand’s breadth above where the horizon should be.
“That way is west,” said one of the soldiers, gesturing in the direction of the sun.
“Which means this way to the east,” the Acharya jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Uttara Tosali lies behind us. Come, let us make some headway before sundown.”
The urgency in the raj-guru’s words did not translate into action as his escort trudged downhill with the enthusiasm of men bearing the dead to their pyres. The councilor knew the cause of their lethargy — the men had no reason to think that a path would miraculously emerge at the bottom of the hill to lead them out of the Aanupa. They had been stumbling around the marsh for nearly two days now, but still had no clue how far they were from the place where they had first lost their bearings, or from their destination. Yet, he couldn’t afford to let their morale sink.
Trouble had arrived in the form of a thunderstorm when they were still on the other side of the Riksha Mountains, in the open plains. Except for the minor inconvenience of damp clothes, they had thought little of the storm, but by the next evening, as they trekked across the mountain ridges, their guide — a small trader familiar with the route — had contracted a burning fever. He slipped rapidly into a delirium, and the Acharya sensibly called for a break to give him rest. In two days, the guide had recovered adequately for them to resume travel, but as they had come down the southern slopes of the range, weakness triggered a relapse, and in a few hours, he had parted their company for good.
Faced with the choice of returning to Avanti or continuing without a guide, the chief councilor figured that having come three-quarters of the way to Odra, scrapping the mission was a ridiculous idea. So, they had stayed the course, keeping to the shadows of the Riksha range so they would be safe from the grasp of the Aanupa. But the following morning brought a dense mist, and before anyone knew it, the group had unknowingly drifted from the mountains and blundered into the marsh. Worse, in a bid to find a way out, three of the men had strayed from the group and were swallowed by the mist, not to be seen again. The others had wisely bound themselves with a chain of vines, so that more of them wouldn’t be lost to the mist and the hungry swamp hiding in its folds.
Feeling the rough vine on his palm and on his waist as they tugged one another along, single file, Vetala Bhatta worried about the group’s predicament. The delay caused by the guide’s illness had already taken a chunk out of their food reserves, and this wandering about the marsh was a further strain on resources. While they were running through their rations, there was little in the Aanupa to compensate for the depletion — they had seen no edible plants, nor any bird or animal. The horses and pack mules had nothing to nibble either, and as a consequence, were weakening rapidly.
The marsh’s maze-like quality rattled the chief councilor the most. At ground level, the mist played constant tricks, weaving this way and that, opening paths and closing them at random, so it was a perpetual challenge to discern where one was going. The topography of moss-covered trees and stagnant reed pools was dismally unvarying, offering no distinguishable landmarks for the eye and the mind to remember. To top it all, the sun was almost always blotted by clouds, so telling the
direction was, at best, guesswork. Lastly, the marsh occupied a huge area; the Acharya realized with a sinking feeling that the group was staring at the horrifying prospect of going around in circles looking for a way out, all of them wearing themselves down and dying of starvation — if insanity didn’t first drive them to take their own or each other’s lives.
It was not without reason that the Aanupa was called the Ghost Marsh.
Vetala Bhatta was lost in these morbid thoughts when one of the guards in front shouted.
“There, a house! Like the one yesterday.”
Heads turned in that direction, and the councilor observed a hut — once probably a hunter’s, but long since abandoned — made of bamboo and thatch, nestling under a copse of trees with low, drooping branches. The copse was in the middle of a swamp, so the only way of accessing the house was over a rickety bridge made of crudely tied logs and planks.
“Isn’t this the one where we spent last night?” asked another of the men.
The question was met with an ominous silence as each man weighed its implications. Vetala Bhatta assessed the ramshackle structure anew and was rewarded with the uncomfortable feeling that the man was right. Finally, the captain spoke.
“Hard to say. Let us take a closer look.”
One after another, still in single file, still tied together by vine, the group traversed the slippery wooden bridge, watching the hut and its environs keenly for signs that would tell them this was a different hut. There was hope in their faces but also the fear of being disappointed. By the time the Acharya, who was bringing up the rear, set foot on the wet soil in front of the hut, Kedara and a couple of soldiers had already entered the hut.
The Vengeance of Indra Page 8