‘Aaaaaaaah,’ the goddess screamed. ‘The king has married,’ her dark eyes glowed like burning embers. ‘And Aham has a new queen. Is she your mother?’
‘Nooo,’ the crowd screamed in a frenzy. ‘You are! You always will be.’
‘Yes,’ bellowed the goddess, showering coins over their heads, watching them scramble in the dirt. ‘Come,’ she intoned, ‘give me your love. I want to feel your love.’
The sky thundered and Manmaani tilted her chin to the flashing light, the shimmer of her dress undulating with her every breath. She made for a powerful figure, the temple spire towering behind her, gleaming amidst the clouds. At her feet the tightly packed audience hummed, surging towards her, a tide eager to press its lips to the hem of her dress.
‘Don’t touch her,’ the priests beat them back. ‘Keep away.’
‘Our queen, our goddess,’ they cried, writhing.
Manmaani stood firm, eyes dilated, the wind spinning her hair into a dark cloud, a tantalizing smile playing on her red lips. A fine drizzle began to fall, caressing every face and the goddess laughed, ‘Receive my kisses, children, and be blessed.’
Shunen stared at his reflection cut by strings of raindrops chasing each other down the window pane, the spy’s words still resounding in his head, ‘The queen mother’s popularity grows again. She is just as strong as before.’ His nostrils flared, his image forbidding, even to himself, the inscrutable face suspended in the rain. His gaze shifted to another reflection, to the pagdi on its silk cushion, and he turned away, snatching it up, his mouth seeking the cool hardness of the emeralds.
‘Sometimes I get the feeling that I am as much a toy for mother as Ashwath or Nandan,’ he muttered to the largest emerald. It stared back, its unyielding glitter mocking him. Shunen straightened, the heavy lids dropping over his eyes. ‘Once I have an heir, I am certain the people will completely lose interest in her antics,’ he tapped his lips with two fingers. ‘A royal baby will command all their attention.’ The emerald winked in the lamplight and Shunen smiled faintly. ‘Yes, I shall go to Lalitara now, and every night, till she is heavy with my child.’
He entered the queen’s wing, grimacing again at the lilac interiors. Hussuri had insisted the pearl-greys and whites be changed to the more feminine shades. ‘The new queen will feel welcome,’ she had said wistfully.
At Shunen’s entry, the maids-in-waiting quickly curtsied and left, leaving the few-weeks-old bride to shrink back in alarm. He looked her up and down, unperturbed by her reaction, noting her delicate form and iridescent complexion with a complacent smile. The only child of a noble fallen on hard times, Lalitara had accompanied her father on a court visit and caught his fancy. One look at her and he had known he would marry her, her skin the colour of the golden pearls studding the oyster throne.
‘Come,’ he gestured, crooking his finger imperiously.
But Lalitara hung back, not daring to look into his face. ‘Please, Your Majesty,’ she beseeched, trembling, ‘not tonight.’
Shunen expelled a sharp breath, ‘You will do as I say, my dear. Come to me quickly.’
Ashish faltered outside the door, hearing a muffled scream. Pity flooded his heart. ‘Dear God, grant the queen strength,’ he whispered, hurrying on, and stopped outside another royal chamber, waiting to be announced.
Hussuri didn’t turn around from the window when he walked in. ‘You called for me, Your Highness,’ he bowed. ‘Is it a new poem?’
She shrugged her angular shoulders, ‘I’m no longer in the mood to recite it. You may go.’
He bowed again. ‘As you wish, Your Highness.’
The gentleness in his voice stirred her and she spun around, ‘Wait, Ashish.’
It seemed to him that the Princess was agitated. Her usually vacant stare sparkled with disappointment, her thin fingers continuously plucking at her dress. She peered into his face, earnestly, ‘I can tell you everything, Ashish, because you never carry tales.’
He inclined his head.
Hussuri continued, a sob in her voice, ‘Mother says that I . . . I should have been queen, and Ashwath the rightful king. But now, it will never be so.’
Ashish glanced past her expectant face to the blackness outside. ‘Your Highness,’ he began on a soft sigh, ‘I have great faith in the unexpected. It remains hidden like thunder in the clouds, and comes as suddenly.’
‘Oh,’ Hussuri clapped her hands, ‘I like the way you put it, so poetic! Should I continue to hope, then?’
He looked at her solemnly, ‘Yes, if you know what is best for you, for everyone, believe in it, with all your heart. Faith gives meaning to life.’
The rain washed down the grime in dirty trickles from the glass case. Ashwath leaned forward. Even in the flashes of lightning, he couldn’t see the khanda. It infuriated him.
‘I’ve seen you glow in his hand,’ he growled, slapping the glass with his hand, ‘show yourself to me.’ But it was as if the sword had vanished. ‘Dead that is what you are, dead like him!’ He turned away, water dripping off his large bull-like frame and muttering oaths, swung himself on to his horse, riding swiftly, not towards the palace, but into an abandoned lane.
‘I won’t be long,’ Ashwath told the horse, leading it into the deserted stable. The wind flung rain in his face as he hurriedly crossed the overgrown garden and stepped over a shattered wall. It was dry inside, and he sighed with relief, his eyes adjusting to the semi-darkness. Stubbing his toe on a fallen beam, he cursed, and then made his way more carefully over weeds flourishing in the cracked floor.
The large house drew him like a magnet, its charred, splintered remains fascinating him. ‘Damn,’ he swore again, noting the empty spaces that hadn’t been there on his last visit. ‘Bloody thieves have been stealing the furniture, or what was left of it.’
He hurried into a wide passage, his fingers feeling the wall carefully. In an alcove, he found the stick of dry kindling that he had left there the previous night. Pulling out pieces of stone and flint from his pocket, he struck them over the wood. Sparks flew out. The stick ignited instantly, its light throwing ravening shapes that followed him into a large hall.
A stone staircase sagged on one side, dragged down by the weight of the crumbling rooms it must have once supported. Picking his way through the rubble, Ashwath sifted through the wreckage. The torchlight caught the glint of metal half-buried under stones and roots. He paused, excited and uncertain at the same time. Setting the torch carefully aside, he scrabbled with both hands, tearing away the debris until he uncovered it, a portrait in a metal frame.
Layers of dirt caked it, yet the steady flame of the torch picked up the warm flesh tones underneath. With his scarf, Ashwath wiped an arc clear of mud, revealing a familiar face. Saahas laughed, his dented chin tilted up, crinkles creasing the brown eyes. A lock of sun-bleached hair fell on the high forehead and a few strands tucked behind the ear kissed the well-defined jaw. Ashwath frowned. A faint echo of that unreserved laugh reached his ears. He had heard it the first time at a royal reception, the night old Vasuket had laid eyes on his mother.
Looking closely at the portrait, he noticed an ashy smear on the cheekbone and hastened to rub it off. The light wavered and Saahas’s gaze shifted, looking him in the eye. Ashwath recoiled. ‘You can’t do anything to me, you are dead.’ A flash of anger tamped down his fear. ‘This is all that’s left of you, general,’ he jeered, ‘a painting! I shall take you back to the palace and put you in a cage, like your useless khanda.’
His foot slipped, sending a shower of stones down the cliff. Digging his fingers into the fissures, he tried desperately to find a foothold, tempted all the while to glance down, to the men shouting advice. ‘Look up, look up,’ he told himself and drawing a deep breath, tilted his head towards the summit. The craggy peak remained as distant and inaccessible as before, the weight of his body telling on his arms, his fingers beginning to lose their hold. Pressing himself flat against the rock, Tota pleaded with it, and the mountain ru
mbled faintly, as if enjoying a quiet chuckle.
‘All right then, have your fun,’ he grinned, his fingers relaxing, tension easing out of him. Time slowed down and he was back in the jungle, listening to it patiently. And then he heard it, the groan of rock against rock and leapt sideways, landing firmly on a ledge.
‘Yamathig,’ he burst out in sudden understanding, ‘you are begging to play.’ Climbing swiftly, joyfully, he waved to the others, pointing out nooks and crannies that he hadn’t noticed before. The mountain shrugged them upwards, and one by one, they reached the surprisingly flattened top, a purple-brown ridge rising up to greet them, encircling them.
Tota exhaled, ‘I have a feeling that in the days to come Yamathig will teach us many lessons.’ The officers gazed at the eastern horizon, wistfully thinking of one man, the one who would have completed them. Perhaps if they had squinted down at the road, they might have spied two horsemen moving rapidly away from them. Perhaps, if they had focused on the second rider, a little behind the first one, they would have noticed the broad shoulders leaning in, the head perfectly still, the body slightly raised above the saddle, yet one with the horse. But they didn’t see any of this and the two riders vanished quickly into a line of trees, intent on their onward journey.
28
‘Try to sleep tonight, sire,’ Bhuma shot a worried glance at the drawn face, at the fine scar gleaming white against the grey pallor, the bruised look about the eyes. ‘I haven’t seen you catch a wink in weeks.’ He had just given Saahas a shave and trimmed his hair, revealing the hollow-cheeked gauntness that had remained hidden so far.
Saahas barely heard him, a vertical line between his brows, his stare fixed, unseeing, his hands polishing the sword with insistent strokes. Bhuma repeated his entreaty and he stirred.
‘Sleep,’ he mused and then shook his head, ‘no, I don’t need it. Not the fitful sleep I have endured, drifting between nightmares. No, I am better off without it.’
They had stopped by the wayside to rest the horses and Bhuma’s quick fingers had picked out edible leaves, flowers, wild mushrooms and roots from the earth. These he had thrown into a pot over a fire, along with a dash of spices from a little pouch, and when the fragrant steam rose, he wiggled his shoulders in a gesture that Saahas had come to understand as an expression of unbounded delight.
‘I am not hungry,’ he said, getting to his feet abruptly and walking towards a rivulet babbling over moss-covered stones. Bhuma sighed. He had tried everything, every trick in his trade, to coax his master to eat more than just a few mouthfuls and failed each time.
Their journey to the east had been slow, inclement weather often stalling them for days. At last, the topography had changed, from dusty plains to rolling hills shrouded in a dewy mist. Short trees with wide canopies grew close together, their long branches trailing fingers in ponds and lakes, teasing water lilies of every hue. White, yellow, pink, violet and blue, they clustered on the water’s surface, their round leaves as large as an infant’s crib. But Saahas remained indifferent to his surroundings, intensely focussed on one thing alone.
‘When will we reach Purvichi?’ he asked time and again, and Bhuma gave the same answer, as a parent would to a fretful child, ‘Almost there, sire, almost there.’
Cresting a low hill one day, they rode down a narrow stone road, every mile of it marked by a lofty arch festooned with red banners. Bhuma whistled in surprise. ‘We will soon arrive at the west gate of Purvichi, sire, but these banners are an ominous sign.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘War, sire, Purvichi is going to war. What should we do?’ He didn’t get an answer. Saahas galloped ahead of him, eyes narrowed against the wind, the mention of war spurring him on. In a fistful of moments, the outline of the high battlement above the gate became visible, rising out of a sea of red, the uproar of men, animals and metal like distant thunder.
The colour soon took shape. Hundreds of cavalry and foot soldiers in red tunics and baggy, white trousers, swarmed the gate, armour and shields gleaming on their backs. Officers shouted instructions, their faces tight, urging their men to fall into position for a drill. A group of soldiers frantically dug at the base of the border wall, a natural rampart of sloping hills, throwing out mounds of clayey mud.
Saahas pulled up, dismounting in one leap and threw his reins to Bhuma. ‘Wait here,’ he commanded and vanished in the churning of men and horses.
Bhuma heaved a sigh, his eyes flicking to the heavily carved gate, to the elaborate design etched in gold leaf, depicting a young lad playing a reed pipe. His fingers twitched. ‘If Skanda wishes, maybe this time I’ll get to pick your gold, boy,’ he muttered. Acrimonious shouts diverted his attention. A noisy argument had broken out amongst some soldiers. His interest piqued, and leading the horses, he threaded his way towards them.
Mingling in the throng of soldiers and animals, Saahas listened to snatches of conversation, his gaze constantly appraising the wide array of weapons.
A hand clapped him on the shoulder, ‘Where do you think you are going?’ and he spun around. A wiry soldier confronted him, his spear pointing at him.
‘I am a traveller,’ he answered in an even voice. ‘My manservant and I have been on the road for months.’
The soldier eyed him, taking in the tall frame, the sword in the scabbard, the thin, deeply tanned face with a fine scar running down one side. ‘You should leave,’ he said, lowering his spear. ‘Things are going to get hot around here.’
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Saahas nodded. ‘You are going to war.’
‘Not just any war,’ the soldier answered, moving on, ‘it is Ugr that we will be fighting.’
He stood rooted to the spot, men brushing past him, rough voices telling him to get out of the way. Ugr, his mind chanted, dredging up his dying father. Ugr, repeated Meghabhuti’s blue lips. Ugr, soundlessly echoed Agraj and Anuj. Ugr, sighed Vasuket. Saahas shuddered, feeling a sudden chill, of ice in his veins.
A voice called him insistently. ‘Sire,’ Bhuma waved, hopping up and down on his toes amidst the crush. ‘I am here, sire.’
He reached Bhuma in an instant. ‘I must meet the king,’ he rasped, ‘as soon as possible.’
Shooting a quick glance around, Bhuma pulled out a red tunic from under his shirt. ‘This will get you inside, sire, unnoticed, but as for meeting the king . . .’ he shook his head.
Saahas’s brows snapped together. ‘Why, what’s the matter?’
‘King Dyaut has begun his annual worship of the cowherd boy, Rabeera, the local deity,’ he said, pointing to the boyish figure on the gate. ‘It’s a ten-day-long ritual, which is why the Ugr forces are marching towards Purvichi. They know that without Dyaut, they have as good as won the war.’
Saahas’s incredulous gaze swivelled from the gate back to Bhuma. ‘Are you telling me that the king of this realm will not fight even as an enemy prepares to attack?’
‘Sire, the soldiers are divided on this. Some say Dyaut will lead them and others believe that no power on earth can interrupt his worship. His devotion to Rabeera is legendary. The last time Ugr attacked, Dyaut finished his worship just as the crazy hordes reached Purvichi, and he crushed them like tomatoes. But this time—’
Saahas cut him off with an impatient gesture, ‘I must find out for myself, let’s go.’
Every few miles, Saahas and Bhuma noticed small crowds waving incense sticks over miniature shrines. Carved out of rock, the little temples were smooth on the outside and topped with a dome, the tiny deity dwelling within. People knelt in the dirt to whisper fervent prayers to Rabeera, begging him to save them from the Ugr. Contingents thundered past and Saahas observed them closely. Each was more irresolute than the previous one, panic marking their movements, a lack of cohesion between them that only another military man could perceive.
Spotting a map of the kingdom on a post, he stopped before it, studying its features. ‘What is that?’ he asked Bhuma, pointing at the northern border.
‘Tomen, sire, a treacherous marsh,’ the manservant tapped the expanse shaped like a half-circle, the curved border jutting out of Purvichi. ‘Ugr lies further up north.’ His finger traced a narrow saddle between the mountains above Tomen that led into rocky terrain.
Saahas stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘Then Ugr forces will divide at Tomen. One half will go east and the other west in the hope of surrounding Purvichi.’
He jerked his horse around. ‘They must be stopped at the marsh. Take me to King Dyaut.’
Bhuma’s jaw opened and shut, his shoulders almost touching his ears in a helpless shrug. ‘Sire,’ he managed to say at last, ‘I am telling you he won’t see you. Besides, this is not your war.’
‘Oh yes, it is,’ Saahas responded in a clipped voice, ‘in more ways than you know,’ and halted a courier riding at full tilt.
‘Let’s have the news,’ he ordered in so authoritative a tone that the man spoke up without a second thought.
‘General Trasnuk is at the palace. He intends to stay there till His Majesty is induced to break his worship.’
Bhuma rolled his eyes, muttering, ‘Obviously Trasnuk is scared witless.’
‘The general says the officers must marshal their men as best as they can,’ continued the messenger, reading from the dispatch rather distractedly, ‘until further instructions.’
He was about to ride on when Saahas stopped him with a question, ‘How many days to Tomen?’
‘Er, six days at the most.’
‘And how many days to cross it to reach the pass?’
The courier shook his head, staring at the grim-faced soldier as if he had gone mad, ‘That has never been done.’
Saahas nodded slowly, ‘Add another message for the officers. Tell them to start marching towards Tomen, both from the east and the west.’
‘And who should I say gave the order?’
Saahas shot over his shoulder, ‘A general and a king.’
The Crown of Seven Stars Page 14