PRINCE OF DHARMA

by AKB eBOOKS Ashok K. Banker

  The man looked up unhappily, his grimy, blood-streaked face wan with exhaustion. ‘Once again I beg your pardon, rajkumar, but I would defy my captain’s orders by doing what you ask. His instructions were explicitly clear. My message must be delivered to the maharaja in person and spoken only in his presence.’ He indicated the sun shining down harshly. ‘Already precious time is wasting. As you can see, I almost killed these two fine Kambhoja stallions to get here as fast as possible. Pray, do not delay my business further. You have my word as an Arya and as a Kshatriya that my message is of grave importance to the well-being of the entire kingdom as well as the city of Ayodhya itself. I beg you, let me pass within the gates and address the maharaja directly.’

  Shatrugan leaned over and spoke softly to Bharat, keeping his voice pitched just loud enough for the senapati to hear as well. ‘I say we let him pass. He has been acknowledged and identified. We can search his person and subject him to the scrutiny of Guru Vashishta before taking him before Father. There’s no point prolonging this conversation further. If his message really is that urgent, Father needs to hear it fast.’

  Bharat nodded, agreeing. ‘And he is awake and alert again. Yes, he should hear this man’s message quickly.’

  Both rajkumars glanced briefly at the senapati. Although he had left the entire exchange to them, he was still the superior officer on duty.

  ‘With your permission, Senapati, we wish to permit the visitor to proceed to the seventh gate for further verification prior to his being granted an audience with the maharaja.’

  Senapati Dheeraj Kumar was impressed. The rajkumars were doing their job admirably enough, but it wasn’t their ability to handle the gatewatch task that impressed him. It was the fact that they had both avoided making any mention of their brothers thus far. Both Shatrugan and Bharat knew that Captain Bejoo’s Vajra had been dispatched to accompany the rajkumars on their Southwoods mission. This lieutenant would surely know how that mission had transpired. Yet neither prince broke protocol to ask the personal questions that must certainly be burning in their minds at this moment: How are our brothers? Are Rama and Lakshman alive and well? They were too well disciplined.

  He nodded curtly at them. ‘I concur. However, before you proceed, I have a query of my own for the visitor.’

  They bowed their heads at once, acknowledging his privilege. ‘Of course, Senapati.’

  Dheeraj Kumar stepped forward to show himself over the rampart. He addressed the visitor directly.

  ‘Kshatriya, on your last mission, you were stationed with the rajkumars Rama and Lakshman, is that right?’

  ‘Indeed, sire. It was my privilege.’

  ‘In that case, tell me when you last saw them and in what state they both were.’

  Beside him, he felt Bharat and Shatrugan growing alert and tense as they awaited the Kshatriya’s reply. This was the moment of truth. Were Rama and Lakshman all right? Every citizen in Ayodhya had waited nine days to know the answer.

  The Vajra Kshatriya looked up at the senapati silently, then down at the ground, at his sandals worn threadbare and on the verge of falling apart, at the moat that still separated him from the first gate. The water level was a good ten yards below his feet, but the surface teemed with various predators hopeful of receiving an unexpected addition to their natural diet. An eager gharial’s long, swordlike snout scratched the side of the moat’s stone-lined wall, snapping eagerly up at the Kshatriya. Bheriya stared down at the gharial as if he wished he could leap straight into its gaping mouth.

  ‘Kshatriya,’ Dheeraj Kumar called out. ‘Did you not hear my question? What of the rajkumars Rama and Lakshman? What news do you have of them?’

  With obvious reluctance, the Vajra lieutenant raised his head and looked up at the senapati. His face, lined with exhaustion, grime and dried blood, looked pleadingly at the general. ‘Sire, I regret that I am unable to answer your question.’

  Shatrugan clutched Bharat’s arm reflexively. The heftier prince had leaned forward at the visitor’s response, as if he wanted to leap down off the wall, over the moat, and on to the Kshatriya himself. To beat the answer out of that stubborn man, Dheeraj Kumar guessed. But privately, he admired the Vajra lieutenant’s steadfastness. The man was only doing his job.

  Still, that didn’t stop Dheeraj Kumar from steeling his voice when he spoke again. ‘You will answer my question or return with your task unfulfilled. The choice is yours, Kshatriya.’

  The man looked stricken. He joined his hands together. ‘I beg of you, Senapati. Grant me my audience with the maharaja and your query shall be answered as well. My lips are sealed here because the information you seek is part of the message I am entrusted with passing on solely to the maharaja. I cannot violate my orders by speaking even that portion of the message here.’

  Bharat and Shatrugan looked at each other. Senapati Dheeraj Kumar saw the expression on their faces and understood exactly what they were thinking. Even though the Vajra lieutenant hadn’t answered his question directly, his refusal itself was reply enough. Had the rajkumars been safe and sound, there would have been no need for secrecy. If news of their condition was part of the secret message, that could only mean one thing.

  Rama and Lakshman were either seriously injured, or dead.

  SIXTEEN

  Sumitra swam up out of a nightmarish vision of a giant cobra attacking her sons. In her dream, the twins were still mere infants, peacefully asleep in their cribs, gaining a few scant hours of rest from their perennial squabbling. Even in his sleep, Lakshman still hitched in his breath resentfully at irregular intervals–he had lost the last bout to Shatrugan. Both boys had their thumbs securely stuck in their mouths, and each clutched a separate corner of the same favourite blanket in his tiny fist. Lying facing away from one another, the blanket tugged taut between them, they resembled each other so perfectly, even down to their grumpy expressions, that even Sumitra could only tell them apart by Lakshman’s irregular breathing.

  She was lying right beside them, her fingers gently brushing away curls of hair from their chubby faces, when the cobra appeared. It reared up from behind the bed, its enormous hood fanning out and casting the entire room into shadow. Its black eyes glinted demonically as it hissed, the long, sharply forked tongue flicking out to spatter droplets of venom all over the blanket. It grew impossibly huge in size, looming over them all, its hooded head bursting through the roof of the chamber, rising above the chamber, the palace, the city itself, so aweinspiring in its power and deadly beauty that she knew it could be none other than Takshak himself, king of the cobras.

  But its face was the face of the Second Queen.

  Kaikeyi looked directly into Sumitra’s eyes and issued a sibilant cry that was as deafening as a squalling ocean battering against the sides of a storm-tossed ship.’

  ‘SSSSSUMITRA! NEXT IT’LL BE THE TURN OF YOUR SONSSSSSS!’

  Sumitra woke up screaming.

  Kausalya’s gentle hand caught her in time before she could fall out of bed. ‘Hush, Sumitra,’ the First Queen said softly. ‘There’s no danger here. You’re safe.’

  Sumitra sat up, her chest heaving, sari unwound, hair over her face. She looked around the chamber, assuring herself that it had been just a nightmare. Her breathing gradually slowed enough to permit speech. ‘It was Kaikeyi again. This time she was after Lakshman and Shatrugan.’

  ‘It was just a bad dream. You’re still in shock.’

  Sumitra looked around wild-eyed, still needing confirmation that the chamber was clear. Kausalya and she were alone in the room. A maid appeared at the doorway, looking in inquisitively. Kausalya waved her away, then picked up something from the bedside table. She turned back with a drinking vessel in her hands and brought it slowly to Sumitra’s lips. ‘Here, drink some water.’

  Sumitra took a sip, still shivering from the memory of the dream.

  ‘Enough,’ she said, sitting up further. She caught Kausalya’s wrist, spilling a little water. ‘Kausalya, tell me. Were
you able to catch the shrew? Did you and Guru Vashishta confront her and tell her that I saw it all?’

  Kausalya moved the vessel to her other hand and put it back on the bedside table. ‘We confronted her. We told her all that you described to the guru and me. About your seeing her in the maharaja’s room, straddling him, biting him … ‘

  ‘Like a snake! A giant she-snake with huge fangs!’ Sumitra held up two fingers inverted before her own lips to show how large the fangs had been. ‘And she wasn’t just biting him. She was poisoning him. I saw the venom dripping, Kausalya. It stained his ang-vastra. The mark must still be there. And devi help us, I think she put her fangs into his neck. Devi alone knows what the venom would have done to him in his sickly state.’

  Kausalya looked down at the space between them, smoothing the ruffled bedcover. ‘Sumitra, Kaikeyi was in her own bedchamber, deep in meditation. She hasn’t left her chamber for the past nine days. I had placed my own guards on double watch at the hallway to her apartments; they confirmed that the Second Queen hasn’t come out from her rooms even once in all that time.’

  Sumitra stared at her. ‘What do you mean? I saw her, Kausalya. I saw her right there in the sick-chamber!’

  Kausalya looked up, her face gentle but apologetic. ‘Sumitra, she couldn’t have been in the maharaja’s sickroom. Even the maharaja’s palace guards confirm it. Nobody saw Kaikeyi leave her rooms or enter Dasaratha’s chambers.’

  ‘Nobody except me, you mean?’ Sumitra got out of bed, pushing away the sheet with which Kausalya had covered her while she had slept. She went to the window, looking out. The thick drapes were tightly drawn, but the spring sunshine shone brightly through the cracks. She guessed from the angle of light that it was past noon. She had slept the whole morning away.

  Behind her, Kausalya said cautiously: ‘We spoke to all the palace staff, Sumitra. There’s nobody else to corroborate your story. And the guruji himself met with Kaikeyi. He says she’s so thin and weakened from her nine days of fasting, she couldn’t possibly have done all you said she did. Even if she did somehow pull it off, she certainly wasn’t hissing or lunging about like a serpent. He says she was barely conscious. He ended up trying to convince her to take some nourishment.’

  Sumitra turned back to Kausalya, her eyes flashing. ‘So what does that mean? That I made up the whole story? Kausalya, when you found me lying unconscious on the floor of the sick-chamber and revived me, I told you and the guruji everything that had happened. Why would I make up a story like that?’

  Kausalya began folding the bedclothes with a slow, deliberate manner that made Sumitra’s heart sink. ‘Sumitra, nobody’s saying you made up the story. It’s just that we can’t find any proof to support your version. Please, don’t get upset again. I know you must have been through a terrible experience. But the guruji feels—’

  ‘What? What does he feel?’ Sumitra realised how angry and resentful she sounded and felt instantly ashamed. Harsh words and angry looks didn’t come easily to her. They were Kaikeyi’s weapons. But she couldn’t believe that the nightmare scene she had witnessed in the maharaja’s sick-chamber was being dismissed as … as what exactly?

  Kausalya stood and came to her. She took Sumitra’s wrists in her hands, massaging the pulse points gently, trying to soothe her. ‘There was a stain on the maharaja’s ang-vastra. The guru identified it. I saw it too. In the exact spot you said it would be found.’

  Kausalya pointed to a spot on her own midriff, just below her ribs. ‘There.’

  A surge of hope leapt in Sumitra’s heart. ‘Then you have proof! The venom from her fangs, it dripped and fell on to his ang-vastra. There’s no way that venom could have come there except if what I saw is true! You have proof!’

  Kausalya looked at her silently, continuing to stroke Sumitra’s wrists. ‘That’s what I thought too when I saw the spot. But then the guru identified the cause of the stain.’ She stopped stroking and touched Sumitra’s cheek gently. ‘It was the fruit punch you had prepared for him, Sumitra. A drop spilt on his ang-vastra, that’s all.’

  Sumitra wanted to scream again. The nightmare had been more bearable than this reality. At least she could wake up from the nightmare. What did all this mean? That her senses had tricked her? That she had slipped and fallen and struck her head and imagined the whole bizarre scenario? Or that Kaikeyi was behind this too, manipulating everything to cover her tracks?

  Sumitra pictured Guru Vashishta’s grim face and changed her mind immediately. Whatever the extent of Kaikeyi’s witchery, she couldn’t possibly have come face to face with the sage and deceived him as well. That was simply impossible.

  But then what was the truth? What had really happened in that sick-chamber?

  Sumitra took a deep breath. ‘Kausalya, at least tell me this much. If the whole thing was just some kind of nightmare hallucination, then Dasa must be well, mustn’t he? Nothing happened to him because, as you say, nothing happened at all.’

  ‘Bhagini,’ Kausalya said, using the affectionate term the two queens shared, meaning literally she-with-whom-I-share-all. ‘There’s something else I have to tell you. Come sit here for a minute.’

  They sat on the edge of the bed again, this time on the side facing the window. The afternoon sunshine leaked through the cracks and crevices in the drapes, creating a peculiar sense of being neither wholly indoors nor outdoors. Like a prison cell with a large barred window, Sumitra thought. Now, why did I think such a thing?

  Kausalya said softly, ‘Guru Vashishta smelled a strange odour in the fruit punch spilled on the floor and in the stain on the maharaja’s ang-vastra.’

  Her deep brown eyes watched Sumitra closely, searching for a reaction. ‘He recognised it at once as the juice of the vinaashe root.’

  ‘Poisonroot?’ Sumitra said, not understanding at first. ‘But that’s impossible! Why would anyone put poisonroot in Dasa’s punch?’ She clapped her hands to her face, horrified. ‘Devi! If he drank vinaashe root, then—’

  Kausalya shook her head reassuringly. ‘The maharaja is going to be all right. Guru Vashishta and I entered the sick-chamber not an instant too soon. The guru sent for the antidote right away. We were able to revive the maharaja. Fortunately, he didn’t imbibe too much of the drug. The vaids say that given his condition, the drug might well have put him into a permanent coma. Or worse.’

  She added slowly: ‘If we had arrived even a few minutes later, the maharaja might not be with us today.’

  Sumitra stared up at the woman who was not just her senior in the family hierarchy but also her dearest friend. At that instant, despite her dishevelled and distraught state, Sumitra herself still looked more like a young girl than the mother of two fifteenyear-old sons. Her large light-brown eyes glistened wetly in her delicately shaped face. Her innocent mind struggled to comprehend the implications of Kausalya’s shocking revelation.

  ‘But how could the vinaashe root have got into his punch, Kausalya? I made it myself with my own hands. I know how poisonroot smells—how it stinks! I would have known at once if it was mixed with the other herbs. Besides, if you and Guru Vashishta say that Kaikeyi wasn’t in the sick-chamber, then nobody else was there either. There was only the maharaja and myself.’

  Kausalya looked down at her silently, still holding Sumitra’s hands. Her beautiful almond-shaped eyes brimmed with an emotion that was part sympathy and part sorrow. Sumitra stared at her, suddenly understanding the full significance of Kausalya’s words.

  ‘Devi spare us,’ Sumitra said, choking on the realisation. ‘You believe that I put the poisonroot in his punch? That I tried to poison him?’

  Kausalya shook her head. ‘No, Sumitra. I know how much you love Dasaratha. You would give your life for him. Why, after he deserted me for Kaikeyi, I turned bitter and angry. It was all I could manage to keep from actually wishing him ill. I wanted to curse him, Sumitra! I hated him for what he had done to me.’

  The First Queen shook her head, trying to banish those bitter y
ears of neglect and betrayal. ‘But you, Sumitra? He neglected you as much as he did me. Yet I saw how you took it. I used to cry on your lap, you remember? You used to comfort me like a little mother! You couldn’t bring yourself to hate him even then. I know you can’t hate him now, when he’s weak and ailing and so full of regret.’

  Kausalya paused to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

  Sumitra waited, knowing there was more.

  After a short pause, Kausalya went on, ‘But as I’ve said already, the guards confirm that nobody else went in or out of the sick-chamber between the time that I left to go see the guru and the time that the guru and I returned together. You admitted it yourself, only you and Dasaratha were there together. Alone.’

  And a giant anthropomorphic serpent with Kaikeyi’s face, Sumitra thought silently. But I can’t prove that. Just as I can’t prove that I didn’t do what everybody thinks I did in that chamber, even though I know I didn’t do it.

  Kausalya went on, her hesitation making it clear that she didn’t enjoy saying what she was about to say, but that it had to be said anyway. ‘The guru thinks that perhaps you were distraught with anxiety for Dasaratha’s condition. That perhaps the maharaja, in one of his sudden fits of delirium, begged you to give him something to sleep peacefully and make the transition to the afterlife without further suffering. We all know how you can’t bear to watch another person suffering, Sumitra. So maybe … and I don’t believe this myself, mind you … but perhaps it’s possible that you ground up some vinaashe root with your herbs and you mixed it into his fruit punch and then gave him a sip. And as you watched him fall unconscious, you were overcome with guilt and shock at what you’d done, and fainted dead away.’

  Kausalya stopped, her face reflecting her pain at saying these things. She searched Sumitra’s face for some confirmation or denial of what she’d just said.

  Sumitra finished for her: ‘And then my mind, unable to accept what I had just done, conjured up a wildly fanciful tale of Kaikeyi turning into a giant serpent and stinging the maharaja into his coma.’