by David Hair
But it was hard to focus on hatred and revenge when she was so alone, in this weirdly tranquil place. Every day was exactly like the other. The perfect golden sun—if you squinted you could see the chariot of Surya and his horses—rose, and the marble and gilt palace awoke. At first she refused to eat, but could not sustain the impulse. When she relented, she found the fruits and breads succulent and wholesome. The wine which the horned servant girl brought in the evening was divine: unearthly, and dangerously heady.
The palace was within a walled city on an island, but an island so large that she could only see the sea to the south. It was richly forested, dark verdant trees fringing the small plains upon which the city stood, in the curve of a natural stream that flowed through the city in a vast underground drainage system. The fortress and the city and the island had one name—Lanka.
She was housed in a tower of the Citadel, which ran for nearly a half a kilometre along the southern walls of the city. Facing north, from her balcony, she could see the lower town below, where thousands of demon and human inhabitants dwelt. She wasn’t sure if ‘demon’ was the right word any more. They didn’t seem so unearthly and evil now, when she could watch them from up high, go about normal everyday tasks like any human city inhabitants. ‘Asura’ was what they called themselves, but they meant it only as a name for themselves, with no connotations of demons or evil. The Citadel was for the Asura-lords, the Rakshasa, another word with a different meaning here: to them ‘Rakshasa’ denoted a lord of their people. The lesser Asura dwelt in the lower town, with their human slaves. She had been told by her maid that more than a quarter of the population were human slaves, primarily housed in Lower Town. The city had an orderly, precise look to it from above. It lived off the produce of the farms that lay about it, and raided the real world for conveniences, her maid told her.
It was the night time she feared the most. Alone in her bed, her dreams were vivid and frightening. She dreamt she was a ghost, stalking a strange forest, lost and hungry. Snatching eggs from nests only for them to crumble to dust in her bony hands. Mewling with thirst and longing. These visions scared her hugely, because she knew they weren’t true dreams, but the thoughts of her other self—the ghost of Padma, the final part of her of her fractured soul. Padma was seeking her with implacable hunger.
The daylight brought relief, and as the dreams intensified and worsened, she was even grateful for the company of her maid, who had a room outside her quarters, and could come and go at will. Ras had all she needed, though she couldn’t wash as the baths here were communal, in underground pools below the Citadel. At first she was self-conscious, and refused to wash. But her itching skin drove her mad, and she couldn’t take it any more. Next morning when Kaineskeya, her deer-antlered maid, appeared at the door, unlocking it carefully, she half-turned.
‘I want to wash,’ she told the Rakshasa girl—who looked about fourteen, if she had been human—in a peremptory voice.
‘Then you must come to the bathing pools, mistress,’ Kaineskeya told her.
‘I want to wash here!’ she demanded.
‘I’m sorry, mistress, but we all wash in the bathing pools. They are under the women’s palace, on the west side. It isn’t far.’
So she let Kaineskeya lead her through the maze-like passages, until they reached the marble pools deep beneath the women’s wing, huge and communal. Naked demon-women frolicked like children, unconscious how alien and in some cases hideous they looked, with their combinations of animal and human forms. She saw human bodies with the heads of cows or pigs or wolves. Some were closer to beast than human, others barely distinguishable from normal people. One had a female torso atop a thick python body. Some were beautiful until you saw their faces, and some retained an alien beauty even then. None were aged and none were children. They all peered at her, and went silent. They watched her with eyes that were slit-pupilled or fiery or pure black like holes in space. They tittered as Ras disrobed, and circled about her. She was petrified, but Kaineskeya snapped at them, and then stroked her shoulders soothingly. ‘They will not harm you, mistress. They are your subjects.’
‘Make them go away,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let them look at me.’
‘You will learn to love them,’ Kaineskeya responded. ‘As they will learn to love you.’
She looked about her fearfully, at the twisted, grotesque faces and bodies with their chilling eyes.
Kaineskeya stood up and clapped her hands. ‘Look at you!’ she snapped at the gathered she-demons. ‘Look at you, scaring the queen! She is your new mother! Give her privacy and your respect!’
They backed away slowly, like a receding ripple. ‘Just another queen,’ hissed someone. ‘Another cruel queen.’
‘My mistress is not like the Shadow Queens,’ Kaineskeya replied, lifting her head possessively. ‘She is a true queen, and she will heal our lord, make him strong and good again.’
The demon-women muttered sourly, but backed further away into the recesses of the baths. Rasita watched them go, feeling not at all like a queen, and more like the only normal person in a freak-asylum. She turned away, and tried to wrap herself in solitude. Kaineskeya washed beside her, her skinny girlish body almost normal, if you disregarded the clawed fingers, backward-hinged hind legs, cloven hooves and the budding antlers on her brow.
None of the Rakshasa spoke to Rasita after that, but they kept up a barrage of questions for Kaineskeya.
‘What are they saying to you?’ Rasita asked reluctantly when there was a pause.
‘They are saying that you are very beautiful, mistress.’
Rasita snorted. No one had ever called her beautiful—she had always been too skinny, too sickly and pinch-faced and unhealthy to be thought of as pretty. But she was vaguely aware that this was changing. Since her spirit had joined with that of Sunita Ashoka, her health had improved, and she had begun to develop mature curves. Her face was losing its hollow, gaunt aspect. Her hair no longer straggled limply. This change might have pleased her at another time. But right now, it seemed dangerous, as though she were no longer fully herself.
The Asura women still bombarded Kaineskeya with questions. ‘They are asking if you dance. If you sing. And many other questions,’ the maid reported.
There was more to it than that, she could tell. Kaineskeya was sheltering her. Some of the comments and questions had sounded lewd or antagonistic. She averted her eyes from the circle of Asura again, not wanting to confront such an array of strange flesh, alien faces and piercing eyes. ‘I am clean now. Let us go.’
Kaineskeya helped her into a fresh silken robe. ‘Your old clothes are filthy,’ she sniffed. ‘They will be laundered or burnt, as you wish.’
‘No, don’t burn them!’ Ras replied. Her modern clothes felt like a lifeline back to her world; a reminder that she hadn’t always been in this strange place.
After the bathing, she went to her roofed garden and sat beneath a pagoda, staring out over the city of the demons. It gleamed in the sunlight with a soft creamy-golden hue. Beyond the walls were green plains and then forests. On one side there was water, glistening waves catching the light in the middle distance. It looked tidal, but it was very gentle, not like an ocean with big waves. The winds from the water smelt as much of silt and mud as it did of salt, but it was clearly seawater, not a lake or river.
The city was not at all what she would have thought a city of demons might be like. She had pictured torture chambers and grim battlements with heads on spikes. This place was like some Mediterranean resort in a travel brochure, with blue swimming pools and colourful gardens full of every bright flower. But fierce beast-faced Asura warriors patrolled the walls, and the little bat-faced Baital circled above at night.
She wondered about the lot of the human slaves in the city below. Apparently most had been born here, the children of older generations of captives, and knew no other life. They had no loyalty except to the Asura, Kaineskeya told her.
I am alone here. There is no on
e like me in all the fortress.
No one but Him.
She hadn’t wanted to like Kaineskeya, but the demon-girl was just too nice and considerate. She protected Rasita from the other Asura women as the days passed and some kind of routine was established. Kaineskeya took Ras’ tantrums and weeping storms, and gave back sympathy. She played chess and cards with her when she asked. She brought treats from the kitchen and arranged musicians to entertain her. She wore Rasita down with kindness. ‘Call me Ke-ke,’ Kaineskeya told her. ‘Everyone else does.’ Rasita tried to ignore the girl, but she was the only company she had, and was sweetness itself.
One morning she woke with something like lightness inside her. She felt fully rested for the first time in months. The face in the mirror was softer than she remembered and there was no darkness beneath the eyes. Her hair looked lustrous. ‘Keke,’ she called.
‘Mistress?’ The Asura-girl pranced into the room with her usual eerie grace, a mop in her hand.
‘How old are you?’
Kaineskeya frowned. ‘I don’t know, mistress. A few hundred years, I think.’
A few hundred years …!
‘How can you not know?’
The Asura shrugged. ‘We don’t count time here, mistress. And sometimes, it is as if we all sleep.’
Rasita puzzled over this. ‘How can you all just sleep?’
Keke shrugged. ‘Lanka without the King is like a clock with no battery. Everything stops.’
Ras didn’t like this reminder of Ravindra or his powers. She had not seen him for weeks, since that awful night when Deepika had fallen down the well. ‘Everything stops?’ she echoed doubtfully. It sounded like that fairy-tale by Hans Christian Anderson, about the Sleeping Beauty.
‘We don’t actually stop. It’s just that without him there is no direction, no purpose. But he is back now, and everything is waking up again!’ Keke enthused. ‘His sons are returning. Lord Indrajit is coming back, they say.’
Rasita recognized the name of Indrajit—in the Ramayana he was the greatest of the demon-warriors apart from Ravana himself, and nearly killed Rama and Lakshmana. But he’d been killed, hadn’t he? Why was he supposedly alive, here? Why were any of these beings alive? ‘Keke, in the Ramayana, Ravana dies. So do Indrajit and all his captains. Then how are they here now?’
Keke frowned and was silent for so long that Ras wondered if she’d overstepped and asked a forbidden question. But eventually Keke met her gaze and spoke again, in a more measured voice than usual. ‘The old ones say that after the great war, Vibhishana the traitor was left here as king of the Asura. For a time it was hard for him, but he won over the people. But after many lives of men, the Rakshasa lords were reborn, as part of the cycle of rebirth. They took Vibhishana away, and he was never seen again. It made the Asura sad, because the new masters were harsh and cruel.’
‘What about Ravana?’ Rasita asked eagerly.
The little maid shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Ras hid her disappointment. ‘Keke, why must the Ravan keep me here? Doesn’t he remember what happened in the Ramayana? Doesn’t he realize that Vikram and Amanjit are going to kill him?’
‘That was then,’ the maid responded brightly. ‘This is now. It will be different. The wrongs will be righted, and you will give your love to the Ravan, and be restored. We all know this.’ She spoke as if speaking of some ancient prophecy in a fairy-story. Her blind faith made Rasita shudder.
‘Please leave me now, I wish to be alone,’ she said suddenly. She didn’t want to hear this.
‘Mistress, why do you resist?’ Kaineskeya asked. ‘The King is a mighty lover and a great man. He will heal you and make you whole. Then you will reign here for all eternity, in joy and fulfilment. It is written.’
Rasita straightened. Never! ‘GO! GET OUT!’ she shrieked, in sudden fury. ‘GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!!!’
‘Poor Keke,’ purred a darkly melodious voice behind her, some hours later. ‘She is quite tearful today.’
Rasita whirled in sudden fright. She had been standing at the edge of her roof-top garden, wondering if she should just jump and end it all. But there is still hope that Vikram will come and rescue me, she reminded herself.
Ravindra looked at her levelly. He still inhabited the body of the Mumbai detective, Majid Khan: beautiful, sensual, familiar and frightening. He wore a moustache now, a flowing one above a clean-shaven tapered chin. His eyes were golden and his hair flowed to his shoulders. He wore an open-fronted shirt, and his torso rippled with muscle. He looked like a male model from a magazine. His legs were sheathed in golden pantaloons. He wore a curved dagger in a waist-belt, and golden armlets and earrings. His feet were sandalled and he walked silently. At his throat was a necklace with four smoky crystals hanging from a chain—the heartstones of the surviving queens of Mandore, except her own. Two had been destroyed in Mumbai, and hers remained hidden—or with Vikram, she hoped fervently.
She felt a prickling fear as he glided closer. She backed to the window. Is this it? Is this the moment when he … ‘Stay away from me! Stay away! Or I’ll jump!’
He put a hand on a curved marble pillar and lifted an eyebrow slightly. ‘Why?’
Why? She spluttered. ‘Why? Because I’m not going to let you get your filthy hands on me ever, you stinking, kidnapping murderer!’
She expected mockery or anger. Instead he just shook his head carefully. ‘I will not lay a finger on you without your permission, Rasita.’
‘Then let me go, because that will be NEVER!’
He shook his head. ‘I cannot just let you go, Rasita. I need you here. But I swear that beyond that basic restriction, you have the freedom of Lanka, and the allegiance of all who dwell within it.’
‘I don’t want their damned allegiance. I don’t want yours, you DEMON!’
He shrugged. ‘Demon. What is a demon? You know the word “demonised”, I take it? It means to besmirch the reputation of someone so that they are considered evil and subhuman. Which is precisely what Valmiki and his poison-penned poets did to me.’
‘Liar!’
‘You speak in ignorance.’
‘Go back to hell.’
Ravindra sighed with a great show of patience and tolerance. ‘I came to enquire after your comfort. Have you been well cared for? Is there anything you need? Do you wish for company beyond Keke? Several of the young women have asked permission to attend upon you and talk with you.’
‘I don’t want anyone! I want to go home!’
He shook his head once.
‘I want a gun.’
He smiled and shook his head again.
‘I want a television set and a radio. And a cell phone.’
‘Electronic goods do not function well here,’ he told her apologetically. ‘It is the nature of this place.’
‘I want books!’
He bowed. ‘At last, something I can provide. Give Keke a list.’
‘I want a copy of the Ramayana,’ she demanded truculently, to see how he reacted.
Ravindra smiled maddeningly. ‘Of course.’
‘And is there a shrine? I want to pray … to Rama. And Vishnu.’
He laughed aloud, then shook his head. ‘I am sorry, this is not a Hindu society. In fact, we are quite … pagan.’
That stopped her in mid-flow. ‘But the legends say Ravana was an acolyte of Shiva?’ she frowned, slightly interested despite herself.
‘Then the legends must be wrong again, my dear,’ he replied flippantly.
‘I’m not your “dear”,’ she snarled. ‘Do not call me that.’ She glared at him. ‘How are you even real?’
‘Ah. I heard that you had asked this question. Be patient, and I am sure all will come clear.’ He gestured for silence. ‘Listen, there is something serious I must talk to you about. As we now know, when you died in your previous life in Mandore without your heartstone, your soul divided in three. Two parts – yourself and Sunita Ashoka – have been reunited. What is left is the ghost of P
adma. Keke tells me that you have nightmares of Padma’s ghost. You are in great danger from this ghost.’
She lifted her head defiantly. ‘What danger could be worse than my current plight?’
Ravindra frowned. ‘You have seen my queens. Would you become one such as them? Rasita, all your lives since Mandore, the ghost of Padma was either blind to you, or more afraid of you than you of it. No longer! It is seeking you now, that is why you sense its approach. In these mythlands, a ghost is far more formidable and complex to deal with. Only the person the ghost is haunting can bring it peace. Even I cannot protect you.’
She stared at him, trying to read his face. Was he feeding her half-truths or lying? What did he want? ‘In Jodhpur I stabbed it with silver and made it go away,’ she asserted.
‘That was in your world. Now you are here.’
‘Then take me back.’
He shook his head, half-amused. ‘Impossible, and futile. In your world it will still hunt you, and it cannot be destroyed anyway. Nothing would be resolved. This situation must end, Rasita. The ghost suffers, and only you can lay it to rest. But you could also die, be swallowed up by it—it is much stronger in this realm then it was in your own. If it overcomes you, it will consume you, and you will become like my other queen Halika and the others, a living-dead thing, until I can find your heartstone and Deepika’s ghost, and complete the Mandore ritual.’
She shuddered at this dismal prospect. It offered no escape, and no hope. She shook her head, rejecting it.
‘Alternately, if you deal with Padma’s spectre, it will make you stronger. Healthier. Complete. But you will not last a second against it if you do not accept occult protections.’
‘What sort of protections?’
‘You have to understand that these ghosts all desire what I desire—to be whole. They want to live with me. They were created by the heartstones I gave each queen. Their nature is shaped by those heartstones. They want you to submit to me. Only one thing will appease her, and allow you to overcome her hostility. That is a token, truly worn, that you will submit to me.’