by David Hair
She was dead.
She was alive.
Her name was Halika …
Halika: Tainted Love
Sinat, 15th century BC
Her name was Halika, and she was born in the Sinat town of Gholasti on the day that Sinat was devastated. Her father died, burnt to nothing by the dreadful fires that rained from the skies, but her mother, giving birth indoors, was a survivor, and joined the harrowing exodus east after the conflagration and floods. There was nothing to eat but what little they could scavenge. There were so few survivors that there was little conflict. Everyone was dazed, barely able to function, the few who retained their calm through the madness herded the survivors like sheep, seeking safety.
None would have survived but for Dasraiyat, the king’s great friend, who came to the aid of the refugees. He led them to springs, and some say he caused trees to grow and give forth fruit, and roots to burgeon from the dusty soil. He brought rain for drinking water, they said, attributing other miracles. They followed him east, and were received in a number of towns, joining with the population of ‘lesser men’, as the Sinathai people still thought of others. But gradually their pride was eroded, and they were absorbed into the people of their new lands. The taller, fairer-skinned Sinathai survivors were by necessity forced to marry easterners. They learnt a new tongue and forgot their own. Eventually they would forget who they were, barely remembering that the tales of the cataclysm in their lands was their own history.
Halika knew none of this. By the time she had awareness, the exodus was three years in the past. She grew alongside the others, but apart. She KNEW, inside, that she was different from the other children. She was pure Sinathai, taller and fairer. Better, in her view. And with a secret, a special secret: she could make wishes come true. Bad, wicked wishes.
She first used her wishes against another one hot day when a girl pulled her hair. She silently wished the girl ill, and that very day the girl collapsed. Her hair fell out in the next few days, and she drowned herself in shame. Halika exulted. A boy bullied her: she wished him dead and a snake bit him. By the time she was ten, the other children sensed that she was different. Nothing that could be proven, but they called her a witch. She was someone to avoid.
She needed a protector, before the villagers could band against her. There was an unpopular priest who she spent her time with. She found she could give him insights about the people, and pick out the unfaithful. He taught her a little learning he had, including how to read and write. She wouldn’t let him do the things he wanted with her, but she found him girls who would. She and the priest became bound together by mutual gain.
Eventually though, she tired of him. By then she was thirteen, and needed more than he could teach. So she shut him in his hut after drugging him, and burned it down with a wish. Then she fled to a hermitage for women which taught ancient wisdom. She despised the other girls, but she wanted to learn. She presented herself meekly to the matron, the Vedavati, and was accepted as a student, vowing a life of chastity and devotion in return for learning. She hated it, yet feared what would happen to her in the greater world, should they discover her secret. She buried her pride deep, beneath the Vedavati’s sight, and learnt and grew.
In the years following the Conflagration, as they called it, the Indus Valley had been left a desert. In the Suryavansha lands Dasraiyat became king. His palace was called Ayodhya. He had sons by several wives. Meanwhile Halika turned twenty, accounted the most promising of the students. They all feared her, too, which gave her even more pleasure. One day she was sitting writing a treatise on the phases of starvation in the human body, picturing the suffering of the victim, when with a clatter of hooves, a man rode into the courtyard. She was immediately struck with him. He was imperious, and clearly Sinathai by birth, for he was lean and tall and golden-skinned. His face was fierce yet haunted, his mouth sensuous and dangerous. His bare arms and thighs were magnificently muscled. When he looked down, he saw her and in that second, she imagined all they would do with each other.
He was calling upon the Vedavati for advice. He didn’t give a name, but he comported himself in a lordly fashion. She made eyes at him over dinner. She thought he hadn’t noticed, and retired early to sulk in her tiny chamber.
At midnight, her door opened, and the stranger slipped inside.
She didn’t need to talk, not at first. Not when there was so much else her mouth could be doing. But afterward, naked in his arms, her mind overflowed with questions. He was happy to answer them.
He was the dreaded Aeshwaran, the man her people called ‘Ravana’: the cause of all weeping. She didn’t care. Finally here was a man to master her. And he seemed to know all about her: her birth date and her strange powers. He said he had been seeking her for years.
Would she return with him to his homeland, and become his queen?
She answered with her body.
They left before dawn, in a cloud of beastmen riders that had been waiting in the woods for their king.
But before they left, the beastmen took all the students and teachers into a courtyard. There they slaughtered them and burnt the corpses inside the hermitage. She herself set the flames. With a wish.
Halika: Sisters in Spirit
Ayodhya, 15th century BC
Two years later, she slipped into Ayodhya, the town of King Dasraiyat. She had a false identity, and a mission: to spy upon the kingdom. It was easy to gain a position at court, in the household of the second queen, Kaikeyi. She took the name Mandara, and was very soon controlling every word the queen spoke. She was careful. Her time with Aeshwaran had taught her discipline. He had shown her how to mask her presence from other sorcerers, which he said was vital. His final words echoed in her mind: ‘Dasraiyat is a sorcerer, just as you and I are. I suspect at least one of his sons is also: perhaps more. Beware! Keep your eyes open. Seek others like yourself who were born on the day of the Conflagration—I have begun to suspect there may be at least two others, perhaps more. I want them.’
‘But I will always be your first wife, won’t I?’ she had replied, a little anxiously. Though they shared a powerful, furious passion, there was always some need in him she couldn’t seem to fill. And they had no children, in fact she was beginning to worry that she was infertile.
‘Of course, Halika. You will always be first.’ But she knew he said such things lightly. He would take other women to his bed whilst she was away, she knew that. When she found out who, they would regret it …
It took little time to find the girl she sought. She was royalty, wife to Ram, the eldest of the princes. Her name was Sita. Halika had been drawn to the girl from the start, when she heard that the girl was considered fey and moon-touched. Halika slipped into the rooms of the astronomer and read the girl’s birth charts—she was born the same day as Halika, the same day as the Great Conflagration. She was the one she had been sent to find!
One morning Halika saw her chance. Sita was in a garden, where she had found a rabbit that had been mauled by cats. Sita stroked the cowering creature, and without really understanding what she did, healed the rabbit with a touch. The girl gazed about guiltily, then scurried away. But Halika saw. She intercepted her.
‘Oh, Mandara!’ Sita exclaimed as she appeared in front of her.
‘Good morning, Princess,’ Halika curtseyed. ‘I wonder if you can help me: I have a pet rabbit and he has escaped, naughty thing! Have you seen it?’
Sita’s lovely eyes flashed anxiously. ‘I might have,’ she breathed.
‘Oh, splendid. Where?’
‘Er … here, in the garden.’
‘Will you help me find it?’
Sita looked like she wished to refuse, but could not think of a reason. They scoured the garden, and found the rabbit cowering beneath the bush where it had been left. Halika picked the thing up, suppressing its desire to flee with a subtle wish. ‘It gashed itself on a nail when it escaped,’ Halika lied. ‘But look! There is no sign of a wound!’
&nb
sp; Sita looked even more worried.
‘Perhaps the presence of your majesty has caused the wound to vanish,’ Halika suggested in a guileless voice, watching the princess shiver anxiously. What a vapid creature! ‘Perhaps your mere touch has healing powers!’
Sita turned bright red.
‘Do you know what?’ Halika said in a quiet voice. ‘We share the same star sign. In fact, we were born on the very same day!’
‘How very odd,’ Sita said, her voice hollow.
‘It is like being sisters,’ Halika said in a sinuous voice.
‘I think not,’ Sita replied haughtily. ‘I must go.’ She fled the garden.
Halika held the frightened rabbit in her hand. Then twisted its neck as soon as she was alone. She liked the way its heartbeat thumped harder, desperate to prolong life, and then faded into stillness.
Halika ghosted through the night-time palace like a shadow. The signal had come. It was time to strike.
The princes Ram and Lakshmana were away in a hunting lodge. Sita was with them. Before the night was over, the two princes would die, and Sita would be Aeshwaran’s prize. She smiled as she slipped through a richly adorned doorway, and into the chamber of the king.
King Dasraiyat, the saviour of the Sinathai, was considered so beloved that he did not even have a guard outside his room. She had not seen him up close before, needing to stay well away lest he sniff her out. He even looked a little like her lord: Aeshwaran had warned that he would. But where her beloved Aeshwaran had powerful, masterful features, a vigour and strength that went beyond arrogance, this man looked older, softer. His face was lined with cares. They said he wept at bad news. That he was kindly and gentle. That his politeness and courtesy were famed.
Pathetic.
She bared the poisoned needle, and lowered it to his neck. A single stab, and in seconds, death. Her every sense was enervated with excitement, her legs trembling as she drove the needle in.
He woke, his mouth flying open. ‘Manda?’ he gasped, as she jammed a cloth over his mouth to drown any cry, and pinned him down. His big eyes, so like Aeshwaran’s, goggled up at her in total disbelief.
‘My name is Halika. I am the wife of Aeshwaran,’ she whispered. He tried weakly to push her away, but the poison was already weakening him. He couldn’t budge her. She felt all-powerful. She bent closer, and hissed into his face. ‘Tonight, my lord husband hunts in your hunting lodge. He hunts princes and princesses.’
She saw his fear, his horror. He tried to rally. Wishes tore at her, mental commands, exhorting her to relent and let him rise. Wishes that the poison be ineffective. But she countered them with wishes of her own, doubling and trebling the efficacy of the venom, and holding on grimly. A wind lashed her, unseen blows staggered her. But she didn’t have to hold on for long … just a few seconds more … They both rose into the air, his back arching, her own strength of body and will tested to the limit.
Then his eyes rolled backward, and he slumped back onto the bed. She fell atop him, gasping. Then forced the cloth down over his mouth and nose again, to make doubly sure. But he never moved again.
King Dasraiyat was dead.
Halika met her lover on the road westward. He had his beastmen about him. Among them was a gelding that was roped to his horse. On it sat Sita. She looked disbelieving, lost in a nightmare come true.
‘The king is dead, my love,’ Halika purred.
His eyes flared, his nostrils widened. He pulled her up and kissed her fervently. ‘Dasraiyat is dead?’ He tossed his mane and roared in triumph. ‘My darling Halika! My love, you are magnificent!’
‘What of the princes?’ she asked.
Aeshwaran looked suddenly angry. ‘They fought off our attack! We struck as they hunted deer, but they had too many guardsmen about them. We had to pull out.’ He looked furious with himself. ‘Ram is a sorcerer, like us. He used Aspect-arrows. He is dangerous.’ He turned back and his eyes drank in the beautiful woman on the gelding. ‘But we have his woman. They had left her at the lodge with only a few guards.’
Sita stared at Halika. Halika found herself smiling. ‘Then this trip has been doubly blessed, my love.’
Aeshwaran raised a hand, signalling his column. ‘Mount up behind me, Halika. We ride, for Lanka!’
As they began to gallop, she whispered in his ear, ‘Who is Manda?’
He never answered that question. Not then. Not ever.
Halika: The Seige of Lanka
Lanka, 15th century BC
Halika clung to her husband’s arm, and stared out over the walls of their fortress, at the massive camp of the enemy. ‘Have they all come, Aeshwaran? The whole East?’ For the first time in her life, she felt truly frightened.
The camp of the enemy went on forever. It didn’t matter that they were all former slaves, lower caste rabble with no breeding: they were fighting men now. Ram and Lakshmana had shown the people the body of his father Dasraiyat, and every man and woman that had been on that awful march out of dying Sinat had rallied to them.
Aeshwaran had been contemptuous of the army of former slaves at first, dismissing them as ‘monkeys’. But he did not dismiss them now. Ram’s army had even adopted the name for themselves, throwing Aeshwaran’s mockery back in his face. They were led by one called Hannu, and they called themselves ‘Hannu’s Monkeys’ with the kind of perverse pride that fighting men develop in war. They threw themselves at Aeshwaran’s Asuras with controlled ferocity. They died by the hundreds, but they were so many.
At first she thought her lover would blast them all to nothing. But they soon found that Ram and Lakshmana could counter their spells with magic of their own. They fired arrows at the attackers from a distance, but for the most part, the sorcerers on either side—she and Aeshwaran against Ram and Lakshmana—cancelled each other out. It was becoming a battle of attrition. And though the Asuras were fierce and each as strong as three men, the ‘Monkeys’ outnumbered them by more than ten to one.
We’re all going to die …
Ram and his Monkeys are going to wipe us out to the last.
The gods will punish us for what we have done, for all eternity.
It was too late to give back Sita, it would have made no difference. She had thought he would bed her, unwilling or not. But he did not. She was kept prisoner, honoured and respected, but a captive still. Halika wasn’t sure why, and was afraid to ask.
Halika clung to Ravan Aeshwaran’s leg. He kicked her away. ‘Do not show fear before my men!’ His whisper was hollow. He emitted a theatrical roar, to hide the dread she knew he felt inside. He was mounted on his warhorse, with his curved sword at his side and his bow slung. A battle-axe hung across his back, beneath his quiver. He looked indestructible, but she knew him better than all the rest. She could see it in his eyes: despair.
She wanted to weep but she had never learnt how.
They had not thought the enemy princes would accept the parley, let alone the challenge—a duel to the death between Aeshwaran and Ram. They were losing the war of attrition and this duel was their last hope. Kill Ram or Lakshmana, and the balance was restored. She had hoped it would be the younger one, Lakshmana, that took the challenge, but Ram had taken the thrown gauntlet. She was desperately afraid of him—he had Dasraiyat’s eyes.
The Asura warriors bellowed encouragement, their eyes holding nothing but confidence as their king rode out the gates amid the blare of the trumpets, and thunder of the drums. ‘Ravan! Ravan!’ She watched from among the Asura captains. These leaders had been given special powders by her husband, the result of long research based on notes Aeshwaran had found that had belonged to Dasraiyat. Some of these Asuras had developed a limited brand of sorcery as a result: Meghanada, Prahasta, Meenakshi, Maricha, some two dozen others. They had been elevated to command, given the title ‘Rakshasa’, a Sinathai word for ‘blessed’. They formed an inner circle, gathered about her, charged with her protection should the king fall.
Ram walked out to meet Aeshwaran in the no
-man’s land, too far from either side for the Rakshasas or Lakshmana to influence the battle. She felt her knees go weak as the Ravan tethered his warhorse, dismounted and approached the young man. Ram was slender, but muscular. His prowess was legendary among the Sinathai. All feared him and his accursed arrows. The two paused when they were some fifty yards apart, and spoke—no one could catch the words. Both armies fell silent. Challenges, taunts, who knew? Last words, for one of them. Then Aeshwaran roared, snatched up his bow and fired, his arrow igniting in a nimbus of scarlet fire.
Ram shot it out of the air and blurred sideways, firing again. His arrow flared and exploded before it even reached the king. Aeshwaran waded forward, firing as he came.
Aeshwaran was twice the size of the young prince. If he reached him he would rip him apart, surely! Arrows flew, and the watching men gasped, as wonders took place in every eye-blink. Normal men simply did not—could not—shoot arrows from the sky! Human beings did not cause winds and fires and lightning bolts to flash across the battlefield. Such wonders were the province of gods. But these two men could and did, moving in barely seen blurs, shouting their spells and making the very air crackle.
Then Aeshwaran tore the axe from his back and covered the last few yards between him and Ram in a sight-defying charge.
His first swing shattered Ram’s bow. The axe arced in a graceful sweep towards the young prince’s neck. But Ram ducked low, even as his own sword flashed out. Tortured metal clashed as the axe met the blade, and then Aeshwaran lurched sideways to avoid a counter-lunge. The whole of the Asura army gasped, but their king righted himself, flinging the axe at Ram’s face as he drew his sword, closing the gap again in a flash.