by David Hair
Ram tipped the axe aside, though it’s edge ripped the skin of his neck. He parried an overhand blow and a whipped slash at his side, then flashed out a lunging point, scouring Aeshwaran’s armour along the chest plate. Halika heard herself shriek. Long-eyed Meenakshi clutched her hand, screaming defiance.
Aeshwaran launched a flurry of blows, driving Ram backward. His right hand pummelled the younger man’s guard whilst his left hand gestured in bewitching movements, causing fires to spray, or waters to gush, or dust to rise blindingly about his foe. But somehow amidst it all Ram kept moving, kept his sight free, and his guard up.
Then Ram’s sword broke.
Halika crowed, her heart redoubling. ‘Oh yes my Lord yes kill him kill him KILL HIM!!’
The moment seemed to slow into fragments. The sweep of Aeshwaran’s sword, following through after snapping Ram’s blade, threw the king momentarily off balance. The graceful spin and turn of the prince. The deadly whirl of her beloved, as he bellowed in triumph and slashed again at the young man’s wrist. Ram’s dancing grace as he lifted the broken hilt, catching Aeshwaran’s blade, and locking it.
One awful instant, with his blade jammed in the hilt of the broken sword …
… and Ram’s other hand pulling an arrow, his last, from his quiver.
The arrow spun from his hand and flew.
Into her lover’s eye.
And exploded.
Then she only knew that she was being held, between Meenakshi and Maricha, as she screamed and screamed at the swirling darkness.
Her last sight of her beloved, etched on her retina, was of a headless body standing like a statue, before it crashed to the ground.
I Know I Am a Monster
Lanka, May 2011
Rasita shook her head dazedly. She was sprawled on the steps of the bowri. Ravindra sat beside her, the bloody sword in his hands. He was covered in Halika’s blood. Her eyes dimly saw the dusty piles of rags that had been Jyoti and Aruna, and the headless corpse of Halika. Halika …
‘She was your wife,’ she whispered. Her voice echoed in the wispy darkness about the pool. ‘Halika was your first queen. I saw it all, through her eyes.’ The rest of it hit her. ‘My God! The Ramayana! That was the Ramayana … Halika was the maid of the queen, who provoked it all! A spy for you! And you really are Ravana! And there really was a Rama! And a Sita! And all the rest. It’s all true …’
She could hear the disbelieving awe in her voice. It was one thing to think that your life was somehow mirroring a legend—it was quite another to find that it had all been real. And was still changing lives.
‘How can you stand to live?’ she whispered.
My God, he has been alive three thousand years. He wiped out his own people. Everything he touches ends in death.
‘I go on,’ he said, simply, in as grim a voice as she had ever heard. A voice haunted by eternity. ‘I go on, until I have achieved what I must.’
‘Why?’
‘I have no choice. I know I am a monster. But I also know what I once was. And what we were.’ He grasped her hands. His bloody grip frightened her. ‘Rasita, you were Sita! And you were Halika. You were all of them, in one: you were Manda! When the ritual to save our people failed, Manda’s soul was torn into seven aspects. Seven. They were each reborn the same day, as she tried to find me, but they were scattered across the lands, near and far. I only ever found two in that life—Halika, the Aspect of Destruction, and Sita, the Aspect of Creation. The other five—the four elements and the Protector Aspect, I could not find, not in that lifetime. I didn’t know what to do—how to restore them. I was ignorant. I was insane with grief and the damage of being trapped in the Destructive Aspect myself. And when I died, I was reborn with no memory or self-knowledge. Only those awful dream-memories of what I had done.
‘Everything I have tried to do since, in all my dream-wracked lives before Mandore, and as Ravindra and all the other men I have possessed, I have done to restore Manda, and to restore myself! For centuries I was a helpless dream-haunted soul, ignorant of the truth. The Rakshasas hid until they became legends and gradually faded into the mythlands, and I never saw them again, until my life as Ravindra of Mandore. Only then did I regain my own memories, through the aid of one renegade Rakshasa, who did not tell his fellows as he hoped to take full credit for restoring me.
‘The ritual in eighth century Mandore was the first time I was able to find all seven aspects of Manda reborn, though by now their birthdates were no longer aligned, and none but Halika had any recollection of who they really were. I had devised a way to restore Manda—by burning all aspects to release your spirits simultaneously, gathering them in the ether, using a binding crystal for each, and performing certain acts appropriate to each aspect to create one single whole Queen Manda. A holy candle for the fire aspect, a special drink for the water aspect and so on. The Aspect of Creation requires the consensual surrender of the vessel of creation—the womb. My consensual union in the ether with the virginal you—Padma—would be the final act that restored Manda to wholeness.
‘But the reborn sons of Dasraiyat were present, and I did not recognize them—Aram Dhoop and Madan Shastri, themselves ignorant of who they were, but instinctively acting against me. Together, they destroyed the Mandore ritual, leaving my queens and I as mere ghosts. They became mindless killers, and it took me decades to regain the power to inhabit other bodies. Only in the life of Mehtan Ali, the enemy of Chand Bardai, did I begin to remember myself. By then my queens were scattered, their heartstones lost.’
She stared into space, at anything but him. ‘You killed us, whenever you found us.’
His face looked like a wound. ‘I didn’t know! I couldn’t reason! I was compelled to lash out: I am Destruction! I know this.’ His eyes met hers, pleading. ‘Heal me, Rasita. Heal me, and in doing, heal yourself.’
She shrank from him. And from the part of her that wanted to give him what he wanted, the compassionate part of herself. ‘I don’t know how,’ was all she could say.
‘You do know, Rasita! In your heart you know! You are her: you are my Manda, who I loved, and who I have longed for, for three thousand years. You are her Creator Aspect, the most beautiful part of her! And now you also have three other parts of the seven aspects within you! Deepika Choudhary’s ghost embodies the other three. Together, you ARE Manda! Please, I beg you, let me help you become her again. Heal me. We both need this, so very much.’
She pulled herself from his grasp, though it hurt to do so, now. She found herself wanting to hold him, to heal him, to turn him from monster to man. To redeem a soul that was lost.
She ran, before she could surrender to that impulse.
An Archery Display
Sri Lanka, May 2011
The silence was all encompassing. Their room had doors and windows again, but the door handles were gone, and though the windows were open, when Vikram tried a musafir-astra to fly away, it failed. No sound carried, apart from an unsettling and distressing moaning sound, as if something large and old was slowly expiring nearby, unseen and alone.
Vikram stared at the featureless white walls. ‘What’s that sound, man?’
‘The dying elephant sound?’ Amanjit lifted his head. ‘Dunno. Maybe it’s a dying elephant?’
Vikram thrust the strange murmur from his mind, staring out the window in frustration. ‘You know what, I really think we are stuck in some kind of loop. It’s a logic trap.’
‘I don’t do logic, bhai,’ Amanjit grumbled. ‘I just want to punch someone, starting with that pompous ass Vibhishana.’ He was sitting on his bed rewrapping his turban.
‘I don’t think it is his fault. I don’t think he has any choice about what he is and what he is compelled to do. He may not be the real Vibhishana at all—just a mythworld echo.’
‘That doesn’t stop me wanting to hit him.’
‘Me neither,’ Vikram confessed. ‘Hey, at least they’re feeding us again. Even if it’s not helping. I’m so hungr
y I could commit murder.’
Amanjit finished the turban, primped in the mirror, then flexed his fist. ‘We need to get out now, before not eating real food makes us too weak to even try.’
‘I know that,’ Vikram replied tersely. ‘That means our next move has to work. We can’t use our energy on false starts and mistakes. We’ve got to get this right.’
Amanjit took up a sword-fighting pose, waving an imaginary sword. ‘Then think, man!’ He made a few half-hearted fencing moves, then stopped and snarled in frustration. ‘Think!’
Vikram’s face twisted ruefully. ‘Well, either we trick our way out, sneak out, or go out blazing. I’m not sure any of those will work.’
‘Will any astras work?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe outside, but not in here.’
‘I thought that Rama could blast the world apart with an arrow—what’s it called, the big shit-kicker one? The one that killed Ravana in the story?’
‘You’re talking about the Brahmastra. Or one of the other Trimurti arrows. Supposedly you can destroy a god with one, or wipe out an army. But you can only use each of them once in your life.’ He grimaced. ‘And before you ask, no, I’ve never used one—I’ve never worked out how. I can’t get a grasp on them. It’s about the difference between giving and taking. All the arrows I use are limited by my own strength and endurance. They’re like, battlefield weapons. But the big arrows, the Trimurti ones, are more like nuclear weapons. You’ve got to use everything about you, and I’ve barely begun to learn that.’
‘Would one get us out of here?’
‘Maybe.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know, for sure.’
‘Can you think of anything else?’
Vikram stood up. ‘No.’
‘Then get on to it, brother!’
Vikram looked at Amanjit in frustration. ‘Do you think this is easy for me! You’ve got the ability to do this stuff too! You can use astras as well! How about you do something, instead of simply heaping it all on me! If you want to help, maybe you can blast out a Brahmastra yourself?’
Amanjit grunted in mild surprise. ‘Hey, peace! Peace, man! I’m just making suggestions. I don’t know how to do half the stuff you can.’
‘Then learn!’ Vikram jabbed his finger accusingly. ‘You just want to swan about looking cool, and let the nerd do the thinking.’
Amanjit stood up, finally angry. ‘Yeah? You think I don’t want to get out of here as much as you? My WIFE is out there, trying to help OUR family and save YOUR girl. We’re stuck in a stupid room in la-la-land! I’ve got muscle you haven’t, and I use it. You’ve got intellectual muscle we can’t see, but we know it’s there. I haven’t. Believe me, if I think of something you’ll be first to know! But if this is a problem-solving issue, not a muscle issue, I’m not the go-to guy!’
‘Claiming not to be clever isn’t good enough! Anyone can have a great idea, just like any fool with a bow can hit the target sometimes! Abdicating responsibility is lazy and cowardly!’
Amanjit stared back at Vikram open-mouthed, and for a second Vikram was frightened they would come to blows. But then Amanjit sat straight down and nodded. ‘You’re right. I admit, you’re right, and I’m sorry. I’m not helping and I should be.’
They eyed at each other, recognizing that the flashpoint had passed. It was just frustration—the more they tried to push against their prison walls, the more encompassing those prison walls seemed. And Amanjit was right too—they were running out of time. It had been a day since they had their last real piece of food, and they were both suffering from a gnawing hunger.
Vikram exhaled slowly and sat down again. ‘I’m sorry too. I’m just frustrated. I can’t see how to get out of this. If we even think about sneaking out, all the windows and doors vanish. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Well, you say every time you use an ordinary astra you draw on your own energy. That’s finite. You need to draw from elsewhere.’ Amanjit screwed up his eyes, trying to concentrate. ‘So it comes back to trying a Trimurti arrow.’
Vikram hung his head in his hands. ‘I’m not so sure. I mean, it is like we’re surrounded by spells, so maybe a Mohini is the answer—blast the spells away. But then, there are just so many spells surrounding us—and we haven’t got many arrows left. There is something about this place: it’s like there is no energy to feed on, everything here just exists. No creation, no destruction—everything just exists in perpetuity. So there is nothing for a Trimurti astra to feed on, because it is like Creation and Destruction don’t exist here.’ He gnawed at his lip, rubbing his aching belly.
Amanjit just listened, not really taking it all in. If Vik is lost, then I’m doubly so … ‘Maybe I should just smash everything in this room, and then you can use that for energy?’
Vikram didn’t answer, lost in thought.
Hours seemed to pass, and they just felt hungrier and more frustrated. A platter of sweets arrived, just appearing on the table, but though they tasted divine, they seemed to vanish somewhere between mouth and belly. The water that accompanied it at least provided some kind of quenching, though that too seemed elusive.
Amanjit tried to think about Deepika but that made him doubly miserable.
‘You know, maybe there is something in that idea,’ Vikram said finally.
‘In what idea?’
‘In what you said about smashing everything.’
‘I said that?’
‘Yeah, a few hours ago.’
‘I’d forgotten. Sure, what should I smash first?’ He looked at the pottery ornaments, his fingers twitching. It would be nice to take out his frustration on something small and breakable.
‘No, no. Listen up.’ Vikram sat up, suddenly energised. ‘What you said got me thinking. Like I said, when I’ve tried to draw on energy outside my own in this place, I run up against a big load of nothing. There is nothing here—no creation, no destruction. Just a perpetual bundle of spells that are keeping this place intact. Master Vishwamitra thinks the mythlands are sustained by cultural memory interacting with magical forces, creating a place where legendary people and places continue to exist. If we can somehow release that magical energy, we have something to work with.’
Amanjit rubbed his forehead. ‘I’m hearing words, but I’m not sure I understand them,’ he said tiredly.
‘No, it’s actually quite simple!’ Vikram exclaimed. ‘All we have to do is get access to the magical energy that sustains this place, and use it for one big destructive Trimurti astra to knock a hole in the walls, and then get the hell out of here.’
Amanjit sat at. ‘Now you’re talking, bhai!’ He punched his fist into his palm, then stopped. ‘How?’
‘It’s got to be simultaneous—the release and drawing of the energy. Otherwise this place just recaptures the energy and reweaves the spells—we’ve seen that in the way the walls reform instantly.’
‘Simultaneous? But how will you fire two spells at once?’
‘I won’t—you’ll fire the multiple-mohini and I’ll fire the Trimurti arrow—I guess it’ll have to be a Pashupatastra, a Shiva-astra, as we’re using destructive energy …’ His voice trailed away. ‘But then, this place will be trying to convert it to Creative, to renew the broken spell … I’m not sure …’
Amanjit stood up. ‘So the plan is—I’ll fire a mohini—’
‘A multiple-mohini would be better,’ Vikram put in. ‘Lots at once.’
‘But I’ve never fired even one! And you’ve never used a Trimurti arrow!’ Amanjit threw his arms wide. ‘What are the odds?’
Vikram grinned suddenly. ‘About a million to one, which if you think about it, happens all the time in the movies. It’s virtually a certainty we’ll succeed.’
‘In the movies. You’ve gone nuts, haven’t you?’
Vikram grinned, feeling exhilarated at finally having a plan. ‘Totally insane! It’s being locked up day and night with you that does it.’
‘My lords, what a wonderful idea, to demonstrate your pr
owess to the whole court,’ Vibhishana intoned, in his usual adulatory voice.
‘It is our pleasure,’ Vikram said with a half-bow. ‘You and your people have been so generous to us. It is only fitting to give something back.’
‘For the guests to entertain the host does not seem proper to me,’ the warthog-faced herald muttered to Vibhishana.
‘Hogface gets the first arrow,’ Amanjit muttered in Vikram’s ear.
‘No deaths, at least not among the Asura, bhai,’ Vikram whispered back. ‘You’ve got to concentrate on nailing the Mohini-Aindra-astra combination. The fewer distractions the better.’
‘Yeah, but the additional motivation is sure to help.’
They had humbly requested an audience with the king the day before, and after a long and convoluted negotiation, Vibhishana had agreed to allow them to perform an archery demonstration. Once agreed, the king had seemed totally taken with the idea, and it had taken only a night for the pavilions to appear in the amphitheatre outside the Citadel.
The morning was the same as ever in this strange place—sunny and pleasant, and it seemed that every denizen of Lanka had come. Semicircular seating housed thousands of half-beast demons clad in every colour of the rainbow. The royal family; Vibhishana and his four wives (four because Ravana used to have three, the king explained proudly), and many children, sat in a special pavilion with the best view.
Vikram had spent half the night going over the intricacies of the Mohini and the Aindra-astra with Amanjit, then a further hour reminding himself of the theory of the Pashupatastra, an arrow he had never used. The weird wheezing sound that seemed to permeate the walls continued all night. It sounded like an asthmatic giant. Once he actually called out to it, but there was no response. He slept late, until hunger woke him. His belly was beginning to rebel, as if a small python was inside him, writhing about squeezing at his guts. Amanjit said he felt the same. Was it imagination or did they both look gaunter, and more tired?