King of Lanka

by David Hair

  Ravindra turned his attention from his subjects, and his mind sought Deepika Choudhary. And found her at last … in Rasita’s chambers! He roared in rage and ran for the balcony, his eyes raking the tower that housed his queen. Two women stood at the window, wings on their backs, poised for flight. He felt his blood boil in his veins. He was dimly aware that the enemy outside had stopped firing, but his mind was consumed with the two young women on the tower.

  NO, YOU CANNOT! I WILL—

  With a roar, the curtain wall disintegrated, a shock wave lifted him from his feet like a toy, and flung him across the room, slamming him into the far wall. For an instant, the whole of creation seemed to teeter on the verge of implosion. He lay dazed, as all about him was washed in dust and smoke. His court choked and writhed, trying to breathe as he lay there, stunned.

  And then silence.

  His brain struggled to process what had happened. He felt like a child that had just had a runaway truck miss it by inches. He could barely think.

  All about him, his courtiers lay stunned, groaning.

  He stood up, staggered back to the window. He barely had time to register the breached walls, the inner buildings flattened in one dreadful blow, when he saw two shapes launch themselves from a window of Rasita’s tower. He raised one hand to the Darya heartstone, and extended the other towards the two fugitives. He snarled a word, and a bolt of energy throbbed through the air towards the fleeing queens.

  Bronze Age Drainage

  Lanka, 31 July 2011

  SMACK!

  It was as if a giant fly-swatter had struck her. Deepika felt herself propelled sideways, and hammered against the wall of the tower, black stars exploding inside her skull. Then a falling sensation, her senses too dazed to react. She struck the pavement, her body a morass of agony as the stone rose to meet her headlong fall. She smashed into the paving stones and cracked them, bounced like a thrown doll and sprawled.

  Then the pain stopped. Utterly.

  She couldn’t feel anything at all.

  Nor could she move even a muscle below her neck.

  It’s broken … My spine …

  She couldn’t see Rasita anywhere. No … Ras!

  Ravindra gracefully spiralled through the air towards her. He held a jewel in his hand.

  A heartstone. My heartstone!

  She could feel it beating in his fist.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see blood pooling about her. The silence was deafening. His lips were moving as he descended, but she could hear nothing.

  This is what death feels like …

  This fading feeling …

  Rasita leapt into the air, and her wings caught her. She dove out from her tower window and arced above the walls. Free!

  A deep voice spoke, and then she heard a shriek behind her. Deepika! She spun, losing height, losing control. Her eyes sought Dee, and she cried aloud in fear. She saw her sister strike the tower wall, and gasped in shock as Dee plummeted, smacking against the pavement before she could raise a hand.

  Blood spread from the motionless body.

  She saw Ravindra, gliding as if walking on the air, descending upon Deepika with a gloating smile.

  In that instant all confusion vanished. Her nascent love for him changed irrevocably to hate, and she truly believed, to her very core, what Deepika had told her about this man—this creature—who had played her emotions like a concert-master.

  She flew headlong, attaining terminal velocity in a second. And even as she did so, her senses racing, she pictured all that was about her. She took the only path that could save them.

  Even as Ravindra touched ground beside Deepika, his head turning to look upwards, only just starting to register her presence, she howled words of command, and headed towards her sister’s body …

  … as the paving opened to her shrieked command …

  … and they plummeted, wrapped in each other, into the torrent of water flowing through the drains below the footpath.

  The pavement slammed shut behind them.

  Water swallowed them, pulled them along.

  She inhaled the water like air, all the lessons learnt from Lavanasura coalescing as she extracted oxygen from the water. She dragged Deepika behind her, frantically seeking another way out before the earth re-opened behind her. All the while, her mind worked at her sister’s broken body, holding desperately to the tiny spark of her life-force.

  Stay with me Dee!

  Then she felt it … the pulling upon the strings of her own heartstone.

  Ravindra stared at the cracked pavement in stunned disbelief. It took him a second to realize what she had done. One instant, the dying Deepika Choudhary had been at his feet, and he had prepared to suck her soul into her heartstone. Too late he had become aware of Rasita, swooping down upon them at a fatal speed.

  She should have splattered herself across the stone and died instantly at that speed.

  Instead, she had opened the paving stones like a box, carrying the broken Deepika down with her into the drains. And closed them again, too! He admired the audacity and quickness of thought even as he cursed it.

  Around him, his Rakshasas floated down to join him, some landing heavily and others gliding light-footed. They jabbered inarticulately. Something had been stripped from their psyche when he warped them so long ago, so that they reverted to animal intellect under stress. ‘Calm yourselves,’ he told them. He raised his sword and pointed it at the breach. ‘The Rama has fired a Trimurti astra.’ He let that thought chill them. It frightened him too. And enraged him. That more than anything.

  The Trimurti astras … He thought about the Pashupatastra. Remembering. Yes … that was how it went …

  He raised his hand to quell their nervousness. ‘Yes, he fired a Great Arrow. So he is weakened now, weak as a child. Only the Lakshmana guards him.’ They growled savagely, regaining their ferocity as the thought of their enemy’s vulnerability sunk in. ‘The man who destroyed our city now lies helpless as a babe! Go, my children! Go and rip the Rama and the Lakshmana apart! Tear out their hearts! Go!’ Meghanada bellowed a war cry. Beside him Atikaya shrieked, and the lesser ones behind them joined in. ‘Kill them!’ he commanded. ‘Kill them all! Bring me their heads!’

  They howled their bloodlust to the swirling skies, and thundered towards the breach.

  Should I join them?

  He wavered, thinking about how good it would be to put an end to Dasraiyat, perhaps forever.

  But I cannot let those two women get away. The risks are too great.

  I have always been able to defeat Dasraiyat.

  But a freed Manda … I cannot risk that.

  With a gesture, he opened the stone pavement again and leapt down into the flowing liquid darkness. He let his eyes adjust to the total darkness, conjuring a light in his blackened hands, peering about him.

  Where had the girls gone? The Darya was near death … they will have gone with the direction of the flow … He clutched at the Darya-stone, found it lifeless but for a faint pulse … she is alive, but barely. Then he tried the Padmastone … ah, there you are, Rasita …

  All doubt disappeared. He had needed to woo Rasita only because he did not hold her heartstone. Then when she gave it to him, she was emotionally his. But now that ruse was up—he would need the heartstone to subdue her after all … He would kill Darya first and consume her soul, then take Padma’s virginity, given with her magically-coerced consent. Manda would reform, super-powerful, but utterly enslaved to him. His own personal djinn, at his command forever.

  He altered his form to swim better, becoming something partway between man and shark, and swept into the darkness, following the trail of blood in the water.

  Boring lectures from her history teachers echoed dimly in Rasita’s mind as she navigated the lightless drainage system of Dholavira. ‘The Harappans had extensive water drainage systems, the first in the world. They ran beneath the city, and carried drinking water in and sewage away. They were truly adv
anced people. Blah blah blah …’

  It had left her bored to tears at school—she could remember thinking that there could be no more irrelevant subject to study. Now it seemed like the most valuable life-lesson she could have learnt. And she’d not been listening …

  Just let there be a way out! She conjured bubbles of air about their faces. The strain of keeping Deepika alive was tearing her mind apart slowly. Mouth: Breathe! Heart: Contract! Release! Wounds, mend! Stay with me, Dee! Don’t you dare die!

  She had to get to a safe place and stop moving. The movements this aquatic journey were forcing on Deepika were damaging her further, and the strain of conjuring fresh air from the water was wearing Ras down. She could not sustain this.

  Suddenly there seemed to be light ahead. She muttered a prayer of thanks to whoever was listening, and pulled Deepika’s floating form as fast as she dared. Before her was a metal grill—she turned it to paper with a thought, then pushed through. As an afterthought, she made the hole seal over with porous stone to disguise their path. She recognized where she was immediately. They were in the woman’s bathing pool. Perfect! She tugged and pulled at Deepika, having to strain even harder to keep her soul-sister alive.

  An insistent, insidious thought surfaced in her mind …

  If I let her die, I would be whole … I would be Manda …

  She refused to listen. She just kept working. Pulling her sister through the water to the steps. She had no plan beyond that.

  Just as she reached the foot of the steps, and prepared for the strain of lifting Deepika to the flat paving at the top of the stairs, struggling to find the energy for yet more magical exertion, a shadow fell over her. She groaned, and looked up.

  Please, no …

  A slender figure loomed over her at the top of the stairs, with horns jutting from its brows and pale glowing eyes. ‘Mistress?’ asked Keke in a tremulous voice.

  Healing Herbs

  Lanka, 31 July 2011

  Amanjit stopped in the breach as a huge shape strode towards him, with massive horns jutting from its temples and shoulders. The Rakshasa hefted a war-axe in one hand and a massive curved scimitar in the other. There were others behind him. More Rakshasas than he’d ever seen in one place. Too many blades to keep track of came towards him. Their mouths hooted and jabbered like animals. They gathered in a cloud, prodding forward, eyeing his blade fearfully.

  Amanjit didn’t react, except to call energy to his blade, to make it more potent. It glimmered menacingly as he raised it. He slashed about him, establishing his reach. They stayed away, pushing at each other. He grinned about him fiercely. ‘Tell you what: you know me. You know I won’t go easy. I promise you I’ll cut in half the first three of you that attack me,’ he told them. ‘Which raises the question—who’s going to wait to be fourth?’ He slashed again, and they backed off a few more steps.

  Then they came at him in a wave.

  Instinct took over. He ducked and spun, arching his back to avoid two spear-thrusts. His sword slashed out, and cut through armour and flesh like butter. An arm lopped from one and another fell disembowelled, screaming as its entrails snaked from its split belly. An axe fell and he caught it in his right hand, struck the left eye of the axe-wielder, darted sideways as the Rakshasa fell stone dead, parrying a sword and then leaping over three slicing blades in a spinning cartwheel that left another Rakshasa cut nigh in half.

  They fell back, staring at him and then at the four bodies strewn on the broken ground.

  He panted slightly, and half-smiled. ‘Sorry, I was too modest. Next time, who wants to be the fifth?’

  They backed away, keening softly. From the far distance, the horns of Vibhishana’s Asuras brayed a challenge, and their battle cries rose into the air. The Rakshasas circled warily, uncertain. Then the largest one stepped forth, the bull-headed giant. ‘I am Meghanada, known as Indrajit,’ the Rakshasa rumbled. ‘Well met, Lakshmana.’ He gestured with his axe to the Rakshasas behind him, barring them from joining his attack. ‘The Lakshmana is mine.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Amanjit leapt forward, his blade flashing low, then altering the angle to slash at the Rakshasa’s chest. Their blades met, and he had to throw himself backwards as Meghanada’s war-axe split the air, barely missing his chest. The Rakshasa snarled at him warily.

  ‘Well, do you still fancy it?’ Amanjit snarled. ‘Because I’m in a hurry.’ He attacked again, low, slashed at Meghanada’s feet, but the demon leapt over the blow, and roared indignantly. He rolled and parried as Indrajit tried to cut him in half. Metal clanged torturously, then Amanjit came up and whipped his blade at the demon’s throat. The war-axe rose to cover the neck, and with a sharp click, the sabre swept through the haft, and the half-moon axe-head fell to the ground beneath them as they staggered apart.

  ‘What true warrior attacks the feet?’ Indrajit snarled. ‘You’re still a snivelling cheat with no sense of true warrior etiquette, I see.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s right! Didn’t Lakshmana beat Indrajit by making sure his morning prayers were interrupted or something?’ Amanjit panted. ‘Learn anything?’

  ‘Yes. It taught me a valuable lesson,’ Meghanada snarled. ‘Cheats prosper.’ He gestured, and the war-axe flared and spun like a discus at Amanjit’s belly. He yelped as he flailed aside, and the whirling blade arced and spun in the air in a curve, and flew back on to the axe-haft. Meghanada roared at his warriors. ‘KILL HIM!!!’

  The wall of Rakshasas swarmed forward.

  Vikram lay on his back, barely conscious that Amanjit had left him. His ears rang, his vision came and went, and he felt sucked empty. Amanjit had been right. The Trimurti astra had taken too much—the Destructive Aspect was not his strength, and his Pashupatastra had been weak and poorly executed, taking too much from him and not enough from the world about him.

  Ravindra won’t need to fight me. I couldn’t hurt him now if I tried.

  I need help …

  A small figure appeared at his head. A langur, its grey coat covered in dust. It made a concerned noise, and then Hemant’s face, for once not smiling, appeared behind it. ‘Vikramji,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘I … I … can’t …’

  Kasun crawled up beside Hemant. He was covered in blood. They both considered him gravely, then Hemant cocked his head. ‘I am thinking you need a pick-me-up, Vikramji.’

  That’s the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard …

  Hemant patted Kasun on the shoulder. ‘You have the things I recommended?’

  Kasun smiled doubtfully, and pulled out a syringe. Without preamble he slammed the needle into Vikram’s shoulder and depressed his thumb. Vikram felt a numbing that seemed to fill his bones in seconds.

  ‘Uhhh …?’

  Hemant leant close. ‘You are expecting perhaps Sanjeevani herbs from the Himalayas?’

  ‘Ehhh …’

  ‘Sadly the mountain is far away and I cannot fly. Instead your friend here has this concoction of opiates, mixed with pseudo-ephedrine, and a dangerous quantity of adrenalin.’

  Vikram stared from one man to the other.

  Kasun looked apologetic. ‘As your doctor I should warn you that you have maybe quarter of an hour of energy before you collapse and perhaps die.’ He swallowed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Hemant shrugged. ‘There is much at stake, Ji.’ He poured something sweet and syrupy down Vikram’s throat.

  Vikram’s mind reeled. But it was suddenly easier to talk, and nothing hurt any more. ‘What’s the drink?’

  ‘Caffeine, guarana, ginseng and cola. And some other things.’

  ‘Don’t try selling it. It tastes ghastly.’ He found suddenly that he could sit up, because nothing actually weighed anything now. His vision had become tunnelled and discoloured oddly, as if he were living in an out-of-focus three-dimensional movie, but there was no pain. His body seemed to rise of its own volition. ‘Where’s Amanjit?’ he asked, his voice echoing strangely in his ears, and slightly sl
urred.

  Hemant pointed to the breach in the walls. Vikram stared. The middle section of the Citadel had been smashed open, as if it were a toy that some destructive child had tired of, and taken to with a giant hammer. In the breach, two figures stood, exchanging alternate words and blows.

  Amanjit …

  Vikram swept towards them on limbs that suddenly seemed pumped with power and life. He felt a sense of invulnerability as he accelerated towards the fight, his hands going to his weapons.

  Behind him, Vibhishana’s Asuras were flooding into Lower Town, howling war cries, their king on a palanquin in their midst, waving them on. Hemant’s Meghwal emerged from their holes and streamed towards the breach. It was now or never.

  Keke’s Choice

  Lanka, 31 July 2011

  Rasita looked up at the Rakshasa maid, whose face was swollen from Deepika’s earlier blow. ‘Keke? What are you doing here?’

  Keke came down the steps into the water, her hooves clicking on the stone paving. She was wrapped in a thin shift and looked frightened. ‘Mistress, when I woke our tower was damaged, and you were gone. I was frightened. I thought Surpanakha had taken you. There was a dreadful noise outside. The walls are breached. I ran down here to hide.’ She looked back over her shoulder. ‘We all did.’

  Ras stood on the first step, and looked over the lip of the pool. There were more than three dozen here. Rakshasa and Asura women … the young children and the girls, and the aged. Rakshasa and Asura servants. They all held tight to each other, cowering at every crash from above. Dust filled the air, lending the torchlight a glowering haze.

  ‘Mistress, who is this?’ Keke descended the steps, the fur on her thin legs floating out like bristles on a bottle-brush as she joined Rasita in the water. She peered at Deepika’s unconscious face.

  Rasita tensed, then realized that the maid had only seen Surpanakha strike her, not Dee. ‘This is my friend, Deepika.’