He did not reply; she knew he would not. But she went on. ‘My father, my friend Agnayi, and everyone I knew told me that Sage Durvasa was old. You were not. You told us that the Durvasa before you had just passed on, and the people of my father’s court believed you, but immortality is not a boon that men possess, my lord. This is a form of living beyond your death, is it not, this practice of placing your knowledge and memories into the mind of a younger man?’ She felt the first stirrings of his fingers, and now she held them firmly with her own. ‘If that could happen to sages, why would any man choose to live beyond his youth? Why would Sage Vasishtha hobble on his stick and bear with his old knees? If it could truly happen, why would any sage on earth ever be old? Either it was a Mystery that only you, Sage Durvasa, knew, or you were not Sage Durvasa.’ Pritha took a step back and peered into the dark shadow his face had become in the gathering darkness. When he pulled his hands away from hers and looked away, she willed herself to continue.
‘Sages do not concern themselves with polity, and they care less about the marriages of princesses in the Great Kingdoms. They retreat to the woods in order to please the gods, in order to perhaps untie the great knots inside their minds, and they often take little interest in worldly affairs of North Country. In the few times we have had visits from smaller sages, never has one spoken to my father about kingdoms; they have only taken to meditation, to courting our waiting-women, and perhaps to give advice on how to perform certain rites.
‘But when you came to our court, you appeared to be not only knowledgeable in matters concerning North Country, but you also advised my father that I should marry into the kingdom of the Kurus. I found that a little odd, but your eyes mesmerized me, my lord. They still do.’ She hoped that this moment of flattery would make him turn back, but he remained as he was, one hand held up against the bark of the birch tree, the other limply holding his staff of gold. The sapphire at its tip glowed with a deep inner light, like his face had on that first morning.
‘Then on our way to Mathura, on the boat at night you covered us with a black fog and called it a trick of the light. In Mathura you summoned balls of fire into your hands and played with them as a child would with bundles of string. The high priests of Mathura, who look no man in the eye, fell at your feet, my lord, and that was when I began to wonder if you really were who you claimed to be.
‘Then in the room of the high priest I saw your eyes turning into little yellow balls, much like the sun, and with your words and sights you seemed to affect how the sunlight came into the room. One moment I would see you smile and the harshness of the sun would decrease; the next moment you would frown, and my upper arm would burn.’
‘Do you not think, my lady,’ he said at last, and his voice seemed to arrive from some place far off, detached from his body, ‘that you are drawing mere inferences without substance?’
‘If I am, sire,’ she replied, ‘I am certain that you would stop me. Shall I?’
For a while he did not reply, but then he sighed and said, ‘Go on.’
‘Until last night, my lord, none of these thoughts were in my head. But I got up from my sleep with a parched throat, and I took a drink from the container of water in your sack, and after I drank from it, I looked at it.’ Now his body tightened visibly, and his fingers dug into the tree. ‘I saw little yellow lines jump about in the water, wriggling and swimming, and yet when I drank, it slipped down my throat, smooth as juice from a ripe date.’
She took a step closer to him so that he could hear her better. ‘It is this water you made High Priest Adhrigu drink to make him feel years younger. When I drank it, my mind seemed to clear, as though something which had forever blinded your vision had been removed from in front of your eyes. I saw it all, my lord; I saw it as though I was gazing through a freshly formed crystal. I saw you – and you are not Sage Durvasa.’
The man sighed again, and he turned around to face Pritha. He took a stride forward, held his staff to one side, and said, ‘Then who am I, Princess?’
‘You are Surya, the Celestial of the sun.’
THIRTEEN
He first laughed; his hoarse voice seemed to mellow in that instant into something else; the sound of which reminded her of Shurasena’s first sugarcane crop, which always got delivered to the royal house of Kunti, on which she always had first claim. Then he tightened his lips and nodded, his face grave. ‘It pays me well,’ he said, ‘for not taking you seriously, Princess. But now I admire your mind; you have no doubt been helped by drinking of the Crystal Water, but the water can only strengthen, it cannot create.’
He held out his hand toward her, but she took a step back, frowning. ‘You came with me all the way to Mathura, my lord, and you pretended that you cared about my brother and his poor wife, rotting in Kamsa’s prison.’
‘I do care for them,’ said the man, ‘and all that I have done is, indeed, to free them.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.‘You came to Mathura to get the book of their mysteries, and you have it now. I think not that you ever wanted to save my kinsman; you used me to enter the city, to gain access to the priests, and you got what you wanted.’ She stopped, still wishing that her words would somehow become untrue, that he would convince her otherwise.
But he dropped his shoulders and said, ‘That is indeed true.’ Her heart sank.
‘I thought you liked me,’ she said bitterly, not able to bring herself to say that other dreaded word that had come to her lips. ‘I trusted you, and this is how you repay me?’ He reached for her, but she hit out with her hands. ‘Do not touch me, you wretch!’ she said. ‘Thank the gods that you have not taken me!’
A shadow passed through his face. His hand flew to his sack, and he patted it, as though to reassure himself. She smiled scornfully at him. ‘You did all this for a book, did you not? You saw it fit to play with a maiden’s life for the Book of Mysteries, and you perhaps will crow to your friends back on the mountain that you have succeeded. Well, I have news for you, my lord. You have not!’
His face turned pale. Pouncing on her, he grabbed her by the arms and shook her. ‘Where?’ he said. ‘Where is it?’
She kept laughing in his face. Disgusted, he pushed her away and let her fall to her knees.‘It is at the base of the Yamuna,’ she said, and broke into another short laugh. ‘I picked it up from your sack this morning at the High Priest’s house, and on our way here I dropped it, into the deepest part of the river.’ Suddenly a wild thought struck her. Perhaps he would have some Mystery to retrieve it, she thought. Had she been too eager?
Durvasa (no, Surya, she corrected herself) had regained his poise, standing now a few feet away from her, looking up at the sky and stars. Was he invoking some chant, she thought, looking about her, half-expecting the waters of the Yamuna to rise and carry the book to the shore in one large, explosive wave.
But the river remained flat and glittering in the moonlight.The sage said, ‘You may think you have foiled me, Princess, but you have only held me back a little.’ He turned around and walked to her, smiling. ‘You may think that I have no affection for you – no, even I would not say love – but I do. I wish to help you save your brother and his wife.’
‘I do not believe you.’
‘You do not need to. You have seen through me clearly enough; I did accompany you to Mathura because I thought a maiden such as you would find it easier to enter the kingdom. In fact, that is why I arrived at Kunti; because I knew that you would be burning with a desire to enter Mathura and rescue your kinsman.’
Pritha’s eyes welled up, not so much at his words but at the ice-cool voice in which he spelled them out. ‘You said that you were mesmerized by me. I must confess that the feeling was mutual. I still am mesmerized by you. But the reason I came down from Meru was to look into the story of Mathura, the tale of this small kingdom that was keeping all the other great empires at bay. We had heard of her war barges – barges that never seemed to break and always cut through water like hun
gry crocodiles; such tales reached our ears. We had to see for ourselves what Mathura’s secret was, and without you I would not have been allowed entry.’
‘You used me!’
‘I did,’ said Surya, shrugging, ‘but only as much as you used me.’ When she opened her mouth to protest he added, ‘We both used each other for our own purposes. There is no disgrace in that, Pritha. That is the nature of a good trade.’
‘But you got what you wished out of it,’ she spat out. ‘What did I get?’
Surya smiled. ‘Did I get what I wished for? Did you not cast the book off into the Yamuna?’ His smile widened, and it seemed as if the Celestial was now gradually assuming his natural form, now that no pretence was needed. ‘But you did not foil my plan as you think you did, Princess.That book only contains what the High Priests already know. There is much in their minds that the book does not have. You thought I was after the book? Ha! It was the High Priests I wanted.’
‘The High Priests?’ Pritha asked.‘They would never join you. They are patriots, they are students of the Mysteries!’
‘They are students of the Mysteries, yes, but they are not patriots. A student of a Mystery loves nothing more than the Mystery itself, my lady. I can tell you that looking you in the eye because I am a student of the Fire Mysteries, and believe me, nothing, no person, no world is dearer to me than my Mysteries.’
She heard Adhrigu’s voice in her ear as Surya said this, the thin, wistful longing for some more time that would allow him to complete studying it, so that he could put off writing in the book for a bit longer. Then she remembered the one hour that morning during which Surya spoke to Adhrigu behind the closed door of his room. Was it that hard to believe that given the right price, Adhrigu would give up everything and follow this strange young man back to his land, where he could probe his Mystery to his heart’s content? But what was the price? What could Surya offer the old man? Even as the answer came to her she heard Surya’s voice.
‘Put yourself in Adhrigu’s place, my lady. You are old, you cannot move, your breath is rough and your coughs are heavy and dry. You have no more than a year to live, your mendicants tell you. And then, in walks a Brahmin who promises you a long life in which you would have no king to answer to, no broken Magadhan black stones to fix, no priests to mentor, and no disease against which to grapple. You can devote all the time you have to the one thing that you love the most: the probing of your Mystery.
‘And when the time came, you can name your successor, and you can live through him forever, and thus you can gain immortality. You can live the life of a Celestial, Pritha. Would you not take that life if I were to offer it to you?’
Pritha now knew what Surya had told the old man to persuade him to give up the book. The book was never important; the book was never part of the plan. What she had to protect was Adhrigu, and she had allowed herself to be swayed by the book. Perhaps it was not yet too late, she thought frantically. Perhaps she could row back to Mathura and speak to Adhrigu, convince him that Mathura and Earth needed him more than the Celestials did. ‘I shall not give up,’ she said, her voice heavy. ‘I shall sail back to Mathura right now, I shall speak to Adhrigu. I am certain that if he knew – if he knew–’
‘If he knew what, my lady?’ said Surya sadly. ‘He already knows all about me. But you are free to go to Mathura if you wish, though you may find that the High Priest’s house is empty when you reach it.’
‘I do not trust you. If I leave now, I think I will find him.’
‘You are free to go. I do not own you, so I shall not stop you. But will you listen to me some more? Let me speak – after that, if you still feel that you must go to Mathura, do so, by all means.’
Do not agree, she told herself. This was just another ploy – thread after thread of sweet words would make you want to close your eyes and sleep in his arms. Just reject him and run for the boat!
But before she could gather the strength to walk away, he began to speak.
‘If I do not steal the black stone from Mathura, my lady, you shall never see your brother and sister again,’ he said, and immediately she felt herself drawn to his voice. ‘Magadha and Mathura will continue to be strong for generations, until the secret of the black stone becomes known to all kingdoms around North Country. And soon they shall fight and take over the whole land, Kamsa and Jarasandha, once they probe enough of the Mystery to make chariots fly on their own.’
‘Make chariots fly!’ she said in a whisper. ‘You lie!’
‘Do I?’ he said, stepping closer to her and taking her hand. ‘You were present on Nabha’s farm. You saw with your own eyes what the stone can do. In a few years, perhaps, no one in North Country would be able to touch Mathura, my lady, be it on water or on land!’ He pressed her hand. ‘How will you save your brother then?’
She looked into his eyes, blue eyes, which had begun to take on a strange oval shape.
‘Your destiny is to rule, my princess, not to serve.With a strong Mathura and Magadha, that is impossible. They shall take over Shurasena, then Kunti, and then Kuru and the rest of North Country too.’ He paused to look deeper into her eyes, melting her. ‘And after North Country is vanquished, they shall ascend the mountain of Meru, and they shall come after the Celestials.’
‘But you … aren’t you too strong for them?’
He smiled. ‘We are not, my lady. Even with our knowledge of the Mysteries, we shall not be able to withstand the might of a black stone-led army. Therefore I must take it away, for your good and ours.’
‘But, my brother…’
‘Your brother shall live,’ Surya said, ‘and so shall his queen. Without the Book of Mysteries and the High Priest, Mathura shall no longer be able to make new stones, nor will she able to mend the broken ones. Slowly, they will go back to the plough, and they will fill their boats with oarsmen. They have a lot of stones already made, so perhaps they shall be powerful for the next ten years maybe, but slowly, they will crack open.’
‘Ten years,’ she mumbled. ‘That is too long.’
His hands held her shoulders in a firm, tender grip. ‘Not too long,’ he said, ‘just long enough for you to foster Mathura’s future king.’
‘Mathura’s future king,’ she repeated.
‘That is so,’ said Surya. ‘When the decline comes to Mathura and the throne falls, Jarasandha will be ready with his army at the gates, and he shall want the land for himself. If he takes it, Magadha shall be the foremost power of North Country. You must prevent that. You must see to it that Mathura’s king is ready to take to the throne when Kamsa’s reign ends.’
‘I do not understand,’ said Pritha, holding his wrists tight with her hands.
‘That is the only way you will protect your brother and sister,’ said Surya, shaking her so that her eyes became alert once again.
‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly seeing. ‘Mathura’s future king ought to be saved.’
‘He shall be. Now what of you, my lady? What shall become of you?’
He looked at her with such love that she felt her head dissolve and hands drop as she leaned against his chest.
‘You shall rule the greatest kingdom in North Country, my dear,’ said Surya, rubbing her cheeks. ‘You shall be the High Queen of Hastinapur, the capital city that thrives northward of here. Like Mathura it is wedged in between the two Great Rivers, but the soil there is the richest that you shall find across the country, and its rulers, unlike Mathura’s, are just people.’
‘Who are they?’
‘You have heard of Devavrata, no doubt,’ he said, and Pritha thought a strange look came to Surya’s face when he said that name. ‘They call him Bhishma the terrible,’ he said, in the same solemn voice. ‘His brother’s sons, Pandu and Dhritarashtra, are marriageable now.’
‘But my lord,’ said Pritha, ‘all I want … all I ever wanted … was you!’
‘And you shall have me, Princess,’ said Surya, smiling kindly at her. ‘But you shall be queen of the Kuru k
ingdom, for in the future the Kurus shall rule the greatest kingdom of the age. Devavrata shall see to that. And I shall see to that too.’
‘I … I do not understand, my lord.’
‘You shall, soon,’ said Surya, and with a wave of his staff a blackness came over them, shielding them from the sounds of the river, the smells of the forest, so that she was aware only of his touch, of his smell, of his sight. He drew her into an embrace, and as she gave in to his arms, she found it within herself to ask a question.
‘Will I have your child?’ she asked.
And he replied, ‘Yes.’
FOURTEEN
She opened her eyes just as the sky turned from black to a dark shade of purple. Pain coursed through her, and brought with it a faint memory of the night before, when it had been so sharp that she had feared that she would die in the sage’s arms. She sat up, and saw Surya, naked, holding up his loincloth to the breeze. On seeing her awake, he dusted his cloth twice and came to sit in front of her, his hands resting on the balls of his knees.
‘You do not think I have erred, do you, my child?’ he said with a distant gaze in his eyes.
‘I do not yet know what to think, my lord,’ she replied, and knew it was true. All she was aware of now was the memory that her body held of his touch, the smell of his exhaled breath on her skin, his teeth marks on her nipples, her neck, her navel, her shins. Only after these signs of his desire had worn out would she be allowed to think; not just yet.
‘I ask you that question for I am not certain myself, Pritha. I have come down to Earth to steal Mathura’s secret, and I have done that, but I did not think that I would meet you, my dear, and that I would walk down this road with you.’ Her eyes must have shown her despair, because he raised his hand at her and shook his head. ‘No, my dear, I do not regret our love for one second, for who among the Meru people can claim to be fortunate enough to be slave to your desire? No, it is not that I worry about.’
The Rise of Hastinapur Page 20