Prince of Dharma (126 page)
Bejoo cried out in exultation, caught in the heat of battle fever. He had drawn first blood. Or, to be more accurate, first venom.
A moment later, his Vajra crashed into the asura ranks to either side, an elephant trumpeting as it smashed a naga hood beneath its massive feet, chariots carrying their lance-wielding riders over the coils of nagas, crushing the serpentine bodies, to drive their pointed lances into the hoods and eyes of other nagas.
***
As the princes of Ayodhya called out the words of the Brahmastra, Sita felt the change in the floor beneath her feet. The Sage’s Brow, like its corresponding tower in the capital cities of each of the seven Arya nations, was said to be built with the shakti of Brahman, raised by the Seven Seers themselves. And the Seers were ordained by Brahma, creator of the universe, the foremost channel of Brahman shakti. As if in recognition of this fact, the tower itself seemed to be coming alive as the recitation progressed. It vibrated and thrummed in response to the mantra’s chanting. Below the sound of the shrieking wind, Sita could hear a faint ringing echo. Was that merely the voices of Rama and Lakshman reverberating off the stone walls? Or was it that the walls themselves, along with every single stone of which the tower was composed, had begun to echo the potent syllables?
She looked around and saw her father gripping the edge of a windowsill to avoid being knocked off his feet. Even hulking Nakhudi, squinting fiercely, was crouching to maintain her balance. Only Brahmarishi Vishwamitra seemed untouched by the wind; he seemed almost to relish the unleashing of power, his flowing beard and tresses flickering in the eddies and currents like a white banner in a battlefield.
The wind was growing stronger by the minute, as if Vayu, the wind god, was being called down to join in the battle himself. The sky outside the tower had turned deep blue, the blue of the shakti of Brahman energy. Sita saw that this was not a result of refracted sunlight or the twilight; it was a supernatural light effected by the mantra itself. It was as if the forces of the universe were being called together to coalesce their powers in one mighty blow.
Somewhere through the sound of the wind and the chanting of the mantras, she also heard the sound of the asura army massed below. They were howling to be unleashed. Awaiting the final order to fall on the mortal city and tear it to pieces.
The resonant voice of Rama-Lakshman - for they were as one being now, not two - rode the rising howl of the wind, reached a climax, and then fell silent.
The mantra was over.
The Brahm-astra had been unleashed.
***
Jatayu led its forces high above the hills, above the enormous dustcloud raised by the asura armies, above even the clouds. From this height, it could see the cusp of the sun. Twilight had already fallen across the earth below, but where it flew, the sun still shone, catching its wings and warming them.
It cried its ululating hoarse cry, and its brethren answered, calling back. Their screeching cries filled the sky for miles around, terrifying birds flying to their nests for the night. Jatayu loved the sensation of power that came before an assault like this one. And the promise of food. It had chosen to remain hungry even after receiving the Lord of Lanka’s orders, knowing that the edge its hunger gave it would make it that much more vicious in the battle.
It swooped down through a cloud and saw the landmarks that indicated it was reaching Mithila. It called to its companions and they passed the word along. It had close to a thousand bird-beasts with it, mostly jatayus like itself, man-vultures, but also a large clutch of garudas, man-eagles descended from the great Garuda himself, and several other subspecies.
A moment later, it saw the familiar concentric circles of Mithila, and the asura armies massed on its south side, stretching for yojanas in both directions, and yojanas back almost to the banks of the Ganga. It wondered how Ravana had convinced his forces to cross the sacred river. Most asuras feared the Brahman-blessed water, believing it would melt them down to nothingness on contact.
Jatayu itself had lived long enough to know that this wasn’t strictly true. It depended on the species of asura really. For instance, vetaals would indeed melt like running hot wax if they came into contact with Ganga waters. But rakshasas were not affected usually—unless they were vetaal-rakshasa crossbreeds. Jatayu’s kind wasn’t affected either, but it would still take a very large whip to get it to touch even a wingtip to that sacred body of water. It was sheer folly to attempt such madness; like standing before Shiva and waiting witlessly for his third eye to open.
Jatayu called out the final order and began the spiralling descent that would take it quickest into the city. Now it could clearly see the flashes of white- and ochre-clad mortals assembled in large groups across the city.
Brahmins! They would hardly know what had hit them. In another few seconds, the sky would fall upon them, tearing their soft flesh with bone-hard beaks and sword-sharp claws. The streets of Mithila would run red with Brahmin blood tonight.
It was only a few hundred yards from the ground when it felt the massive wave of Brahman shakti unleashed. It had time to cry out one last time before being buffeted up, up, up, high above the clouds, higher than it had ever flown before in its five thousand years of existence. It felt its wings tear to shreds and was blanketed by agony.
Then the world vanished from existence.
***
Bejoo felt the wave hit before he saw it. In fact, he never actually saw it. All he knew was that some tremendous force, the likes of which he had never heard of nor seen before, was sweeping across the entire surface of the earth. It came from behind him, which meant its source was Mithila. But that was all he knew. Then the wave struck him and knocked him off his horse, flinging him to the ground and pressing him flat, like a thousand bigfoot standing on his back.
Ahead of him, the wave rolled on, tearing through the asura ranks, shredding the nagas to bits so tiny that they were as powdered rang at a Holi festival. The asura hordes behind the front ranks sensed some awesome force being unleashed and cried out in horror and rage.
Then the aftershock struck Bejoo, even as the wave itself was still rolling across the asura armies, and he lost consciousness.
***
From the vantage of the Sage’s Brow, the two princes of Ayodhya, Rajkumari Sita and her father, and the bodyguard Nakhudi all watched. They saw the deep blue wave of Brahman ripple outward from the tower itself, rolling harmlessly over humans and their animal friends and the city and its structures. But when it reached the asura armies massed on the south bank of the Sarayu, the effect was numbing.
The dense black hordes of asuras disintegrated as the wave touched them, turning into powder, like the dust-cloud their tramping hoofs and paws had raised on their northward march.
An instant later, as the aftershock hit, the powder itself disintegrated into nothingness. Here and there, particles of coloured light, red, purple-black, green, lingered in the air for a moment, then faded away as well.
In the sky, the asura bird-host was falling to attack when the wave hit them. Sita saw the leader of the host, a man-vultureshaped being, buffeted by the first ripples and thrown in an arcing sweep across the bowl of the sky. The rest of the host suffered the same fate as their ground-borne asura brethren: powdered and then disintegrated.
A moment later, the last echoes of the wave faded away, leaving behind a silence as deafening as the wave itself.
The entire asura army had vanished from the south bank, leaving no trace that they had ever been there.
Except for the dark hanging mass of the dustcloud that was still visible in the dusky twilight light. That was the only sign that remained to mark that the great alien army had ever existed.
Brahmarishi Vishwamitra had kept his face averted as the wave struck.
Now, he turned and looked southwards, at the vanished army. Then he raised his gaze to Rama and Lakshman, who stood, staring together with identical expressions of shocked numbness. The blue light of Brahman was gone entirely from their faces, making them appear oddly naked.
‘It is done,’ said the brahmarishi.
To Sita’s surprise, the seer-mage’s eyes welled with tears. He stepped forward and embraced both the princes at once, his large bony arms encircling the two slender young torsos easily. He hugged them tight, as tightly as a father bidding his sons goodbye.
‘You have done the impossible,’ he said at last, tears flowing freely down his lined, ancient face. ‘You have rid the world of almost all the evil of Ravana. Never again will he be able to assemble such a vast army. Surely, he has a large number of wretched asuras still extant on his island-fortress of Lanka, but he will never again be able to assemble a force vast enough to invade the mortal realm. Even his vast fleet, asura-polluted as it was, is gone, destroyed by the Brahm-astra.’
Rama’s voice was hoarse, choked with his own emotion. ‘Is it truly over then? The asura threat to our people? Is it finally ended?’
Vishwamitra released them both and turned away. Only Sita saw the seer-mage’s face clearly as it looked away from Rama and Lakshman. The anguish on those ancient features was unmistakable.
‘The threat is ended,’ the sage said.
But there was no joy on his face, or in his voice.
The epic adventure continues!
THE RAMAYANA SERIES®
PRINCE OF DHARMA
PRINCE OF AYODHYA & SIEGE OF MITHILA
PRINCE IN EXILE
DEMONS OF CHITRAKUT & ARMIES OF HANUMAN
PRINCE AT WAR
BRIDGE OF RAMA & KING OF AYODHYA
KING OF DHARMA
VENGEANCE OF RAVANA & SONS OF SITA
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