RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (24 page)

He decided to remain where he was, hovering. He had a feeling that the time for talk and parley was over. And now whatever transpired next would be achieved through brutal, swift, intense acts of violence. It would be strategically useful to Rama to have him here, poised thus.

He waited and watched as the drama below unfolded and reshaped itself into open conflict…

Rama’s first response was to feel a sense of outrage at Shatrugan. For the javelin had come from a point not far from where Shatrugan must be standing, directly below the high spot. There were firing windows built into the structure of the wall precisely to enable such actions, usually with anti-siege machines situated before them, ready to fire javelins the thickness of a man’s torso, and twice as heavy. It would be simple enough for a man to climb up the struts to one such window, balance himself, then launch a javelin. It would take considerable skill and experience to throw one with such devastating aim and force through such a narrow aperture. Shatrugan was the city’s best javelin thrower, winner of the annual contest for well over a decade. Yet surely it couldn’t have been Shatrugan? His brother knew better than to do something as drastic – and as senseless – as this, didn’t he? And to attack a woman? An unarmed woman, a visiting queen no less? No, it was absurd to even think of Shatrugan. But then… who else? It was the only thing he could think of in those first few shocked instants after Mandodhari was struck so brutally.

Beside him, Sita hitched as she broke out of the long held breath that had transfixed her for the past several moments. He saw her teeter briefly and shot out his hand to steady her, then stayed his hand. Her fiercely independent nature did not easily brook chauvinistic gestures, even those made in the thick and heat of battle; he had often seen her deliberately flaunt her feminine status, pretending weakness, in order to bait and then efficiently despatch enemies. That delicate, beautiful veneer was deceptive; she was as tough as he or Lakshman. And the javelin throw, coming as it did on the heels of the stunning revelations of Mandodhari, had shaken him as much as her. She regained her balance without any aid from him. He saw her glance sideways, conscious of his gaze, and closed his fist, accompanying the action with a firm look. She read him as perfectly as ever:
Hold fast. We shall get through this together as always.
And she nodded in response, her beautiful heart-shaped jaw tightening, the furrows on her narrow forehead easing.

He turned his attention back to the figure on the horse outside the gate.

The man holding up the sword.

There was something very alarming about the man – and the sword. It was hard to tell which was more alarming. The man’s skin, milky-white as ash as it had seemed earlier, now appeared translucent in the peculiar half-light that had fallen across the land. Rama grew gradually aware of the ceiling of boiling clouds overhead that had appeared abruptly in the wake of the attack on Mandodhari and the howling wind that swooped in swathes first off to one side then the other end of the city, like a flying beast raging in search of prey. The sword the man had unsheathed, probably at the very minute after Mandodhari was attacked, was the focal point of everything that was occurring: it blazed fiercely with a strange half-light that was neither white nor golden, shining and resplendent yet silver rather than golden, like moonlight upon the surface of a raging ocean, but moonlight of such intensity as had never been seen before. An incandescent flame searing the centre of vision, impossible to look at directly, and even obliquely, glimpsed from behind a warding arm, as Rama was forced to raise to protect his own eyesight, so brilliant that it would have put the noonday sun to shame. This immense, intense, blazing light spread outwards like a cold white fire laying hostage to the entire countryside for as far as the eye could see in every direction, like a net of burning moonshine cast upon the realm of Prithvi-loka. It curled and smoked and simmered and coalesced like a white-hot raging furnace within the slender flat blade of the weapon: giving off an aura so powerful that no mortal hand could have forged or tempered such an object or held its power within a flesh-and-blood fist. Enveloped in the penumbra of its silver-hot effulgence, the grey-haired man was but a blurred blob. Even attempting to stare directly at him sent needles of agony into Rama’s brain.

He sensed and glimpsed rather than directly saw something swoop down from the high heavens and knew it was Hanuman returning. He had sensed the vanar hovering overhead when he had begun speaking to the white-skinned man; he had not seen what happened to his faithful champion in the aftermath of Mandodhari being struck, but the explosive effusion that had followed, flinging him and Sita back a step and searing their vision and consciousness had no doubt had an effect on the flying one too. He sensed Hanuman descend within a few dozen yards above and wait there, ready.

He sensed the near-panic of those gathered in the shelter below the high spot: his brothers, his mother and the wisest counsels of the nation. He sensed their resolve and their iron discipline holding them together and holding in good stead the awed, dazed soldiers all along the walls of the city. He felt their shock and confusion as well as their discipline and determination. Regardless of what Mandodhari had said or claimed, every one of them would give their lives for him.

That knowledge gave him strength.

And he used that strength to call on his own innermost reserves.

To straighten his spine and stride to the edge of the high spot’s railing. Thence to look out and call in the loudest voice he could muster, straining to be heard above the keening howl of subvocal sound that was being produced by the sword itself, the sword held in the upraised fist of the man on the horse.

“Who are you? What do you seek here?” he shouted.

For a moment, he thought he felt the song of the sword diminish in volume and intensity ever so slightly and felt the attention of all his kinsmen and countrymen snap and sharpen as they collated their wildly roving conjectures and paid heed to this bellowed query of their commander and king.

The pale man spoke. And his voice was one with the song of the sword. Blade-sharp and sword-deadly, it sliced the nerves and penetrated through to the inner organs, much as Kala-Nemi’s voice had, but with a different tone and intensity. That had been like grated glass. This was the texture of liquid fire poured into one’s ears. Rama felt his ear canals seared as if by a blast of superheated air from the heart of a fire.

SEVEN

“Imposter! Look upon your doom. I am Atikaya, son of Ravana and Vedawati. Stepson to Mandodhari. Brother to Indrajit, Prahasta, Akshay Kumar, Devantaka, Narantaka, and Trishira. I am the sole heir to the throne of Lanka, bearer of the legacy of my father and the fulfiller of his last wishes.”

The white rider twisted his wrist and the searing light changed in intensity and kind as the blade turned, sending shooting arrows of agony into Rama’s forebrain. Across the length of the wall, he heard involuntary moans and cries break out as soldiers were unable to stifle their own agony. If they were feeling the pain he was experiencing right now, it was a wonder any of them could stand. It took all his strength and will to remain on his feet and even then his hands were gripping the railing hard enough to drive a splinter into his palm. He felt as if the wood would crack under the intensity of his grip, but since it was solid lohitwood timber – ironwood, literally – he knew the bones in his hand were more likely to snap first. From the elevated view of the high spot, the sword’s effect was even more unendurable, since the blinding blaze of light intensified as it rose. As the white rider continued, a screaming sound came from the corona of light, shredding through Rama’s nerves, bludgeoning his mind and senses. It was beyond any mortal man’s capacity to look at directly; it reduced the world to a blurring darkness, and everything on the visible spectrum to a white field of shrieking agony. Yet even above this torture, the man’s voice penetrated like the roar of a beast might penetrate a dying prey’s ears while it’s claws savaged the hapless animal.

“Behold the symbol of my righteousness, this blade I carry. It is none other than the divine sword given unto my blessed father by Lord Shiva the Destroyer himself, the indomitable moon-blade known as Chandrahas that has never been bested in battle. I come to fulfil the prophecy of doom and to wreak the vengeance of Ravana upon you and all who stand by you. Do what you will, you will not escape my fury. You are lost now and Chandrahas shall not rest until it has drunk deeply of your blood in combat.”

And then he opened his mouth – Rama did not have to see him do it to know he did – and emitted a sound that counterpointed and emphasized the shrieking of the sword to produce a new level of pain. Pain so intense, so all-pervasive, it reduced Rama to a sack of flesh riddled with nothing but pure suffering. He strained and struggled to maintain his upright stance, his wits, his dignity at least if not his strength, but he might as well have been that dying animal with its guts pouring out onto the ground trying to break free of the predator five times its weight and size. He fought with all his might, but it was beyond hopeless, it was laughable. He sank slowly to the floor of the high spot, brain raging with a fire greater than any forge furnace and felt his body stiffen like rock, his blood slow to a pounding gurgle, as the commingled shrieking wail of sword and sword-bearer filled not just his head and senses, but the universe entire.

Faintly, as if from a great distance, he heard another sound. A strange, inhuman sound such as nothing he had ever heard before. Slowly, through the fog of pain and sound and blinding brilliance, he realized it was his own voice. He was sobbing! Not just he, every Ayodhyan along the wall was crying out, groaning or screaming in agony as they reached the limits of their endurance and were still tortured.

The pain increased, intensified, to heights that he did not know he could experience.

And then, when he was certain his skin itself would burst and unloose his blood like an overripe jackfruit fallen from a high branch, he reached the limit of his ability to withstand pain and all went dark and mercifully silent.

Hanuman pressed down in rage and frustration with all his might. Yet try as he would, he could descend no lower than his present height of some forty yards above ground. He could barely move for that matter. It was as if he was wading through quicksand – in mid-air! As with quicksand, the more he struggled and raged, the more the air around him resisted and pushed back. He felt as if he was pushing against a giant winebag filled to bursting point, and while it yielded to pressure, it would not give away completely, nor was he able to burst his way through it. The vanar had grown accustomed to being able to use his preternatural powers to achieve almost any feat he desired in the past several months fighting for Rama’s cause. Which made this inability all the harder to accept.

Yet accept it he had to, if only for the present. He looked down and saw the man turn his wrist again, increasing the intensity of the blinding light from his sword further, and the screaming wail both from the man’s throat and the sword itself grew to intolerable limits even for a being such as Hanuman. He snarled, raising his thick lips to reveal his teeth. What he would not give for a chance to swoop down and ram into that man like a hawk descended upon a snake… He sensed the white man’s awareness of him expand, and thought he heard a faintly mocking tone in the continual wailing that filled the universe. Yet the restriction on his own mobility only increased further, reducing his efforts to a mere sluggish churning of his limbs, until finally even that grew impossible and he was forced to remain still, frozen in an absurdly comical posture, like a fly in amber. He glared down at the man, or rather at the effulgent corona of light that vaguely outlined the shape of the man and the horse below, and cursed in the most fervently rude vanar sounds and clicks and burps he knew, even though no audible sound actually left his rounded snout.

He watched helplessly as the brave Ayodhyans along the wall all succumbed to the agony of the wailing and the light and the abnormal hardening of all matter, watched in immense frustration as Rama himself sank to his feet, the last to succumb, and continued to wage a silent desperate battle. He watched as finally Rama too was unable to fight any longer and slipped into open-mouthed unconsciousness, sprawled on the floor of the high spot. Below, the white rider turned his wrist once more and then the world exploded with brilliant white light and Hanuman saw no more of what followed.

Several moments after Hanuman lost consciousness, all was impossibly still and silent.

Ayodhya lay in a death grasp, shrouded by a darkness greater than night. The Sarayu Valley, verdant and sunkissed until moments ago, now lay under a dense pallor that was tinged with crimson. The sky boiled and seethed with a seemingly endless roof of clouds that were unlike any natural phenomenon ever seen. The air grew thick and still, as if the wind itself had been prevented from entering the great city-state. Not a leaf stirred, not a bird chirruped, not so much as an insect crept along the ground… The river itself seemed to have turned to clotted blood, its roaring rush reduced to a choked gurgle. Fish rose to the surface of the river and lay motionless, floating on their sides with one eye staring blankly up at the raging sky. Animals lay on their sides in the brush, in the dappled forests, in trees and burrows and dens and caves, barely breathing. The air grew fouler as if unable to move and refresh itself. The atoms of all matter moved slower than normal, reducing air to the texture of water, water to mud, and earth, flesh and bone to stone-like solidity. Moving one’s body became a struggle, breathing became a torturous battle and even keeping one’s eyes open was now a challenge. What Hanuman had experienced was also shared by every living being across the land in a large swathe that extended from the Sarayu Valley outwards to enclose a substantial part of the Kosala nation itself. Outside this region, life went on as normal. Within this area, everything that breathed lay unconscious. Even the creatures in the murky waters of the three moats ringing the city, the lice on the unwashed hair of the prisoners in the city dungeons, the parasites feasting on rotting meat in the refuse… all lay still, silent, senseless. Children slept in gurukuls, women at work, men at their chores, nothing and nobody was spared. The city slept a deep shuddering sleep that was no less than death. For none under the spell of this state could will themselves free of its grasp; nor could they be woken by anyone else.