The Palace of Illusions (48 page)

“Abhimanyu, who learned it from his father, Arjun.”

“We must stop him somehow!”

Drona shook his head. There was a feral smile on his face. “We can't stop him. He's too good a fighter. But don't worry. The others will not be able to follow him in. And Abhimanyu hasn't yet learned how to extricate himself from the vyuha once he enters it.”

My head swam as I realized Drona's diabolical plot. If only I could send word to Yudhisthir and save Abhimanyu! But it was impossible.

Duryodhan took the costliest jewel from his crown and offered it to Drona. “Truly you are a master strategist! Even Bheeshma couldn't have conceived of such an infallible plan. So this is how we'll destroy Arjun!”

As Drona had foreseen, a desperate Yudhisthir asked Abhimanyu to break through the vyuha, promising that he and his brothers would follow close behind. I focused all my mental power on Abhimanyu, begging him to excuse himself, but I failed. An excited Abhimanyu was delighted to finally be of help to his uncles.

When Abhimanyu saluted Yudhisthir and drove his chariot into the army amassed in front of him, I shut my eyes in despair. But the sight was relentless. And so from behind my closed lids I saw it all: how the vyuha locked up immediately behind Abhimanyu; how the lock was guarded by Jayadrath, my onetime abductor who had received a boon to withstand the Pandavas as long as Arjun was not with them; how the Pandavas, unable to aid their nephew, despaired. Inside the vyuha, Abhimanyu, realizing he was doomed, decided to make his death as expensive for his enemy as possible. None could withstand him in fair fight, this boy so like his father, until finally six of their best warriors fell upon him all together, in violation of the most important code of war. Coming up behind him, they cut the string from his bow and the hilt from his sword. They killed his charioteer and his horses and smashed his chariot. Still he wrenched out a broken wheel and advanced upon them, asking only that they fight him one at a time. But they would not honor this last request. So Abhimanyu fell, his beautiful face turned toward the women's tent where Uttara waited, his eyes filled with astonishment at the perfidy of men he'd respected as heroes. And his killers—so greatly had war altered them—roared their triumph like beasts.

Who were among the killers, these warriors who trampled honor into the bloody ground beneath their feet to commit this heinous act? Drona was there, and Aswatthama, and—yes, the sight chose this moment to grant me my wish that I should observe him in action—Karna.

I remained on the hill that night. I knew that in their anguish none on the Pandava side would pay attention to my absence. I
could not bear to be there when Uttara found out the news. But the cruel night air carried every sound of lamentation to me. Uttara was in a frenzy, tearing her hair and beating her breast, calling on death to come for her, too. She flung herself on the ground unmindful of the child in her womb, while the other women, putting aside their own losses, tried to restrain her. I could feel the suffering of my husbands, their rage surpassed by their excruciating guilt, for had they not pressed him, Abhimanyu would never have entered the formation on his own. Each one wished that he'd died in Abhimanyu's stead. But theirs was not to be such a quick release.

When he finally learned what had occurred, Arjun fell down in a swoon so deep that his brothers were afraid he'd perished of sorrow. But Krishna touched his chest and said, his voice stern, “Your son died most nobly. Be a worthy father to him!” Then Arjun awoke and took water in his hand and spoke a dreadful oath: If by sunset tomorrow he did not kill Jayadrath, who had prevented his brothers from entering the formation to support Abhimanyu, he would commit suicide.

I lay on the hill under the great, wheeling stars. I had no energy left for raging, I to whom rage had come so easily all my life. Fog had stained the dark; the heavenly bodies were dim. It seemed to me that with the murder—for so it was—of Abhimanyu, a glory had passed from the earth. We were firmly in the grasp of Kali, the age of injustice. The war had festered. Neither Kaurava nor Pandava would escape its infection. I wept for Abhimanyu, that guileless, golden boy who would have been king after Yudhisthir, and for all of us who loved him. I wept in fear of what would happen if Arjun failed to fulfill his vow. I wept in remorse for the part I'd played in pushing the Pandavas into war, for now I'd begun to realize its full horror. Finally I wept for Karna, who had lived all his life for honor only to lose it today. He had cut away his armor and with it his
hopes of victory rather than be known as a man who broke his word. For the sake of his good name he had given up the possibility of his brothers' love. He had curbed his longing for me to stand by his friend. But now he would be remembered as the murderer of a defenseless boy.

What subversive power did war possess that it could turn even such a man into a butcher?

Perhaps it was good that Abhimanyu fell when he did. He could die believing that the Pandavas, at least, had maintained the battle code with which they'd brought him up. He didn't have to witness how, in the days that followed, they, too, swerved from honor when it was expedient, attacking the unarmed and maimed, justifying their actions by stating it was for the ultimate good. Even Krishna played his part, creating the illusion of a false sunset so Jayadrath would think he was safe—and then, when Jayadrath stood up in triumph, urging Arjun to behead him. But the worst was how they killed Drona.

After Abhimanyu's death, Drona fought like a demon, discarding every one of the laws he'd helped set up a mere fifteen days ago. Goaded by Duryodhan's poison tongue or by self-loathing, he forced his exhausted troops to attack at night, when the Pandava army had retired to rest. He turned his divine astras on common soldiers who had no way of withstanding them, transforming entire battalions into charred masses. In an attempt to break Dhri's spirit and render the prophecy of his death false, he singled out my family and killed, in one afternoon, my father and all three of Dhri's sons.

Perhaps Krishna was right in declaring that Drona must be stopped by whatever means necessary. Still, there was something shameful in the way it was done. Bheem killed an elephant that had
the same name as Drona's son and announced to Drona that Aswatthama was dead. But Drona said, “My son is too fine a warrior to be killed by the likes of you! I will believe it only if Yudhisthir, who never lies, declares it to be true.” Yudhisthir was caught in a terrible dilemma. But finally, weighing the lives of all the hapless men gathered to fight for him against his personal good, he gave up the virtue by which he'd lived his whole life and said it was so.

Then Drona dropped his weapons in despair, closed his eyes and sat in prayer. Seeing this, Dhri—my gentle brother who until then had not fallen prey to the insanity of war—rushed at him with his upraised sword. With all my strength I cried to him to stop—but once again I was merely an observer, helpless to intervene. Even as the Pandavas shouted that he should take Drona captive but spare his life, he beheaded the man who had, in a happier time, been the greatest teacher he'd known. Drona's blood spurted over my brother. He held up his dripping hands and roared with laughter, calling on the spirits of his father and sons to see how he avenged them. I shuddered. Bile rose in my throat. His laughter was so like that of the men who had killed Abhimanyu that had I not been watching, I couldn't have told them apart.

Thus my brother fulfilled the fate he was born for, gaining revenge and losing himself, and spawning (for such is the nature of vengeance) a further drama of hate.

36

When Karna became commander, some semblance of order was restored to the battle. He sent a proclamation to both sides, urging a return to righteousness.
It is certain to me that most of us shall not leave this field alive
, he wrote.
How shall we behave, then, in these last days? Would you rather the gods welcome us to the loka meant for heroes, or do you wish to be banished to the tortures of narak?
Perhaps the warning about hell struck a chord in the hearts of the kings, for in the next days they extended a grudging chivalry to each other. For his part, Karna practiced his own philosophy. I sensed that he bitterly regretted his part in the death of Abhimanyu, that moment when in the blood-heat of battle he forgot himself. Perhaps in recompense—or because of the secret that clawed at him from within—he spared, one after the other, Sahadev, Nakul, Bheem— and most important, Yudhisthir, when he had them at his mercy. In this one instance he was disloyal to Duryodhan. He was careful not to rouse their suspicion, though, and taunted them mercilessly before he let them go. Only I saw the way he gazed after them in sorrow and tenderness.

The common soldiers adored Karna. Thanks to him, they no longer lived in constant fear of the pitiless astras that could, in an eyeblink, turn a disciplined battalion into a writhing mass of agony.
They could rest at night without worrying that they might be attacked without notice. But mostly they loved him because, in the evenings after the other maharathis had retired to their tents, he walked among them. He offered solace to the wounded and made sure they were given what comfort was available. To those who would go into battle the next morning, he spoke bluntly and honestly, man to man.
I cannot promise you safety
,
but this much I know. Whoever wins—Yudhisthir or Duryodhan, he will take care of the families of those who fight faithfully in this battle.
Such was the power of his conviction that men who were ready to desert changed their minds. I wonder if Duryodhan ever knew that it was Karna's words that held his dwindled army together in its last moments. This was how things stood on the seventeeth day of the war, when Karna and Arjun faced each other.

From the beginning it was clear that this duel was unlike their previous encounters. It would end only when one of them died. By unspoken consent, soldiers on both sides stopped their skirmishes to watch. (If they lived, this would be the story they'd tell their grandchildren.) Vyasa has written that the gods themselves came to see this amazing fight. I believe him, for though I couldn't see them, I felt an electric presence in the air, a deep, if impersonal, sadness.