PRINCE IN EXILE (16 page)

Even Kaikeyi’s face acknowledged the turning of the tide by a faint twitching downturn of her mouth. The Second Queen’s eyes flashed briefly, smouldering in their sockets. 

The entire assembly looked to Maharaja Dasaratha for his response. 

TEN 

Jatayu descended cautiously through the labyrinth of inner towers and fortifications that crisscrossed the heart of the black fortress, following the kumbhas in its quest for an answer to the riddle that now dominated the course of its future history. 

The bird-beast had folded its wings firmly upon its back, and appeared strikingly human at first glance. Except for its bald misshapen head and oversize wattled neck, the vulture-king could have passed for an oddly configured mortal. Its anthropomorphic appearance was enhanced when it passed through the long stretches of shadowy dimness that dominated the asura stronghold. 

Only when it chanced upon an occasional - and rare demonlight casting its garish fluorescent green light from a high crevice did the illusion vanish, to reveal nothing more than a giant creature with the body of a bear-like animal and the head and wings of a giant vulture. But it pleased the bird-king to maintain the illusion when it could; it enjoyed the look of blank incomprehension upon the face of the rakshasas it passed when they came upon Jatayu. It took them several moments to understand what it was, and that it was not what it seemed at first to be - a human wandering casually through the lair of Ravana. Then they gnashed their curved fangs, slammed their hooved fists together and went on their way, cursing Jatayu in their harsh rakshasa tongue. 

Jatayu was descending a flight of stone stairs that seemed to go down endlessly. It had lost track of time, and even though it knew only a little while had passed since sundown, it seemed as if it might wander these dark passageways eternally. 

It shivered at the thought and hastened its pace. Its talon-tips clacked and clattered noisily on the dark lohit stone, the sounds rising behind and above it to the distant rooftop trapdoor it had used to enter the fortress. Here and there, slashes and streaks of rusty red scored the dark walls. Lohit stone was literally ironstone, rich with the raw element, and it tended to rust when exposed to the air, or to salt water. Fresh air was not much to be found in the depths of the black fortress, but salt water there was plenty of, and these patches on the walls marked the places where countless asuras of every species had scratched or scraped on their way up or down these stairs, exposing the stones to the corroding salt air. 

Jatayu heard something and paused. 

Strange echoes and distant reverberations sounded from deep within the bowels of the fortress. Most of these Jatayu took to be simply the sounds resulting from the endless war preparations of the demon races, their giant smiths working to produce armour and weaponry for those asuras who needed to enhance their natural killing endowments. But some of these noises were mystifying to the bird-beast. Like the deep rhythmic groaning it heard now, rising steadily until it seemed to fill the entire stairwell with its sonorousness, then fading away into the distance. What could
that
possibly be? Jatayu wasn’t sure if it even wanted to know. 

It shivered and continued its downward descent. After what seemed like another thousand yards, the stairwell finally let out upon a horizontal level. Jatayu heaved a sigh of relief as it stepped on to flat ground again. It resisted the urge to unfurl its wings and peered down a dark corridor. This seemed like the way to the Hall. It recalled a level much like this one following a similarly harrowing descent. It pattered cautiously down the gloomy passageway. The sickly glow of the demonlights illuminated only a featureless antechamber like a thousand thousand others in this vast fortification. It was said there were a million million asuras in Lanka, and there was a chamber to house each one of them in the black fortress. 

Now, of course, the first figure would have to be severely amended - very severely - but the fortress itself remained, vast and impenetrable, so labyrinthine that to be lost within its endless passages and halls was not just likely but inevitable, which was why Jatayu never ventured down here except when following those given the way by the demonlord himself. And Ravana, for reasons best known to him, had long ago chosen only to let the kumbha-rakshasas know the way through the fortress. It was rumoured that even the brutal overseers often lost their way in these countless mazes, usually those ones who had fallen out of favour with their master. It was said that there were thousands of wretched outcasts and hapless ones wandering these corridors endlessly in search of the way out. For when it pleased its master, the black fortress was given to altering its own architecture and interiors. 

Jatayu went to the end of the antechamber and peered through the archway to the next chamber. It looked exactly like the first. It hesitated a moment then decided to continue. Something smelled familiar about this place, and it was quite certain the kumbha-rakshasas it had followed down from the rampart rooftop had come this way. It could still smell traces of their distinctive odours, especially the older one, whose scent clearly indicated a vile case of uraga-bite which had begun to fester. 

The antechambers flowed for several hundred yards further, ending abruptly. The demonlights also ceased, and Jatayu suddenly found itself plunged into total darkness. It skittered nervously to a halt, its talons seeking purchase on the slimy floor. It paused, craning its neck this way, then that. The only thing it could make out at first was that the chamber was vast even by the standards of the black fortress, enormous beyond all measure. It could feel currents and eddies of wind sweeping from different directions, travelling in a complex interweaving. 

The vulture-lord’s leathery wings shuddered, eager to unfold, to take it high up to the rafters and explore this vast open space, but it forced them to remain closed. It shut its eyes, making the darkness redundant, and used its bird senses to explore the room. By studying the wind currents flowing across its bald head and fine, profuse antennae-like hairs, it could form a virtual mental image of the chamber’s dimensions and broad measures. After a moment, it opened its beaked mouth and issued a sharp piercing screech. The sound raced away into the darkness, seeming to lose itself in the vast empty spaces. But to Jatayu’s finely attuned avian senses, the sub-sonic echoes of the call reverberated for several moments after wards, adding depth, dimension and even texture to the sketch formed by the wind-current image. It opened its eyes, blinking its heavy lids in amazement. If its senses were right, and there was no reason to doubt them, this space was two whole yojanas in length and a full yojana in width! 

Jatayu squawked again, expressing its sheer amazement at the discovery. A chamber eighteen miles long and nine miles wide? Impossible! It had flown over entire island-chains in the Lakshadweep archipelago that were not this large. But once the first flush of surprise passed, it realised that anything was possible in Lanka. If the portals of hell themselves could be kept open in a place in the mortal realm, allowing the free passage of dead asuras from the nethermost levels of Patal and Narak, then what was a minor architectural miracle or two? Besides, it was well known that the black fortress had been built by yaksas for Kubera, Ravana’s half-brother, from whom he had wrested the island-kingdom. And yaksas had built cities such as Amravarti, Alkapura and Indraloka, the celestial cities of the devas themselves. Surely a room a few hundred square miles large would pose no obstacle to those gifted builders. 

After a moment of indecision, Jatayu began walking through the chamber. The scent of the kumbha-rakshasas led through here, unmistakably, and it still needed to verify the news heralded by the raising of the flag. If Ravana truly was dead, Jatayu wanted to see his corpse with its own two eyes. Spitting was optional. 

It walked for another thousand yards or so without meeting anything or anyone. That was not surprising in itself: it hadn’t expected to find
furniture
in this place! This was probably some holding area where asuras retrieved from the hell worlds were brought and kept awhile until their obedience and loyalty to the Lord of Lanka was established beyond doubt. Hence the overpowering stench of kumbha-rakshasas in the place: the overseers and their vicious knife-tipped lashes were most needed here. But what Jatayu didn’t understand was why there was no corresponding stench of other asura species. After all, if a million or two demons had been assembled here, still writhing and smouldering from their time spent in the hell worlds, surely the resulting smell should be overpowering? Yet Jatayu could detect no trace of anything but kumbha-rakshasa. It didn’t give the matter much thought: intellectual analysis had never been the vulture-king’s strong point. What mattered was that the kumbha it was seeking had clearly passed this way, so this was the way Jatayu would go. 

It passed a row of enormous round objects, each looming up to rise high out of sight. They gleamed with a metallic dullness in the faint illumination that crept in from cracks and crevices in the vaulting rock walls of the chamber. Jatayu paused to peck at one with its beak; it resounded with a startling sound that made it back away hurriedly. The sound was curiously like striking a metal vessel filled with water, but on an immensely larger scale. Jatayu debated a moment, torn between curiosity and caution, and finally decided that flying was the only way it would get where it was going within a reasonable time. 

It spread its wings with a sensation akin to sexual relief. It felt so good to be able to fly again, even if only for short intervals. The wounds on its body still hurt horribly, but they were healing fast. And while some damage was permanent, leaving Jatayu a pale shadow of its former self, at least flight was still possible. Among its kind they had a saying:
If it can fly, it’s still alive
. A flightless jatayu or garuda was better off dead, which was why its fellows pecked and clawed it to death, mercifully saving it from years of landlocked misery. 

Jatayu found the currents surprisingly powerful and rose quickly. By its earlier estimate, the roof of the chamber was as high as its width, namely a full yojana. With that much space, a whole flock of jatayus could live down here. Not that any bird-beast would want to live out of reach of the blessed life-giving rays of Surya-deva, the sun god. But it was a sobering thought. Once this vast place had probably contained lakhs, or even crores of asura species. Now, it was deserted. That was how dramatically Lanka’s fortunes had changed. 

It turned in a wide arc as it reached the top of the curved metal object it had pecked at earlier. It took it a fraction of an instant to recognise the object, and several stunned moments to let its mind accept the reality. 

It was a jal-bartan. 

An enormous drinking-water receptacle. 

Jatayu screeled with surprise as it rose higher and saw, stretching out for miles and miles, an endless row of identical jal-bartans, all as impossibly huge as the first. 

It veered left, flying to the far side of the chamber’s width. As it came within sight of that side of the enormous hall, it saw what it had expected to find: a row of small hill-sided heaps of oddly familiar stick-like objects. It took only a sniff to confirm with its keen sense of smell that the mountains were in fact mounds of discarded bones. The gnaw marks on their centres and edges were clearly visible as Jatayu flew closer then swooped overhead. 

Suddenly, it realised with a shuddering shock that it was dangerously mistaken. This was no ordinary chamber at all. Nor was it a holding pen for retrieved asuras. 

As if in confirmation, the groaning sound it had heard earlier on the stairwell began again. Except that this time it was sounding from
this
level of the black fortress, from this very chamber. With the evidence Jatayu now had, there was no disputing the nature of the sound. It was the sound of something snoring. Something so huge that it took a bedchamber eighteen miles long and nine miles wide to accommodate it comfortably. 

The snoring grew louder as Jatayu flew further. The bird-beast knew that it was committing perhaps the most foolish act of its long life, yet it felt compelled to go on. Now that it knew where it was, in the forbidden chamber, it couldn’t resist the fascination of exploring further. It executed another turn, finding a wind current that was as warm and sultry as a South Seas breeze. But unlike those balmy wind waves, this one had the foulest stench imaginable. More peculiar, it seemed not to bear any relation to the other currents and eddies in the chamber. If anything, this malodorous wave seemed to originate from a point within the room itself, about a mile off the floor. 

Jatayu peered down through the slatted dimness. Slits of light from other torchlit chambers filtered through into this vast space, illuminating long, slender bars of the room. There was something there, Jatayu could see now, something rising from the floor to about a mile’s height. Could it be a volcano? It was certainly large enough to be one! But a volcano would emit light as well as heat, and the stench was nothing like any other volcano on Lanka. 

Suddenly a mashaal flared somewhere down below, off to one side, about two miles or so from the western wall of the forbidden chamber. It sent flickering fingers of yellow light racing across the breadth of the vast space, illuminating the enormous humped object that lay on the floor of the room. A moment later, it was joined by another mashaal, then yet another.