RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (15 page)

Almost as if reading her mind, Rama spoke beside her.

“He is alone,” he said.

At once a quiver of relief flooded her. She felt her parched gullet push down a blob of saliva, her knees unlock and tremble once – just once – before she brought herself under control.

“Yes,” she said calmly, as if she had known that all along.

Rama said nothing. For which she was grateful. Her stoic stance was predicated on thinking and feeling and saying as little as possible: merely remaining in a state of warrior-like preparedness, ready to act.

“RAMA!”

The voice boomed across the avenue, surely audible across the city itself.

She felt its bass vibrations grab hold of and shake the very ribcage encasing her heart, penetrating within that thudding organ itself; like the time when she was a very little girl, no more than a toddler and had climbed into a giant drum one day, not realizing the drum was soon to be struck by a musician wielding an enormous baton. The ensuing boom and the vibrating power of that first strike of that drum – the drummer had instantly sensed something was amiss from the very sound his instrument gave off, and she was immediately extricated – had left her deaf the rest of that day, and its memory imprinted upon her senses forever. The sound of this rakshasa’s voice was no less bone-shaking, and filled with a peculiar teeth-grating, nerve-fraying quality. It was like glass grinding against glass, but elevated to the pitch of a scream. And yet it was bass enough to make the very ground vibrate beneath her feet.

“RAMA!”

A third time, and this time the elephants and horses all screamed and lowed and rampaged in terror, for the voice was undercut with a sound like bones snapping and blood gurgling from arterial wounds.

“I am here, Kala-Nemi,” Rama said quietly, in a voice that seemed all too human and insignificant after the grinding boom of that terrible roar. He stepped out towards the crumpled gates, the PFs parting at his curt gesture. The senapati remained standing where he had been, raised fists still clenched, brown face red with impotent anger at this ultimate trespass

– A rakshasa! Within Ayodhya! At the royal gates! Impossible!

Rama touched him lightly in passing and the general subsided, turning aside to let Rama pass. Sita saw the expression on his face and the fear that was squirming in her gut increased its writhing. She had no name for that expression, and no way to describe how the senapati must be feeling at this moment.

Rama looked tiny standing before the towering form. His crow-black head barely reached the rakshasa’s ankle – although it more exactly resembled a hoof, with woolly fur ringing it at the top. Yet somehow he managed to address the asura without craning his neck or using his hand to mask the sun which was shining directly into his eyes. That was Rama, never yielding the advantage no matter what the circumstances or how uneven the odds.

“Hah!”

The rakshasa’s voice boomed with a trace of satisfaction that grated just as much as the earlier plaintive howls. It went on with a tone that grew harsher and more unbearable to withstand even though the emotions it expressed were what would have passed for pleased or smugly contented among humans.

“I have waited a long time for this day. Yet never doubted it would come at last.”

“Did you have a pleasant stay in your subterranean prison?” Rama’s voice was as casually indifferent as it was quiet, yet so tense was the silence in the avenue that everyone heard his every word.

Sita saw the rakshasa twist his head to gaze down. It seemed to cause Kala-Nemi more discomfort to look down at the little figure on the street than it took Rama to stare up at him. The rakshasa squinted, finally focussing on Rama before replying.

“PRISON? It was a place of rest, no more.”

“Really?” Rama asked pleasantly. “I thought the lowermost level of Naraka was one place where rest was quite unlikely. In fact, that realm exists purely for the infliction of the most severe dands, what you call punishment, and the beings that are in charge of that realm are very creative and ingenious in the methods by which they inflict that punishment. Or so I’ve been told.”

Kala-Nemi swung from side to side, snorted and threw his head back, hands on hips. His laughter was a jagged effusion of sharp-edged sounds that penetrated Sita’s ears painfully. She realized she was starting to feel more than a little nauseated. She forced herself to stand her ground. She could not display any sign of weakness. Not now. Not ever.

“I know what you wish to do. You wish to enrage me, to make me fight.”

Rama did not speak, his silence eloquent.

“The time for fighting will come shortly. But first I have things to say, a message to communicate to you…from my nephew.”

His nephew? Sita wracked her memory. She recalled Rama and Lakshman’s recounting of Kala-Nemi’s intrusion into Ayodhya fourteen years earlier, disguised as the Brahmarishi Vishwamitra in a futile attempt to attack the royal family and prevent Vishwamitra from achieving his goal. The incident had seemed a minor one at that time, important only for what it portended – Ravana’s evident willingness to bring hostility to his enemy’s doorstep and provoke an all-out war – rather than significant in itself. All Kala-Nemi had achieved at the time was a little subterfuge, sneaking past the outer-wall guards and making it as far as the gates of the palace – the very gates that now hung crooked and twisted near her now – before the two brahmarishis Vishwamitra and Guru Vashishta despatched him by the use of their brahman shakti down to the nethermost level of Naraka, the special hellish realm reserved for the worst offenders against humanity. But who was Kala-Nemi’s
nephew
? She faltered for a moment, and the strain of trying to remember caused her nausea to return. Then it came to her with a rush of blood that only added to her dizziness…

“You remember my nephew Ravana.”

The mention of that name, especially from the swollen lips of a beast as intimidating as this one, sent a visible reaction through the massed troops and onlookers. Even dead, Ravana still commanded fear and respect among mortals everywhere, a bedtime ogre conjured up by mothers across the Arya nations to put reluctant children to bed.
Sleep, child, or Ravana will come and take you away as he took Sita from Rama!

“You mean your dead nephew?” Rama replied insouciantly. “We burned his remains on the funeral pyre of his home, the city that once used to be Lanka.”

Kala-Nemi chuckled. The sound was as unlike laughter or amusement as a lion coughing.

“Death is only a release. The beginning of a new level of existence. My nephew has finally achieved moksha from this eternal cycle of birth and rebirth to resume his rightful place in Swargaloka. And he achieved it by your hands, as he had desired all along.”

Moksha? Swargaloka? What was this beast talking about? How could a rakshasa like Ravana with millennia of the vilest crimes imaginable – and many unimaginable too – have acquired sufficient karma to attain salvation from the cycle of birth and rebirth? It was unthinkable. And Swargaloka? The realm of the devas themselves? What place could he have there? She wondered why Rama did not say these obvious things – why he did not toss them scornfully back at Kala-Nemi. She sensed that all those listening were also wondering the same things. Why was Rama so silent? Why was he not arguing the point? Why was he tacitly acceding to the rakshasa’s line of thought? Or was he merely seeking to say as little as possible, to avoid rising to the rakshasa’s bait? With Rama, it was hard to tell, even for her.

“If that is so,” Rama said, and his tone emphasized the
If
, “he is gone from Prithvi-loka forever, never to return. And this mortal realm is the better for his absence.”

The dustcloud churned up by Kala-Nemi’s rising had mostly settled, leaving a better view of the environs of the palace. Sita noticed a flurry of movement at the far end of the avenue. She saw Bharat and Shatrugan, who had retreated back once they had regained their feet, turn to take cognizance of the commotion. A pair of riders approached, slowed cautiously while still several dozen yards away, and dismounted. From the flags their horses bore, Sita knew they were alarm-riders. Their horses carried long staffs imbedded in secure pockets on the sides of the saddle-rigs; during an emergency, the riders had only to slip the appropriate flag onto the top of the staff and ride through the city calling out the alarm. Right now, the flags on both their alarm-staffs were red, the highest level of emergency. She saw Bharat and Shatrugan confer with the riders and even at this distance it was obvious that the message being communicated was of an urgent nature. She swallowed dryly, dreading what it might be: more rakshasas? Another supernatural breakout? But Rama had said Kala-Nemi was alone, and he had seemed to know what was talking about; Rama usually did.

She had no time to muse further. Kala-Nemi’s dialogue with Rama had acquired an urgency of its own.

“That is where you are mistaken, boy! Ravana’s departure from this mortal realm was the crux of his whole plan. Do you not recall the battle of Lanka? How you and your valiant vanar and rksa hordes struggled against our proud rakshasa yoddhas? At what high cost you finally achieved some semblance of victory? And in that last encounter, when you came face to face with my nephew himself, how shockingly easy it was to kill him? Did you not wonder how that final conflict, instead of being a meeting of champions that would make the heavens and earth tremble and be recorded in the annals of war eternally, ended without so much as a whimper? Could Ravana, the challenger and victor of the devas themselves, invader of the highest realms, ruler of the three worlds, conqueror of everything he set his eyes on, the greatest maha-yoddha who ever lived, succumb so easily?”

Again, that telling silence from Rama. As if he too had thought the very things Kala-Nemi was speaking of and knew the truth of those words. Even Sita, though she had not witnessed any part of the war of Lanka herself, recalled her wonder at learning how quickly and simply Ravana had been despatched. She knew that while none of the others had ever spoken this doubt aloud, it had been felt and its awareness underscored every description of the events of the war she had heard.

After narrating every detail with great gusto and relish, each narrator seemed to pause in confusion and blurt out abruptly the puzzling manner in which Rama had simply…killed Ravana. It had seemed too good to be true and everyone had thought it, if not said it: and now Kala-Nemi was saying that it was so.

Rama was silent so long this time, she began to think he would not reply at all. Between the giant intruder’s woolly feet, she glimpsed Shatrugan and Bharat mount the horses of the alarm-riders and ride back up the avenue – towards the outer gates. The riders themselves remained behind, no doubt left to convey their message to others, and gawked nervously up at the giant rakshasa.

When Rama spoke at last, it was in a voice so quiet, she almost missed his words.

“What does the how or why matter now, rakshasa? He is gone. That is all that matters.”

There followed a long moment of silence, in which Sita thought she could hear a faint rumbling somewhere in the distance. The sky was clear and it was nowhere near the monsoon season. That could only mean…. She did not want to think what it meant. Not now. Not just yet. There was enough to deal with already: all 300 feet high of him, reeking up the air.

Kala-Nemi laughed. Soldiers jerked their heads involuntarily, as the glass-grinding awfulness of the sound grated inside their heads.

The rakshasa drew himself up, raising his head and straightening his slightly bent-over torso to its full height. Sita saw with startled wonder that her earlier estimation had been wrong; he was actually
taller
than the Seer’s Eye – by a good two or three yards. And far wider around. She couldn’t bear to wonder what would happen if he simply began rampaging and crushing homes and buildings – and palaces – at will. Surely Rama and Hanuman and the others would find a way to bring him down. But he would destroy a good part of the city and cause considerable casualties – innocent civilian casualties – before that happened. She did not even want to estimate how many he could kill or how much destruction he could cause in that time.
This is really real now,
she thought, her jaw tightening with the inner steeling that always came just before a battle or

life-threatening circumstance.
Death is at our threshold once again, and nothing has changed since our years of exile.

Except that it had, of course. And it was worse this time. For this was no wild, uncharted jungle or even a land of rakshasas. It was Ayodhya, beautiful Ayodhya. Home. And it had been invaded.

Then Kala-Nemi spoke again. And she realized that even in her darkest dreams she had had no notion of just how bad it really was, and how much worse it was about to get.

The rakshasa’s words boomed out louder and harsher than before. Loud enough to be easily heard across the city. Sita had a sudden image of children burying little faces in their mothers’ laps as they cringed at the ear-hurting sound of Kala-Nemi’s voice, men standing in the aangans of their houses with weapons in their hands, sweating thinly and wondering what evil day had come to their proud land.

Kala-Nemi’s voice boomed out across Ayodhya like a trumpeted proclamation of war: