RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (27 page)

She hefted the sword, swung it this way and that, as warriors often did from time to time to prevent muscles from stiffening. “But here I am. And here you are. And your wicked deviation from Ravana’s original plan will end here and now before it goes any further.”

Without further ado, she leaped forward and attacked the rakshasa. By rights, she ought to have brought him down with her first blow. Instead, her deftly-swung sword merely clanged off an invisible shield, rang out with a terrible ear-splitting burring sound, and was twisted out of her hands to be sent flying yards away. Sita exclaimed and bent over, nursing her wrist which Bharat knew must have been badly twisted by the force and angle with which her sword had bounced off the invisible obstacle.

And then, to her surprise, and Bharat’s as well, Atikaya threw his head back and laughed. As open and full-throated a laugh as Sita herself had emitted only moments earlier. Gone was all trace of nervousness. The rakshasa sounded now as if it was he, not Sita, who had been in full command of the situation all this while.

THREE

Sita stared at Atikaya. The rakshasa laughed and laughed until tears spilled from his ghostly grey eyes. The tears were viscous and treacly and though they seemed colourless in themselves, the fluid trickling down his skin appeared greenish in hue. The moon-sword, still held in his hand, blazed and burned without pause, but the shade of its emission seemed to change hue from blinding white to a faint greenish grey as well, a sickly hue that pulsed steadily in rhythm to his laughter. Finally the son of Ravana stopped laughing and looked at Sita. The sword’s spellfire blazed steadily.

“
Girl
,” he said. And now the high-pitched voice of a few moments ago was gone, replaced by a gruff growl, like a young fox threatening a rival. “
For girl you will always be, no matter your age in years. You mortals can never fully understand how pointless is your opposition to the asura races. We have walked the earth since before the dawn of your species. And we shall walk it again aeons after you are but ashes and crumbled bones. Your futile resistance only strengthens us by weeding out our weakest specimens. Yet even the strongest among you cannot face up to the might of our greatest warriors! For we wield the secret to ultimate power. The way of brahman channelled into fleshly artifice. For ages untold we have studied to perfection and mastered the art of manipulating the eternal cosmic energy in ways your feeble human minds can never imagine. This is how my father was able to forge Chandrahas. How he raised an army of asuras great enough to invade and conquer the realm of the devas as well as Naraka. And he would have conquered the mortal world too, if not for the accidental happenstance that benefitted your husband.”

Sita forced herself to speak without betraying any trace of hesitation or fear: “It was no accident, nor happenstance. It was Brahmarishi Vishwamitra’s deep knowledge of Vedanta that enabled him to pass on the smriti shloka summoning the terrible power of the brahmastra. And it was Rama’s unwavering sense of dharma that enabled him to utter that shloka. He unleashed the greatest astra ever devised and wiped out your father’s evil hordes before they could accomplish their invasion. One man. Alone against untold asuras. And he alone stood alive at the end of that encounter.”

Atikaya issued a sound that was neither human nor animal, but resembled something between a lion’s cough and a horse’s snort. “
Believe your girlish fairy tales if it helps you stay sane. The truth is, everything that happened, from Rama’s birth itself and before it, right to this very moment, was planned and meticulously put into place by my father. The genius of Ravana engendered the very existence of Rama Chandra. For without Ravana, there could be no Rama. And without Rama, we would not be here today. Nor, perhaps, would the world itself.”

What did he mean by that? Even Sita could not fathom those cryptic words. Yet she sensed that despite his nauseating arrogance and nerve-rasping tone, he spoke without any trace of deception. She pushed the thought aside. There would be time later to muse over and analyze; now, it was time to turn this confrontation back to her advantage, and quickly. She did not like the way Atikaya had pretended to be cowed at first, then turned the tables on her so abruptly. She must regain control of the situation. Too much depended on her doing so.

“You can weave your myths and fancies all you wish, rakshasa,” she said coldly. “It does not change the fact that you went against your father’s wishes. That you murdered your own mother because you knew she would not cooperate with your change of plan. You are nothing but a rogue and a renegade seeking to aggrandize yourself by vaulting piggyback over the great history and painstakingly acquired shakti of your great father. Yes, I acknowledge Ravana’s greatness, though it sticks in my gullet to even speak his name. He was a great king, a great master of the Vedas, a mighty brahmin and a devout Shiva worshipper. All his immense shakti came from the same sources that empowered Vishwamitra, Vashishta and the other saptarishis who walked the earth since time immemorial. But he corrupted the use of brahman shakti. He turned it to the devises of asura maya. For self acquisition. Personal gain. Lust and avarice. Greed and profit. Rape and reaving. Conquest and subjugation. These were not acceptable under dharma and by violating dharma he violated the natural order of the universe itself. Therefore he had to be stopped. Had not Rama stopped him, some other champion would surely have risen to do the needful. Ravana’s time had come. Rama merely happened to be the right person in the right place – and Ravana’s abduction of me the mistake that cost him his life.”

Atikaya smiled, flashing teeth so flat and blockish they seemed incapable of biting or tearing even the softest food. Teeth quite unlike that of any rakshasa Sita had ever seen. Yet there was such menace and forbidding in that grin, it made her pray she never had those teeth at her own throat in a fight.

“That is where you are mistaken, queen of Kosala,” he said in a voice suddenly reduced to a very normal – almost human – level and tone. The transition was as shocking as if he had ratcheted up to a louder rather than softer level. “And that mistake, and that lack of acceptance of the truth, and that yawning gap in your otherwise impressive stable of knowledge, is what will cost you your husband’s life. For all this, this mad bloody game of kings, is but a small part of the greater dance being performed at the end of days. And we but bit actors in a lavish production. The real drama is elsewhere. Offworld. The real war is being waged in other realms, other times, other universes. Your husband, the one you still foolishly believe to be Rama Chandra of Ayodhya, is there, fighting those battles, waging those wars. Not entrapped in this minor realm in that flesh cage you recognize and assume to be his only form. I said this before and I say it again now, and mark my words for they are true: Rama is not Rama. Ayodhya not Ayodhya. This world is not what it seems. Nothing is as it appears. And we are pathetic unfortunate beings banished out of our true time and place and the worse for it.”

He raised the moon-sword and as Sita watched with bewilderment, it pulsed stronger and stronger, its blazing effulgence growing to an impossible degree, bathing Atikaya himself in a wash of dazzling white light tinged with grey and green in swirling patches. And as its light increased, so did its song.

“I know now how you knew what you knew,” he said, his voice slowly overwhelmed by the rising shriek of the swordsong. “You were able to channel the flow of the chandra-shakti. The power of the moonsword. And since my consciousness and the sword’s are one, you were thereby able to read the contents of my uppermost thoughts as well.” He chuckled wistfully. “That is how you were able to discern everything that was in my mind. A simple yet effective device and one that threw me off-guard for a brief moment, I admit. But that was the extent of your ability. The moonsong that burns in your veins can do no more for you. Your puny Mithila steel toothpick cannot match the power of Chandrahas. Nothing and nobody can. And now, it is time for me to complete my small part in this very great game. Time for me to slaughter your husband in this flesh form, and his entire family and dynasty. And then,” he glanced towards the city behind her, “then I shall unleash the vengeance that you glimpsed in my vision before. And this time, Ayodhya shall truly fall. And burn to ruination.”

He held the sword in both hands now, and chanted a mantra that was drowned by the deafening banshee wail of the swordsong. Sita cried out in agony as the waves of energy rammed into her senses like a stone wall falling and she sensed dimly that the sword had fallen from her hands. Then her knees struck the dirt and her forehead bent over until it touched the ground, obeising herself against her will to the deity that was the moon Himself incarnate now. This amsa of Chandra-deva. The progeny of Ravana. Her brother in blood if not in spirit and intent.

“
BEHOLD!
” Atikaya’s voice rang out with the clear sharpness of a metal hammer striking a clear brass bell. “
BEHOLD THE VENGEANCE OF RAVANA!
”

And he matched word to deed, bringing the sword down to cleave the ground itself with a force that shook every bone in Sita’s body and threw her a dozen yards up into the air, flying backwards like a pebble slung from a catapult to land in a shattering impact. Then she saw no more.

Everyone frozen by the spellsong of Chandrahas watched and listened with impotent horror as Atikaya brought the moon-sword down with a mighty force, smiting the ground and cleaving it like a woodaxe cleaving a chip. The ground beneath their feet shuddered under the impact and a great crack appeared in the great avenue that led from the foremost gate into the city. The force was great enough that the vibrations caused buildings to tremble and dust and plaster to fall in a shower. Had the entire populace of Ayodhya, and all fauna in the Sarayu Valley itself not been frozen by the asura sorcery, the shock would have drawn a reaction no less than an avalanche or an earthquake. As it was, the world shuddered visibly and the crack in the ground spread in outwardly radiating ripples, creating a spiderweb tracery into which the dust and gravel of the avenue crumbled and fell in a steady shower. Dust rose up in a blinding cloud, and when it settled several moments later, there was a roughly Y-shaped jagged crevasse some fifty yards in length and as much in width. How deep the crack ran below ground, it was hard to tell, but an observer standing on the rim looking down would have seen nothing but darkness for several yards downwards.

Sita lay crumpled across the far side of the crevasse, rendered unconscious by the force with which she had been flung and fallen. Had she struck a wall or post at that speed, she would no doubt have broken her back and body. As it was, she lay bruised and battered, but merely unconscious, not seriously hurt.

Or so Rama assumed. And hoped. And prayed.

Sita’s boldness in facing Atikaya alone was breathtaking. But his heart had been in his mouth when she had moved of her own volition, shrugging off the spell’s miasma, climbing down the stairway, then leaped down the last few yards to land on the street and confront the rakshasa armed with nothing but an ordinary sword. A Mithila sword against Chandrahas? A mouse battling an elephant would have stood a better chance: at least the mouse could slip into the pachyderm’s trunk and block its air and food passage; it could do
something
. Sita could have accomplished nothing by that risky manoeuvre. It made Rama seethe with impotent anger that she had put herself and their unborn children into harm’s way without any forethought or expectation of a successful outcome. But he could not deny that it also made him proud. She was truly a queen of Ayodhya. A monarch of the Kosala nation. And she had proven that yet again, this time in full view of all those whose opinion counted in this kingdom. That would go far in helping her gain the trust, love and respect of everyone –
if
she survived.

But she hadn’t stood a chance against the son of Ravana. Nor did anyone else in this land. Not so long as the young matricide carried that sword.

The first order of business was to take that sword away from Atikaya before he could wreak havoc with it and fulfil the terrible nightmarish vision that he had forced all their captive minds to share only a short while earlier. Or, if it was not possible – or too costly in terms of collateral damage – then the next best tactic would be simply to negate the power of the sword itself, render its epic shakti utterly meaningless…

By countering it with an even greater weapon.

FOUR

Atikaya laughed.

The rakshasa was in his element. Nothing, nobody, no power could thwart him. Ayodhya lay before him like a calf beneath a naked blade. Prithvi-loka itself lay unguarded beyond. Soon, he would achieve even greater glory than his father ever had. He would rule the three worlds for all time to come. With Chandrahas he was indestructible. And once word of the slaughter and havoc he was about to unleash upon Ayodhya spread, few would dare oppose him. The world would open before him like an oyster offering up its prize.

The crack in the ground he had cut open with a single downstroke of Chandrahas yawned wide, running like a jagged streak of lightning away from him. Had he chosen, he could have made a crevasse large enough to swallow entire buildings – or half the city. But that would be too simple. He intended to make the most of his time in Ayodhya. The Unconquerable? Not to Atikaya! The Conquered, it would be known as henceforth. He chuckled at his own wit and hefted the great sword, relishing the thrumming power of chandra-shakti that sang from the face of the open blade and reverberated through his entire being. It evoked powerful lusts within his libido, and he licked his lips in anticipation of the havoc he would wreak today. Finally, he would reap the rewards of a childhood and youth spent in silent patient suffering and preparation. All he had been until now was a weapon of vengeance, a weapon created, tooled and honed by his father and mother. Now, he was to be unleashed. And he would show no mercy, give no quarter, yield not an inch.