PRINCE IN EXILE (21 page)

The lurid remark drew another mangled burst of asura laughter. On the floor below, the female rakshasi had finally stopped writhing and lay spreadeagled in a grotesquely inviting sexual posture. If she wasn’t moved soon, he wouldn’t put it past some lusty asura chief to cover her and use her for his necrophilic satisfaction. 

Vibhisena looked around for the kumbha-rakshasas that customarily stood by when Ravana held his sessions. Not a single one was in sight, yet another telling sign of the rapid deterioration in morale and discipline. If he didn’t act quickly and decisively, the asura races would soon break out into open mutiny. From there to outright inter-species war would be a short step. And much as Vibhisena deplored his brother’s excesses and brutalities, he had never doubted that without Ravana the asuras would all go their separate ways. There was good reason why no one master had been able to command all the species until Ravana came along and dared to attempt the feat. To rule over a million million demons, you had to show that you were more demonaic than them all. 

Vibhisena raised his arms, holding them out before him, palms facing upward. 

Someone saw him and commented boldly, ‘Now the brother is praying for rain. Quit it, white-face! All the waters of the world won’t revive your brother now!’ 

Something exploded like a blast of thunder from the heart of a barkha cloud. A lightning bolt, jagged black edged with crimson, shot out from the roof of the Hall and struck the vetaal who had spoken the last comment. It was indeed the last comment that wretch would ever speak. The bolt of black lightning entered his mouth and impaled him on the point of its jagged tip. The vetaal’s skinless body crumpled in a single burst of flame, then dissipated into a hundred thousand flakes of ash. The flakes flew apart and were lost in the murky light of the mashaals that lit up the Hall. 

The voice that spoke into the ensuing silence was as deep and sonorous as the distant rolls of thunder fading away. 

‘I am Ravana, Lord of Lanka. Who dares show me disrespect in my own house?’ 

This time, Vibhisena noted with relief, there were no vulgar retorts or comments. Every asura chief in the sabha stared transfixed at the object that had appeared in the centre of the Hall. 

Ravana, still embedded within his block of transparent red stone, floated in mid-air, several yards above the ground. The enormous block rotated rapidly, turning on a diagonal axis to allow a view to every chief in the assembly. Frozen within the heart of the redstone, the demonlord’s body was still suspended like a beetle in glass, but his eyes, all twenty of them, were open and glaring. 

SIXTEEN 

‘Dasa, don’t go,’ she said, catching his arm as he rose wearily from the bed. The attendants had brought the travelling chair into the sickroom and had set it down beside the bed. Dasaratha, a shawl wrapped around his chest, was preparing to move his ailing self from the bed to the chair when Kausalya stopped him. 

He looked up at her with woeful large eyes, rimmed red and shot through with a fine tracery of veins. The irises seemed as if ringed by filmy white orbs, like cataract-ridden pupils, even though Dasaratha had not complained or displayed any loss of vision. ‘Kausalya,’ he said softly. Sumantra had left the chamber, escorting Manthara out, and Kausalya could hear his voice berating the daiimaa in the antechamber for the way she had barged into the maharaja’s private chambers unannounced. But the attendants who would carry the chair were yet here, and it was to avoid them overhearing that the maharaja kept his voice low. 

‘You heard the daiimaa,’ he said now, his eyes pleading. ‘She has taken a vrath vow and locked herself into the kosaghar. You know what that means. If I don’t go to her, then she will allow herself to die of starvation and thirst.’ 

‘Even if she does, which I doubt,’ Kausalya said softly but urgently, ‘she’s hardly likely to die this very night. Why not go see her on the morrow, after a night’s rest?’ 

Dasaratha shrugged, although it came off as the merest twitch of his shoulderblades. The powerful arm, shoulder and upper back muscles that she had once stroked with such pride and pleasure were dissipated and sagging with disuse. It was all he could do to continue speaking hoarsely. ‘Why put off what must be done anyway?’ 

‘Because I don’t trust her,’ Kausalya said. ‘Because her timing is so bad. You saw her this evening, strutting about at the griha pravesh welcoming rite. Did that seem like a woman about to take a fast-vow unto death? On her son’s wedding night?’ 

Dasaratha sighed, his eyes flickering weakly. ‘That is what I must go to find out, Kausalya. Sitting here, how can these questions be answered?’ 

‘But why would she do this if not to rouse you from your sickbed?’ 

His mouth twitched. ‘Sumitra and you did give her cause for upset.’ 

‘Cause enough to take her own life? Come on, Dasa. Even for Kaikeyi that’s making a Himalaya out of an ant-heap. Besides, it still doesn’t make sense for her to do it at such a time, when she knows that you are so ill and in need of rest. Why tonight? Why now? Why not wait until you are stronger to take up the matter formally? After all, she won her vindication before everyone present. She proved her identity beyond doubt when Guru Vashishta recognised her and blessed her. She has already won that little battle. Why drag you out of your bed?’ 

‘As I said already, Kausalya, we’ll never know if I don’t go.’ 

She clutched his arm, gripping his flabby flesh through the sleeve of his ang-vastra. ‘Then do it for my sake.Don’t go tonight. Send back word that you are too unwell to move about. Let the daiimaa take the message back to her that you will see her on the morrow. Then, after the coronation, you will be up and about anyway, and you can go meet with her then.’ 

He shook his head doubtfully. ‘I don’t know, Kausalya. I have already said I will go, I told Manthara.’ 

‘Forget Manthara!’ Kausalya glanced around, aware of the attendants standing with eyes averted, waiting. ‘I told you about Sumitra and her experience with that old hag. Surely you believe that there was something wrong, even if we could not track down any hard evidence of actual wrongdoing. Where there is smoke, there must be fire.’ 

‘But there was no smoke,’ he said wearily. ‘Not even a wisp to be seen, from what I gathered. And she has been under close guard ever since. It was the guards who escorted her here to my chambers. Besides, she has nothing to do with this. This is between Kaikeyi and me.’ 

Kausalya was about to speak again, marshal a new line of argument, when he raised his eyes sternly, silencing her. 

‘Kausalya, listen to me. I spent fifteen years with Kaikeyi. She gave me a son, as you did. I shared my life, my kingdom and my bed with that woman every night for those many hundreds of moons. I cannot simply detach the rope and set myself adrift without so much as a backward glance. If this were simply some tantrum, I might have protested. But a vrathvow is a serious act, to be taken seriously. I must go to see her in the kosaghar. The moment I am done, I will return here to you. It will be you I share this bed with tonight, and every night hereafter. But first I must perform this one last duty as a husband to his lawful wife. I must go minister to Kaikeyi and see what ails her.’ 

I know what ails her
, Kausalya wanted to scream.
She cannot accept the loss of you to me. And she will not accept it, no matter what you do or say to placate her. She is a warriorqueen, the daughter of a long line of raj-Kshatriyas. Defeat is not in her vocabulary. This is the only reason she has staged this new drama tonight. Stay here with me. Let this night pass
. 

Dasaratha was shuffling toward the chair. It broke Kausalya’s heart to see him hunched like a vanar. The attendants stepped forward but Dasaratha gestured them away as fiercely as ever
he has more pride than strength left now -
and made it to the seat on his own. He sat down with a great sigh, face flushed and dripping sweat. He accepted the napkin given by one of the attendants and nodded. 

‘Kosaghar le chalo.’
Take me to the anger room
. 

The attendants bent as one and raised the poles on which the chair was hung. Moving in perfect tandem, they strode swiftly out of the chamber. Sumantra’s voice broke off in the antechamber and he said something to which Dasaratha replied. 

Kausalya didn’t hear their words. She was absorbed by a fresh thought that had struck her. She would tell Dasaratha to ask Guru Vashishta to go to Kaikeyi in the kosaghar. It was an old and accepted practice for the preceptor to intervene in such matters. Kaikeyi could not refuse the guru’s requests; in fact, with Vashishta she would not have the emotional hold she had over Dasaratha. Then, after the guru had ascertained what exactly the Second Queen was demanding this time, Dasaratha could decide whether or not to see her on the morrow. 

Kausalya raced out of the chamber to stop Dasaratha and tell him of this strategy. But the chair was already far down the long corridor, and as she watched, it turned the corner and disappeared from sight. 

It was too late to stop him now without causing a hullabaloo that would awaken the entire palace. She could hardly go running after the chair through the heart of the palace, yelling out suggestions to thwart Kaikeyi. 

She stood at the aangan and twisted the edge of her sari pallo into a knot, struggling to control the wave of anguish that threatened to drown her. 

She was not given to over-emotionality. But this once, she could not stop the small inner voice that kept repeating over and over again that she had lost some crucial battle she had not even known she was fighting. 

And that this lost battle would cost her the war entire. 

SEVENTEEN 

The sabha had ended. The Hall of Lanka was empty once more. Even the naked dead rakshasi had been dragged out by the kumbha-rakshasas who had appeared magically the minute they were given evidence of Ravana’s continued existence. 

Now Vibhisena was alone in the vast echoing expanse of the great Hall. He felt ashamed of himself. Ashamed and unclean. He took two steps back, unable to believe that he had just done what he had done. Forgetting where he was, he continued stepping backwards, as if trying to physically retreat from his own actions and words. The back of his knees struck the edge of the lohit-stone throne and he sat down heavily, gasping with surprise. The iron throne was cold as ice, and he sprang back to his feet at once. But somehow the frozen consciousness that was all that remained of his brother spoke once more into his mind. 

Brother, you play the part of a tyrant well. Perhaps you should have your own throne
. 

Vibhisena looked up at the block of redstone, still rotating slowly in mid-air. Ravana’s splayed arms and feet were motionless, but in those terrible commanding eyes he thought he saw a flash of life. 

‘Brother,’ he said softly. ‘You know I will never sit on a throne or command others. It goes against my principles.’ 

Ah. Of course. You are that rarest of rare creatures, a rakshasa with scruples. A Brahmin, no less. How did I ever grow a Brahmin rakshasa under my own roof, I wonder
? 

‘You had nothing to do with it. If anything, you were even more pious and devout in your worship than I was when we were children. It was only later in puberty that you began to change. But you and I are still grandchildren of Pulastya, don’t forget that, brother.’ 

How can I, when you never let me forget! You and my wife Mandodhari. Sometimes I think that you should have been the brother she married, not me! The two of you would have gone through life happily together, chanting the praises of the devas. 

Vibhisena clicked his tongue disapprovingly. ‘Ashubh, ashubh!’
Inauspicious, unsuitable
. ‘Do not speak of my sisterin-law in that manner. She is a paragon of moral virtue, as you well know.’ 

Oh, I do know. Which is why, when I desire true womanly passion, I have to seek it in the arms of one or other of my sweet rakshasi mistresses. Which isn’t always easy, there being so many to choose from! And any of them are far more enjoyable to mate with rather than your too-sweet sister-in-law. 

Vibhisena pinched his earlobes, then turned and made a throwing gesture in the general direction of Varanasi, seeking to cleanse himself thus of Ravana’s vulgarity. 

Did I cause some offence? Excuse me if I don’t apologise. As you can see, my resources are limited and I must make the most pertinent use of the only shakti I seem to have access to communication. To the point then, brother. You did well today with the asura council. Those bottom-feeders would have eaten you alive if you had shown the slightest bit of weakness. By putting them in their place so effectively, you held my kingdom together for a while longer. I have to admit, I would never have thought that you would be the one to help me thus. Tell me, what made you rise to the occasion so admirably? If anything, you’ve always sought to thwart my desire to destroy the mortals. Why do you help me now? 

‘I help you because nobody else can, brother,’ Vibhisena said. ‘Because you are my brother after all. It becomes my dharma to do whatever I can to save you.’ He gestured at the empty Hall. ‘As for the kingdom, it was a matter of survival. Had I not held the asura races together, civil war would have broken out. And in that infighting, even the devout Brahmin rakshasas of my order would have been destroyed.’