The Rise of Hastinapur (29 page)

She wondered, though, what the sage offered the High Priest in return for the book, for Adhrigu was adamant that he would not share his mystery with any outsider, even if the outsider saved and prolonged his life. And then she thought of the night before, when she took a sip of the water in Durvasa’s sack, and what she had seen when she peeped through the mouth of the container.

They approached the shore of Shurasena now, and Durvasa deliberately veered them away from the fishing settlement toward the woods. Pritha did not protest, for if the sage had given her what she had wanted, she had to give him what he wanted from her. But as they entered the shade of the banyan trees that took root on the edge of the river and threw their branches out onto the river, she once again thought of the water, and the queer little yellow lines of light that she had seen in it, travelling up and down from surface to bottom, rotating about themselves like just-born tadpoles.

She had always heard stories of the existence of an elixir – the balladeers called it by different names; some called it nectar, some called it
soma
– that was fabled to heal diseases and the afflictions of age. Men who drank it, they said, retained their youth and lived forever, and when she thought of that she heard Adhrigu’s words ringing in her ears:
I feel younger by two years
.

She had consumed the water too, and how could one describe what happened to her when it slid down her throat? She was as yet a maiden of sixteen, in the prime of her youth, and yet she had felt a surge of life pass through her body, and all traces of fatigue and mental greyness had disappeared, and she had slept as though she had been drugged. When she had woken up this morning she had felt unlike she ever had; she felt … she felt as though a divine force had cleansed her mind, her body, her spirit.

But the elixir was merely a staple of tales, was it not? Even if it was not, it belonged to the gods who lived up on the Meru and never came down to live among the earthmen. All tales of gods revolved around how much they wished to protect this life potion from everyone else; so they would not share it with men of the north; no, not even with renowned sages. Perhaps they would allow some select men to live with them on the mountain, perhaps they would even share in their Mysteries, but not the water of life.

Their boat stopped, and Durvasa got out to steady it with one hand and extended his other arm to her. His face appeared constant to her; he looked now just like he had in the High Priest’s room that morning, half his face mired in shadow and his blue eye aglow with desire.

She took his hand.

When they came up to the grassy mound where they had shed their clothes the previous evening, Durvasa took her hands in his, and for a moment she lowered her gaze, allowing him to pull her gently toward him as the evening shadows lengthened all around them. Just as he leaned in to touch his lips to her cheek, she stiffened and drew back a touch.

‘You are not Durvasa,’ she whispered.

He did not react in any visible way. The pressure of his fingers over her hands did not change. A little spring of doubt took birth in her mind, so she began to speak, hoping that the words would find their own meaning. Her cheek rested against his, and once again she noticed how his chin and face were completely devoid of hair, even more than hers.

‘I know not whether you are a sage or a priest,’ she said, her voice still soft, ‘and I know not how a sage is different from a priest. But I do know this: sages do not study the Mysteries. Sages pray to the gods of the Ice Mountains and gain knowledge of the
practice
of the Mysteries, but they do not gain knowledge of the Mysteries themselves. Is that not so?’

He did not reply; she knew he would not. But she went on. ‘My father, my friend Agnayi, and everyone I knew told me that Sage Durvasa was old. You were not. You told us that the Durvasa before you had just passed on, and the people of my father’s court believed you, but immortality is not a boon that men possess, my lord. This is a form of living beyond your death, is it not, this practice of placing your knowledge and memories into the mind of a younger man?’ She felt the first stirrings of his fingers, and now she held them firmly with her own. ‘If that could happen to sages, why would any man choose to live beyond his youth? Why would Sage Vasishtha hobble on his stick and bear with his old knees? If it could truly happen, why would any sage on earth ever be old? Either it was a Mystery that only you, Sage Durvasa, knew, or you were not Sage Durvasa.’ Pritha took a step back and peered into the dark shadow his face had become in the gathering darkness. When he pulled his hands away from hers and looked away, she willed herself to continue.

‘Sages do not concern themselves with polity, and they care less about the marriages of princesses in the Great Kingdoms. They retreat to the woods in order to please the gods, in order to perhaps untie the great knots inside their minds, and they often take little interest in worldly affairs of North Country. In the few times we have had visits from smaller sages, never has one spoken to my father about kingdoms; they have only taken to meditation, to courting our waiting-women, and perhaps to give advice on how to perform certain rites.

‘But when you came to our court, you appeared to be not only knowledgeable in matters concerning North Country, but you also advised my father that I should marry into the kingdom of the Kurus. I found that a little odd, but your eyes mesmerized me, my lord. They still do.’ She hoped that this moment of flattery would make him turn back, but he remained as he was, one hand held up against the bark of the birch tree, the other limply holding his staff of gold. The sapphire at its tip glowed with a deep inner light, like his face had on that first morning.

‘Then on our way to Mathura, on the boat at night you covered us with a black fog and called it a trick of the light. In Mathura you summoned balls of fire into your hands and played with them as a child would with bundles of string. The high priests of Mathura, who look no man in the eye, fell at your feet, my lord, and that was when I began to wonder if you really were who you claimed to be.

‘Then in the room of the high priest I saw your eyes turning into little yellow balls, much like the sun, and with your words and sights you seemed to affect how the sunlight came into the room. One moment I would see you smile and the harshness of the sun would decrease; the next moment you would frown, and my upper arm would burn.’

‘Do you not think, my lady,’ he said at last, and his voice seemed to arrive from some place far off, detached from his body, ‘that you are drawing mere inferences without substance?’

‘If I am, sire,’ she replied, ‘I am certain that you would stop me. Shall I?’

For a while he did not reply, but then he sighed and said, ‘Go on.’

‘Until last night, my lord, none of these thoughts were in my head. But I got up from my sleep with a parched throat, and I took a drink from the container of water in your sack, and after I drank from it, I looked at it.’ Now his body tightened visibly, and his fingers dug into the tree. ‘I saw little yellow lines jump about in the water, wriggling and swimming, and yet when I drank, it slipped down my throat, smooth as juice from a ripe date.’

She took a step closer to him so that he could hear her better. ‘It is this water you made High Priest Adhrigu drink to make him feel years younger. When I drank it, my mind seemed to clear, as though something which had forever blinded your vision had been removed from in front of your eyes. I saw it all, my lord; I saw it as though I was gazing through a freshly formed crystal. I saw you – and you are not Sage Durvasa.’

The man sighed again, and he turned around to face Pritha. He took a stride forward, held his staff to one side, and said, ‘Then who am I, Princess?’

‘You are Surya, the Celestial of the sun.’

THIRTEEN

H
e first laughed; his hoarse voice seemed to mellow in that instant into something else; the sound of which reminded her of Shurasena’s first sugarcane crop, which always got delivered to the royal house of Kunti, on which she always had first claim. Then he tightened his lips and nodded, his face grave. ‘It pays me well,’ he said, ‘for not taking you seriously, Princess. But now I admire your mind; you have no doubt been helped by drinking of the Crystal Water, but the water can only strengthen, it cannot create.’

He held out his hand toward her, but she took a step back, frowning. ‘You came with me all the way to Mathura, my lord, and you pretended that you cared about my brother and his poor wife, rotting in Kamsa’s prison.’

‘I do care for them,’ said the man, ‘and all that I have done is, indeed, to free them.’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.‘You came to Mathura to get the book of their mysteries, and you have it now. I think not that you ever wanted to save my kinsman; you used me to enter the city, to gain access to the priests, and you got what you wanted.’ She stopped, still wishing that her words would somehow become untrue, that he would convince her otherwise.

But he dropped his shoulders and said, ‘That is indeed true.’ Her heart sank.

‘I thought you liked me,’ she said bitterly, not able to bring herself to say that other dreaded word that had come to her lips. ‘I trusted you, and this is how you repay me?’ He reached for her, but she hit out with her hands. ‘Do not touch me, you wretch!’ she said. ‘Thank the gods that you have not taken me!’

A shadow passed through his face. His hand flew to his sack, and he patted it, as though to reassure himself. She smiled scornfully at him. ‘You did all this for a book, did you not? You saw it fit to play with a maiden’s life for the Book of Mysteries, and you perhaps will crow to your friends back on the mountain that you have succeeded. Well, I have news for you, my lord. You have not!’

His face turned pale. Pouncing on her, he grabbed her by the arms and shook her. ‘Where?’ he said. ‘Where is it?’

She kept laughing in his face. Disgusted, he pushed her away and let her fall to her knees.‘It is at the base of the Yamuna,’ she said, and broke into another short laugh. ‘I picked it up from your sack this morning at the High Priest’s house, and on our way here I dropped it, into the deepest part of the river.’ Suddenly a wild thought struck her. Perhaps he would have some Mystery to retrieve it, she thought. Had she been too eager?

Durvasa (no, Surya, she corrected herself) had regained his poise, standing now a few feet away from her, looking up at the sky and stars. Was he invoking some chant, she thought, looking about her, half-expecting the waters of the Yamuna to rise and carry the book to the shore in one large, explosive wave.

But the river remained flat and glittering in the moonlight.The sage said, ‘You may think you have foiled me, Princess, but you have only held me back a little.’ He turned around and walked to her, smiling. ‘You may think that I have no affection for you – no, even I would not say love – but I do. I wish to help you save your brother and his wife.’

‘I do not believe you.’

‘You do not need to. You have seen through me clearly enough; I did accompany you to Mathura because I thought a maiden such as you would find it easier to enter the kingdom. In fact, that is why I arrived at Kunti; because I knew that you would be burning with a desire to enter Mathura and rescue your kinsman.’

Pritha’s eyes welled up, not so much at his words but at the ice-cool voice in which he spelled them out. ‘You said that you were mesmerized by me. I must confess that the feeling was mutual. I still am mesmerized by you. But the reason I came down from Meru was to look into the story of Mathura, the tale of this small kingdom that was keeping all the other great empires at bay. We had heard of her war barges – barges that never seemed to break and always cut through water like hungry crocodiles; such tales reached our ears. We had to see for ourselves what Mathura’s secret was, and without you I would not have been allowed entry.’

‘You used me!’

‘I did,’ said Surya, shrugging, ‘but only as much as you used me.’ When she opened her mouth to protest he added, ‘We both used each other for our own purposes. There is no disgrace in that, Pritha. That is the nature of a good trade.’