27

Manmaani looked at the crowd. In the light of the torches, thousands of perspiring faces craned towards her. Like one mass of flesh, with one mind, she gloated. Hers to control. It was time to cast her spell. She stepped out from the high, pillared shrine and slithered up to the stone dais in her black and grey snakeskin dress, the platform jutting over the sea of humanity. A hush fell over the audience. She raised her arms, the long sleeves falling back to reveal the countless gold and diamond chains entwining her wrists. A warm breeze stirred the air, and Manmaani threw her head back, swaying, a cry gurgling up her throat.

‘Goddess of Aham, I call upon thee. Rise, rise in my bones, in my blood.’

A sigh resounded up to the sky, the crowd falling to its knees. Manmaani swayed more vigorously, her eyes rolling, thick coils of her hair coming undone.

‘I move your tongue, woman,’ she shrieked. ‘What do you seek?’

‘Mercy,’ Manmaani moaned in her natural voice.

‘Aaaaaaaah,’ the goddess screamed. ‘The king has married,’ her dark eyes glowed like burning embers. ‘And Aham has a new queen. Is she your mother?’

‘Nooo,’ the crowd screamed in a frenzy. ‘You are! You always will be.’

‘Yes,’ bellowed the goddess, showering coins over their heads, watching them scramble in the dirt. ‘Come,’ she intoned, ‘give me your love. I want to feel your love.’

The sky thundered and Manmaani tilted her chin to the flashing light, the shimmer of her dress undulating with her every breath. She made for a powerful figure, the temple spire towering behind her, gleaming amidst the clouds. At her feet the tightly packed audience hummed, surging towards her, a tide eager to press its lips to the hem of her dress.

‘Don’t touch her,’ the priests beat them back. ‘Keep away.’

‘Our queen, our goddess,’ they cried, writhing.

Manmaani stood firm, eyes dilated, the wind spinning her hair into a dark cloud, a tantalizing smile playing on her red lips. A fine drizzle began to fall, caressing every face and the goddess laughed, ‘Receive my kisses, children, and be blessed.’

Shunen stared at his reflection cut by strings of raindrops chasing each other down the window pane, the spy’s words still resounding in his head, ‘The queen mother’s popularity grows again. She is just as strong as before.’ His nostrils flared, his image forbidding, even to himself, the inscrutable face suspended in the rain. His gaze shifted to another reflection, to the pagdi on its silk cushion, and he turned away, snatching it up, his mouth seeking the cool hardness of the emeralds.

‘Sometimes I get the feeling that I am as much a toy for mother as Ashwath or Nandan,’ he muttered to the largest emerald. It stared back, its unyielding glitter mocking him. Shunen straightened, the heavy lids dropping over his eyes. ‘Once I have an heir, I am certain the people will completely lose interest in her antics,’ he tapped his lips with two fingers. ‘A royal baby will command all their attention.’ The emerald winked in the lamplight and Shunen smiled faintly. ‘Yes, I shall go to Lalitara now, and every night, till she is heavy with my child.’

He entered the queen’s wing, grimacing again at the lilac interiors. Hussuri had insisted the pearl-greys and whites be changed to the more feminine shades. ‘The new queen will feel welcome,’ she had said wistfully.

At Shunen’s entry, the maids-in-waiting quickly curtsied and left, leaving the few-weeks-old bride to shrink back in alarm. He looked her up and down, unperturbed by her reaction, noting her delicate form and iridescent complexion with a complacent smile. The only child of a noble fallen on hard times, Lalitara had accompanied her father on a court visit and caught his fancy. One look at her and he had known he would marry her, her skin the colour of the golden pearls studding the oyster throne.

‘Come,’ he gestured, crooking his finger imperiously.

But Lalitara hung back, not daring to look into his face. ‘Please, Your Majesty,’ she beseeched, trembling, ‘not tonight.’

Shunen expelled a sharp breath, ‘You will do as I say, my dear. Come to me quickly.’

Ashish faltered outside the door, hearing a muffled scream. Pity flooded his heart. ‘Dear God, grant the queen strength,’ he whispered, hurrying on, and stopped outside another royal chamber, waiting to be announced.

Hussuri didn’t turn around from the window when he walked in. ‘You called for me, Your Highness,’ he bowed. ‘Is it a new poem?’

She shrugged her angular shoulders, ‘I’m no longer in the mood to recite it. You may go.’

He bowed again. ‘As you wish, Your Highness.’

The gentleness in his voice stirred her and she spun around, ‘Wait, Ashish.’

It seemed to him that the Princess was agitated. Her usually vacant stare sparkled with disappointment, her thin fingers continuously plucking at her dress. She peered into his face, earnestly, ‘I can tell you everything, Ashish, because you never carry tales.’

He inclined his head.

Hussuri continued, a sob in her voice, ‘Mother says that I . . . I should have been queen, and Ashwath the rightful king. But now, it will never be so.’

Ashish glanced past her expectant face to the blackness outside. ‘Your Highness,’ he began on a soft sigh, ‘I have great faith in the unexpected. It remains hidden like thunder in the clouds, and comes as suddenly.’

‘Oh,’ Hussuri clapped her hands, ‘I like the way you put it, so poetic! Should I continue to hope, then?’

He looked at her solemnly, ‘Yes, if you know what is best for you, for everyone, believe in it, with all your heart. Faith gives meaning to life.’

The rain washed down the grime in dirty trickles from the glass case. Ashwath leaned forward. Even in the flashes of lightning, he couldn’t see the khanda. It infuriated him.

‘I’ve seen you glow in his hand,’ he growled, slapping the glass with his hand, ‘show yourself to me.’ But it was as if the sword had vanished. ‘Dead that is what you are, dead like him!’ He turned away, water dripping off his large bull-like frame and muttering oaths, swung himself on to his horse, riding swiftly, not towards the palace, but into an abandoned lane.

‘I won’t be long,’ Ashwath told the horse, leading it into the deserted stable. The wind flung rain in his face as he hurriedly crossed the overgrown garden and stepped over a shattered wall. It was dry inside, and he sighed with relief, his eyes adjusting to the semi-darkness. Stubbing his toe on a fallen beam, he cursed, and then made his way more carefully over weeds flourishing in the cracked floor.

The large house drew him like a magnet, its charred, splintered remains fascinating him. ‘Damn,’ he swore again, noting the empty spaces that hadn’t been there on his last visit. ‘Bloody thieves have been stealing the furniture, or what was left of it.’

He hurried into a wide passage, his fingers feeling the wall carefully. In an alcove, he found the stick of dry kindling that he had left there the previous night. Pulling out pieces of stone and flint from his pocket, he struck them over the wood. Sparks flew out. The stick ignited instantly, its light throwing ravening shapes that followed him into a large hall.

A stone staircase sagged on one side, dragged down by the weight of the crumbling rooms it must have once supported. Picking his way through the rubble, Ashwath sifted through the wreckage. The torchlight caught the glint of metal half-buried under stones and roots. He paused, excited and uncertain at the same time. Setting the torch carefully aside, he scrabbled with both hands, tearing away the debris until he uncovered it, a portrait in a metal frame.

Layers of dirt caked it, yet the steady flame of the torch picked up the warm flesh tones underneath. With his scarf, Ashwath wiped an arc clear of mud, revealing a familiar face. Saahas laughed, his dented chin tilted up, crinkles creasing the brown eyes. A lock of sun-bleached hair fell on the high forehead and a few strands tucked behind the ear kissed the well-defined jaw. Ashwath frowned. A faint echo of that unreserved laugh reached his ears. He had heard it the first time at a royal reception, the night old Vasuket had laid eyes on his mother.

Looking closely at the portrait, he noticed an ashy smear on the cheekbone and hastened to rub it off. The light wavered and Saahas’s gaze shifted, looking him in the eye. Ashwath recoiled. ‘You can’t do anything to me, you are dead.’ A flash of anger tamped down his fear. ‘This is all that’s left of you, general,’ he jeered, ‘a painting! I shall take you back to the palace and put you in a cage, like your useless khanda.’

His foot slipped, sending a shower of stones down the cliff. Digging his fingers into the fissures, he tried desperately to find a foothold, tempted all the while to glance down, to the men shouting advice. ‘Look up, look up,’ he told himself and drawing a deep breath, tilted his head towards the summit. The craggy peak remained as distant and inaccessible as before, the weight of his body telling on his arms, his fingers beginning to lose their hold. Pressing himself flat against the rock, Tota pleaded with it, and the mountain rumbled faintly, as if enjoying a quiet chuckle.

‘All right then, have your fun,’ he grinned, his fingers relaxing, tension easing out of him. Time slowed down and he was back in the jungle, listening to it patiently. And then he heard it, the groan of rock against rock and leapt sideways, landing firmly on a ledge.

‘Yamathig,’ he burst out in sudden understanding, ‘you are begging to play.’ Climbing swiftly, joyfully, he waved to the others, pointing out nooks and crannies that he hadn’t noticed before. The mountain shrugged them upwards, and one by one, they reached the surprisingly flattened top, a purple-brown ridge rising up to greet them, encircling them.

Tota exhaled, ‘I have a feeling that in the days to come Yamathig will teach us many lessons.’ The officers gazed at the eastern horizon, wistfully thinking of one man, the one who would have completed them. Perhaps if they had squinted down at the road, they might have spied two horsemen moving rapidly away from them. Perhaps, if they had focused on the second rider, a little behind the first one, they would have noticed the broad shoulders leaning in, the head perfectly still, the body slightly raised above the saddle, yet one with the horse. But they didn’t see any of this and the two riders vanished quickly into a line of trees, intent on their onward journey.