The Guardians of the Halahala (34 page)

That evening, a little over a year after he had been brought to Ujjayini, something had shifted inside Kalidasa.

Outside the palace, the rain increased in intensity, muting the sound of the alarm bells a little. The raj-guru smiled to himself and shook his head. That evening, something had shifted inside Kalidasa
permanently.
The young boy had found a key to unlock the kinship he felt for Vikramaditya.

That evening, Kalidasa had been reborn as the Kalidasa they had come to love, admire and respect – the Kalidasa who now stood outside the door of the bedchamber, willing to fight until his last breath for his king.

For his oldest friend.

***

The ringing of the bells had reached Vararuchi and Shukracharya's ears long before Ujjayini had come into their sights. The councilor had charged through the dark and the rain, driving his mount harder and harder as they neared the city, and Shukracharya had struggled to keep pace. The high priest had hollered to Vararuchi a couple of times, demanding to know what was happening, but the king's half-brother had merely beckoned with his hand, urging greater speed.

Now as they reined in their horses to a thundering halt on the west bank of the Kshipra, Vararuchi leaped off his mount and strode to the river's edge, where in the light of a covered lamp a boat could be seen riding the water. A couple of soldiers of the City Watch stood by the boat, waiting. Across the Kshipra, the lights of Ujjayini reflected and diffused through the rain, spilling softly over the city's ramparts like a river of ocher mist breaking its banks.

The bells continued their incessant clanging.

Getting off his horse, Shukracharya scuttled down the embankment to where Vararuchi was now in earnest conversation with the soldiers of the City Watch.

“Would you tell me what's happening?” the high priest asked as he neared the group.

“Our city is under attack,” Vararuchi explained brusquely.

“Who?” Shukracharya shook his head to clear the confusion. “I mean, by whom?”

“You might not want to come with us,” replied the councilor, evading the question. “I'm told it's pretty bad inside. It's best you stay here. Safer.”

“But your honor, why are you being attacked?” Shukracharya persisted. “And how is it possible? Everything was peaceful a few hours ago when we left.”

“We are being attacked by asuras.” Seeing the head priest's eye fly open in surprise, Vararuchi nodded grimly. “See what I meant? It's safer to stay here than come inside.”

The councilor and the soldiers began stepping into the boat when Shukracharya took a few steps forward. “But... I would like to come too.”

“Why?” Vararuchi snapped irritably. Waving his arm in the direction of Ujjayini, he asked, “Do you want to die? It's nasty in there... many lives have already been lost, it seems. Stay here. You can come in if the city is still standing tomorrow.”

“I can help.”

“What help?” One leg already in the boat, the councilor turned to look at Shukracharya in vexation. “Don't tell me you will help in the fighting.”

“You forget I am a healer, your honor.” The head priest paused as the small group turned their eyes on him. “I can help with the wounded. Especially the soldiers.”

The boat pushed away from its moorings and nosed into the black water, the boatmen paddling furiously toward the darkened bathing
ghats.
Shukracharya sat in the center, flanked by Vararuchi and one of the soldiers of the City Watch.

“How do you know it's an asura attack?” the head priest ventured.

“The attackers are giant rakshasas with four horns on their heads,” the soldier beside him answered.

“Is that all?”

“Well, they have hard, shell-like bodies that spears and arrows can't seem to penetrate. Swords just shatter against them. And they have eyes that glow like white moonlight.”

Shukracharya could feel his heartbeat quicken. “Are they... dark blue in color? Their skin?”

The soldier shook his head. “No idea. It's too dark to tell, and anyway their bodies are mostly covered by that shell-like armor.”

“Why do you ask?” Vararuchi turned and looked at the high priest with keen interest.

“No particular reason. I just... In my travels I've heard people speak of asuras having moonlight eyes and blue skin.” Shukracharya fumbled and recovered. “So I was curious.”

The councilor dismissed the healer with a shake of his head. “We must have some idea of the approximate numbers dead,” he looked at the soldiers hopefully.

“There are all kinds of numbers being bandied around, your honor,” the soldier seated near the prow of the boat replied. “Some put the toll at fifty, some say it's closer to seventy-five. According to one report, thirty people have died in the eastern quarter alone. All we know for certain is that the numbers are mounting.”

Looking up at the city, Vararuchi let out an effusive oath.

“It's the invisible fire that is causing the most damage,” said the other soldier in a voice that trembled slightly with awe and fear. “Because it can't be seen...”

“Invisible
fire?” the councilor interjected.

“The asuras throw something that is invisible to the eye, but which scorches the skin on contact,” the soldier by the prow confirmed. “I chanced upon three bodies in an alley that were charred beyond recognition. Soldiers of the Watch – I could tell by their swords.”

“Invisible fire,” Vararuchi muttered in disbelief.

“They're also armed with swords, your honor. Giant, jagged swords, sharp as steel. But they look as if they've been fashioned out of bones.”

Shukracharya held his breath, not heeding another word being spoken by the men. Asuras with four horns on their heads, shell-like bodies that were impenetrable, eyes that glowed like white moonlight... and jagged swords shaped out of bone.

Diti's seven demonic sons. The dreaded Maruts. Asura by birth, deva by allegiance.

The irony of it brought a small sneer to Shukracharya's lips. After all, he was a deva by birth, but asura by allegiance. Loyalty was everything and nothing.

The humor passed quickly, and cold, numbing anxiety took its place. He had been banking on the fact that the human king could fend off the attack with the Hellfires. But now that he knew the identity of the attackers, Shukracharya saw the Hellfires would be useless in this battle – for Diti had cleverly infused the two swords with mantras to keep the
churails
from causing harm to those born out of her womb.

Shukracharya marveled at Indra's tactic of sending the Maruts to Ujjayini. There was nothing the humans could do to protect the dagger.

It was now entirely up to him to get to Ujjayini and prevent the seven rakshasas from claiming the Halahala for their master.

Maruts

T
he sun had faded and lost form long before the fog had crept in around Vikramaditya. Now all that existed was a dull, white, disembodied half-light that shifted around the king, watching him like a wary sentinel as he walked through the flat, wet marshland. The air was thick with damp, and a fine drizzle fell from the whiteness above, settling on the samrat like a clammy shroud.

The earth beneath Vikramaditya's feet was soft and alkaline, pockmarked with cesspools that held small quantities of dark green water in their shallow basins. Other than the moss, lichen and clumps of dwarf-reed that clung to the edges of the pools, the ground was devoid of vegetation, with no tree or shrub to break the sweeping, weeping monotony of the soggy marsh.

Strangely enough, even though he had no way of finding his bearings in this featureless desolation, the king's feet instinctively knew where to lead him.

Vikramaditya had lost track of how long he had been walking when somewhere ahead and a little to his left, he fancied he saw a nebulous orange glow punctuate the curtain of fog. The glow flickered and died as the fog thickened, and the samrat shrugged it off as a trick of his mind. But a little further on, another glow appeared up to his right. Then yet another, straight ahead. Unlike the first glow, these two persisted in his vision.

The king realized he had finally arrived at the cremation grounds.

Almost at once, as if obeying some silent command, the fog receded like an ebbing tide, and the cremation ground revealed itself to Vikramaditya. Hundreds of smokeless funeral pyres stretched away in all four directions, dwindling into the marshland haze. Many of the pyres were burning low, but many others were in full flame. Around these, the king could see small groups of ghouls hovering, wraithlike, tending to the fires and making certain the passing over of the dead was complete and without incident. The monastic ghouls paid the samrat no attention – their work was with the dead who arrived on pyres, not the living who walked on their feet.

Vikramaditya didn't concern himself with the ghoul attendants either. His focus was on a solitary banyan tree of impossible proportions that sprouted in the middle of the burning pyres. The tree was of majestic height, its upper reaches lost in the fog overhead. But its lower branches were visible, spreading like a mammoth umbrella over the cremation ground. From these, colossal aerial roots plunged to the ground, forming a protective ring of pillars – ring after ring, radiating outward in concentric circles. These ash-gray roots were so densely stacked that the tree's trunk was fully hidden from view.

Patting the dagger in his belt, Vikramaditya made for the tree, wondering how he was to find his way in.

But as he approached the outermost ring of the jumbled aerial roots, the roots directly in front of him parted miraculously, creating a narrow cavelike mouth to allow passage. It was pitch black inside the opening, but Vikramaditya stepped in with bowed head and began walking. Behind him, the roots fell quietly back in place like curtains drawing shut, but ahead more roots made way, so that the king progressed through a gloomy tunnel that opened and closed in his immediate vicinity.

The walk seemed to last forever, so when the tunnel abruptly opened into bright orange light, Vikramaditya was both blinded and surprised. He blinked for a moment, shielding his eyes as they adjusted to the surroundings. Then, slowly lowering his hands, he walked toward the light.

And its source.

The king was in a bare, open space of indeterminate size, the mud underneath disappearing into shadow on all sides. And in the middle of this open space hovered a large ghoul, the top of its head alight with fire in place of hair. Thick locks of flame collapsed in abundance over its shoulders and back, casting a cheery glow around the chamber.

The ghoul's body was silvery and vaporous, with no distinguishable anatomy other than two long ghostly hands that ended in curiously curved, razor-sharp claws. Its features were more clearly defined though – a thin, skeletal face set to a permanent grin that revealed sharp teeth and fangs. Tiny pinpoints of red light burned in the black hollows of its eyes, which were trained on the samrat.

“My greetings to the Wielder of the Hellfires,” the ghoul spoke in an old, bony voice. “Now that you are here, I remembered that you would come.”

“My greetings to you, Ghoulmaster,” Vikramaditya smiled. “So if you remembered I would come, you would also know what brings me here?”

“I don't, wise king.” The samrat detected dry humor in the Betaal's tone. “But when you tell me, I will remember.”

***

A clatter of hooves on stone chased Shanku as she rode at the head of a posse of twenty horsemen of the City Watch. Now that the city had been adequately warned of the dangers it faced, the alarm bells had started dying down. The rain had also let up a bit, improving visibility, and to Shanku's relief, the streets of Ujjayini were mostly clear of its citizens, who were hiding deep in the bowels of their houses. Open streets meant unimpeded progress for units of the City Watch, the
samsaptakas
and the soldiers of the Imperial Army, who had also been pressed into service.

That was the good news. The bad news, unfortunately, continued to outweigh the good.

The attacks were spread across the city, and no one still had the faintest clue of how many asuras the city was up against. It didn't help that these rakshasas moved at incredible speeds, making the job of tracking them virtually impossible. Fresh reports of indiscriminate attacks in some new corner of Ujjayini kept streaming in, and from what had been gathered so far, nearly sixty lives had been lost.

Judging by the nature of the multiple attacks, Shanku suspected that the asuras' objective was to draw the defenders away from the palace and spread them thin over a large area. Once this had been achieved, the weakened palace would be open to attack – and it would be nigh impossible for the defenders to rally and return to the palace in time. The strategy, as she saw it, was working brilliantly.

From somewhere to the left, not far from the city's southern wall, voices could be heard shouting. Something crashed heavily, followed by more screams and shouting. Up ahead, where the street she was riding in emptied into another street, Shanku saw a group of people running. Men, women, a few children. Citizens running scared.

Cursing under her breath, Shanku dug her heels into her horse's flanks.

Emerging onto the main street, she turned in the direction of the shouts. The horsemen followed in her wake, up the winding street, but their progress was slowed by another rush of panic-stricken citizens coming from the opposite direction. The sight of reinforcements arriving didn't seem to reassure those in flight, and that bothered Shanku.

But when she turned the corner and set eyes on the scene in front of her, she understood the fear she had seen on the people's faces.

The street was strewn with debris – rubble and masonry, an overturned horse cart with a dead horse still hitched to the shafts, a smashed potter's wheel, a pair of upturned wheelbarrows... and half a dozen human bodies. Shanku could tell that two of the bodies belonged to children not yet into their teens.

And rising above this carnage was one of the wrathful beasts!

She had heard the attackers being described as giants, but the rakshasa standing in the middle of the street – hulking over a doorway that barely reached up to its chest – was far bigger than anything she had pictured in her mind's eye. With bulk to match and the huge horns framing its face, the demon was downright diabolical in appearance; watching it batter the door and the surrounding wall with its huge fist, a tremor ran through Shanku. Even from this distance, she could hear the muffled wails of terror issuing from behind the door.

“We must distract that creature,” Shanku threw a frantic glance over her shoulder. “I want two of you to go around and approach from the other side. While we draw the thing this way, you must free those trapped inside that house. Go!”

Two horsemen detached themselves and rode away. Shanku stared at the asura for a moment before turning her horse to face the remaining riders. “We have to lure that thing into a trap. Do we know where the closest City Watch picket is?”

“There's one a few streets down that way,” one of the soldiers replied doubtfully. “But I'm not sure if it's still standing... and if it is, whether it's still manned.”

“We'll have to take our chances,” said Shanku. “Let's try to attack the beast and draw it toward the picket. You -” she picked out one soldier at random. “Inform the picket to be prepared.”

The soldier departed, his relief in plain sight. Shanku appraised the rest of the horsemen, their doleful expressions and the hesitant glances they exchanged barely concealing their reservations. Shanku realized her idea bordered on the suicidal, but then something had to be done to stop these asuras...

“Come on,” she said turning her horse around. And her eyes widened in dismay.

The rakshasa had stopped pounding the door and was loping away, shaking its horned head in sullen rage. That it had lost interest in the house and its inmates was good, of course. But now it was moving in the direction from where the two horsemen she had dispatched would appear. And they would blunder straight into the beast's path – toward certain death.

Shanku spurred her horse into a gallop and charged down the street, yelling at the top of her voice to attract the demon's attention. Behind her, the horsemen followed with more circumspection.

As she rode, Shanku's hand closed around one of the thick, circular blades that occupied a wide-mouthed pouch in her saddle. Fashioned out of iron, its outer edge wickedly sharp, the
chakram
was an ancient range weapon of the Wandering Tribe, very deadly, but incredibly hard to wield. Hefting the
chakram
out of the saddle, balancing herself carefully, Shanku went after the murderous beast.

***

Vararuchi clutched the short
katari
in his right hand and surveyed the rooftops of the buildings that bordered the open market square.

The lethal
urumi
was his most favored weapon for combat, but for all its virtues, Vararuchi knew no
urumi
could cut through the thick, bony armor of the rakshasa that stood glowering amid the ruins of Ujjayini's biggest marketplace. His best bet was the
katari
– as long as he was able to move in really close and get his aim right.

With this beast though, even that posed a serious challenge.

Vararuchi had seen the demon in action, laying the market to waste. Soldiers of the Watch and a dozen
samsaptakas
had tried to collar the beast, but the ferocity of its counter-attack had been stupefying. The rakshasa had swatted the soldiers aside, cleaving the head of a
samsaptaka
into two and frying four soldiers to death with invisible energy bolts.

It wasn't just the city's defenders who suffered the rakshasa's onslaught. Three innocent laborers sheltering in a shop had tried to make their escape at an inopportune moment; catching sight of the fleeing trio, the beast had pursued and slaughtered them ruthlessly, displaying a vindictiveness that had left Vararuchi aghast. The councilor could see at least fifteen soldiers lying in the market square, and something told him those brave men of Avanti would never rise again. Anger surged through his veins at that thought, and he set his jaw in determination.

He would bring this asura down if it was the last thing he did.

His eyes alighted on a building that stood a little to the left of the beast. Its rooftop was of the right height, and it was located close enough for him to try and have a go at the demon. Without wasting another moment, Vararuchi slipped through the shadows, circling the square, making for the building...

***

Varahamihira's eyes were wide with amazement and horror as he watched the battle raging on the palace causeway.

The rakshasa was already halfway across the bridge, hacking and slicing with its massive serrated sword, and the speed with which the palace guards were being forced back was alarming. Archers from the palace roofs and windows had tried to slow the demon's progress, but now, even they had ceased attacking for fear of wounding Avanti's own.

Maimed and mutilated soldiers lay on the causeway and floated in the lake's dark waters.

“Fall back, fall back...” the chief of the Palace Guards could be heard instructing his men. “Fall back... we're closing the palace gates.”

Directly below Varahamihira were the heavy palace gates, and the councilor could see anxious soldiers and palace attendants bracing themselves against it, eager to shut it before the beast could get any closer. It was only the thought of leaving those outside at the rakshasa's mercy that prevented them from prematurely shutting the gates.

“The gates must be closed quickly,” Kshapanaka's strained voice sounded in Varahamihira's ear as she leaned out of the window next to him. “We can't let that demon get inside.”