Bheem Page 6
The equivalent of the year 5119 in the current Kali Yug. He had traversed three millennia. Bheem grimaced. Against all odds, he had survived Samay’s vortex. And Ashvatthama? Kritavarma? They had survived too, protected as they were by the asura guru’s mantra. He could sense that they had passed through the cave recently—traces of Ashvatthama’s fetid reek still hung in the torpid air. The warrior looked at the three prostrate maanavs . . . and instantly knew them—sorted, labelled, categorized, like herbs on a physician’s shelf. Moments ago Bheem had touched them, grasped them, the contact instantly linking him with the labyrinthine storehouse of knowledge that he had wrested from Samay. Their memories were his: who they were, what they knew, where they came from. Bheem’s mind darted to their dwelling places, megalopolises of soaring towers and shrunken humans without number—cities with glittering vehicles and strange names: Mumbai, Delhi, Tel Aviv. His thoughts skidded to a halt, and concentrated on the one who had spoken, the female. Every experience, each thought that had sparked in Aviva’s brain was open to Bheem, from her childhood memories to when, minutes ago, Bheem had burst out of the coils of Samay. Fear—it had been uppermost in the woman’s mind, but Bheem was not the cause. Aviva had been terrorized by . . . Bheem’s mind wound back, viewing what the woman had seen: the man with the broken neck, the impaled man . . . and images of two warriors . . . lime-caked . . . lethal . . . instantly recognizable . . .
‘Ashvatthama,’ Bheem hissed.
It was the first glimpse of the enemy since Bheem had begun his pursuit. The woman’s memories he had accessed were just blurred images she had seen on the dead man’s communication device; there was no actual contact between Ashvatthama and Avivafein. Which, of course, was fortunate. The woman would not have survived such an encounter and Bheem had no intention of sacrificing himself on the altar of Mrityu Gyaan to rip information out of a corpse. Ashvatthama . . . Kritavarma . . . he had missed them by the blink of an eye. He knew now that they had emerged from the vortex just seventy hours ago—a nanosecond by Samay’s reckoning—and had roared through this cavern, swatting aside the pitiful humans who stood in their way, racing to fulfil their terrible mission: the Four.
Bheem grew still. The Four? Where had that number come from? Memory flooded in. The vortex. The annihilating force of Samay through which Ashvatthama had passed unscathed, protected by a mantra: ‘The Four’. Samay’s scorching flames had imprinted the words on Bheem’s mind. There was more, though . . . Ashvatthama was on a mission. Desperately, Bheem scoured his memory, but he had no contact with Ashvatthama; beyond the mantra, the enemy’s mind was closed to him, Samay’s archives sealed off. ‘The Four’—the same words had resonated with someone else recently. Who? Bheem gazed at the terrified woman. Avivafein had pondered over this number, made connections . . . The arrows on the wall . . . A group of four! The woman’s thoughts unspooled: ‘3004 groups . . . 3004 years . . . unfinished record . . . a living record-keeper . . .’
Abruptly, Bheem spoke. ‘Avivafein, what did you mean by “a living record-keeper”?’
Aviva gasped in astonishment. How could the brute know this? She hadn’t told anyone, not even Arun!
‘The 3004 groups, Avivafein,’ the warrior continued in immaculate Hebrew. ‘You think someone is keeping a record?’
Aviva struggled up. The cave tilted and she sank to her knees.
‘You hit your head when you fell, Avivafein. It is best not to stand for a while.’
‘How—how do you know so much about me? Who are you?’
‘I will explain when there is time, Avivafein.’ Bheem took a step forward. ‘The record-keeper. I need to know what you meant. Now.’
Aviva willed her spinning brain to focus. ‘The arrow groups . . .’ The hoarse voice sounded strange to Aviva. Was it really hers? ‘Some of them are under others . . . on an earlier layer of lime deposit. The marks on top are more recent, as if . . . as if written on a fresh page . . . on a newer layer that could only have formed after centuries . . .’
Bheem’s gaze sharpened. He raised his head, seemed to sniff the fetid air. Suddenly, the feeble maanavs were irrelevant. Bheem spun around, leapt towards the passageway and plashed through its central stream, indifferent to the cold, following the water’s outward flow.
Within seconds he was out of sight, but Aviva could not convince herself that she had been hallucinating. She had taken a blow to the skull, was obviously imagining things, but she was too much of a scientist to ignore the evidence: Vineet on his back, struggling for breath; Madhu gripping his wrist, terrified, staring at the tunnel; the crushed revolver; the corpses. This was not delirium—the impossible had happened. Normally, Aviva would have been horrified at the gruesome violence, tried to help survivors, reported the massacre to the authorities without delay. But ‘normal’ was suspended. All Aviva could think of were the Brahmi aksharas she had seen on the inside of the being’s wrist, the tattoo that had read ‘Bheem’.
Madness!
Insanity had taken over and Aviva embraced it. She struggled to her feet. With no thought of personal safety, oblivious to the needs of her stricken friends, the Israeli stumbled down the path taken just moments before by the being from nowhere.
~
The rain had stopped but water still cascaded down the ravine’s walls. This was deep jungle; no trail threaded through the dense undergrowth, no human habitation jostled for space in this brooding vale of green light and rampant vegetation. And yet, perhaps a dozen sadhus and sanyasis sat scattered around, unmoving, totally absorbed, listening to the great tree sing. The tree was a giant peepul, an ashvattha tree, known to the ancients as the Param Vruksh, already old when the Kauravs had been destroyed at Kurukshetra and when Ashvatthama had wielded the Rudra sword with such terrible power, slaying the sleeping Pandav army and avenging his clan. The follies of humankind had made little difference to the tree. It had sung its song then, as it did now, the wind whistling through the aerial roots and the crevices of the enormous trunk and emerging as lilting music, the sweetly painful, heart-stirring tones of a natural flute, reaching deep into the sadhus’ souls, talking to their innermost selves. The rustling of leaves quieted as the wind died. The tree fell silent. The sadhus stirred, awakening as if from a trance. It was music unlike any they had heard, but for these present-day sages, music was all it was. They lacked the tapasya of the ancient rishis who had learnt the language of the trees and interpreted the voice of the wind. There were two, however, for whom it was much more. Ashvatthama and Kritavarma knew what they had just heard: it was Om, the word, the hymn of creation. It was the flute of Lord Krishna, who had declared, ‘Among trees, I am the ashvattha.’ The duo had been there before the sadhus had arrived, aware of the exact moment when the wind slipped into the ravine, trilling the first notes of the tree song. They had sat in the shadows with their eyes closed, their powerful, naked bodies completely still. The music had washed over them, each movement heard clearly—and understood. After all, they had the key, hard-won by the dying Krupacharya. The tree song spoke to them and they listened and learned: about the essential sameness of nature’s elements; about the secret pathways that connect wind with water, earth with fire.
‘Like shedding a cloak,’ exulted Kritavarma, ‘and donning another!’
Never had he felt as elated, liberated. The illusion of physical form, it was so obvious. He could transform into air, fire, water, earth, become one with the elements as mood or necessity dictated. His warrior’s mind unfurled possibilities: Attack as fire; evade as air! Who could withstand the irresistible power of water or overwhelm the solid immovability of earth?
The same music had wafted over Ashvatthama but he had heard notes inaudible to Kritavarma. This was his tree, after all—the ashvattha—with which he had always shared more than a name. He picked up on subtleties, layers of meaning embedded deep within the sweet suras of the tree song:
Harsshhim, rasshhoom, shhumaani . . .
Shhaarim, hrusshham, nisshhamni . . .
Transmuted into the shakti that informs all creation.
‘Dying,’ Ashvatthama realized, ‘and then living again.’
He had survived that very process recently, but this was not Samay. There was no spinning vortex to contain the liberated energy and reshape it. Every shift in form—to fire, to air—would come at a cost. And they had just one resource: life itself.
So there is a choice to be made, as always . . . Ashvatthama thought. A hard bargain to be struck.
The nature of the trade-off was obvious. The shakti required to power a change of form would chip away at his life. His days were the coin that would pay for each transformation. There would come a time when, having chosen the path of air or earth, he would be unable to retrace his steps, become incapable of reacquiring human form, and would meld eternally with the elements. So it was clear finally—the loss of the jewel had robbed him of his immortality. Death would come for him, as it did for all others. And what if it did? The importance of his life was limited to the task he had undertaken. He would use this newly acquired power without hesitation whenever he felt the need. It was a vardaan, a boon, and he was utterly willing to pay the price.
Just a few minutes before, he had felt the air boil, his nerves scream. Instantly, he had located the source of the disturbance: Samay. The great vortex had discharged its energy again and that could mean but one thing: a traveller had arrived. His identity was no mystery to Ashvatthama. Only one other man could have survived the flaming winds of Samay—Bheem.
Relentless. Unforgiving. Enemy.
Ashvatthama’s eyes opened. Kritavarma stood before him, flushed with excitement, itching to unleash his newfound power.
‘We have very little time,’ Ashvatthama said.
More than seventy hours had elapsed since he and Kritavarma had swept through the Royce expedition camp, leaving no one alive. Their victims continued to exist, however, in the killers’ minds, with everything they had experienced from birth to that instant when the marauders had erupted from Samay’s fiery gateway. Ashvatthama concentrated, drawing on this storehouse of knowledge and memory. In thirty centuries, the world had changed completely; the enemy had spread like vermin. Where among these teeming multitudes were the Four? Locating and destroying them—the task before him was immense. And now there was the unpredictable factor of Bheem. Facing him was inevitable, the outcome of their confrontation a throw of the dice. Ashvatthama could not risk that. Completing his mission was vital; his final face-off with Bheem must wait.
He still looks for revenge, Ashvatthama mused. He does not know the true purpose of our journey through Samay.
Without this knowledge, tracking them would not be easy for Bheem. But Ashvatthama would not underestimate his adversary. While Bheem groped in the dark, they must hunt down their quarry. Krupacharya had salvaged the names of the Four from the fading spirit of the dead asuraguru, but the name foremost in Ashvatthama’s mind was another one, not among the Four: Jagan Bhambri. Information systems specialist at the Pandit Hari Shankar Sharma University. Data analyst with the Royce expedition. Ashvatthama could still see Bhambri’s horror-stricken face when he had lifted him as if he weighed nothing at all; he could feel even now the puny maanav’s reflexive shudder as his neck snapped. Ashvatthama raked through the dead man’s memories and knew exactly where he would find the information that would forge the final link between the names and the named.
Rising smoothly from the knoll on which he was seated, Ashvatthama looked around. Dense, trackless jungle surrounded them, an unassailable, encircling army, besieging them, forestalling all movement towards their goal.
‘How long would it take, Krita, to cut through this?’
‘Weeks . . . months . . . even for a full Akshauhini! For us, though . . .’ Giddy with the exhilaration of countless unfolding possibilities, Kritavarma almost giggled.
Ashvatthama smiled—and focused. The words of the Atharva Veda flamed alive:
I drive out the enemy with my mind, with my thought, with my chant.
I drive them out with a branch of the ashvattha tree.
His mind expanded, its tendrils reaching out, connecting with the vast energy streams that flowed between the elements.
The spear of terror took the sadhus without warning. They lost all power to move, to flee, watching helplessly as the two huge men, Naga-naked, white-streaked, unleashed their sorcery. The massive, knotted tree trunks, the tangled mass of creeper, vine and leaf, the living walls of this impenetrable green fortress trembled as if under assault from an invisible engine of war. And then the sound began—an ear-piercing hiss, more terrifying than any roar. The sadhus fell to their knees, clutching at their ears, powerless to tear their eyes away from the sorcerers even when their blood boiled over and ran out from their eye sockets. The green world turned red, and then scarlet; the two beings ignited into columns of flame.
Wind ripped through the ravine and the peepul tree shrieked in pain; the flame straddled the wind and raced forward, leaping from bush to branch to vine, slashing through the vegetation as if it didn’t exist. Horror-stricken, the sadhus watched the fire crackle forward, and then in a moment of blinding agony, it had overrun them. Completely indifferent to the smoking pile of cinders already being scattered by the wind, the flame sped on, powering through mile upon mile of jungle towards the city of Raipur and the almost infinite data that lay in the information systems of Pandit Hari Shankar Sharma University.
~
The Cave of the Flame
He had stood there the day before, thirty centuries ago. Bheem’s gaze swept over the outer cave, noting the alcoves and the dark crevices that appeared to be entrances to passageways but led to blank walls. Everything was the same and yet it had all changed. The dim glow revealed patterns on the lime-covered walls, the marks short and sharp: arrows—groups of four—hundreds of them, smaller versions of the giant pattern opposite the waterfall in the Cave of the Flame. 3004 marks apparently, but Bheem couldn’t see them all. Massive roots had bored through the walls and had been petrified, adding unexpected planes and curves to the surfaces. The stalagmites had proliferated into a forest, barring clear views, frustrating the eye as it attempted to make sense of its surroundings. But the eye is the least effective weapon in a warrior’s arsenal, easily tricked, effortlessly deterred. It wasn’t vision alone on which Bheem relied. There was something in the taste of the viscous air, a rank smell that was not decay.
Bheem threaded through a colonnade of stalagmites towards an arched recess partially concealed by huge, tapering roots. He didn’t remember this recess; Saragha had rushed him through the outer sections of the cave complex into the inner sanctum. There was scuffing on the entrance to the recess, scratches on the lime coating. Someone had trimmed these roots recently, in all likelihood the very men whose dead bodies lay in the interior cavern. Bheem could distinguish their smell from the fug that lay over the cave like a malodorous quilt. But humanscent wasn’t all that lingered around the entrance. Bheem picked up another, much more potent, spoor. Grimly, sensing what he would find ahead, he slid into the recess.
The alcove was deceptive, deeper than it looked from the outside. And it was dark, the feeble light trickling in from the phosphorescent walls of the main cave accentuating the gloom. There was something forbidding about the chamber, almost as if it were a hidden dungeon in a castle, one that held the castellan’s nasty secrets. Bheem paused, allowing his eyes to adjust. Smooth stone walls took shape, rising to a high ceiling that seemed to shudder, flutter. Bats. Hundreds of them, the air heavy with their feral stink. But mingled with that was a stench strangely familiar, emanating from a deeply shadowed hollow in the wall on the left. It was only when Bheem stood directly facing the alcove that the figure became visible: a life-size vaanar statue, perfectly chiselled in basalt. Despite the intense gloom, the sculptor’s artistry was evident, each bristle of the pelt defined, powerful muscles taut, the
tail artfully poised. The eyes were disconcertingly alive, staring at Bheem. There was just one deficiency: the right paw, curved as if holding something against the figure’s shoulder, clutched air. It was obvious what was missing: a mace.
Hanuman.
Revered. Unforgettable.
Bheem looked around. ‘Statues don’t stink!’ he said.
The words echoed in the chamber, the bats above stirring and settling. Silence reclaimed the room. Then, suddenly, a series of snorts erupted—snuffles, grunts—vaanar laughter! Involuntarily, Bheem’s eyes swivelled to the statue’s face. Nothing had changed, of course.
Bheem smiled. ‘So you still live, Saragha! And stink worse than ever!’
‘As do you!’ a familiar voice shrieked in the Old Tongue from within the walls behind the stone figure. ‘The warrior stinks! Even Samay spits him out!’
Two voices! The being was talking to someone! But to whom? Aviva had entered the outer cave moments earlier but the white-streaked giant was nowhere to be seen. Then his voice had emerged from the recess in the north wall, an acoustic quirk carrying it through the main cave. This had been followed by staccato growls and snorts and then, incredibly, a voice that sounded as if it had sprung from the earth’s gut rumbled through the cavern. Aviva stopped dead, hair standing on end. She struggled to understand the words; it was Sanskrit but the accent was even more obscure than that of the giant. Prakrit? Consumed by curiosity, Aviva crept through the stalagmites, edging towards the recess.
More grunts and snorts from within the wall, punctuated by disjointed roars—what was this? Bat wings rustled in resentment but Bheem stood still, feeling out the laughing vaanar, unseen behind his veil of stone. Saragha had guided him into the flame, knowing that his chances of survival were minimal. Perhaps it wasn’t betrayal but it certainly wasn’t the act of an ally. And the secrets of the asura guru had fallen into enemy hands. Was that also the greybeard’s doing? A question that led to a cliff’s edge. Bheem stared into the abyss. The consequences of a misstep were incalculable.