An Oblique Approach

The new army he would create would make Majarashtra a name of woe to Malwa. In the Great Country, the asura's rule would become a wraith—a thing seen only by day, in large cities. The land would become a deathtrap for Ye-tai and Rajputs and all the motley hordes of the demon.

He began to think of his stratagems and tactics, but again, put the thoughts aside. There would be time enough for that. More than time enough.

Again, he smiled, remembering his last conversation with Shakuntala. As he had expected, the princess had been utterly furious when he explained the plan to her. But she had acquiesced, in the end.

Not from conviction, of course. She had not believed that she would be an encumbrance in his escape. No, she had acquiesced from duty. Duty which he had hammered into her stubborn, reluctant soul.

She was no longer a princess. No longer a girl, for whom life could be an adventure. She was the empress, now, the ruler of broken Andhra. The sole survivor of great Satavahana. Upon her shoulders—her very soul—rested the fate of her people. Her life was not hers to risk. So long as she survived, rebellion against the asura could find an anchor, a point of certainty around which to pivot and coalesce. Without her, rebellion would become simple brigandry.

Hers was the duty of surviving and forging such alliances as bleeding Andhra needed. For now, no better alliance could be imagined than one with the very men who risked their lives to free her. Those men, and their purpose, might prove the key which unlocked the demon's shackles. Duty. Duty. Duty.

In the end, she had agreed, as Raghunath Rao had known she would. Her soul could do no other.

An old ache began to surface; he forced it down with long-practiced habit. But then, as he had never done before, allowed it to rise up anew.

This time, this one and only time, I will allow it. And never again.

He spent some minutes, then, lost in reverie. Pondering the vastness of time, wondering if there might ever be, in some turn of the wheel, a world where his soul and its treasure might not be forever separated by dharma.

Perhaps. What man can know?

Soon enough, reverie fell away. His life had been one of harsh self-discipline and great austerity, habits which now came automatically to him. So an old ache was driven under, again, and more ruthlessly than ever before.

Due, perhaps, to the effort that task demanded—greater than ever before—his thoughts turned to sacrifice. He was not given to the ancient rites, as a rule. The Vedas themselves he treasured, but the old rituals held little sway over his mind. Long ago he had embraced the way of bhakti, of devotion to God, even before the Mahaveda had turned honorable rituals into rites of cruelty and barbarism.

The sun was beginning to set over the Erythrean Sea, bathing the waters and the shore with lambent glory.

Yes, he would sacrifice.

Quickly, he constructed the three ritual fires. Once the flames were burning, he drew forth his offering from its leather container.

He had saved the last sheet, only. The others he had destroyed in his fire in the forest, weeks earlier. The other sheets, had they been found on his body in the event of his death or capture, could have led to the discovery of the man who wrote that message. But the last sheet, even if found by the Malwa, would have been simply a thing of myth and mystery.

That message was the most precious thing he had ever owned. He would sacrifice it now, in devotion to the future.

Before casting the sheet into the flames, he read it one last time.

— as you may imagine. More I cannot say, for a certainty. He is a strange fellow. Like a child, often, filled with mute hurt and fumbling grievance. Great hurt and grievance, that I doubt not. And just ones, as well, I believe.

But power also he possesses, of that I am equally certain. The greatest power of all, the power of knowledge.

His name I do not know. I do not think he knows it himself.

Yet, I have a belief. It comes not from my faith—though I do not see where it is forbidden by it, nor do the holiest of men that I know. It comes from a vision. A vision I had, once, of you yourself, dancing on the rim of destruction.