Prince of Dharma by Ashok Banker Page B

knowledge with anyone else. She had come much too far to be thwarted now by a pathetic bhaangaddled tantric who thought that a few painted symbols were sufficient to show his devotion to the Dark Lord. 
     
    The sound of him clearing his throat distracted her from her thoughts. She realised she was still holding the money and her work here was finished. Move, Manthara. It will be daybreak soon. There’s much to be accomplished today, and it can’t be done standing around in this stupid man’s shack . 
     
    ‘Here,’ she said disdainfully, holding out the money. 
     
    To her surprise, he didn’t take it. 
     
    Instead, he raised his eyes to look at her. Insolently. 
     
    ‘You promised,’ he said. His voice was hoarse and cracked. It told her that he took his ganja through a hookah rather than through a chillum. 
     
    She frowned. ‘Yes, I promised six silvers. Here they are. Take them quickly. I am in a hurry.’ 
     
    He shook his head, straining to express himself better. Speaking in a dialect of commonspeak so chopped and garbled as to be almost incomprehensible. No wonder he didn’t talk much. 
     
    ‘Promised, I join you. This yagna. Dark Lord, welcome, into Ayodhya.’ 
     
    She stared at him. Had she promised this lout that she would let him aid her in performing her yagna? How did he know that this was the crucial rite, the penultimate sacrifice with which she would welcome her lord on the eve of His entry into Ayodhya? Why in the three worlds would she have revealed this much to a ganja-addicted tantric? Then she remembered. It had been his insistence, not her revelation. He had guessed without being told. Had put two and two together over the months—it wasn’t hard, given the task she had hired him to do—and had added rumour, dark gossip, and word brought by tantrics from the Southwoods of strange developments afoot. He had come up with this smart but wholly logical conclusion: that she was a worshipper of the Dark Lord of Lanka, who demanded the sacrifice of a threaded Brahmin boy at every interface, and who was prophesied to rise from his ignominious failure in the last asura war and launch a great new campaign of conquest. 
     
    Starting with the invasion of Ayodhya. 
     
    Yes, she recalled how eagerly, excitedly, nervously this fool had blurted out his findings and eventual conclusion at their last exchange, and how impatiently she had waved him away, hardly caring whether he thought she was agreeing to his requests or simply dismissing him. She hadn’t expected the wretch to have the gumption to actually follow up that ill-voiced demand. 
     
    And yet here he was, voicing it again, mumbling on in his fractured ganja-scattered syntax about how his talents and hers would make a perfect union of yoni and lingam shakti, the meshing of female and male energies that resulted in the perfect circle of tantric power. How they would form a new order together, the Order of Lanka, and after the Dark Lord’s arrival, they would preside as the high priest and priestess of their new religion. 
     
    She resisted the urge to laugh aloud at his impudence. High priest and priestess indeed! This fool would drop dead with terror if the Dark Lord appeared before him even for an instant. And did he really think that by helping feed her sacrificial fire with a few young Brahmin boys—for which he had been well paid—he had earned the right to make these ludicrous demands? Really, the human capacity for arrogance was only exceeded by its capacity for ignorance. Arrogant, ignorant gaddha ! 
     
    Sensing that he wasn’t getting through to her quite as effectively as he desired, the tantric stopped his rambling and looked at her dully. He was waiting for her response. 
     
    She surprised him by smiling warmly. Or as warmly as her wizened, paralysis-stricken right side allowed. 
     
    ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you have great vidya, great kala. This knowledge and art would be an immense aid to me in my