Page 78 of The Legend of Meneka
Heaven’s war command.
CHAPTER 28
It is mayhem from there.
I am thrust out of the sky. The next thing I know, I am back in the forest. I blink, and lightning crashes above me, so close that I am dizzied.
Blurs appear everywhere, arrows and discs, magic flung indiscriminately. Celestial horses raze through the ranks of mortals, chariots with blades that injure and maim. Airavat, Indra’s elephant, is berserk, the sound of his trumpeting bloodcurdling. Vayu is unseen, but great gusts of wind cyclone across the land and sky, throwing up mortals in Kaushika’s army, churning trees in the forest.
Vaguely, I register that Rambha was thrown from the sky too. I have only landed safely in the forest because of the protection she has from Indra, extended to me by being near her.
Agni and Surya work together, burning and igniting with the power of fire and sun. Bodies hurtle, explosions in the sky like fireworks. Smoke climbs my nose. Glimpses come to me, apsara magic deluding the mortals into traps laid by gandharvas. Consecrated arrows hurtle through the sky, piercing illusions of seduction. Apsaras fall, blinking away into ashes.
Indra roars, and for an instant, his rage overtakes everything else. His vajra sizzles through the air, cutting tree and forest, to spin through the mortal army. Lightning strikes blind me. Beside me, Rambha cries out. My heart leaps, terrified—
But in a blink the army is gone. Kaushika’s magic.
It appears in the valley, atop a hill, safe for a second on hard terraininstead of in the skies. Kaushika stands at the front, blazing with such strong magic that his body shines like a deva’s. He thrusts his hands out, chanting, and the streak of Indra racing toward him twists in the sky, momentarily thwarted.
Horror and terror grip me.
Kaushika and Indra will destroy each other. Amaravati—and any hope for reconciliation—will be gone with an arrow’s speed.
I try to ascend once more into the sky, but Rambha pulls me back, and both Indra and Kaushika disappear from view, battling elsewhere. Rambha gestures wildly to me, and I see that the forest is loud with cries of death. We huddle together, racing through the trees. A sword avoids us. We are nearly trampled by a runaway horse. I shriek as lightning crashes inches from me, and for a second, Surya shines above, blinding us further with his light. Then I blink and he is gone, pursuing an adversary, and we stumble again, scratching ourselves on trees and magic.
Splinters burst in front of us, and I shade my eyes. Rambha prays next to me, and I draw a rune of obscurity to hide us. I draw a second rune, this one for clarity, embedding it with the intent to see, and the trees explode around us, soaked in golden magic.
In the sky, devas split themselves. Agni is everywhere, fires popping all over the forest, heat lashing my face, cries echoing from the army that is so far away. Islands rise in the tributary of Alaknanda as magic takes unexpected forms.
I can’t focus. There is too much chaos, flares of Surya’s sun, shards of Indra’s lightning, blood everywhere, golden and red.
Rambha screams in my ear, a question. She wants to know the plan.
I have no plan. Only faith. Shiva shines in my mind. I repeat his name over and over again.
Through dust and swirling leaf, I see a motley crew. My friendsstand in a small circle of protection under a tree. Rambha and I stagger to Nanda and Anirudh and Kalyani and the others. Anirudh spins runes and chants, and I recognize the call to the innate form of devas. His eyes dart from sky to forest, where the battle is thickest, and even as I watch, Eka and Parasara unleash magic toward a knot of mortals in the distance. A tree trunk crumbles to dust before it smashes into the mortals. My friends have averted Vayu’s aim by calling on his own power.
Next to them, Kalyani and Romasha are just blurs, darting in and out of the protection of the circle. They sprint into battle, carrying injured mortals, one time even a minor deva I don’t recognize, then lay them to rest near us, where Anirudh performs healing chants. Nanda dances, her mudras increasingly desperate, casting illusions of peace around us, maintaining the shield that protects everyone. The illusion stutters, threaded with her panic, watery.
I shake Rambha off and stumble over to Nanda. I grab her arm.
Alarmed eyes question me, but Nanda does not stop. Though she is not looking, her aim is true. The illusion she creates blinds an archer. His arrow redirects over the cliff, saving the life of an unwary celestial. Her next illusion protects several mortal soldiers, making them appear like harmless rocks, while Vayu himself rages, fooled by her power. Nanda’s mouth never stops moving in chants, consecrating her illusions even as she unleashes them. We are protecting one or two people. It is not enough.
“Sing,” I command.
Golden blood trickles down her forehead. She breaks her chant long enough to give me a withering look, as though to ask,What do you think I’m doing?
It exacts a cost. Agni’s fire climbs up a mortal, their flesh burning.
“No,” I say urgently. “For me. Nanda, sing forme. So I can dance.”
Amaravati’s magic floods into me. It pushes against me. My pranasurges, all my chakras activated. Is this a mistake? It is our only chance.
Her eyes widen. She understands.
In a blink, the half-formed illusions she has created disappear and are replaced with a mridangam. An earthly instrument made from clay. A mortal instrument, but an instrument of Shiva, one that accompanied his own maya-splitting dance, the tandava, thus making the mridangam an instrument of the devas too.
Nanda begins to beat against it, the sound thundering in my ears. Around us, mortals and immortals fall, but her eyes blaze. She throws her head back, and a robust song emerges from her mouth, clear, high, cutting through the noise like a sword. It is an illusion, but one that ensnares every being, so strong is she in her magic.Dance, I hear her command.
