Jaipal stared at Narpal, who stood above Kiratpal’s prostrate form, the blade of his sword wet with blood, breathing hard. Kiratpal lay on the ground, his face twisted in a scream he had not yet found the wind to release. “What have you done?” Exclaimed Jaipal! “Me?” Narpal looked around, then flung his brother’s sword to the ground. “What have I done? What have you fucking done brother!” Kiratpal sat up, still starring at the stump of his arm, then began to scream. “You bastards! I’ll kill you all! To the end of the earth I will hunt you! I’ll-.” Jaipal strode up to him and struck him across the face, knocking him out cold, then turned to Narpal. “Go find the gravekeeper!” He bound his cousin’s wound as best he could using cloth from his own turban. It was only as he unraveled the wrap that he discovered the coin-purse, Sohanpal’s coin-purse, left to him by Srichandra. Narpal returned, a cloth pressed across his mouth, with an elderly chandala in tow, who practically fell to his knees in fright at the sight before him.

“You should have let him kill me.” Muttered Jaipal as he worked. Narpal shook his head. “Do you have turmeric?” He asked. The gravekeeper stared at him blankly. “Turmeric! Now!” The old man ran to his hut, returning shortly with a bundle of dried root in shaking hands. Jaipal took one, cut it into slices with his sword, cursing as he tried to do such delicate work with so long a blade, then pressed the juices into his cousin’s wound. There was nothing else to be done. “That should hold, I pray.” Jaipal said as he stood shakily to his feet, suddenly finding that his legs had turned almost to water. Narpal punched him straight in the jaw, and he fell down again. The gravekeeper let out a short screech, and fell as well. Jaipal pulled himself unsteadily up, rubbing his jaw. The two brother’s glared at each-other for a moment, then without a word, grabbed Kiratpal and deposited him lightly outside of the cemetery, sent the grave-keeper to notify the village, and fled.

Dusk found them fleeing across the plains. They plowed through copses of deciduous shorea, startling peacocks and gazelles from their haunts, here and there stumbling upon a sacred tree whose knotty roots like great serpents emerging from the earth had been piled high with the bones of saints or an ancient megalith beneath which offerings were still left. At one of these they took a pair of milk-filled gourds, leaving several coins to repay the yaksa who dwelt there. They stumbled upon a hermitage, almost bumbling straight into the middle of the little circle of grass huts as the brahmins and their young initiates were making the last of the days sacrifices to their sacred fire.

The moon lit their way as they navigated fields of wild sugarcane higher than their head. They were more than a little afraid of blundering into the lair of a tiger as they cut through the fragrant stalks, but even more afraid were they of pursuit, and so continued on. Once they were spied by a young man, startling him from where he had been dozing upright in his stilts amidst the oozing, spear-like shafts. They tried to grab ahold of him but the lad was too quick, bounding away with long strides to disappear amidst the green palisades. They filled their empty gourds with brackish water from the depths of an ancient, crumbling step-well, and Jaipal took a crane with his bow, but the pair did not stop to boil the water nor cook the meat.

Finally, exhausted, they decided to halt at an old cemetery, much like the one they had left. The graveyard was near no village, and its walls were little more than a tumble of moldering stone overgrown with vile looking creepers. The urns had all been smashed, the hero-stones overturned and their bases dug up, and well gnawed bones lay strewn about the bases of the banyan trees where the tracks of hyenas could be made out clearly in the moonlight. Jaipal and Narpal shivered as they sighted the placed, but decided there to make their camp, for as likely a place as it was to be haunted by flesh-starved rakshas, it was equally likely to be avoided by men.

The bark of a hyena greeted them as they approached, and Jaipal was surprised to see a small, well maintained hut in the center of the that polyandrium, surrounded by poles upon which skulls had been mounted and chimes of finger-bones hung which cast shadows of queer aspect upon the moonlight frosted ash heaps which surrounded the place. A pair of hyenas rose, hackles raised as they approached, and Jaipal almost had an arrow knocked to his bow when a man emerged from the hut. He was naked this man, save for the ashes smeared across his skin and the long, braided shikha which fell from his tonsured skull and was wrapped about his waist. He stared at them as if not sure if they were truly were men or spirits come to pay the living their respects, then with a snort and a derisive toss of his head, he said. “Begone you two!” Jaipal and Narpal made haste to turn, but then saw that it was the hyenas who slunk away into the dark, and the strange brahmin gestured for them to enter the hut.

Inside the peculiar man’s abode, a low fire flickered amidst a ring of stone, and Jaipal could not understand how he had not detected its glow earlier. The flame caused shadows to jump manically about the enclosure, revealing here a bamboo staff and there a silver mirror and there again the wicked hook of a sickle like one used to harvest sugarcane. They sat across the fire from the priest and did not dare speak, till finally he said. “Prepare for me your crane. And here, pour your water in my kettle.” The two sreni jumped to do as they were bade, for the man, if he were truly a man and not a demon in the guise of one, held them in a sort of terror, like the villain of some harrowing jataka come to life! For a time the brahmin did not speak, eying the brothers thoughtfully as they stripped the feathers from the bird’s carcass, then he chuckled, an evil sound in that unhallowed place, and began.

“You are a pair of fratricides! I know it!” At that Jaipal dropped the bird and reached for his sword, but Narpal stayed his hand, asking in a low, frightened voice. “Why do you say that master?” The ascetic chuckled again and gestured to the strings of knucklebone hanging from the roof of the hut. “I know every man’s sin! I have studied the ways of karma. I know all the subtle differences in the compositions of its particles and the way they cling to a soul! And in counting them I can know the sin of all whom I count! The two of you have shed the blood of those whose blood you share! Hah! You are in good company then!” The man reached behind him, coming up with a leather flask which he uncorked and passed to Narpal, who sniffed at it thoughtfully. “Wine? You drink wine?” He asked. The ascetic smiled. “I drink wine and I eat flesh and I handle the skin of the calf, for only in knowing sin may I overcome it.”

Jaipal and Narpal looked at each-other, not understanding, and more than a little afraid that the “flesh” the madman spoke of, for he was clearly not of sound mine, might include their own. “Drink! I command it!” Narpal thrust the flask to his lips, taking a big gulp, afraid to disobey. He handed it to Jaipal, who likewise took a swig, wincing as the fiery liquid burned his tongue and throat. “You came from Rajgarh did you not? From the siege?” Jaipal and Narpal looked at each other, then back to the brahmin, and shook their heads. “Salwa then? Yes, that’s it, I see it in your eyes. Durga’s many hands lay upon your shoulders! Deny it not! You may be followers of the Buddha, but the goddess of destruction loves you all the same! Yes! Pressed to her breast like babes you are, though you know it not! Here!” The man suddenly held forth a stone, and the brothers sprung back from it as if it were a two-headed cobra, for the stone was black, pure, atramentous black, and seemed to drink the very light of the fire!

“Give to her a gift of blood, and see your future revealed! Swift as thought is mighty Durga! She will surely answer!” Narpal scooted back until his back was against the wall of the hut, but Jaipal leaned forward. In the stygian depths of the stone he thought he saw something, a vague form, like smoke, or perhaps oil, something viscous and yet diaphanous and without order as men know it, the echoes of a black thought which reverberated out across time and space from a time before men had learned the secret of walking and tore the raw flesh of their kill with their teeth.

As if unable to stop his own hands, he held the crane’s neck up to the stone, and with his dagger severed it from its head, allowing the foul, thick blood to pour down upon it and, could it be, no, the stone drank the blood! Or that’s what it appeared to Jaipal, though the smoke of the fire much stung his eyes and with the exertions of the last few days he thought himself to also finally be going mad! Let himself be mad then, for often the censor of insanity was wielded by the gods in punishment and surely he above all deserved to be punished! The brahmin withdrew the stone, smiling evilly, then dropped it in the fire, where it began to hiss and crack as smoke as blue as the goddess of war’s skin mixed with the shaft of moonlight pouring down into the hut!

“Let it be know to you, children of Maa Durga, that war will soon sweep these lands! Cities will burn and temples be destroyed and the hooves of a thousand horses will trample the fields to mud! This war will reach as far as fabled Pataliputra so deep will the blood flow beneath its walls that men will drown in it! Now hear this, ohh children of she who wields the knife!” The brahmin’s eyes were wild as spoke, rolling back in his head, his hands making great arcs around his head, his fingers tracing sigils only he could read. “There will come to this place a man seeking a weapon. You are to assist this man! Endeavor not to unsheathe your blades, for they must be saved for the greater battle ahead! Instead treat all with kindness, for their lives are not your to take! Maa Durga has claimed them, and when the great war arrives, then, and only then, will you be given leave to reap the fruits of the terror which has been sown! Hear me and obey my children, and I will annihilate the chains of karma which bind you as surely as I annihilated the demon Mahishasura!”

With that final proclamation, the brahmin slumped forward, breathing hard. The fire began to burn low in its hearth, and a chill descended upon the hut. Narpal lay were he had slinked back against the wall, still watching warily for the hunched form of the ascetic, and Jaipal reached forward to touch his shoulder. The brahmin stood suddenly erect, and said simply. “Finish with the bird, for I am hungry. And go get me some more firewood as well.” For the rest of the night, no one spoke. Narpal gathered more firewood, most thankful for any excuse to leave that terrible sanctum, while Jaipal finished with the crane. They ate, the three of them, the fat dripping from their fingers to sizzle and spit in the fire, and then Jaipal and Narpal found themselves falling into a dreamless slumber, with the wan form of the brahmin still starring into the flame.

When Jaipal awoke, the brahmin was gone. He shook Narpal awake, gazing with squinted eyes up through the hole in the ceiling of the hut. It was almost midday! All around them, the hut was empty. The black stone was gone, as was the mirror and the staff and the knucklebones and all those other occult implements that madman had kept. It was as if he himself had been a phantom, the only evidence of his existence being the still warm ashes in the fire-pit and the kettle. Jaipal belted hastily his sword-belt about his waist and left the hut, then nearly jumped out his skin as he heard a cry.

“Aaaggghhhh!” He spun about, sword leaping from its scabbard, then spied the cries source. It was man, dressed in a long, colorful chapkan sewn with copper crescents and suns, a curious choice of attire given the heat. His eyes were bright and with heavy epicanthic folds and his skin was smooth yet dark, with that characteristic admixture of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors without performing physical labor. A bard perhaps. The man had fallen over in his fright, and was starring at Jaipal with a hand raised. It took Jaipal a moment to realize why, then he returned his sword to his scabbard and advanced slowly upon the man.

“Are you alright?” He asked. “I, what, yes, I, are you a man?” Jaipal stopped and tilted his head. “Uhh, yes?” “Ohh good! Thank the Buddha! I uhh, I rather thought you might be a raksha! You gave me quite a fright!” The man’s accent was strange, and Jaipal placed it as being from somewhere in the foothills of the himachals to the north. “Jaipal? What is it?” Narpal had emerged from the hut as well, to stare in bemusement at the man.

“What are you doing here?” Asked Jaipal, feeling stupid the moment he asked it. What was he doing here? What he doing here? The man dusted himself and rose to his feet, then bowed low, doffing his tall felt cap. “My name is Ramesh Gurung! And I am ahh, well, I came for grave dirt.” He said, smiling nervously as he rose and clutched his hat to his chest. Jaipal and Narpal exchanged glances. “Gravedirt?” Replied Narpal. “Yes! Gravedirt! It’s uhh, it’s a most unusual predicament we, I mean, I, no! We, find ourselves in! It’s got my nerves on edge I have to say! That’s why you frightened me so I think.” “What do you need gravedirt for?” Asked Jaipal.

“An excellent question! There is a particularly troublesome yakshini in a tree not far from here, and I seek a method by which to drive her away!” “A yakshini?” Exclaimed Narpal incredulously. “Just so!” Said Ramesh, either oblivious to the tone of Narpal’s voice or pretending not to notice. “I uhh, I am not a jadugara, but I have heard it said that one thing a nymph cannot abide is gravedirt, and so I have come to get some, to use as a weapon to expel one from her tree! Just temporarily mind you! And we will leave her proper offerings I assure you! You need not fear a curse!” “That’s ridiculous!” Laughed Narpal. “Shouldn’t you get a monk involved?” But Jaipal did not think it was ridiculous at all, for the words of the ascetic were ringing in his ear! So quickly had Durga’s prophecy begun to come to pass!

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“There is gravedirt here.” He said grimly. “This here by the hut should be potent stuff. Here.” Jaipal rushed inside, grabbed hold of the kettle, and ran back out to begin shoveling ash inside of it. “What are you doing?” Demanded Narpal. Jaipal ignored him, filling the kettle, then rising and presenting it to Ramesh. To his surprise, Ramesh took it thankfully, and with closed eyes and a sudden soberness of expression intoned. “Yes. This might work. Om Amitabha Hrih. Please let this work.” Jaipal realized as he spoke, that whatever it was that troubled the man, it was great indeed. Ramesh opened his eyes and bowed again.

“Thank you my friends. I must go.” “Wait, let us go with you!” Exclaimed Jaipal. His brother looked at him as if he had gone mad, which Jaipal felt he very may well have. “I, really?” Asked Ramesh, as if Jaipal had done him the favor and not the other way around. “Yes. We can help you.” At that Ramesh looked down at his feet and shook his head. “I do not think anyone can help us my friend, and I do not wish to involve you in our troubles.” Jaipal stepped forward, extending a hand. “All of my days of late have been troubled. Perhaps we can help each-other? My name is Jaipal by the way.” Ramesh looked at the proffered hand of the sreni for only a moment before seizing it, and then they were off.

Narpal introduced himself as well, and as they left the cemetery, following a narrow trail in the yellow grass which lead down a gentle slope, Ramesh explained their problem. “They”, as it turned out, were a theater troupe, and they had indeed come from the himachals, from one of those small mountain kirati princedoms whose chief export seemed to be fighting men and deposed monarchs seeking to reclaim their meager thrones. Currently they were on their way to Mathura, to attend the long-delayed horse-fair which was to finally take place there, for where horses were sold, lords came with their purses, and what better place to find an appreciative audience was there? Ramesh was the sthapaka of the troupe, second only to their sutradhara, and to him fell conducting rehearsals and designing the props in addition to acting. Their sutradhara was a man named Trishanku, and though Ramesh tried to speak around the subject, it seemed to Jaipal that he was the fulcrum of their troubles.

Trishanku was an older man, a man of great talent upon the stage and the master of all forms of natya, comfortable performing before both lords of the highest rank and peasants of the lowest, but he was far from an able manager of finances, and so their little troupe always found themselves fleeing the gnawing of hunger in the bellies from town to town, unable to secure a patron who would allow them to settle down and achieve the sort of modest prosperity a troupe such as theirs always hoped to attain. There was an actress in their troupe, a woman by the name of Hansini, and Jaipal could tell from the breathless way that Ramesh spoke of her that she must be a rare beauty. Trishanku had long made Hansini the object of his desires, but being as he was old and she young and he without the means to purchase a bridge between that gap, she had resisted his advances. Her uncle, a skilled ventriloquist and master of puppetry, and her aunt, also an actress and ventriloquist, were both members of the troupe as well, and had protected her fiercely, sometimes drawing the ire of their leader in the process.

Things it seemed had finally come to a head and Trishanku had in a rage threatened that if Hansini did not agree to be his bride, that he would expel them all from the group! He had attempted to force himself upon her, and she had fled to the branches of a sacred tree beneath which the troupe had encamped. Her uncle and aunt had taken up positions beneath the tree to guard her, but they were both even older than Trishanku and besides the rest of the group would assuredly have followed their sutradhara’s orders in removing them when a wondrous thing happened!

A voice, haughty and divine, had called down from the tree, saying that she was a yakshini, and that Hansini was now under her protection and any who attempted to abscond with her would incur the nymph’s wrath! And so a state of siege had ensured, one which neither side could hope to maintain, seeing as how the troupe only had provisions for a few days! And so that is how it came to be that Ramesh had been sent to find the nearest cemetery and procure a supply of gravedirt, which, one of their number had heard, was sure to force the yakshini to flee for it is known that the celestial maidens abhor the touch of death!

Ramesh finished his story just as they reached the hillock upon which the sacred tree grew. It was only then that either it occurred to him, or that he finally thought it polite, to ask just what is was the Jaipal and his brother had been doing at the sepulcher! Narpal answered quickly that they had come seeking the advice of an ascetic who it was said lived there, but that they had not found the man, only his hut. It was not of course, entirely a lie, and Ramesh seemed satisfied with the answer.

The holy bole was a neem tree of truly massive proportions! It’s thin, whiplike branches were flush with viridian splendor though all the grass and brush beneath it lay yellow and parched in the summer sun, her leaves hanging down like the brilliant jade curtains of some naga prince’s tellurian seraglio, rustling in the hot breeze like the sighs of a hundred courtesans. Garlands and ribbons had been strung from her reaches, and the area immediately beneath them was marked by a series of upright stones, the markings carved into them much faded but still bespeaking a hallowed import. There were three large wagons covered with canopies of colorful cloth and a number of tents whose copper ornaments flashed in the light and shaggy oxen with bells braided into their mains chomping desultorily on the dry grass. At the base of the tree, a man and a women of advanced age sat with staves set across their laps, and across from them, a small crowd of their fellow stage-hands stood. Everyone was arguing, shouting back and forth amongst each-other with heated words, then someone spied Ramesh and the crowd broke to meet them. An older man, though not entirely too old, perhaps in his late fifties, came up first.

“Ramesh! Finally! Did you get it? The dirt?” He asked, his voice hoarse from shouting. Ramesh bowed slightly and held up the kettle with the ash. “I have sir. But uhh, Trishanku, do you really think this is wise? Perhaps the whole matter should be dropped! Our little troupe has met enough hardship as it is and-.” “Nonsense! Give it to me!” The sutradhara spat, taking the kettle without care, spilling some of the pale dust upon his robe. “She will resist me no longer! How many long years have I led us up and down the road, always at the head of the train, always the first to rise and last to sleep, always first on stage, without even a thought given to family? Ehh? I will have her!”

The man made as if to turn, and Ramesh grabbed his arm, gesturing towards Jaipal and Narpal. “Sir! I met these two young men at the graveyard! They are kind souls, I can tell, and they have offered us their aid! Please, perhaps we can all just calm down and show them a troubadour’s hospitality? Let Hasini come down and lets hash this all out later sir! For the stranger’s sake!” Ramesh’s eyes were pleading as he looked at them, and Jaipal realized both that the sthapaka was stalling for time, and that he too had no desire to see Hansini taken by Trishanku, but that he simply saw no way to challenge his leader.

“Ehh? Hospitality? It is not these strangers I worry about but the yakshini! You there!” He pointed towards Jaipal with the long, thin beard upon his sharp chin. “Can you talk sense into a goddess? Huh? What about you?” He asked, looking at Narpal. The two brothers could only share bewildered glances and shrug. “I thought not! Now away with you! We are not taking auditions!” Trishanku turned and stomped towards the tree, and Ramesh spread his arms, and looked after him, appearing close to a panic. Jaipal stepped forward, but his way was barred by the suspicious glares of several young set-builders who, while not drawing the cudgels and hammers at their waists, made it very clear that they would if he continued.

Jaipal watched as Trishanku approached the tree, then he looked up, spying for the first time Hansini, and were he in any state of mind to appreciate beauty, his breath would have caught in his throat and his heart would have begun to beat as if he carried a pavise into a hail of arrow-fire! And indeed, Hansini had a face which could inspire a man to do just that! He skin was a pale as milk, her eyes like golden almonds, he hair long and lustrous and black as the night sky and even sitting in a tree branch, there was a quality most ethereal and yet also regal about her, as if that branch was not branch at all but a throne covered with silken divans! Jaipal could well see how a man such as Trishanku could be driven to oppose a minor goddess in her very place of power to win her!

The old playwright stopped just shy of the pavilion made by the sacred tree’s branches, and the man and women beneath it arose clutching their bamboo staffs, and it suddenly occurred to Jaipal that the both of them looked rather wan and unsteady, as if they had not eaten for a day or more, and his fists began to shake with a sudden, sympathetic rage, for old and famished though they were, they still barred their weapons in defense of their kin against a man who was supposed to be above all, their protector and leader!

Trishanku did not speak for a moment, then he took a deep breath, and shouted. “See this here, lady of the tree!” He raised high the kettle of ash. “Vacate this place now, and allow me to take what is mine, or I will throw this foul stuff upon the trunk of your tree! You will be compensated greatly, you have my word!” What happened next made Jaipal almost fall over, for the second time in less than a day he saw, or in this case, heard, something wondrous! A voice called from somewhere in the tree! It could not have been Hansini, for her plump lips were squeezed shut as she starred down with undisguised ire towards her erstwhile sutradhara, and besides the voice seemed to come from much higher in the trunk itself! The voice was soft and lilting and yet also imperious and it said. “Again I command thee to leave this lady alone, for she is under my protection! Your trinkets do not frighten me! I am a god! How can you think I would abandon one toward whom I have extended my grace? Such ignorance!”

“Leave me alone Trishanku!” Exclaimed Hansini with a voice which well matched the beauty of her appearance. “I will never marry you! I would rather die an old maid and eat the flesh of a dogs!” Strong stuff from so pretty a mouth, and upon hearing it, Jaipal was driven almost homicidal with anger at Trishanku. The sun shown red for a moment, but through its glare he again heard the words of the ascetic, and he knelt and punched the ground repeatedly, causing the actors and set-builders who had blocked their path to step back in fright!

He drew his dagger, and then an arrow, and Narpal flung himself upon his arm. “Brother no! Not again!” Jaipal wrenched himself free and with a few strokes of the dagger, severed the arrow head from the arrow. The members of the troupe were scattering now, eager to get out from between their leader and Jaipal, calling out in alarm to Trishanku, who appeared not to hear them. Jaipal quickly cut another arrow’s head from its shaft as Trishanku advanced upon the tree. The man and woman beneath it brandished their staffs as if they were spears as the sutradhara raised the kettle of ash above his head, and then…

There was a loud metallic ping and the kettle was wrenched from his grasp, the ash within spilling harmlessly upon the ground. The old man spun around, his eyes almost popping out his head so angry was he, as Jaipal knocked the other blunted shaft to the string of his bow, and cried out. “Leave her alone! The lady has fucking spoken!” “You dare!” Trishanku stepped forward, fists balled. Narpal drew his his brothers sword from his scabbard and stood besides him, a warning to all who would approach! But none of the troupe did. It was as if they were all suddenly overcome with exhaustion, their shoulders slumped, not even drawing their weapons.

“Enough Trishanku!” Ramesh strode forward, putting himself between Jaipal and his boss, hands held to his side. “She does not wish to marry you! Cease this folly! We have to get moving! We have shows to perform! We’re almost out of fucking food!” The young man kicked the ground, sending a clod of dirt flying, long suppressed frustration finally being vented. “We move when she gets down and becomes my wife!” Roared Trishanku. “All of you! Get her! Get her now! I command it!” The old man ordered, but no one moved, instead falling in behind Ramesh.

“Come on Trishanku! We’re all tired! Please!” Ramesh begged, and his fellows nodded in agreement. The sutradhara’s face became black with rage. “Traitors! You’re all fucking traitors! I’ll do it myself! To hell with the gods!” Everyone staggered back as if smitten by the force of such blasphemy! Trishanku hurried to one of the carts, dug around inside, and came up with a saber, like the saka of the steps used in their raids for cattle and brides. A prop it may have been, with a hilt gilded with pyrite and a painted knob of wood masquerading as a ruby, but its edge looked keen, and with a cry of fury Trishanku turned and charged at the tree. Hansini’s aunt and uncle braced themselves to receive him, but the twang of a bowstring sounded out and Trishanku was sent tumbling to the earth as a shaft from Jaipal struck him in the thigh. The troupe members rushed to subdue him, but the old man was far sprier than he looked, and he righted himself quickly, swinging wildly the flashing blade, driving them back!

“Shit!” Jaipal drew another arrow and began to saw at its shaft, while Narpal charged forward, blade held high! Trishanku again assaulted the tree. The old man and the women tried to stop him but the shafts of their simple staves were cut clean through by the sutradhara’s saber and Hansini screamed as they too were forced to flee. Trishanku was cursing now, swearing vengeance against all who had denied him what he thought was his right, god or man, crying that if he could not have her, then no one would, leaping madly beneath the branches of the tree and hacking at them while above him Hansini screamed again as the blade struck the branch she was crouching on, sending splinters flying, and in desperation she leaped from the tree! Trishanku roared in triumph and advanced upon her, his eyes alight with a mad flame! Narpal was still some distance away, and Jaipal had just removed the arrow head, then there was a crunch of wood and the branch broke and struck Trishanku in the head and he went down and did not move. The yakshini had spoken true.