A tree the villagers dare not approach

On the outskirts of the city stood an old banyan tree that had, over the years, acquired a reputation for being haunted — the kind of reputation that grows on its own once a few travelers report strange sounds after dark, until eventually no one in the neighboring villages would walk anywhere near it once the sun had gone down, and the story had grown so entrenched that a group of priests announced they would perform a special ritual beneath the tree to drive out whatever spirit had taken up residence there, for a fee collected in advance from the frightened villagers who wanted the matter settled once and for all.

Tenali smells more mischief than magic

Word of the arrangement reached Tenali, who had a healthy respect for genuine devotion and a rather smaller one for priests who happened to profit handsomely from problems that only they could solve, and he decided the ritual deserved a closer look than the frightened villagers were likely to give it themselves, arriving at the tree well before the appointed hour and concealing himself high up among its branches to watch the proceedings from a seat no one below thought to check.

Chanting begins in the gathering dark

As night fell the priests arrived with their lamps, their offerings, and their sacred implements, and began their chanting beneath the tree with great solemnity and considerable volume, calling on whatever spirit dwelled there to reveal itself, make its demands known, and be persuaded — for a further donation, naturally — to depart the neighborhood in peace, while a small crowd of villagers watched from a respectful and thoroughly nervous distance.

A ghost the priests were not expecting

Tenali, listening to the whole performance from above with growing amusement, waited until the chanting had built to its most dramatic pitch and then dropped down out of the branches directly among the startled priests with a wild cry and a great deal of theatrical flailing, giving every appearance of exactly the vengeful spirit their ritual claimed to be summoning.

A stampede of holy men

The effect was immediate and considerably more convincing than anything the priests' own chanting had produced: lamps were dropped, offerings scattered, and the entire ceremonial party fled toward the palace at a speed that would have surprised anyone who had watched them process solemnly out to the tree only an hour before, arriving breathless and wild-eyed to report to the king that the tree's spirit was real, hostile, and had very nearly caught them.

A confession that ends the haunting for good

Tenali followed them back at a more leisurely pace and, before the king, revealed the whole business — the tree, the branches, the wild leap, and his considerable doubts about a ritual that happened to require repeated paid donations to work — and Krishnadevaraya, once he had finished laughing at the image of his most dignified priests fleeing a middle-aged poet in the dark, ordered the matter investigated properly, after which the banyan tree was quietly declared spirit-free and the neighboring villages walked past it, by daylight and by dark, without incident ever after.