A sage's blessing opens the tale

Before a single sword is drawn or a single vampire laughs from a tree, the sage Bhavabhuti bows to Ganesha, Lord of Beginnings, and tells us plainly what this book is for: a string of pearls to hang round the neck of human intelligence, a fragrant flower for the turban of mental wisdom, a jewel of pure gold fit for the brow of the wisest minds, a handful of powdered rubies whose tonic virtue works upon the mind like medicine upon the body. Read these tales rightly, he promises, and a soul may walk this world all the way into blessed absorption, past the need for any further fable. It is a large claim for a book that is about to spend most of its pages on a bickering king and a wisecracking corpse, but such is the Eastern way with frame and moral. Only then, blessing given, does Bhavabhuti turn to the matter at hand — how a fierce, clever, and thoroughly unsentimental prince named Vikramaditya came to rule the city of Ujjayani in the first place.

Born a prince, favored by no one

Some nineteen centuries ago Ujjayani celebrated the birth of a prince burdened with the magnificent name Vikramaditya — mercifully shortened by the Sanskrit-speaking world, who are not usually pressed for time, to plain Vikram. He was the second son of old King Gandharba-Sena, a monarch of whom posterity remembers little that is flattering, save that he somehow became an ass, married four queens regardless, and fathered six sons upon them, each reputedly cleverer and stronger than the last. In time the old king died, and the throne passed by custom to the eldest of his heirs, a prince called Shank. Shank did not enjoy his inheritance long. Vikram — described by his own chronicler, without a trace of embarrassment, as his brother's scorpion — murdered him almost at once and took the carpet of kingship for himself. It is not the sort of opening a hero usually gets, but Bhavabhuti offers it without apology, as the simple mechanism by which the ambitious younger son of a large and quarrelsome family becomes, by main force, the hero of the story.

Two princes groomed for greatness

Before that bloody shortcut to the throne, however, Vikram had been raised for rule the hard way. The old king, calling his two grandsons Bhartari-hari and Vikramaditya to him, laid out a curriculum that would exhaust a lesser boy merely to hear recited: grammar, scripture, and every branch of the religious sciences; military tactics and international law; music, and the riding of horses and — especially — elephants; the driving of chariots, the use of the broadsword, the bow, and the mogdar clubs; leaping, running, the besieging of forts, the forming and breaking of armies. They were to learn cunning in judging an enemy's strength, the making of war and the making of peace, how to sit properly before nobles, how to tell the innocent from the guilty, how to punish the wicked and govern the rest with an even hand. Diligent teachers were found, and the brothers gave such satisfaction in their schooling that the eldest was given a hand in royal business even before he was formally crowned — a grooming Vikram would put to famously ruthless use.

A king explains kingship to his brother

The two brothers, close in their student years, often talked late into the night about the true duties of a king, and it is Vikram — already the harder, more decided of the pair — who is remembered giving Bhartari-hari the classic formula. As Indra fills the earth with rain through the four wet months, he said, so should a king fill his treasury, yet as the sun warms the earth eight months without scorching it, so should he draw revenue from his people without oppressing them. As the wind moves everywhere and misses nothing, a king's spies and officers should know every corner of his realm. As Yama judges without favor, a king must punish the guilty without partiality; as Varuna binds his enemies with his divine noose, a king should bind every malefactor safely in prison; and as the moon cheers all alike with its light, a king's generosity should fall equally on every subject, as the earth itself sustains high and low without distinction. It is fine, quotable advice — the kind men love to give and hate to receive.

A king's day, measured to the minute

Once crowned in earnest, Vikram did not merely rule — he administered himself with the same iron discipline he administered his kingdom, carving day and night into sixteen watches of ninety minutes apiece. Before dawn a servant woke him for this express purpose alone; he swallowed a bitter tonic on an empty stomach as only a warrior-caste king was permitted to do, and made his cooks taste every dish before he touched it himself. Pages recited his virtues as he dressed; Brahmans sang the praises of the gods as he left his chamber; he bathed, worshipped, heard more hymns, gave alms to the poor, and audited his accounts — all before the business of ruling had properly begun. He surrounded himself with so many spies, and such artful ones, that of a thousand reports no two ever agreed, which he seems to have counted a virtue rather than an inconvenience. It was less the schedule of a happy man than of a man who trusted absolutely nothing, least of all leisure, and it would serve him well in the trials still to come.

The court, the scholars, the Nine Gems

At his morning levee Vikram sat armed even among friends, and had women searched for hidden weapons before they approached him — a king, evidently, who had made a study of exactly how kings get killed. Around him arranged themselves his kinsmen and Brahmans to his right, the other castes to his left, his ministers close at hand, and beyond them bards singing of gods and monarchs, charioteers, elephant-drivers, and soldiers of proven valor. Scholars of every stripe attended — masters of scripture, of one narrow philosophy or another, of law both civil and criminal, of medicine and mineralogy, alongside riding-masters, dancing-masters, tasters, mimics, and mountebanks, all waiting on the royal pleasure. Here Vikram heard appeals and pronounced judgment. And here, too, he kept fed and flattered the famous Nine Gems of Science, whose gratitude — expressed mostly through fits of enthusiastic drinking and endless verse in his honor — did more for his lasting reputation, the chronicler notes rather dryly, than almost anything else he accomplished.

A capital built for splendor and defense

The city Vikram made his own was chosen as carefully as his ministers. Four great roads converged near it; durable ramparts and guarded gates ringed it about, and a mountain fortress under a trusted captain watched over the approaches, so that the place was as difficult to take as it was pleasant to live in. Within, the royal palace rose noble both outside and in, Grandeur and Prosperity having plainly made it their joint residence. From its terraces a visitor could see rock and mountain, plain and valley, field and fallow, lake and glittering stream all mingled below; the winding river Lavana ran fringed with dew-pearled meadow grass fit for the sacred cattle, and dotted with fig trees and tamarinds — in one orchard alone Vikram planted a hundred thousand trees and gave the whole grove to his priests. Beyond the river valley lay forest, then a dark jungled hill range broken here and there by a farmer's clearing, then bluer hills, and behind those, range upon range of far mountains touched with silver and gold — a kingdom built to be looked at as much as ruled.

A restless king slips away in disguise

For all this splendor, by the time he reached thirty Vikram found himself a staid, settled, slightly bored middle-aged monarch, fond enough of most of his many sons — though pointedly not of his eldest, who had begun to behave as though the succession were already his by right. Then, without much warning even to himself, the old restlessness returned. I must visit those countries of whose names I am ever hearing, he decided — though the honest truth, the chronicler admits, was that he meant to spy out the lands of his enemies in disguise and learn how best to break them later. Having settled the matter in his own mind, Vikram handed the government of Ujjayani to his younger brother Bhartari Raja, dressed himself as a wandering religious mendicant, and set out from city to city and forest to forest with only his second son, Dharma Dhwaj — a boy just reaching the edge of manhood — for company. It was a strange abdication for so suspicious a ruler to trust to anyone, however loved, and it would not go untested.

The regent's old grief resurfaces

Bhartari Raja, left holding the kingdom, was by temperament a melancholy man, having lost in his youth a wife of unusual devotion. Out hunting one day he had passed a funeral pyre where a Brahman's widow was becoming a sati with great fortitude, and told the story that evening to his own wife, Sita Rani, who answered that a truly virtuous woman dies of grief for her husband, not merely of the flames. To test her, the prince rode out again, then sent his attendants home with his robes torn and bloodied, claiming he had died by accident. Sita perished on the spot, exactly as she had promised, and her husband — who had engineered the whole cruel experiment himself — was left inconsolable, though the chronicler notes with some acid, only for a time. He remarried, took up the duties of a Raja with scrupulous, joyless correctness, and settled into a life so thoroughly regulated by scripture and self-denial that he began, not unreasonably, to think of himself as something of a philosopher.

A quietist king and his favored minister

Bhartari Raja governed as his brother had trained him to, rising before dawn to bathe, pray, and honor the Brahmans before ascending his own more modest throne — one distinguished only by a peacock-feather umbrella — to judge his people gently and receive petitioners with soft words. He kept lust, anger, avarice, and pride carefully in check, avoided the pleasures of gaming, dancing, and the chase, and met each evening with his ministers in some quiet, womanless retreat to talk business. Having little imagination and fewer strong passions of his own, he prized above all one particular friend: Mahi-pala, a nobleman of shining ability, popular, eloquent, fearless, well-traveled — and, as the old law-books recommend a good councillor should be, remarkably handsome. Mahi-pala became his ambassador for war and peace both, the one intimate the philosopher-regent allowed himself in an otherwise dutifully solitary life. It was, on paper, an ideal arrangement of trust and competence. Fate, or rather Kama, the flower-armed god of desire who has humbled gods greater than any regent, had other plans for the household.

A queen of dangerous, unrequited beauty

For among Bhartari's several wives was one, Dangalah Rani, of a beauty the poets could barely contain: her face a full moon in a clear sky, her hair the purple monsoon cloud, her complexion outshining the palest jasmine, her eyes those of a timid antelope, her lips red as a pomegranate bud and sweeter, when parted, than any fountain of ambrosia. Before her the warrior laid down his arms and the politician confessed his every secret; the devout prince would have slaughtered a sacred cow — the one unforgivable sin — to spare one of her eyelashes, and the sober, self-disciplined philosopher would have danced before her like a common singing-girl for the shadow of her smile. So it was, at least, with Bhartari Raja, who loved her past all reason or dignity. But love, the old saying warns, does not reliably breed love in return, and Dangalah Rani found her husband's devotion less a gift than an affliction — his warmth annoying her, his vows giving her headaches, his very caresses running cold through her blood like a fever she could not shake.

The queen's heart wanders elsewhere

Naturally, the doting Bhartari noticed nothing of his wife's true feelings, being far too absorbed in admiring what he took for coyness and coquetry in her coldness. And since — the chronicler observes, with the weary cynicism of a man who has read a great many such stories — women must give their hearts away whether asked or not, Dangalah Rani lost little time lavishing hers upon Mahi-pala, the same handsome ambassador her husband trusted above all men. For a while the arrangement suited everyone tolerably well: the regent adored a wife who did not love him, the wife adored a minister who accepted her love gladly, and the minister enjoyed both the queen's affection and the king's confidence at once. Such a structure, built as it was on a foundation of mutual deception, could not last, and its collapse — when it came — arrived by the strangest possible route: not through a jealous rival or a discovered letter, but through the pious excesses of an elderly, half-starved beggar and his far more practical wife.

An old couple's reward for extreme piety

In the city of Ujjayani, within sight of the palace, there lived an old and poor Brahman and his wife who, having nothing better to occupy their remaining years, threw themselves into devotion of an almost unbelievable severity: fasting, standing on their heads, holding their arms in the air for weeks on end, praying until their knees calloused like leather, scourging themselves with wire, walking naked through the cold season and sitting inside rings of burning wood through the heat, until even the lesser gods of the lower heavens grew envious of their discipline. For such extraordinary piety a celestial messenger at last rewarded them with an apple of the tree Kalpavriksha — a fruit that confers eternal life on whoever eats it. It should have been the happy ending of their long ordeal. Instead, no sooner had the messenger vanished than the old Brahman opened his toothless mouth to eat it — and his wife, weeping copiously, stopped him with an argument that would send that single apple on one of the strangest journeys of any piece of fruit in literature.

A wife's tears redirect eternal life

To die, she told him, is a passing pain; to be poor is an interminable anguish. Surely, she reasoned, their wretched poverty was punishment for some great sin in a former life — so what use was mere deathlessness to two people already sunk in misery? Better, she said, quoting the poet, to die loved in youth than hated in age; and besides, if the fruit could not restore his failing eyes, his deaf ears, his blunted taste and cooled blood, what good was it to either of them? The old man, persuaded, very nearly hurled the sacred fruit into the fire in disgust — at which point his wife, having gotten exactly the outcome she wanted, snatched it from his hand before it could be wasted and revealed her actual plan: he should carry it instead to the palace, present it to the Regent with a suitably reverent blessing, since King Vikram himself was away, and — she was careful to add — demand a large sum of money in return, for the sake of both their present and their future welfare.

A fortune in gold for a single fruit

The Brahman did exactly as instructed, presenting himself before Bhartari Raja and explaining, with rehearsed humility, the miraculous nature of his gift: O mighty prince, accept this tribute and bestow wealth upon me, I shall be happy in your living long. Bhartari, delighted, led him into an inner strong-room heaped with fine gold dust and told him to carry away as much as he could hold, which the old man did with great enthusiasm, not neglecting to stuff even his own toothless, eloquent mouth with the precious metal before staggering home under the weight of his reward. The Regent, meanwhile, carried the fruit straight to the apartments of his wives, summoned his beloved Dangalah Rani, and pressed it into her hands with all the tenderness of a man who has never once suspected his wife of anything. Eat this, light of my eyes, he told her. This fruit, joy of my heart, will make thee everlastingly young and beautiful. It was, under the circumstances, a rather touching gesture — and entirely wasted on its recipient.

The apple begins its secret circuit

The lovely queen, placing both hands on her husband's chest and kissing his eyes and lips with a tenderness the chronicler dryly attributes to the guile of women, begged him sweetly to eat the fruit himself, or at least share it — for what, she asked, is life or youth without the presence of those we love? Bhartari, moved nearly to tears by this unaccustomed warmth, gently refused, explained that the fruit's magic worked for only one person, and left the room satisfied. The moment he was gone, Dangalah Rani — still smiling just as sweetly — pocketed the apple, and at the next opportunity, while her husband sat occupied in the hall of audience, sent for Mahi-pala and gave the fruit to him with at least as much tenderness as it had been given to her. Mahi-pala, in turn, pocketed it, left the queen's presence, and — meeting one of the palace maids of honor, a girl named Lakha, whom he happened also to be courting — explained the fruit's wonderful power and gave it to her as a token of his love.

The gift returns to where it began

Lakha, however, proved more ambitious than sentimental. Recognizing at once that an apple of eternal youth was exactly the kind of present that flatters a regent in his own king's absence, she carried it straight back to Bhartari Raja, who — quite unaware he was receiving his own gift for the second time — accepted it graciously, rewarded her handsomely, and dismissed her with thanks. Only then, turning the fruit over in his hands, did the full shape of his misfortune assemble itself in his mind. His heart broke inside him; a loathing for the whole deceitful world rose in his throat. Of what value, he asked himself, are these delusions of wealth and affection, whose sweetness lasts a moment and turns to eternal bitterness? What is love but a drunkard's cup — delicious at the first drink, palling as it continues, and most bitter in the dregs? It is a fine speech, and not an unreasonable one, from a man who has just traced a single piece of fruit through his wife, his best friend, and his own maid of honor, and arrived back exactly where he started.

A queen's lie, a king's terrible verdict

Even so, before abandoning the world entirely, Bhartari could not resist one last confrontation. He summoned Dangalah Rani and asked, quite simply, what had become of the fruit he had given her. Without hesitation she answered that she had eaten it exactly as commanded. Bhartari then produced the very apple, and watching his wife's face go rigid with horror at the sight of it — unable to muster a single word in her own defense — he gave the order, calmly and without further argument, for her beheading. Then he went out, had the fruit washed clean, and ate it himself. That done, he set aside the throne entirely, took up the garb and life of a wandering jogi, and vanished into the jungle without a word to anyone — becoming, in time, so complete a devotee that death itself lost its power over him, wandering still, or, some say, absorbed at last into the very essence of the Divine. It left Ujjayani's throne standing empty at the precise moment its rightful king, far off in disguise, had no idea anything at all was wrong.

A giant guards the empty throne

Word of the vacant seat reached Indra, King of Heaven and Protector of Earthly Monarchs, who dispatched a fierce giant named Prithwi Pala to stand watch over Ujjayani night and day until its rightful master returned. And return Vikram eventually did — not out of any premonition of his brother's fate, but simple weariness. Within the year he had grown thoroughly tired of wandering the woods half-dressed, alternately starving and hunted by wild beasts; he reflected, too, that he owed his wives and children better, that an unwatched heir-apparent could do considerable damage left to his own devices, and that whoever now sat his throne might not, for all he knew, be equal to the trust. Having by now also thoroughly spied out the strengths and weaknesses of every rival kingdom — the actual purpose of his long absence — he judged the expedition complete. When rumor reached him that Bhartari had abdicated and vanished into the forest, Vikram turned to his son and said simply, We have ended our wayfarings, now let us turn our steps homewards. Homeward, it turned out, held one final obstacle.

A monstrous challenge at midnight

It was midnight, the city gong tolling its mysterious hour, when Vikram and Dharma Dhwaj approached the great gate of Ujjayani and found their way blocked by a monstrous shape rising up out of the darkness. Who are ye, and where are ye going, it roared. Stand and deliver your names. I am Raja Vikram, the king answered, half choking with fury at being challenged at his own threshold, and I am come to mine own city. Who art thou that darest to stop me? That is easily answered, replied Prithwi Pala — for it was he — in his great booming voice. The gods have sent me to guard Ujjayani. If thou be truly Raja Vikram, prove it: fight me first, and then return to what is thine. It was, for a king who had spent a year in humble disguise and was in no mood for further humiliation, precisely the wrong thing to say to precisely the wrong man. Vikram cried Sadhu, wanting, in truth, nothing better, cinched his girdle tight, and stepped into the open ground beyond the gate to settle the matter with his fists.

Father and son wrestle a giant to earth

It was no easy contest. The giant's fists were large as watermelons, his knotted arms whistling through the air like falling trees with every blow, and each time he struck he loosed a whoop so abominable that no ordinary nerve could stay steady beneath it — while Vikram, for his part, barely reached the creature's stomach with the crown of his head. But luck turned at last: the giant's foot slipped on the wet ground, and Vikram seized the other leg to trip him further off balance, while young Dharma Dhwaj, rushing in to help his father, jumped viciously onto the giant's bare, exposed toes. Between the two of them they brought the monster crashing down — the boy sitting his full weight upon its stomach, the king clambering up to straddle its throat and press both thumbs hard against its eyes, threatening blindness if it would not yield. O Raja, the giant cried at last, his voice gone suddenly meek, thou hast overthrown me, and I grant thee thy life. Vikram, half laughing and half still furious, was not in a mood to be thanked for mercy he had not asked for.

The giant offers a warning instead of a fight

Surely thou art mad, monster, Vikram sneered from his perch atop the giant's throat. To whom grantest thou life? If I wished it, I could kill thee this instant — how, then, dost thou talk of granting me mine? Vikram of Ujjayani, the giant answered steadily, be not too proud. I mean to save thee from a nearly impending death. Only hearken to the tale I have to tell, use thy judgment upon it, and act accordingly — so shalt thou rule the world free from care, live without danger, and die happily. Something in the giant's tone — no longer a challenger's roar but something graver — checked the king's temper. Proceed, he said after a moment's thought, dismounting from the giant's throat and settling in to listen with, as the chronicler puts it, all his ears. Prithwi Pala raised himself to a sitting position amid the mud and began, in solemn tones, to unfold a history stranger than anything Vikram had encountered even in a year of wandering disguised through the lands of his enemies.

Three men, one fate, born the same hour

In short, the giant began, three men were born in this same city of Ujjayani, in the same lunar mansion, in the same division of the ecliptic, at the very same moment. Thou, the first, wast born in the house of a king. The second was an oilman's son, slain by the third — a jogi, an anchorite who kills all he can reach, offering the sweet scent of human sacrifice to Durga, goddess of destruction. That holy man, having compassed the oilman's son's death, has hung the body head-downward from a mimosa tree in a cemetery, and is even now plotting thy own destruction. He hath murdered his own child besides. Vikram, startled out of his listening silence, could not help but interrupt. And how, he demanded, came an anchorite to have a child at all? It was a fair question, and one the giant seemed to have been waiting for, for he settled more comfortably against the mud and answered, that is exactly what I am about to tell thee, before unspooling a story that reached back into the reign of Vikram's own father.

A buried ascetic astonishes the old king

In the good days of thy generous father Gandharba-Sena, the giant continued, the court, taking its pleasure in the forest, came upon a devotee — or rather, a devotee's head — protruding from a hole in the ground, his body long since sealed in a case of earth by industrious white ants. Insects and small animals crawled over his face without disturbing a single muscle; wasps had built their nests against his temples, scorpions wandered freely through his matted hair, and only the faint movement of his nostrils, drawing in the smoke of a thorn fire, proved he still lived at all. He spoke to no one, accepted no gifts, and seemed less a man than a monument to what devotion could do to a body. Thy father marveled at the sight for the rest of the day, could speak of nothing else that evening in his hall of audience, and at last, his curiosity overtaking his patience, proclaimed a reward of a hundred gold pieces to whoever could bring this astonishing anchorite bodily into his court.

A dancing girl accepts an impossible dare

It was Vasantasena, the giant went on, a singing and dancing girl rather better known for her wit and her beauty than for her discretion, who stepped forward and offered — for the modest fee of a single gold bangle — to bring the anchorite into the palace herself, carrying a baby on his shoulder besides. Thy father, astonished at such confidence, handed her a betel leaf in token of holding her to the wager, and let her go with a laugh of triumph still on her lips. She went directly into the jungle and found the holy man exactly as described: faint with thirst, shriveled with hunger, half dead between the heat of the day and the cold of the night. Cautiously she extinguished his sacred fire. Then, working from behind where he could not see her, she rubbed a little prepared sweetmeat upon his lips, which — starved as he was — he licked up with unmistakable relish, unaware that his long austerity had just met its match in a girl with a confection and a wager to win.

Sweetmeats undo years of holy discipline

Two days of this generous feeding restored some strength to the ascetic, and on the third day, feeling a finger against his lips, he opened his eyes at last and asked, why hast thou come here? Vasantasena, ready with her story, answered, I am the daughter of a deity, and have practiced religious observances in the heavenly regions; I have now come into this forest. The devotee, beginning already to think — as men so often do — that such company might be rather more pleasant than solitude, asked to be shown her dwelling. She led him, once she had persuaded him to purify himself properly, to a hut she had built for herself in the wood, explaining its considerable luxuries as bound up in her vow, which required her to indulge in fine clothing, richly flavored food, and every comfort besides. In time the hermit followed her example entirely: he gave up his sacred smoke, took up eating and drinking as a daily occupation, and — inevitably, the chronicler notes — Kama the god of desire soon found him too.

Saint and singer become husband and wife

Saint and saintess, the giant said, were before long made man and wife by the simple rite called Gandharbavivaha — a marriage by mutual consent alone, without ceremony, witnessed only by the heavenly minstrels who give the rite its name — and some ten months later a son was born to them. So it was that an anchorite came to have a child at all, a fact which had puzzled thee only a moment ago. But Vasantasena's cleverest stroke was still to come. Some months after the birth she turned to her husband and said, O saint, let us now, our devotions finished, make a pilgrimage to some sacred place, that the sins of our bodies may be washed away, after which we may die together and pass into everlasting happiness. Cajoled by this pious-sounding proposal, the hermit mounted his infant son upon his shoulder and followed her wherever she led — which turned out to be directly into the halls of King Gandharba-Sena's own palace, the very place where the whole strange bargain had begun.

The court mocks a broken man's pride

The king and his ministers and courtiers, seeing Vasantasena arrive with her spouse and his infant burden, recognized her instantly. Lo, the Raja exclaimed, this is the very singing girl who went to fetch the devotee. And the court, gathering around her, cried out with delight, O great monarch, thou speakest truly — and observe, whatever she undertook to do, she hath done. They pressed her with questions, treating the whole extraordinary seduction as the lightest, most laughable thing in the world. But the anchorite, overhearing their mockery, understood it very differently. They have done this, he thought, to rob me of the fruits of my penance. Cursing them all with terrible curses, he snatched up his child and stormed from the hall, fled to the forest, and there — in a rage that would outlast his own lifetime — began slaughtering innocents and practicing austerities aimed at nothing but revenge. It was the moment, the giant told Vikram gravely, that set in motion everything that had since befallen the royal house of Ujjayani.

A father's rage becomes a curse on kings

Having slain his own child in his fury, the giant said, the ascetic set himself, through years of terrible austerity, toward one single purpose: destroying the line of the king whose court had mocked him. His prayers — and the gods, it must be said, hear the prayers of the malicious as readily as those of the pious — have already been answered twice over. First they took thy father from the world. Second, they cast enmity between thyself and thy own brother, dooming him in turn to an untimely end. And now, third, they are working thy ruin outright: the anchorite intends to offer up a king and a king's son together to his patroness Durga, and by virtue of so terrible a sacrifice, to claim the sovereignty of the entire world for himself. That is the man who now hunts thee, Vikram, disguised as whatever he must be to draw thee within reach — and it is why I stopped thee tonight, at thine own gate, before thou couldst walk unwarned into his hands.

A giant's parting counsel, then silence

But I have promised to save thee from this impending destruction, if Fortune wills it, the giant said, his roaring voice quieted now to something almost gentle. Therefore hearken well to my words: distrust them that dwell among the dead, and remember always that it is lawful and right to strike off the head of him that would slay thee. Do this, and thou shalt rule the whole earth, and leave behind an immortal name. And with that, as abruptly as he had first reared up out of the darkness, Prithwi Pala the giant fell silent and vanished entirely, leaving father and son alone once more before the gate of their own city. Vikram and Dharma Dhwaj passed through into Ujjayani, running careful hands over their own limbs to make sure no bones had been broken in the struggle, each turning the strange scene over in his mind — the king already certain, though he said nothing of it yet, that somewhere out there an ash-smeared enemy was already watching for his chance.

A joyous homecoming, red with Holi's powders

It was spring when Vikram finally returned, and the whole city was already given over to the riot of the Holi festival — every house alive with music and dancing, every face and garment stained red and yellow with the perfumed powders thrown in celebration. Ujjayani, overjoyed at the return of her ruler, gave herself over entirely to the festivities, and Vikram, riding in amid a glittering procession of state palanquins, a hundred lesser kings in his train, cavalry and elephants and chariots and infantry drawn up in full array, and a guard of Amazon warrior-girls besides, joined in the gladness with his whole kingly heart, the white parasol of dominion held above him and the golden staff of office in his hand. It must have felt, after a year of hunger and disguise and wrestling giants at midnight gates, like waking from a long and complicated dream into exactly the life he had left behind — except that somewhere out beyond the city walls, an ash-smeared holy man with a very long memory was already waiting for him to settle back in.

Justice returns with an iron hand

Once the first pleasures of homecoming had passed, Vikram threw himself into good government with the same relentlessness he brought to everything else, rooting out the corruption that had crept in during his absence. He confiscated a corrupt councillor's property outright; branded the forehead of a servant caught drinking; had a fraudulent goldsmith cut to shreds with razors, as the law in its stated mercy required; and in the case of one notorious slanderer, had the back of his skull opened and his own tongue drawn out through the wound. A handful of murderers he burned alive on iron beds, praying piously all the while that Vishnu might show their souls the mercy he denied their bodies. His spies mingled with thieves to lure them into traps, and when a gang proved too wary for subtlety, he simply seized them, their relations, and impaled the lot — conclusively proving, as the chronicler puts it without much apparent irony, that he was indeed king of the earth.

Suspicion falls hardest on women

With women his justice ran no gentler. One convicted of poisoning an elderly husband to marry a younger man was thrown to the dogs and swiftly devoured; simple infidelity cost the offender her nose, a punishment the chronicler admires as both a fitting penalty and a standing warning to others; and faithlessness compounded by brazen shamelessness earned a public parade through the bazaar astride a small, crop-eared donkey, seated backward. After a few such examples, the women of Ujjayani grew almost modest — proof, the narrator notes dryly, that it is generally the fault of the men when they are not. And Vikram, trying causes daily from the judgment-seat, developed a signature interrogation technique of his own: whenever some crime struck him as more horrible than the usual run of wickedness, he would turn to the accused and demand simply, who is she — on the theory, apparently borne out often enough to seem uncanny, that nothing thoroughly bad happens in the world without some woman standing behind it.

A conqueror who could not conquer

For all his ferocious competence at home, Vikram's foreign wars went badly for years on end. He attacked city after city, town after town, only to have the local people rise as one against his armies and hew them to pieces, defeat following defeat until he had nearly despaired of ever bringing the whole earth under his umbrella. The turn came, unexpectedly, from a village woman he happened to overhear while passing through in disguise: baking cakes for her child, she scolded him for eating only the soft middle and discarding the crust, just like Vikram trying to conquer the world. Puzzled, the boy asked what she meant, and she explained that the king, like her son with his cake, kept striking straight at the rich center of a country while leaving its frontiers untouched — so that the untamed borderlands rose up behind his army and destroyed it every time. It was, from an overheard scrap of kitchen wisdom, exactly the strategic lesson a lifetime of court advisers had somehow failed to give him.

A peasant woman's lesson wins an empire

Vikram took the woman's words to heart in a way he rarely took anyone's advice. He rebuilt his army, and this time began his campaigns properly — subduing the frontier towns first, garrisoning each conquered strip of land before advancing further inward, reducing kingdom after kingdom in careful, methodical order rather than lunging for the glittering center. The new method worked exactly as the cake-cutting child had unwittingly predicted: with no untamed borderlands left at his back to rise against him, Vikram's armies swept forward unopposed, province by province, until at last he stood monarch of the entire known world. It is one of the story's quieter ironies that the strategic insight which finally won him the earth came not from any of his Nine Gems of Science, his spies, or his war councils, but from a single overheard remark about the proper way to eat a cake — proof, perhaps, of his own oft-repeated theory that wisdom turns up in the least expected corners, provided a man is paying close enough attention to catch it.

A stranger arrives bearing mysterious fruit

Sovereign now of the whole world, Vikram sat one day upon his judgment-seat when a young merchant calling himself Mal Deo, recently arrived in Ujjayani with camel-trains and elephants and a reputation for immense wealth, entered the court, placed a single fruit into the king's own hand, spread a prayer carpet, sat in silent devotion for a quarter of an hour, then rose and departed without another word. Something about the gesture nagged at Vikram once the man had gone. Under this disguise, he thought, perhaps is the very man of whom the giant spoke. He did not eat the fruit; instead he handed it to the master of his household with strict orders to keep it safely, and said nothing further. But Mal Deo did not take the hint. Day after day he returned to court, each time presenting an identical fruit with an identical silent devotion, until the royal storeroom held quite a small collection of them — and Vikram's suspicion, far from fading, only sharpened with each fresh gift.

A monkey reveals a fortune in rubies

The truth came out by accident. Touring his stables one morning with his ministers, Vikram received yet another fruit from the ever-present Mal Deo and, tossing it thoughtfully in his hand, let it slip and fall to the ground — where a monkey tethered among the horses, kept there by ancient custom to draw misfortune onto its own head rather than the animals', snatched it up and tore it open. Out tumbled a ruby of such size and water that king and ministers alike gasped aloud at its brilliance. Why, Vikram demanded of the merchant at once, his suspicions now thoroughly roused, hast thou given us all this wealth? Mal Deo answered with maddening composure that scripture forbids approaching kings, teachers, judges, and young maidens empty-handed — and asked, almost reproachfully, why the king spoke of only one ruby, when every single fruit he had ever presented concealed an identical jewel inside it. Vikram sent at once for every fruit still in the treasurer's keeping, had them all split open, and found a perfect ruby nestled inside each one.

A fortune too vast to name a price

Delighted despite himself, Vikram summoned a lapidary to appraise the hoard, remarking, with a philosophical flourish rather at odds with his usual bluntness, that a man carries nothing out of this world but his virtue, so the jeweler had better value the stones justly. The lapidary, matching piety with piety, agreed that virtue indeed accompanies a man everywhere and profits him in both worlds — before getting to the actual point: each gem was so flawless in color and quality that naming a price in mere millions of gold pieces would still fall short of its true worth; each ruby alone, he said, could purchase one of the seven regions of the earth. Vikram rewarded him with a robe of honor and sent him off, his suspicions unsatisfied even as his wonder grew. Then, taking Mal Deo's hand himself, he led the merchant into the palace, seated him on his own carpet before the assembled court, and demanded to know — plainly now, kingdom's-worth of jewels notwithstanding — exactly why a mere trader in goods had been showering him with treasure enough to buy the world twice over.

Secrets meant for only two ears

Mal Deo demurred, with the elaborate discretion of a man clearly enjoying the suspense he was creating. Matters like this — prayers, spells, drugs, household secrets, and a neighbor's private sins — were not fit for open assembly, he said; there was an old proverb that a secret told to six ears is no secret at all, one told to four might still escape notice, but one confided to only two ears even Bramha the Creator himself would never learn. Privately, he promised, he would explain everything. Vikram, his patience and his curiosity both stretched thin by now, drew the young merchant aside and pressed him directly: You have given me such riches, and not once eaten so much as a meal at my table — I am ashamed before you. Tell me plainly what it is you want. It was, at last, the question Mal Deo had been so patiently engineering all along, and he did not waste the opening.

The merchant reveals his true name

Raja, the young man said, dropping his merchant's disguise at last, I am not Mal Deo, but Shanta-Shil — a devotee. I intend to perform spells and incantations on the banks of the river Godavari, in a great smashana, a cemetery where bodies are burned, that the Eight Powers of Nature may all become mine. This I ask of thee as alms: that thou and thy young son Dharma Dhwaj pass one single night with me there, doing whatever I bid. Your presence alone will make my incantations succeed. At the word cemetery Vikram very nearly started from his seat — for whatever else the man's face concealed, that single word confirmed everything the giant Prithwi Pala had warned him of at the city gate. But a king who rules the world does not show fear before a supplicant, however dangerous, and Vikram mastered his features, and after only the briefest pause replied evenly, good, we will come, tell us on what day.

A promise made, a trap accepted knowingly

Come armed, but without followers, Shanta-Shil instructed, on Monday evening, the fourteenth of the dark half of the month Bhadra. Vikram repeated the promise plainly — go your ways, we will certainly come — and the devotee, satisfied, took his leave, returning first to his own house and then to a temple to make his preparations before retreating once more into the cemetery to resume his ceremonies. Vikram, for his part, withdrew alone into an inner chamber to weigh the strange bargain in private, unwilling — out of a proud man's fear of ridicule, the chronicler suggests, rather than any real uncertainty — to share the adventure even with his most trusted ministers. He already understood, better than his host supposed, exactly what kind of night he had just agreed to walk into: not a devotee's harmless ritual, but very likely his first direct encounter with the ash-smeared anchorite who had sworn, years before this, to end his family's line entirely.

Father and son slip out at nightfall

When the appointed evening came at last — the fourteenth of the dark half of Bhadra — Vikram and Dharma Dhwaj tied their turbans close under their chins, tucked trusted blades beneath their arms against enemies human, animal, or worse, and slipped out through a side gate of the palace unseen, taking the road toward the cemetery on the river bank. The night that received them was dark and drear in the extreme: gusts from the tail end of the winter rains drove masses of dark cloud like unwieldy beasts across the sky, and the thin crescent moon, whenever it broke through, gave no more light than the pale tip of an elephant's tusk glimpsed beneath muddy water. A storm was plainly gathering; heavy drops fell from groaning trees even before it broke, and the bare clayey ground beneath the avenue gleamed a ghostly white in the intermittent moonlight. It was, in short, exactly the kind of night on which sensible men stay indoors — which made it, naturally, exactly the night Vikram had promised to be out in it.

A cemetery alive with every horror imaginable

A faint ray of light at last drew them toward the burning-ground, where Vikram hesitated only a moment before its unclean earth before advancing regardless, covering his mouth with the end of his turban and stepping over scattered bones with his son close behind, undismayed. What awaited them at the far end of the smashana defied easy description: an outer ring of monstrous beasts — roaring tigers, trumpeting elephants, wolves whose foul coats crawled with bluish phosphorescent sparks as they tore at human remains, foxes and jackals squabbling over the same prey, bears calmly chewing the livers of dead children — and within that circle, a whole population of restless spirits: subtle bodies still prowling the ashes of their own cremation, ghosts of the murdered wandering with gashed limbs, skeletons held together by blackened sinew trailing their victims like debts still owed, witches with shriveled skin and distorted eyes crouching low over the earth, and spectres tall as palm trees leaping and tumbling in fits before the man who had summoned them all — while the storm-wind moaned, owls hooted, jackals wailed, and the swollen river gurgled its own hoarse accompaniment beneath it all.

The jogi at the center, drumming on a skull

In the middle of this whole shrieking assembly, lit by the fire that threw shadows across his evil countenance, sat Shanta-Shil himself — clad in the ochre loin-cloth of his order, his tangled hair streaming like horsehair from his skull, his black body striped in chalk, a girdle of thigh-bones circling his waist, his face smeared with ashes from a funeral pyre, and his fixed, statue-still eyes gleaming with an infernal hatred that needed no further introduction. His sectarian mark, drawn with careful precision across his shaven cheeks, was made of blood rather than the customary paste — and as Vikram drew closer, he saw that the man was making his devil-music quite literally, playing upon a human skull with two shank-bones, keeping time for the whole horrid revelry around him. It was a sight to test even a bold man's nerve, but Vikram — brave as he had shown himself against a giant at his own gate, and equally cautious — merely saluted the jogi courteously, as a guest fulfilling a promise, and waited to see what would be asked of him.

A king weighs murder against his given word

For one long moment, as Shanta-Shil briefly bid them come, sit down, both of ye, Vikram's hand strayed toward the memory of the giant's advice: that it is lawful and right to strike off the head of any man who would slay you, and a single stroke of his good sword might end the whole danger then and there. But he had given his royal word to do the devotee's bidding for this one night, and some deeper instinct told him the true moment for action had not yet arrived. So father and son sat down as bidden, entirely unmoved — at least outwardly — by the devil-dances swirling around them, and Vikram, once the courtesies were observed, reminded his host plainly that he had come to keep his promise, and asked what commands there were for him. Shanta-Shil's answer, when it came, was almost disappointingly mundane for so monstrous a setting: a simple errand, he said, about two kos to the south, where another cemetery held a mimosa tree — and on that tree hung a body he wanted fetched immediately.

Into the storm to fetch a hanging corpse

Vikram took his son's hand — unwilling to leave the boy alone in such company even for a moment — snatched up a firebrand, and set off at once in the direction indicated, by now entirely certain that Shanta-Shil was the very anchorite the giant had warned him of, his enemy's father wronged so long ago at Gandharba-Sena's court. His only thought, as he strode into the dark repeating an old proverb to himself, was to breakfast upon his enemy before his enemy could dine on him. Behind them the jogi's skull-drum resumed its tattoo, and the crowd of devils, which had fallen briefly silent during the audience, broke out again into whoops and screams and laughter as father and son departed. The storm, which had only threatened before, now broke in earnest: the clouds opened as though they meant never to close again, lightning split the sky brighter than day, and thunder shook the ground beneath their feet, while baleful lights flickered like fireflies over the black cones of the trees ahead of them.

Goblins and serpents obstruct every step

The road to the second cemetery tested even Vikram's famous resolve. Unclean goblins dogged their footsteps and flung themselves down directly in the travelers' path; huge snakes, their mouths dripping blood and black venom, coiled repeatedly around their legs on the worst stretches of ground, loosening their grip only when cut away by the sword or driven off by a muttered spell. The noise and tumult of it all, the chronicler admits, would have made even a genuinely brave man falter — yet the king pressed on regardless, until at last, having somehow crossed the worst of the difficult road, he arrived at the smashana the jogi had described. There, ahead of him, a single tree stood out from root to crown wrapped entirely in a blaze of crimson flame, every branch and leaf alight without being consumed. And as Vikram advanced toward it undaunted, a fresh clamor rose from the darkness around him — voices shrieking kill them, seize them, take care they do not escape, let them scorch to cinders, let them suffer the pains of Patala — which, far from frightening him, only seemed to sharpen his resolve to finish the errand.

A strange body hangs head-downward from the flames

Approaching the burning tree, Vikram found — to his considerable relief — that its fire did not burn him at all, and he sat for a while beneath it studying the body that hung, head downward, from a branch just above his reach. Its wide-open eyes were a greenish-brown that never blinked; its hair and its face shared three subtly different shades of brown that somehow, unpleasantly, resembled each other, like the mismatched layers of an over-dried coconut. Its ribbed, skeletal body clung to the bough by its toe-tips alone, like some monstrous flying fox, its drawn muscles standing out like ropes of coir; its skin, when Vikram touched it, felt icy and clammy as a snake's, seemingly bloodless entirely — and the only sign that it lived at all was the faint, restless whisking of a ragged little tail, uncannily like a goat's. From these unmistakable signs, the king concluded at once what he was looking at: not merely a corpse, but a Baital — a Vampire — inhabiting the very body of the murdered oilman's son the giant had described to him at the gate.

A struck bough, a captured prize — briefly

Puzzled only for a moment by how a corpse could look so unlike an oilman's actual son, Vikram quickly reasoned that his cunning enemy had simply altered its shape to further deceive him — jogis, after all, being famous for exactly such tricks — and this satisfied him well enough. My trouble has been productive of fruit, he told himself with some satisfaction, and set about the task of actually delivering his prize. Ordering Dharma Dhwaj to stand well clear, he climbed the burning tree fearlessly, seized the Vampire by its hair, and struck the branch through with a single blow of his sword, sending the whole bundle crashing to the ground below — where it immediately began gnashing its teeth and wailing like an injured infant. Vikram, hearing the sound, was rather pleased than alarmed: this devil must be alive, he told himself, and slid nimbly back down the trunk to take his captive properly in hand, demanding without preamble, who art thou? It was, as it turned out, exactly the wrong question to ask before securing his grip.

The prize slips away laughing, again and again

No sooner had the royal question left his lips than the Vampire slithered clean through Vikram's fingers like a worm, gave a great shout of laughter, and rose bodily into the air legs-first to hang once more, swinging merrily to and fro from its own cachinnations, from a different bough entirely. Decidedly this is the young oilman, Vikram exclaimed, standing open-mouthed for a full minute before climbing the tree a second time, wrenching the creature loose with both hands — genuinely angry now — and dashing it down again with the same demand: O wretch, tell me who thou art. This time he had positioned Dharma Dhwaj to seize the thing the instant it touched ground, and the boy managed to fasten his grip on its neck — to no avail. Laughing exactly as before, the Baital slipped through their combined fingers and returned once more to its dangling perch, entirely unbothered by the growing indignity of the whole procedure, while father and son stood below growing steadily less amused by the joke.

Five failed attempts test a king's patience

To fail twice was already more than Vikram's proud, hot temper could easily stomach. This third time he ordered his son to strike the Baital's head outright with his sword the instant it fell, while he himself, climbing the tree once more with the fury of a wounded bear rather than the dignity of an emperor, aimed a furious blow at the creature's thin, calfless legs — a stroke violent enough to loosen its toe-hold and send it tumbling, whereupon Dharma Dhwaj's blade duly crashed down onto its matted hair. Neither stroke seemed to land on anything softer than iron-wood, for at the very sound of the same fatal question — who art thou — the Baital simply returned, gleeful as ever, to its old branch. Five separate times in all did Vikram repeat this apparently fruitless labor, and yet — remarkably, given how thoroughly the joke was now on him — he did not lose heart. He had, if anything, entered fully into the spirit of the contest, ready by his own account to climb that tree six times sixty times, or until the end of the present age, if extreme resolution were what the task required.

Even the gods yield to sheer stubbornness

Extreme resolution, as it happened, was not required quite that long. On the seventh fall, the Baital — rather than eluding its captor's grasp yet again — allowed itself to be seized outright, remarking only, with the air of a creature conceding a wager rather than a war, that even the gods cannot resist a thoroughly obstinate man. Seeing the king strip off his own waist-cloth to fashion a makeshift bag for better carrying his prize, the Vampire judged the moment ripe to negotiate the most favorable terms available to it, and asked its captor — with more courtesy than it had shown in six prior escapes — who he was, and what exactly he intended to do with him. Vile wretch, the breathless king answered, know me to be Vikram the Great, Raja of Ujjayani, and I bear thee to a man who amuses himself drumming to devils on a human skull. It was the first real exchange of the whole long chase, and the Baital, listening, seemed to find in it exactly the opening it had been waiting for all along.

The vampire consents — and sets his own terms

Remember the old saying, mighty Vikram, the Baital replied, with an audible sneer, that many a tongue has cut many a throat. I have yielded to thy resolution, and I am content to accompany thee, slung to thy back like a beggar's wallet. But hear me out before we set off. I am, I confess, of a rather loquacious disposition, and it is nearly an hour's walk from this tree to the place where thy friend sits, favoring his companions with the particular music they love so well. I mean to distract my own thoughts along the way — which otherwise might turn to matters far less pleasant — with a few sprightly tales and some profitable reflections of my own. Sages and men of sense, after all, spend their days delighting in literature both light and heavy, while only dolts and fools waste their time in sleep and idleness. And so, as we walk, I intend to put to thee a certain number of questions — concerning which, if it please thee, let us settle between us a proper covenant before we take a single step.

The vampire lays down the rule of the game

Here is my proposal, the Baital continued, warming visibly to the subject. Whenever thou answerest me — whether compelled by Fate, tricked into it by my own cunning, or simply moved by thine own vanity and conceit, eager to display thy cleverness — in that same instant I shall leave thee where thou standest and fly straight back to my favorite branch in the siras-tree, and thou shalt be put to the trouble of returning for me all over again. But whenever thou remainest silent — confused, at a loss for an answer, whether from humility or from a plain confession of thine own ignorance and want of comprehension — then, and only then, will I permit myself, of my own free will, to be carried onward and placed before thy waiting friend. Perhaps I ought not say it so plainly; it sounds rather like bribery. But take my counsel all the same: mortify thy pride and thine arrogance as swiftly as thou canst, for only by doing so wilt thou gain the one benefit that only I can give thee.

A king winces at such insolence in his ear

Vikram, hearing such rough and needling speech directed at him — a king who ruled the entire earth — winced visibly at words so strange to his royal ear, and felt, in the same breath, a flicker of relief that his proud heir-apparent was nowhere near to witness the insult. He turned at once to look at Dharma Dhwaj, half expecting to catch the boy smirking with exactly the kind of impertinent amusement the moment invited. But the first glance told him otherwise: his son stood entirely absorbed in the unglamorous business of pinching and folding the Baital's stiff legs into a more manageable shape, so that the whole grim bundle might sit more comfortably in the makeshift cloth sack — too occupied with practical matters to have registered the vampire's insolence at all. Satisfied, Vikram gathered the ends of the waist-cloth, twisted them into a workable knot, hoisted the whole burden onto his shoulder with a single practiced jerk, told his son not to lag behind, and set off at a brisk pace toward the western edge of the cemetery, the terms of the covenant now sealed between them whether he liked it or not.

The storm breaks, and so does the silence

As they walked, the shower that had drenched the whole miserable night finally ceased, and the weather, mile by mile, began noticeably to improve — the wind dying, the worst of the cloud breaking apart overhead. It was the Baital, true to his word, who broke the quiet first, offering a few idle remarks about the wind, the rain, and the state of the muddy road behind them — small talk, transparently meant to draw the king into some careless reply. Vikram, wiser now than he had been climbing that tree seven separate times, said nothing at all. The silence plainly unsettled his passenger; a creature of a self-described loquacious disposition does not take easily to being ignored, and the Baital's discomfort grew with every unanswered remark, until at last, unable to bear it any longer, he abandoned the pretense of idle conversation altogether and came out with the words that would launch the very first of his famous tales: O King Vikram, listen to the true story which I am about to tell thee. And there, on the threshold of that story, this introduction to their long and curious contest comes to its proper close.