The king shoulders his silent burden once more

Through the smoking ground of the charnel field Vikram trudged again, the Baital slung in his grave-cloth across one shoulder, cold and grinning and utterly unrepentant of the seven tricks he had already played. Seven times the king had marched to the sorcerer's fire with his catch; seven times a careless word had sent the wretch flying back to his tree. And yet Vikram went a eighth time, jaw set, his son Dharma Dhwaj padding along beside him in the dark, because a vow once made does not release a man merely because he has been made a fool of. The Baital, dangling head-down and thoroughly delighted with the arrangement, wasted no time in breaking the silence himself. You are fond of stories, great Raja, so here is one worth the walking. It concerns two learned men, two magic pills, a princess, a treasurer's love-struck son, and a Brahman who was, for reasons of the heart, a girl for five months running. Listen, if your royal patience can bear a tale of the use and misuse of magic pills.

Spring turns a royal garden into paradise

In the city of Raja Subichar there lived a daughter named Chandraprabha, beautiful past the ordinary reckoning and of an age when fathers begin to worry. One day, as the season of Vasanta loosened its warm hold over the world, she went down with her companions into her father's pleasure-garden. Dark tamala boughs tangled with pale nim leaves; the pippal's shivering dome of foliage stood beside the columned aisles of the banyan; old forest patriarchs wore beards of hanging moss, and lianas swung rope-bridges from trunk to trunk for the monkeys. They came out into clearings bright with crimson asoka blossoms, blue cliterias, snow-white madhavis, and jasmine raining perfume on the grateful earth. Tall areca palms stood arrow-straight against the solid green pyramids of cypress. Bees droned low over orange dak flowers, water chattered along stucco channels between beds of poppies, and somewhere a kokila bird's sweet note answered the hoarse complaint of a hidden turtle-dove. The south wind, that famous accomplice of lovers, blew warm and heavy with the scent of narcissus and citron. It was, in short, exactly the kind of afternoon in which foolish and irreversible things happen to young hearts.

The princess who could push and never be pushed

The fair troop of girls gave themselves over entirely to the license of the season. They pelted one another with stolen blossoms, ran shrieking races down the broad smooth alleys, swung on silk ropes strung between the orange trees, embraced, teased, and made determined efforts to tip the least popular member of the party headlong into the fish-pond. Of them all, none played harder or laughed louder than Chandraprabha herself, for she alone among the company enjoyed the peculiar privilege of rank: she could shove and splash and mock every one of her friends exactly as she pleased, secure in the knowledge that not one of them would dare shove her back. It was a small tyranny, prettily worn, and it had made her, if anything, livelier and more reckless than the rest. The attendants, whose proper business was to seal the garden from every wandering eye before the princess so much as set foot in it, had not yet finished their rounds. Which oversight — as the Baital was pleased to note, watching Vikram's scowl deepen — is precisely how every good story about princesses gets started.

A sleeping stranger beneath the garden trees

Into this half-secured paradise had wandered, quite without malice or plan, a young man named Manaswi, a Brahman's son of remarkable good looks. He had come tired from walking, found a shaded, cool spot beneath a tree, and simply lain down and gone to sleep, unnoticed by any of the king's people who ought to have been guarding the gates. There he remained, dead to the world, while the princess and her friends shrieked and splashed and swung on their silken ropes not far away, none of them suspecting that a strange man lay dreaming within earshot of a king's daughter at play. It is worth pausing on how ordinary the moment was — a tired traveller asleep in the shade, nothing more — because everything that follows, the pills, the disguise, the double marriage, the whole enormous farce, springs from this one small, accidental trespass. Fate, the Baital observed with some satisfaction, rarely announces itself with fanfares. More often it simply falls asleep under the nearest tree and waits to be woken by the wrong footstep at the wrong hour.

Two strangers' eyes meet and both collapse

Weary of the games, Chandraprabha left her friends and went singing up the stairs of the summer-house alone. Her approaching footsteps roused Manaswi; he sat up, startled, and found himself staring directly into the face of a princess he had never seen in his life. She, in turn, saw a strange man where no man had any business being. Neither one screamed, neither one fled — because in that single instant their eyes had already met and done their damage. It was love at first sight, that phenomenon poets praise and cynics mock, and it struck both of them down at once: Manaswi fell back senseless where he sat, and Chandraprabha, trembling, crumpled to the floor of the summer-house in a dead faint. Nonsense, growled Vikram, who had suffered that particular freak of Kama Deva more than once himself and never once profited by it. I do not believe in love at first sight. And yet, O Raja, replied the Baital with dogmatic relish, there is such a thing — and I can even explain it to you, if you will only hold still and listen.

The vampire's learned theory of love at first sight

In olden times, the Baital continued, unasked, a certain philosopher discovered a fluid pervading all matter — self-repulsive as steam from a brass pot, and spreading as widely as the breath of scandal, yet also clinging to every substance it touches. He called it Ambericity, for no better reason than that it has nothing whatever to do with amber. Now, said he, when two bodies holding unequal measures of this fluid meet, a current passes between them, producing attraction, and when the charge is strong enough the effect is instantaneous. The vulgar call this love at first sight; the wise call it a phenomenon of ambericity. As for my own opinion — Either hold your tongue, fellow, or get on with the story, snapped Vikram, worn thin by nonsense that explained nothing whatsoever. The Baital, entirely unbothered, shrugged and obliged him — though not before noting, silently and with great satisfaction, that he had once again gotten several sentences out of the king for free, silence-vow or no silence-vow, merely by being sufficiently irritating about physics.

Attendants carry the fainted princess home

The commotion Chandraprabha's collapse caused was considerable. Her companions, discovering her senseless on the summer-house floor, gathered her up in a great fright, laid her in a litter, and bore her swiftly back to the palace, no one among them any the wiser as to what — or who — had caused it. Manaswi they never saw at all; he lay where he had fallen, beyond the reach of help, utterly overcome, his whole being extinguished by the single glance he had exchanged with a girl whose name he did not even know. He might have lain there until nightfall, or worse, had not two learned and famously purblind old Pandits, Muldev and Shashi by name, happened to wander into that same corner of the garden and stumble, quite literally, over his prostrate body. Neither man had the faintest notion what they had found — a corpse, a drunkard, a sleeper — until they bent down to look closer, and found instead a very handsome young Brahman, breathing, senseless, and clearly in the grip of something far more dangerous than illness.

Two old scholars debate whether to help at all

Friend, said Muldev, how came this youth to fall senseless on the ground? Doubtless, replied Shashi, ever the misanthrope, some damsel has loosed the arrows of her glances from the bow of her eyebrows, and thence he has become insensible. Then we must lift him up, said Muldev, already moving. What need is there to raise him? Shashi asked, entirely serious, and did not move an inch. Muldev, benevolent as ever and unmoved by his friend's philosophy, ignored him. He ran to the ornamental pond, soaked the end of his own waistcloth, sprinkled the water over the young man's face, and hauled him up against the garden wall to sit. When Manaswi's eyes opened and it became plain that his sickness lived in his heart rather than his body, the two old men — one tender, one hard, and both incurably curious — settled down to find out exactly what had happened to him, whether he wanted to tell them or not.

A lovesick youth confesses he will die

Manaswi at first would say nothing. We should tell our griefs only to those who can relieve them, he told the old men. What is gained by empty pity, by condolence that changes nothing? But Muldev's kindness wore him down, and at last he spoke. A certain princess entered this summer-house. From the sight of her alone I have fallen into this state. If I can win her, I shall live. If not, I shall die. Then, warming to his own catastrophe, he went on in the fevered, over-the-top style of every young man freshly struck by that endemic disease, the determination to marry: that woman was the chiefest jewel the Deity ever made, that wealth existed only for her sake, that a man without a wife was a beast in all but shape, and that where no wife is, happiness cannot follow. Vikram, hearing the demon recount this speech, muttered that it was exactly the sort of thing a Brahman's son suffering from terminal infatuation would say — curious to a king, but natural enough to the afflicted.

Muldev vows to win the princess for him

Whatever thou desirest, Muldev told the stricken youth, shall, by the blessing of heaven, be given thee. Manaswi seized on the promise at once and begged, most pathetically, that the Pandit bestow the princess upon him outright, as if love could simply be handed over like alms. Muldev, unbothered by the size of the request, agreed to do exactly that, comforted the trembling young man, and led him home to his own house, where he seated him politely on a carpet and excused himself for a few minutes with a promise to return. It is worth remembering, the Baital added, that Muldev's whole reputation rested on an inherited family secret meant to promote the welfare of mankind — a secret whose success, he always insisted, depended entirely on the purity and heart-wholeness of whoever came asking for his help. Which makes it worth asking, O Vikram, whether a lovestruck young man who has just fainted twice in one afternoon over a stranger's face is quite the picture of a pure and heart-whole petitioner. But Muldev asked no such question of himself.

The old man returns holding two small pills

When Muldev reappeared, he held in his palm two small round pills, and he explained their virtue with the gravity of a man handing over something considerably more dangerous than it looked. Placed in the mouth, he said, either pill would transform the swallower instantly into a girl of twelve years old; withdrawn again, it would restore his original shape just as instantly. But — and here his voice dropped into warning — the power existed only for good purposes; used wrongly, some great calamity would follow the misuser without fail. Take counsel of thyself, he told Manaswi, before undertaking this trial. What lover, the Baital asked pointedly, has ever hesitated at such a moment to swear himself the most innocent, earnest, and well-intentioned soul in all Three Worlds? Manaswi certainly did not hesitate. He swore his purity on the spot, and Muldev, entirely satisfied, placed one pill in the young man's mouth with strict instructions never to swallow it, and popped the other into his own.

A young Brahman becomes a girl, an old man ancient

The change came over them at once and completely. Manaswi, in the space of a breath, became a sprightly young maid of twelve; Muldev, in that same breath, withered into a reverend, decrepit old man of no fewer than eighty years, leaning already on the staff he had not needed a moment before. Neither of them wasted time admiring the transformation. Thus disguised — an ancient priest and his supposed young charge — the two of them set off together for the palace of Raja Subichar, pausing only to admire the splendour of its gate before passing, unannounced, through seven courts as beautiful as the paradise of Indra itself, straight into the hall where the king sat surrounded by his courtiers. It was, Vikram had to admit even to himself, an audacious plan — walking straight into a king's court wearing nothing but a borrowed face and a promise made to a fainting stranger under a garden tree. But audacity, as the whole miserable affair would eventually prove, was the one resource neither Pandit ever ran short of.

The false priest blesses an unsuspecting king

Raja Subichar, seeing what appeared to be a holy Brahman of great age enter his hall, rose at once, made the customary humble salutation, and led the supposed father and daughter to seats of honour. Muldev repaid the courtesy with a blessing of such polished eloquence that its beauty, the Baital swore, has been diffused over all creation ever since — invoking the deity who as a dwarf outwitted the great king Bali, who as a hero bridged the salt sea with an army of monkeys, and who as a shepherd lifted a whole mountain on his palm to shield his cowherds from heaven's own thunder. The Raja, thoroughly charmed and more than a little awed, asked whence his holiness had come. It was, Vikram muttered, a fine performance for a man who had been an ordinary Brahman's son with a fainting fit not twelve hours earlier — proof, if any were needed, that the making of an unimpeachable liar requires mainly confidence, a good blessing, and an audience too polite to ask hard questions.

A fabricated son, a fabricated famine, a fabricated favour

My country, Muldev told the king, lies north of the great mother Ganges, and there too is my dwelling. I travelled far and found in this maiden a worthy wife for my son, and was bringing her home when I learned that famine had scattered my village — my wife and son fled, I know not where. Encumbered with this girl, how can I search for them properly? Hearing of a ruler both pious and generous, I resolved to leave her in your charge until my return. Be pleased to take great care of her. It was a masterpiece of manufactured pathos, built from nothing but confidence and a captive audience, and it placed Subichar between two dangers he could not easily weigh: the awkward charge of a beautiful strange girl under his own roof, or the wrath of an insulted holy man and whatever curse he might leave behind him. He judged refusal the more dangerous of the two evils, raised his face, and agreed to everything the old Brahman asked of him.

Sita is placed in the princess's own keeping

Having secured the king's word, Muldev delivered a farewell benediction nearly as dazzling as his opening one, accepted the ceremonial betel offered to departing guests, and went his own way — leaving behind him, without a backward glance, the young man he had transformed only hours before. Subichar lost no time; he sent for his daughter Chandraprabha and instructed her that this girl, called Sita, was the affianced bride of a young Brahman, entrusted to his protection by her father-in-law, and that she was to be kept always at Chandraprabha's side — day and night, waking and sleeping, eating and travelling, never once out of reach. Chandraprabha, still pale from her own fainting fit and entirely unaware that fate had just delivered the very stranger she had fallen for straight into her own private rooms, took Sita's hand without suspicion and led her off to her apartments — apartments that had, since the garden incident, taken on the hushed, darkened, faintly medicinal air of a sickroom.

A princess confides her secret heartbreak to a stranger

Chandraprabha, despite her own private grief, treated her new companion with warm and unusual vivacity — whether because Sita had roguish, likeable eyes, or because some instinct told her something was about to happen, the Baital declined to say, and it hardly mattered which. Sita, for her part, could not help noticing the shadow of sorrow that never quite left her new friend's forehead, and when they retired for the night she gently asked its cause. Chandraprabha told her everything: how, strolling in the garden that same spring afternoon, she had glimpsed a Brahman of extraordinary beauty, how their eyes had met, how he had fallen senseless and she directly after, how her companions had carried her home not knowing whom she had seen or where he had gone, and how ever since she had had no appetite for food or drink, her colour gone pale, her body wasting — concluding, as the lovesick reliably do, with a confident prediction of her own sudden and untimely death sometime near the start of the following month.

Sita offers to produce the missing lover

What wilt thou give me, asked Sita, demurely, once the tale was finished, if I show thee thy beloved this very moment? Chandraprabha, startled out of her melancholy, answered without hesitation that she would be the lowest of Sita's slaves forever, standing before her with joined hands in gratitude. It was, the Baital observed, an extremely generous offer made by someone who had absolutely no idea what she was actually promising. Sita did not make her wait. She drew the little pill from her mouth, and in the space of a single breath the sprightly twelve-year-old girl vanished and Manaswi stood there instead — the very Brahman from the summer-house, restored entire, tucking the pill carefully away into a small bag hung round his neck. Chandraprabha, seeing the stranger she had fainted over standing suddenly alive and solid before her, in her own private rooms, at midnight, felt herself go hot with confusion and dropped her eyes, utterly undone. Spare us the description, Vampire, Vikram interrupted, jerking the imaginary little bag as though weighing gold in it. The fewer of those, the better for everyone.

Manaswi weighs eight kinds of marriage and picks one

Manaswi, ever the practical theologian even in the middle of a seduction, ran quickly through the eight recognised forms of marriage — the gift of a daughter without price, the offering of a bride as sacrificial fee, the exchange of two cows for a wife, the father's simple command to go and fulfil religion's duties, the outright purchase, the capture of a bride in war, the abduction by stealth, and eighth and last, Gandharva, the marriage made by mutual consent alone, without ceremony or witness. He settled at once on the eighth, partly because it suited the hour and partly because Chandraprabha's own rank entitled her to choose her own husband in exactly this fashion — the same right, he reminded her, that had let princesses of old choose Rama, Arjuna, Krishna, and Nala for themselves. Chandraprabha needed no more persuading than that. And so, in the private hush of her own darkened apartment, with no priest, no fire, and no witness but the two of them, a Brahman's son disguised as a girl and a king's daughter became husband and wife.

Five months of living as two people at once

For five whole months after that secret wedding, Manaswi never once left the palace. By day he was Sita, the demure companion, gentle-voiced and pill-sweetened into girlhood; by night, behind locked doors, he withdrew the pill and became, once more, entirely and unmistakably her husband. The Baital was careful to note that whichever shape he wore, Sita or Manaswi, his mind never once changed — it remained stubbornly, recognisably masculine underneath both faces, which was rather the whole point of the arrangement and also, in time, rather its whole problem. The natural consequence of five months' worth of such nights soon made itself apparent: Manaswi found himself, most improbably for a man who spent half his life as a twelve-year-old girl, on the fair way to becoming a father. One might imagine, Vikram observed drily, that changing sex every single day would provide variety enough to satisfy even the most restless of men. The Baital only smiled at that, in the particular way that meant the king had understood absolutely nothing about where this story was going.

A husband complains his wife keeps him locked away

Manaswi was not, in fact, satisfied. He began to pine for the world outside the apartment walls, and to find fault with his wife for never once taking her supposed lady-companion out into it. It seems strange, does it not, that a girl who had fainted from love and predicted her own tragic death should so quickly become an injured, irritable wife the very moment her husband suggested a simple outing — but Chandraprabha managed it handsomely. When Manaswi first raised the idea of appearing before the world together, admitting only that he feared what her father might do to him, she answered with a cutting remark about his thoroughly unconvincing femininity during daylight hours, told him a cautionary nursery tale of a woman who had married a fiend handsome by night and hideous by day, and finished by quoting mournful poetry about the tiresome vanity of change and the veil falling from her eyes. Chandraprabha and Manaswi, who had taken to calling each other the Zodiacal Twins, quarrelled daily now with the easy fluency of people who are, underneath it all, thoroughly in love.

The king is persuaded his daughter needs fresh air

Between them, Chandraprabha and Sita worked easily on the old Raja, persuading him that the princess's health would only improve with fresh air, exercise, and a little diversion from her sickroom gloom. Subichar, overjoyed to see the daughter he had feared losing suddenly restored to liveliness, gave his blessing without asking too many questions about the sudden recovery. A new life began at once: short trips beyond the palace walls, baths and dances, music parties, drives in bullock chariots, water excursions on the palace lake, one pleasant distraction chasing the heels of the last. It was, on the surface, everything a young married woman — or a secretly married Brahman disguised as her lady-companion — could want: freedom, company, festivity, and no one the wiser. But freedom of that particular kind has a well-known habit of introducing new eyes into a story that was already, quietly, far too crowded with secrets for its own good. And new eyes, as Vikram already suspected before the Baital confirmed it, were exactly what arrived next.

A treasurer's son falls in love at a wedding feast

It happened that the whole royal household attended a wedding feast at the house of the king's grand treasurer, and there, amid the music and the crowd, the treasurer's own son caught sight of Sita in all her borrowed girlish beauty. It was, the Baital noted with visible relish, the third case of love at first sight in this single story, and it struck the young man exactly as hard as the first two had struck their victims. He turned at once to a particular friend and declared, without a trace of irony, that if he did not obtain that girl he would live no longer, and if he did, he would live forever — the standard, wildly overstated arithmetic of the freshly infatuated. The feast ended, the king and his household returned home entirely unaware of the small disaster that had just been set in motion behind them, and the treasurer's son, left alone with his new and total devotion, promptly stopped eating, stopped drinking, and began the slow, deliberate business of making everyone around him extremely uncomfortable.

A secret confessed becomes a father's crisis

The friend kept the secret for some days, burning the whole time to tell it, until the young man's condition grew sad enough to give him the excuse he wanted, and he ran straight to the treasurer with everything he knew — feeling, the Baital added dryly, considerably relieved once the confidence was safely out of his own hands and lodged in someone else's. The treasurer went at once to court and laid the matter before the king: his son was wasting away for love of the Brahman's daughter-in-law, refusing food and drink, consumed entirely by the fire of separation, and if the king would only show compassion and grant the girl to him, his life might yet be saved — and if not — The Raja cut him off in fury. Fool! It is not right for kings to do injustice. When a man entrusts a charge to a protector, how can that protector give the charge away without consulting the one who trusted him? Yet this is exactly what you ask of me.

The treasurer starves himself into leverage

The treasurer, who understood perfectly well that the kingdom could not run smoothly without him and knew his master's soft heart besides, said nothing further, only hung his head in simulated hopelessness while Subichar alternately scolded and coaxed him in vain. At last, with tears carefully arranged in his eyes, he begged leave to withdraw, and as he passed through the palace gates announced aloud, for anyone listening, that it would cost him but ten days of fasting. Home again, he gathered his household and went to his son's room, took the sallow, starving young man's hand, and murmured — in a whisper deliberately pitched to carry — that he could do nothing now but perish alongside him. The servants, hearing this theatrical vow of joint suicide, slipped out one by one to spread the news through the city, and then drifted quietly back to see whether their master truly intended to keep his word, and if so how, and when — not, the Baital was careful to clarify, because they wished their good master dead, but because there is, undeniably, a certain excitement in watching to see whether someone actually will.

The whole cabinet marches on the king together

By the third day of the treasurer's fast, the cabinet council had convened and resolved that they too would retire from business altogether unless the Raja gave way, since the treasurer was, after all, their indispensable working man — and what use, they reasoned, was being a councillor at all if a king could simply refuse them whenever he pleased? Early the next morning they went before Subichar in a body and painted the direst possible picture: the treasurer's son at the point of death from an empty stomach and a full heart, the father three days without food or water, and should the father die, the kingdom's accounts themselves imperilled — half already gnawed by white ants, the other half eaten through by some corrosive defect in the ink, so that no one but the treasurer could make sense of what remained. It was, Vikram had to admit, an argument built entirely out of manufactured catastrophe and administrative panic, and it worked exactly as such arguments always do on rulers too soft to simply say no.

A king surrenders while insisting he has not

The white ants and the corrosive ink proved too strong for the Raja's resolve, though he made a great show of firmness even as he crumbled. He declared, with much dignity, that he knew the treasurer's worth, that he would rather die a dozen deaths than break his royal word or betray a trust, that man's condition in this world was to depart it as surely as he had entered it, and much more in the same solemn, well-worn vein — edifying words, the Baital noted, and utterly beside the point to anyone who understood what lay behind them. Having thoroughly impressed his ministers with his high principles, he then quietly undid the whole effect by allowing them, with a little more coaxing, to convince him that his royal duty actually required him to break his word, betray his trust, and hand over another man's wife after all. When a man starts talking about his principles, O Vikram, the Baital said, always ask yourself why he suddenly needs to.

Ministers argue that one girl must be sacrificed

Sensing their advantage, the ministers pressed harder, reasoning aloud that the old Brahman had been gone many days now and was very possibly dead, that the girl was only affianced and not fairly married, that giving her to the treasurer's son would settle the government firmly — and that even should the old priest somehow return, villages and wealth could smooth things over, or failing that, a better and more beautiful bride found for his son instead, and the priest dismissed. A person, they concluded grandly, should be sacrificed for a family, a family for a city, a city for a country, and a country for its king. Subichar, hearing arguments enough on both sides to satisfy his conscience whichever way he leaned, dismissed them with the promise of a decision by morning, after a night spent — as the councillors well understood — not in prayer but in consultation with his wives. They went away thoroughly satisfied, certain that every voice in the palace would favour the wedding, and that no girl offered such a match would sacrifice a bright future for an absent priest's inconvenient claim.

The king orders his own daughter's companion away

That same evening the king went straight to his daughter's apartments and gave Sita a blunt order: go at once to the house of the treasurer's son. Chandraprabha and Manaswi had, by this point in their marriage, fallen into the comfortable habit of scolding each other daily, so that Chandraprabha and Sita were barely on speaking terms when the command arrived — and yet the news of their coming separation struck them both like a blow. Delighted, surely? put in young Dharma Dhwaj, Vikram's son, who had been following the tale with more enthusiasm than judgment. Overwhelmed with grief, thou guileless young prince, the Baital corrected him, and Vikram sternly told his son to hold his tongue about matters he did not understand. The two women — one a princess, one a disguised husband — turned pale, wept, wrung their hands, argued, and flatly refused obedience, doing everything short of open rebellion to make the king revoke an order neither of them had any intention of actually surviving apart.

Sita buys time with an impossible condition

Sita quoted proverbs about virtue destroyed by too much beauty and prosperity fleeing broken promises, which the Raja applauded warmly while remaining perfectly immovable on the actual point. Chandraprabha accused her father of acting from interested motives, observing that when selfishness sways a man, right and left reverse themselves as in a mirror — a comparison Subichar also approved of, without it changing his mind one degree. It was Sita, thinking fastest under pressure, who found the real solution: buying time, that oldest and most reliable of feminine stratagems. Great king, she said, if I must be given to the treasurer's son, then exact from him a promise first — that he will do whatever I bid him. I am of the Brahman caste, he of the Kshatriya; the law requires that before we two may wed, he perform pilgrimage to every holy place. The Raja, delighted to find so respectable an excuse for delay while still appearing resolute, declared she had spoken Veda-truth, and that night Manaswi and Chandraprabha, instead of quarrelling, congratulated themselves on an escape they had, in fact, not made at all.

The pilgrimage plan comes with a fatal amendment

The next morning Subichar summoned his ministers, the treasurer, and the lovesick son himself, and praised the Brahman's daughter-in-law's wise condition to the whole assembly. All approved readily enough — except the young man himself, who ventured one small but ruinous amendment: that while he travelled on pilgrimage, the maiden should reside under his own father's roof rather than remain at the palace. When father and son showed every sign of resuming their fasting theatrics should this small favour be refused, the Raja, however loath to part with his daughter's dearest friend, found himself driven to agree. And so Sita, weeping bitterly, was carried off to the treasurer's house, formally committed to the care of his third and youngest wife, a woman near her own age named Subhagya-Sundari, with strict instructions that the two should live together peaceably, without quarrelling, and never wander into other people's houses. The treasurer's son, satisfied at last, departed on his pilgrimage — leaving behind him, quite unknowingly, a rather more combustible arrangement than he imagined.

Six days of secrecy end in one careless swallow

It is a sad but true thing, the Baital told Vikram, that in less than six days the disconsolate Sita grew thoroughly weary of being Sita at all, took the pill from her mouth by night, and became Manaswi once more, just as he had done a hundred times before in the safety of the palace. Alas for the infidelity of mankind — and gratifying, the Baital added, to note that Manaswi met precisely the punishment old Muldev had warned him of at the very start. One night, careless or simply exhausted, the pill slipped down his throat instead of staying safely in his cheek. When morning broke, Manaswi found himself unable to change back into Sita at all, stuck fast in his own true male shape, in the private bedroom of the treasurer's third wife, with servants stirring and daylight climbing and absolutely no explanation available that would not end in disaster for everyone involved. There are worse mornings to wake up in a stranger's household as the wrong sex entirely, but not many.

A desperate leap through a window, and a sprained ankle

With no other way out of a room he had no business occupying as a man, Manaswi threw himself straight through the window and dropped to the ground below, sprained his ankle badly on landing, and lay there for a time in considerable pain, unable to go any further. And there, said the Baital cheerfully, I shall leave him lying, while it is convenient to me to do so. Vikram, who had grown used to the demon's habit of abandoning characters mid-crisis purely to torment his audience, said nothing, knowing full well that objecting would only prolong the torment. What mattered now was not Manaswi's throbbing ankle but the small, mysterious disappearance it represented: by morning, all the treasurer's household would know only that Sita, the Brahman's daughter-in-law, had vanished from the house in the night without explanation — a disappearance that would, in time, reach exactly the ears it needed to reach, though not before a rather older story, set in motion months earlier, finally came due for settlement.

Muldev returns to an old friend with a confession

We must now go back a little, said the Baital, to the very day Muldev left King Subichar's court, having successfully deposited his disguised charge under royal protection. The moment he was clear of the palace, he resumed his true shape and went straight to his brother Pandit, the misanthropic Shashi, to tell him exactly what he had done — the pills, the disguise, the whole elaborate scheme built on one lovesick boy's promise of purity. Shashi's face went black the instant he heard it. Good nature and soft-heartedness, he told his old friend flatly, had just led him into committing a very grave sin indeed, arming a fool with a weapon far too dangerous for his hands. Muldev, stung by the accusation, retorted hotly that he had warned the youth thoroughly about the need for purity of purpose, and that no harm could possibly come of a warning properly given. Shashi only smiled his particular cold smile and let the silence answer for him.

Two old scholars wager a princess on a fool's virtue

Thou hast placed a sharp weapon in a fool's hand, Shashi said again, with irritating coolness, and therefore thou art answerable for all the mischief he does with it — mischief he assuredly will do. He will not, by Brahma! cried Muldev, thoroughly provoked now. He will, by Vishnu, Shashi replied, visibly enjoying his friend's rising temper, and here is my wager: if within six months this Manaswi has not disgraced himself, thou shalt have my entire book-case. But if he does disgrace himself, then thou, philanthropic Muldev, shalt use every ounce of thy skill to win the daughter of Raja Subichar as a wife for thy faithful friend Shashi instead. It was, Vikram remarked when he heard it, a genuinely appalling thing for two old men to gamble on — a young man's virtue on one side, a princess's marriage on the other, as though both were simply counters on a board. The Baital agreed entirely, and pointed out that this had never once stopped either Pandit from making the bet.

Six months later, the bet quietly settles itself

The two old men agreed to speak no further of the wager until autumn, and as the appointed time drew near, they began quietly making enquiries into how the magic pills had actually fared. What they learned settled the matter beyond argument: Sita, alias Manaswi, had one night mysteriously vanished from the grand treasurer's house and had not been seen or heard of since. That single fact, together with certain other whispers that had begun circulating by then, was more than enough to convince Muldev — who had, by this point, cooled considerably from his earlier temper — that his old friend had won the wager fair and square. There was no dramatic confrontation about it, no further argument; Muldev simply accepted the evidence and prepared, with characteristic promptness, to pay what he owed. He had lost, and unlike most men who lose wagers of this size, he intended to make good on it immediately and in full.

Old age falls away from Shashi in an instant

True to his word, Muldev handed the remaining pill to old Shashi, who took it and was transformed at once into a stout, strikingly handsome young Brahman of perhaps twenty years — the misanthrope's sour disposition suddenly housed in the body of a man half his age. Muldev then placed the second pill, the very one that had first turned him ancient before Subichar's court, back into his own mouth, and resumed exactly the venerable, staff-leaning shape under which he had originally appeared as Sita's supposed father-in-law. Leaning once more on his staff, the newly restored old priest led the newly young Shashi straight toward the palace of Raja Subichar — the same gate, the same seven courts, the same audacious walk into a king's hall that had begun this entire affair five months before, except that this time the purpose was payment of a debt rather than the placing of one.

The king recognises the priest, and dreads the reason

Subichar knew the old Brahman's face the instant he entered, and knew at once, with a sinking heart, exactly what errand had brought him back after so long an absence. Still, custom demanded courtesy, and he rose, offered seats, received their blessings, and made polite enquiries about their health and travels before finally, with visibly gathered courage, asking where his holiness had been living all this time. Great king, the priest replied gravely, I went to seek my son, and having found him, I now bring him before your majesty. Give him his wife, and I will take them both home with me. It was a simple enough request on its face, and utterly impossible for the king to grant honestly, since the girl in question had vanished from the treasurer's house months before under circumstances Subichar had gone to considerable lengths not to examine too closely. Pressed hard enough, however, he found he had no choice but to confess the whole tangled business, start to finish.

A false curse forces the king's hand entirely

Muldev heard the whole confession out — the treasurer's son's infatuation, the hunger strikes, the pilgrimage stalling-tactic, Sita's mysterious disappearance from the treasurer's house — and then erupted in beautifully simulated fury. What is this you have done? Why have you given my son's wife in marriage to another man? You have done as you pleased — now receive my curse for it! The poor Raja, thoroughly terrified, begged him not to be angry, swearing he would do whatever the priest demanded. And Muldev, having achieved exactly the position he wanted, named his price without delay: marry your daughter Chandraprabha to my son here, and in exchange I forgive you everything. To me now, he added, with the practiced serenity of a man performing sanctity rather than possessing it, a necklace of pearls and a venomous cobra are the same; the softest bed and the hardest stone are the same; all I wish is to end my days in some holy place, repeating the name of God.

An astrologer fixes the hour of a second wedding

Terrified by this fresh display of holy indifference, Subichar summoned an astrologer at once and had him fix the most auspicious moment and lunar influence for the marriage without delay. He did not think to consult his daughter on the matter — though the Baital noted that even had he done so, Chandraprabha would likely not have resisted his wishes anyway, for reasons entirely her own. She had, by then, already heard of Sita's strange vanishing from the treasurer's house, and harboured her own private suspicions about exactly what that meant; she was also, by this point, looking forward to a certain event of her own, and was by no means certain her royal father approved of Gandharva marriages, at least where his own daughter was concerned. And so, saying nothing, suspecting everything, and offering no resistance whatsoever, Chandraprabha allowed herself to be prepared for a wedding to a young man she had never once laid eyes on before that very week.

A princess married in public to a stranger

The wedding went ahead exactly as arranged, in full public view, complete with priests, astrologers, and the whole formal apparatus a royal marriage required — the very ceremony, witnesses and all, that Manaswi's secret Gandharva union with the same woman had so carefully avoided five months earlier. Chandraprabha, veiled and silent, received in due course by the young Brahman calling himself Shashi's son, took her dowry and her new husband's hand before the assembled court, and the newly-made bridegroom, having achieved everything his old friend's lost wager had promised him, took his leave of the king and set off for his own village with his royal bride beside him. It was, on paper, an entirely legitimate marriage — lawful, witnessed, blessed, and impossible to challenge by any ordinary means. Which made it all the more unfortunate for everyone involved that Manaswi, recovered at last from his sprained ankle and his six days of enforced male humiliation, chose that exact moment to come looking for his wife.

Manaswi returns and demands his wife back

Manaswi had spent the recovery time nursing both his ankle and his love, and the delay had, if anything, only sharpened his devotion — a man rarely misses a woman more fiercely than after he has briefly lost the ability to walk toward her. The moment he could travel, he went straight to Shashi and confronted him without preamble. Give me my wife, he demanded, with all the fury of a husband who considers his claim beyond any possible dispute. He had, after all, loved Chandraprabha first, married her first, shared her bed and her secrets for five months, and stood by every account to become the father of the child she now carried. None of that, as Shashi was about to demonstrate with considerable satisfaction, would count for very much against a wedding conducted in front of ten witnesses, several priests, and one very convincing astrologer.

Shashi answers with priests, astrologers, and ten witnesses

Shashi did not so much as raise his voice. He simply laid out his proof, point by point: astrologers who had fixed the hour, priests who had performed every rite, and ten separate witnesses who had watched the ceremony from beginning to end and would swear to it before any court in the land. Therefore, he said, with the calm of a man who knows he holds every card, she is my spouse. Manaswi, for his part, swore just as passionately by every holy thing he could name that he had been lawfully married to Chandraprabha long before Shashi ever appeared, and that he, not Shashi, was the true father of the child soon to be born. How then, he demanded, can she possibly be thy spouse? He tried to summon old Muldev as a witness to confirm every word of it — but the old Pandit, after a brief and pointed remonstration with the desperate young man, had simply vanished, leaving Manaswi with nothing but his own word against a mountain of documented ceremony.

The princess denies ever having known her husband

With Muldev gone, Manaswi turned to the one witness who could not possibly deny the truth — Chandraprabha herself — and called upon her to confirm that they had loved each other first, married each other first, and shared a bed and a secret for five whole months before any Shashi had ever entered the story. Chandraprabha, standing beside her lawfully wedded husband before the assembled household, put on a face of perfect innocence and denied, flatly and without a flicker of hesitation, ever having seen the man before in her life. It was, the Baital admitted, a breathtaking piece of nerve from a woman who was at that very moment carrying Manaswi's own child under her second husband's roof — though whether from fear, from calculation, or from simple self-preservation in a position with no good options left, the demon declined to say for certain, leaving Vikram to draw his own conclusions about a woman cornered between two claims she could not possibly satisfy both of at once.

A story too strange for most, believed by a few

And so the matter rested there, unresolved by any court, any confession, or any further proof. Manaswi's version of events was, by any honest measure, the marvellous and nearly incredible one — a Brahman's son turned into a twelve-year-old girl by a magic pill, smuggled into a palace, secretly wedded by mutual consent, and betrayed by an accidental swallow and a sprained ankle — and yet, the Baital noted, there were those who heard the whole tale and believed every word of it regardless. Even to this day, he added, there remain people who consider Manaswi the true and lawful husband of Raja Subichar's daughter, whatever the priests, the astrologers, and the ten witnesses might say to the contrary. It was a dispute, in other words, that had long since outgrown the courtroom and settled instead into the far messier territory of popular opinion — which is, of course, exactly the kind of unfinished business the Baital most enjoyed dropping directly into a silent king's lap.

The vampire turns the question directly on the king

Having brought the tale to its uneasy resting place, the Baital paused, and there was a familiar, dangerous relish in his dead voice as he turned the matter squarely toward Vikram. So there it stands, great Raja, disputed to this very day. One man loved her first, married her first in the old Gandharva way by nothing but her own free consent, shared her secret and her bed for five months, and by every account is the true father of the child she now carries. The other married her second, but married her before priests, astrologers, and ten sworn witnesses, in the full public light of day. Both men call her wife. Both cannot be right. Tell me, then, O Vikram, since you are so certain of your own judgment — which of the two is truly her husband, Manaswi or Shashi? Answer me that, if you can, and answer it truly.

Vikram delivers his verdict without a moment's pause

Vikram, who despised nothing in this world quite so thoroughly as a clandestine, runaway match, did not hesitate for even a breath before answering. Then those who believe Manaswi are pestilent fools, he declared flatly. Consider the two claims honestly. No one on earth witnessed Manaswi's so-called marriage, no priest blessed it, no elder sanctioned it, and no living soul but the girl herself could confirm he was ever truly the father of her child — his whole case rests on nothing firmer than his own word, whispered in secret, in a locked room, with a stolen pill for a wedding ring. Shashi, by contrast, married her lawfully, openly, before witnesses, with every rite properly observed and every priest and astrologer standing ready to swear to it. She is, by that plain reckoning, his wife in the eyes of law and custom both — and the child, when it comes, will rightly perform the funeral rites and offer water to the ancestors of Shashi's line, not Manaswi's. That, at least, is what law and justice both plainly declare.

The vampire laughs at justice, and at Vikram

The Baital's laugh, when it came, was low and delighted and entirely without mercy. Which justice, he crowed, is very often unjust enough! You have made your law-court's argument beautifully, great Raja — ceremony over devotion, witnesses over truth, paperwork over a broken heart. A tidy verdict. I wonder if Manaswi, lying somewhere still nursing his sprained ankle and his stolen wife, would agree that your law and your justice have served him quite so plainly as you say. There was no time for Vikram to answer that second, sharper barb — because the instant the king's own voice had broken the long night's silence to deliver his verdict, the ancient bargain that bound them both had already, quietly and irreversibly, come due. The Baital knew it before Vikram did, and his laughter only sharpened with the knowing.

The wrapping cloth goes suddenly, terribly light

The change happened in less time than it takes to tell it. The weight on Vikram's shoulder simply vanished — no struggle, no warning, only a sudden and total absence where a corpse's dead bulk had been a heartbeat before. The Baital had slipped clean out of the grave-cloth that bound him, as easily as smoke slips through a closed fist, and shot away into the dark air above the charnel ground, already streaking back toward his own distant siras-tree. His parting words trailed behind him on the night wind, gleeful and utterly unhurried: Ply thy legs, mighty Raja — let us see whether thou canst reach the siras-tree before I do! And then he was gone entirely, a shadow among shadows, leaving nothing behind him but his own fading, delighted laughter and the empty cloth swinging uselessly from Vikram's shoulder.

Vikram stands motionless over his own defeat

Vikram did not shout, did not curse, did not so much as break his stride into a run after the vanishing shadow. He simply stopped where he stood, in the middle of the dark and silent ground, and let the empty grave-cloth hang limp and weightless from his shoulder for one long, grim moment. Eight times now he had carried that wretched, chattering corpse toward the sorcerer awaiting him; eight times, sooner or later, his own tongue had betrayed him into speech, and eight times the prize had slipped away laughing into the night. There was no fury left in his face for it, only the flat, settled patience of a man who has learned exactly what a broken vow costs and has decided, without needing to say so aloud, to pay that cost as many times as required. His son Dharma Dhwaj, standing quietly beside him, said nothing at all this time — having learned, if nothing else from this whole strange night, precisely when his father's silence was not an invitation to speak.

Father and son retrace every silent step

Without a word, without so much as a sigh of complaint, Vikram turned on his heel and began walking back the way he had come, retracing the same dark path step for step, the empty cloth still slung across his shoulder like a banner of quiet, stubborn defeat. Dharma Dhwaj fell into step beside him, matching his father's pace through the gloom, past the same smouldering funeral fires, the same silent stretches of burial ground, the same crooked shadows they had already walked through once that night. Neither of them spoke. There was, after all, nothing left to say that the night itself had not already said more eloquently than either of them could — a king who had sworn silence and broken it again, walking back to undo his own undoing, for the eighth time, with the same patient, unblinking resolve he had brought to the first.

Up the siras-tree, and the corpse cut down again

At last the siras-tree rose up before them out of the dark, its branches heavy with the same grim burden that had hung there at the very start of the night. Vikram climbed without hesitation, found the corpse swinging exactly where it always seemed to return, and drew his sword to cut it down from the branch as he had done seven times before. The body fell into his arms with the same lifeless, indifferent weight it always carried, betraying nothing of the mocking, laughing spirit that had so recently escaped it and would, soon enough, be occupying it again. Methodically, without haste and without complaint, Vikram bound the Baital back into his grave-cloth, drew the wrapping tight, and swung the whole burden up onto his shoulder once more — the same motion he had performed at the start of this story, and the story before it, and every story before that, all the way back to the very first climb up this same patient tree.

A new tale begins before ten paces are gone

Vikram set off a third time toward the waiting sorcerer's fire, his jaw set, his silence this time resolved to be absolute, whatever fresh nonsense the vampire chose to provoke him with. He had scarcely gone a dozen paces, however, before the familiar dead voice piped up again from the cloth on his shoulder, entirely unbothered by its own recent escape and evidently delighted at the prospect of doing it all again. Come, great Raja, do not sulk — a long walk is better filled with a story than with silence, and I promise you this next one is remarkably interesting. Vikram said nothing at all in reply, but walked on steadily into the dark, carrying his talkative burden toward the sorcerer once more, already bracing himself, in grim and practiced silence, for whatever trap the Baital's next tale would set for him.