Terror turned my blood to ice. And our salvation came to me in a flash of instinct.
I took a deep breath and imagined the fire that I had started in Shishir’s forest. In my mind, I set the flame against the tangle, summoning a ball of heat to immolate the bonds. The locus of the puppet strings shuddered, and some of the animals shrieked.
I fell to my knees, pouring all my energy and all my will into the imagined flame. The knot trembled, and there was a moment of terrible stillness before it exploded into thousands of wisps of black, like ash falling from the gray sky.
And then I knew no more.
Ravana came to visit me the day I woke. “Thank you. I cannot thank you enough for your help.”
I glared up at him. “Did you hear nothing of what Bhandasura said? We played exactly into his master’s hands.”
“You cannot believe everything an asura says. Perhaps he wished to keep himself alive by bargaining information.” Ravana was surprisingly calm. But then, he’d had more time to ruminate on it while I’d been unconscious.
“He thought he was victorious,” I whispered. “I need to go back to Ayodhya. At once.”
“Wait one week until you have recovered,” Ravana said. “I will fly you to the edge of Kosala myself.”
“You can fly me now,” I said. But my voice was weak. My limbs had no strength. I was powerless.
“One week,” Ravana said. “The asura is gone, and Janasthana is mine. Your kingdom will keep too.”
I groaned, knowing there was little I could do to argue. Instead, at my instruction, Lakshmana sent a message to Hirav instructing him to meet us in Sripura and telling him the danger had passed. There was not much more I could do until I recovered.
In the mornings, I spent time with my mother. She helped me to stand and take small steps about the room, as though I were a child. I had no memory of her ministrations when I was so young, but it warmed me now to be cared for, to be loved.
In the afternoons, Ravana visited and taught me a game of his own invention entitled chaturanga. It was delightfully complex, played on a wooden board engraved with sixty-four squares. Each of us started with two rows of beautifully carved players, one painted a creamy yellow and the other a dark forest green. The front row held eight foot soldiers, but the back row had a variety of pieces, most notably a raja and a saciva.
“Why is the saciva a woman?” I asked when we first started playing.
Ravana lifted his own piece to examine it. “The saciva is the most powerful piece on the board. She can move diagonally, horizontally, and vertically. Without her, the raja is nothing.” He looked at me, amusement in his features. “Does that seem familiar?”
I resolved then and there to master the game. I even conscripted Lakshmana and Meena into learning the rules and practicing with me. The day before our imminent departure, I finally managed to place Ravana in a lethal stranglehold.
With a rueful smile, he tipped over his king. “You win, Radnyi,” he said. “I should have known it would take you no time at all to defeat me.”
I smiled in return, delighted by my victory. “Perhaps, once I leave, we can start a game by correspondence.”
“I would like that,” he said. “By hawk would be simplest. And I can even offer you a hawk of your own to take with you. In exchange, I would ask you a favor.”
“Anything,” I agreed easily.
“It feels like an eternity has passed since we spoke of it, but Sita is still my daughter. And her husband—I can’t trust him. She is young and adjusting, I know, but you can at least make sure her unhappiness does not grow. That her husband never takes advantage of her. You are a powerful woman. Please swear it.”
“Of c—” I began, but he continued on.
“This is what I ask of you. Swear to me on the gods that you will take care of her.” He spoke formally, as though he had rehearsed this pledge beforehand.
I knew I would do everything I could to help Sita should something happen to her, regardless of her status as Ravana’s daughter. And if a pledge to the gods would set Ravana’s mind at ease, so be it. “I swear to the gods that I will look out for Sita and offer her any help that I can provide. And I would have sworn this even without the agreement we made.”
I would like to believe that is the moment when I sealed my fate, and his fate, and Rama’s and Sita’s fate, and all the rest. But I know that even without my promise to him, I would not have done anything differently.
The next morning, we said our goodbyes. My mother came to my room early and hugged me close. “I can never thank you enough for saving the city,” she said. “Even when the gods would not come for us, you did.”