Page 106 of The Burning Mountain
Vihari’s screech vibrated in the air around them, his great wingspan stirring up a mini dust storm.
She dismounted from her horse, who was already panicking at the giant kite flying overhead.
She took out her dagger and sliced her palm, wincing against the slight burn.
Vihari swooped low and caught her. He took her offering of blood, allowing her to climb him. Dissonance descended and took a while to adjust, but it was easier to correct than last time.
He rose in altitude, moving swiftly toward Rajgarh. Chandra glanced back. From this great height, she got a bird’s-eye view of the action. Surasen’s small coterie were surrounded by Vivismati’s army.
Chandra’s hands fisted. She hated fleeing, leaving others behind. But what could she do against such insurmountable odds? She had her weapons, her trusty bow and arrows, and her ancestral daggers. But they were ordinary weapons, made extraordinary by the power of the goddess. Without the ability to summon her magic, she was useless.
Stepping out of Amaravathi brought home to her exactly how out of depth she was. What good was her training if she couldn’t save others? If all it took to defeat her was the simple removal of a collection of beads.
Below, Surasen’s horse fell, dislodging her rider. He was battling with a long sword, which had fire licking along the blade. His vision had to be obscured by a bleeding head wound, because his sword thrusts were slow, more defensive than offensive. Chandra watched, borrowing Vihari’s keen vision, as Surasen blocked a fatal blow just in time. Billadev had his trusty axe with him, but the wound he suffered earlier on his back, made him sluggish than usual.
And then she saw the army bring in new equipment. Long catapult machines loaded with heavy stones. They weren’t intending to capture anyone. This was slaughter!
Without a conscious command from Chandra, Vihari followed her instincts, and turned around.
She had to do something. She couldn’t let them die, not after they helped her.
She closed her eyes and prayed harder than she ever had. The nothingness she felt when she had always felt a sense of purpose wasawful. Her eyes burned with tears. An inarticulate scream of helpless rage erupted from her throat. She felt forsaken by a goddess she had revered as a mother and the loss felt as bad as witnessing the massacre of people.
Her mind broke through the mental barrier and soared into the serene place she had always associated with a trance. A lightness enveloped her body and when she opened her eyes, a string ofrudrakshabeads had appeared on her wrist—six dark beads with a single face and the seventh, a red one.
She smiled. In relief and gratitude.
The power she felt inside made her realize she had broken through the final barrier. She had mastered the seventh chakra. Just like her brother had predicted, it was right when she needed it the most.
The mark of her ancestor blazed on her forehead and with just a thought, her bow transformed into a golden-hued one with a trio of arrows already nocked.
She angled it and squinted down the long shaft of the arrows. Her target came into view, and she released the tension. The string snapped back, and the arrows sailed, hovering in the air parallel with them for a brief moment.
“Brm,” she dropped the seed word in a whisper. And as if commanded, the magical arrows hurtled down, descending in a progressively steeper slope, gathering speed and igniting into golden, fiery bolts, multiplying by hundreds, as the seed activated the dormant spell on the arrow.
She watched the arrows do their job, but the enemy still had those catapults. She pondered over that threat and then, on inspiration, she slipped off Veer’s gift of metal bangles and turned the knob on them, exposing the row of teeth. After smearing her blood on them, she nocked them to the next arrow in her quiver.
“Kleem.” The seed word for the spell fused the makeshift weapon together. She took aim at the catapults.
On the ground,Surasen shaded his eyes to look up when he saw the rain of golden arrows. The kite was a black speck against the brilliance of the sun, the rider on his back clearly visible. The princess had stayed behind to help. He didn’t know whether to laugh or curse.
He remembered she had a quiver full of arrows, but they were nowhere near the number he estimated were now speeding toward the ground.So where did these come from?And surprisingly, none of the arrows seemed to strike hismen, he realized as cries resounded all around him. They instead, targeted the soldiers of Vivismati, giving his men enough breathing space to launch a counterattack and defend themselves.
But Vivismati was too well prepared. The catapults were going to be a problem, and the enemy had them on the move, preparing for launch.
A lone, sturdier-seeming arrow flew toward the wooden machines, extending mid-flight to a weirdly shaped spear with flat, circular, wheel-like objects attached to its shaft.
Once the spear struck, the wood of the machine caught fire, but then, the discs detached, whirling in the air, flames dancing along its edge, which had pointed teeth, giving it a serrated edge. They mowed over and sawed through the rest of the wooden machines, setting small blazes wherever they could.
Surasen’s mouth hung open, unable to believe his eyes. It was all over in a matter of minutes. With a great crash, the machines fell, having been chopped into kindling.
Vivismati’s men lay defeated, their weapons destroyed, the person they needed to capture far out of their reach. Surasen wasn’t sure if they had won, but Vivismati decidedly had lost.
He jerked, as if coming out of a daze, hearing the piercing cry of the kite above, as it swiftly made its way to Rajgarh. Shading his eyes once again, he tilted his head, and he could have sworn the rider had lifted her hand in farewell.
“Veer would kill you if he ever saw that expression on your face,” remarked Billadev, leaning on his axe that he planted on a rocky outcrop, as he wiped his forehead with his arm.
“She…she’s worth a thousand men,” remarked Surasen in a hushed voice. “No wonder Veer was willing to strike a bargain with me.”
