MAHABHARATA SERIES BOOK#2: The Seeds of War (Mba) by AKB eBOOKS & Ashok K. Banker

Author:AKB eBOOKS & Ashok K. Banker [Banker, Ashok K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epic fiction
Publisher: AKB eBOOKS
Published: 2011-12-22T04:00:00+00:00

8

In retrospect, it was extraordinary how easily life went back to the way it had been before. The events of that night might never have happened: the palace staff knew better than to spread tales openly and the citizens who heard the rumours quickly wondered at their veracity. After all, here was their Queen, flat stomach and beauty intact, as winning as always. And the King beside her at all times, rarely apart for long, mooning over her as much as ever. The sight of them riding together in their royal vaahan, the ornamental bejwelled carriage, brought people running out of doors, leaving aside their work to watch the king and queen pass by. Shouts of joy were heard everywhere and those who possessed conch shells – or rather, those merchants and nobles rich enough to possess their own guard, ordered them to blow the conch shell trumpets – heralding the approach of the royal couple. They were too dearly loved for the rumoured scandal of that one night to cast a shadow upon their reputation. People quickly dismissed it as an idle rumour and soon even the palace staff wondered if that had been the Queen’s newborn son she had walked out carrying that night, or merely a bundle of clothes. People even surmised their own explanations, assuming that in her homeland, wherever that mythical place was, they had such unusual customs as walking to the river and throwing in articles of clothing as a means of appeasing the gods and asking for the gift of an heir. This theory, that it was all an arcane ritual designed to obtain a son, was the most favoured, for it explained everything quite neatly.

Only the daiimaas who had been present in the queen’s bedchambers when she gave birth to that beautiful dark-hued black-skinned prince of a child, knew the truth. And they were accustomed to keeping secrets and silencing rumours. They did so. For they understood that the King loved the Queen and she loved him as well, madly. Whatever reason she had had for that extraordinary deed, or how in fact she had been able to produce a child within an hour of copulation and conception, were things they did not dwell on too long. They were superstitious women given to the wearing of amulets and sacred threads and chanting of shlokas designed to ward off evil eyes and spirits. They accepted supernatural impossibilities as a part of life.

Time passed, healing all hurts, annulling all hurtful memories. The human spirit survives by selective forgetting.

When a year had passed, on another night much like the first one, Shantanu and his Queen were in their bedchamber, entwined in the grip of passion. When their ecstasy was spent, she looked at him in a certain way, rose, and left him. This time, he knew at once that something was amiss. He rose as well and followed her. He was just in time to see her enter her bedchambers. The daiimaas were already waiting with pans of steaming hot water and cloth.

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