Dice, in her family, had always cost her too dearly. Her eldest husband had thrown away palaces and kingdom for it—and ultimately herself. She did not trust dice, nor this man who bore himself like a skilled gambler.
All her long life, she had been a mistress of illusion. What if she showed him a few truths? He would flee in loathing.
She held out her hands. Smooth, unstained, unwrinkled, though hardened from the rigors of her recent journey. Draupadi had learned her lessons well, hadn’t she? After all these years, she still looked—no, she was no longer the slender girl who had slipped from cell to library of the Temple school in the city by the shore and through the inner passages to share her fears with Ganesha and the other students she had trusted.
Since then, since the city fell and the sea shrank back into the earth, Draupadi had seen herself mirrored in the water of sea or fountain, in silver, in the metal of shields in all the years of my exile.
Leaving the valley of her sanctuary, looking down upon a place that bore a name she knew had suddenly made those years sink upon her like a burden. Astonishing that they were not reflected in her face—as she saw it in Arjuna’s eyes. She knew he was called Quintus in this place and time. She knew that his name meant “five.” The fifth son, perhaps. Or, in his case, the avatar of her five husbands. He was so different. As reserved as the twins, he was: It was hard to see in him the kingliness of one of the brothers, the fighting heart of another. Arjuna himself had been a quiet man, she reassured herself. Like Arjuna, this man had suffered, had lost much, had wandered far. Unlike him, though, he had never been acclaimed.
So different—and yet she had known him the instant he strode onto the tiny island of her refuge.
So far they had traveled apart. Please all the gods that they could join together.
A saffron drift of dust cleared away, like a fading spell of illusion, and Draupadi stared down at the Stone Tower. It was closer than it had been after days of necessarily slow downhill travel, but still far away. Years ago, so many years ago—she wished she had Ganesha’s memories or, failing them, the scrolls he had left in their retreat, to remind her.
Had the Stone Tower always looked out upon dry lands? She rather thought so: The basin in which she had spent the first part of her life lay far beyond the town called Su-le by the golden-skinned warriors she traveled among. She remembered it as a town near the shore, its breezes rich and wet, refreshing as the grapes that grew on the slopes and near the towns that surrounded a long-gone sea.
How long had it been? Even the dances of the stars had changed!
The wind blew. Again, dust rose. Draupadi smelled dung, some crushed greens, the smoke of a fire, the wild-ness of true desert, with salt underlying it, the salt of a sea that had lapped its shores when the patterns of the stars overhead were very, very different.
She shut her eyes, casting her thoughts as far back as she could. If she thought of the night sky, she knew what stars she would see, and in what ordered dances. Now, memory was easier: the blue of the sea between snowcapped mountain ranges; towns with tile roofs and thick-walled buildings, temple walls and towers overshadowing them, shining with pure light to guide the slim, graceful ships to harbor, heavy with the treasures they carried. She saw the Naacals in the Temple worshipping the flame as an embodiment of the flame of pure thought, a reflection of the Mind and time beyond all worlds. She saw her own cell in that Temple and felt the hopes and growing power of the young student she had been.
Ganesha would remember better than she. Her skill had been mainly with the spinning of illusions. A humble choice, and there were those in the Temple who had hoped to guide her toward greater skill. But she had never been troubled overmuch by pride in those serene days when sunlight shone on the Inland Sea.
There had been so many worthier students in those days. So many fine men and women. All young, save for Ganesha, who had taught them. Strong or stronger than they had believed.
Some said that the Naacals’ teachings in such temples were themselves illusions as the crafts she wrought at feasts. They believed that beneath the light, the thought, lurked another truth, and that truth dark. Just as great fish leapt upon the surface of the sea to rescue the occasional sailor, such people said other creatures lurked in its depth to swallow the unwary and, ultimately, to swallow all. Such were the Black Naacals, who saw life as a feast of such creatures, writ large and dread upon the pages of the world, and who saw a share of that feast as the best that they might gain.
Even a practitioner of illusion could see how such a belief would turn treason into necessity, if a Black Naacal wished to be feaster and not fast. She had not, she thought, the strength to withstand them: How should she, when what she made faded? The mastery of true change lay lifetimes away—time that she was grateful to be permitted to spend in study. She had had—what was it they said in these days? All the time in the worlds? Ganesha, to whom she brought her fears, had told her so, and she had trusted him.
Where could I have gone right? She had not been believed at first. Ganesha had his scrolls, his studies. Seeing patterns in the stars as in the land, he had not seen this new threat. In all these years, Draupadi thought, he has kept his memory unclouded. Was that his punishment?
She had realized that for the first time—in so many years—when he looked down about the valley and named it. As the very stars had circled into new patterns, they had mercifully forgotten … forgotten much. He had forgotten nothing, not even consciousness of the errors he had made.
She too had forgotten in those years of exile. But she had not forgotten her illusions. If she dropped them, she wondered, would they show a woman as far beyond a crone in age and looks as a bone buried deep in the rock is beyond a living creature? She laughed angrily. This creature of an instant, who called himself Lucilius and bore himself like a prince, would flee from her—
And what of Arjuna? In this body, he barely remembered even his name, like a word spoken in the ear of a dreaming man.
Ah, they had traveled so long down different roads, even long after the glory of Mu was swallowed with the Inmost Sea.
Memory, as unwelcome as Ganesha’s, struck, and she sank to her knees. She gazed out at the Stone Tower, but saw a gentler, richer—and far older—land instead.
For all of them, life had seemed very sweet in the palaces, in the sunlit towns by that Inmost Sea—until the Black Naacals’ greed broke all asunder. They no longer wished to wait for their feast: They wished it now, and they sought ways of binding man and earth and water to their will.
Clouds hid the sun, lit only by lightning with never a drop of rain. The hills shook; they cracked; smoke and molten rock rolled down their slopes. The very seabeds trembled, and great waves began to pound the harbor. Ganesha might have been resigned: He had collected the wisdom of many lives already, and would be quite content to add his light to the eternal flame. Still, she knew, he could be enticed by his love of knowledge—and his love of his students. They were still so young, with the tales of many lives yet to come. In the end, Ganesha’s compassion conquered his resignation, and he taught his students one last set of lessons: survival.
The students prepared: boats, food, weapons, and a clear passage to escape. And Draupadi spun the illusions that would let them reach the harbor.
After a week of darkness even at noon, the thunder pealed: as above, so below. The earth rumbled and, with a roar, the sea rushed in to devour the cities that had claimed it as their tributary. Their ship had sailed until the wind had stripped the cloth from its masts, and then those aboard had turned the very force of their minds to keep their course. To the mountains of the west, always west, while the waves roiled about them and Draupadi lashed herself to a mast, singing illusions to keep the creatures at the deep from swallowing her ship along with the other fugitives.