A seething Daksha refused to answer Brahmanayak, turning his face away.

Brahmanayak shook his head and rolled his eyes. He then patted Sati on her head. ‘I’ll see you when I return, my child.’

‘Yes, grandfather.’

Brahmanayak opened the door and was gone.

Daksha glared at the closed door.

Thank God I’m going to be rid of you, you beast! Insulting me in front of my favourite daughter? How dare you! Take the throne away, take all the riches away, take the world away if you wish. But don’t you dare take my good daughter away from me! She’s mine!

He looked at Sati’s back. She was still staring at the door, her body shaking.

Is she crying?

Daksha thought that perhaps Sati was angry with Brahmanayak for insulting her father. She was his daughter after all.

Daksha smiled. ‘It’s all right, my child. I’m not angry. Your grandfather doesn’t matter anymore because...’

‘Father,’ interrupted Sati as she turned around, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Why can’t you be more like grandfather?’

Daksha stared at his daughter, dumbstruck.

‘Why can’t you be more like grandfather?’ whispered Sati again.

Daksha was in shock.

Sati suddenly turned around and ran out of the room.

Daksha kept staring at the door as it slammed shut behind Sati. Fierce tears were pouring from his eyes.

More like grandfather?

More like that monster?

I am better than him!

The gods know that! They know I will make a far better king! I will show you!

You will love me! I am your creator!

You will love me! Not him! Not that monster!

The sound of the door being opened broke his train of thought, bringing Daksha back to the present from that ancient memory.

He saw Veerini walk into the bed chamber. She glanced at Daksha for an instant, then shook her head, walked up to her private desk and rummaged through it to find what she was looking for: her prayer beads. She brought them up to touch her forehead reverentially, then both her eyes and then her lips. She held the beads tightly and turned to take one last look at her husband. The disgust she felt couldn’t be expressed in words. She had no intention of desecrating her ears by listening to his voice. She hadn’t spoken to him since Sati’s death.

Daksha’s eyes followed Veerini’s passage. He couldn’t muster the courage to speak, even if it was only to apologise for all that he’d done.

She walked into the private prayer room next to her bed chamber and shut the door. She bowed before the idol of Lord Ram, which was, as usual, surrounded by the idols of his favourite people, his wife, Lady Sita, his brother, Lord Lakshman and his loyal devotee, Lord Hanuman, the Vayuputra.

Veerini sat down cross-legged. She held the beads high, in front of her eyes and began chanting as she waited for her death. ‘Shri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram; Shri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram...’

The faint echo of this chanting reached Daksha’s ears. He stared at the closed door of the attached chamber, his angry wife closeted within.

I should have listened to her. She was right all along.

‘Shri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram; Shri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram....’

He continued to hear the soft chanting of his wife in the prayer room. Those divinely serene words should have brought him peace. But there was no chance of that. He would die a frustrated and angry man.

Daksha clenched his jaw and looked out of the window. He stared at the banyan tree in the distance, tears streaming down his face.

Damn you!

The banyan shook slightly and its leaves ruffled dramatically with the strong wind. It appeared as if the giant tree was laughing at him.

Damn you!

Chapter 53

The Destroyer of Evil

‘The wind is too strong,’ murmured a worried Tara, looking at the windsock that had been set up close to the Pashupatiastra missile tower.

Tara and Shiva were mounted on horses, stationed far from the Pashupatiastra launch tower. It was almost the end of the second prahar and the sun was just a few moments away from being directly overhead. Shiva’s entire army and the refugees from Devagiri had been cordoned off seven kilometres from the launch tower, safely outside the Pashupatiastra’s blast radius.

Shiva glanced at Tara and then up at the sky, trying to judge the wind from the movement of dust particles. ‘Not a problem.’

Saying this, Shiva’s attention returned to stringing his bow. Parshuram had been working on making this composite bow for months. Its basic structure was made of wood, reinforced with horn on the inside and sinew on the outside. It was also curved much sharper than normal, with its edges turning away from the archer. Due to the mix of different elements and the curve at the edges, the bow had exceptional draw strength for its small size. It was ideal for an archer to shoot arrows from, while riding a horse or a chariot. Parshuram had named the bow Pinaka, after the fabled great ancient longbow of Lord Rudra.

Though Parshuram didn’t know this while designing the bow, the Pinaka would prove ideal for Shiva’s purpose, as firing the Pashupatiastra was not easy.

The Pashupatiastra was a pure nuclear fusion weapon, unlike the Brahmastra and the Vaishnavastra which were nuclear fission weapons. In a pure nuclear fusion weapon, two paramanoos, the smallest stable division of matter, are fused together to release tremendous destructive energy. In a nuclear fission weapon, anoos, atomic particles, are broken down to release paramanoos, and this is also accompanied by a demonic release of devastating energy.

Nuclear fission weapons leave behind a trail of uncontrollable destruction, with radioactive waste spreading far and wide. A nuclear fusion weapon, on the other hand, is much more controlled, destroying only the targeted area with minimal radioactive spread.

So the Pashupatiastra would be the obvious weapon of choice for those who intended to destroy a specific target with the precision of a surgeon. The problem though, was its launch.

These daivi astras were usually mounted on launching towers, packed with a mixture of sulphur, charcoal, saltpetre and a few other materials which generated the explosive energy that propelled the astra towards the target. Once the astra was close to its target, another set of explosions would trigger the weapon.

The launch material within the tower had to be triggered from a safe distance or else the people firing the astra would be incinerated in the initial launch explosion. Keeping this in mind, archers were called upon to shoot flaming arrows from a distance to trigger the launch explosion. These archers usually used long bows with a range of more than eight hundred metres. To hit a target accurately from this distance required archers of great skill.

The Brahmastra and Vaishnavastra did not need a precise landing as their destruction spread far and wide. Since accuracy was not of the essence, the launch towers that cradled these weapons had huge firing targets.

The Pashupatiastra or Weapon of the Lord of Animals was a precise missile. It had to land at the exact spot. What complicated the issue even more at this particular time was that the attempt was to fire three missiles concurrently. The trajectory of the three missiles had been planned such that they would detonate over the Svarna, Rajat and Tamra platforms of Devagiri simultaneously, guaranteeing the complete and instantaneous destruction of the entire city. The risk with trying to destroy three platforms at the same time was that the inner circle of devastation would expand, since the weapons would have to be triggered from a greater height. Tara had planned the angles of descent of each missile such that, together, their simultaneous explosions would ensure the annihilation of Devagiri while their excess energies would be trapped within each other, thus preventing any fallout destruction outside the inner circle.