Chapter 1 — Two Archers

From the crest of the hill Hanuman saw two men who had no business being on the shore of Lake Pampa.

The sun had climbed only a spear’s length above the trees. The boulder where he crouched was already warm, and dry moss in its crevices crumbled beneath the soles of his feet. Down below, the lake lay open among flowering trees, its water clear, red and white lotuses drifting in patches across its surface. The deer that usually drank along the western bank had already bolted into the brush.

Both men wore robes of bark cloth, and their hair was bound up high in the matted crowns of ascetics. Yet ascetics did not carry bows as tall as their shoulders. Ascetics did not sling quivers packed to the brim across their backs, nor hang long swords at their waists in gold-plated scabbards that flashed whenever their bearers moved.

The older of the two stood knee-deep in the water. The younger waited on the bank holding two bows, a woven basket braced against his hip.

A breeze blew from the lake toward Rishyamuka, carrying voices far across the water. Hanuman tilted his head.

“Look at the birds along that bank, Lakshmana. Every one of them has its mate.” The man in the water pointed with a hand that held the stem of a dried flower. “That peacock cries out to his hen, and no rakshasa comes to tear her away.”

The wind shifted, and his next words were lost. When the breeze came back around, the man was looking down at his own hand.

“This wind brings the scent of blossoms out of the woods.” He closed his eyes and drew it in. “Her breath smelled like this once. At the hermitage she loved to hear the koels calling in the spring, and she always called me to come listen with her.”

“How am I to face Janaka when the time comes? When he asks me where his daughter is, what am I to tell him?”

The younger man stepped down into the water. Lotus pads drifted aside from his calves, and he stood beside his brother without touching him.

“Cast off this grief, Brother. A wick soaked in too much oil burns itself away.” He held out one of the bows, and his brother took it without looking. “That rakshasa will never draw an easy breath, even if he hides beneath the earth. Either he gives your wife back, or he dies. Without effort, not even the strongest man wins back what he has lost.”

A rakshasa. A wife. Hanuman glanced back for an instant at the cave mouth behind him, into the shadows where a bundle of yellow silk lay on dry stone with its knot still tied.

The two men waded out of the water. They walked slowly along the bank, paused beneath a tree heavy with yellow blossoms, and walked on again. Their steps were carrying them straight toward the foot of this hill.

---

Beside Hanuman, Sugriva was already on his feet.

The vanara king had been sitting cross-legged on a flat rock, and now he stood up without anyone bidding him, sat down again, and sprang back up. His tail stood stiff behind him. His toes gripped the edge of the stone until the moss peeled away.

“Bark cloth,” he said. “Look at their clothes, Hanuman. Then look at their bows.”

Hanuman looked. Down below, the older man had stopped and was gazing up toward the summit, shading his eyes with one hand.

“Vali sent them.” Sugriva backed a pace away from the lip of the rock. “They dressed themselves as ascetics and cut through the deep forest all this way. Who else could they be looking for if not me?”

The other four vanaras had heard him. One of them leaped first, from boulder to branch and branch to boulder, and the rest went after him. Sugriva bounded in their midst.

Hanuman came last.

They raced along the spine of the ridge, leaping from crag to crag. Loose stones clattered beneath their feet, sending gravel skittering down the slope. Flowering branches snapped under their weight and rained petals into the ravine. A herd of deer burst through the thicket. A wildcat hissed from a cleft in the rock and vanished. Out of a bamboo clump they cleared in a single bound, a tiger rose roaring as the vanaras sailed over its head.

They did not stop until they reached the highest peak, among great boulders that turned their backs to the lake. There they stood around Sugriva with palms pressed together before their chests, waiting for whatever their king would command. Sugriva sat on a stone, his breath coming short. His eyes kept darting back toward the trail they had just torn through the woods.

Hanuman stood a little way off. He looked back along that trail as well. Broken boughs hung by strips of bark. A bird whose nest had been knocked down wheeled crying above the brush. Anyone with eyes could read the path they had taken.

“My lord.” He stepped forward. “Whom are we running from?”

Sugriva looked at him.

“I do not see Vali. I do not see that fierce face of his, nor even his shadow. Vali cannot set foot upon this hill.” Hanuman pointed down toward the lake, hidden now behind the ridge. “You ran because a vanara’s heart is light and quick to startle, and you let it leap ahead of your mind. A king who loses his wits cannot rule anyone.”

The four other vanaras glanced at one another.

Sugriva straightened his back on the stone.

“Who would not quail at the sight of two men like that? Their eyes are wide. Their arms reach to their knees. Bows, arrows, swords, they carry them all. Their faces are the faces of the sons of gods.” He spread his palms across his knees. “I know Vali cannot come here. Sage Matanga cursed him. If he sets foot on this hill, he dies.”

“Then you are safe, my lord.”

“Which is why he has no need to come himself.” Sugriva tapped a finger against the rock, once, twice. “A king has many friends, Hanuman. Enemies walk abroad wearing other men’s clothes. They wait until we trust them, and then they strike. Vali knows well how to send others in his stead. Kings versed in cunning destroy their foes that way.”

A wind rose from the valley and swayed the branches overhead.

“You go,” Sugriva said.

Hanuman turned his head.

“Not in your own shape. Put on another form.” Sugriva leaned forward. “Watch their faces. Their hands. The way they speak. If they harbor ill intent, it will show. If their faces are open and their hearts are clean, win their trust for me. Praise me before them again and again. Ask them why they have come into these woods.”

“As you command, my lord.”

“Look into his eyes, Hanuman. The older one.”

“I will look.”

---

He went back the way they had come, alone.

Passing the mouth of the cave where the yellow bundle lay hidden, he walked out to the edge of the cliff.

Down below, the two men had reached the foot of the hill. They were sitting on the roots of a great tree with their bows across their laps. The younger one was opening his basket. The older one was gazing out at the water.

Hanuman dropped over the edge.

He landed on a rocky ledge halfway down the slope, leaped again, and once more, until the trees screened him from the lake. There, among trunks unseen from below, he stopped.

He closed his eyes.

The hair along his arms sank back into his skin. His tail shortened and vanished. His stooped shoulders drew upright, his legs lengthened, and his long prehensile toes made for gripping branches shrank into short human toes meant only for walking on the ground. When he opened his eyes, his hands were the thin hands of a man, with dirt under the fingernails. A worn strip of bark cloth wrapped his waist. In his left hand rested a begging bowl made from a halved gourd, cracked along the rim.

He stepped out from under the trees with the gait of a traveler who had walked a long road, descending toward the lakeshore as a mendicant. Beneath the great tree, the younger man had already set his basket aside and reached for his bow.