NOVEL NEXT Chapter 33: The Mantle of the Kapala Chief
A whole day had passed while he was going through the Kapala Chief’s memories. His deep meditation had unintentionally invoked some of his own memories he thought were lost. Svetavastra steadied himself from the grip of the memory that had held him paralysed for a while. In front of him, the Kapala Chief sat in meditation, unmoving, his attention focused on his breath. I am God? he thought to himself, his brows slightly creased. He tucked the memory away to process the information at a later time. Cleansing the Yaksha mani is the priority, he reminded himself.
Svetavastra brought his attention to his breath to clear his mind and reentered the mind of the Kapala Chief through the spiritual connection he had made earlier. He along with the Kapala Chief entered a translucent memory bubble in the tunnel of time and space.
The Kapala Chief’s mother, the woman whom Svetavastra had seen in a previous memory was facing a small army of soldiers in red uniform led by a man wearing black robes on horseback. She was on her horse, her hand firmly holding the reins and Toyesha, the young Kapala Chief was secured on her back using a cloth sling.
“Keraku, what is the meaning of this?” She asked the black-robed man.
Keraku curved his lips into a sinister smile.
“Chief,” he said. “Surrender and plead guilty and you may live to see another day.”
The woman looked at him for a moment in disbelief. Keraku was one of her own, her trusted squadron leader and he had betrayed her to the enemies. She felt a sharp sting in her heart. I failed as a leader, she thought to herself.
“The rest of the Kapala Army has already been captured,” continued Keraku.
“Why?” asked the woman, trying to understand where she went wrong.
“I’m the commander of the Northern Army of Dayita,” said Keraku. “This was all planned to rid Dayita of the Kapala Army.”
The woman widened her eyes in shock. She had harboured a mole, she brought this on herself. Quickly regaining her composure, she assessed her options to escape. She couldn’t face the soldiers head-on, her son could be harmed. She would have to backtrack into the denser parts of the forest behind her.
She pulled the reins of her horse and nudged it with her legs, the horse neighed standing on its hind legs, the soldiers were caught off guard and the horse galloped into the forest. Keraku ordered the archers to shoot at her.
“You can shoot the child,” said Keraku. “But I want the Kapala Chief alive.”
The horse raced across the stretches of the forest, the woman pulled her son in front of her and hugged him close while bending down to protect him from the speed with which the horse was escaping. Keraku was still behind her and his archers couldn’t aim accurately as all they could see was a blur of the brown horse that deftly dodged low-hanging tree branches and became increasingly difficult to spot as the forest became denser and denser.
Soon, the woman had reached a stream, she remembered a hidden clearing beyond it. She got down from her horse, quickly made a dummy body with the scrap twigs around her and put her cloak on it. She tied it to her horse and hit on the back to go in the opposite direction to where she was heading.
Svetavastra along with the adult Toyesha came out of the memory and floated in the tunnel of time and space.
So it seems, the Kapala Chief is a hereditary title, he thought, the current Kapala Chief, Toyesha, inherited in from his mother who was betrayed. She passed on the mantle and the ancestral memories through the tattoo on his arm.
Svetavastra found another memory of the woman, who was leading the bandit army with a baby Toyesha strapped to her chest and raiding wealthy merchants across a ravine. In another memory bubbly, she was gently rocking him in her arms and singing him a lullaby in the Yaksha tongue that spoke of the yakshas and the Yaksha mani, she took the baby’s hand and let it touch the green tattoo on her arm. In a different memory bubble, the woman was by herself in a secluded forest, she was in labour, she stood, her hands raised holding on to the branches of an Ashoka tree and gave birth to Toyesha.
She is a strong woman, Svetavastra thought to himself as he went from one memory to another. But I do not sense any bloodlust in her.
Svetavastra continued to sift past the memories. He saw the woman falling off a cliff after being chased by an army of soldiers. Saved by a fortuitously placed tree branch, she was found by a scholar who lived in a secluded area. Svetavastra saw the memories of the woman as she recovered while staying with the scholar, falling in love with him and then leaving him on a moonless night when she discovered she was with child.
“He is a good man,” she said to herself as she climbed up the cliff. “I wish him a good life. Forgive me child for robbing you of a father but you and I do not belong with him. Let us not involve him in our tortured destiny.”
Svetavastra found another memory bubble. This was inside a large cave, the Kapala Army had made this cave its hidden base. Inside a sequester enclosing within the cave, an old man lay on a platform. The woman, who looked younger was holding his hands while kneeling on the ground by the platform. Surrounding him were a few of their remaining relatives. This was the ruling clan of the Kapala Army and its chief unbeknownst to the army stationed outside was on his deathbed.
“Manavi,” said the old man, his frail voice strained. “You must secure the bloodline of the yakshas.”
Tears were running down the woman’s cheeks.
“Don’t leave me so soon, father,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
“It must be done,” he said and raised to sit up. He put his hand to his heart sending his yaksha energy towards it and pulled out the rib that carved into a bone needle. The yaksha relatives chanted in their ancient yaksha tongue and the dim cave enclosure lit with a strange glow.
As he started to tattoo on his daughter’s arm, he gave her some final words of advice,
“We are yakshas,” he said, his voice weak but firm with conviction. “We carry our ancestors with all their glory, all their triumphs as well as their downfall. You are our hope to set things right. Always remember who you are.”
He finished the tattoo on her arm that glowed with the yaksha energy before settling to become green. Her father turned to embers as did her relatives, leaving her all alone, the last yaksha of a displaced clan, all by herself to lead a bandit army and to save their clan from being wiped out forever.
She broke down in tears, feeling bereft and lost. After a few hours, she wiped her tears and went outside to announce herself as the new Kapala Chief, raising her tattooed arm to the sky. The Kapala soldiers at once fell to their knees, put their fisted hands to their hands and bowed their heads.
“Long live the Kapala Chief! Long live the Kapala Chief!” their voices echoed in the mountains.