CHAPTER 44: Stay in Pallava

Aryaman decided to use his powers for the betterment of the people’s lives and to make the King realize his responsibility towards his subjects.  He felt that this could be the reason behind Ananya asking him to come to Pallava.

When he was flying over to the Panchayat meeting, he saw little Aditi falling into the well and had come to her rescue. 

Later, he rescued Shailendra and Gayatri by terrifying the Panchayat and their men with his great illusionary powers given to him by Sage Ananya.

When he was observing the state of affairs in the kingdom, he had come across some people who always stood outside the famous Shiva temple but never entered in. 

Once, in the disguise of a young boy he had asked one of them the reason behind it and learnt the facts.  He formed a plan to shake off the temple devotees and the authorities from their parochial attitude. 

On another occasion inside the temple, he had changed his looks twice – one was in the form of a young Brahmin and the other into an elderly – because he wanted the people to feel that two different individuals witnessed the disappearance of the idol and its subsequent appearance. 

Aryaman did not want anyone to suspect anything fishy and wanted to make this episode appear as genuine as possible so that it attained the desired result.

Later, when the palace guards told him that Ravichandran had gone for hunting, he knew the forest where he could find the King.  When he was gathering information about the King from the conversations of the people, he had learnt as to where the King went to exercise his favorite pastime.  

Mrutyunjay discovered the trouble the people of a village in Amlanagar took to take their children to the abode of their guru, when he once flew in the form of a crow.  He thus volunteered to make the journey easy for the little students.

Spending time in the kingdom, Mrutyunjay had learnt many locations and landmarks of Pallava.  Thus, he was aware of the physician Hansraj and the place Ankhileshwar, were the cart man Rajan resided.

 The next few months witnessed him do exactly what he had decided in his mind.

When King Ravichandran informed him about the high probability of King Chandrashekhar getting the boon from Ananya, he knew what the latter might have gained! 

Ananya had told him that he had given a divine arrow as a boon to the first ruler who had come to him, which his armor could not withstand.  Later in the meeting with Chandrashekar the Prince observed the expressions on the King’s face after advising him that having an arrow does not mean that it had to be fired to kill his opponent. 

Chandrashekar was taken aback to hear this as if Mrutyunjay was aware about the boon granted to him by the sage.  This made Mrutyunjay believe that Chandrashekar indeed was the benefactor of that arrow!  He decided against telling Ravichandran about this fact.  Sage Ananya had specifically told him to reveal the source of his powers only if he had no other choice to do so.  He may have made a similar demand from Chandrashekhar as well. 

In that case, Mrutyunjay did not want to go against the sage’s wish.  After conversing with Chandrashekhar, the Prince could not stop this feeling that the King was not very comfortable with that boon.