The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,9
line of kings before him, Kalidasa held court in Ranapura. Then, for reasons of which history is silent, he abandoned the royal capital for the isolated rock monolith of Yakkagala, forty kilometers away in the jungle.
There were some who argued that he sought an impregnable fortress, safe from the vengeance of his brother. Yet in the end he spurned its protection. If it was merely a citadel, why was Yakkagala surrounded by immense pleasure gardens whose construction must have demanded as much labor as the walls and moat themselves? Above all, why the frescoes?
As the narrator posed this question, the entire western face of the rock materialized out of the darkness—not as it was now, but as it must have been two thousand years ago. A band, starting a hundred meters from the ground and running the full width of the rock, had been smoothed and covered with plaster, upon which were portrayed scores of beautiful women, life-size and from the waist upward. Some were in profile, others full-face, and all followed the same basic pattern.
Ocher-skinned, voluptuously bosomed, they were clad either in jewels alone or in the most transparent of upper garments. Some wore towering and elaborate headdresses; others, apparently, crowns. Many carried bowls of flowers, or held single blossoms nipped delicately between thumb and forefinger. Though about half were darker-skinned than their companions, and appeared to be handmaidens, they were no less elaborately coiffured and bejeweled.
“Once, there were more than two hundred figures. But the rains and winds of centuries have destroyed all except twenty, which were protected by an overhanging ledge of rock….”
The image zoomed forward. One by one, the last survivors of Kalidasa’s dream came floating out of the darkness, to the hackneyed yet singularly appropriate music of “Anitra’s Dance.” Defaced though they were by weather, decay, and vandals, they had lost none of their beauty down the ages. The colors were fresh, unfaded by the light of more than half a million westering suns. Goddesses or women, they had kept alive the legend of Demon Rock.
“No one knows who they were, what they represented, and why they were created with such labor, in so inaccessible a spot. The favorite theory is that they were celestial beings, and that all Kalidasa’s efforts here were devoted to creating a heaven on earth, with its attendant goddesses. Perhaps he believed himself a god-king, as the Pharaohs of Egypt had; perhaps that is why he borrowed from them the image of the Sphinx, guarding the entrance to his palace.”
Now the scene shifted to a distant view of the Rock, seen reflected in the small lake at its base. The water trembled; the outlines of Yakkagala wavered and dissolved. When they had re-formed, the Rock was crowned by walls and battlements and spires, clinging to its entire upper surface. It was impossible to see them clearly; they remained tantalizingly out of focus, like the images in a dream. No man would ever know what Kalidasa’s aerial palace had really looked like, before it was destroyed by those who sought to extirpate his very name.
“And here he lived, for twenty years, awaiting the doom that he knew would come. His spies must have told him that, with the help of the kings of southern Hindustan, Malgara was patiently gathering his armies.
“And at last Malgara came. From the summit of the Rock, Kalidasa saw the invaders marching from the north. Perhaps he believed himself impregnable; but he did not put that belief to the test.
“He left the safety of his great fortress and rode out to meet his brother on the neutral ground between the two armies. One would give much to know what words they spoke, at that last encounter. Some say they embraced before they parted. It may be true.
“Then the armies met, like the waves of the sea. Kalidasa was fighting on his own territory, with men who knew the land, and at first it seemed certain that victory would go to him. But then occurred another of those accidents that determine the fate of nations.
“Kalidasa’s great war elephant, caparisoned with the royal banners, turned aside to avoid a patch of marshy ground. The defenders thought that the King was retreating. Their morale broke. They scattered, as the chronicles record, like chaff from the winnowing fan.
“Kalidasa was found on the battlefield, dead by his own hand. Malgara became king. And Yakkagala was abandoned to the jungle, not to be discovered again for seventeen hundred years.”