Read RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA for Free Online Page B

– looking upon them – their haunting chant yielded to a moment of such utter silence that he thought his heart itself had ceased beating.
    As one, in drill-perfect unison, they straightened their battered bodies to stand on their hind legs – a measure of supreme respect among both vanars and bears – and raised their snouted, furred and dusty faces to him, their dark wet eyes gleaming in the slanting evening light. On straightened knees with lowered brows, hoarse voices stilled at last after days of yelling war cries and crying havoc, they observed him, and waited.
    In the silence that fell, he heard a bird twittering somewhere, calling the end of day. He felt the benediction of a soft, cool ocean breeze wafting in from the west, redolent of salt and the exotic odours of a thousand yojanas of open sea. He felt a strange absence of feeling spread through his being, like the sensation one experienced just before falling fast asleep, when the body and mind hovered momentarily between wakefulness and deep unconsciousness. He stood on that precipice, and teeming multitudes waited to hear his words.
    A great hand fell upon his shoulder; gently, despite its great strength. The voice that spoke in his ear was as quiet as that hand was gentle.
    “Command them. They are yours. As are the earth, the sky and the sea and everything in them. You are the master of the world now. Rule it as you see fit.”
    The voice of the bear king Jambavan was sonorous and gruff as ever. But the tone of sad wisdom was new. Perhaps, he thought, the war had taken its toll on the ancient one too, dimming his penchant for eccentric proclamations and whimsical asides. Or perhaps it was the gravity of the moment that the bear lord tempered his speech to suit.
    He turned to look up into the eyes of the lord of rksaas. During the time of battle, he had seen those same eyes blazing like coals in obsidian, promising fire and delivering death. Earlier in their numerous counsels he had seen grace, wisdom, empathy and knowledge so deep and infinite that he had felt he could ask any question and the answer would be there in those eyes. Now, he saw in them a mirror image of the same adoration he saw in all those lakhs of vanar and bear and rakshasa eyes staring up at him from the field of battle. A look of fierce admiration and pride, an almost deifying adoration. It was the look a soldier gave his king after a successful end to war; the look a worshipper gave his deity after a lifetime’s wish was fulfilled.
    He wondered if he deserved such a look, such adoration, such deification.
    “Lord bear,” he said softly. “I barely know how to console myself. How do I console these who have sacrificed so much for my cause? What do I say to explain the terrible cost of this great conflict?”
    Jambavan’s face fur rippled in a diagonal pattern that began somewhere east of his left ear and traversed across the top of his mountainous head ending somewhere in the vicinity of his nape. The effect resembled a strong wind ruffling thick elephant grass on plainsland. The berry dark eyes shone with sympathy, but the parted jaws promised no mercy. “Heed well my words, youngun. I will say this only once, so treasure it and scroll it and do not make me repeat it. The price of war is the prize of war.”
    And the bear stepped back, silent, turning his snout away to gaze at a flight of geese overhead as if they had suddenly grown more interesting than anything transpiring on earth. Rama blinked, taking in the words so eccentrically given, tersely spoken, yet so dense and rich with meaning.
    The price of war is the prize of war.
    He blinked again, this time to dispel the sudden wetness that plagued his vision. And suddenly found the courage to speak. He found a little strength to straighten his stiff back, to raise his head and thrust his chin forward, to return their show of respect with a gesture of his own, for among vanars and bears, actions counted more than words. Yet