At that, the nagini’s long, beautiful eyes flashed, and she caught the king by his wrists, saying, “Never speak to me of jealousy and betrayal, even in jest. My folk are faithful through all their lives—can you say the same of yours? And I will tell you this, my own lord, my one—should night ever come to this tower and not bring you with it, it will not be morning before a terrible catastrophe befalls your kingdom. If even once you fail to meet me here, nothing will save Kambuja from my wrath. That is how we are, we nagas.”
“And if you do not come to me each night,” said the king simply, “I shall die.” Then the nagini’s eyes filled with tears, and she put her arms about him, saying, “Why do we vex each other with talk of what will never happen? We are home together at last, my friend, my husband.” And of their happiness in the golden tower there is no further need to speak, save to add that the spiders and serpents and owls were all gone from there by morning.
Thus it was that the king of Kambuja took a nagini as his queen, even though she came to him only in darkness, and only in the golden tower. He told no one of this, as she bade him; but since he abandoned all matters of state, all show and ceremony, as soon as the sun set, to hurry alone to the tower, rumors that he met a woman there every night spread swiftly through all the country. The curious followed him as closely and as far as they dared; and there were even those who waited all night outside the tower in hopes of spying out the king’s secret mistress as she came and went. But none ever saw even the shadow of the nagini—only the king, walking slowly back into the day, calm and pensive, his face shining with the last light of the moon.
In time, however, such gossip and fascination gave way to wonder at the change in the king. For he ruled more and more with a passionate awareness of his people’s real existence, as though he had awakened to see them for the first time, in all their human innocence and wickedness and suffering. From caring about nothing but his own bitter loneliness, he now began to work at bettering their lot as intensely as they themselves worked merely to survive. There was no one in the realm who could not see and speak freely to him; no condemned criminal, overtaxed merchant, beaten servant or daughter sold into marriage who could not appeal and be heard. Such zealous concern bewildered many who were accustomed to other sorts of rulers, and a half-mocking saying grew up in the land: “By night we have a queen, but by day we have at least five kings.” Yet slowly his people came to return their king’s love, if not to comprehend it, and it came also to be said that if justice existed nowhere else in the entire universe, still it had been invented in Kambuja.
The reason for this change, as the king himself well knew, was two-fold: first, that he was happy for the first time in his life and wished to see others happy; second, that it seemed to him that the harder he worked, the faster the day sped its course, carrying him to nightfall and his nagini queen. In its turn, as she had told him, the joy that he took in their love made even their hours apart joyous by reflection, as the sun, long since set, yet brightens our nights through the good offices of the moon. So it is that one learns to treasure, without confusing them, day and night and twilight alike, with all that they contain.
The years passed swiftly, being made up of days and nights as they are. The king never spent a night away from the golden tower—which meant, among many other things, that during his reign Kambuja never went to war—and the nagini was always there when he arrived to greet him by the secret name that the priests had given him as a child, the name that no one else knew. In return she had told him her naga name (and laughed fondly at his attempts to speak it correctly), but she refused ever to let him see her in her true shape, as she went among her own folk. “What I am with you is what I am most truly,” she said to him (according to the sworn word of my trader). “We nagas are forever passing between water and earth, earth and air, between one form and another, one world and another, this desire and that, this dream and that. Here in our tower I am as you know me, neither more nor less; and what shape you put on when you sit and give judgment on life and death, I do not ask to see. Here we are both as free as though you were not a king and I were not a naga. Let it remain so, my dear one.”
The king answered, “It shall be as you say, but you should know that there are many who whisper that their night queen is indeed a naga. The land has grown too bounteous, the rainfall is too perfect, too reliable—who but a naga could command such precise good fortune? Most of my people have believed for years that you are the true ruler of Kambuja, whatever else you may be. In truth, I find it hard to disagree with them.”
“I have never told you how to govern your country,” the nagini answered him. “You needed no instruction from me to be a king.”
“You think not?” he asked her then. “But I was no king at all until you came to me, and my people know that as well as I. Perhaps you never taught me to build a road or a granary, to devise a just tax or keep my land’s borders free of enemies, but without you I would never have cared that I could do such things. Once Kambuja was only to be endured because it contained our golden tower; now, by little and little, the tower has grown to take in all Kambuja, and all my people have come inside with us, precious as ourselves. This is your doing, and this is why you rule here, by day as well as night.”
At times he would say to her, “Long ago, when I told you that I would die if you ever failed to meet me here, your face changed and I knew that I had spoken more truth than I meant. I know now—so wise has loving made me—that one night you will not come, and I will die indeed, and for that I care nothing. I have known you. I have lived.” But the nagini would never let him speak further, weeping and promising him that such a night would never be, and then the king would comfort her until morning. So they were together, and the years passed.
The king grew old with the nagini as he had been young with her, joyously and without fear. But those most near to him grew old too, and died or retired from the court, and there emerged a rabble of young soldiers and courtiers who grumbled increasingly loudly that the king had provided no heir to the throne, and that the realm would be torn to pieces by his squabbling cousins at his death. They complained further that he was in such thrall to his nagini, or his sorceress, or his leopard-woman (for the belief in such shape-changers is a common one in Kambuja) that he took little care for the glory and renown of the kingdom, so that Kambuja had become a byword for well-fed timidity among other nations. And if none of this was true, still it is well-known that long tranquility makes many restless, ready to follow anyone who promises tumultuous change for its own sake. It has happened so even in Rome.
Several attempted to warn the king that such was the case at his court, but he paid no heed, preferring to believe that all around him were as serene as he. Thus, when a drowsy noon hour abruptly shattered into blood and shouting and the clanging of swords, and even when he found himself with his back to his own throne-room door, fighting for his life, the king was not prepared. If the best third of his army, made up of his strongest veterans, had not remained loyal, the battle would have been over in those first few minutes, and there would be no more than this to my trader’s story. But the king’s forces held on doggedly, and then rallied, and by mid-afternoon were on the attack; so that as the sun began to set the insurrection had dwindled to a few pockets of a few desperate rebels who fought like madmen, knowing that no surrender would be accepted. It was in combat with one such that the king of Kambuja received his mortal wound.