Maricha's Warning

News of the defeat at Janasthana reached Lanka twice — first through the wounded commander Akampana, then through Shurpanakha herself, her ears and nose cut away, weeping with rage in front of her brother's throne. Both of them described Sita's beauty as they described Ram's strength, and by the time Shurpanakha finished speaking, Ravana had stopped thinking about an open battle at all. A king who could not defeat Ram in the field might still take from him the one thing no army could guard every moment.

He went to the seashore, to a rakshasa named Maricha, who lived alone and kept himself apart from Lanka's court. Maricha knew Ram's strength better than almost anyone — years before, Ram's arrow had thrown him far out over the ocean while he tried to break up Vishvamitra's sacrifice, and he had never fully recovered from the fear of that day.

"Attack another man's family," Maricha told him plainly, "and you risk your kingdom along with your life. Leave Sita alone." Ravana listened, said nothing, and went back to Lanka.

But Shurpanakha had not finished. She went to her brother again, this time with every detail of Sita's face and figure, and needled him for turning back from a rakshasa half his strength. Stung, Ravana returned to Maricha — not to ask his counsel this time, but to give him an order: take the form of a golden deer, draw Ram and Lakshman away from the cottage, and leave Sita alone and undefended.

Maricha refused a second time, more urgently than the first. He told Ravana exactly what he had seen at Vishvamitra's sacrifice — the arrow that never missed, the discipline behind it — and said that this plan would not end in Sita's capture but in both their deaths.

Ravana's answer was not another argument. He told Maricha, plainly, that if he did not obey, he would die right there, by Ravana's own hand, before he could even fear what Ram might do to him.

Maricha understood then that there was no path left that did not end in his death. Refuse, and Ravana would kill him where he stood. Obey, and Ram's arrow would find him again — this time for good. He looked at the king he could not refuse and said what he had already accepted.

"I am already a dead man," he told Ravana. "And so, I think, are you."

Then he agreed to become the deer.