Far from the battlefield, in the quiet palace of Hastinapura, the blind old king Dhritarashtra sat very still. Beside him sat Sanjaya, who had been given a special inner sight so that he could watch everything happening on the distant plain of Kurukshetra and describe it, word by word, to the king who could not see.

Sanjaya had been describing wonders no human had ever witnessed: the cosmic form, the thousand suns, the burning mouths, the voice of Time itself. Now he paused, and the king leaned forward, gripping the arms of his throne. "And Arjuna?" the old king asked. "What did Arjuna do, when he heard such words?"

Sanjaya closed his eyes and watched.

"He heard the words of Keshava," Sanjaya said softly, "and then, O King, your nephew — Arjuna, the crowned prince, the greatest archer in all the world, the warrior whom no enemy has ever made afraid — he began to tremble."

The king said nothing.

"He pressed his palms together," Sanjaya went on, "the way the smallest child does before something holy. And he bowed. Not the proud nod of a prince, but a low, deep bow, his crown tipping toward the ground. Then, still shaking, frightened to his very bones, he bowed again."

Sanjaya's own voice grew gentle. "And when he tried to speak, the words would not come out smoothly. The same mouth that had shouted war cries across a hundred battlefields could now only stammer. He spoke to Krishna in a small, choking voice, the way you and I might if we stood at the edge of the whole sky and were asked to say something to it."

The blind king sat in silence, picturing it: his mighty enemy, the invincible Arjuna, reduced to a trembling, whispering, bowing boy. And something in that picture frightened the old king more than any report of weapons ever had. If Arjuna trembled like this, then truly the one beside him on that chariot was no ordinary man at all.