ON a hot day in the dense forest during the thirteenth year of exile, Yudhistira discovered his four brothers dead. Beside a lake lay sprawled Bima and Arjuna, his two full brothers by his own mother, Kunti. A little to the north lay the body of his half-brother Nakula. Then he discovered Sadewa, whose mother, like Nakula, was Madrim.

Yudhistira was dumbstruck. His four brothers, dead, with no sign of any battle. What had happened? And in his co