The Prince and the King's Blind Eye
A prince wins his princess through a chain of silent signs and a heartless deception, and her parents die of grief. The Betaal asks who is guilty, and the answer points at a throne.
Prince Vajramukuta falls in love with Padmavati, who tells him who she is entirely through silent gestures that his clever friend decodes. To carry her off, the friend works a deception so complete that the city believes a beast took her, and her parents die of grief. Who is guilty of their deaths: the schemer, the prince, or Padmavati? The answer falls on none of them. You judge first, then the king does.
The Burning Ground
The corpse hung in the tree. The king climbed, cut it loose, bound it, and shouldered it, and walked back out onto the ash without a word. The Vetala took its place behind his ear and began the tale.
The Silent Signs
A prince of Varanasi named Vajramukuta was hunting in the forest when he came upon a lake, and at its edge a young woman bathing among her attendants. Her name was Padmavati, the daughter of a skilled ivory-carver in the realm of King Karnotpala. The prince and the maiden looked at one another, and in a single glance were lost to each other.
She could not speak to him openly before her attendants. So she told him everything without a word. She took a lotus and touched it to her ear, then to her tooth, then held it up, then laid it upon her heart, and then she was gone.
The prince understood none of it, and it left him wretched. But his closest friend was with him, the son of his father's minister, a young man named Buddhisarira, whose mind was quicker than any sword. He read every sign. The lotus at her ear meant she lived in the land of King Karnotpala. At her tooth, that her father worked in ivory. Lifted, that her name was Padmavati, the lotus-lady. Laid on her heart, that her heart was now the prince's own. From four silent gestures, the friend had drawn her home, her house, her name, and her love. Each sign was a pun in her own language: the ear for karna, hidden in King Karnotpala's name; the tooth for the ivory her father carved; the lotus, padma, for Padmavati herself. What was a blank riddle to the prince was plain speech to anyone who caught the wordplay.