The Twenty Blades of the Rajah

June 1565. One hundred thirty-five days after the Battle of Talikota, which razed the Vijayanagara Empire, a cult emerges in the Western Ghats-the Rakshasas. Villages are burned, captives are taken, and people flee. The Rajah of Kaladurg sends twenty Rajputs under the command of Captain Rana Singh to destroy the sanctuary and free the prisoners. In the monsoon forests, at an altitude of eight hundred meters and then eighteen hundred, the group encounters Kamala-a devadasi from the Mallikamba temple, alone in the Ghats for one hundred thirty-five days, who spent seven days captive to the Guru before escaping.
She agrees to guide them. She sets three conditions. What follows is a twenty-two-day mission through one of the most treacherous terrains on the subcontinent: raging torrents, gorges sixty meters deep, sabotaged bridges, and tree trunks rolled down from the ridges. And within the group, a traitor who is relaying their positions to the enemy. The Rajah's Twenty Blades is a historical novel of adventure and psychological tension, set in 16th-century Deccan India-an era of destruction and reconstruction where the line between devotion and fanaticism can hinge on a single catastrophe.