Lord of Light

by Roger Zelazny

  "Hold ranks, for now!" called out the Master.

  "The same applies," said the prince to his men.

  The two of them crossed the courtyard, and the prince dismounted before the Hall.

  "You owe me a body," he said in a soft voice.

  "What talk is this?" said the Master.

  "I am Prince Siddhartha of Kapil, Binder of Demons."

  "Siddhartha has already been served," said the other.

  "So you think," said the prince, "served up as an epileptic, by order of Brahma. This is not so, however. The man you treated earlier today was an unwilling impostor. I am the real Siddhartha, oh nameless priest, and I have come to claim my body—one that is whole and strong, and without hidden disease. You will serve me in this matter. You will serve me willingly or unwillingly, but you will serve me."

  "You think so?"

  "I think so," replied the prince.

  "Attack!" cried the Master, and he swung his dark staff at the prince's head.

  The prince ducked the blow and retreated, drawing his blade. Twice, he parried the staff. Then it fell upon his shoulder, a glancing blow, but sufficient to stagger him. He circled around the white mare, pursued by the Master. Dodging, keeping the horse between himself and his opponent, he raised the horn to his lips and sounded it three tunes. Its notes rose above the fierce noises of the combat on the palace stair. Panting, he turned and raised his guard in time to ward off a temple blow that would surely have slain him had it landed.

  "It is written," said the Master, almost sobbing out the words, "that he who gives orders without having the power to enforce them, that man is a fool."

  "Even ten years ago," panted the prince, "you'd never have laid that staff on me."

  He hacked at it, hoping to split the wood, but the other always managed to turn the edge of his blade, so that while he nicked it and shaved it in places, the grain held and the staff remained of a piece.

  Using it as a singlestick, the Master laid a solid blow across the prince's left side, and he felt his ribs break within him. . . . He fell.

  It was not by design that it happened, for the blade spun from out his hands as he collapsed; but the weapon caught the Master across the shins and he dropped to his knees, howling.

  "We're evenly matched, at that," gasped the prince. "My age against your fat . . ."

  He drew his dagger as he lay there, but could not hold it steady. He rested his elbow on the ground. The Master, tears in his eyes, attempted to rise and fell again to his knees.

  There came the sound of many hooves.

  "I am not a fool," said the prince, "and now I have the power to enforce my orders."

  "What is happening?"

  "The rest of my lancers are arrived. Had I entered in full force, you'd have holed up like a gekk in a woodpile, and it might have taken days to pull your palace apart and fetch you out. Now I have you in the palm of my hand."

  The Master raised his staff.

  The prince drew back his arm.

  "Lower it," he said, "or I'll throw the dagger. I don't know myself whether I'll miss or hit, but I may hit. You're not anxious to gamble against the real death, are you?"

  The Master lowered his staff.

  "You will know the real death," said the Master, "when the wardens of Karma have made dog meat of your horse soldiers."

  The prince coughed, stared disinterestedly at his bloody spittle. "In the meantime, let's discuss politics," he suggested.

  After the sounds of battle had ended, it was Strake—tall, dusty, his hair near matching the gore that dried on his blade — Strake, who was nuzzled by the white mare as he saluted his prince and said, "It is over."

  "Do you hear that, Master of Karma?" asked the prince. "Your wardens are dog meat."

  The Master did not answer.

  "Serve me now and you may have your life," said the prince. "Refuse, and I'll have it."

  "I will serve you," said the Master.

  "Strake," ordered the prince, "send two men down into the town — one to fetch back Narada, my physician, and the other to go to the Street of the Weavers and bring here Jannaveg the sailmaker. Of the three lancers who remain at Hawkana's, leave but one to hold the Shan of Irabek till sundown. He is then to bind him and leave him, joining us here himself."

  Strake smiled and saluted.

  "Now bring men to bear me within the Hall, and to keep an eye on this Master."

  He burned his old body, along with all the others. The wardens of Karma, to a man, had passed in battle. Of the seven nameless Masters, only the one who had been fat survived. While the banks of sperm and ova, the growth tanks and the body lockers could not be transported, the transfer equipment itself was dismantled under the direction of Dr. Narada, and its components were loaded onto the horses of those who had fallen in the battle. The young prince sat upon the white mare and watched the jaws of flame close upon the bodies. Eight pyres blazed against the predawn sky. The one who had been a sailmaker turned his eyes to the pyre nearest the gate—the last to be ignited, its flames were only just now reaching the top, where lay the gross bulk of one who wore a robe of black, a circle of yellow on the breast. When the flames touched it and the robe began to smolder, the dog who cowered in the ruined garden raised his head in a howl that was near to a sob.

  "This day your sin account is filled to overflowing," said the sailmaker.

  "But, ah, my prayer account!" replied the prince. "I'll stand on that for the time being. Future theologians will have to make the final decision, though, as to the acceptability of all those slugs in the pray-o-mats. Let Heaven wonder now what happened here this day—where I am, if I am, and who. The time has come to ride, my captain. Into the mountains for a while, and then our separate ways, for safety's sake. I am not sure as to the road I will follow, save that it leads to Heaven's gate and I must go armed."

  "Binder of Demons," said the other, and he smiled.

  The lancer chief approached. The prince nodded him. Orders were shouted.

  The columns of mounted men moved forward, passed out through the gates of the Palace of Karma, turned off the roadway and headed up the slope that lay to the southeast of the city of Mahartha, comrades blazing like the dawn at their back.

  III

  There is no disappearing of the true Dhamma

  until a false Dhamma arises in the world.

  When the false Dhamma arises, he makes the

  true Dhamma to disappear.

  Samyutta-nikaya (II, 224)

  It is said that, when the Teacher appeared, those of all castes went to hear his teachings, as well as animals, gods and an occasional saint, to come away improved and uplifted. It was generally conceded that he had received enlightenment, except by those who believed him to be a fraud, sinner, criminal or practical joker. These latter ones were not all to be numbered as his enemies; but, on the other hand, not all of those improved and uplifted could be counted as his friends and supporters. His followers called him Mahasamatman and some said he was a god. So, after it was seen that he had been accepted as a teacher, was looked upon with respect, had many of the wealthy numbered as his supporters and had gained a reputation reaching far across the land, he was referred to as Tathagatha, meaning He Who Has Achieved. It must be noted that while the goddess Kali (sometimes known as Durga in her softer moments) never voiced a formal opinion as to his buddhahood, she did render him the singular honor of dispatching her holy executioner to pay him her tribute, rather than a mere hired assassin...

  Near the city of Alundil there was a rich grove of blue-barked trees, having purple foliage like feathers. It was famous for its beauty and the shrinelike peace of its shade. It had been the property of the merchant Vasu until his conversion, at which time he had presented it to the teacher variously known as Mahasamatman, Tathagatha and the Enlightened One. In that wood did this teacher abide with his followers, and when they walked forth into the town at midday their begging bowls never went unfilled.

  There was alw
ays a large number of pilgrims about the grove. The believers, the curious and those who preyed upon the others were constantly passing through it. They came by horseback, they came by boat, they came on foot.

  Alundil was not an overly large city. It had its share of thatched huts, as well as wooden bungalows; its main roadway was unpaved and rutted; it had two large bazaars and many small ones; there were wide fields of grain, owned by the Vaisyas, tended by the Sudras, which flowed and rippled, blue-green, about the city; it had many hostels (though none so fine as the legendary hostel of Hawkana, in far Mahartha), because of the constant passage of travelers; it had its holy men and its storytellers; and it had its Temple.

  The Temple was located on a low hill near the center of town, enormous gates on each of its four sides. These gates, and the walls about them, were filled with layer upon layer of decorative carvings, showing musicians and dancers, warriors and demons, gods and goddesses, animals and artists, lovemakers and half-people, guardians and devas. These gates led into the first courtyard, which held more walls and more gates, leading in turn into the second courtyard. The first courtyard contained a little bazaar, where offerings to the gods were sold. It also housed numerous small shrines dedicated to the lesser deities. There were begging beggars, meditating holy men, laughing children, gossiping women, burning incenses, singing birds, gurgling purification tanks and humming pray-o-mats to be found in this courtyard at any hour of the day.

  The inner courtyard, though, with its massive shrines dedicated to the major deities, was a focal point of religious intensity. People chanted or shouted prayers, mumbled verses from the Vedas, or stood, or knelt, or lay prostrate before huge stone images, which often were so heavily garlanded with flowers, smeared with red kumkum paste and surrounded by heaps of offerings that it was impossible to tell which deity was so immersed in tangible adoration. Periodically, the horns of the Temple were blown, there was a moment's hushed appraisal of their echo and the clamor began again.

  And none would dispute the fact that Kali was queen of this Temple. Her tall, white-stone statue, within its gigantic shrine, dominated the inner courtyard. Her faint smile, perhaps contemptuous of the other gods and their worshipers, was, in its way, as arresting as the chained grins of the skulls she wore for a necklace. She held daggers in her hands; and poised in mid-step she stood, as though deciding whether to dance before or slay those who came to her shrine. Her lips were full, her eyes were wide. Seen by torchlight, she seemed to move.

  It was fitting, therefore, that her shrine faced upon that of Yama, god of Death. It had been decided, logically enough, by the priests and architects, that he was best suited of all the deities to spend every minute of the day facing her, matching his unfaltering death-gaze against her own, returning her half smile with his twisted one. Even the most devout generally made a detour rather than pass between the two shrines; and after dark their section of the courtyard was always the abode of silence and stillness, being untroubled by late worshipers.

  From out of the north, as the winds of spring blew across the land, there came the one called Rild. A small man, whose hair was white, though his years were few—Rild, who wore the dark trappings of a pilgrim, but about whose forearm, when they found him lying in a ditch with the fever, was wound the crimson strangling cord of his true profession: Rild.

  Rild came in the spring, at festival-time, to Alundil of the blue-green fields, of the thatched huts and the bungalows of wood, of unpaved roadways and many hostels, of bazaars and holy men and storytellers, of the great religious revival and its Teacher, whose reputation had spread far across the land—to Alundil of the Temple, where his patron goddess was queen.

  Festival-time.

  Twenty years earlier, Alundil's small festival had been an almost exclusively local affair. Now, though, with the passage of countless travelers, caused by the presence of the Enlightened One, who taught the Way of the Eightfold Path, the Festival of Alundil attracted so many pilgrims that local accommodations were filled to overflowing. Those who possessed tents could charge a high fee for their rental. Stables were rented out for human occupancy. Even bare pieces of land were let as camping sites.

  Alundil loved its Buddha. Many other towns had tried to entice him away from his purple grove: Shengodu. Flower of the Mountains, had offered him a palace and harem to come bring his teaching to the slopes. But the Enlightened One did not go to the mountain. Kannaka, of the Serpent River, had offered him elephants and ships, a town house and a country villa, horses and servants, to come and preach from its wharves. But the Enlightened One did not go to the river.

  The Buddha remained in his grove and all things came to him. With the passage of years the festival grew larger and longer and more elaborate, like a well-fed dragon, scales all a-shimmer. The local Brahmins did not approve of the antiritualistic teachings of the Buddha, but his presence filled their coffers to overflowing; so they learned to live in his squat shadow, never voicing the word tirthika—heretic.

  So the Buddha remained in his grove and all things came to him, including Rild.

  Festival-time.

  The drums began in the evening on the third day. On the third day, the massive drums of the kathakali began their rapid thunder. The miles-striding staccato of the drums carried across the fields to the town, across the town, across the purple grove and across the wastes of marshland that lay behind it. The drummers, wearing white mundus, bare to the waist, their dark flesh glistening with perspiration, worked in shifts, so strenuous was the mighty beating they set up; and never was the flow of sound broken, even as the new relay of drummers moved into position before the tightly stretched heads of the instruments.

  As darkness arrived in the world, the travelers and townsmen who had begun walking as soon as they heard the chatter of the drums began to arrive at the festival field, large as a battlefield of old. There they found places and waited for the night to deepen and the drama to begin, sipping the sweet-smelling tea that they purchased at the stalls beneath the trees.

  A great brass bowl of oil, tall as a man, wicks hanging down over its edges, stood in the center of the field. These wicks were lighted, and torches flickered beside the tents of the actors.

  The drumming, at dose range, was deafening and hypnotic, the rhythms complicated, syncopated, insidious. As midnight approached, the devotional chanting began, rising and falling with the drumbeat, working a net about the senses.

  There was a brief lull as the Enlightened One and his monks arrived, their yellow robes near-orange in the flamelight. But they threw back their cowls and seated themselves cross-legged upon the ground. After a time, it was only the chanting and the voices of the drums that filled the minds of the spectators.

  When the actors appeared, gigantic in their makeup, ankle bells jangling as their feet beat the ground, there was no applause, only rapt attention. The kathakali dancers were famous, trained from their youth in acrobatics as well as the ages-old patterns of the classical dance, knowing the nine distinct movements of the neck and of the eyeballs and the hundreds of hand positions required to re-enact the ancient epics of love and battle, of the encounters of gods and demons, of the valiant fights and bloody treacheries of tradition. The musicians shouted out the words of the stories as the actors, who never spoke, portrayed the awesome exploits of Rama and of the Pandava brothers. Wearing makeup of green and red, or black and stark white, they stalked across the field, skirts billowing, their mirror-sprinkled halos glittering in the light of the lamp.

  Occasionally, the lamp would flare or sputter, and it was as if a nimbus of holy or unholy light played about their heads, erasing entirely the sense of the event, causing the spectators to feel for a moment that they themselves were the illusion, and that the great-bodied figures of the cyclopean dance were the only real things in the world.

  The dance would continue until daybreak, to end with the rising of the sun. Before daybreak, however, one of the wearers of the saffron robe arrived from the direction of
town, made his way through the crowd and spoke into the ear of the Enlightened One.

  The Buddha began to rise, appeared to think better of it and reseated himself. He gave a message to the monk, who nodded and departed from the field of the festival.

  The Buddha, looking imperturbable, returned his attention to the drama. A monk seated nearby noted that he was tapping his fingers upon the ground, and he decided that the Enlightened One must be keeping time with the drumbeats, for it was common knowledge that he was above such things as impatience.

  When the drama had ended and Surya the sun pinked the skirts of Heaven above the eastern rim of the world, it was as if the night just passed had held the crowd prisoner within a tense and frightening dream, from which they were just now released, weary, to wander this day.

  The Buddha and his followers set off walking immediately, in the direction of the town. They did not pause to rest along the way, but passed through Alundil at a rapid but dignified gait.

  When they came again to the purple grove, the Enlightened One instructed his monks to take rest, and he moved off in the direction of a small pavilion located deep within the wood.

  The monk who had brought the message during the drama sat within the pavilion. There he tended the fever of the traveler he had come upon in the marshes, where he walked often to better meditate upon the putrid condition his body would assume after death.

  Tathagatha studied the man who lay upon the sleeping mat. His lips were thin and pale; he had a high forehead, high cheekbones, frosty eyebrows, pointed ears; and Tathagatha guessed that when those eyelids rose, the eyes revealed would be of a faded blue or gray. There was a quality of—translucency?—fragility perhaps, about his unconscious form, which might have been caused partly by the fevers that racked his body, but which could not be attributed entirely to them. The small man did not give the impression of being one who would bear the thing that Tathagatha now raised in his hands. Rather, on first viewing, he might seem to be a very old man. If one granted him a second look, and realized then that his colorless hair and his slight frame did not signify advanced age, one might then be struck by something childlike about his appearance. From the condition of his complexion, Tathagatha doubted that he need shave very often. Perhaps a slightly mischievous pucker was now hidden somewhere between his cheeks and the corners of his mouth. Perhaps not, also.