"I suggest you do not wait, for there will be no 'later', Taraka."
"Why not?"
"I came to Hellwell, the wrath of the gods swarming and buzzing at my back. Now sixty-six demons are loose in the world. Very soon, your presence will be felt. The gods will know who has done this thing, and they will take steps against us. The element of surprise will be lost."
"We fought the gods in the days of old . . ."
"And these are not the days of old, Taraka. The gods are stronger now, much stronger. Long have you been bound, and their might has grown over the ages. Even if you command the first army of Rakasha in history, and backing them in battle I raise me up a mighty army of men—even then, will the final result be a thing uncertain. To delay now is to throw everything away."
"I wish you would not speak to me like this, Siddhartha, for you trouble me."
"I mean to. For all your powers, if you meet the One in Red he will drink your life with his eyes. He will come here to the Ratnagaris, for he follows me. The freedom of demons is as a signpost, directing him hither. He may bring others with him. You may find them more than a match for all of you."
The demon did not reply. They reached the top of the well, and Taraka advanced the two hundred paces to the great door, which now stood open. He stepped out onto the ledge and looked downward.
"You doubt the power of the Rakasha, eh. Binder?" he asked. Then, "Behold!"
He stepped outward, over the edge.
They did not fall.
They drifted, like the leaves he had dropped—how long ago?
Downward.
They landed upon the trail halfway down the mountain called Channa.
"Not only do I contain your nervous system," said Taraka, "but I have permeated your entire body and wrapped it all about with the energies of my being. So send me your One in Red, who drinks life with his eyes. I should like to meet him."
"Though you can walk on air," said Siddhartha, "you speak rashly when you speak thus."
"The Prince Videgha holds his court not far from here, at Palamaidsu," said Taraka, "for I visited there on my return from Heaven. I understand he is fond of gaming. Therefore, thither fare we."
"And if the God of Death should come to join the game?"
"Let him!" cried the other. "You cease to amuse me, Binder. Good night. Go back to sleep!"
There was a small darkness and a great silence, growing and shrinking.
The days that followed were bright fragments.
There would come to him snatches of conversation or song, colorful vistas of galleries, chambers, gardens. And once he looked upon a dungeon where men were hung upon racks, and he heard himself laughing.
Between these fragments there came to him dreams and half dreams. They were lighted with fire, they ran with blood and tears. In a darkened, endless cathedral he rolled dice that were suns and planets. Meteors broke fire above his head, and comets inscribed blazing arcs upon a vault of black glass. There came to him a joy shot through with fear, and he knew it to be mainly that of another, but it was partly his, too. The fear—that was all his.
When Taraka drank too much wine, or lay panting on his wide, low couch in the harem, then was his grip loosened somewhat, upon the body that he had stolen. But Siddhartha was still weak with the mind-bruise, and his body was drunk or fatigued; and he knew that the time had not yet come to contest the mastery of the demon-lord.
There were times when he saw, not through the eyes of the body that had once been his, but saw as a demon saw, in all directions, and stripped flesh and bone from those among whom he passed, to behold the flames of their beings, colored with the hues and shades of their passions, flickering with avarice and lust and envy, darting with greed and hunger, smouldering with hate, waning with fear and pain. His hell was a many-colored place, somewhat mitigated only by the cold blue blaze of a scholar's intellect, the white light of a dying monk, the rose halo of a noble lady who fled his sight, and the dancing, simple colors of children at play.
He stalked the high halls and wide galleries of the royal palace at Palamaidsu, which were his winnings. The Prince Videgha lay in chains in his own dungeon. Throughout the kingdom, his subjects were not aware that a demon now sat upon the throne. Things seemed to be the same as they had always been. Siddhartha had visions of riding through the streets of the town on the back of an elephant. All the women of the town had been ordered to stand before the doors of their dwellings. Of these, he chose those who pleased him and had them taken back to his harem. Siddhartha realized, with a sudden shock, that he was assisting in the choosing, disputing with Taraka over the virtues of this or that matron, maid or lady. He had been touched by the lusts of the demon-lord, and they were becoming his own. With this realization, he came into a greater wakefulness, and it was not always the hand of the demon which raised the wine horn to his lips, or twitched the whip in the dungeon. He came to be conscious for greater periods of time, and with a certain horror he knew that, within himself, as within every man, there lies a demon capable of responding to his own kind.
Then, one day, he fought the power that ruled his body and bent his mind. He had largely recovered, and he coexisted with Taraka in all his doings, both as silent watcher and active participant.
They stood on the balcony above the garden, looking out across the day. Taraka had, with a single gesture, turned all the flowers black. Lizardlike creatures had come to dwell in the trees and the ponds, croaking and flitting among the shadows. The incenses and perfumes which filled the air were thick and cloying. Dark smokes coiled like serpents along the ground.
There had been three attempts upon his life. The captain of the palace guard had been the last to try. But his blade had turned to a reptile in his hand and struck at his face, taking out his eyes and filling his veins with a venom that had caused him to darken and swell, to die crying for a drink of water.
Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.
His power had grown again, slowly, since that day in Hellwell when last he had wielded it. Oddly independent of the brain of his body, as Yama had once told him, the power turned like a slow pinwheel at the center of the space that was himself.
It spun again faster, and he hurled it against the force of the other.
A cry escaped Taraka, and a counterthrust of pure energy came back at Siddhartha like a spear.
Partly, he managed to deflect it, to absorb some of its force. Still, there was pain and turmoil within him as the brunt of the attack touched upon his being.
He did not pause to consider the pain, but struck again, as a spearman strikes into the darkened burrow of a fearsome beast.
Again, he heard his lips cry out.
Then the demon was building black walls against his power.
But one by one, these walls fell before his onslaught.
And as they fought, they spoke:
"Oh man of many bodies," said Taraka, "why do you begrudge me a few days within this one? It is not the body you were born into, and you, too, do but borrow it for a time. Why then, do you feel my touch to be a thing of defilement? One day you may wear another body, untouched by me. So why do you consider my presence a pollution, a disease? Is it because there is that within you which is like unto myself? Is it because you, too, know delight in the ways of the Rakasha, tasting the pain you cause like a pleasure, working your will as you choose upon whatsoever you choose? Is it because of this? Because you, too, know and desire these things, but also bear that human curse called guilt? If it is, I mock you in your weakness, Binder. And I shall prevail against you."
"It is because I am what I am, demon," said Siddhartha, hurling his energies back at him. "It is because I am a man who occasionally aspires to things beyond the belly and the phallus. I am not not the saint the Buddhists think me to be, and I am not the hero out of legend. I am a man who knows much fear, and who occasionally feels guilt. Mainly, though, I am a man who has set out to do a thing, and you are now blocking my way. Thus
you inherit my curse—whether I win or whether I lose now, Taraka, your destiny has already been altered. This is the curse of the Buddha—you will never again be the same as once you were."
And all that day they stood upon the balcony, garments drenched with perspiration. Like a statue they stood, until the sun had gone down out of the sky and the golden trail divided the dark bowl of the night. A moon leapt up above the garden wall. Later, another joined it.
"What is the curse of the Buddha?" Taraka inquired, over and over again. But Siddhartha did not reply.
He had beaten down the final wall, and they fenced now with energies like flights of blazing arrows.
From a Temple in the distance there came the monotonous beating of a drum, and occasionally a garden creature croaked, a bird cried out or a swarm of insects settled upon them, fed, and swirled away.
Then, like a shower of stars, they came, riding upon the night wind . . . the Freed of Hellwell, the other demons who had been loosed upon the world.
They came in answer to Taraka's summons, adding their powers to his own.
He became as a whirlwind, a tidal wave, a storm of lightnings.
Siddhartha felt himself swept over by a titanic avalanche, crushed, smothered, buried.
The last thing he knew was the laughter within his throat.
How long it was before he recovered, he did not know. It was a slow thing this time, and it was in a palace where demons walked as servants that he woke up.
When the last anesthetic bonds of mental fatigue fell away, there was strangeness about him. The grotesque revelries continued. Parties were held in the dungeons, where the demons would animate corpses to pursue their victims and embrace them. Dark miracles were wrought, such as the grove of twisted trees which sprang from the marble flags of the throne room itself—a grove wherein men slept without awakening, crying out as old nightmares gave way to new. But a different strangeness had entered the palace.
Taraka was no longer pleased.
"What is the curse of the Buddha?" he inquired again, as he felt Siddhartha's presence pressing once more upon his own.
Siddhartha did not reply at once.
The other continued, "I feel that I will give you back your body one day soon. I grow tired of this sport, of this palace. I grow tired, and I think perhaps the day draws near when we should make war with Heaven. What say you to this. Binder? I told you I would keep my word."
Siddhartha did not answer him.
"My pleasures diminish by the day! Do you know why this is, Siddhartha? Can you tell me why strange feelings now come over me, dampening my strongest moments, weakening me and casting me down when I should be elated, when I should be filled with joy? Is this the curse of the Buddha?"
"Yes," said Siddhartha.
"Then lift your curse, Binder, and I will depart this very day. I will give you back this cloak of flesh. I long again for the cold, clean winds of the heights! Will you free me now?"
"It is too late, oh chief of the Rakasha. You have brought this thing upon yourself."
"What thing? How have you bound me this time?"
"Do you recall how, when we strove upon the balcony, you mocked me? You told me that I, too, took pleasure in the ways of the pain which you work. You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light. A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires . . . his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old—but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing you called the curse of man and mocked—guilt!
"Know then, that as we existed together in the same body and I partook of your ways, not always unwillingly, the road we followed was not one upon which all the traffic moved in a single direction. As you twisted my will to your workings, so was your will twisted, in turn, by my revulsion at some of your deeds. You have learned the thing called guilt, and it will ever fall as a shadow across your meat and your drink. This is why your pleasure has been broken. This is why you seek now to flee. But it will do you no good. It will follow you across the world. It will rise with you into the realms of the cold, clean winds. It will pursue you wherever you go. This is the curse of the Buddha."
Taraka covered his face with his hands. "So this is what it is like to weep," he said, after a time.
Siddhartha did not reply.
"Curse you, Siddhartha," he said. "You have bound me again, to an even more terrible prison than Hellwell."
"You have bound yourself. It is you who broke our pact. I kept it."
"Men suffer when they break pacts with demons," said Taraka, "but no Rakasha has ever suffered so before."
Siddhartha did not reply.
On the following morning, as he sat to breakfast, there came a banging upon the door of his chambers.
"Who dares?" he cried out, and the door burst inward, its hinges tearing free of the wall, its bar snapping like a dry stick.
The head of a horned tiger upon the shoulders of an ape, great hooves for feet, talons for hands, the Rakasha fell forward into the room, smoke emerging from his mouth as he became transparent for a moment, returned to full visibility, faded once more, returned again. His talons were dripping something that was not blood and a wide burn lay across his chest. The air was filled with the odor of singed hair and charred flesh.
"Master!" it cried. "A stranger has come, asking audience of thee!"
"And you did not succeed in convincing him that I was not available?"
"Lord, a score of human guardsmen fell upon him, and he gestured. . . . He waved his hand at them, and there was a flash of light so bright that even the Rakasha might not look upon it. For an instant only it lasted—and they were all of them vanished, as if they had never existed. . . . There was also a large hole in the wall behind where they had stood. . . . There was no rubble. Only a smooth, clean hole."
"And then you fell upon him?"
"Many of the Rakasha sprang for him—but there is that about him which repels us. He gestured again and three of our own kind were gone, vanished in the light he hurls. . . . I did not take the full force of it, but was only grazed by his power. He sent me, therefore, to deliver his message. . . . I can no longer hold myself together—"
With that he vanished, and a globe of fire hung where the creature had lain. Now his words came into the mind, rather than being spoken across the air.
"He bids you come to him without delay. Else, he says he will destroy this palace."
"Did the three whom he burnt also take on again their own forms?"
"No," replied the Rakasha. "They are no more . . ."
"Describe this stranger!" ordered Siddhartha, forcing the words through his own lips.
"He stands very tall," said the demon, "and he wears black breeches and boots. Above the waist he has on him a strange garment. It is like a seamless white glove, upon his right hand only, which extends all the way up his arm and across his shoulders, wrapping his neck and rising tight and smooth about his entire head. Only the lower part of his face is visible, for he wears over his eyes large black lenses which extend half a span outward from his face. At his belt he wears a short sheath of the same white material as the garment—not containing a dagger, however, but a wand. Beneath the material of his garment, where it crosses his shoulders and comes up upon his neck, there is a hump, as if he wears there a small pack."
"Lord Agni!" said Siddhartha. "You have described the God of Fire!"
"Aye, this must be," said the Rakasha. "For as I looked beyond his flesh, to see the colors of his true being, I saw there a bla
ze like unto the heart of the sun. If there be a God of Fire, then this indeed is he."
"Now must we flee," said Siddhartha, "for there is about to be a great burning. We cannot fight with this one, so let us go quickly."
"I do not fear the gods," said Taraka, "and I should like to try the power of this one."
"You cannot prevail against the Lord of Flame," said Siddhartha. "His fire wand is invincible. It was given him by the deathgod."
"Then I shall wrest it from him and turn it against him."
"None may wield it without being blinded and losing a hand in the process! This is why he wears that strange garment. Let us waste no more time here!"
"I must see for myself," said Taraka. "I must."
"Do not let your new found guilt force you into flirting with self-destruction."
"Guilt?" said Taraka. "That puny, gnawing mind-rat of which you taught me? No, it is not guilt, Binder. It is that, where once I was supreme, save for yourself, new powers have arisen in the world. The gods were not this strong in the old days, and if they have indeed grown in power, then that power must be tested—by myself! It is of my nature, which is power, to fight every new power which arises, and to either triumph over it or be bound by it. I must test the strength of Lord Agni, to win over him."
"But we are two within this body!"
"That is true. . .. If this body be destroyed, then will I bear you away with me, I promise. Already have I strengthened your flames after the manner of my own land. If this body dies, you will continue to live as a Rakasha. Our people once wore bodies, too, and I remember the art of strengthening the flames so that they may burn independent of the body. This has been done for you, so do not fear."
"Thanks a lot."
"Now let us confront the flame, and dampen it!"
They left the royal chambers and descended the stair. Far below, prisoner in his own dungeon. Prince Videgha whimpered in his sleep.
They emerged from the door that lay behind the hangings at the back of the throne. When they pushed aside these hangings, they saw that the great hall was empty, save for the sleepers within the dark grove and the one who stood in the middle of the floor, white arm folded over bare arm, a silver wand caught between the fingers of his gloved hand.
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