Lord of Light(39)

As he fled, he grew conscious of a pursuing shadow.

Somewhere just at the periphery of his vision, it lurked. No matter how he turned his head it escaped his sight. But it was always there, and growing.

Ahead, there was a lock. A gate to the outside hovered above and ahead. The Talisman could unbind that lock, could warm him against the cold, could transport him anywhere in the world. . . .

There came a sound of wings, beating.

"Flee!" the voice thundered in his head. "Increase your speed, Binder! Flee faster! Flee faster!"

It was one of the strangest sensations he had ever experienced.

He felt himself moving forward, racing onward.

But nothing changed. The gate was no nearer. For all his sense of tremendous speed, he was not moving.

"Faster, Binder! Faster!" cried the wild, booming voice. "Seek to emulate the wind and the lightning in your going!"

He strove to halt the sense of motion that he felt.

Then the winds buffeted him, the mighty winds that circle through Heaven.

He fought them down, but the voice sounded right next to him now, though he saw nothing but shadow.   





 

"'The senses are horses and objects the roads they travel,'" said the voice. "'If the intellect is related to a mind that is distracted, it loses then its discrimination,' " and Sam recognized the mighty words of the Katha Upanishad roaring at his back. "'In this case,' " the voice went on, "'the senses then become uncontrolled, like wild and vicious horses beneath the rein of a weak charioteer.'"

And the sky exploded with lightnings about him and the darkness wrapped him around.

He sought to bind the energies that assailed him, but found nothing with which to grapple.

"It is not real!" he cried out.

"What is real and what is not?" replied the voice. "Your horses escape you now."

There was a moment of terrible blackness, as if he moved through a vacuum of the senses. Then there was pain. Then nothing.

It is difficult to be the oldest youthgod in the business.

He entered the Hall of Karma, requested audience with a representative of the Wheel, was shown into the presence of the Lord, who had had to forego probing him two days before.

"Well?" he inquired.

"I am sorry for the delay. Lord Murugan. Our personnel had become involved in the wedding preparations."

"They are out reveling, when they should be preparing my new body?"

"You should not speak. Lord, as though it is truly your body. It is a body loaned you by the Great Wheel, in response to your present karmic needs-"

"And it is not ready because the staff is out reveling?"

"It is not ready because the Great Wheel turns in a manner- - "

"I want it by tomorrow evening at the latest. If it is not ready, the Great Wheel may become as a juggernaut upon its ministers. Do you hear me and understand, Lord of Karma?"

"I hear you, but your speech is out of place in this-"

"Brahma recommended the transfer, and he would be pleased for me to appear at the wedding party at Milehigh Spire in my new form. Shall I inform him that the Great Wheel is unable to comply with his wishes because it turns exceeding slow?"

"No, Lord. It will be ready in time."

"Very good."

He turned and left.

The Lord of Karma made an ancient and mystical sign behind his back.

"Brahma."

"Yes, goddess?"

"Concerning my suggestion . . ."

"It shall be done as you requested, madam."

"I would have it otherwise."

"Otherwise?"

"Yea, Lord. I would have a human sacrifice."

"Not. . ."

"Yes."

"You are indeed even more sentimental than I had thought."

"Shall this thing be done, or shall it not?"

"To speak plainly-in the light of recent events, I should prefer it this way."

"Then it is resolved?"

"It shall be as you wish. There was more power present in that one than I had thought. If the Lord of Illusion had not been sentinel-well, I had not anticipated that one who had been so quiet for so long could also be as-talented, as you have put it."

"Will you give unto me the full disposition of this thing, Creator?"

"Gladly."

"And throw in the Monarch of Thieves, for dessert?"

"Yes. Let it be so."

"Thank you, mighty one."

"It is nothing."

"It will be. Good evening."

"Good evening."

It is said that on that day, that great day, the Lord Vayu stopped the winds of Heaven and a stillness came upon the Celestial City and the wood of Kaniburrha. Citragupta, serving man to Lord Yama, built a mighty pyre at Worldsend, out of aromatic woods, gums, incenses, perfumes and costly cloths; and upon the pyre he laid the Talisman of the Binder and the great blue-feather cloak that had belonged to Srit, chief among the Kataputna demons; he also placed there the shape-changing jewel of the Mothers, from out the Dome of the Glow, and a robe of saffron from the purple grove of Alundil, which was said to have belonged to Tathagatha the Buddha. The silence of the morning after the night of the Festival of the First was complete. There was no movement to be seen in Heaven. It is said that demons flitted invisible through the upper air, but feared to draw near the gathering of power. It is said that there had been many signs and portents signifying the fall of the mighty. It was said, by the theologians and holy historians, that the one called Sam had recanted his heresy and thrown himself upon the mercy of Trimurti. It is also said that the goddess Parvati, who had been either his wife, his mother, his sister, his daughter, or perhaps all of these, had fled Heaven, to dwell in mourning among the witches of the eastern continent, whom she counted as kin. With dawn, the great bird called Garuda, Mount of Vishnu, whose beak smashes chariots, had stirred for a moment into wakefulness and had uttered a single hoarse cry within his cage, a cry that rang through Heaven, stabbing glass into shards, echoing across the land, awakening the soundest sleeper. Within the still summer of Heaven, the day of Love and Death began.   





 

The streets of Heaven were empty. The gods dwelled for a time indoors, waiting. All the portals of Heaven had been secured.

The thief and the one whose followers had called him Mahasamatman (thinking him a god) were released. The air was of a sudden chill, with the laying of a weird.

High, high above the Celestial City, on a platform at the top of Milehigh Spire, stood the Lord of Illusion, Mara the Dreamer. He had upon him his cloak of all colors. His arms were raised, and the powers of others among the gods flowed through him, adding to his own.

In his mind, a dream took shape. Then he cast his dream, as a high wave-front casts waters across a beach.

For all ages, since their fashioning by Lord Vishnu, the City and the wilderness had existed side by side, adjacent, yet not really touching, accessible, yet removed from one another by a great distance within the mind, rather than by a separation merely spatial in nature. Vishnu, being the Preserver, had done this for a reason. Now, he did not wholly approve of the lifting of his barrier, even in a temporary and limited way. He did not wish to see any of the wilderness enter into the City, which, in his mind, had grown into the perfect triumph of form over chaos.

Yet, by the power of the Dreamer was it given unto the phantom cats to look upon all of Heaven for a time.

They stirred, restlessly, upon the dark and ageless trails of the jungle that was part illusion. There, within the place that only half existed, a new seeing came into their eyes, and with it a restlessness and a summons to the hunt.

It was rumored among the seafaring folk, those worldwide gossips and carriers of tales, who seem to know all things, that some among the phantom cats who hunted on that day were not really cats at all. They say that it was told in the places of the world where the gods passed later, that some among the Celestial Party transmigrated on that day, taking upon themselves the bodies of white tigers out of Kaniburrha, to join in the hunt through the alleys of Heaven after the thief who had failed and the one who had been called Buddha.

It is said that, as he wandered the streets of the City, an ancient jackbird cycled three times above him, then came to rest upon Sam's shoulder, saying:

"Are you not Maitreya, Lord of Light, for whom the world has waited, lo, these many years-he whose coming I prophesyed long ago in a poem?"

"No, my name is Sam," he replied, "and I am about to depart the world, not enter into it Who are you?"

"I am a bird who was once a poet. All morning have I flown, since the yawp of Garuda opened the day. I was flying about the ways of Heaven looking for Lord Rudra, hoping to befoul him with my droppings, when I felt the power of a weird come over the land. I have flown far, and I have seen many things, Lord of Light"

"What things have you seen, bird who was a poet?"

"I have seen an unlit pyre set at the end of the world, with fogs stirring all about it. I have seen the gods who come late hurrying across the snows and rushing through the upper airs, circling outside the dome. I have seen the players upon the ranga and the nepathya, rehearsing the Masque of Blood, for the wedding of Death and Destruction. I have seen the Lord Vayu raise up his hand and stop the winds that circle through Heaven. I have seen all-colored Mara atop the spire of the highest tower, and I have felt the power of the weird he lays-for I have seen the phantom cats troubled within the wood, then hurrying in this direction. I have seen the tears of a man and of a woman. I have heard the laughter of a goddess. I have seen a bright spear uplifted against the morning, and I have heard an oath spoken. I have seen the Lord of Light at last, of whom I wrote, long ago: