"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."