"Do you remember the curse of the Buddha?" asked Taraka. "Do you remember how you taught me of guilt, Siddhartha? I remember, and I feel I owe you this victory. I owe you something for your pains, and I will give these gods into your hands in payment."
"No! If you would serve me at all, do it at another time than this! Serve me now by bearing me away from this place, far and fast!"
"Are you afraid of this encounter. Lord Siddhartha?"
"Yes, yes I am! For it is foolhardy! What of your song-'We wait, we wait, to rise again!'? Where is the patience of the Rakasha? You say you will wait for the seas to dry and the mountains to fall, for the moons to vanish from the sky-but you cannot wait for me to name the time and the battlefield! I know them far better than you, these gods, for once I was one of them. Do not do this rash thing now. If you would serve me, save me from this meeting!"
"Very well. I hear you, Siddhartha. Your words move me, Sam. But I would try their strength. So I shall send some of the Rakasha against them. But we shall journey far, you and I, far down to the roots of the world. There we will await the report of victory. If, somehow, the Rakasha should lose the encounter, then will I bear you far away from here and restore to you your body. I would wear it a few hours more, however, to savor your passions in this fighting."
Sam bowed his head.
"Amen," he said, and with a tingling, bubbling sensation, he felt himself lifted from the floor and borne along vast cavernways uncharted by men.
As they sped from chamber to vaulted chamber, down tunnels and chasms and wells, through labyrinths and grottoes and corridors of stone, Sam set his mind adrift, to move down the ways of memory and back. He thought upon the days of his recent ministry, when he had sought to graft the teachings of Gotama upon the stock of the religion by which the world was ruled, He thought upon the strange one, Sugata, whose hands had held both death and benediction. Over the years, their names would merge and their deeds would be mingled. He had lived too long not to know how time stirred the pots of legend. There had been a real Buddha, he knew that now. The teaching he had offered, no matter how spuriously, had attracted this true believer, this one who had somehow achieved enlightenment, marked men's minds with his sainthood, and then gone willingly into the hands of Death himself. Tathagatha and Sugata would be part of a single legend, he knew, and Tathagatha would shine in the light shed by his disciple. Only the one Dhamma would survive. Then his mind went back to the battle at the Hall of Karma, and to the machinery still cached in a secret place. And he thought then upon the countless transfers he had undergone before that time, of the battles he had fought, of the women he had loved across the ages; he thought upon what a world could be and what this world was, and why. Then he was taken again with his rage against the gods. He thought upon the days when a handful of them had fought the Rakasha and the Nagas, the Gandharvas and the People-of-the-Sea, the Kataputna demons and the Mothers of the Terrible Glow, the Dakshinis and the Pretas, the Skandas and the Pisakas, and had won, tearing a world loose from chaos and building its first city of men. He had seen that city pass through all the stages through which a city can pass, until now it was inhabited by those who could spin their minds for a moment and transform themselves into gods, taking upon them an Aspect that strengthened their bodies and intensified their wills and extended the power of their desires into Attributes, which fell with a force like magic upon those against whom they turned them. He thought upon this city and these gods, and he knew of its beauty and its tightness, its ugliness and its wrongness. He thought of its splendor and its color, in contrast to that of the rest of the world, and he wept as he raged, for he knew that he could never feel either wholly right or wholly wrong in opposing it. This was why he had waited as long as he had, doing nothing. Now, whatever he did would result in both victory and defeat, a success and a failure; and whether the outcome of all his actions would be the passing or the continuance of the dream of the city, the burden of the guilt would be his.
They waited in darkness.
For a long, silent while they waited. Time passed like an old man climbing a hill. They stood upon a ledge above a black pool, and waited.
"Should we not have heard by now?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not."
"What shall we do?"
"What do you mean?"
"If they do not come at all. How long shall we wait here?"
"They will come, singing."
"I hope so."
But there came no singing, or movement. About them was the stillness of time that had no objects upon which to wear.
"How long have we waited?"
"I do not know. Long."
"I feel that all is not well."
"You may be right. Shall we rise a few levels and investigate, or shall I bear you to your freedom now?"
"Let us wait awhile longer."
"Very well."
Again, there was silence. They paced within it.
"What was that?"
"What?"
"A sound."
"I heard nothing and we are using the same ears."
"Not with the ears of the body-there it is again!"
"I heard nothing, Taraka."
"It continues. It is like a scream, but it does not end."
"Far?"
"Yes, quite distant. Listen my way."
"Yes! I believe it is the scepter of Kali. The battle, then, goes on."
"This long? Then the gods are stronger than I had supposed."
"No, the Rakasha are stronger than I had supposed."
"Whether we win or lose, Siddhartha, the gods are presently engaged. If we can get by them, their vessel may be unattended. Do you want it?"
"Steal the thunder chariot? That is a thought. . . . It is a mighty weapon, as well as transportation. What might our chances be?"
"I am certain the Rakasha can hold them for as long as is necessary-and it is a long climb up Hellwell. We need not use the trail ourself. I grow tired, but I can still bear us across the air."
"Let us rise a few levels and investigate."
They left their ledge by the black pool, and time beat again about them as they passed upward.
As they advanced, a globe of light moved to meet them. It settled upon the floor of the cavern and grew into a tree of green fire.
"How goes the battle?" asked Taraka.
"We hold them," it reported, "but we cannot close with them."
"Why not?"
"There is that about them which repels. I do not know how to call it, but we cannot draw too near."
"How then do you fight?"
"A steady storm of rocks rages about them. We hurl fire and water and great spinning winds, also."
"And how do they respond to this?"
"The trident of Shiva cuts a path through everything. But no matter how much he destroys, we raise up more against him. So he stands like a statue, uncreating storms we will not let end. Occasionally, he swerves to kill, while the Lord of Fires holds back the attack. The scepter of the goddess slows those who face upon it. Once slowed, they meet the trident or the hand or the eyes of Death."
"And you have not succeeded in harming them?"
"No."
"Where do they stand?"
"Part way down the well wall. They are still near to the top. They descend slowly."
"How many have we lost?"
"Eighteen."
"Then it was a mistake to end our waiting to begin this battle. The cost is too high and nothing is being gained. . .. Sam, do you want to try for the chariot?"
"It is worth a risk. . .. Yes, let us try."
"Go then," he instructed the Rakasha who branched and swayed before him. "Go, and we shall follow more slowly. We will rise along the side of the wall opposite them. When we begin the ascent, redouble your attack. Occupy them entirely until we have passed. Hold them then to give us time in which to steal their chariot from the valley. When this has been accomplished, I will return to you in my true form and we can put an end to the fighting."
"I obey," replied the other, and he fell upon the floor to become a green serpent of light, and slithered off ahead of them.
They rushed forward, running part of the way, to conserve the strength of the demon for the final necessary thrust against gravitation. They had journeyed a great distance beneath the Ratnagaris, and the return trip seemed endless.<.p>
Finally, though, they came upon the floor of the well; and it was lighted sufficiently so that, even with the eyes of his body, Sam could see clearly about him. The noise was deafening. If he and Taraka had had to rely upon speech for communication, there would have been no communication.
Like some fantastic orchid upon an ebon bough, the fire bloomed upon the wall of the well. As Agni waved his wand, it changed its shape, writhing. In the air, like bright insects, danced the Rakasha. The rushing of winds was one loudness, and the rattling of many stones was another. Above it all was the ululating cry of the silver skull-wheel, which Kali waved like a fan before her face; and this was even more terrible when it rose beyond the range of hearing, but still screamed. Rocks split and melted and dissolved in midair, their white-hot fragments leaping like sparks from a forge, out and downward. They bounced and rolled, and glowed redly in the shadows of Hellwell. The surrounding walls of the well were pocked and gouged and scored in the places where the flame and the chaos had touched.