alows; 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.
The Buddha raised the crimson strangling cord, which was a thing borne
only by the holy executioners of the goddess Kali. He fingered its silken
length, and it passed like a serpent through his hand, clinging slightly. He
did not doubt but that it was intended to move in such a manner about his
throat. Almost unconsciously, he held it and twisted his hands through the
necessary movements.
Then he looked up at the wide-eyed monk who had watched him, smiled his
imperturbable smile and laid the cord aside. With a damp cloth, the monk
wiped the perspiration from the pale brow.
The man on the sleeping mat shuddered at the contact, and his eyes
snapped open. The madness of the fever was in them and they did not truly
see, but Tathagatha felt a sudden jolt at their contact.
Dark, so dark they were almost jet, and it was impossible to tell where
the pupil ended and the iris began. There was something extremely unsettling
about eyes of such power in a body so frail and effete.
He reached out and stroked the man's hands, and it was like touching
steel, cold and impervious. He drew his fingernail sharply across the back
of the right hand. No scratch or indentation marked its passage, and his
nail fairly slid, as though across a pane of glass. He squeezed the man's
thumbnail and released it. There was no sudden change of color. It was as
though these hands were dead or mechanical things.
He continued his examination. The phenomenon ended somewhat above the
wrists, occurred again in other places. His hands, breast, abdomen, neck and
portions of his back had soaked within the death bath, which gave this
special unyielding power. Total immersion would, of course, have proved
fatal; but as it was, the man had traded some of his tactile sensitivity for
the equivalent of invisible gauntlets, breastplate, neckpiece and back armor
of steel. He was indeed one of the select assassins of the terrible goddess.
"Who else knows of this man?" asked the Buddha.
"The monk Simha," replied the other, "who helped me bear him here."
"Did he see"-- Tathagatha gestured with his eyes toward the crimson
cord-- that?" he inquired.
The monk nodded.
"Then go fetch him. Bring him to me at once. Do not mention anything of
this to anyone, other than that a pilgrim was taken ill and we are tending
him here. I will personally take over his care and minister to his illness."
"Yes, Illustrious One."
The monk hurried forth from the pavilion.
Tathagatha seated himself beside the sleeping mat and waited.
It was two days before the fever broke and intelligence returned to
those dark eyes. But during those two days, anyone who passed by the
pavilion might have heard the voice of the Enlightened One droning on and
on, as though he addressed his sleeping charge. Occasionally, the man
himself mumbled and spoke loudly, as those in a fever often do.
On the second day, the man opened his eyes suddenly and stared upward.
Then he frowned and turned his bead.
"Good morning, Rild," said Tathagatha.
"You are . . . ?" asked the other, in an unexpected baritone.
"One who teaches the way of liberation," he replied.
"The Buddha?"
"I have been called such."
"Tathagatha?"
"This name, too, have I been given."
The other attempted to rise, failed, settled back. His eyes never left
the placid countenance. "How is it that you know my name?" he finally asked.
"In your fever you spoke considerably."
"Yes, I was very sick, and doubtless babbling. It was in that cursed
swamp that I took the chill."
Tathagatha smiled. "One of the disadvantages of traveling alone is that
when you fall there is none to assist you."
"True," acknowledged the other, and his eyes closed once more and his
breathing deepened.
Tathagatha remained in the lotus posture, waiting.
When Rild awakened again, it was evening. "Thirsty," he said.
Tathagatha gave him water. "Hungry?" he asked.
"No, not yet. My stomach would rebel."
He raised himself up onto his elbows and stared at his attendant. Then
he sank back upon the mat. "You are the one," he announced.
"Yes," replied the other.
"What are you going to do?"
"Feed you, when you say you are hungry."
"I mean, after that."
"Watch as you sleep, lest you lapse again into the fever."
"That is not what I meant."
"I know."
"After I have eaten and rested and recovered my strength-- what then?"
Tathagatha smiled as he drew the silken cord from somewhere beneath his
robe. "Nothing," he replied, "nothing at all," and he draped the cord across
Rild's shoulder and withdrew his hand.
The other shook his head and leaned back. He reached up and fingered
the length of crimson. He twined it about his fingers and then about his
wrist. He stroked it.
"It is holy," he said, after a time.
"So it would seem."
"You know its use, and its purpose?"
"Of course."
"Why then will you do nothing at all?"
"I have no need to move or to act. All things come to me. If anything
is to be done, it is you who will do it."
"I do not understand."
"I know that, too."
The man stared into the shadows overhead. "I will attempt to eat now,"
he announced.
Tathagatha gave him broth and bread, which he managed to keep down.
Then he drank more water, and when he had finished he was breathing heavily.
"You have offended Heaven," he stated.
"Of that, I am aware."
"And you have detracted from the glory of a goddess, whose supremacy
here has always been undisputed."
"I know."
"But I owe you my life, and I have eaten your bread."
There was no reply.
"Because of this, I must break a most holy vow," finished Rild. "I
cannot kill you, Tathagatha."
"Then I owe my life to the fact that you owe me yours. Let us consider
the life-owing balanced."
Rild uttered a short chuckle. "So be it," he said.
"What will you do, now that you have abandoned your mission?"
"I do not know. My sin is too great to permit me to return. Now I, too,
have offended against Heaven, and the goddess will turn away her face from
my prayers. I have failed her."
"Such being the case, remain here. You will at least have company in
damnation."
"Very well," agreed Rild. "There is nothing else left to me."
He slept once again, and the Buddha smiled.
In the days that followed, as the festival wore on, the Enlightened One
preached to the crowds who passed through the purple grove. He spoke of the
unity of all things, great and small, of the law of cause, of becoming and
dying, of the illusion of the world, of the spark of the atman, of the way
of salvation through renunciation of the self and union with the whole; he
spoke of realization and enlightenment, of the meaninglessness of the
Brahmins' rituals, comparing their forms to vessels empty of content. Many
listened, a few heard and some remained in the purple grove to take up the
saffron robe of the seeker.
And each time he taught, the man Rild sat nearby, wearing his black
garments and leather harness, his strange dark eyes ever upon the
Enlightened One.
Two weeks after his recovery, Rild came upon the teacher as he walked
through the grove in meditation. He fell into step beside him, and after a
time he spoke.
"Enlightened One, I have listened to your teachings, and I have
listened well. Much have I thought upon your words."
The other nodded.
"I have always been a religious man," he stated, "or I would not have
been selected for the post I once occupied. After it became impossible for
me to fulfill my mission, I felt a great emptiness. I had failed my goddess,
and life was without meaning for me."
The other listened, silently.
"But I have heard your words," he said, "and they have filled me with a
kind of joy. They have shown me another way to salvation, a way which I feel
to be superior to the one I previously followed."
The Buddha studied his face as he spoke.
"Your way of renunciation is a strict one, which I feel to be good. It
suits my needs. Therefore, I request permission to be taken into your
community of seekers, and to follow your path."
"Are you certain," asked the Enlightened One, "that you do not seek
merely to punish yourself for what has been weighing upon your conscience as
a failure, or a sin?"
"Of that I am certain," said Rild. "I have held your words within me
and felt the truth which they contain. In the service of the goddess have I
slain more men than purple fronds upon yonder bough. I am not even counting
women and children. So I am not easily taken in by words, having heard too
many, voiced in all tones of speech-- words pleading, arguing, cursing. But
your words move me, and they are superior to the teachings of the Brahmins.
Gladly would I become your executioner, dispatching for you your enemies
with a saffron cord-- or with a blade, or pike, or with my hands, for I am
proficient with all weapons, having spent three lifetimes learning their
use-- but I know that such is not your way. Death and life are as one to
you, and you do not seek the destruction of your enemies. So I request
entrance to your Order. For me, it is not so difficult a thing as it would
be for another. One must renounce home and family, origin and property. I
lack these things. One must renounce one's own will, which I have already
done. All I need now is the yellow robe."
"It is yours," said Tathagatha, "with my blessing."
Rild donned the robe of a buddhist monk and took to fasting and
meditating. After a week, when the festival was near to its close, he
departed into the town with his begging bowl, in the company of the other
monks. He did not return with them, however. The day wore on into evening,
the evening into darkness. The horns of the Temple had already sounded the
last notes of the nagaswaram, and many of the travelers had since departed
the festival.
For a long while, the Enlightened One walked the woods, meditating.
Then he, too, vanished.
Down from the grove, with the marshes at its back, toward the town of
Alundil, above which lurked the hills of rock and around which lay the
blue-green fields, into the town of Alundil, still astir with travelers,
many of them at the height of their revelry, up the streets of Alundil
toward the hill with its Temple, walked the Buddha.
He entered the first courtyard, and it was quiet there. The dogs and
children and beggars had gone away. The priests slept. One drowsing
attendant sat behind a bench at the bazaar. Many of the shrines were now
empty, the statues having been borne within. Before several of the others,
worshipers knelt in late prayer.
He entered the inner courtyard. An ascetic was seated on a prayer mat
before the statue of Ganesha. He, too, seemed to qualify as a statue, making
no visible movements. Four oil lamps flickered about the yard, their dancing
light serving primarily to accentuate the shadows that lay upon most of the
shrines. Small votive lights cast a faint illumination upon some of the
statues.
Tathagatha crossed the yard and stood facing the towering figure of
Kali, at whose feet a tiny lamp blinked. Her smile seemed a plastic and
moving thing, as she regarded the man before her.
Draped across her outstretched hand, looped once about the point of her
dagger, lay a crimson strangling cord.
Tathagatha smiled back at her, and she seemed almost to frown at that
moment.
"It is a resignation, my dear," he stated. "You have lost this round."
She seemed to nod in agreement.
"I am pleased to have achieved such a height of recognition in so short
a period of time," he continued. "But even if you had succeeded, old girl,
it would have done you little good. It is too late now. I have started
something which you cannot undo. Too many have heard the ancient words. You
had thought they were lost, and so did I. But we were both wrong. The
religion by which you rule is very ancient, goddess, but my protest is also
that of a venerable tradition. So call me a protestant, and remember-- now I
am more than a man. Good night."
He left the Temple and the shrine of Kali, where the eyes of Yama had
been fixed upon his back.
It was many months before the miracle occurred, and when it did, it did
not seem a miracle, for it had grown up slowly about them.
Rild, who had come out of the north as the winds of spring blew across
the land, wearing death upon his arm and the black fire within his eyes--
Rild, of the white brows and pointed ears-- spoke one afternoon, after the
spring had passed, when the long days of summer hung warm beneath the Bridge
of the Gods. He spoke, in that unexpected baritone, to answer a question
asked him by a traveler.
The man asked him a second question, and then a third.
He continued to speak, and some of the other monks and several pilgrims
gathered about him. The answers following the questions, which now came from
all of them, grew longer and longer, for they became parables, examples,
allegories.
Then they were seated at his feet, and his dark eyes became strange
pools, and his voice came down as from Heaven, clear and soft, melodic and
persuasive.
They listened, and then the travelers went their way. But they met and
spoke with other travelers upon the road, so that, before the summer had
passed, pilgrims coming to the purple grove were asking to meet this
disciple of the Buddha's, and to hear his words also.
Tathagatha shared the preaching with him. Together, they taught of the
Way of the Eightfold Path, the glory of Nirvana, the illusion of the world
and the chains that the world lays upon a man.
And then there were times when even the soft-spoken Tathagatha listened
to the words of his disciple, who had digested all of the things he had
preached, had meditated long and fully upon them and now, as though he had
found entrance to a secret sea, dipped with his steel-hard hand into places
of hidden waters, and then sprinkled a thing of truth and beauty upon the
heads of the hearers.
Summer passed. There was no doubt now that there were two who had
received enlightenment: Tathagatha and his small disciple, whom they called
Sugata. It was even said that Sugata was a healer, and that when his eyes
shone strangely and the icy touch of his hands came upon a twisted limb,
that limb grew straight again. It was said that a blind man's vision had
suddenly returned to him during one of Sugata's sermons.
There were two things in which Sugata believed: the Way of Salvation
and Tathagatha, the Buddha.
"Illustrious One," he said to him one day, "my life was empty until you
revealed to me the True Path. When you received your enlightenment, before
you began your teaching, was it like a rush of fire and the roaring of water
and you everywhere and a part of everything-- the clouds and the trees, the
animals in the forest, all people, the snow on the mountaintop and the bones
in the field?"
"Yes," said Tathagatha.
"I, also, know the joy of all things," said Sugata.
"Yes, I know," said Tathagatha.
"I see now why once you said that all things come to you. To have
brought such a doctrine into the world-- I can see why the gods were
envious. Poor gods! They are to be pitied. But you know. You know all
things."
Tathagatha did not reply.
When the winds of spring blew again across the land, the year having
gone full cycle since the arrival of the second Buddha, there came one day
from out of the heavens a fearful shrieking.
The citizens of Alundil turned out into their streets to stare up at
the sky. The Sudras in the fields put by their work and looked upward. In
the great Temple on the hill there was a sudden silence. In the purple grove
beyond the town, the monks turned their heads.
It paced the heavens, the one who was born to rule the wind. . . . From
out of the north it came-- green and red, yellow and brown. . . . Its glide
was a dance, its way was the air. . . .
There came another shriek, and then the beating of mighty pinions as it
climbed past clouds to become a tiny dot of black.
And then it fell, like a meteor, bursting into flame, all of its colors
blazing and burning bright, as it grew and grew, beyond all belief that
anything could live at that size, that pace, that magnificence. . . .
Half spirit, half bird, legend darkening the sky.
Mount of Vishnu, whose beak smashes chariots.
The Garuda Bird circled above Alundil.
Circled, and passed beyond the hills of rock that stood behind the
city.
"Garuda!" The word ran through the town, the fields, the Temple, the
grove.
If he did not fly alone; it was known that only a god could use the
Garuda Bird for a mount.
There was silence. After those shrieks and that thunder of pinions,
voices seemed naturally to drop to a whisper.
The Enlightened One stood upon the road before the grove, his monks
moving about him, facing in the direction of the hills of rock.
Sugata came to his side and stood there. "It was but a spring ago . .
." he said.
Tathagatha nodded.
"Rild failed," said Sugata. "What new thing comes from Heaven?"
The Buddha shrugged.
"I fear for you, my teacher," he said. "In all my lifetimes, you have
been my only friend. Your teaching has given me peace. Why can they not
leave you alone? You are the most harmless of men, and your doctrine the
gentlest. What ill could you possibly bear them?"
The other turned away.
At that moment, with a mighty beating of the air and a jagged cry from
its opened beak, the Garuda Bird rose once more above the hills. This time,
it did not circle over the town, but climbed to a great height in the
heavens and swept off to the north. Such was the speed of its passing that
it was gone in a matter of moments.
"Its passenger has dismounted and remains behind," suggested Sugata.
The Buddha walked within the purple grove.
He came from beyond the hills of stone, walking. He came to a passing
place through stone, and he followed this trail, his red leather boots
silent on the rocky path.
Ahead, there was a sound of running water, from where a small stream
cut across his way. Shrugging his blood-bright cloak back over his
shoulders, he advanced upon a bend in the trail, the ruby head of his
scimitar gleaming in his crimson sash.
Rounding a comer of stone, he came to a halt.
One waited ahead, standing beside the log that led across the stream.
His eyes narrowed for an instant, then he moved forward again.
It was a small man who stood there, wearing the dark garments of a
pilgrim, caught about with a leather harness from which was suspended a
short, curved blade of bright steel. This man's head was closely shaven,
save for a small lock of white hair. His eyebrows were white above eyes that
were dark, and his skin was pale; his ears appeared to be pointed.
The traveler raised his hand and spoke to this man, saying, "Good
afternoon, pilgrim."
The man did not reply, but moved to bar his way, positioning himself
before the log that led across the stream.
"Pardon me, good pilgrim, but I am about to cross here and you are
making my passage difficult," he stated.
"You are mistaken, Lord Yama, if you think you are about to pass here,"
replied the other.
The One in Red smiled, showing a long row of even, white teeth. "It is
always a pleasure to be recognized," he acknowledged, "even by one who
conveys misinformation concerning other matters."
"I do not fence with words," said the man in black.
"Oh?" The other raised his eyebrows in an expression of exaggerated
inquiry. "With what then do you fence, sir? Surely not that piece of bent
metal you bear."
"None other."
"I took it for some barbarous prayer-stick at first. I understand that
this is a region fraught with strange cults and primitive sects. For a
moment, I took you to be a devotee of some such superstition. But if, as you
say, it is indeed a weapon, then I trust you are familiar with its use?"
"Somewhat," replied the man in black.
"Good, then," said Yama, "for I dislike having to kill a man who does
not know what he is about. I feel obligated to point out to you, however,
that when you stand before the Highest for judgment, you will be accounted a
suicide."
The other smiled faintly.
"Any time that you are ready, deathgod, I will facilitate the passage
of your spirit from out its fleshy envelope."
"One more item only, then," said Yama, "and I shall put a quick end to
conversation. Give me a name to tell the priests, so that they shall know
for whom they offer the rites."
"I renounced my final name but a short while back," answered the other.
"For this reason, Kali's consort must take his death of one who is
nameless."
"Rild, you are a fool," said Yama, and drew his blade.
The man in black drew his.
"And it is fitting that you go unnamed to your doom. You betrayed your
goddess."
"Life is full of betrayals," replied the other, before he struck, "By
opposing you now and in this manner, I also betray the teachings of my new
master. But I must follow the dictates of my heart. Neither my old name nor
my new do therefore fit me, nor are they deserved-- so call me by no name!"
Then his blade was fire, leaping everywhere, clicking, blazing.
Yama fell back before this onslaught, giving ground foot by foot,
moving only his wrist as he parried the blows that fell about him.
Then, after he had retreated ten paces, he stood his ground and would
not be moved. His parries widened slightly, but his ripostes became more
sudden now, and were interspersed with feints and unexpected attacks.
They swaggered blades till their perspiration fell upon the ground in
showers; and then Yama began to press the attack, slowly, forcing his
opponent into a retreat. Step by step, he recovered the ten paces he had
given.
When they stood again upon the ground where the first blow had been
struck, Yama acknowledged, over the clashing of steel, "Well have you
learned your lessons, Rild! Better even than I had thought!
Congratulations!"
As he spoke, his opponent wove his blade through an elaborate double
feint and scored a light touch that cut his shoulder, drawing blood that
immediately merged with the color of his garment.
At this, Yama sprang forward, beating down the other's guard, and
delivered a blow to the side of his neck that might have decapitated him.
The man in black raised his guard, shaking his head, parried another
attack and thrust forward, to be parried again himself.
"So, the death bath collars your throat," said Yama. "I'll seek
entrance elsewhere, then," and his blade sang a faster song, as he tried for
a low-line thrust.
Yama unleashed the full fury of that blade, backed by the centuries and
the masters of many ages. Yet, the other met his attacks, parrying wider and
wider, retreating faster and faster now, but still managing to hold him off
as he backed away, counterthrusting as he went.
He retreated until his back was to the stream. Then Yama slowed and
made comment:
"Half a century ago," he stated, "when you were my pupil for a brief
time, I said to myself, 'This one has within him the makings of a master.'
Nor was I wrong, Rild. You are perhaps the greatest swordsman raised up in
all the ages I can remember. I can almost forgive apostasy when I witness
your skill. It is indeed a pity. . ."
He feinted then a chest cut, and at the last instant moved around the
parry so that he lay the edge of his weapon high upon the other's wrist.
Leaping backward, parrying wildly and cutting at Yama's head, the man
in black came into a position at the head of the log that lay above the
crevice that led down to the stream.
"Your hand, too, Rild! Indeed, the goddess is lavish with her
protection. Try this!"
The steel screeched as he caught it in a bind, nicking the other's
bicep as he passed about the blade.
"Aha! There's a place she missed!" he cried. "Let's try for another!"
Their blades bound and disengaged, feinted, thrust, parried, riposted.
Yama met an elaborate attack with a stop-thrust, his longer blade again
drawing blood from his opponent's upper arm.
The man in black stepped up upon the log, swinging a vicious head cut,
which Yama beat away. Pressing the attack then even harder, Yama forced him
to back out upon the log and then he kicked at its side.
The other jumped backward, landing upon the opposite bank. As soon as
his feet touched ground, he, too, kicked out, causing the log to move.
It rolled, before Yama could mount it, slipping free of the banks,
crashing down into the stream, bobbing about for a moment, and then
following the water trail westward.
"I'd say it is only a seven- or eight-foot jump, Yama! Come on across!"
cried the other.
The deathgod smiled. "Catch your breath quickly now, while you may," he
stated. "Breath is the least appreciated gift of the gods. None sing hymns
to it, praising the good air, breathed by king and beggar, master and dog
alike. But, oh to be without it! Appreciate each breath, Rild, as though it
were your last-- for that one, too, is near at hand!"
"You are said to be wise in these matters, Yama," said the one who had
been called Rild and Sugata. "You are said to be a god, whose kingdom is
death and whose knowledge extends beyond the ken of mortals. I would
question you, therefore, while we are standing idle."
Yama did not smile his mocking smile, as he had to all his opponent's
previous statements. This one had a touch of ritual about it.
"What is it that you wish to know? I grant you the death-boon of a
question."
Then, in the ancient words of the Katha Upanishad, the one who had been
called Rild and Sugata chanted:
"'There is doubt concerning a man when he is dead. Some say he still
exists. Others say he does not. This thing I should like to know, taught by
you.' "
Yama replied with the ancient words, "'On this subject even the gods
have their doubts. It is not easy to understand, for the nature of the atman
is a subtle thing. Ask me another question. Release me from this boon!'"
"'Forgive me if it is foremost in my mind, oh Death, but another
teacher such as yourself cannot be found, and surely there is no other boon
which I crave more at this moment.'"
"'Keep your life and go your way,'" said Yama, plunging his blade again
into his sash. "'I release you from your doom. Choose sons and grandsons;
choose elephants, horses, herds of cattle and gold. Choose any other boon--
fair maidens, chariots, musical instruments. I shall give them unto you and
they shall wait upon you. But ask me not of death.'"
"'Oh Death,' " sang the other, "'these endure only till tomorrow. Keep
your maidens, horses, dances and songs for yourself. No boon will I accept
but the one which I have asked-- tell me, oh Death, of that which lies
beyond life, of which men and the gods have their doubts.'"
Yama stood very still and he did not continue the poem. "Very well,
Rild," he said, his eyes locking with the other's, "but it is not a kingdom
subject to words. I must show you."
They stood, so, for a moment; and then the man in black swayed. He
threw his arm across his face, covering his eyes, and a single sob escaped
his throat.
When this occurred, Yama drew his cloak from his shoulders and cast it
like a net across the stream.
Weighted at the hems for such a maneuver, it fell, netlike, upon his
opponent.
As he struggled to free himself, the man in black heard rapid footfalls
and then a crash, as Yama's blood-red boots struck upon his side of the
stream. Casting aside the cloak and raising his guard, he parried Yama's new
attack. The ground behind him sloped upward, and he backed farther and
farther, to where it steepened, so that Yama's head was no higher than his
belt. He then struck down at his opponent. Yama slowly fought his way
uphill.
"Deathgod, deathgod," he chanted, "forgive my presumptuous question,
and tell me you did not lie."
"Soon you shall know," said Yama, cutting at his legs.
Yama struck a blow that would have run another man through, cleaving
his heart. But it glanced off his opponent's breast.
When he came to a place where the ground was broken, the small man
kicked, again and again, sending showers of dirt an