Everything was flaming. Flames leapt from the stone walls, the tables, the robes of the monks. Smoke billowed and curled about the room. Yama stood in the midst of a conflagration, but he did not move.
“Is that the best you can do?” he asked. “Your flames are everywhere, but nothing burns.”
Mara clapped his hands and the flames vanished.
In their place, its swaying head held at almost twice the height of a man, its silver hood fanned, the mechobra drew into its S-shaped strike position.
Yama ignored it, his shadowy gaze reaching now like the probe of a dark insect, boring into Mara’s single eye.
The mechobra faded in mid-strike. Yama strode forward.
Mara fell back a pace.
They stood thus for perhaps three heartbeats, then Yama moved forward two paces farther and Mara backed away again. Perspiration blistered upon both their brows.
The beggar now stood taller and his hair was heavier; he was thicker about the waist and broader across the shoulders. A certain grace, not previously apparent, accompanied all his movements.
He fell back another step.
“Yes, Mara, there is a deathgod,” said Yama between clenched teeth. “Fallen or no, the real death dwells in my eyes. You must meet them. When you reach the wall you can back no farther. Feel the strength go out of your limbs. Feel the coldness begin in your hands and your feet.”
Mara’s teeth bared in a snarl. His neck was as thick as a bull’s. His biceps were as big about as a man’s thighs. His chest was a barrel of strength and his legs were like great trees of the forest.
“Coldness?” he asked, extending his arms. “I can break a giant with these hands, Yama. What are you but a banished carrion god? Your frown may claim the aged and the infirm. Your eyes may chill dumb animals and those of the lower classes of men. I stand as high above you as a star above the ocean’s bottom.”
Yama’s red-gloved hands fell like a pair of cobras upon his throat. “Then try that strength which you so mock. Dreamer. You have taken on the appearance of power. Use it! Best me not with words!”
His cheeks and forehead bloomed scarlet as Yama’s hands tightened upon his throat. His eye seemed to leap, a green search-light sweeping the world.
Mara fell to his knees. “Enough, Lord Yama!” he gasped. “Wouldst slay thyself?”
He changed. His features flowed, as though he lay beneath restless waters.
Yama looked down upon his own face, saw his own red hands plucking at his wrists.
“You grow desperate now, Mara, as the life leaves you. But Yama is no child, that he fears breaking the mirror you have become. Try your last, or die like a man, it is all the same in the end.”
But once more there was a flowing and a change.
This time Yama hesitated, breaking his strength.
Her bronze hair fell upon his hands. Her pale eyes pleaded with him. Caught about her throat was a necklace of ivory skulls, but slightly paler than her flesh. Her sari was the color of blood. Her hands rested upon his own, almost caressing. . .
“Goddess!” he hissed.
“You would not slay Kali . . . ? Durga . . . ?” she choked.
“Wrong again, Mara,” he whispered. “Did you not know that each man kills the thing he loved?” and with this his hands twisted, and there was a sound of breaking bones.
“Tenfold be your damnation,” he said, his eyes tightly closed. “There shall be no rebirth.”
His hands came open then. A tall, nobly proportioned man lay upon the floor at his feet, his head resting upon his right shoulder.
His eye had finally closed.
Yama turned the corpse with the toe of his boot. “Build a pyre and burn this body,” he said to the monks, not turning toward them. “Spare none of the rites. One of the highest has died this day.”
Then he removed his eyes from this work of his hands, turned upon his heel and left the room.
That evening the lightnings fled across the skies and the rain came down like bullets from Heaven.