“You have bound yourself. It is you who broke our pact. I kept it.”
“Men suffer when they break pacts with demons,” said Taraka, “but no Rakasha has ever suffered so before.”
Siddhartha did not reply.
On the following morning, as he sat to breakfast, there came a banging upon the door of his chambers.
“Who dares?” he cried out, and the door burst inward, its hinges tearing free of the wall, its bar snapping like a dry stick.
The head of a horned tiger upon the shoulders of an ape, great hooves for feet, talons for hands, the Rakasha fell forward into the room, smoke emerging from his mouth as he became transparent for a moment, returned to full visibility, faded once more, returned again. His talons were dripping something that was not blood and a wide burn lay across his chest. The air was filled with the odor of singed hair and charred flesh.
“Master!” it cried. “A stranger has come, asking audience of thee!”
“And you did not succeed in convincing him that I was not available?”
“Lord, a score of human guardsmen fell upon him, and he gestured. . . . He waved his hand at them, and there was a flash of light so bright that even the Rakasha might not look upon it. For an instant only it lasted—and they were all of them vanished, as if they had never existed. . . . There was also a large hole in the wall behind where they had stood. . . . There was no rubble. Only a smooth, clean hole.”
“And then you fell upon him?”
“Many of the Rakasha sprang for him—but there is that about him which repels us. He gestured again and three of our own kind were gone, vanished in the light he hurls. . . . I did not take the full force of it, but was only grazed by his power. He sent me, therefore, to deliver his message. . . . I can no longer hold myself together—”
With that he vanished, and a globe of fire hung where the creature had lain. Now his words came into the mind, rather than being spoken across the air.
“He bids you come to him without delay. Else, he says he will destroy this palace.”
“Did the three whom he burnt also take on again their own forms?”
“No,” replied the Rakasha. “They are no more . . .”
“Describe this stranger!” ordered Siddhartha, forcing the words through his own lips.
“He stands very tall,” said the demon, “and he wears black breeches and boots. Above the waist he has on him a strange garment. It is like a seamless white glove, upon his right hand only, which extends all the way up his arm and across his shoulders, wrapping his neck and rising tight and smooth about his entire head. Only the lower part of his face is visible, for he wears over his eyes large black lenses which extend half a span outward from his face. At his belt he wears a short sheath of the same white material as the garment—not containing a dagger, however, but a wand. Beneath the material of his garment, where it crosses his shoulders and comes up upon his neck, there is a hump, as if he wears there a small pack.”
“Lord Agni!” said Siddhartha. “You have described the God of Fire!”
“Aye, this must be,” said the Rakasha. “For as I looked beyond his flesh, to see the colors of his true being, I saw there a blaze like unto the heart of the sun. If there be a God of Fire, then this indeed is he.”
“Now must we flee,” said Siddhartha, “for there is about to be a great burning. We cannot fight with this one, so let us go quickly.”
“I do not fear the gods,” said Taraka, “and I should like to try the power of this one.”
“You cannot prevail against the Lord of Flame,” said Siddhartha. “His fire wand is invincible. It was given him by the deathgod.”
“Then I shall wrest it from him and turn it against him.”
“None may wield it without being blinded and losing a hand in the process! This is why he wears that strange garment. Let us waste no more time here!”