“Very well,” said Siddhartha. “I’ve a kingdom, some weeks’ journey hence, where I rule. A regent has been seated in my place for many years, but if I return there I can raise me an army. A new religion moves now across the land. Men may now think less of the gods than once they did.”
“You wish to sack Heaven?”
“Yes, I wish to lay open its treasures to the world.”
“This is to my liking. It will not be easily won, but with an army of men and an army of my kind we should be able to do it. Let us free my people now, that we may begin.”
“I believe I will simply have to trust you,” said Siddhartha. “So yes, let us begin,” and he moved across the floor of Hellwell toward the first deep tunnel beading downward.
That day he freed sixty-five of them, filling the caverns with their color and their movement and their light. The air sounded with mighty cries of joy and the noise of their passage as they swept about Hellwell, changing shape constantly and exulting in their freedom.
Without warning, then, one took upon itself the form of a flying serpent and swept down toward him, talons outstretched and slashing.
For a moment, his full attention lay upon it.
It uttered a brief, broken cry, and then it came apart, falling in a shower of blue-white sparks.
Then these faded, and it was utterly vanished.
There was silence in the caverns, and the lights pulsed and dipped about the walls.
Siddhartha directed his attention toward the largest point of light, Taraka.
“Did that one attack me in order to test my strength?” he inquired. “To see whether I can also kill, in the manner I told you I could?”
Taraka approached, hovered before him. “It was not by my bidding that he attacked,” he stated. “I feel that he was half crazed from his confinement.”
Siddhartha shrugged. “For a time now, disport yourselves as you would,” he said. “I would have rest from this task,” and he departed the smaller cavern.
He returned to the bottom of the well, where he lay down upon his blanket and dozed.
There came a dream.
He was running.
His shadow lay before him, and, as he ran upon it, it grew.
It grew until it was no longer his shadow but a grotesque outline. Suddenly he knew that his shadow had been overrun by that of his pursuer: overrun, overwhelmed, submerged and surmounted.
Then he knew a moment of terrible panic, there upon the blind plain over which he fled.
He knew that it was now his own shadow.
The doom which had pursued him no longer lay at his back.
He knew that he was his own doom.
Knowing that he had finally caught up with himself, he laughed aloud, wanting really to scream.
When he awoke again, he was walking.
He was walking up the twisted wall-trail of Hellwell.
As he walked, he passed the imprisoned flames.
Again, each cried out to him as he went by:
“Free us, masters!”
And slowly, about the edges of the ice that was his mind, there was a thawing.
Masters.
Plural. Not singular.
Masters, they had said.
He knew then that he did not walk alone.
None of the dancing, flickering shapes moved through the darkness about him, below him.
The ones who had been imprisoned were still imprisoned. The ones he had freed were gone.
Now he climbed the high wall of Hellwell, no torch lighting his way. But still, he saw.
He saw every feature of the rocky trail, as though by moonlight.
He knew that his eyes were incapable of this feat.
And he had been addressed in the plural.
And his body was moving, but was not under the direction of his will.
He made an effort to halt, to stand still.
He continued to advance up the trail, and it was then that his lips moved, forming the words:
“You have awakened, I see. Good morning.”
A question formed itself in his mind, to be answered immediately through his own mouth:
“Yes, and how does it feel to be bound yourself, Binder—in your own body?”