“Though you can walk on air,” said Siddhartha, “you speak rashly when you speak thus.”
“The Prince Videgha holds his court not far from here, at Palamaidsu,” said Taraka, “for I visited there on my return from Heaven. I understand he is fond of gaming. Therefore, thither fare we.”
“And if the God of Death should come to join the game?”
“Let him!” cried the other. “You cease to amuse me, Binder. Good night. Go back to sleep!”
There was a small darkness and a great silence, growing and shrinking.
The days that followed were bright fragments.
There would come to him snatches of conversation or song, colorful vistas of galleries, chambers, gardens. And once he looked upon a dungeon where men were hung upon racks, and he heard himself laughing.
Between these fragments there came to him dreams and half dreams. They were lighted with fire, they ran with blood and tears. In a darkened, endless cathedral he rolled dice that were suns and planets. Meteors broke fire above his head, and comets inscribed blazing arcs upon a vault of black glass. There came to him a joy shot through with fear, and he knew it to be mainly that of another, but it was partly his, too. The fear—that was all his.
When Taraka drank too much wine, or lay panting on his wide, low couch in the harem, then was his grip loosened somewhat, upon the body that he had stolen. But Siddhartha was still weak with the mind-bruise, and his body was drunk or fatigued; and he knew that the time had not yet come to contest the mastery of the demon-lord.
There were times when he saw, not through the eyes of the body that had once been his, but saw as a demon saw, in all directions, and stripped flesh and bone from those among whom he passed, to behold the flames of their beings, colored with the hues and shades of their passions, flickering with avarice and lust and envy, darting with greed and hunger, smouldering with hate, waning with fear and pain. His hell was a many-colored place, somewhat mitigated only by the cold blue blaze of a scholar’s intellect, the white light of a dying monk, the rose halo of a noble lady who fled his sight, and the dancing, simple colors of children at play.
He stalked the high halls and wide galleries of the royal palace at Palamaidsu, which were his winnings. The Prince Videgha lay in chains in his own dungeon. Throughout the kingdom, his subjects were not aware that a demon now sat upon the throne. Things seemed to be the same as they had always been. Siddhartha had visions of riding through the streets of the town on the back of an elephant. All the women of the town had been ordered to stand before the doors of their dwellings. Of these, he chose those who pleased him and had them taken back to his harem. Siddhartha realized, with a sudden shock, that he was assisting in the choosing, disputing with Taraka over the virtues of this or that matron, maid or lady. He had been touched by the lusts of the demon-lord, and they were becoming his own. With this realization, he came into a greater wakefulness, and it was not always the hand of the demon which raised the wine horn to his lips, or twitched the whip in the dungeon. He came to be conscious for greater periods of time, and with a certain horror he knew that, within himself, as within every man, there lies a demon capable of responding to his own kind.
Then, one day, he fought the power that ruled his body and bent his mind. He had largely recovered, and he coexisted with Taraka in all his doings, both as silent watcher and active participant.
They stood on the balcony above the garden, looking out across the day. Taraka had, with a single gesture, turned all the flowers black. Lizardlike creatures had come to dwell in the trees and the ponds, croaking and flitting among the shadows. The incenses and perfumes which filled the air were thick and cloying. Dark smokes coiled like serpents along the ground.