There had been three attempts upon his life. The captain of the palace guard had been the last to try. But his blade had turned to a reptile in his hand and struck at his face, taking out his eyes and filling his veins with a venom that had caused him to darken and swell, to die crying for a drink of water.
Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.
His power had grown again, slowly, since that day in Hellwell when last he had wielded it. Oddly independent of the brain of his body, as Yama had once told him, the power turned like a slow pinwheel at the center of the space that was himself.
It spun again faster, and he hurled it against the force of the other.
A cry escaped Taraka, and a counterthrust of pure energy came back at Siddhartha like a spear.
Partly, he managed to deflect it, to absorb some of its force. Still, there was pain and turmoil within him as the brunt of the attack touched upon his being.
He did not pause to consider the pain, but struck again, as a spearman strikes into the darkened burrow of a fearsome beast.
Again, he heard his lips cry out.
Then the demon was building black walls against his power.
But one by one, these walls fell before his onslaught.
And as they fought, they spoke:
“Oh man of many bodies,” said Taraka, “why do you begrudge me a few days within this one? It is not the body you were born into, and you, too, do but borrow it for a time. Why then, do you feel my touch to be a thing of defilement? One day you may wear another body, untouched by me. So why do you consider my presence a pollution, a disease? Is it because there is that within you which is like unto myself? Is it because you, too, know delight in the ways of the Rakasha, tasting the pain you cause like a pleasure, working your will as you choose upon whatsoever you choose? Is it because of this? Because you, too, know and desire these things, but also bear that human curse called guilt? If it is, I mock you in your weakness, Binder. And I shall prevail against you.”
“It is because I am what I am, demon,” said Siddhartha, hurling his energies back at him. “It is because I am a man who occasionally aspires to things beyond the belly and the phallus. I am not not the saint the Buddhists think me to be, and I am not the hero out of legend. I am a man who knows much fear, and who occasionally feels guilt. Mainly, though, I am a man who has set out to do a thing, and you are now blocking my way. Thus you inherit my curse—whether I win or whether I lose now, Taraka, your destiny has already been altered. This is the curse of the Buddha—you will never again be the same as once you were.”
And all that day they stood upon the balcony, garments drenched with perspiration. Like a statue they stood, until the sun had gone down out of the sky and the golden trail divided the dark bowl of the night. A moon leapt up above the garden wall. Later, another joined it.
“What is the curse of the Buddha?” Taraka inquired, over and over again. But Siddhartha did not reply.
He had beaten down the final wall, and they fenced now with energies like flights of blazing arrows.
From a Temple in the distance there came the monotonous beating of a drum, and occasionally a garden creature croaked, a bird cried out or a swarm of insects settled upon them, fed, and swirled away.
Then, like a shower of stars, they came, riding upon the night wind . . . the Freed of Hellwell, the other demons who had been loosed upon the world.
They came in answer to Taraka’s summons, adding their powers to his own.
He became as a whirlwind, a tidal wave, a storm of lightnings.
Siddhartha felt himself swept over by a titanic avalanche, crushed, smothered, buried.