Lord of Light

"You fertility deities are worse than Marxists," he said. "You think that's all that goes on between people. We were just friends for a time, but she is too hard on her friends and so loses them."

"She did repulse you?"

"I suppose so."

"And when she took Morgan, the poet of the plains, as her lover — he who one day incarnated as a jackbird and flew away—you then hunted jackbirds, until inside a month with your arrows you had slain near every one in Heaven."

"And I still hunt jackbirds."

"Why is that?"

"I do not care for their singing."

"She is too cold, too mocking," agreed Murugan.

"I do not like being mocked by anyone, youthgod. Could you outrun the arrows of Rudra?"

Murugan smiled again. "No," said he, "nor could my friends the Lokapalas—nor would they need to."

"When I assume my Aspect," said Rudra, "and take up my great bow, which was given me by Death himself, then can I send a heat-tracking arrow whistling down the miles to pursue a moving target and strike it like a thunderbolt, dead."

"Let us then talk of other matters," said Murugan, suddenly interested in the target. "I gather that our guest mocked Brahma some years ago in Mahartha and did violence in holy places. I understand, though, that he is the same one who founded the religion of peace and enlightenment."

"The same."

"Interesting."

"An understatement."

"What will Brahma do."

Rudra shrugged. "Brahma only knows," he replied.

At the place called Worldsend, where there is nothing beyond the edge of Heaven but the distant flicker of the dome and, far below, the blank ground, hidden beneath a smoke-white mist, there stands the open-sided Pavilion of Silence, upon whose round, gray roof the rains never fall, and across whose balconies and balustrades the fog boils in the morning and the winds walk at twilight, and within whose airy chambers, seated upon the stark, dark furniture, or pacing among the gray columns, are sometimes to be found the gods contemplative, the broken warriors or those injured in love, who come to consider there all things hurtful or futile, beneath a sky that is beyond the Bridge of the Gods, in the midst of a place of stone where the colors are few and the only sound is the wind — there, since slightly after the days of the First, have sat the philosopher and the sorceress, the sage and the magus, the suicide, and the ascetic freed from the desire for rebirth or renewal; there, in the center of renunciation and abandonment, withdrawal and departure, are the five rooms named Memory, Fear, Heartbreak, Dust and Despair; and this place was built by Kubera the Fat, who cared not a tittle for any of these sentiments, but who, as a friend of Lord Kalkin, had done this construction at the behest of Candi the Fierce, sometimes known as Durga and as Kali, for he alone of all the gods possessed the Attribute of inanimate correspondence, whereby he could invest the works of his hands with feelings and passions to be experienced by those who dwelled among them.

They sat in the room called Heartbreak, and they drank of the soma but they were never drunken.

It was twilight all about the Pavilion of Silence, and the winds that circled through Heaven flowed past them.

They sat within black robes upon the dark seats, and his hand lay atop hers, there on the table that stood between them; and the horoscopes of all their days moved past them on the wall that separated Heaven from the heavens; and they were silent as they considered the pages of their centuries.

"Sam," she finally said, "were they not good?"

"Yes," he replied.

"And in those ancient days, before you left Heaven to dwell among men—did you love me then?"

"I do not really remember," he said. "It was so very long ago. We were both different people then—different minds, different bodies. Probably those two, whoever they were, loved one another. I cannot remember."

"But I recall the springtime of the world as though it were yesterday—those days when we rode together to battle, and those nights when we shook the stars loose from the fresh-painted skies! The world was so new and different then, with a menace lurking within every flower and a bomb behind every sunrise. Together we beat a world, you and I, for nothing really wanted us here and everything disputed our coming. We cut and burnt our way across the land and over the seas, and we fought under the seas and in the skies, until there was nothing left to oppose us. Then cities were built, and kingdoms, and we raised up those whom we chose to rule over them, until they ceased to amuse us and we cast them down again. What do the younger gods know of those days? How can they understand the power we knew, who were First?"

"They cannot," he replied.

"When we held court in our palace by the sea and I gave you many sons, and our fleets swept out to conquer the islands, were those days not fair and full of grace? And the nights things of fire and perfume and wine? . . . Did you not love me then?"

"I believe those two loved one another, yes."