"Will you give unto me the full disposition of this thing, Creator?"
"Gladly."
"And throw in the Monarch of Thieves, for dessert?"
"Yes. Let it be so."
"Thank you, mighty one."
"It is nothing."
"It will be. Good evening."
"Good evening."
It is said that on that day, that great day, the Lord Vayu stopped the winds of Heaven and a stillness came upon the Celestial City and the wood of Kaniburrha. Citragupta, serving man to Lord Yama, built a mighty pyre at Worldsend, out of aromatic woods, gums, incenses, perfumes and costly cloths; and upon the pyre he laid the Talisman of the Binder and the great blue-feather cloak that had belonged to Srit, chief among the Kataputna demons; he also placed there the shape-changing jewel of the Mothers, from out the Dome of the Glow, and a robe of saffron from the purple grove of Alundil, which was said to have belonged to Tathagatha the Buddha. The silence of the morning after the night of the Festival of the First was complete. There was no movement to be seen in Heaven. It is said that demons flitted invisible through the upper air, but feared to draw near the gathering of power. It is said that there had been many signs and portents signifying the fall of the mighty. It was said, by the theologians and holy historians, that the one called Sam had recanted his heresy and thrown himself upon the mercy of Trimurti. It is also said that the goddess Parvati, who had been either his wife, his mother, his sister, his daughter, or perhaps all of these, had fled Heaven, to dwell in mourning among the witches of the eastern continent, whom she counted as kin. With dawn, the great bird called Garuda, Mount of Vishnu, whose beak smashes chariots, had stirred for a moment into wakefulness and had uttered a single hoarse cry within his cage, a cry that rang through Heaven, stabbing glass into shards, echoing across the land, awakening the soundest sleeper. Within the still summer of Heaven, the day of Love and Death began.
The streets of Heaven were empty. The gods dwelled for a time indoors, waiting. All the portals of Heaven had been secured.
The thief and the one whose followers had called him Mahasamatman (thinking him a god) were released. The air was of a sudden chill, with the laying of a weird.
High, high above the Celestial City, on a platform at the top of Milehigh Spire, stood the Lord of Illusion, Mara the Dreamer. He had upon him his cloak of all colors. His arms were raised, and the powers of others among the gods flowed through him, adding to his own.
In his mind, a dream took shape. Then he cast his dream, as a high wave-front casts waters across a beach.
For all ages, since their fashioning by Lord Vishnu, the City and the wilderness had existed side by side, adjacent, yet not really touching, accessible, yet removed from one another by a great distance within the mind, rather than by a separation merely spatial in nature. Vishnu, being the Preserver, had done this for a reason. Now, he did not wholly approve of the lifting of his barrier, even in a temporary and limited way. He did not wish to see any of the wilderness enter into the City, which, in his mind, had grown into the perfect triumph of form over chaos.
Yet, by the power of the Dreamer was it given unto the phantom cats to look upon all of Heaven for a time.
They stirred, restlessly, upon the dark and ageless trails of the jungle that was part illusion. There, within the place that only half existed, a new seeing came into their eyes, and with it a restlessness and a summons to the hunt.
It was rumored among the seafaring folk, those worldwide gossips and carriers of tales, who seem to know all things, that some among the phantom cats who hunted on that day were not really cats at all. They say that it was told in the places of the world where the gods passed later, that some among the Celestial Party transmigrated on that day, taking upon themselves the bodies of white tigers out of Kaniburrha, to join in the hunt through the alleys of Heaven after the thief who had failed and the one who had been called Buddha.
It is said that, as he wandered the streets of the City, an ancient jackbird cycled three times above him, then came to rest upon Sam's shoulder, saying:
"Are you not Maitreya, Lord of Light, for whom the world has waited, lo, these many years—he whose coming I prophesyed long ago in a poem?"
"No, my name is Sam," he replied, "and I am about to depart the world, not enter into it Who are you?"
"I am a bird who was once a poet. All morning have I flown, since the yawp of Garuda opened the day. I was flying about the ways of Heaven looking for Lord Rudra, hoping to befoul him with my droppings, when I felt the power of a weird come over the land. I have flown far, and I have seen many things, Lord of Light"
"What things have you seen, bird who was a poet?"
"I have seen an unlit pyre set at the end of the world, with fogs stirring all about it. I have seen the gods who come late hurrying across the snows and rushing through the upper airs, circling outside the dome. I have seen the players upon the ranga and the nepathya, rehearsing the Masque of Blood, for the wedding of Death and Destruction. I have seen the Lord Vayu raise up his hand and stop the winds that circle through Heaven. I have seen all-colored Mara atop the spire of the highest tower, and I have felt the power of the weird he lays—for I have seen the phantom cats troubled within the wood, then hurrying in this direction. I have seen the tears of a man and of a woman. I have heard the laughter of a goddess. I have seen a bright spear uplifted against the morning, and I have heard an oath spoken. I have seen the Lord of Light at last, of whom I wrote, long ago:
Always dying, never dead; Ever ending, never ended; Loathed in darkness, Clothed in light, He comes, to end a world, As morning ends the night. These lines were writ By Morgan, free, Who shall, the day he dies, See this prophecy."
The bird ruffled his feathers then and was still.
"I am pleased, bird, that you have had a chance to see many things," said Sam, "and that within the fiction of your metaphor you have achieved a certain satisfaction. Unfortunately, poetic truth differs considerably from that which surrounds most of the business of life."
"Hail, Lord of Light!" said the bird, and sprang into the air. As he rose, he was pierced through by an arrow shot from a nearby window by one who hated jackbirds.
Sam hurried on.
It is said that the phantom cat who had his life, and that of Helba a little later, was really a god or a goddess, which was quite possible.
It is said, also, that the phantom cat who killed them was not the first, or the second, to attempt this thing. Several tigers died beneath the Bright Spear, which passed into them, withdrew itself, vibrated clean of gore and returned then to the hand of its thrower. Tak of the Bright Spear fell himself, however, struck in the head by a chair thrown by Lord Ganesha, who had entered silently into the room at his back. It is said by some that the Bright Spear was later destroyed by Lord Agni, but others say that it was cast beyond Worldsend by the Lady Maya.
Vishnu was not pleased, later being quoted as having said that the City should not have been defiled with blood, and that wherever chaos finds egress, it will one day return. But he was laughed at by the younger of the gods, for he was accounted least among Trimurti, and his ideas were known to be somewhat dated, he being numbered among the First. For this reason, though, he disclaimed any part in the affair and retired into his tower for a time. Lord Varuna the Just turned away his face from the proceedings and visited the Pavilion of Silence at Worldsend, where he sat for a spell in the room named Fear.
The Masque of Blood was quite lovely, having been written by the poet Adasay, who was noted for his elegant language, being of the anti-Morganic school. It was accompanied by powerful illusions cast by the Dreamer especially for the occasion. It is said that Sam, too, had walked in illusion on that day; and that, as a part of the weird, he had walked in partial darkness, amidst awful odors, through regions of wailing and shrieking, and that he had seen once again every terror he had known in his life conjured up before him, brilliant or swart, silent or trumpeting, fresh-torn from the fabric of his memory and dripping with the emotions of their birth into his life, before it was over.