with holy austerity. Very taut, in fact, for these were high priests, given to great austerity. But they grew tauter still, under the Wind’s discipline. For Mahaveda priests, the Wind would settle for nothing less than ultimate austerity.
The Wind departed the quarters of the high priests and swirled its way through the adjoining chambers. Small rooms, these, unlocked-the sleeping chambers of modest priests and even humbler mahamimamsa.
They grew humbler still, models of modesty, in the passing of the Wind. True, their simple bedding gained ostentatious color, quite out of keeping with their station in life. But they could hardly be blamed for that natural disaster. The monsoon always brings moisture in its wake.
Done with its business in those quarters, the Wind veered toward the west wing of the palace. There, still some distance away, lay the principal destination of the Wind’s burden of wet destruction.
The Wind eased its way now, slowly. These were the servant quarters. The Wind had no quarrel with that folk. And so it moved through these corridors like the gentlest zephyr, so as not to rouse its residents.
A servant awoke, nonetheless. Not from the effects of the Wind’s passage, but from the incontinence of old age. A crone, withered by years of toil and abuse, who simply had the misfortune to shuffle out of her tiny crib of a room at exactly the wrong moment.
Shortly thereafter, she found herself back in the room. Lying on her pallet, gagged, bound with silk cords, but otherwise unharmed. She made no attempt to fight those bonds. As well fight against iron hoops. When she was finally discovered the next day, she had suffered no worse than the discomfort of spending a night in bedding soaked with urine.
In the event, the Wind wasted its mercy. The crone would die anyhow, two days later. On a stake in the courtyard, impaled there at Venandakatra’s command. Condemned for the crime of not overcoming one of the world’s greatest assassins.
Strangely, she did not mind her death, and never thought to blame the Wind. Hers had been a miserable life, after all, in this turn of the wheel. The next could only be better. True, these last moments were painful. But pain was no stranger to the crone. And, in the meantime, there was great entertainment to be found. More entertainment than she had enjoyed in her entire wretched existence.
She was surrounded by good company, after all, the very best. Men she knew well. Ye-tai soldiers who had taken their own entertainment, over the years, mocking her, beating her, cursing her, spitting on her. Their fathers had done the same, when she had been young, and thrown rape into the bargain. But they would entertain her, now, in her last hours. Entertain her immensely.
So went a feeble crone to her death, cackling her glee. While seventeen mighty Ye-tai around her, perched on their own stakes, shrieked their warrior way to oblivion.
Once out of the servant quarters, the Wind moved swiftly through the cavernous rooms where the Vile One, when present, resided and entertained himself. Invisible, the Wind, for there were no lanterns lit, and as silent as ever. The invisibility and the silence were unneeded. At that time of night, with the lord absent from his palace, none would intrude in his private quarters. None would dare. To be found was to be convicted of thievery and impaled within the hour.
Unnecessary invisibility, unneeded silence; but inevitable for all that. It was simply the way of the Wind, the nature of the thing, the very soul of the phenomenon.
Into the corridor leading to the stairs swept the Wind. The first mahamimamsa guard was encountered there, at the foot of the stairs, standing in a pathetic semblance of a sentry’s posture. The Wind swirled, very briefly, then lofted its way up the stairs. The mahamimamsa remained below, his posture much improved. More sentry-like. True, the torturer no longer even pretended to stand. But his eyes were wide open.
Near the top of the stairs, at the last bend in its stately progression, the Wind eddied, grew still. Listened, as only the Wind can listen.
One mahamimamsa, no more.
Had silence not been its way, the Wind would have howled contempt. Even Ye-tai would have had the sense to station two sentries at the landing above.
But the Ye-tai had never been allowed up those stairs, not since the treasure in the west wing had first been brought to the palace. The princess had been placed in that wing of the palace, in fact, because it was located as far from the Ye-tai quarters as possible. The majordomo had known his master’s soul. No Malwa lord in his right mind wants Ye-tai anywhere near that kind of virgin treasure. The barbarians were invaluable, but they were not truly domesticated. Wild dogs from the steppes, straining at a slender leash. Mad dogs, often enough.
The lord of this palace was in his right mind. A mind made even righter by the experienced wisdom of a foreigner. A drunken foreigner, true. But- in vino veritas. And so the right-minded lord had tightened the guard over his treasure. Had sent orders ahead. None but mahamimamsa torturers would protect that treasure now, with a few priests to oversee them. Men bound to celibacy. Bound by solemn oaths; bound even tighter by fear of pollution (the worst of which is the monstrous, moist, musk-filthy, blood-soiled bodies of women); bound, tightest of all, by their own twisted depravity, which took its pleasure in a place as far removed from life-creation as possible.
The Wind swirled, rose the final few steps, coiled its lethal way around the corner. Another length of cord found good use.
The Wind was pleased, for it treasured beauty. Such wonderful silk was meant to be displayed, admired, not wasted in the privacy of a glutton’s chambers. It would be seen now, the following day. Not admired, perhaps. Mortal men, tied to the veil of illusion, were hard to please.
Down the corridor to the left, down the next corridor to the right. So the Wind made its silent way, as surely as if it knew every inch of the palace.
Which, indeed, it did. The Wind had discovered all of the palace’s secrets, from the humblest source: the idle chatter of village women, filled with the years of toil in that palace. Long years, washing its walls, cleaning its linens, dusting its shelves, scrubbing and polishing its floors. Idle chatter, picked up by the Wind as it wafted its light way through their lives.
Now, as it came to the end of this corridor, the Wind wafted lightly again. Not so much as a whisper signaled its arrival. This was the corridor which led to the great domed hall where all the corridors in the west wing of the palace intersected.
The Wind knew that hall. That great domed hall, empty, save for a single small table at its center. A table with three chairs. Oh, yes. The Wind knew that hall well. Knew it, in fact, better than it had known any room it had ever actually entered.
Knew it so well, because it hated that domed hall more than any room built by men had ever been hated. Hours, days-weeks, the Wind had spent, thinking about that hall. Trying to find a way it could swirl through that hall, without the fatal alarm being sounded.
But the Wind had never found a way. For a man with an iron face had also thought upon that hall, and how to guard it.
At the end of the corridor, at the very edge of the light-cone cast by a lantern on the table which stood at the center of the hall, the Wind eddied. Grew still.
Till now, the Wind had been able to take its own time. Once that hall was entered, there would be no time.
The hall was the first of the final barriers to the Wind’s will. There were four barriers. The first was the domed hall, and the guards within it. Beyond, just two short corridors away, was the second: the guards standing in front of the princess’ suite. The third was the antechamber of the suite, where the main body of guards were found. And now, the Wind had learned (the day before, from a village woman clucking her outrage), there was a fourth barrier, in the princess’ own chamber. In a former time, when an iron-faced man had commanded very different guards, the princess had been allowed to sleep undisturbed. Now, even in her sleep, torturers gazed upon her.
But it was the first barrier which had been the main barrier to the Wind, for all these weeks. The Wind had never doubted it could make its way through that hall-even when guarded by his men-and to the barriers beyond. But not without the alarm being sounded. And, the alarm sounded, the barriers beyond would become insurmountable obstacles, even to the Wind.
Eddying in the darkness of the corridor, the Wind examined the hated hall, in the light of a new reality. And, again, found it hard not to howl.
His warriors, in the days when this had been their duty, stood their duty erect, alert, arms in hand. They did not converse. Conversation was impossible, anyway, because his sentries always stood far apart from each other,
