so that if one were to be overcome, the other would at least have time to cry the alarm. (Which they would. The Wind had marked out the paces of that hall in a forest, and tested, and despaired.)
The others, to be precise. The iron-faced man had always stationed three guards in that hall, at every hour of the day or night. It was the central node of the upper floor in the west wing, the pivot of the defense. And he was a veteran, a master at judging terrain. He had seen it at once, the first time he inspected the new battleground.
Three. Here. There. There. Always.
Those had been the iron-faced man’s very first commands, in his new post. The Wind knew, from a village woman who had been polishing the floor of that hall when the iron-faced man entered it.
She had been struck dumb by that man.
Not by his face. Hard faces she knew all too well, and, in the knowing, had willed herself to utter stillness. Crouching, in a corner of the hall, like a mouse on an empty floor when felines enter.
Not by his command. Which she remembered, barely, only because it illustrated his terse, harsh nature.
No, she had been dumbfounded because an iron-faced man had examined the hall swiftly, issued his commands, and had then led his men across it slowly. Slowly, and carefully, so that five hours of a worthless menial’s tedious labor would not be destroyed.
In a different way, hearing the tale, the Wind had also been struck dumb. Speechless, its voice strangled between a great hatred, and a greater wish that its hatred could be directed elsewhere.
Now, it could. Now, the iron-faced man was gone. And gone, as well, were the men he commanded. Men of his breed.
Gone, replaced by- these.
So difficult it was! Not to howl with glee!
Two Malwa guarded the hall. One priest, one mahamimamsa.
Soldiers would have guarded that hall differently.
Any soldiers.
Common soldiers, of course, would have been more careless than his men. Common soldiers, in their idle boredom, would have drifted together in quiet conversation. True, they would have remained standing. But it would have been a slouching sort of stance, weapons casually askew.
Ye-tai, in their feral arrogance, would have taken their seats in the chairs at the table in the center of the hall. And would have soon rung the hall with their boisterous exchanges. Still, even Ye-tai would have sat those chairs facing outward, weapons in hand.
Only a priest and a torturer would guard a room seated at a table, their backs turned to the corridors, their swords casually placed on a third chair to the side, poring over a passage from the Vedas. The priest, vexed, instructing the thick-witted torturer in the subtleties of the text which hallowed his trade.
From the corridor, just beyond the light, the Wind examined them. Briefly.
The time for examination was past.
The Wind, in the darkness, began to coil.
In the first turn of its coil, the Wind draped the remaining length of cord across an unlit lantern suspended on the wall.
The time for silk was past.
In the second turn of its coil, the Wind admired the silk, one last time, and hoped it would be found by a servant woman. Perhaps, if she were unobserved, she would be able to steal it and give her squalid life a bit of beauty.
In the third turn of its coil, and the fourth, the Wind sang silent joy. The Wind sang to an iron face which was gone, now, but which, while there, had watched over the Wind’s treasure and kept her from harm. And it sang, as well, to an unknown man who had caused that iron face to be gone, now, when its time was past.
The Wind took the time to sing that silent joy, as it coiled, because the time for joy was also past. But joy is more precious than a cord of silk and must be discarded carefully, lest some small trace remain, impeding the vortex.
An unknown man, from the primitive Occident. In the fifth turn of its coil, the Wind took the time to wonder about that strange West. Wonder, too, was precious. Too precious to cast aside before savoring its splendor.
Were they truly nothing but superstitious heathens, as he had always been told? Ignorant barbarians, who had never seen the face of God?
But the Wind wondered only briefly. The time for wonder was also past.
The vortex coiled and coiled.
Wonder would return, of course, in its proper time. A day would come when, still wondering, the Wind would study the holy writ of the West.
Coiling and coiling. Shedding, in that fearsome gathering, everything most precious to the soul. Shedding them, to make room.
Coiling and coiling.
Hatred did not come easily, to the soul called the Wind. It came with great difficulty. But the Wind’s was a human soul; nothing human was foreign to it.
Coiling and coiling and coiling.
The day would come, in the future, studying the holy writ of the western folk, when the Wind would open the pages of Ecclesiastes. The Wind would find its answer, then. A small wonder would be replaced by a greater. A blazing, joyful wonder that God should be so great that even the stiff-minded Occident could see his face.
But that was the future. In the dark corridor of the present, in the palace of the Vile One, joy and wonder fled from the Wind. All things true and precious fled, as such creatures do, sensing the storm.
Coiling and coiling. Coiling and coiling.
Love burrowed a hole. Tenderness scampered up a tree. Pity dove to the bottom of a lake. Charity, ruing its short legs, scuttled through the grass. Tolerance and mercy and kindness flapped frantic wings through the lowering sky.
A great soul, the Wind’s. Enormous, now, in its coil. With a great emptiness at the center where room had been made. Into the vacuum rushed hatred and rage, fury and fire. Bitterness brought wet weight; cruelty gave energy to the brew. Vengeance gathered the storm.
Monsoon season was very near.
The monsoon, like the Wind, was many things to many people. Different at different times. A thing of many faces.
Kindly faces, in the main. One face was the boon to seamen, in their thousands, bearing cargoes across the sea. Another was the face of life itself, for peasants in their millions, raising crops in the rain which it brought.
But the monsoon had other faces. There was the face that shattered coasts, flooded plains, and slew in the millions.
It was said, and truly, that India was the land created by the monsoon. Perhaps it was for that reason-what man can know? — that the Indian vision of God took such a different form than the vision which gripped the Occident.
The stiff-minded Occident, where God was but the Creator. Yet even the Occident knew of the seasons, and its Preacher penetrated their meaning.
India, where God danced destruction as well, singing, in his terrible great joy: I am become death, destroyer of worlds.
For all things, there is a time. For all things, there is a season.
In the palace of the Vile One, that season came.
Monsoon.
For all its incredible speed, the rush was not heard by the Malwa at the table until the Wind was almost upon them. The mahamimamsa never heard it at all, so engrossed was he in poring over the difficult text. One moment he was thinking, the next he was not. The fist which crushed the back of his skull ended all thought forever.
The priest heard, began to turn, began to gape as he saw his companion die. Then gasped, gagged-tried to choke, but could not manage the deed. The Wind’s right hand had been a fist to the torturer. The torturer done, the hand spread wide. The edge of the hand between thumb and finger smashed into the priest’s throat like a sledge.
The priest was almost dead already, from a snapped spine as well as a collapsed windpipe, but the Wind was
