An Oblique Approach

Long into the night, long into the night. A low, murmuring sound in the forest; a faint, flickering light. But there were none to see, except the two predators themselves, quarreling over their prey.

The soul, the great prey, the leviathan prey, the only fit prey for truly great hunters. The greatest hunters in the world, perhaps, those two, except for some tiny people in another forest far away. Who also, in their own way, grappled Creation's most gigantic beast.

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Framed

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Chapter 23

Three nights later, the Wind of the Great Country swept through the palace of the Vile One.

Eerie wind. Silent as a ghost. Rustling not a curtain, rattling not a cup. But leaving behind, in its passage, the signs of the monsoon. The monsoon, great-grandfather of fury, whose tidal waves strew entire coasts with destruction.

Unnatural wave. Selective in its wreckage, narrow in its havoc, precise in its carnage.

The majordomo was the first to die, in his bed. He expired quickly, for his lungs were already strained by the slabs of fat which sheathed his body. He died silently, purple-faced, his bulging eyes fixed on the multitude of cords and levers for which his plump hand was desperately reaching. Cords and levers which might have saved him, for they were the nerve center of the entire palace. The mechanisms which could have alerted the Ye-tai guards, roused the priests and torturers, summoned the servants.

Wondrous levers, crafted by master metalsmiths. Beautiful cords, made from the finest silk.

The mechanisms, alas, proved quite beyond his reach. They would have been beyond that reach even if the nearest silk cord, the one he most desperately sought, had still been there. That cord rang the bell in the Ye-tai quarters. But it was gone. The majordomo could see the stub of the cord, hanging from the ceiling. It must have been severed by a razor, so clean and sharp was the cut. Or, perhaps, by a truly excellent dagger.

He did not wonder what had happened to the missing length of the cord, however. The beautiful silk had disappeared into the folds of fat which encased his neck and throat, driven there by hands like steel. He struggled against those hands, with the desperation of his feverish will to survive.

But his was a petty will, a puny will, a pitiful will, compared to the will which drove those incredible hands. That will made steel seem soft.

And so, a lackey died, much as he had lived. Swollen beyond his capacity.

The Wind swept out of the majordomo's suite. As it departed, the Wind eddied briefly, cutting away all of the cords and removing all of the levers. Without—eerie wind—causing a single one of the multitude of bells throughout the palace to so much as tremble.

The levers, the Wind discarded. The cords it kept. Excellent silk, those cords, the Wind fancied them mightily.

The Wind put three of those cords to use within the next few minutes. The Mahaveda high priests who oversaw the contingent of priests and torturers newly assigned to the palace dwelt near the suite of the majordomo. Their own chambers were not as lavish as his, nor were the locks on their doors as elaborate. It would have made no difference if they had been. Door locks, no matter how elaborate, had no more chance of resisting the Wind than dandelions a cyclone.

It made no difference, either, that the priests' lungs were not slabbed with fat. Nor that their necks were taut 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.