Eric Flint - An Oblique Approach

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, 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.