Eric Flint - An Oblique Approach

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 in full fury now. The monsoon, by its nature, heaps havoc onto ruin. The terrible hands did their work. The left seized the priest's hair, positioned him; the right, iron palm-heel to the fore, shattered his nose and drove the broken bone into the brain. All in an instant.

The Wind raged across the domed hall, down a corridor.

The end of that short corridor ended in another. Down the left, a short distance, stood the door to the princess' suite. Before that door stood three mahamimamsa. ( He had only stationed two; three were too many for the narrow space, simply impeding each other.)

The Wind raced down the corridor. The time for silent wafting was over. A guard had but to look around the bend. ( He had stationed one of his two guards at the bend itself, always watching the hall; the Wind had despaired here also.)

For all the fury of the Wind's coming, there was little noise. The Wind's feet, in their manner of racing, had been a part—small part—of the reason his soul had been given another name, among many. A panther's paws do not slap the ground, clapping their loud and clumsy way, when the panther springs on its prey.

Still, there was a bit of noise. The torturer standing closest to the corridor frowned. What—? More out of boredom than any real alarm, the mahamimamsa moved toward the bend. His companions saw him go, thought little of it. They had heard nothing, themselves. Assumed the tedium had driven him into idle motion.

The Wind blew around the bend. Idleness disappeared. Boredom and tedium vanished. The torturers regretted their sudden absence deeply, much as a man agonizes over a treasure lost because he had not recognized its worth.

The agony was brief.

The first torturer, the—so to speak—alert one, never agonized at all. The dagger came up under his chin, through his tongue, through the roof of his mouth, into his brain. The capacity for agony ended before the agony had time to arrive.

The remaining two torturers had time—just—to startle erect and begin to gape. One, even, began to grope for his sword. He died first, from a slash which severed his throat. The same slash—in the backstroke—did for the other.