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.