An Oblique Approach

by David Drake

  In the event, the Wind wasted its mercy. The crone would die anyhow, two days later. On a stake in the courtyard, impaled there at Venandakatra's command. Condemned for the crime of not overcoming one of the world's greatest assassins.

  Strangely, she did not mind her death, and never thought to blame the Wind. Hers had been a miserable life, after all, in this turn of the wheel. The next could only be better. True, these last moments were painful. But pain was no stranger to the crone. And, in the meantime, there was great entertainment to be found. More entertainment than she had enjoyed in her entire wretched existence.

  She was surrounded by good company, after all, the very best. Men she knew well. Ye-tai soldiers who had taken their own entertainment, over the years, mocking her, beating her, cursing her, spitting on her. Their fathers had done the same, when she had been young, and thrown rape into the bargain. But they would entertain her, now, in her last hours. Entertain her immensely.

  So went a feeble crone to her death, cackling her glee. While seventeen mighty Ye-tai around her, perched on their own stakes, shrieked their warrior way to oblivion.

  Once out of the servant quarters, the Wind moved swiftly through the cavernous rooms where the Vile One, when present, resided and entertained himself. Invisible, the Wind, for there were no lanterns lit, and as silent as ever. The invisibility and the silence were unneeded. At that time of night, with the lord absent from his palace, none would intrude in his private quarters. None would dare. To be found was to be convicted of thievery and impaled within the hour.

  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 du
mbfounded 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 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.

  There were sounds now, of course. The muffled sound of bodies slumping to the floor, the splatter of arterial blood against walls. Loudest of all, perhaps, the gurgling sound of air escaping. The deep breaths which the torturers had taken in their brief moment of fear were hissing their way out, like suddenly ruptured water pipes.

  Ye-tai guards, for all their arrogant sloppiness, would not have failed to hear those sounds. Even through a closed door.

  But the priest and the six torturers standing guard in the room beyond that door heard nothing. Or, rather, heard but did not understand the hearing. Unlike Ye-tai warriors, they were not familiar with the sounds by which men go swiftly to their doom.

  Other sounds of death, yes. Oh, many of them. Shrieks of pain, they knew. Howls of agony, they knew. Screams, yes. Wails, yes. Groans and moans, it goes without saying. Whimpers and sobs, they could recognize in their sleep. Even the hoarse, whispering, near-silent hiss from a throat torn bloody by hours of squalling terror—that they knew. Knew well.

  But the faint sounds which came through the door, those they did not recognize. (Though one torturer, puzzled, stepped to the door and began to open it.) Those were the sounds of quick death, and quick death was a stranger to the men beyond that door.