priests

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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 i