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I sagged miserably and moaned beneath the filthy cloth which bound my mouth

“Of course you would You’ll listen to anything I wish to tell you, won’t you? Where e? Oh, yes, Z comfortably in one hundred and forty-five satisfied stomachs…”

THE PALACE OF INDRAJIT THE TERRIBLE SLEPT peacefully that night, dreahteous murderers But when dawn broke like a win dowpane over the steel-toothoccurred

The Varaahasind, bringers of death, began to go mad

At first it was nothing anyone would notice The soldiers, after all, had always behaved barbarically, decorating their huts with the li their faces with boar’s blood Madness would have to be strong as paired oxen in them to be marked out from their usual custom

And so it was thathis ornate beard, which curved down to his collarbone like the tusks of a great pig He was delicately cutting it with the edge of his sword, eradicating the syainst the code of the Varaahasind to shave that proud beard, the penalty death by exposure—yet this man removed it so cleanly that his face was like that

of a child, smooth as a moon

The next week, a captain was found in an ivory tub, singing some wordless psalm full of hideous voorse, the tub itself was filled to its gilt edges riggling green snakes, thick as a woman’s waist, which wound around the captain in reptilian ecstasy

And finally, on the third day of the new year, the second in command of the fell troops lost his ability to speak He spat and hissed obscenely, his body contorting with the effort of uttering even the slightest sibilant syllable When the court physician calmed the poor man sufficiently to open his ue had becoh the thick flesh

At this pass, the King and the Coan to fear for their own ician to them, in order to divine the source of the malady

I was young then I had just taken the collar under Indrajit For the first ti on a farm for roots out of the earth I was Omir Doulios, and if others spit that word as a curse, I wore it like a crown It meant I was more than a potato or a turnip or a beet covered in mud Even a slave is better, even a slave handed master to master until he dies I wore the iron collar as easily as a necklace It clasped my throat from chin to chest, a sylinting like a sword held to ic except in the service of Indrajit, and even then not without the observation of other craftsmen, as if I were a common cobbler But it was better than a daht for the first time before the Throne of Teeth, excite months of boredom and the waste of my talents

“Omir Doulios, lowest of slaves, you are coues my men The speed hich you acco you will live once you have left our presence,” Indrajit intoned pere for the speech of introduction I had painstakingly prepared The Tusk-Crown flashed and glowered in the torchlight, distorting ht, perhaps this was better For, of course, I had already deduced the root of their sickness, being the wisest of all le before his porcine nose, and it ht purchase me that which then I most desired

“My an quickly, “I can answer your riddle for you in aa book or an oracle, if you will but grant me the price I ask”

I could see his rage flare at such ireat battle within his breast and he nodded his assent, which could not be withdrawn

“The solution is simple You have killed and eaten a Star, which the siods Her presence within you and yourto assert itself, to re-form into the shape of the Great Serpent”