Chapter 27 The Weather Mage
A short distance from the temple city, near the monolith, a thatched hut was set on fire in the early hours of dawn. Smoke stained the pure bright rays of the sun as it rose above the horizon.
Two people seemed to have survived the fire, an elderly man and a man still in his prime. They sat outside, watching the burning building.
He felt no anguish. That is what he had lost this time. Not a great loss, thought the young man, as he watched that emotion painted grotesquely on the other man’s face.
Bleached white teeth rose like tombstones from the gums of the elderly man’s gaping mouth as he bawled his heart out. His paralyzed legs were useless, although, he made futile attempts to reach the crying baby in the burning thatched house.
The noisy cry cut off abruptly, and the wizard appreciated the quiet, for it also stifled the elderly man’s yells for help. He now lay quietly sobbing, hunched over, looking like a skin-covered skeleton.
The wizard, Maayavi, now in the body of the young man, didn’t understand why the man was crying over the apparent death of his grandson.
Intellectually, he understood that people cried when someone they loved died, but he felt nothing. And that was how he knew what he had lost.
Each time he re-formed his body from this false death, he felt the loss of an emotion. He didn’t know why and with each transformation, the why of it became less important.
The storm he had caused yesterday had resulted in an incredible use of power. It had burned his previous body so badly that he had died in agony early this afternoon.
Luckily, a man, a goatherd by appearance, was passing by and found him covered in blood. He had taken him to a solitary home here, up on the slopes of the hill.
Maayavi stood up and flexed his fingers to make a fist, appreciating the bunch of substantial muscle in his arm.
It was good not to be in pain and to have control of a strong and healthy body.
He already knew the goatherd had passably handsome features, which would be a bonus. At least his vanity was intact.
He had burned his previous body, setting the thatched hut on fire, but there was no way he could hide the traces of magic on it. It was not the kind that washed away easily. But unless a person knew what to look for, they wouldn’t find it.
Maayavi should know; he had been doing this for years now and no one had caught him or even suspected his involvement. But then, everybody thought he was dead.
The elderly man gazed with rheumy eyes as Maayavi carefully cleaned the most important possession he had; far more important than his four-skulled magical staff leaning against a stone.
A bone dagger.
Years ago, shortly after his physical death, Maayavi had to break into his own samadhi or grave to acquire this femur bone, fashioning it into a sharp dagger by whittling and scraping it down, inscribing the bone with powerful spells to help make the transfer of souls into other bodies easy.
Without the bone dagger, he would cease to exist, and he dreaded the day when it decomposed into the earth, like all things that once lived.
Knowing it would be many, many years before that happened, didn’t quell the anxiety that his time was running out.
Why couldn’t that emotion have left him, instead of staying on like an unwelcome relative?
“Kill me, too, please,” came the elderly man’s raspy voice. “What is there for me to live for? You have killed my family. Why do you hesitate to kill me?”
Maayavi spared him a glance as he finished cleaning the bone dagger with water and then wiped it down with a cloth before wrapping it carefully in another.
“Well, I needed your son’s body. And I needed your daughter-in-law to kill him with my dagger so I could transfer my soul into his body.
She fought me and knew my secret, so she had to die. ”
“And the baby…” Maayavi straightened and shrugged.
“I forgot it was in the hut when I set fire to it, and I didn’t want to rescue him at the risk of burning my new body.
” He nodded to himself, pleased he had lost none of his reasoning capabilities.
These re-formations seemed to prune his emotions but left his mental faculties and magic intact, but it didn’t hurt to make sure.
He still had the rage, envy, and hatred that made him the way he was, but more importantly, he still had his purpose. Like a miser, he hoarded them.
“In a few days, you will die of hunger and thirst if I leave you here with no one to help you. You are no threat to me,” he said to the weeping, half-dead man on the ground.
The wizard’s gaze swept toward the horizon and the silhouette of the temple city nestled in the plain.
Hopefully yesterday’s use of magic had fulfilled what was required to reveal the hiding place of the key piece.
Now, all Maayavi had to do was to get it.
Thianvelli better provide what he asked of them.
But maybe he would wait a day or two to retrieve the key piece. After all, it wasn’t going anywhere.
None of those people in the temple city were even aware of the significance of the ritual with the idol and the three-river confluence. They thought it had to do with cleansing.
Over the years, those fools had even changed it slightly, building up the drama around the ritual, so the idol didn’t ever go to the bottom of the confluence. It was outrageous!
Without that significant event, the hidden place of the key piece wouldn’t be revealed.
“Then have pity on me and kill me,” came the defeated voice from behind.
Maayavi’s crouched to look at the elderly man closely. “What does pity feel like?”