Elelli said, “We loathed the calamity with the water-borne epidemic, but this is an even worse affliction.”
Yazzal said, as he sheltered against the house’s west wall and pulled his companion with him, “No affliction is easy until a worse one arrives.”
“We need to contact our companions immediately.”
“Indeed, we must quickly carry out the punishment.”
The wind was howling as it attacked the wall. The sage shouted back, “What punishment?”
The diviner, who was seeking the wall’s protection from the deluge of dust, replied, “Whoever delays in carrying out a punishment, brings punishment down on his own head.”
“Do you mean the storm’s a curse we acquired by being too slow to punish the fool?”
“If you promise the spirit world a sacrifice, don’t be slow to deliver. This is what the lost Law has taught us.”
“Many disagree with your view.”
“The majority is a handful of wretches who never understand what must be understood.”
“They say that the wind is the spirit world’s angry reaction to the sentence against the fool.”
“Rubbish! The spirit world is only angry when it seeks a blood offering.”
“It has seized many blood offerings. Indeed, the entire oasis has become a propitiatory sacrifice.”
“When people are stingy in their sacrifices to the spirit world, it takes a dreadful toll of victims, whether people like it or not.”
The wind roared; so the diviner shouted, “It’s threatening us. If we don’t make haste, the walls’ turn will be next. Haven’t you heard of the tribe that was too stingy with the spirit world to sacrifice a kid, and so the spirit world sent its messenger the wind to annihilate the whole tribe? The wind always brings a message from the spirit world; so heed it.”
The sage raised his head, but a gust struck him, ramming his skull against his companion’s breast. He muttered to the diviner’s chest. “I fear nothing on your behalf so much as the Law’s effect on you.”
The diviner yelled, “Is the Law’s effect something a man should fear?”
“The Law’s impact on a man is fearsome, because the Law’s commandment is a fetter.”
“Did you say: fetter?”
“A prophetic commandment is true during the moment of inspiration. A prophetic maxim is true while it remains unrestricted. Once we imprison it in a thin-necked jug, however, it becomes a self-parody.”
“A prophetic commandment is a prophetic commandment, no matter where or when. Space and time exercise no sway over prophetic dicta.”
The sage, however, said defiantly, despite the wind’s assaults: “A prophetic commandment is a danger even when time hasn’t touched it; so what if time has?”
“I would not be astonished to hear statements like this from foreigners. What astonishes me is to hear it from a close friend.”
The sage burst into alarming laughter and then stammered, “It’s a mistake to allow anything time touches to astonish us. Time speaks through my tongue. Don’t blame me!”
5 The Execution
The day of the execution, when the vassals brought the fool, who was bound with ropes, the wind cast generous puffs of dust into the faces of the procession so the men could barely see one another. They were forced to call out to keep from becoming separated. Behind the hill, the elders assembled, although the chief had vanished from the group.
The diviner approached the fool to pronounce the statute, which he attributed to the lost Law: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. If the killer is not killed, the Law will be diminished.”
The sage whispered to the chief merchant, “The diviner begins by seeking a prophecy but ends up extolling prophecy’s veil.”
The chief merchant took his time before turning toward the sage to whisper back a maxim before the frenzied wind could snatch it from his lips: “How can the diviner help but laud prophecy’s veil — and not prophecy — since we know we possess nothing that does not perish?”
The sage shouted, “I almost believe that the generations continue to refer to the Law as ‘lost,’ not because the Law itself has been lost — which is what we say nowadays — but to acknowledge the loss through senescence of individual axioms of the Law.”
The wind howled, casting into the wasteland new reserves of coarse dust. So the diviner signaled to the vassals to execute the fool. Just then the group heard the fool for the first time. In a voice that was husky, weak, weird, and totally unlike his normal voice, the fool said, “Undo my bonds so I can pray.”
The diviner approached him till he almost bumped him with his turban and asked with astonishment, “To whom would you pray?”
The fool replied in the same voice, “My Master!” The diviner expressed his disapproval with a telling question: “What’s the use of praying to a father who has rejected you?”
The fool stammered, “My putative father in the physical world has rejected me, but my Master will never reject me.”
The diviner hesitated for a few moments. He turned toward the group of elders, but then a new wave of dust separated them. He gestured to the vassals to loosen the fool’s bonds.
The vassals untied the prisoner, who stood there, gaunt, alone, abandoned, his head bowed.
The diviner shouted, “You can pray now. Your hands and feet are free.”
The prayer, however, did not issue from the fool’s tongue. He also did not seem intent on stepping aside to pray privately. He stood among them like a ghost, his head bowed, his veil falling away from his face, dust coating his eyes, lips, and nose. The diviner started to repeat his words, but a hideous bellowing ripped the phrase from his mouth and almost deafened his ears. After the hideous bellowing, a demonic power swept them up and hurled them far away. It grasped them in an instant. They were first bumped against each other, colliding. Then they were scattered so far apart no one could see anyone else. They did not call out to one another, not because of the howling, but because of their surprise. The tempest separated them and the demonic wind carried them into the air after breaking up their terrestrial congregation. They were forced to travel long distances to find one another again.
This one found that one, but they never found any trace of the fool.
The following day, when the dust clouds scattered and the wind stopped once and for all, people set out to search for the missing whom the tempest had carried away. They discovered some alive and others dead but found no trace of the idiot.