I came back to memory in a daze and feeling much pain in my head. The brazier flared beside me. Bending over me was Pra Oom Bwaht, with a knife in his hand.
“Son of a pig!” he said.
“Where is Nagy N’Yang?” I asked.
He smiled at me—his cursed twisty smile.
“On the river’s brink she waits, bound to a great teak log lodged at the end of the spit,” he cried hoarsely. “When the flood comes to its full, she will float away—”
I spat full into his face. I thought it would make him slay me.
He wiped the spittle from his chops calmly. When an Oriental takes an insult calmly, beware! There is more to come.
“She was my wife,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“Was or is, it makes no difference to me,” I stormed. “She is mine now.”
“She is Siva’s,” he jeered. “Think you that as she swirls down into the whirlpool at the river’s bend the great river python, mother of all the pythons, will not take her? Placed I the yellow scale of Nagy in her hand for naught?”