There would be another heir apparent to be let into the secret--another man to scheme and hunger for the throne--another party to the bloody three-angled intrigue which kept the Siva-servers fat and the princes lean.
Past masters of the art by which superstitious ignorance is swayed, the priests could swing the allegiance of the mob whichever way they chose--even the soldiers, loyal enough to their masters under ordinary circumstances, would have rebelled at as much as a hint from holy Siva.
It was the priests who made it possible for Jaimihr to dare take his part in the ceremony; without them he would not have entered his brother's palace-yard unless five thousand men at least were there to guard his back--but, if there was danger where the priests were, there was safety too.
As the custom was, he rode to the temple of Siva first with a ten-man guard; there, when the priests had finished droning age-old anthems to the echoing roof, when his brother, the Maharajah, also with a ten-man guard, had joined him, and the two had submitted to the sanctifying rites prescribed, eleven priests would walk with them in solemn mummery to the palace-entrance--censer-swinging, chanting, blasphemously acting duty to their gods and state.
The moon--and that, too, was custom-rested with her lower rim one full hand's breadth above the temple dome as viewed from the palace-gate, when a gong clanged resonantly, died to silence, music of pipes and cymbals broke on the evening quiet, and the strange procession started from the temple door, the Maharajah leading.
Generally it passed uninterrupted over the intervening street to the palace-entrance, between the ranks of a salaaming, silent crowd, and disappeared from view.

This time, though, for the first time in living memory, and possibly for the first time in all history, the unforeseen, amazing happened.

The procession stopped.

Moon-bathed, between the carved posts of the palace-gate, two people blocked the way.
The music ceased.

The sudden silence framed itself against the distant thunder of a hundred drums.