Shadow of God Read Online Free

and pressed their heads to the floor. A servant took each man by the arm and led him backwards toward the wall of the room. This way, they could not turn their backs upon the Sultan. When the six men sat kneeling against the walls and looking towards their master, Selim rose and moved toward the opposite side of the room. He took an archer’s bow from its rack on the wall, bringing it in front of the mutes. He stood before them, and with his powerful hands bent the stout wooden bow tighter in its recurved arc to loosen the silk string. That this act requiredimmense physical strength was not lost on the mutes. He removed the string from the bow and walked toward the kneeling men. Slowly he moved before them, looking into each one’s eyes. From them, he saw nothing. No emotion. No fear. No love. Nothing.
    He came to the end of the line. With feline speed and precision, he stepped behind the first mute, quickly wrapping the silk bowstring around his neck. He crossed his powerful hands and tightened the garrote. The big mute clawed at the rope around his throat. His legs shot out in front of him as he tried to gain his feet to find a platform from which to resist. Selim barely moved. His hands continued to tighten the snare of silk.
    The mute’s fingers clawed at his own neck, trying to find purchase under the cord, anything to loosen the cord and escape the strangulation. His fingers tore at his skin. But the cord was buried deep into his own flesh, and his fingers could not find their way. As he struggled, his face grew scarlet, then crimson. The veins began to stand out upon his neck. His eyes were wide with fear, and his color slowly changed to a pale blue. Small dots of hemorrhage began to break out in the whites of his eyes. Then, as if it were the changes of color that controlled his body, the strength and the intensity of his resistance began to diminish. In less than three minutes, he stopped struggling altogether. His hands came away from his neck and he buckled limply to the floor. His knees sagged, and he appeared as a puppet held aloft by the strength of Selim, the puppeteer. His skin turned gray, and the luster left his protruding eyes.
    All the while, Selim had hardly moved. When the man was quite still, Selim released the garrote, unwound it from the mute’s neck, and allowed the body to fall forward onto its face. He took the bow and restrung it with the silk cord. Then he carefully replaced the bow in the rack.
    Selim motioned to the remaining mutes, who were led away by the servant. A moment later, four of his Janissaries hurried in from the corridor and dragged out the body of the strangled man.
    The five kneeling mutes were dispatched to the quarters of Selim’s two older brothers. There, the mutes carried out Mehmet’s law. They strangled Selim’s two brothers in their beds, with silkencords from the archer’s bow. Care was taken in the struggle that no royal blood was spilled. They immediately sent a message back to the Palace. None of the mutes cared to enter the presence of the Sultan if not absolutely necessary.
    But, Selim was still not content. The two dead brothers had five living sons. Selim feared that they, too, might mount opposition to his Sultanate. Their fathers had been the elder sons, and these sons might feel that their fathers were more entitled to the throne than Selim. Again, the assassins were sent out, and this time Selim went with them, listening to the struggles and cries of his nephews from the adjoining room. Some say Selim actually cried when he heard the mutes strangle his favorite nephew, the youngest, who was only five years old. But, who would ever know? The assassins, the only witnesses, were deaf and mute.
    By the time Selim, himself, lay dying of cancer in his tent, only eight years into his reign, he had claimed the lives of all his nephews, sixty-two blood relatives, and seven Grand Viziers.

    Piri Pasha left Selim, and walked to the tent of the Sultan’s doctor,