At his signal, two attendants set a long easel before King Vasuki and Queen Naga Yakshi. Then Nayan, with a flourish, shook the revisioning from its tube, unrolled it, and spread its featherlight bulk across the easel.

At the sight of the tapestry, the audience broke into curious muttering.

Equally entranced, Venkat marveled at his masterpiece as if he were just another guest. The vibrant hues, the integrity of every detail, the sheer power radiating from it all floored him once more.

He really had forged something special, and after so many years of imagining, he was going to see what it could do.

“Your Majesties,” Nayan said, “I present to you a tapestry of dreams. Of healing.”

The nagarani nodded for him to continue.

Nayan pointed to the scene depicted in the tapestry. “Long ago, two sisters imprudently entered into a terrible wager, the consequences of which ripple out into our present day. It is that wager we must correct.”

Something about his manner struck Venkat as off. Nayan’s tone should have been benevolent or at least cordial. Instead, he sounded self-satisfied, even haughty.

“We have brought you all here to behold a reversal of fortune.” The bent of Nayan’s secretive smile set Venkat’s teeth on edge. “You see, my son has been training in the art of smithing dreams. Of retelling stories. Together, we have forged a spell that will revise the mistakes of the past.”

The audience was spellbound. Venkat heard its shocked whispers, but he was too busy trying to decipher what the tapestry was saying to listen.

Nayan had never been an extraordinarily large man, but now his body began to elongate and spread, growing to mammoth proportions. The muscles in his arms swelled to boulders. His body brightened to gold as his snake tail split into sinewy legs.

Screams, including Chintu’s, erupted as the guests fled in every direction. Guards advanced on Nayan, but he ignored them.

Venkat must have fallen into a nightmare. What was happening?

Twin mounds like mountains sprang up from beneath Nayan’s shoulder blades. He now stood as tall as the palace. “I believe we all hold cheating to be an abomination, do we not? An act so vile it cannot—must not—go unpunished?”

“Lord Nayan,” demanded the nagaraja, towering on his coils, “what is the meaning of this?”

Nayan’s aquiline nose rounded into a cruel hooked beak, and his face reddened to the scarlet of poppies. Talons like carving knives jutted from his fingertips. “Surely you remember me, Cousin?”

The tapestry. Venkat tore his gaze from Nayan’s changing form and really pored over the image he’d forged. The scene came into focus: the birds, the village, the sage.

And at last he could see what he’d been missing.