Samapti at Ghoshs Table

What Happened

• At dinner on the bottom veranda of Ghosh House, Ghosh announced a second guest: Baron von Kaunitz, who took the head of the table and gloated about his return to power and his new associations. Adrien confronted him about his disappearance from the ball in Vienna.
• Ghosh dropped his hospitality: his cult is in every rung of the British government, the East India Company, the military and the judiciary; the ritual on the night of Kali will open a gate for Yog-Sothoth. He clicked his fingers and the servants seized the party and held them in their chairs, while Thomas tried to resist.
• To a rhythmic chant, the four servants holding the Baron softened, ran together and flowed into him, one slow luminous mass. When it drew apart the Baron sat distorted, his eyes out of line, and broken: “I saw everything. I was part of something greater.”
• Georgiana, her hand pulsing with the chant, unwrapped it and laid it bare. Ghosh showed his own arm, a tentacle with fronds from the elbow down, told her she was achieving samapti, and invited her to join them.
• Ghosh collected the Baron and left, calling the party not worth the trouble of killing. They fled with Elizabeth, near-catatonic, to the Dak Bungalow.

Why It Matters

• The cell’s leader has shown himself, his reach and his date, to the party’s face.
• Kaunitz, the party’s enemy since Vienna, is Ghosh’s broken servant.
• Georgiana’s change has been seen by the party and named by Ghosh, who wants her.

Related

• People: Acharya Devendra Ghosh — host and author of it; Otto von Kaunitz — its subject.
• Places: Ghosh House — where it happened.