Grandmaster (11 page)

 

H
e awoke in a dark stone cell lit only
by the flame of a small candle. Over him, Tagore bent, placing cold cloths on Justin's forehead. The old man's features relaxed when he saw Justin's eyes open. "My son," he said gently.

"How long?" Justin croaked.

"You have slept for three days."

He had trouble swallowing. The burning fever had subsided, but the sickness had left him limp and weak. His robes were soaked with sweat and lay twisted around him. Suddenly he sat bolt upright, his eyes wide and glassy. "Rashimpur!" he cried. "The fire—the tree was on fire!"

"Hush," Tagore whispered, stroking the boy's face. "There has been no fire."

"There
was!
I saw it. It was all around. The Great Hall burned."

"The fire was in your body, burning from the fever." Tagore said. "Rashimpur is in no danger. There was no fire. You have been screaming about fire for these three days, but there is no fire."

"But the tree—"

"Silence," Tagore said, daubing the cool cloth over the boy's cheeks. "Those who have come to see you have begun to gather. You must save your strength. In two days' time you must go forth into the Great Hall, prepared to assume the duties left for you by Sadika."

Justin frowned, trying to pull the blurred image of Tagore into focus. "What duties?"

"They are to remain unknown to all but you. If you are fit to rule."

"But... how will you know if I'm fit?" Justin asked.

"I told you before that Sadika himself will tell us."

He cautioned the boy to silence and kept vigil over him for the rest of that night and the next day. Justin slept intermittently, accepting small bowls of rice and tea and fighting off the recurrent dreams of the familiar stranger who watched at the moment of his death.

On the third day, just as the first strings of dawn were seeping through the narrow slitted window of his cell, four monks bearing bowls of water and jeweled caskets entered and knelt before him. They were the same four who had left him with Tagore at the lake below Amne Xachim.

Wordlessly, they helped him off the stone pallet where he had lain since his first day in Rashimpur. They washed him with scented herbs in water and dressed him in another of the yellow robes, then led him into the corridor where Tagore stood waiting.

"Where are we going?" Justin asked.

"To the Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms," he said.

The torches in the splendid hall were all ablaze, giving the vast room a shimmering, underwater appearance. Visitors to the Hall lined both walls four deep, leaving only a path on the marble floor leading directly to the tree and the open casket beneath it.

The visitors were magnificently dressed in strange garb. As they waited at the rear of the hall, Tagore pointed out some of the visiting eminences. "The Dalai Lama of Tibet has come to pay Sadika his last tribute," Tagore said. "And beside him is Manjusri, the Saskya Lama." He nodded toward a small, round-headed man swathed in green silk robes, his feet shod in jeweled slippers. "Long before the establishment of the Dalai Lama, who rules Tibet today, Manjusri's predecessors were supreme in that holy land. Even the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan bowed before the ancestors of Manjusri, who are said to be the incarnations of the Bodhisat of Knowledge. He is reputed to be the wisest of men."

Tagore pointed out another, on the other side of the hall, a man in rags, his feet bare, who stood quietly in the shadows of the great torches. "That is the Ralpahi Dorje," Tagore whispered. "He is head of the Can-skya lamasery in Peking."

"Why is he so poor?" Justin asked.

"It is only in the eyes of the unseeing that the Dorje is poor," Tagore said. "He is also descended from an ancient line of holy men. He is considered in Buddhism to be a true saint. His miracles in healing have been seen by all. He chooses to live in poverty because true power comes from humility. He is the greatest of all healers."

"But I don't understand," Justin said. "Wouldn't people respect him more if he didn't look so dirty?"

"Only those whose faith is not strong enough to see beyond his rags," Tagore said.

There was a great clamor in the hall as four red-robed monks entered, bearing a sedan chair. It was jeweled from top to bottom, its bamboo poles lacquered a deep red. As the four monks set the chair down and drew open its curtains, a tall woman emerged. She wore a long garment made of many layers of crimson gauze, but as she moved, the fabric clung tightly to the curves of her body and showed the flesh beneath. Gems dotted the fabric. Her black hair glinted with jeweled pins, and on her fingernails, she wore long jewel-encrusted sheaths. She fixed her eyes on young Justin, and, involuntarily, he sipped in his breath. Her eyes were of the darkest green, but they were dotted with flecks of a lighter color, almost gold, and they seemed to reflect all the lights in the great hall. Her features were exquisite, with high, sculpted cheekbones and full, dark red lips, and Justin thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He could not pull his eyes away from hers.

"That is the Dorje Pagma," Tagore said.

Justin was stunned, then forced himself to look up to Tagore. "Is she a monk?"

"An abbess. She rules over the Samding monastery at the Lake of Yamdrok in Tibet. Both monks and nuns follow her, and believe her to be the incarnation of the Indian goddess Varja. She is the most powerful personage here. Her magic is very strong."

"As strong as the Shamans'?" Justin asked, remembering Tagore's story of the Black Hats.

"Stronger. Much stronger. It is said that she can control time itself. The goddess Varja is old, thousands of years. The Dorje's followers claim that she is not an incarnation, but the original goddess herself, living without time, without death."

"That's impossible," Justin said, noticing several of the visitors to the hall moving silently away from the jeweled chair of the Dorje Pagma.

"Nothing is impossible in our world," Tagore said. He smiled at the exodus of people to the other side of the hall. "They are leaving because they fear the power of Varja," he said.

"Why? Is she evil?"

"A goddess is a goddess," Tagore said. "She does as she wills. But many think the destruction of the monasteries at Labrang and Pemiongchi— formerly great centers—was brought about because of the wrath of Varja."

"How were they destroyed?"

"By—" Tagore's face changed. "The political governments of the countries where the monasteries had existed for thousands of years eliminated them," he said.

"They were burned," Justin said. "Just like in my dream. Burned." He had started to tremble.

"Be still, my son," Tagore said. "For if it is God's will, we will be destroyed. Not even Varja has power over the great Brahma. And if it is God's will, we will return. Do you understand?"

Justin said nothing. After a while, he looked up. "Tagore, everyone here seems to do something better than everybody else. What do you do at Rashimpur?"

Tagore smiled. "We of Rashimpur are the poorest of all," he said. "For we are not the wisest of men, nor the holiest, nor the most powerful. We have only our strength and will to take before Brahma in offering, as Patanjali did."

"Strength?"

"I have told you of yoga. It is the discipline we practice here. With it, we try to bring our bodies into union with the forces of the universe. We are known only for this."

"You're the strongest ones."

"It is as nothing," Tagore said. "But Brahma needs men of physicality as well as those of spirituality."

Justin smiled. "I think being strong is the best thing of all."

They walked forward in silence. In the still hall, Justin felt Varja's eyes on him like molten lead. Clasping Tagore's hand, he made his way down the aisle to the base of the Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms. Torches above Sadika's casket illuminated the treasures in his hands; the diamond and the snake amulet sparkled in the light.

Tagore faced the crowd for several minutes. Justin wondered what the test would be. Then, without preamble, Tagore raised the boy's right hand with tremendous power and slashed it down the bark of the tree.

The pain was almost unbearable. Justin felt the skin and flesh of his right palm scrape off. Too surprised to cry out, all he could do was gape at his bleeding hand and try to hold back the tears that sprang to his eyes.

"Sadika!" Tagore commanded. "Is this the child?"

Justin thought he was going to faint. A river of blood ran down his arm, staining the yellow robe he wore. The pain gave way to an electric throbbing that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

Tagore picked a leaf from the tree and placed it in Justin's wounded hand. Then, causing the most excruciating pain Justin had ever felt, the teacher closed his mangled hand into a fist around the leaf.

He began to shake. The pain was unendurable. He closed his eyes. And in the red darkness of his pain he saw the old man again, not dead and in his glass casket, but standing before him, holding out the two emblems of his office.

There was a gasp from everyone in the hall as Tagore opened the boy's hand. Justin's head swam. There was no blood. When his fist opened, all that fell from it was a withered brown leaf. The hand was unmarked.

Tagore raised the boy's hand high in the air. At that moment, the casket seemed to creak and move of its own accord.

The sight set Justin's teeth chattering. For, as Tagore held his arm in the air, the body of the old leader crumbled to ash before them. In the midst of the powdery remains rested the diamond and the gold amulet bearing the figure of the coiled snake.

"Hail, O Wearer of the Blue Hat," several voices called. Others took up the chant. "Hail, O Wearer of the Blue Hat."

Tagore repeated the words as he lifted the diamond from the casket and placed it in Justin's hands. Then, to the accompaniment of the chant that filled the hall, he placed the sacred medallion of the coiled snake around the boy's neck.

Justin felt the surge of power from the medallion like an electric shock that began near his heart and coursed wildly through every nerve and vein in his body. He fought for breath. Surely there was magic here, he thought, greater magic than he could ever control.

"Do not fear it," Tagore whispered.

Justin looked to Varja, the abbess of magic. Her green eyes were blazing, but she, too, bowed in respect to him.

"Hail, O Wearer of the Blue Hat," she said. A small smile played at the corners of her mouth.

Tagore began the procession out of the hall, keeping Justin in front of him. The medallion felt as if it were burning into his chest. The congregation filed outdoors to the rock shelf on which Rashimpur was built. Tagore knelt, and the others followed, even Varja in her misty jeweled crimson wraps. Alone, Justin walked to the edge of the precipice and stood facing the snow-capped Himalayas.

He could breathe more easily now. So this was where the amulet was at peace, he thought. Beneath the blue sky, which was the blue hat of the gods.

I will try to be worthy of you, he thought.

He held up both arms to the sky. The huge diamond gave off the fire of a thousand suns. The gold medallion on his chest warmed him. He felt strong.

Never will I betray you.

Never.

 

 

A
lexander Zharkov sat alone in his Moscow apartment.
Like his office, the apartment was spare and ugly, even though it was situated in one of the best buildings in the city and was spacious enough to house two families of six.

A pair of leaded glass doors, now sealed shut, stood beside the armchair where he sat holding a file on Justin Gilead. But unlike the file in his office, this one was thick, bulging with papers. Its cover was red instead of the official green that signified a closed file.

The only light in the room came from an old brass floor lamp behind Zharkov's chair. At the other end of the room, near the doorway to the master bedroom, stood a small dining table with two straight chairs.

Beside it was another table, smaller, on which a magnificent teak and walnut chess board was set up, with a game in progress. Stacked neatly on the floor under the chess table were two piles of bound copies of Shakmatni, the official Soviet chess journal.

There was only one chair at the chess board, stationed behind the black pieces, because in this solitary game at home, Zharkov always took the black side. This gave white, who traditionally moved first, a slight advantage, and Zharkov had conceded that advantage to his invisible opponent.

The game had begun slowly, with white's pieces opening elegantly, following well-defined lines like a beautiful solo dance.

But after the first dozen moves, white had deviated from the well-known opening "book" and moved other pieces into play in novel and interesting positions. The solo had turned into an ensemble ballet.

Zharkov's black pieces had joined the ballet and begun attacking almost at once. For a while, white's position seemed untenable and an early resignation inevitable. But slowly, white had consolidated his position, stood off Zharkov's onslaught, as piece after piece vanished from both sides in a series of equal trades.

The black and white dance continued, and the unbelievable had happened. White's king had moved, starting to march inexorably to the center of the board to join the contest. It was unthinkable. The king was at once both the most valuable piece in the game, whose capture ended the contest, and the weakest, most vulnerable, and hardest to defend.

Zharkov knew this opponent did not play a game of pawns, but to burst into the open with his king was impossible. Unless it signaled the beginning of an elaborate, deeply thought attacking scheme. Or did it mean merely that the invisible white opponent had lost his nerve and offered himself up for confrontation and quick slaughter?

For the first time since he had opened the red folder, seeing in his mind not its contents but the board across the room, Zharkov looked up. Rain was pelting against the glass doors. The room seemed suddenly dark. And there was a knocking at the big walnut door leading out of the apartment. It was delicate but insistent, as if whoever was behind it had been knocking for some time, although Zharkov hadn't heard anything in his concentration over the chess pieces.