Grandmaster (17 page)

He gasped, watching the blood pump out of his belly in rhythmic spurts as the steel spear tore through him again.

And again.

With a shudder, he fell. His legs splayed apart, twitching uncontrollably. He struggled for air. At last he lay back, his hand covering the wound in his side, the gush of blood subsiding between his fingers.

He looked up. The last sight he had was of the Prince of Death who stood over him, his face twisted in a pained grimace, while soft gray edges of smoke curled around him like a shroud.

 

 

W
ater.

It was all around him, cold and soothing, its blue clarity marbled with threads of dark blood seeping from his wounds. Justin's eyes opened slowly. He realized that he had automatically suspended his breathing.

In the stillness of the water, he heard his own heart beating in a rhythm so slow that it seemed to have no rhythm at all. This remarkable ability, drilled into Justin every day since childhood until his body could perform it without thought, had saved his life. Silently he thanked Tagore for the arduous training. He would need it all now.

The calm of the water was shattered by something of great weight falling into it near Justin. Bubbles frothed above a sudden gush of mud. When the water cleared, he saw the floating yellow robes of one of the monks, sinking, then rising slowly to the surface. There was another splash, and the face he saw stared into the depths of the water with sightless eyes. He must be in the small lake near Rashimpur, he thought numbly. The soldiers were dumping the bodies of the dead into the water.

Justin's injuries were too severe for him to move, so he remained motionless, rocking with the impact of each yellow-robed body that was thrown into the lake, focusing his will on the broken blood vessels in his side. There was no time for sorrow. He had to direct every fiber of his body and spirit toward his own healing. The sorrow would remain, he knew. The horror would last forever.

Concentrating, he willed his heart to beat even more slowly. The water felt warmer, so he knew his temperature was falling. The blood from his side thinned to a trickle. His thoughts narrowed to a white dot of light that he willed in front of him. He had no consciousness of anything outside the white light. He grasped it with his mind and brought it closer. Then, when the dot of light was large enough for him to enter, he willed a dot of black light inside the white, and withdrew himself even farther. When the black dot revealed yet a third light, he was in the trance state of deep consciousness where he knew he had to be in order for his body to heal. He rested inside the small white light until his eyes opened again. The water was dark now. Outside, it would be night.

Like a snake—semiconscious, his limbs blue from the cold, his mind clouded—he slithered onto the shore of the lake and lay beneath the rhododendron bushes. The blossoms were trampled and muddy from the boots of the soldiers. Overhead hung a thin moon, dim and shrouded by mist. The monastery of Rashimpur was invisible and silent, but the lingering stench from the fire remained. Slowly Justin deepened his breathing. The new oxygen made him dizzy at first, then filled him with energy. He sat up, then stood. His heart sped up to his normal waking rate. Tearing a strip of cloth from his robe, he tied a crude bandage over his wounds.

He tested it with a slap. The pain was bad, but the bandage would hold. He clenched a fist; his fingers worked. Good, he thought. He would need his hands.

He was ready.

Two sentries guarded either side of the plateau where Rashimpur stood. Justin edged silently up the cliffside behind the left guard and waited for him to mark his paces. When the sentry approached the far end of the plateau, out of sight of the other guard, Justin wound his forearm around the man's neck. A low gurgling sound issued from the man's throat as his arms windmilled in panic.

You are forbidden to kill.
Tagore's voice rang out in the hate-filled recesses of Justin's mind. He had never killed before. The man's flesh was clammy, and he stank of fear. Lice crawled in his filthy hair. This is a man who bore me no ill, Justin thought. He has endured hardship and loneliness and has gone unclean in service to another. He lives only to do another's bidding. He is a soldier, not a leader. The rationality of his years of tutoring came back to him: The taking of life is wrong, rarely justified.

Your karma will be destroyed
, Tagore's voice echoed. But Justin's karma was a foreign thing now, burned in the fire of Rashimpur, as dead as his soul.

Forgive me, all the wise and holy who have gone before me. The hate inside me is too great.

He broke the man's neck.

 

T
he second time, the killing was easier.
The sentry died quickly under Justin's hands, soiled now with the sweat of his first kill. Then he made his way inside, where the soldiers lay sleeping on the floor of the Great Hall. Tagore's body was gone. He lay, Justin knew, at the bottom of the lake with the others.

His movements were soundless. He had learned to walk with such stillness that even the air around him was not disturbed. He was careful to strike each blow with such speed that the soldiers would make no noise to awaken the others as they died. There was no more hesitation in his attack. Reason had no place in his thoughts. He felt no pity. It was only his hate that Justin was feeding now, and the hunger in him grew with each death. It would not be satisfied until the last man had died by his hand. He would make sure that the last man was Zharkov himself.

Zharkov would not die silently. Justin wanted to see him suffer, watch him in the extremities of his agony, hear his pleas for mercy. He wanted to look into the composed lizard eyes at the moment when the life in them was extinguished. Only then would he begin to sorrow for the lost love of Tagore, for he would allow himself no rest until then.
He would see his eyes
. For that, the loss of his immortal soul, doomed to wander the earth for endless ages of suffering, was not too high a price to pay.

One last perfect moment with the Prince of Death.

In minutes, the Great Hall had become a massive crypt for the second time. The soldiers lay in their bedrolls, undisturbed except for their bloodless, fatal wounds. Zharkov was not among them.

Justin paused after his work to breathe in the air, thick with death. Death was his karma now, his essence. He understood it in the depth of his heart. Death was all he wanted, first Zharkov's and then his own. He himself needed Zharkov's death; the spirit of Tagore, now desecrated by Justin's actions, would require Justin's.

He pitched his hearing low. All life, he was taught, carried sound. Even the growth of a plant could be heard by ears sensitive enough to perceive it.

He listened now, in the death-filled stillness, for the sound. Because Zharkov was alive.

It came from the monastery's kitchen. He followed it through the dark corridors, the torches on the walls now extinguished forever. His heightened hearing picked up the low wail of the wind behind the rock facade of Rashimpur, and the scurrying of a thousand invisible night creatures. But behind them was another sound, one that Justin would never forget.

The sound of fire.

Zharkov sat at the stone cook's table, facing the doorway. He was bent over scrolls containing maps of the area. Occasionally he marked the maps, writing notes along the edges. Behind him, in a stone grotto, burned a small cooking fire, which cast huge shadows tinged with gold.

Zharkov's jacket was open. Strapped to his chest was a pistol in its shoulder holster.

"I remember you," Justin said.

Zharkov grabbed for the gun, but Justin was prepared this time. He swung his arm downward and knocked the weapon out of Zharkov's hand. It clattered to the floor. With his eyes on Zharkov, he picked it up and threw it through the narrow slot opening of the kitchen window. Justin could hear it strike the ground outside and tumble down the cliff face.

"Your men are dead."

The reptilian eyes wandered slowly in the direction of the Great Hall. He was listening. At last he said, "You couldn't have reached me if they weren't."

Justin marveled at the coldness of the man. There was not a flicker of panic on Zharkov's face. No surprise that a man he had watched die was standing in front of him. Not the slightest pity for the soldiers who he surely knew were lying lifeless outside the room.

Zharkov spoke again. "I remember you as well. The chess match in Paris." He spoke quietly, without a trace of emotion. "You beat me then."

"I will beat you again," Justin said.

Zharkov shrugged slightly. "I presume the old man lied to me. I asked who the leader of your sect was. He said it was he who ruled the monastery."

"You killed the wrong man," Justin said.

"I guessed as much. He spoke through an interpreter. He did not know my language. I understood that the Wearer of the Blue Hat was educated to speak many tongues."

Justin tried to conceal his shock as the man continued. "Also, you wear the amulet of the coiled snake. You are the leader."

Then Justin understood. The vision in his dreams had been real. "Varja," he said. "The woman led you here."

Zharkov's eyes remained locked into Justin's. "Then you understand why all had to die. I knew of their skill in combat. I could not risk my men so early."

"It is too late now," Justin said coldly.

There was silence. "I have been instructed to occupy this building. If I do not take it, then others who come after me will."

"Let them come. You will be long dead."

Zharkov did not flinch as Justin inched closer to him, his footsteps as silent as dead air. Justin's heartbeat quickened; the moment he had given his soul for had come. He would see those lizard eyes roll into a nightmare death.

At that moment, Zharkov drew back and kicked him in his wounded side with the heel of his boot. Justin reeled backward, the unexpected pain ripping through him. As he staggered away, Zharkov's hand snaked out to tear the amulet from Justin's neck and throw it into the fire. While Justin was recovering from the blow, Zharkov pulled a short knife from his belt and lunged at him.

Nauseated with pain, Justin lurched forward and grasped the knife by the blade. The exercise of crumpling and smoothing the rice paper for three years had made his palms as hard and unyielding as slate. He twisted the knife away. Then, swiftly, he yanked Zharkov by the hair and dragged him over to the fireplace. With one hand he reached into the flames to find the amulet.

Zharkov struck out blindly. Justin was surprised at the man's strength, but his struggle fired Justin's hate. He slammed Zharkov's head into the stones of the grotto. The distance was only a few inches, not enough to kill, but the force of the blow, undirected, unfocused, filled Justin with shame. He did not want to bludgeon his enemy to death like a terrified barbarian.

Zharkov moaned. His legs skittered in place for a moment, then stopped. The hooded eyes fluttered open briefly and then closed as the Russian fell limp, his short hair bristling through Justin's fingers.

This was not how it was supposed to be, Justin thought, anguished, as he watched the inert form beside him. Zharkov was unconscious, the pulse in his neck still throbbing rhythmically. For the Prince of Death simply to die, unaware and painlessly, was not enough.

Tagore had been right. It was not yet time. One did not answer meaningless deaths with more meaningless deaths.

Justin retrieved the amulet from the fire. It had already begun to melt. The coiled snake had lost its intricately carved scales, and a drop of molten gold rested on the base of the disc.

Zharkov came to groggily, the lizard eyes unfocused. Justin held him fast.

"I cannot kill you yet," Justin said. "It is not time. But we will meet again." He pressed the fire-hot amulet into Zharkov's neck. The Russian screamed and bucked, trying to get away, but Justin's arm around his throat was like iron.

The skin on the soldier's neck smoldered and blackened, and once again the stench of burning flesh filled the air. When Justin drew back, the imprint of the coiled snake, raw and blistered, remained.

"Remember me," Justin said.

 

H
e returned late the next night.
Zharkov was gone. The bodies of his soldiers still lay on the floor where Justin had killed them.

He removed the heavy stone from the wall and took out the diamond that had been kept for him there. The Great Hall was in ruins. Its gold-covered walls were blackened with smoke, and the tree—the sacred Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms, which had healed him and taught him to see through new eyes—now stood leafless and broken, a charred hulk.

"Tagore said nothing could destroy you," he said bitterly.

He gathered a handful of ash from the base of the tree and walked outside to the edge of the plateau where Rashimpur stood. The wind whistled in tuneless mourning through the silent mountains.

Justin wanted to pray for the souls of the dead, but he knew he was no longer fit to pray. He had destroyed his karma and had gone against the will of Brahma. Worst of all, he had not been able to save a single life except his own and that of the man he hated more than anything on earth. They would both have to live now.

"Weep, sacred mountain," he said. "Weep the tears I have no right to shed." He opened his hands. The ashes were swept upward in the wind, flying into the silent night.

 

 

I
n Havana, the sun is hot...

An image of improbably colored palm trees swirled through Andrew Starcher's mind. In Havana, the sun was hot. It hung in the sky, bright and dangerous, a drop of molten gold at its base, and the coiled snake inside it darted out and wound itself around Starcher's heart, squeezing, killing him ….

He sat up with a start. The pain was excruciating. The intravenous tubing in his arms stabbed him, and the ball of muscle inside his chest seemed about to burst. Monitors above his head squealed in protest. Their smooth waves peaked into jagged irregularity. Within seconds, a team of nurses was hovering nearby, forcing him back down in the bed, covering his face with a plastic oxygen mask.