The Concubine's Daughter (73 page)

He seemed not to hear, but his smile had flown. “All great masters must eventually fall to the hand that once obeyed them. It has been the Way of the Warrior for a thousand years.”

Sing answered with studied contempt. “Eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand, not by deception and betrayal.” She played on his anger. “You are a thief and a liar, Ah-Keung. While I have pursued a life of hope and found my truth, you seek only the darkness of false gods. I am no longer the child afraid of spiders, but you are still the herd boy with a twisted foot.”

Ah-Keung strutted before her, stretching and testing his limbs. “I have often wondered what he taught you that he would not teach me. Have you remembered? Do you practice the art of spiritual boxing? Do you fight me in your dreams?” His tone was confident, almost frivolous, a man speaking to a wayward child before punishment.

As he closed his fists, the muscles of his chest and abdomen twitched and the snarling face of the tiger seemed to spring to life. She stood perfectly still, silhouetted against the vivid sky. Time and distance dropped away for those alone upon the forgotten plateau of Lantau Island. The great temple bell boomed like the voice of Buddha, rising with a distant mantra, the shimmering vibrations of a thousand throats at prayer.

The tiger circled the crane, murmuring soft threats meant to unnerve her. They were meaningless words she did not hear, like the screech of gulls carried on the wind, as she awaited his first move.

It was a cautious move, merely testing her reflexes, and was easily repelled. They analyzed each other’s strengths and weaknesses, attuned to the slightest sight or sound that might betray a flicker of fear; observing the steadiness of breath, the depths of stamina, the cycle of chi. In lightning strikes too fast to see, the claws of the tiger took the measure of the wings of the crane. Iron bone clashed with iron bone, as grasps and locks were evaded, grips broken, kicks that would shatter any ordinary limb or destroy an internal organ deflected and returned. The defensive dance of the crane rose with ease from the path of the tiger, its feet as deadly as tooth and claw, its lethal beak sheathed like a sword.

The words of her master were as much a part of her as the measure of her chi:
To take the upper part, first feign at the lower; to cut the lower
part, first feign at the upper. To attack the left, be aware of the right; to attack the right, be aware of the left. Take care of both upper and lower parts; correlate the left and the right. Block and then attack at the first instance; attack and then block at the first instance. Defense should be accompanied by attack; attack should be accompanied by defense. It is an expert who wins without blocking in advance; it is the defeated who only blocks the opposing strike but does not attack simultaneously.

Ah-Keung spun away, whirling to face his opponent at a distance of several paces. “We have tried each other for many precious moments, yet we hardly sweat.” He grinned his slanted grin. “Perhaps there is something to be said for the barrel of a gun and the speed of a bullet to settle old scores.”

Turning his back on her, Ah-Keung lifted the water gourd by its tasseled cord, pouring its contents over his head. He swilled water in his mouth, spurting some at her feet, tossing the gourd for her to catch. “Drink, Red Lotus. Taste the sweetness of water while you can.”

Sing widened the space between them before pouring cold water into her open mouth. Her eyes left his for the sliver of time it took to lift the gourd, closing in less than a blink as the water splashed her face.

A blade sliced viciously through the air, so instantaneous she had no time to recognize the lethal buzz of the Shaolin Dart, only the silver blur of its passage and the scarlet streak of its flight. Too late she leapt high, but his timing was perfect. As if her ankles were bound by steel, she crashed to the rock with no hope of balance, striking her head in a blinding flash and rolling sharply into a chasm of blackness.

Ah-Keung’s voice reached her from afar—from the Place of Clear Water, perhaps, or the shadowy corner of the herb shed. Her face was slapped from side to side until the warm, metallic taste of blood began to choke her. The slapping ceased, and his hard hand patted her cheek affectionately. “That’s better, my Little Star. It would be an insult if you slept before I am finished with you.” Consciousness returned to Sing in a wave she was careful not to show, as his fingers closed upon her throat.

She knew with absolute clarity what had happened. She had heard many times of the Shaolin Dart, a weighted blade kept straight by a
swallowtail of red ribbon and secured to a length of twine supple as silk and strong as steel. Easily hidden by wide-legged trousers or about the waist in the folds of a sash, it was the tongue of the snake in the hands of an adept. That he would conceal such a weapon had not occurred to her, and she cursed herself for a fool.
That which the eye can see should not trouble you. It is what you cannot see that you should fear.

He slapped her harder. “Wake up, Little Star. Did the old one not warn you to beware of tricks? I am disappointed. I did not think it would be so easy to overcome the Red Lotus.” His thumb shifted from her jaw, probing behind the carotid artery. “But did you really believe that a disciple of the black Tao would allow a girl with the heart of a chicken to stand against him in the mortal combat of masters?”

As the ball of his thumb found the silent pulse that would paralyze her limbs but leave her senses heightened, she called upon the words of the hook-maker:
Let yin become yang, black become white; reverse the eight trigrams and you will triumph.
She feigned the tremor and wide-eyed stare of paralysis as he loosened the cord that bound her legs. She felt the garments ripped from her limbs, his knee forcing her legs apart. The pressure of his thumb increased; her vision swam as her life-force began to drain like blood from an open wound.

His breath was hot on her face as he searched her blank eyes with an ugly grin of triumph. “I have wondered for so long who would steal the precious cherry of the great Red Lotus … or would it be given freely? Was it the boys from the reed-cutters’ camp? Did you yield to the Japanese whore and her wooden prince, or barter it for old money bags at the Nine Dragons?” He shook his head wisely. “I do not think so. The taipan Ching would not pay so highly for soiled goods. So, has the one with golden hair and the eyes of a woman been there before me?”

He leaned closer, his foul tongue lapping at her face as he pulled the drawstring of his pants. “We shall see. If he has been the one to make you squeal, then I will kill him slowly.” She felt his stiffened shaft jabbing, prodding to enter her. She called upon the source of her chi, the crucible of power reserved for just such a moment. The words hissed through his teeth in an ecstasy of hate. “When I have finished with you,
the sun will be gone and you will think you have been mounted by a herd of mountain goats.”

In his haste he did not detect the sudden movement of her cupped hands. They flew wide and with explosive force struck his ears simultaneously. A stream of bloody mucus shot from his nose, plastering his cheek like a weeping scar, his wide-eyed shock instantly eclipsed by a thunderclap of blinding pain. She knew precisely what he felt: The implosion of the blow within his brain cavity would rupture both eardrums in a sea of vivid stars; the vibrations would ring in his deadened ears and penetrate his head like a white-hot blade, crowding his skull like the boom of the temple’s great bell, persisting with endless peals of pain.

The agony would take only seconds for one as trained as Ah-Keung to control—long enough for her to roll from beneath his weight and find her feet, kicking aside the loosened cord. The ear slap of the iron palm could have been fatal, but the keenest edge of her chi had been deflected by the pressure of his thumb. She had time to draw upon the pristine currents of mountain air, nourishing her internal strength with every vital breath.

The strike had left him unsteady, shaking his head to clear his vision, his nose flowing like a spigot as he drew a forearm across his face, flicking the bloodied flux from his fingers as he rose to face her. “You are clever, Little Star—your chi flows like a river.” He grinned hideously, groping for the water gourd, his burning eyes absorbing hers, unblinking as he poured the remaining water over his head. “No longer afraid of the forest cobra.” He spat copiously at her feet, smearing his chest with a bloodied hand. “Or the tiger in the reed bed … The old one taught you well.”

Red Lotus was beyond the reach of hate, awed by the sense of power that welled within her like a boiling spring. Her heartbeat barely quickened, she felt humbled by the damage she had done with such immediacy and ease. She stepped away from Ah-Keung’s advance. “It is not too late. You have struck, and so have I. None but the gulls will know we parted here.”

He tossed the empty gourd away, its hollow rattle loud among the
rocks, shaking his sodden hair as a wolf would shake a rabbit, as though he had not heard her. “I once thought of granting you a sudden and silent end—of letting you die with a warrior’s dignity.” His words were slurred as he dropped into the crouching tiger form, shaking his head to clear his vision. “But now I want to hear you scream. I want the monks of Po-Lin to stop their chanting, to search the skies for the hawk and the sparrow, and listen to you howl before I have done with you.”

She breathed in his words as she would a sudden gust of sea air. Such naked fury could spell his downfall—all skill and discipline, all stealth and strategy, a lifetime of training tossed aside in the lust to kill.

Red Lotus waited calmly for the frenzied charge she knew must come. Her arms rose like arcs of steel, loosely erect, as the rising sun tipped the eastern horizon, flooding the oceans with its pure light, sweeping the rocky summit like a vast blade of fire. Red Lotus felt it hot across her back, reaching over time and distance to protect her with its radiant aura as it had done upon the Rock of Great Strength. She drank the air to replenish her chi, and drew upon the forces of the universe to enter her body through the Heaven Door at the top of her head.

Her feet were bare upon the rock, the grip of her toes summoning its ageless power to feed her roots—to anchor her, solidly, immovably … or to release her as lightly as the smallest feather is lifted by the slightest wind. The shadow of the crane grew in dimension, long and wide until it dominated the battleground like an avenging gargantuan, inviting the tiger’s attack with open arms. She felt the great bird enter her, lifting her on rippling wings, surer, lighter, and higher than ever before, evading his wild rush with the mechanism that had been set and coiled within her for so long it had become a second sense … a force much greater than her woman’s body that needed to be freed.

The full glare of the sun smote the twisted face of the herd boy as she heard the shrill cry of the crane echo through the old pagodas. Her arms arched higher, dropping with the swiftness and weight of the hammer that strikes the anvil. The right blocked the tiger’s strike to her throat, absorbing the full shock of its power upon her forearm. She willed her chi into the marrow of the slender bone, turning it for that fraction of an
instant to steel, as her hooked fingers struck his dazzled eyes. Her blow drove deep, the heel of her hand breaking the bridge of his nose with a meaty click. She heard the words of Master To spoken from a place deep within, but as real as the burning stroke of the sun:
The power of the tiger is in its golden eyes.

Ah-Keung mouthed a vicious curse, his left hand blocking her strike too late to deflect its impact. She sensed his crippling snap-kick to her upper shin before it reached her, lifting easily from its path. Her left hand flew in a wide arc, her arm supple as the neck of the crane, her fingers bunched and rigid as the lethal beak, under Ah-Keung’s attacking arm, driving upward with the force of a sword point to a spot slightly below the armpit, allowing for the shifting of the pressure points, letting her senses guide her. Every ounce of her willpower and every second of her training went into the lethal strike of
di-muk
, the death touch she had practiced ten thousand times for this moment of truth.

She drove through vulnerable flesh between the muscles, penetrating tissue between corded cartilage, piercing taut sinew to reach the nerve juncture slightly above and behind the diaphragm, plunging with the force of a battle axe to the root of his lung; so finely tuned to his savage vibrations that she felt the electric spasm run up her arm like the ringing of steel upon steel. No sound escaped Ah-Keung’s gaping jaws as he fought for his next breath, his damaged, blood-filled eyes staring at the burning sun.

In that splinter of time the voice of her
si-fu
spoke again: Yan-jing-shi
is unforgiving. We must strike him before he strikes us.
But she also heard him say in a quieter voice beneath the pear tree:
It is not easy to take a life and carry this forever in your heart. It is the heaviest of all burdens and leaves no place for happiness. To kill another is the end of freedom… . Sometimes it is the loser that wins.

The aim of her blow shifted, avoiding by a hair’s breadth the lethal spot deep behind the rib cage that separates the heart and lung from the liver and the gut, deflecting its full power from the lethal point of entry. Ah-Keung bent backward like a tautened spring, the bloodstained face of the tiger bared to a livid sky as he fought for breath. Every muscle in
his body quivered, his hands flapping helplessly at his sides. One violent convulsion bucked him like a lightning bolt; blood flowed freely from his broken nose, seeping from his mouth where he had bitten through his tongue. Sing stepped back as he dropped to his knees, suspended by the shock of disbelief, to pitch forward at her feet.

Such a strike would have instantly killed any ordinary man, stopping any normal heart like a shaft of steel. She had spared his life, but the deflected blow had taken its toll; even a hardened warrior like Ah-Keung could not survive without lasting internal damage.