Grandmaster (55 page)

Justin struggled to keep the pain of the cracked bone in his chest from his voice. "As are you."

The monk nodded. "My training was at Rashimpur. But I have always belonged to Varja."

"Belonged?" Justin asked, trying to stall for time as he worked the leather knots behind his back.

"Our tie is deeper than this life," the monk said. "My ancestors were of the sect of the Black Hats. You know of them, perhaps?"

Justin didn't respond.

A faint twitch of amusement played at the corners of the monk's mouth. "The most powerful beings on earth."

"The Black Hats no longer exist."

The monk's eyes flashed. "Only because of a fool and his tricks. Patanjali was an old man who believed that the spirit of life was stronger than the magic of death. Through trickery he destroyed our people, but he could not destroy the magic of the Black Hats forever."

A note of passion had crept into the monk's voice. "The magic remained, unharnessed and wild, through centuries. While the Black Hats faded into oblivion, there were many new incarnations of Patanjali, but none powerful enough to evoke the sleeping spirits of the Black Hats."

"Then why do you bother to serve Varja?" Justin asked.

"A generation ago, Sadika, the sage of Rashimpur, predicted that the true Patanjali would be born once again. That was when the spirits of the Black Hats awoke again in anger. I left Rashimpur then to follow the living goddess of evil, who has waited through ages of oblivion to exact her revenge."

Justin tried to struggle out of his bonds, but the knots were perfect. The monk watched him, smiling.

"Take me to Varja!" Justin cried.

"You have no need to see the goddess. You cannot even fight me, and my power is mortal. Varja reserves herself for the great, not the weak and unworthy of the world." He spoke near Justin's face, enjoying his captive's humiliation.

It was the moment Justin had been waiting for. Spinning where he lay, Justin retracted his legs and then kicked with all his strength. The monk crashed against the wall of the palace.

The monk cried out in anger. In one bound he was up and grasping the thong that held Justin, lifting him into the air and whirling Justin's much heavier body as if it were a toy attached to a string.

The monk let go. His aim was flawless. Justin fell in a heap inside the doorway, in the empty room that had once been the living quarters of the palace women. As he tried to right himself, he felt a vicious kick to the side of his head, smashing it against the floor. He passed out.

He came to in another room he remembered, a stark white room devoid of furniture except for a high, square platform. Duma once lay there, he thought. For how long? Years? She still looked young when Justin saw her for the last time. She had been robbed of her life while she still lived, just as Justin had.

He felt for the knots on the thong. The monk's exertions had stretched the leather. In time, he would be able to loosen them enough to free himself. He worked frantically, trying hard to focus with his still fuzzy vision on the little man.

The monk was straining at a corner of the bare white wall. His fingers made a hollow sound on it. It's made of metal, Justin thought. But what is he doing? Then, surprisingly, the wall itself slid open, and the monk threw Justin through the opening.

His broken rib throbbed, but Justin forced himself to think while he continued to manipulate the leather thong. Was he outside? It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was no ceiling that he could see, but he was still indoors, in some sort of cavernous corridor. Flickers of light shone dimly from an area some distance away, along with the faint, smoky fragrance of incense. Another chamber?

Varja's quarters, Justin realized. Of course. He was in another section of the palace. During his visit, he had not seen the goddess until his final day in the Sacred Chamber. The women who served her did not normally see her, either. If Varja was anywhere in the palace, it would be here.

One hand slipped free. A flood of relief washed through him, but he could not give himself away too quickly. Grasping the loose ends of the thong tightly to hide them from view, he allowed the monk to drag him down the dark corridor.

At the far end, where the open doorway let out the scent of incense, some flickering light danced on the polished wood floor. But the monk was taking Justin in the opposite direction, toward deeper darkness.

He heard men's voices somewhere, muffled and distant. Men? He remembered the black-painted faces of the men who had executed the young women of the harem while Justin looked on helplessly. The same ones who had come for Zharkov. But where were they?

They stopped before an expanse of darkness that caught the distant light in a sheet. Iron, Justin thought. Another metal door. Like the wall in the Sacred Chamber, the black iron door slid open at the monk's touch. Immediately the sound of voices grew louder and more distinct. Now Justin knew where they were coming from. Below, in the cellar of the great palace, lived a teeming mob of Varja s laborers.

"I must see Varja," Justin demanded. "This is my warning to you."

The monk turned to him. There was hatred in his eyes. "Do you think I do not know who you are ... what you are?" He kicked Justin around to face him. "Patanjali," he sneered, "Varja will never see you. I will spare her the odor of your presence."

He spat. Then, preparing to kick Justin into the dark human-filled hole, the monk took a step backward.

It was the moment to strike. Justin threw his arms open in a wide arc, knocking the monk off balance. As the leather thong flew away from him, he spun and struck the monk in the face. With a high scream, the monk fell head-first into the stinking pit. There was a sudden silence broken only by the little man's frightened wail as he fell with a thud and the crack of small bones.

Justin looked into the pit. It was so deep that the black-painted men, lit by the flames from a huge fire pit, seemed to swarm like rodents far below. There were no stairs leading to the metal door from the depths of the cellar, only a worn rope ladder rolled into a scroll at its top.

The pit was at one end of the corridor. Justin reasoned that the room on the other end, where the faint light glowed, must be the one in which Varja waited. He walked slowly toward the light.

As he neared, the light grew brighter. With an unseen evil force that made the hair on his neck stand on end, the dim flickering light pulsated and brightened until it spilled out of the incense-filled room like a vague, shapeless entity.

Justin stopped, frozen. The light expanded, seeming to take on a life of its own, as it moved from the room into the corridor. The area where Justin stood, once nearly black with darkness, was now awash with a blinding cold light that moved, slowly and inexorably, toward him.

In the center of the light was a vision. A dream, Justin thought, a trick of the eyes. But he knew it was no dream. It was Varja herself, iridescent, shimmering with pure, violent light, more beautiful than any mortal woman.

She was painted, as she had been on the night of Justin's rite of manhood, with a third eye in the center of her forehead. But where he had once viewed her as disgusting, he now found her irresistible. The third eye was the focus of the light. It was blackness, the beginning. It was the center of Varja's death-nurtured spirit.

"You sought to burn me with your pitiful fire," she said mockingly.

Justin could not speak. He tried to turn away, but the light that burned from her compelled him to look. Her beauty was terrifying, hypnotic. It carried the eternal fascination of death.

"You cannot burn me, fool." Her face, with its three eyes, seemed to look into his very soul and judge it to be contemptible. "You know that you are weak. You have failed in every poor attempt you have made against me. The force behind me is too strong for you, nameless, spineless man. I am too strong, and my prince is too strong. He was strong enough to kill the woman he loved. She was the same woman you loved, but you could not save her. Or the others. You had to let them all die. In the end, it was your weakness that killed them."

      She pointed a finger at Justin. He sank, groaning, to his knees.

"Would you like to see fire?" She smiled, and the smile grew into a loud, sadistic laugh. "Here is your fire."

She held out her hand. A spark flew from the tips of her fingers and gathered into a ball, growing as it rolled at tremendous speed toward Justin. It filled the corridor. There was no place for him to hide from it.

His clothes ignited instantly when the fire touched him, burning his skin like a bucketful of boiling oil. Screaming, he fell back into the pit. He landed atop the lifeless body of the monk.

"Kill him," she breathed, so softly that it was less a spoken command than a thought. Then she said the words again, shrilly: "Kill him!"

She raised her arms, and a wall of flame rose up in the pit, encircling the terrified men. "Kill him or die in the flames of my anger!"

As the men watched, still unable to comprehend the powerful magic they had just witnessed, the luminous vision of Varja the goddess disappeared. In its place was blackness and emptiness—a closed metal door. She had never been. Yet the flames were real.

The men shouted, running wildly to put out the fire, but it surrounded them. One of them approached Justin, pulling a long-bladed knife out of his waist wrap. He spoke a bastard version of Hindi. "You have done this to us!” he shrieked.

Another followed him, also unsheathing his knife. "Kill him," he said. "The goddess will put out the fire when he is dead."

"She cares nothing for you," Justin said. "You are merely a horde of murdering beasts, and death by fire is too good for you."

"Kill him!"

"You will not kill me as easily as you killed the helpless women on the steppes. You." He pointed at the leader. "Fight me."

The man's dirty face broke into a grin. "I'll fight you. And I'll kill you, too.”

"Try," Justin said.

The leader jabbed, long and quick. Just before the knife touched Justin, he kicked the blade out of the man's hand, caught it, and in the same motion slit open the man's throat.

"For the women you butchered," he said.

He took the second man by the arm, broke it behind the man's back, and threw him into the flames.

A third bludgeoned him from behind. Justin felt the club a moment before it struck, and flattened himself on the floor to escape the blow. It was a mistake. In his prone position, the men were on him in a swarm. A dirty heel ground into his hand, tearing off the burned skin. Beneath it, Justin's raw flesh lay exposed and bleeding.

As he tried to get up, another of the black-painted men kicked him. A third doubled his fists together and slammed Justin on the side of the head. Two strong arms grabbed him from behind and lifted him to his feet. As Justin opened his eyes, he saw the tallest of the mob, a giant more than seven feet in height, come at him with a knife glistening in his sweat-shiny hand.

He lunged for Justin's heart. Justin wriggled free, but not in time to miss the sharp point of the blade. It struck deep in his side, ripping open his flesh in a spurt of blood. Justin moaned. He slumped in the first man's arms as the tall man stood back, watching.

Justin lay still. His breathing ebbed and finally stopped. The old voices called to him again in the darkening recesses of his consciousness.
Come back, Justin. Come back, hide with your fears and weakness...

The tall man, gasping for breath in the airless pit, raised his arms and shouted above the din of the men: "Varja! Our goddess and protectress, we have done your bidding. The one you call your enemy is dead. Stop your fire of wrath. Permit your servants to live."

There was no answer. The black metal door remained closed.

The man holding Justin threw his limp body to the dirt floor. "Cut him to pieces," he hissed. "Let nothing of him remain. Then will the goddess be satisfied."

Come back to us,
the voices called
, where it is safe and warm and forgetting. This life is too hard. Come back now, and when you die, there will be no more pain, no more suffering. Allow yourself to find some comfort, some peace, some rest...

But then another voice spoke, jarring and uncomfortable. It was Tagore's voice, as clear as if the old man were himself present. Whereas Varja manifested her power in resplendent light, Tagore's voice came from a pure void. But Varja's light was centered around the bottomless darkness of her third eye. The darkness of Tagore's presence was focused around a pinpoint of shimmering light. Justin's mind followed the light in the darkness, willing himself nearer Tagore.

"I hear you, teacher," he whispered.

Who are you?

"I am no one. I am nothing."

Do you fear death?

"No, master. I welcome it."

But you fear life.

"I... I cannot live. Varja's magic is too strong."

Then you believe in magic?

"I believe in all things now, my teacher. All is possible."

What is karma?

"A circle, master."

Past and present...

"The same."

Yin and yang, good and evil, light and darkness...

"The same."

Life and death?

The light was very close now.

"The same, my teacher."

Justin was bathed in light. But it was not Varja's blinding, fearful light of destruction. It was, instead, the light of the sun reflected on a rippling lake, and the cloudless sky of summer, and the sparkle in the eyes of an infant. And into this light came Tagore, again living and whole, his arms outstretched to Justin.

Come to me now, Patanjali, and embrace life. For now are you truly the Wearer of the Blue Hat, the bearer of light in the darkness. If you do not fear death, then you cannot fear life. Go forth and do what you must. For life.

Justin walked into Tagore's arms. The old man's spirit suffused him with a calm power, pure and perfect. For a moment, Justin felt as if he were not made of flesh at all, but solid energy. He opened his eyes.