Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4) (16 page)

“It is not permitted,” he replied simply, “but I greet you in peace all the same, Darlene Drukiski from the Guild of the Staff. You and your companions both.”

Ferraro and I followed Darlene’s lead. She took a spot on the left, while I took a seat in the middle, directly across from the wizened abbot.

“Looks like you were waiting for us,” I commented, nodding toward the tea, though not picking up my cup. In my business, taking drinks from complete strangers—even friendly old monks—is a good way to end up choking to death on rat poison or worse.

“Indeed, I have been waiting for you,” he replied. “Though I do not know you, I have seen you three often in my dreams. Heralds, arriving to announce my death.” He paused, glancing up at the clock adorning the wall behind us. “Yes, the hour of my end draws near. Second by second, minute by minute, it creeps closer. It is around the corner, riding upon the shoulders of the man who follows after you. A man, both youthful and ancient, called the Savage Prophet by some.”

Suddenly, I felt light-headed, the blood frozen in my veins, my stomach sinking as though someone had just drop-kicked me from the cargo hold of a C130 cruising along at 13,000 feet. Coming fast in the wake of that cocktail of emotional turmoil was anger. A red rage that flooded in on the edges of my vision.

The Savage Prophet.

That’s what the monk had said.

I’d heard that title—or was it some sort of formal name?—before, in a shadow version of a nightmarish Seattle. A nightmare future where the Big Bad pulling the strings behind this whole shitstorm had
won.
A nightmare future where I didn’t exist, because some shithead called the Savage Prophet had done me in.

“What did you say?” I demanded, voice a threatening growl which promised impending violence.

“Ah. I suspected you might know of this man,” the monk replied, unworried by the menace in my words or, apparently, his own approaching doom. He spoke the same way you might talk about a bit of bad weather rolling in.

“His story, however,” the monk said, “is not mine to tell. Besides, I know little of it. What I do know”—he glanced up at the clock again—“is that he will arrive shortly. He and a companion. Then, he will murder me.” He tapped his heart lightly with one hand. “A noble death, though. Of all the ways to die, there are many worse. But that is my story and, though I’d gladly tell it, time is short and the story you
must
hear is that of my friend and master, Luang Phor Ong, guardian of the Seal of Death.”

“No.” Ferraro said, the word a whip-crack of command. “If there’s a killer on his way to this temple, we need to leave. Now. We can fight our way out if we have to, but it’d be better if we weren’t here at all.” The monk tried to speak, but Ferraro cut him off with an upraised hand. “Listen, you can tell us whatever stories you want once we’re clear of here, but I don’t make it a point of letting people get killed, not if I can stop it.”

She made a move to get up, but the monk didn’t. He sat as stoically and steadfastly as an old mountain stone. “Your passion for life is admirable. Truly. But I will not leave. I am the abbot, and my duty is to the temple. I will not abandon my post. Besides, even if I were to consent, which I will not, the cost would not be worth paying.”

He paused, lips turning up thoughtfully as he considered us. Almost as if he were deciding what to say, how much to tell us. “Ong,” he finally said, “was merciful enough to show me my death, but he has shown me this thing too: should I refuse my fate and walk away from this place, you three will die. All of you. And should you die, the world may well die with you. Fate is a tricky business, as delicate as a swaddled newborn, and betimes even the smallest change can have terrible consequences. My death tips the balance in favor of life. In favor of your lives. At least for a short time.”

“Listen to me, old-timer,” I snapped, patience slipping away, evaporating like boiling water. “You don’t even know us, and the last thing I need on my conscience is some geriatric monk dying for me. I’ve got enough friggin’ trouble sleeping as is.”

“It is what must be, that is all,” the monk said, unconcerned. “Perhaps you think I fear death, but this is error. Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely. Now, please drink with me as I tell you of my dear friend.”

Ferraro looked torn—a woman who genuinely didn’t know what the right thing to do was. But, at last, she plopped back down, though she kept stealing peeks toward the entryway.

“Drink.” He gestured toward the cups, and there was something oddly urgent in the motion. “It is an important ceremony, binding you as friends of the Wat. Drink.” He glanced at the huge bell, suspended by the Buddha, then motioned once more toward the tea.

With a sigh and an eye roll, I picked up my tiny cup, about the size of a shot glass, and downed the contents. The liquid was hot, but not too hot, and strong, though enjoyable. A little bitter, but tempered with a hint of mint. It hit my belly with a warm splash, and a pleasant heat spread out like a shot of good hooch, suffusing my limbs. I cocked an eyebrow, then let out a soft belch. “Not bad.”

Ferraro and Darlene each eyed their glasses before taking small slugs.

“Good, good,” the abbot said as we drank, carefully running a hand over the creases in his robes. “Now, the first thing you must know is that Ong is not as other men are. Nor am I.” The monk’s features distorted, bubbling and bulging out. Sleek serpentine scales and green eyes, black slits running down the middle, showed briefly, but quickly disappeared, leaving only the human-seeming monk behind.

“The initiates of our order are all Naga Lords,” he said, “descended from the mother of our kind, Kadru. Ong, though, is more. He is a king. Our king.” With deliberate care, he set down his minuscule teacup and swept an arm toward the Buddha statue behind him. The Buddha statue with a giant, seven-headed cobra looming over it.

“Yes,” the monk said, seeming to read the question in my mind. “That is Ong in his true form. But before you judge him on his appearance alone, let me show you a bit of his story.”

He raised one hand into the air, palm up. A globe of brilliant light the size of a soccer ball, shifting through the hues of the rainbow, burst to life, spinning lazily above the monk’s hand. “In a time long forgotten by most, a time so ancient the reality has become legend and the legend, myth, my master dwelt in the lush untouched jungles of India.”

The orb took shape as the monk spoke, thinning, distorting until a semitransparent jungle in a multitude of greens stretched before us. Thick palm trees dotted the impressive illusion. Swatches of bamboo poked through like the bristly whiskers of a man badly in need of a shave. Majestic tualang trees shot up two hundred feet or more, towering over the rest of the lush canopy. All green, pristine. A different world. Almost prehistoric. Almost paradise.

Then came the nasty clouds. Twisting black things that rolled over the jungle in a flash, beating at the trees with awful wind, dumping torrential rains onto the greenery below.

I’d seen constructs like this a handful of times before. They were basically amped-up Vis-conjured illusions, but the elegance and sophistication was beyond what I could do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m alright with illusions—though better with glamours, which deceive the mind instead of the eye—but I couldn’t come close to doing what the monk was doing. Not in a million years. I knew only a handful of magi who could manage a working like this, and four out of five sat on the Elder Council.

The fifth was Ailia.

The elaborate illusion-trees began to sway and shake as something big, though unseen, wriggled through the forest. The audible
-snap-crack
of breaking tree branches resounded in the air.

A second later the head of a cobra broke through the greenery of the canopy, followed shortly by another and another, until seven enormous hooded heads swayed above the tree line. But let’s get one thing straight up front—this thing only had a passing resemblance to a cobra. Instead of the slick, streamlined face of a snake, this reptilian beast had a thick muzzle and powerful tearing jaws positively bristling with teeth. Hundreds of teeth that had to be six inches or more in length. Son of a bitch looked more like some kind of hooded dinosaur than a snake.

That or a dragon.

“There he is,” the monk said, staring fondly at the hulking, terrifying doom-lizard, which would’ve left me shrieking like a little girl if I ever saw it coming my way in real life. “Such a sight to behold. This, now, is the day he discovered the Buddha or, at least, the man who would become the Buddha in time—Siddhartha Gautama, prince of the Shakya clan. There he is, Siddhartha, taking shelter beneath a Bodhi tree, trying to weather the storm of a millennia.”

The picture shifted, diving through the dense leaf cover, until a single giant tree, its trunk a complicated tangle of smaller vines ten feet in diameter, stretched out before us. The tree shook, bent, and bowed from the driving gale-force gusts. A man—slim, young with burnt copper skin, in the same garb as the monk before me—hunkered down beneath the spreading bows of the tree, which sheltered him from the pelting rain.

“I was still a young serpent then,” the monk said, “fresh from my egg, but I remember well the terrible storm that descended on the valley.”

The picture shifted once more, drawing back so we could see the great serpent king cut through the foliage with a rustling whisper, before stopping a few feet from the huddled Buddha. The Naga King’s giant, golden eyes warily regarded the man under the tree with a mixture of curiosity and something else …

Hunger, perhaps.

The man met the creature’s massive gaze without a hint of fear, however. He looked cold, true, and soaked to the bone from the torrential rains, but he didn’t look scared. Not of the storm, and not of the ginormous serpent only a few feet away, sizing him up for dinner. A small, peaceful smile broke across the man’s lips, and then he dipped his head in acknowledgement to Ong.
Well met
, the nod seemed to say.

The scaled creature regarded the man for a moment longer, his gargantuan body stretching and flexing as he breathed, then slithered forward. Slowly, ominously. Instead of attacking, though, the monstrous dragon encircled the tree with his thick body, wrapped around it until his scaled trunk formed a low wall, protecting the man within from the furious wind. Then, without a noise, the serpent raised its great torso high into the air, the hoods on its many heads flaring open, forming a giant living umbrella—a shield against the pounding rain.

And there the magnificent dragon-creature stayed, offering shelter from the raging storm as it stood vigil against the encroaching night, protecting the oh-so-fragile man below.

“Such a noble creature, was my friend,” the monk said, the glimmer of a tear escaping, rolling down his cheek. “A protector who held life in the deepest regard. It was not long after Ong saved Siddhartha that an angel of the White King above visited my master. One of the Burning Ones, a
Malakim
.”

The Malakim were exalted angels of the highest order who walked among the stars and dwelled in the direct presence of God. And we’re talking God with a capital G.

“The name of the angel is lost to me now,” the monk said absently, “but he came and entrusted the Fourth Seal to my master, to protect it as my master had protected the young Siddhartha against the deadly storm. Twenty-five hundred years ago, that was, and Ong has stood sentry over the vile demon within the Seal since. Buné the Chloros, Grigori of Old, the Grand Duke of Hell, the Dragon-headed Lord of the Grave.”

The floating forest blurred and lurched into motion, the illusionary sun rising and setting a thousand times as the forest shifted, changed, the unspoiled paradise giving way to human civilization:

The sun rose and set as buildings sprang up and toppled.

The sun rose and set as armies clashed and died, only to be replaced by ever more armies.

The monk spoke as the sun bobbed and dipped, shining down on the ethereal world below, which zipped through a condensed and bloody history of humanity.

“My master Ong stood strong,” he said, “but Buné’s power is tied to the grave, to discord and murder and death.”

The flickering slide show of human atrocity slowed as factories bloomed, cars flooded narrow streets, and planes took to the skies. Then, the whole thing dissolved, exploding in a shower of light, which, in turn, resolved into a fat mushroom cloud of orange and red. The all-too familiar aftereffects of a nuclear blast. That brilliant cloud lingered before us for a beat longer and then the whole illusion fell apart, a mushroom-shaped afterimage temporarily scarring my retinas.

“The industrial revolution changed the world,” the monk said, staring blankly past us, as though looking into a different day and age. “Changed it in many wonderful ways, but in many terrible ones, too. Mankind’s population grew. When Ong accepted the Seal there were one hundred million human souls in the world.” He said the number,
one hundred million
, slowly, deliberately, almost fondly. “Not in any one country, but in all countries, on all continents, across the entire face of the globe.

“By the 1800s that number grew to nine hundred million, and in the past two hundred years, it has exploded to seven billion. Seven billion.” He wagged his head back and forth, an inscrutable look on his lined face. “An ocean of humanity, too vast to consider. Too vast to understand. As numerous as sand on the seashore, or so it seems betimes. Sadly, the human capacity to kill has grown along with your population. The twentieth century was far bloodier than every century before it.”