Destroyer - Master's Challenge Part 26

Remo took a long time returning to the cave. Inside, Chiun, Jilda and Griffith kept watch over the body of H'si T'ang. A single candle lit the features of the dead man.

The three of them watched Remo enter, his shoulders stooped. "He's gone," he said. He walked to the far corner of the cave and sat on a heap of fallen rock.

Chiun and Jilda were silent. Only Griffith stood up. He walked to the center of the cave, to a spot where the afternoon sun poured through a hole in the rock. The light illuminated his dirty face. Without speaking, he raised his battered arms to shoulder level, palms up. In the sunlight, his wounds seemed to disappear.

Remo rose slowly. They had disappeared. The boy's skin was as smooth and brown as seasoned wood.

'"How in the-"

The boy silenced him with a look. His eyes were gla.s.sy and faraway, and carried in them an innate authority far beyond his years. Chiun motioned Remo abstractedly to sit down.

"My spirit do I bequeath to this child," Griffith began in a voice unrecognizable as his own.

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"H'si T'ang," Chiun whispered. "He lives."

"Only my spirit lives, the essence of what my life has been. The boy's soul and mind shall always remain his own. My knowledge only is added to what he already possesses. He has always had the Sight in some measure, and so will use the gift wisely and well, if he is taught correctly. Tell him, when I have finished, of his legacy, for he cannot hear my words, and will be afraid of his powers. I beg you, do not permit him to grow like the Dutchman, fearful and lonely."

"I will not," Jilda said.

"My fierce and beautiful warrior," the voice inside the boy said to the woman. "You have risked much, given much. Your courage has not gone unnoticed. Be strong, Jilda, for just a short time longer. Much will depend on you."

She nodded, too overcome to speak.

Griffith turned his strange, unseeing eyes on Chiun. "You called me your father, and that I am. For though you are not my natural son, you have pleased me beyond my expectations. For you, Chiun, are the greatest of all the Masters of Sinanju who have walked this earth. It was for this reason that the charge of s.h.i.+va was placed upon you."

Chiun's eyes welled.

"It was this that I tried to tell you while I was still among you. But I was weak, and the Void called irresistibly to me. And so I tell you now. I could not have found a better son if I searched all the world until the end of time."

"Father," Chiun whispered.

Finally, the boy turned to Remo. "And you. Do you yet know who you are? What you are?"

Remo turned his head. "I've failed," he said.

"You have failed only to alter the course of destiny." H'si T'ang spoke angrily through the boy. "Is your arro- 232.

gance such that you believe you can control even the forces of the universe?"

"What? No," Remo stammered. "No. It's nothing like that. Only-"

"Then you must realize that even s.h.i.+va does not possess the power to take a life before its appointed time to die."

Before its-"

"The Other lives because you must live. Yin and yang, light and darkness. Both must exist. There is a great destiny before you, Remo. Have the courage to fulfill it."

"I ... 1 ..." The boy's eyes seemed to bore into his very soul. He fell silent.

Griffith's face grew gentle. He stepped close to Remo. "You have fought well, son of.rny son." He touched Remo's hand. The knife wounds disappeared.

Remo examined himself in amazement as the boy went to Jilda and caressed her face. The bruises and cuts healed instantly. He unwrapped the bandage around her hand. Beneath it the flesh and bones and skin were once again perfect.

"And now I speak my last words to you all, for I shall not appear again," Griffith said feverishly. "Go back to your lands in peace. Keep in your hearts the balance of the universe. Live your lives in honor and wisdom."

Then the boy sank to the floor, unconscious.

Jilda cradled him in her arms. "You will not fear this gift you have, little one," she said. "The Lady of the Lake will see to that."

Chapter Thirty.

Since the start of the Master's Trial, spring in Sinanju had changed almost imperceptibly into summer. Crickets and tree frogs called endlessly through the warm night, and the air was fragrant with the scent of ripening plum blossoms.

Remo lay with Jilda on a bank of cool moss. In the distance was music. Chiun was playing his belled instrument near the graves of H'si T'ang and Emrys. The melody was the same one he had played for Remo's Ritual of Parting so long ago, before the Dutchman came. Now its notes rang again, serene and beautiful, in another ritual of parting.

Remo kissed the smooth skin at the nape of Jilda's neck, still flushed with pa.s.sion. Making love, even with Jilda, had never been so good as this last time, beneath the open night sky. There had been an urgency about her caresses, a hunger that she had needed him to satisfy. "You make me very happy," he said, lifting her chin. Her eyes were filled with tears. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she said quickly, drawing her hand over her 233.

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face. "I am happy, too. I never thought I would find you. I mean, someone like you," she added.

"No. Not someone like me or someone like you. You, the original, and me. That's the only combination that works."

Jilda looked up at the stars. Gullikona, the Golden Lady of the sky, was burning in all her glory. "Sometimes I feel as if the love we have was meant to be," she said softly. "Like the princess and the warrior of the legend."

"They don't even come close," Remo said. He looked out to sea. "Jilda, the submarine from the States is due in tomorrow."

"No!" She held him fiercely. "We will not speak of tomorrow."

"Why not?"

"I will not cross the sea in an iron fish," she said. "I have built my own boat. It is hidden near the sh.o.r.e."

Remo laughed. "Ever the stubborn barbarian," he said. "Look, the sub's perfectly safe, and it'll save us weeks of travel. Just trust me, okay? We'll set Griffith up with some relatives, and then-"

"I will remain with Griffith." She held his glance for a moment, then turned away. "He is an exceptional boy. His upbringing cannot be entrusted to people who do not understand him."

"Spoken like a true mother."

"It was my promise to H'si T'ang. He was a wise man. We would all do well to listen to what he has said."

"Meaning what?"

Jilda bit her lip. "It will only be necessary to spend a few years with Griffith. After he is grown, 1 will return to Lakluun. Where I belong."

"Hey," Remo said gently. "Is that what's bothering you?" He stroked her hair. "You don't have to change your life for me. I love you, funnyface, remember?" He 235.

tweaked her nose. Her green eyes changed to blue and then gray and back to green again, like the s.h.i.+fting hues of an ocean. "G.o.d, I'll never get used to those," he said.

"Remo ..."

"Shhh. Listen to me. If you've got to stay in Wales, I'll stay with you. We'll raise Griffith together. No problem. I've always wanted a kid, anyway."

His thoughts ran to their life together in the green hills of Emrys's valley. The three of them in the Forest Primeval. Me Tarzan, you Jilda. His face flushed, and his hands grew cold. He liked the feeling. He liked it very much. "I'll build you a nice little house," he said eagerly. "With a picket fence around it. No fair spearing any animals on the fence. And we'll plant some flowers around the front, just like in the movies."

"Oh, Remo-"

"And when Griffith's good and sick of us telling him how to run his life, we'll take off in one of your crazy canoes and row ourselves to Viking Land, and swim in ice water and swill mead with the boys-''

"Stop!" She didn't bother to check her tears now.

"I don't understand," Remo said quietly. "I'm asking you to marry me." He stared at her in bewilderment. "Don't you ... I mean, I thought you wanted ..."

"Above all things, I wish to spend my life with you. But the sacrifice ... the sacrifice will be too great."

"There wouldn't have to be any sacrifice, I'm telling you."

"Not for me, Remo. For you."

"For me? You've got to be kidding. I've spent my whole life in orphanages and army barracks and motel rooms. A cottage in Wales'11 seem like a castle as far as I'm concerned."

"It is not the place," she said. "What you would be 236.

giving up is something inside you, something so rare that the sages among your people have waited for millennia to see it." She took Remo's hand in hers. "You listened to the words of H'si T'ang. You have a great destiny before you. You cannot abandon that for something as selfish, as small as-"

"Small?" Remo shouted, rising to his feet. "Smalll Is that all you think of us?" He picked up a rock and threw it so hard that it whistled. "d.a.m.n it, I don't want a 'great destiny.' 1 want to be happy, and for the first time in my life, I am. 1 want this. I want ..." His voice cracked. "You."

It was a long time before Jilda spoke. "That is why I must leave you," she said quietly.

The song of the tree frogs, combined with Chiun's distant melody, seemed to fill the world.

"Whatl" he whispered.

She didn't answer. She gathered her things and dressed quickly, pretending not to see Remo standing beneath the plum tree. Her vision blurred. "Good-bye," she said.

He raced to stop her. "Tell me you don't love me."

"Remo-"

He shook her. "You can't believe in that prophecy c.r.a.p any more than I do. I'll let you go if you want to go, but not because of any bulls.h.i.+t legend. Just tell me you don't want me, and I'll leave you alone. That's all I'll accept. Otherwise, you're stuck with me. For better or worse."

"Remo, I can't. It's not fair of you."

"Tell me! Do you love me or not?"

The moon s.h.i.+fted. Her face, more beautiful than Remo had ever seen it, was bathed in pearlescent light.

"Good," Remo said. "For a minute, I thought-"

"I don't love you." She pulled away from him abruptly. Remo exhaled as if someone had kicked him in the belly.

She backed away into the shadows. "I don't love you.

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Now go to your own world, your own life, for everyone's sake. Go, be what you were meant to be."

She turned and ran. Remo watched her, too stunned to move. A sudden gust of wind blew a shower of blossoms from the plurn tree to the ground. In a moment she was gone.

Chapter Thirty-One.

Smith had finished scanning the Du Lac College computer tapes, and he finally went home for dinner. He had been gone for two weeks.

Irma was cooking.

"h.e.l.lo, dear," she said, without turning from the stove.

"h.e.l.lo, Irma," he said and gave her a peck on the cheek. She did not ask where he had been or what he had been doing. He was home, safely, and that was all that counted.

Dinner was burned pot roast and potatoes, cooked rock-hard in the center.

Dessert was rice pudding. Smith had never liked rice pudding, but he had been trained to finish what was put in front of him, and so Irma never knew. Thirty years ago, his mother had told Irma that he didn't like rice pudding.

Irma kept serving it. She was sure it was his mother's rice pudding that Harold Smith didn't like.