Path of Possession

by Harmon Cooper

  “I’m getting hungry,” he said, breathing heavily now.

  “Me too,” I told him.

  We reached the jungle and made our way down to the stream, eating dried fruit as we powerwalked, everything on the periphery a blur yet tinged with familiarity.

  It was an odd sensation.

  I wasn’t quite paying attention to our surroundings, but I was aware of them, and every time I did take a look, I got that strange sense I had been here before.

  Because of course I had.

  It was when we were starting to reach the end of the jungle that I heard some commotion. Saruul came running toward me in her lion form, Buka riding her back while Amraa and Sarnai were guided by Roger, the bird clutching his knife.

  “Have the soldiers shown up yet?” I asked.

  Roger dropped his knife to the ground, which I swiftly put in my boot. Buka hopped off Saruul, allowing her to return to her human form.

  “They’re just now getting there,” Roger said, breathing hard. “But I don’t think they saw us.”

  “And you say they will kill me, Exalted One?” Amraa asked, looking to Lhandon with terror on his face. “Are you a fortune-teller? That’s what the snow lioness said.”

  “Not exactly,” Lhandon said, taking over in a calm, yet breathy voice. “We, um, ran into a hermit in the mountains, one with fiery wings. He had an amulet that told the future, and he told us that we needed to hurry here to save you.”

  “But she said…”

  “He’s right,” Saruul told Amraa. “I meant that the hermit was the fortune teller.”

  “The brewery,” Amraa said, looking to Sarnai. “If they were coming to kill me, they may burn it down or worse, drink all our chung!”

  “We won’t let that happen,” I told him. “But before we go there, I need to know the fastest way back to Ganbold.”

  “The fastest way would be by boat,” he said, his daughter nodding in agreement.

  “And how often do the boats leave?” I asked.

  “I rode a lion!” Buka said, now holding her mother’s hand.

  “Boats leave quite often. Your best bet would probably be one of the overnight boats carrying passengers from Minjin, which is a coastal community in the Kingdom of Rinpunga. I have some friends down there at the docks. One of the guys that runs the shipyard is named Batmonkh. I went to grade school with that old fart and he owes me a favor.”

  “We won’t let them destroy the brewery,” I said, my hand going to my Flaming Thunderbolt. “But we will need you to lead us to the docks as soon as we finish up here.”

  “Certainly, save our brewery and especially our chung, and I’ll do anything I can do to help.”

  “Let’s disguise ourselves,” Lhandon said suddenly.

  “Good call; I have the perfect disguise,” I told him, imagining my old friend’s face.

  Lhandon traced the rune that allowed him to change a person’s features. Sarnai and Amraa gasped once they saw my new face, my short dark hair, my chiseled features.

  “Damn,” Roger said from the branch he was perched on. “You’re bringing back some terrible memories, Nick.”

  “I don’t even think we will have to fight them if I go with this look,” I said. “Lhandon?”

  His features began to change as well, Lhandon’s face morphing to the scar-faced monk who ran the monastery in Zol, the one who had assaulted him.

  “Let’s handle this,” he said.

  Lhandon and I approached the brewery, where we quickly saw that there were several guards in front of it. We found the side gate and let ourselves in. As we approached, the men at the front placed their hands on their weapons.

  That was, until one of them recognized my face.

  “Emperor Hugo?” one of them stuttered, instantly lowering his weapon. He got down on his knees, bowing. The other two soldiers did the same.

  “The man you are looking for is not here,” I informed the soldiers in my best Hugo impression, even though I assumed they didn’t know what he sounded like. “He is currently making his way through the jungle back to Anand, and you’re letting him get away.”

  “Anand? Through the jungle?” one of the soldiers asked. The other soldier whispered something about how Emperor Hugo came here so suddenly and was quickly shushed.

  Two more soldiers came out of the brewery, one with a mug of chung in his hand.

  “I did not say you could steal their chung!” I scolded the soldier.

  “Emperor Hugo?” the soldier asked, spitting out the alcohol.

  The other soldiers filed out of the brewery, including the one with the big ax, who immediately threw his mug of chung over his shoulder.

  “I want all of you to leave the city at once,” I told the soldiers. “You are to make your way through the jungle searching for these treasonous dogs.”

  “Treasonous dogs?” Landon asked under his breath.

  “Go with it,” I whispered.

  “You will also perform prostrations, two hundred per day,” Lhandon said firmly, “as a way to repent for your sheer incompetence. You are not to steal from local businesses! You are lucky our Emperor doesn’t have you stuffed full of rocks and tossed into the ocean.”

  “Damn,” I said, watching as the soldiers bristled.

  “Yes, Emperor,” a few of them said, getting down to their knees. Only the man with the ax didn’t kneel, the beefy soldier gracefully bowing his head instead.

  The group of soldiers took off. Once we were sure they were gone, Lhandon and I returned to the edge of the jungle. Buka ran up and hugged me immediately, Sarnai quietly apologizing.

  “Your brewery should be fine,” I said to Amraa and Sarnai. “But we need to get out of Zol as soon as possible.”

  Amraa gave me a smile as he rubbed his hands together. “Leave that part to me and my dear old friend.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three: You’ve Got a Friend in Me

  “Batmonkh, you stinking, no good, dirty sailor,” Amraa said as soon as we entered a small hut, where we found a man seated on the floor playing a game that looked like a simplified version of mahjong. There was a single table beneath a weathered window, and a large wool carpet on the floor that looked like it used to be bright red.

  The seated man was around the same age as Amraa but much heavier, with a constellation of moles around his neck. He had quite the gut yet his arms were muscled and tan, his skin two shades darker than Amraa’s, his fingers and knuckles yellow and dry.

  “What!?” the man, who I assumed was Batmonkh, shouted. He pressed his game away, a grin taking shape on his face. “What did I tell you about hanging out with queefing good-for-nothing monks and snow lions? I hate to break it to you all, but Amraa here isn’t going to pay you whatever he promised he’d pay you to hang out with him and pretend you’re his friends. You don’t have any friends, Amraa. Everyone in Zol knows that.”

  “I have you,” Amraa said as he helped his old friend up, both of them laughing.

  “Ha! You have me like I had your sister.”

  “What did you say?” Amraa grabbed the front of the man’s kurta, pulling him in close.

  “So that’s how this is going to be, huh?” Batmonkh growled. “You come in here smelling like last week’s fermented belch with a pair of monks, a lion queen, and… Is that a bird?”

  “That’s right,” Roger told him. “And if you two would wrap your little banter up, we got places to go and emperors to kill.”

  “Mouthy little fucker, isn’t he?” Batmonkh asked Amraa. “Now where was I? Were we talking about your sister? What was her name again? I think it rhymed with bang-hole.”

  “I told you not to say anything about her!” Amraa said, shoving his friend away.

  Batmonkh lifted his fists. “Careful, or I’ll give you the same fist I gave her!”

  “Don’t make me give you a whooping before I ask you for a favor,” Amraa said as he also brought his fists up.

  “Gentlemen, I believe there are better ways for us to
solve our differences,” Lhandon said, stepping in.

  Both Amraa and Batmonkh looked to Lhandon and nearly fell over laughing.

  “You thought we were really going to fight?” Batmonkh asked, out of breath now. The big man was bent over, his face red from laughter. “I guess they don’t teach reading body language in monk school, do they?”

  “Your body language tells me that you’re going to fight…”

  “Look how confused he is,” Batmonkh said, still trying to stop himself from laughing. “We aren’t going to fight, and if we did, I would kick his ass anyway. He knows that.”

  “Like hell, you would,” Amraa growled, shaking a fist at the heavyset man. “Maybe twenty years ago you would have given me a run for my money, but the only thing your fat ass is kicking is the waiter’s leg if he is late with your second helping!”

  “And he doesn’t even have a sister; we can thank the gods for that,” Batmonkh said. “The last thing we need is a lady walking around here as ugly as this guy.”

  “Yeah?” Amraa asked. “Well if I did have a sister, she would still be too good for you.”

  “Too good for this?” Batmonkh drummed his hands on his belly. “Because you would be surprised how many young ladies like to rest their heads on my gut, listening to the illustrious orchestra that is my nightly stomach rumbling.”

  “If you keep holding all those farts in, you’re going to explode!”

  “Aye, there are worst fates than death by farts,” Batmonkh told Amraa, wiping a few beads of sweat from his brow. “Okay, okay, let’s stop talking about bodily functions. There’s a lady present.”

  “Thank you,” Saruul said, her eyebrows slowly lowering.

  “No, please, go on, I understand now that this is supposed to be funny and I will try to laugh along as if I’m entertained,” Roger said.

  “What can I do for you?” Batmonkh asked, ignoring Roger.

  “We need to get them to Ganbold as soon as possible,” Amraa said, his voice suddenly devoid of the jovial tone he had started the conversation with. “And no one can know about it.”

  Batmonkh nodded, and as he did his cheeks jiggled. “Do you mind if I ask why?”

  “We do,” Saruul said.

  “Let’s just say they want to pay the Emperor a visit,” Amraa told his old friend.

  “In that case, maybe the less I know, the better,” he said, his cheeks sinking into his jowls as a cold look came over his face. “There’s a ship that leaves tonight. Did anyone see you come here?”

  “No, we came through the jungle,” Amraa said.

  “You always were a little jungle rat, weren’t you?”

  “It’s the only place I can get away from your stink,” Amraa said, starting to smile again.

  “Ha! Just wait until the next moon festival; I’ll be sure to aim any stinks I can conjure up in the direction of the jungle.”

  “The people of the city depend on the jungle for sustenance,” Amraa said, ripping into his friend again. “You don’t want to be responsible for countless deaths. Think of the karma.”

  Batmonkh turned to his open book on the table just beneath the shack’s only window. The pages were brittle; it looked like it had been dropped in the water a few times. He licked his finger and flipped a few pages over, snorting as he found the information he was looking for. “Yep, just as I suspected: this guy owes me a favor. Hell, he owes me more than one. If you are going to pull this off, however, you’re going to need to change clothes.”

  I looked at Lhandon in his saffron robes, and remembered I was wearing something similar, with a scarf wrapped around my head because I was still waiting for Emperor Hugo’s visage to fade away. I was pretty sure it was gone by now, but I had kept the scarf on just to be sure.

  “Don’t worry, I have stuff you can wear,” Batmonkh said, waving away our concern.

  “I haven’t worn regular clothing in…” Lhandon bobbed his head left and right. “At least thirty years, maybe even a bit longer.”

  “Is that so? In the end, rags are rags. I definitely have something that will fit the monk, but not you,” he said, pointing his fat finger at me. “So it’s going to be a little baggy.”

  “You want them to wear your clothing?” Saruul asked, trying to hide the skepticism she was feeling.

  “Not just them, lioness, you too. I’m guessing the bird can hide in some of your clothes. Basically, I need the three of you to get down to the ship without anyone suspecting anything. After you arrive in Ganbold, you can change for all I care.”

  Saruul made a soft sound with her throat. “Is your clothing clean?”

  “Yes,” Roger said. “I second that question.”

  Batmonkh grinned, revealing to us that he was missing a couple teeth. “Does a peckerhead run a brewery with his practically mute daughter on the outskirts of town selling piss that he claims is chung? Does this practically mute daughter have a daughter herself who is just about the cutest thing in the five kingdoms?”

  Amraa snorted.

  “I… I don’t know the answer to that,” Saruul said.

  “Yes, you do,” Batmonkh said, still teasing her. “The guy I’m referring to is right here, and I get it, I know that if you were in your lion form, you wouldn’t want to eat him because he’d be all skin and bones. Makes sense. You would prefer me, somebody with a little meat and fat, something that has been tenderized in the sun.”

  “I…”

  “—Yes, whatever we have to do,” Lhandon said, taking over for Saruul, who hadn’t yet figured out how to respond to the old sailor.

  “Good, I know my shack here doesn’t look that big, but like most things on the Island Kingdom, it’s all about peeling back the layers.” He kicked his foot against a carpet, revealing a fairly large trapdoor. Batmonkh used a cane to lift the trapdoor. “Trust me, it’s bigger inside than it looks,” he said as he started to make his way down.

  I exchanged glances with Lhandon and Saruul.

  “Sure, let’s go into the pirate’s trapdoor,” Roger cleared his throat. “After hearing these two talk, I believe that my last statement there may have some sexual innuendo to it. That was not my intention, but if you would like to laugh now, please do so.”

  Rather than laugh, Saruul made her way down the stairs followed by Lhandon and me, Amraa staying up the top.

  Roger dropped onto my shoulder. “I guess I’m not as funny as those guys...”

  “I’ll let you guys sort it out from here,” Amraa called down to us. “Enjoy his fart dungeon, and good luck on your mission! Remember: I never saw you, and you never saw me.”

  “Be gone, jungle rat!” I heard Batmonkh call up to him. “And stop quoting lines to them that I used to use on your sister!”

  To my surprise, the space beneath the shack was absolutely immaculate, light coming in from portholes in the ceiling, everything spick-and-span, very few decorations aside from a large map of the five kingdoms on the opposite wall, a seating area, a quaint kitchen, and an additional room off to the side.

  “Have a seat,” Batmonkh said, motioning toward the seating area that had a bench and two additional chairs, images of ships carved into their wooden backs. “I just did laundry yesterday, so I should have something fresh for all of you,” Batmonkh said, his earlier salty pirate demeanor shifting to something a bit more eloquent. “I was planning on making a stew tonight, but I can start early. You will be in Ganbold by morning, and trust me, you’re going to want to eat before you get on the ship.”

  “Yes, that would be nice,” Lhandon said, still in shock at how nice the underground room was. “Is there anything that we can help you with?”

  “Yes, just let us know,” Saruul added.

  “Help me?” Batmonkh chuckled. “No, just relax. I know where everything is, and you might not believe this, but I’m sort of a clean freak. So I’d rather take care of things myself. Also, if my earlier banter offended any of you, I apologize. For some reason, whenever I see Amraa, I revert back to the p
erson I was thirty years ago. It is almost like a spell has been cast on both of us.”

  “That’s some spell,” Roger said as he landed on the headrest of one of the chairs.

  Lhandon took a seat on the wooden bench. “It’s fine. And we really appreciate your help and hospitality. I hope the karmic benefits far outweigh the trouble you will go through to help us.”

  “Trouble?” Batmonkh smiled. “It’s no trouble, it never has been, and it never will be.”

  I was surprised when we were given one of the nicer rooms of the ship, definitely not below deck this time around.

  According to Batmonkh, this particular ship, which was known as the Glimmering Sea Ruby, was mainly used by wealthy tourists from Minjin, which was a coastal community of vacation homes located in the Kingdom of Rinpunga.

  It wasn’t quite like being on a cruise ship—there were no water slides or much entertainment aside from a bard in the eatery below deck—but it was definitely comfortable.

  Our room had four cushioned bunks, complimentary snacks and chung, a magnificent view of the sea complete with a small yet well-thought-out writing nook positioned before it.

  This was where Lhandon ended up spending most of his evening, still looking over Conversations with a Hellspawn, the book we had yet to return to the monastery in Zol.

  Predictably, Lhandon wasn’t keen on the karma associated with stealing a book, and to offset this, he planned to have it returned at some point in the future, likely when he sent someone to visit the Exonerated One’s reincarnation.

  Since Lhandon didn’t really have anyone for his future temple, I figured that someone would end up being Altan, who would likely become Lhandon’s first disciple. Then again, things could change greatly between now and the point that the journey was even feasible.

  Happy to have a bunk for himself, Roger was quiet through the night, allowing Lhandon to study until he fell asleep at the desk, Saruul and me sharing one of the bottom bunks.

  No dreams, restful sleep, no choppy waves, quiet neighbors—my kind of night.