The War of the Realms

by C Steven Meldrum

  The nomadic tribes of the plains were deeply religious and believed that the more hardship and suffering they endured in this life, the easier would be the next. The had a saying;

  Ten miles at dawn and

  ten before noon, then

  ten before the shadows grow long and tent, food and warmth very soon.”

  But talk of his own troubles quickly ceased. “He looked awful, Tashi.” Rogel had seen Dorje when he came looking for me.

  “He took a blast virtually full on. It’s amazing he lives at all.” Another skill of Jigme’s, which most black robes possessed, was a degree of medical training. The monks from the outpost monastery had also been pressed into service under his direction caring for the injured. Jigme tended to Dorje himself, bandaging him and providing whatever care he could.

  “It has certainly taken the shine of seeing two of my old friends. When I heard that the Panchen Lama was a day away and heading towards town, I could not believe it, but then we heard about the attack as you came up the valley. We hear of bandits all the time attacking caravans going north to Kyichu. But Sidus fighters? That is going too far for common bandits.”

  I had been thinking the same thing and Vajra’s words kept repeating themselves in my mind.

  “I think the thing clothed in black was a more advanced version perhaps,” he said. “We hear the traders talking about the pestarii and other off-worlders but I haven’t heard of anything that matches what you describe. Did the others see it?”

  “I don’t know … no, I don’t think so.” I sat in silence for a moment but I could see he wanted to know everything. I sighed and looked at his expectant expression. “I don’t know what’s happening to me Rogel. It was like that night on the river all over again.”

  This time it was Rogel’s turn to fall silent. I thought I understood. Were it not for that, he would have completed his dge tsul ordination and be a journeyman now. Yet here I was in the robes of a rinpoche lama, torn, bloodied and dirty as they were, and he still in the grey of a novice. I knew it must have been hard for him and could think of nothing positive to lift his spirits.

  His thoughts were on Dorje though. They had been close friends for many years and whatever thoughts ran through his mind about his own dramatic shift in circumstances, Dorje’s situation was foremost.

  “We need to get Dorje back to the monastery. They have the means there to save him.”

  I felt sure he would not survive more than a few more watches but did not want to labour Rogel with my thoughts.

  “You’re right, he is strong. He’ll make it. We’ll need to organise provisions and volunteers to start the trek back.”

  We started to move back to the town, my thoughts bent on doing as much as I could to ensure that he would survive. But I was also thinking of the injured woman that had saved me from the creature of blackness. I looked at Rogel as we walked and said, “I asked Yeshe this, and you can tell me if you don’t know, but … do you know who it was that ran out upon the ice when we were on the river?”

  He was leading the way back and turned to look at me but kept walking. “What? Are you still thinking about that?” He could see that I was. “Look, everything happened so fast. There was a huge one that had crept

  up the other side that Puk and I held off while you and Yeshe were trying to hold off those going for Lhapka. And everything went crazy. You were pinned by the one that gave you … those scars … and that tooth hanging around your neck. Yeshe was pushed back to the base of the rocks. Lhapka was suddenly dragged off the rocks by one of them and then some sort of energy weapon was fired from upstream that broke up the ice and released the river. Yeshe and you would both have been killed I think, if it wasn’t for that. They took off after the other person when they saw her running down the ice and that’s when she fired. You and Yeshe were both safe but then you jumped down to have a go at the one that held Lhapka. You tried to grab him and then we saw the torrent coming toward us. I knew you were both done for.” He hung his head.

  “You said ‘she’! The stranger was a woman?” He looked at me as if deep

  in his own memories of that night.

  “Eh? The stranger? Yes, a woman. Don’t ask me who she was. She was

  tall, maybe your height perhaps … I don’t know. Anyway, she was covered in

  thick clothes, she spoke in a very odd accent and she helped search until you

  turned up on the ice. Then she was gone, like a mantra upon the wind. We

  didn’t spend any time looking for her. You were turning blue and we thought

  it would be better to get you back. I didn’t give it any more thought myself

  until I was standing before Lama Tomas and he askedthe same thing.” A woman. That woman. Maybe she had some answers. Moreso than the

  thousand-pound beast that frolicked in the shadow of the outcropping,

  lovingly grooming itself with paws that could easily take the head off a man

  but which had also vanquished the Sidus atop the hillside and thus saved my

  life.

  I felt that I was truly going mad. How could any reasonable person be

  expected to remain so when the gods themselves were revealed. Rogel saw

  nothing of the quandary that threatened to overcome me. But I suddenly had a

  thought and bade Rogel to go on without me for a moment. He looked at me

  and saw the purpose in my eyes, shrugged and continued on. When he had

  disappeared round a small bluff I looked down to the tiger.

  “Vajra, please come with me.” The massive head turned to regard me and

  without noticing, the beautiful form of Ussuri was suddenly beside me on the

  pathway.

  “Can you save him?”

  “Who?” she purred.

  “No games!” I was angry that I was speaking to a goddess, who should

  have the power to do anything she pleased, and she wanted to play games.

  “Can you save him?”

  “Yes!” she hissed.

  I started back along the path to town, she a few paces behind me. “But

  understand this. You do not willingly take one of Yama’s subjects without a

  price to pay. Ifit is his time to die, it is his time!”

  “I don’t care! He is far more integral to achieving this quest than I am.

  Do what you need to do. Whatever the cost – do it!”

  Rogel, Ussuri and I stood in the makeshift lazaret. We knelt beside the pallet on which the still unconscious Dorje lay. His breathing was quick and shallow and he had a deathly pallour to his skin. I looked at Ussuri. She turned to me as if offering me the opportunity to let him go. My look said that my resolve hadn’t faltered.

  “Go outside then.” Rogel was looking down at Dorje, a look of despair on his face. His eyes followed the rapid andalmost imperceptible rise and fall of Dorje’s chest, almost willing it to continue.

  “Come on Rogel, let’s go outside and start organising people.” He looked at me as if to say, “You’re mad,aren’t you? He’ll be dead within a mile of the village!”

  I stood and made my way to the door. He followed. Once outside, he looked at the ground in utter despair. I grabbed his shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “Rogel, hear me. He will live. Don’t look at me like I am insane. Go and start organising things.” I pushed him away from the door. “Trust me!”

  He moved slowly away but stopped and turned to face me. “Is it true what they say Tashi: you are the Panchen Lama returned?”

  “If I am, I have no memory of being anything before … well, me. But things have happened of late … strange things.”

  Dorje would live. I felt for the first time since all this madness had consumed me that I could use this power for something more noble than a foolish journey to find a sword. If the gods wanted my help then surely I could ask for theirs. I felt a sudden wild exultation and a joy for life that I could not describe– but it was a joy filled wi
th bitterness and pain and weighed upon me sorely.

  At that moment, a villager came running up and stood patiently beyond Rogel. He clasped his hands together above his forehead and bowed, as was proper. I nodded ascent and though he was breathing hard, he calmed himself and said as steadily as possible, “Your Holiness, she is awake!”

  Because she was such a strange and enigmatic person and I did not want rumour and fear to worry an already superstitious people, I had ordered her taken to an abode across town were the abbot of the small monastery had his own residence. I bade Rogel to stay outside and stared at the heavy, patterned rug that hung in place of a door. I steeled myself to learn the recondite truth and pushed the rug aside. After being in the glare of the afternoon, the inside was pitch black apart from the myriad phantom spears that stabbed down from small holes in the ceiling and walls that smote the darkness, given form by the smoke that drifted up from what seemed hundreds of scented candles placed around the room and from a kitchen fire in an adjoining room.

  The pallet had been placed upon the top of a table in the centre the room beyond. My eyes were steadily becoming more accustomed to the half-light and I could see in an instant that the bier was empty. Before I could turn a powerful arm grabbed me around the chest and I felt the sharp tip of a blade placed at my throat.

  “Ar arw qui oushak eevthrei!” I put my hands up to show I wasn’t armed. I silently berate d myself for not bringing a weapon with me. Fancy a monk having to arm himself to attend a sick person. These were strange days indeed.

  “Id oosh quoollu isht ‘Tashijalenjrinpoche’?”

  “What?” I asked.

  She turned me around and pushed me into wall with incredible strength;

  strength that I had not known a woman could possess.

  “Id oosh quoollu isht ‘Tashijalenjrinpoche’?” She asked me the same question again more slowly and thinking I could hear my name in the thickly-accented and almost too-deep voice I answered, “Yes, yes, I am Tashi Jalen Rinpoche.”

  She released me, took a step backward and immediately knelt before me, head bowed, one knee up, the other on the ground, arms extended with hands upturned, the dagger laid bare across one upturned palm.

  “Forgive me, Liege. I have tracked you over thousands of eons and here I find you, at the end of your age.”

  She leaped up and backward as Rogel and two others burst in through the flap, Rogel holding his cudgel and the others, seemingly villagers, holding clubs.

  “Get away from him!” yelled Rogel and took a step towards her.

  In a move faster than anything I had ever seen, she somehow had an arm around Rogel and the knife at his throat. Rogel was a fierce proponent of the martial arts, strong, swift and cunning:on a good day Dorje’s equal. But with her incredible strength and speed he could do no more than flail his arms and look askance at the rest of us.

  “Quool isht ar vwreif thei!”

  I could not understand her but took it to mean that one further step from anyone and he was dead. Taking a lead, I held up my hands and clasped them in prayer over my forehead and bade the others to follow.

  “We will not harm you”, I said. “You startled us and Rogel was protecting me. Put down your blade mistress.”

  She hesitated, eyes darting from me to the armed retainers from our party, who looked so scared they would have been totally ineffectual anyway. “I will do as you command,” she said and released him. He staggered back to our side of the room and I caught him before he fell. I said to the two that had come in with him, “Take him outside for some air and make sure no-one disturbs us. And continue getting things ready for the journey back!”

  They nodded, eager to be gone. I turned and faced this dangerous and enigmatic creature. She was half a head taller than me and could barely stand straight in the low-ceilinged room.

  “Who are you?” I slowly ventured, studying her. I first wanted to ask what are you? but I knew the answer would only confuse me more than I was already.

  “I am known in many lands and have many names. But you above all should know my name for when we meet.” She looked at me, studying my face, trying almost to look through me, it seemed.“Is it really you? You are shorter than I remember and look so different. But that is perhaps from the ravages of afuture you have yet to endure.”

  I didn’t understand a thing she had just said but let her continue.

  “My name. In my language it will be hard for you to say. The closest I can concoct in yours is Yabshipanrinzinwangmo.” She said it again, breaking it up into slow syllables. “If you find that too difficult, what would you name me?”

  I thought for a moment. With the bluish look to her skin she almost looked mechish, but she breathed the air, and in look, movement and proportion she was exquisitely human. I then thought of a fragment of an ancient tale I once read of a land of warriors where a lord of men had a falcon called Lady of Steel. It was only a fragment of an extremely ancient text that we had studied and I was sorry I could not have read the whole story, for their warrior’s code of duty and loyalty reminded me very much of the Sera Ngari.

  “I name you, Tetsuko.” She smiled, knowingly it seemed, and nodded her head slightly. I almost felt like I had just passed some kind of test. I clasped my hands in prayer above my forehead and bowed to her. “And I am called Tashi.”

  The cool breeze that stirred the fallen leaves upon the snow-covered floor of the orchard and gently whipped my woollen cloak about me did nothing to ease the trial of that afternoon walk. Clouds raced across the sky, intermittently blocking out the sun and it seemed time ran forward at an amazing pace so that the broken shadows lengthened and the day waned before we seemed even to have walked a mile. Tetsuko’s story was amazing to me, not least because it was too fantastic to be true. In fact, it was absurd, insane even. A comedy of whimsical and grotesque events that had led her inexorably to this time, to this place, to me.

  “I have seen things you wouldn’t believe”, she said. “ All of creation at war and the constellations afire with pain and death.”

  She looked off into the distance. “On his cliffs stood Albion’s wrathful Prince. A dragon form clashing his scales at midnight he arose, and flamed red meteors round the land.

  “I’ve seen the flaming red.” She looked at me. “And I’ve seen the terrible forces of night; the unstoppable hosts of the Black Land swarming through all the layers of the multiverse, their attack ships arrayed with such power that the planet-bound refugees can do little more than huddle in bunkers as their planet casually breaks up beneath them, sending them into the void in silence and death.”

  She told me about the planetary systems mined with black-holes, the starships that were the last defence of their masters floating listlessly on fire at the edge of creation.

  She told me about the end of all things.

  “But why? Is all this happening now? At this moment?”

  “Yes, I have just come from that and to me my friends and family are either dead or hopelessly scattered through time and space; dying, maybe, while we walk this grove in peace. But to you it is but a shadow of a dream, a nightmare of which you and your race is blissfully ignorant.

  “But it has started. The son of Naraka has almost completed his preparations and his generals have begun their long march from their dark fortresses towards the light of this realm.”

  I looked at her as though she were mad.She still hadn’t told me why any of this was happening but head was too full of the wrongness of everything we had been through to ask articulate questions.

  “We have heard nothing of this – are you sure?” I remembered the Lord Regent’s words and knew that my heart denied what my head had now in some sense pieced together.

  “Who do you think has spilled blood keeping the borders of this realm safe while you have buried your heads in prayer scrolls and books and all the frivolities of youth? Where I am from, we have already lost. It is here, now, that I must make my stand.”

  I looked
at her but did not speak. She had at least answered one of my questions. As if reading my mind she looked at me and smiled a warm and forgiving smile.

  “Yes, I am human.” She could see the way I looked at her and regarded her bluish appearance. “And, no. You must understand what life is like whither I come. The nature of the universe is changed from now. My survival, and that of my people, has ever been reliant upon that union …”

  She cut herself short and gazed down at the ground. I looked questioningly at her but she continued walking and said no more. After twenty paces or so I decided to change tack.

  “Thank you for saving us that night from the wolves.”

  She looked at me. “You are welcome.” She walked on.

  Obviously I was not going to be able to ask the hundred burning questions I had about how she had known and what was she doing in the inn, watching us, and where did she disappear to after I had turned up on the ice? I had found her now and knew I would have plenty of time to find the answers I needed to make some sense out that night. Instead, I asked another burning question I had.

  “What was that black creature you fought in the wadi, the one I somehow destroyed with the energy weapon?”

  “The Cimmerii they are called, the people of darkness, or in your histories the Dasyus: His followers. You have looked into the very face of death. What you saw was a fragment of their world. It is the land of Pretas, the realm of hungry ghosts; the dry land. The city of Dis, its only city, lay at its centre; a place you would never wish to see.”

  I gave her aquestioning look and she said, “You know of what I speak. You have your world, they have there’s. And only occasionally can they creep into our dreams, when in the depths of sleep the veil between the worlds is thinnest, or possibly where the human mind is more open to what is beyond that veil.

  “The sorcerers, witches and dream-tellers of the ancient world knew the paths to tread and could even call the souls of men back from their slumber for a brief time. But it takes a greater power than that to give unto them what they need to enter this world in physical form.

  “But this one was different. I was unprepared. I had never thought to face one in this realm of men. You saw what it did to me. It had a strong hold on this realm. Those sickles carried death in each fingertip, death from the dry land, that with each cut froze my skin and drained my life. I am lucky to be here. You saved my life.”