Wasn’t this how everything started?
* * *
Tiger wasn’t the only one in need of Excedrin. Banner wasn’t quite himself. He wasn’t sure who he was, but he felt... different. Had a high-pitched ringing in his head and a headache. There was also something bothering him “upstairs,” like a sinus problem, but of the mind.
And he kept seeing... shapes... he kept seeing things at the edge of his vision, but each time he turned... gone. Nothing there. And one moment he swore he’d heard the snort and stomp of a horse (as silly as that sounded in a courtroom), but when he turned toward the sound found a guard had merely scuffed a chair across the floor.
When this trial was over he was seriously considering retirement.
* * *
Sheila simply could not concentrate. She knew it was bound to happen... but what troubled her most was that it’d happened so quickly. One day they were doing great—and the next?
History.
Had it been something she’d done, something she’d said?
No, Kacey’d insisted, it had just been that she needed to sort out her life, once and for all. It hadn’t been about anything she’d done.
But, had she, in all truth, moved too fast and Kacey was just being polite?
Or maybe it really wasn’t about her at all. After all, she had left her family—child and husband (key word: husband, not wife). There were other dynamics going on, she was sure, of which she simply wasn’t a consideration. This wasn’t about her... it was about Kacey.
Sheila looked to her hands. They were shaking—her whole body trembled—and she didn’t know how long she could stand it. She’d been dumped before, but this time was different. Every time she looked over to her, she tried not to show her hurt, her love, but failed every time. The tears... she could cry an ocean of tears if she allowed herself... but no, she couldn’t have that. She was a professional. But, this was pure torture, sitting in the same room with her, living in the same universe with her, yet no longer feeling the warmth of her skin... the warmth and tenderness of her palm wrapped within hers, the kiss of her lips. They were meant to be together, but now they were, once again (and why did this one thought, above all else, feel like such a death sentence?... departing.
Splitting up.
That one thought brought on such intense, soul-killing feelings of abandonment and she wasn’t sure she could handle it.
They were meant to be together, yet Kacey just didn’t seem to feel the same way about it—or was doing a great job in hiding it. She had to know... had expressed similar feelings when they’d been together... touring the islands... in the restaurant—how could she so abruptly and totally turn everything off like that?
Cast it all away, like giving away the shirt off her back?
Sheila brought a tissue to her eyes, lightly dabbing around her mascara.
How could she do this to her again?
Again?
* * *
“Answer the court, please, sir,” D.A. Benét asked, “Are you also known by another name?”
“Answer the question, Mr. Tiger, and I remind you you are under oath,” Stoker warned.
Tiger wiggled nervously in the stand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Benét held up the documents. “Does not the name Susan Sibley mean anything to you?”
Tiger stared back at her, jaw clenched.
“Or how about the offices of Meyers Financial,” Benét continued, checking her documentation, “on the thirty-seventh floor of the Pall Meadows building?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
Tiger had difficulty breathing. Gripped the chair. His mind reeled as the wind in his head wailed to sirocco proportions. His sister? Here? How had she been—
“I don’t believe you... I’ve had no contact with her, since—”
“Are you not, Mr. Tiger—or should I say... Mr. Wallace T. Bryce—brother to Susan Sibley, one of the suspects who’d also been arrested—”
“Counselor,” Stoker said, “I remind you you are this man’s defense.”
“Your Honor, I ask the court to bear with me. I’m trying to establish Mr. Bryce’s state of mind, that there is no cult nor conspiracy on the part of my clients.”
“Tread carefully, counselor.”
Benét nodded to Judge Stoker in acknowledgement. She turned back to Tiger.
“Tiger... is it fair characterization that you’d fallen upon hard times?”
“Yes,” Tiger said.
“Wanted—needed—to get away from all the stress of having been a successful broker?”
“Yes.”
“Tiger... you still hear voices and other noises in your head?”
Tiger paused, then said, “Yes.”
“Daily? Throughout the day?”
“Yes, every minute; they never leave me alone. They’re there now.”
Benét nodded. “And you emphatically state that, aside from your sister, you do not know any of the victims?”
“N-no, I do not know any of the victims.”
“No more questions, your Honor,” said, returning to her seat.
“Mr. Gordon?” Stoker asked.
“Mr. Bryce, is it? Well, how very interesting, though not entirely correct,” Prosecutor Harry Gordon said. Tiger sat visibly flustered in his witness stand. “I have it on good authority that you also knew a Stephen Acres, who’d been one of your managers. One of the many with whom you’d beaten and cut up with your bottle that night in Safe Harbor.”
“Objection, your Honor!” Benét said. “I saw no such reference in the documentation!”
“Your Honor, perhaps Ms. Benét missed it, but that name is among the victim list,” he said, holding up a document with the name on it in one hand, the “Important—Rush” folder in the other. He brought it up to Stoker.
“Overruled,” Stoker declared.
Benét sat back down, flipping through her documentation.
“Sir, whatever your name, why did you skip out on life during that Pall Meadows plane crash? With all the missing and dead who had no choice—paid for it with their lives—you chose to sneak out. Why was that, Mr. Bryce? Did you have something to hide? People to kill?”
“Your Honor, move to strike!” Benét said, getting to her feet.
“Withdrawn,” Harry said, turning away from Tiger. “Tell us, Mr. Bryce, why did you run away... and why commit murder... leading your sister and the others to our quiet little harbor town, which will now forever carry the stain of your carnage?”
Harry turned back to Tiger.
Tiger was no longer listening to Gordon’s pleas for culpability. Inside Tiger, aka Wallace Theodore Bryce’s mind, was a flurry of confusion... wind... thundering hooves... murder...
His sister?
How had she possibly gotten involved?
And she’d killed herself? Taken her own life?
Why had he killed those people?
Had his sister—whom he hadn’t had any contact with since the crash—really also been a part of it—only to later have the guts to take her own life rather than face the inevitable? Why couldn’t he have killed himself?
What had become of him?
Of the successful man he’d once been? Of the amount of power he’d once wielded? Of the battles he’d fought...
Harry stood before the witness box, folder in hand.
“Mr. Bryce... I submit the following: in 2010 you had an affair with Mr. Acres’ young wife, Terri. I submit Mr. Acres become aware of the affair and was poised to ax you from the company. When Mrs. Acres was confronted with this knowledge by her husband, she’d told you to take a hike. I....”
Tiger sat dumb and numb, nervously twitching as Harry read off the litany of acts he’d committed in a whole nother—different—life, one to which he was no longer attached. He no longer knew that man any longer, that him. Tiger slid his feet around on the floor of the box among the sand... piles of it that were spread around at the foot of the witness b
ox and accumulated in its corners. There was sand in his shoes. Grass also grew down there, beneath his feet...
The noises were too much, the questions... too much.
“Don’t you hear it?” Tiger blurted out, his voice strained with fear. He leaned forward, grabbing the witness box’s wooden handrail. “Don’t you hear them?”
Gordon looked to Tiger.
“Hear what, Mr. Bryce?”
Harry snorted and coughed, tried to clear his sinuses; caught scent of an odd smell to the air.
Camphor?
“The wind! Oh, my God, the wind,” Tiger said. “And the thunder... the-the pounding hooves. They’re coming... all of them... they’re coming again, and there’s nothing we can do about it! We tried, oh, Lord, how we tried, but there’s really no way to stop them, I see that, now...”
“Please, if this is some insanity—”
Tiger shot to his feet, wild-eyed, and grabbed at his clothing.
“I-I need to get out of here... they’re going to kill us... I can’t let that happen—not again!”
Bailiffs were already closing in on Tiger before Stoker called for them. Stoker went for his gavel, when he, too, became confused, gavel poised in mid air. His eyes glazed over as he stared out across the court room. Sand blew across his bench, and the smell of ancient lands permeated the courtroom...
* * *
A strange, sparse grass had sprung up across the entire floor. Drifts of dirt and sand piled up against benches, tables, and doorjambs. A bitter, desiccating wind cut through the room, evaporating all humidity.
And a gigantic presence descended upon the court like a heavy cloak.
Stoker slowly came to his feet behind the bench... arms to his sides... his mouth open in an expression of truncated bewilderment. What he felt was curiously familiar... familiar-like-Enoch-familiar... but it wasn’t Enoch. This was a far different entity that had taken up residence inside him... someone far more... earthy. Coarse. Someone... something... more commanding... imposing... intimidating.
Stoker felt no threat. He searched out the presence, and before he knew it—
“I HAVE RETURNED.”
The voice that issued forth from Stoker thundered in a booming, authoritative, tone. A voice vastly unlike his own filled the room. Stoker was no longer Stoker. Stoker had become something much, much, more...
Legs spread powerfully apart, the entity-as-Stoker planted his fists firmly into his hips and took up a new, confident stance behind the bench. The entity-as-Stoker surveyed the once-court room as if it were his empire. He glared at all present, not only those in the jury box, but the man in the witness stand, the men and women of the gallery. He sneered and narrowed his eyes. Recognized each and every face that stared back at him.
Chuckling mightily, he declared, “I SEE I STILL COMMAND FEAR IN ALL OF YOU—THAT IS GOOD!” and broke into uproarious laughter that shook the mortal foundations of all present...
Chapter Twenty-Five
1
Out of the mists of Time had emerged a land of sand and grass, steppe and mountain. And from its desolate, windswept barrens had come a blue-gray wolf and a fallow deer. Together they had traveled across an inland sea and camped upon the source of the Onon River, whereupon their first son was born. Dynasties had come and gone... empires won and lost. The eternal struggle for that which one did not have continued to rage among clans and tribes that roamed the endless pastoral and desert steppes...
* * *
... a brave warrior hunting with his falcon along the Onon had spied a couple traveling alone on the steppe. Seeing the woman beautiful, the warrior had ridden back to his tribe, beseeching his two brothers to accompany him...
And from this history had been birthed another from a stolen wife and a brave warrior. A child with a fire in his eyes, a clot of blood the size of a knucklebone die clutched in his right hand, and the destiny of Heaven’s Will imprinted upon his soul. He had been given the name Temujin, and had risen to a power and grandeur not seen then nor since. A reluctant warrior king, later enthroned as Genghis Khan, he had united the Mongol people under one identity. Ruthless and wise, genius and mighty, he had commanded a land from Yellow to Aral Sea. With wisdom and purpose, and no thought to greed he did reign. A man of his time possessed of great energy and method. And upon his death, a thousand horsemen had he ordered to trample asunder his burial site until it could no longer be found... where it still eludes all who seek it to this very day...
2
The entity-as-Stoker stood before the court that was no longer a court. There no longer resided familiar marble flooring, nor rich mahogany paneling. Now were dun-colored Mongolian grasses and drifts of sand piled up against bench and table legs. Along walls and behind Stoker’s bench now clustered Scots, Siberian pines, and larches whispering in hot, desiccating winds that swept throughout the room-that-was-no-longer-a-room. What had been benches, tables, and seats, had become hillocks, rocks, and open grassland steppe... a river running through it, above which shone a brilliant, deep blue sky. The musty scents of dirt and grasses filled the air.
Yet each person knew that... in some dimension... they still resided in a court room...
The entity-as-Stoker stood before them, nodding and silently smiling ear to ear as if overseeing troops. Tiger, the jury, lawyers, and those in the gallery still saw Stoker as the judge in chamber robes—but also in the leather accoutrements of a mighty Mongol warrior. On his left arm was strapped a dagger and small shield, and to his side a saber and quiver of arrows, a bow slung across his back. His gaze penetrated all, his presence beside each person in the court room-turned-steppe, and in their minds burst images of an ancient land and a powerful warrior’s rise to unparalleled distinction. They experienced his father stealing his mother from another. His mother birthing him into the world. Experienced one of his brothers as he stole from Temujin, and how Temujin had later killed him for that. Experienced Temujin’s strength... his marriage, and his own wife’s history-repeating kidnapping and her subsequent rescue by Temujin; were with him at his kuriltai, when he was proclaimed Genghis Khan, master of all Mongolia... and lived with him though each and every one of his conquests. Discovered that Genghis’s actions were the results of insults and wrongs against his people, rather than mere efforts at primal and materialistic expansion and exploitation...
* * *
Hogelun Ujin, late of the Olkhunugud people, dustily rattled along in her cart, unexpectedly jarred back to waking consciousness. She’d daydreamed of a people—tall and round-eyed—who lived in a far-off land and were arguing about one who sat on a bench before them. She shot her hands out of the loose-fitting folds of her garments, grabbing the sides of the cart.
It had all been so real!
She’d really felt as if she’d grown up and lived among those people—herself tall and round-eyed—and lightly stroked her face with the backs of her fingertips.
It was actually quite frightening, now that she looked back on it. She shivered; tried to remember other details from the dream, like her name (she actually remembered it). It was something like Kurashi... Kraiji—no... Ka-cey! She’d remembered it! It was the most real dream she’d ever had. She’d had a family—a husband and one child—and there was something about another woman. There was something very familiar about her. These people lived in a hazy, indistinct land, surrounded by vast quantities of water, and they’d all gathered together in a kuriltai, in a very large ger. She’d never seen anything like it before—it was truly massive, as tall as a mountain and filled with many, many, people-filled layers...
Shaking it off, Hogelun looked to Yeke Chiledu, her new husband, a nobleman from the Merkid. She smiled. He rode just ahead on horseback. He was a fine man, and would make a good husband. Maybe her vision foretold of good things to come—she had had a child, in her dream...
Regrasping her reins, Hogelun lightly tapped the horse. On one of her fingers she wore a ring her new husband had given her, and remembered there had ev
en been something about that in her vision, too.
But as she settled her mind back into her present, and looked out over the steppes before them, there was something else... something dreadfully ominous lurking in the background of her dream... something that she intuitively felt had a connection to her—Hogelun (why did her name suddenly sound so funny to her?)—here. She wrinkled her face. She would ask Tengri for guidance...
* * *
Harry-as-Kioshu peered out across the water as he stood fast in the heavily tossed-about fishing boat. There were many of them, and they’d all just left Takashima. The weather was quickly worsening, but they must not let the invaders triumph!
As Kioshu looked out across the expanse of dark, roiling water that seemed at once familiar yet make-believe, he couldn’t shake the nagging images of that faraway land. Again. He must remain focused in his duty to Japan. He shook his head.
But wasn’t he supposed to be in a trial? Wasn’t he a law-yer? A... law-yer...?
If he was supposed to be at a trial (a murder trial), how could he be standing in a tossed-about fishing boat, inhaling salty air and fighting stiff, storm-driven winds? Battling an invading force? Never had he seen so many ships at one time...
What was law-yer?
The term “Armani” entered his mind, and he felt it had to do with attire. He fingered his metal and leather armor. Chided himself for behaving as a child. He was here, in the ocean, standing in the belly of a commandeered fishing boat preparing to do battle...
* * *
Fisher-as-Bogorchu milked his mares, when out from the distance rode a lone stranger. Bogorchu stood to meet the man, who asked, “Have you seen any silver-white geldings come this way?” The young man on horseback, powerfully built and imposing, had a fire in his eyes hard to ignore.
“Yes,” Bogorchu replied, feeling a strangeness to his voice. “This morning I saw men ride through here... eight horses that sound like the ones you seek. Come.”
Bogorchu walked the stranger to the tracks. He felt a familiarity with what he was doing... something called plice and invest’gichon.
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