Tears sprang to his eyes. "It's terrible," he groaned, pleading with his eyes. "I can't stand it."
"You can," Tagore said coldly. "And you will. And one day perhaps you will understand where a man's strength lies."
He turned his back and walked away.
The next day Justin sought out the old teacher. His hand was wrapped in cloth, and there was no pride in the blue eyes. "Please help me to understand," he said.
Tagore gave him a roll of coarse rice paper. "Kneel before the tree and crumple this paper into a ball," he said.
Justin looked up. "And then?"
"And then smooth the paper flat. When you have finished, begin again, crumpling the paper and smoothing it on the floor of the Great Hall. You are not to speak during the task. You are not to move from your place. You are not to come to me again. Go."
Trembling with anger and shame, Justin took the rice paper to the Great Hall and knelt before the Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms. From his position on the floor, the tree looked once again as it had when he was a boy, forbidding, darkly grand. The tree where the spirit of Brahma lived.
As Tagore had instructed, he crumpled the paper into a ball and then smoothed it flat on the stone floor. It was no effort. It did not even pain his damaged hand. The exercise required no skill, no strength, no endurance. As the monks passed, unseeing, in front of him to gather for devotions, he flushed with humiliation. Those others were to bow to him, he thought angrily. They always had. It was not his place to stay on his knees in full view of his followers, performing a task unfit for the lowliest chela. He was Patanjali. He was the Wearer of the Blue Hat.
Tagore walked by him without a glance. The old man has lost his senses, he thought, hating the stooped figure who shuffled down the long hall. Justin began to rise. There would be a confrontation, and it would be now.
The moment his knees left the ground, the old man whirled around and fixed him with a stare so cold and unforgiving that it felt like a dagger entering Justin's heart. Involuntarily, he sank to the floor again.
The old man was a magician. A mind reader. An evil, fanatical old lunatic.
Who had given him the body of a god.
Stifling his rage, he crumpled the paper again.
The sun set and rose again. And set. Food was brought to him once a day. He ate alone, in silence, kneeling in the Great Hall. At night, one of the monks took him to his cell, now cleared of the spiky rocks, and Justin lay down on the bare stone floor, trying to hold back his tears of shame. Autumn gave way to winter, and when the small doorway to the hall opened, gusts of windblown snow showered the torches like sparks. In spring, he heard the songs of birds outside as he knelt in his small spot, crumpling and smoothing the rolls of paper that were brought to him every few days.
Another year passed. He would never be strong again, he was sure. Tagore had given him the useless task to perform in order to take away his strength—the strength he had spent a lifetime of discipline acquiring.
To counteract his failing muscles, he began to use the time in his cell at night to exercise. Alone, fighting off sleep, he breathed and stretched, working one muscle against the other. He worked a crack in the wall until a small rock broke loose. With this he chipped away at the wall, night after night. After a few months he had loosened a section of rock and broken it into small pieces, which he knotted into his robes. Using the weights as he had as a child, he performed his exercises, teaching himself how to move again. Now, when sleep came, Justin welcomed it.
He grew accustomed to silence. Each morning he focused all his attention on the short walk from his cell. His legs fairly danced with the pleasure of walking. Kneeling before the ever-present paper, he began to observe details of the tree that he had never before noticed. Minute pockets of sap formed on the bark during the autumn season; in spring, the blackish trunk took on subtle shades of green. He grew to tell the time of day by the shades of light and dark cast by shadows in the hall. Each grain of rice he ate became a new experience for him, and for the first time he tasted a variety of flavors in the food he had once regarded as bland. He felt the response of his organs to every breath he took, every miniscule shiver of excitement.
Gradually his world, which he had thought was shrunken into one odious task, had exploded into a thousand universes, each bursting with experience. Suddenly, he found that there was barely enough time in each day to sift through all the wonders that entered his mind. The world was not Rashimpur. It was immense. And it was tiny. He meant nothing to it. And everything.
As he was smoothing out his paper, one of the monks bade Justin to follow him outside. The beauty of the sunset that melted around Amne Xachim was achingly beautiful. His nostrils filled with the cold air, and he shivered with its sweetness. His mind reeled with the thousands of sounds and songs of the mountains, all filled with breathtaking wonder. He stood on the edge of the cliff where he had stood on the day of his coronation. Once again, he felt power surge through him as it had never done since. He touched the amulet on his chest, and again he heard the ancient music he had heard on the day he met Tagore. It had been mysterious then, unknowable. But now he heard it, and knew distinctly what the music was. It was the sound of the wind, of the birds, of the still water in the lake, of the movement of the earth and its births and deaths. It was the sound of present and past and eternity. It was being. It was life.
This time he did not stop the tears that came to his eyes. Never had he thought he would see anything so lovely, hear anything so beautiful, and yet the sights and sounds that intoxicated him were things he had seen all his life. Tagore had been right. It was all magic, every molecule of air.
Another figure walked silently to the cliffside and stood beside Justin.
"Come inside," the old man said.
In the Great Hall, Justin slipped wordlessly to his place on the floor, but Tagore took his hand and raised him up.
"Pull your hand down the bark of the tree," he said.
Justin obeyed without hesitation. The pain would come, but it would leave. The tree would wound him, but that wound would heal. And even during the worst of the pain, he knew, the wind outside would still sing. The sun would still set. Amne Xachim would continue to live, and so would his immortal soul. He feared nothing.
With all his strength he pressed against the black bark of the tree, seeing its tiny sap tears with his new eyes, savoring its thousand hidden colors, feeling its ancient strength beneath his hand. In his mind, he joined with the tree, became the tree itself. In one swift motion, he swept his bare palm down the bark.
The bark fell in a strip at his feet.
Aghast, he stared at the peeled-away bark and at the white stripe that ran the length of the tree. He looked at his hand. There was not a mark on it.
He turned to Tagore. The old man was kneeling on the hard stone floor, bowing to him. Justin reached down and helped the old man to his feet.
"Do you remember?" Tagore asked gently. "When I first brought you here? You wanted magic. To show it to you, I placed a rock in a stream."
"I remember," Justin said. They were the first words he had spoken in three years.
"Which is stronger?" Tagore asked, lifting the crumpled sheet of paper from the floor. "The rock or the water?"
Justin knelt and bowed to him.
By the time Justin Gilead was twenty-six years old, he had learned every lesson but one.
In that year, he learned how to kill.
Chapter Thirteen
The dreams had grown worse.
Through each step of Justin's development, the strange yet familiar face of the man he had come to know as the Prince of Death had entered Justin's world as he slept, bringing with him the destruction of Justin's life. He told Tagore about the dreams, of the fire and destruction he saw, of his own death and burial. But Tagore told him only that the will of Brahma would prevail and that dreams were only dreams.
"But I've seen other things. The tree. I knew about the Wearer of the Blue H
at. You believed me then."
"Yes," Tagore had said, and dismissed him.
But the old man had taken the diamond left to Justin and buried it deep within the walls of the Great Hall of Rashimpur. "This is yours," he said. "If you leave this place, you must take the diamond with you. Break it into small pieces and sell them. The diamond will keep you until you are able to return here."
Justin watched sadly as the old monk sealed the stone into the wall. "My dreams are true, aren't they," he said.
"I do not know. Only the Wearer of the Blue Hat can know."
The dreams weighed more heavily on Justin than did the rocks he carried as a boy. At first, the Prince of Death had visited him rarely. Each time, it had taken Justin days to recover. But now the dreams recurred every night. Every night the man whose features he knew by heart appeared, bringing with him the soft, gray curling smoke of endless pain. Before, he had come alone; but recently the man in Justin's dreams was led by a woman. She was beautiful and ageless, robed in crimson, with jewels in her black hair. She, too, was someone Justin had seen before. The Dorje Pagma, abbess of the Yamdrok Lake monastery in Tibet, the one called Varja, the goddess. In the dreams Varja pointed the way to Rashimpur, for the Prince of Death to walk forth.
He stopped sleeping. The nights came and went, each spent looking out the narrow slotted window of his cell. After a week, he wrapped himself in a woolen cloak and spent the cold nights outdoors, keeping vigil on the rock face of Amne Xachim.
Tagore went to him.
"He is coming," Justin said. "You do not believe me, but I know this. The abbess, the one you call Varja, has shown him the way."
Tagore did not answer for a long moment. "I believe you," he said at last. "I have always believed you."
Justin turned his blue-circled eyes from the darkness of the mountains to the old man.
"Sadika, your predecessor, prophesied it himself," Tagore said quietly. "You are to be the last Wearer of the Blue Hat. The ages of Rashimpur are to end with you. I could not tell you earlier, because it would have frightened you. Forgive me, Patanjali."
Justin stared, stupefied. "That can't be true," he said.
"Long before your birth, Sadika told of the trials we would all face after his death." He wrapped his cloak around him tighter. "He, too, saw the flames of destruction that were to engulf Rashimpur." Tagore sighed. "And he, too, saw the figure of Varja leading the way."
"Then why did you invite her here?" Justin asked, the despair in him welling. "Why didn't you kill her before she started?"
"My son, Varja already knew of Rashimpur. And we do not kill out of fear. That is for the weak. Such an act would have destroyed us far more completely than it would have hurt her. No, Justin. Varja has her destiny, just as you have yours."
"And the man? The Prince of Death?"
"He, too, must live out his life according to Brahma's great plan."
Justin spoke bitterly. "The great plan to kill us all."
There was silence. "Not all," Tagore said softly. Then he asked the drawn young man next to him, "What is karma?"
Justin thought. Karma, he knew, was everything. Good and evil, incarnation after incarnation. It was a man's spirit, created by his actions. The obstacles and joys he experiences in a present lifetime, carved inexorably from the previous one. Karma was destiny, at once fixed and changeable, understandable yet beyond reach. The beginning and the end. Past and future, together in the present.
Justin struggled with the answer. At last he said, "Karma is the circle."
Tagore nodded slowly. "You must allow the circle to complete itself."
"I don't understand," Justin said.
"The man, the one you call the Prince of Death, is as much a part of your life as I am. As necessary to you as the air you breathe. You can no more deny yourself the pain he brings than you can the peace brought by Amne Xachim. I told you once that your life would be the most difficult of mortal lives. I have tried to train you here to prepare you for that life, for it has not yet begun. It is your karma to meet this man. As it is your karma to vanquish him or be vanquished by him."
"I will kill him the moment I see him."
"You are forbidden by ancient law to kill except in defense of a life in immediate danger. If you kill this man now, you will break the circle of your karma. And the snake within your circle, whose power rests in the amulet you carry, will remain forever coiled. It is not time yet."
"Should I let him destroy us first?" Justin said with a cruel edge to his voice.
"You will not decide the matter," Tagore said.
Justin looked deeply into the old teacher's eyes. "Tagore," he said, "you have been more than a father to me. I respect you above all men, and I love you. But this time you are wrong. I rule over Rashimpur, and I will decide. The man will die."
"When it is time."
"And when will it be time?" Justin asked angrily.
"You will know. Until then you are forbidden."
Justin turned away from him and sat once again facing the black night mountains.
"It is not I who forbid you," Tagore said, rising. "It is the karma of Patanjali, and the will of Brahma."
Justin did not answer.
"Farewell, my son." Tagore said, and left.
*~*~*
The next morning, just after dawn, a procession of soldiers appeared on the narrow footpath at the base of Amne Xachim. Justin watched them in silence for a moment. Then, checking to make sure that he wasn't seen by the other monks at Rashimpur, he stole away, alone, scaling down the cliffside to wait for them among the rocks.
Too far away for the untrained eyes of the marching men to see him, Justin stole toward the group, watching as they made their slow progress up the mountain. They climbed along the narrow mountain route as Justin had as a boy—wearily, with painstaking effort. The first time Justin walked to Rashimpur, the journey had taken four days. Now he could run it easily in less than six hours.
The men were more than a day’s journey from Rashimpur when Justin reached them, careful to conceal his movements and stay out of their sight. There were twelve of them, dressed in some sort of military uniform, their long overcoats crusted with dirt from what had obviously been a long overland journey through the mountain passes on foot. Justin studied them carefully, searching for the face he had seen so often in his dreams. But none resembled the familiar stranger who had come to him night after tortured night since childhood.
The soldiers stopped for food and rest at high noon, laying down the heavy backpacks and weapons they carried. They spoke in Russian, but what they said puzzled Justin.
One of them complained about the endless journey, and others joined in, calling their group the losers in a wager. Even when the leader of the group demanded silence, he did so in a halfhearted way, his disgust at his position clear.
Justin watched the men for some time. A couple of the soldiers dozed. Without a sound, Justin made his move, bursting into the small encampment and removing their weapons in one swift, continuous motion. A young soldier scrambled for his rifle. Effortlessly, Justin kicked it out of his hands as he reached for the leader of the troop and pinned him to the ground.
"Where is he?" Justin shouted, sickened at his own actions. His karma, he knew, was already lost. By attacking first, he had violated the most basic laws of his people. But Rashimpur would not be destroyed. He vowed it, and if that vow meant the loss of his soul, then so be it. "Where is the one who leads you?"
No one answered. Two of the soldiers looked at each other, apparently surprised that the young monk with his shaved head and flowing yellow robes could speak Russian. The officer in Justin's arms struggled to free himself. He yanked the man's arm harder, and the officer yelped.
"Where?" he demanded. "I swear before you that I will kill every one of you if you keep your silence."
The soldiers stood in awed bewilderment. Most of them were young, Justin noticed, still young enough to be called boys. They shivered as they
watched him, their eyes round and frightened. One of them, the youngest-looking member of the group, glanced upward, behind Justin toward the plateau where Rashimpur stood. He swallowed hard and blinked.
Justin didn't move. Something was wrong, he knew it. Very wrong.
"You will not decide," Tagore had said of the destruction of their home. And then the machine-gun fire came from overhead, punctuating the still air from the cliff face of Rashimpur. The guns, mixed with the screams and wails of the dying, the terrible noise, sending down fumes of acrid smoke. The boy whose eyes Justin had followed were downcast in shame.
Justin whirled, the soldier still locked in his grip, and he saw it. Thick gray curls of smoke were pouring out of the doorway leading to the Great Hall. The vision had come to pass, after all. Rashimpur was burning.
"No!" he shouted, tossing the soldier away like a rag and darting at full speed up the stony mountainside. Shots were fired behind him, but he paid no attention to the soldiers below now. The only thought in his mind was to reach the monastery before it was too late. To reach Rashimpur and to find the Prince of Death.
The hours of running up the colossal steepness of Amne Xachim seemed like days. His heart pounding, he forced his legs harder, willing himself upward.
The Prince of Death would not escape him. He would be there, waiting, and Justin would see that he died for daring to invade the monastery. He hoped that the other monks had not already killed him. For he would be there, Justin knew. He felt the presence of the man as surely as if he were standing in front of him.
He approached by the small lake to the east of the cliff face and dived into the water. He scaled the final cliff of the ascent in bounds, thrusting his hands into the rock and pulling himself up, choking on the heat and smoke that poured out of the rock face above, his ears ringing with the cries that faded into a silence that was even more pernicious than the sounds of death.
At last he stood on the plateau. His teeth clenched, tasting the bitterness in his throat, he made his way silently through the rank smoke to the doorway. His face collapsed as he took in the most horrifying spectacle of his life.
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