Deep Fire Rising

by Du Brul, Jack

  They continued down the volcanic tube, their way lit by bulbs strung along the ceiling. Tisa suspected this was an alternate route to the oracle chamber, the subterranean cavern where centuries earlier devotees of Zhu Zhanji had constructed the oracle based on designs that dated from long before the scholar took possession of Admiral He’s historical treasures. The air in the tunnel turned warmer the farther they descended, fueled by the earth’s fiery heart.

  At last they came to an open area that had been finished off with elegantly paneled walls and a carpet-strewn wood floor. The room was furnished with ornate sofas and chairs covered in watered silk. Glittering chandeliers hung from the coffered ceiling like crystal stalactites. The architectural details of the handcarved moldings were lost under heavy layers of gilt. Through an open doorway Tisa could see a bedroom dominated by a massive four-poster bed. It was only the lack of windows that betrayed the space as something other than a room fit for royalty. She’d never seen this part of the monastery and didn’t understand what it was. Luc indicated she should go into the bedroom.

  The chamber was much dimmer, shadowed and ominous. There was a gamey odor in the air, like meat on the verge of rotting. Sensing a presence, she stilled her breathing. Someone was on the bed, hidden by darkness. Her heart began to hammer and her palms turned slick. As Tisa approached the bed, she couldn’t still her quivering lips. She knew whom she was about to see. The rasping breathing that first caught her attention stopped suddenly and the figure on the bed let loose with a crowlike caw.

  Tisa’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a scream. She slowly made her way closer, angling across the room so light could reach the figure leaning against the headboard. Behind her Luc adjusted a light switch and the level of illumination grew. Tisa gasped.

  The Lama no longer wore his ceremonial blue robe. He was naked, his thin chest rising feebly as he struggled to breathe. His body was hairless save the coarse gray nest at the juncture of his legs. The hair atop his head was as fine as silk thread. His face was more deeply wrinkled than any she had ever seen. The creases seemed to vanish into his skull. His mouth was a blackened, toothless hole, his limbs little more than desiccated sticks. He wasn’t yet seventy but appeared ninety. She discerned all this ruin in a glance, but what held her were his eyes. They were those of someone with severe retardation. They remained bright, but there was no curiosity behind them, nothing to indicate the creature peering through them even knew who or where he was.

  Soft cords bound his left hand and ankle. The right side of his body was held rigid by some paralysis.

  Tears burned Tisa’s eyes. She turned to her brother, unable to hide her pain and confusion.

  “Two months ago,” Luc explained as if discussing the weather. “The doctors say it was a massive stroke. It would have been better had the old bugger died. I’ve actually thought about putting him out of his misery, but the others believe his condition is a portent and that the date of his death will have special meaning.”

  Tisa reached out and brushed a wisp of hair back across the Lama’s forehead. He looked at her trustingly, but without recognition. Unable to keep her composure, a wracking sob tore into Tisa’s chest. The pain was like a lance.

  “Ah, dinner’s here,” Luc said from the doorway, unmoved by his sister’s personal agony.

  Tisa glanced over her shoulder. A local woman Tisa didn’t recognize hesitated at Luc’s side, torn by duty and the unexpected presence of a stranger in the Lama’s bedroom. She was pretty, not far out of her teens, with a round face and freshly washed hair. She was dressed simply in a long skirt and a loose blouse of cotton. She carried nothing, no tray or bowl from which to feed the Lama.

  “I’m not sure that you want to stay for this,” Luc said as the girl made her decision and drew closer to the bed.

  The high Lama cawed again, becoming animated at the sight of the young woman. The girl paused, her dark eyes darting from Luc to Tisa. Luc made a “go ahead” gesture with his hand. Tisa remained uncomprehending. The Lama tried to reach for the woman with his bound hand, his motions directed at her chest.

  It was then that Tisa saw the wet patches at the swell of the woman’s bust. She was a nursing mother, her breasts heavy with milk.

  Tisa whirled away, unable to hide her revulsion as the woman began to undo her buttons.

  Luc laughed. “It’s the only way he’ll eat,” he explained cavalierly. “Though we did have his teeth pulled. He kept biting the wet nurses.”

  The Lama’s agitated noises were suddenly replaced with a contented mewling. Tisa refused to look, although her brother watched for a moment. She stormed past him.

  “How could you?” she hissed so hard it hurt her throat.

  He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her into his arms so their mouths were inches apart. “I told you it would have been better if the stroke had killed him. The pillar of our community has been reduced to an infant. Maybe it is punishment for continuing the program to counter the time drift that developed in the oracle’s predictions. The Order should never have started moving rivers, constructing towers, and digging holes in an effort to change earth’s chi.”

  Tisa twisted so she wouldn’t have to look at her brother’s face, a visage so much like her own. “I hate you.”

  “One of these days you’ll see things my way. Not now, I understand, but soon, very soon.” He kissed the top of her head and released his grip. “In the meantime I’ll make sure no harm comes to you, as we wait together for the world to be transformed.” He looked past her shoulder. Donny Randall stood at another entrance to the living quarters. “Take my sister back to her cell, Donny, then meet me in my office.”

  Tisa couldn’t stop crying as the big man lumbered at her heels through the sprawling building. She’d been away a few months, but it had been even longer since she’d seen the Lama. She should have stayed. She could have prevented Luc from usurping power as he had. Her duty was here, at Rinpoche-La, not on the outside. Had she not wasted so much effort contacting Mercer, maybe she could have saved a portion of the Lama’s dignity and with it the purity of the Order.

  Half a millennium of planning and surviving was about to unravel in a way even the oracle couldn’t have predicted. For centuries the Order had been free of the pettiness that had destroyed so much that was rational in the world, the squabbles that blossomed into wars, bankrupting nations and killing millions. The innocence they had enjoyed for so long was lost, as lost as the Lama’s mind.

  Maybe Luc was right, she thought, capitulating to her own inner darkness. Maybe nothing humanity had created was worth saving. After all, she’d seen there was an ugly reflection to all things beautiful. The first joyous cry of a newborn was the same sound as the dying wail of a starving child. The same techniques that created great cathedrals helped the construction of concentration camps. The same laboratories that produced chemicals that cured also made those that killed. Art and music and free expression had all been perverted by hate by those bent on sending their own unholy message. Religion, politics, family, it was all so easily distorted that little of the good behind these ideals remained.

  She trudged up the steps to her cell, barely able to shoulder the burden of her feelings. Her strength was gone. Since she’d first learned the mysteries of the Order, she’d always held hope that she’d been selected for a special task, that she would be the one to break the cycle that had kept the Order together but doomed it to the role of Cassandra, the figure from Greek mythology endowed with the gift of prophecy but unable to convince others of the future. She realized now that it didn’t matter that she had convinced Mercer. Events were inalterable. Her true purpose, she saw bitterly, was to witness the end of everything, to be the last watcher stuck on the fringes of calamity.

  Tisa had dammed up so much in her life, watched as devastation overran the world, stood by knowing she could have helped, all the while fighting for a time when she could make a change. Time had been her enemy, the most hated element she’d ev
er known. She’d fought it for as long as she could, hoping she could steal a moment and slay the beast. But there was no stopping time and only now was she willing to concede defeat.

  They reached the upper floor. Donny fumbled with a key ring as Tisa stepped into her cell.

  “What time is it, Mr. Randall?”

  “Huh?” Donny looked up from his work, lost count of the keys and had to start from the beginning to find the right one.

  “I asked for the time.”

  “How the hell should I know? It’s nighttime. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I guess maybe I won’t.” She eased herself onto the bed.

  Once Randall had the proper key, he could turn his mind to his next concern. “Your brother’s going away in a couple of days. My orders are to keep an eye on you. I just wanted you to know my eye isn’t the only thing of mine that’s gonna be on you, if you know what I mean. You ain’t got much tit, but I figure if you were good enough for Mercer, you’re good enough for me too.”

  Tisa had expected this was coming. Randall had done little to hide his leering interest since shortly after he’d pulled her from the Aegean. “Fine. By all means, rape me all you want. I just hope you understand that molesting me isn’t going to get you any closer to the person you really want.”

  “Yeah, and who’s that?”

  “It’s obvious you’re using me as a surrogate for Mercer. He’s the one you want to rape. He’s the one you want power over. You’re only with me so you can pretend I’m Mercer.”

  Donny bristled. “Are you calling me some kind of fag?”

  “No. I’m calling you a deeply sick person. And if you touch me even once, I am going to hurt you in ways you’ve never imagined.”

  Randall pulled himself to his full height, the top of his head scant inches from the underside of the doorframe. “Brave words now. Let’s hear them again when your brother’s gone and I’ve got a knife to your heart.”

  “Then I’ll do us both a favor and walk into it.”

  Not understanding what she meant, Randall the Handle shot her a scowl and slammed the door, jamming the key in the lock as though it were an act of violation.

  At another time, Tisa would have been scared, but she truly didn’t care any longer. Being raped by Donny Randall was nothing, a small taste of the shame she was just beginning to sense from her own failures.

  The next day Luc knelt before an altar on the monastery’s second floor. The smell of incense was thick and the low dirge of chanting monks reverberated around the spartan temple. To the disciples behind him it appeared that Luc was deep in prayer. He was in fact thinking about his next course of action but he understood the symbolic role he had to play. While the Lama lived, he couldn’t don the sacred blue robe. However, by acting out the Order’s mysteries and rites he was laying the foundation for his eventual consecration.

  In the months since the Lama’s stroke, Luc had steadily brought the Order’s younger brothers to his cause. Like him, they were drawn to the promise of power in the wake of the cataclysmic destruction of civilization. It was the old guard who resisted the changes he wanted to implement. Luc would soon leave Rinpoche-La again. Tisa had always been a poor liar and he knew Mercer was still alive. While there was nothing Mercer could do about the eruption, Luc wanted him dead. But before he could fulfill that mission, he had to solidify his position here in the monstery.

  The prayers went on for six straight hours. As the voices of some monks faltered, others took up the chant. Even Luc added his voice, one more small deception. As the sixth hour ended, Luc came to his feet. Despite the forced inactivity, his muscles hadn’t cramped and he moved easily.

  “My brothers,” he called softly. While the fifty younger monks stopped chanting immediately, it took several minutes for the dozen older monks that Luc had invited to this special prayer to return from their trances.

  “My brothers,” Luc repeated. “Your voices have helped guide my thoughts at this troubled point in our history. I have been too long away from Rinpoche-La yet even just a moment home restores my spirit and clears my mind.”

  “Time has no meaning when one has peace,” Yoh Dzu remarked. He was the Lama’s secretary and the voice of the more conservative arm of the Order. His words were part of a familiar litany, a not-so-subtle rebuke to the discord Luc’s actions had created.

  “And yet time stalks us even if we have peace. Because peace isn’t a possession, but a state. That is precisely what I want to discuss with all of you. The state of the world and the state of the Order, for the two are more entwined now than ever.”

  “That was not always the way,” an ancient monk muttered. “For many generations the world and the Order were separate.”

  Luc seized on that comment. “Since our present Lama was given the right to wear the blue robe, he has changed the nature of the Order from passive watchers to active participants. He embarked us on a path of interference, of trying to correct the discrepancies between the oracle and physical reality. I stand before you and say that it was a mistake.”

  Several heads nodded. A young monk Luc had coached said, “His mistakes have cost us and they have cost him.”

  “Laying blame at the feet of a dying man is not taking a stand,” Dzu scolded.

  “It is not blame, brother. It is fact. The world and the Order are no longer separate.” By invoking the Lama’s controversial decision to try to realign the earth’s chi, Luc had carefully sidestepped his own responsibility in drawing attention to the Order. “Even if we stopped now, our presence has already been detected.”

  “This was debated many years ago,” Dzu pointed out. “We understood the risk then and accepted it. We all agreed that we had to do something to heal the earth and return the oracle’s accuracy. It is an unfortuante circumstance that we are without the Lama’s guidance when the time came to face the consequences.”

  “Perhaps not unfortunate, but auspicious. Unlike our Lama, I have spent a great deal of my life in the outside world. I understand how it works. The La Palma eruption is going to spark unprecedented fear, and what people fear they hate. What they hate, they kill. Word will soon spread about us and how we knew about the volcano. The world leaders cannot lash out at a mountain, but they can come after us.”

  “Why would they do that?” an older monk asked innocently. The man had never set foot outside the valley and had been sheltered from the corruptive nature of the world.

  “Because that is their way. Startle a snake and it will strike. It doesn’t matter to it that you meant it no harm.”

  “But I would not blame the snake,” the elder brother said.

  “Nor I,” Luc agreed. “But the outside world does not think like us.”

  The old man grasped the analogy. “I think I understand. When I was a young man I once burned my hand picking up a stone that was too close to a fire pit. In anger I kicked out the fire. Afterward I could not understand why I did it, for it was not the fire’s fault.”

  Luc smiled. “You were given a taste of human nature’s darker side, one that is amplified outside the valley to the point where nations wage wars over rumors.”

  “What can be done?” Dzu asked.

  “I do not know, but I fear that we can no longer rely on the monastery’s isolation to protect us.”

  “Is that why you and some of the others are carrying weapons?”

  “Yes, brother. I fear for our safety.”

  “Would you take a life to protect your own?” Dzu asked.

  “No,” Luc lied. “But I still debate whether I would do it to defend the oracle.”

  The statement sent a shocked murmur through the older monks. The taking of life, either a human’s or that of the lowliest insect, was anathema to everything the Buddhist Order believed.

  Luc cut through the chatter. “That is the question that faces us all, the one we must answer before I take my leave of Rinpoche-La.”

  “Is our situation truly that dire?” Dzu, who had been Luc’s sh
arpest critic in the months since the Lama’s stroke, was falling under Luc’s spell.

  “It is. We must all recognize that our way of life will soon come to an end. It is how we go forward from this moment that will determine the Order’s ultimate fate.”

  “I for one can never kill, no matter the circumstances.” Dzu crossed his arms over his chest as if that settled the discussion.

  “And many agree with you,” Luc said. “I would never ask anyone to act against his vows. But I need to know if you would prevent others from acting in ways that you would not? What if they believed that killing to protect the oracle was the right choice? Would you stop them?”

  “That question should be easy to answer. Life must take precedence over all other considerations.” Dzu paused. “Even if the oracle was threatened, killing to preserve it is wrong.”

  “As wrong as those who may kill to destroy it?”

  “Are there degrees to that kind of sin? I don’t know, perhaps. This is a matter I have never contemplated.”

  Luc took on a sincere look of sympathy. “It is something I have not stopped thinking about for some time now.” It was a struggle to keep from smirking. He had so twisted logic that he now had the monks thinking about committing murder. “Here is something else for your consideration, something that has occurred to me over time. For one hundred fifty years the Order has had within its power the ability to save countless lives by warning those about to die and yet we did not. By rights those deaths should be on our collective consciences. Is not a lie of omission still a lie? Why then would the deaths of those who come to harm us be more wrong?”

  His question was met by silence.

  Finally Dzu spoke. “In some ways I hear the voice of our Lama in you, Luc. He stood in this very room when he proposed that the Order heal earth’s chi. He was very convincing and after a short debate we agreed to his plan, although some secretly believed it was a mistake. How do we know that your intentions aren’t also a mistake?”