Mortal Kombat

by Jeff Rovin

  He was unaware of the eyes that were watching him from behind the Temple of the Order of Light, eyes that were so fair and pale brown as to appear golden…

  CHAPTER TWO

  The nation is called Chung Kuo, the Central Nation, by its natives; it is also known as China, named after the dynastic family of Ch’in emperors who sought to unify the land and its inhabitants in 221 B.C., succeeding where other leaders had failed, as far back as the Chou dynasty of 1000 B.C. and the Shang dynasty before them.

  Following the unification under the Ch’in, China was ruled by the Han dynasty, for whom Kung Lao had little regard. They and their princes had discouraged so many of the advances made by the people under the Ch’in, shutting the nation off from the rest of the world and what was happening there.

  China is so vast, their emissaries said, so rich in resources and people, what need have we of others?

  They were fools, Kung Lao told himself. But as he walked inland now, toward the west, across a plain spotted with patches of yellow sand deposited by some long-ago flood, he had to admit that the geography of his homeland was as varied as it was vast. He had read accounts of the frozen lands and strange inhabitants of the mountains of Tibet, and he had seen with his own eyes the sweltering marshes of the lands that border the China Sea. When he was a boy, and his parents had moved to Chu-jung, they had traveled by the Szechwan Basin of the Yangtze River and crossed the ranges by the great mountains – including the range of Mt. Ifukube. He remembered the strange and fascinating creatures he had seen here: the long-tailed pheasants, the goatlike antelopes, the flat-nosed monkeys, the giant black-and-white bears munching on bamboo of the Cloud Forest.

  He wondered why these glorious animals were found only here, why only the gods were permitted to have them. His father had said, It is because they are gods, my son. They made these animals for their own enjoyment. But that answer had not satisfied Kung Lao.

  Why would gods be so selfish? Why would they not want to uplift and educate their other children, the ones to whom they had given minds and souls?

  He learned to mix paints using soil and oils, and painted pictures of these beasts and gods… even daring, once, to render the face of T’ien, which he had quickly destroyed. If it had been discovered, his family would have been driven from the village. They were lucky enough to have arrived when the previous water carrier had died, childless; Kung Lao did not want to be responsible for costing his father his livelihood.

  And yet, Kung Lao knew that his father often wondered about the gods. He would sit outside at night and contemplate the stars while he smoked his pipe. Once, Kung Lao had even seen his father stand, stretch his arms toward the moon, and say, Why can we not reach you… embrace you? Why do birds not go to you? Why is there only one of you and not many – or are you one of the stars, come close to us to bring light to the dark night?

  Sometimes the elder Lao kept company with a beggar, a man in a black, tattered, wool-and-leather cloak. Kung Lao never saw his face or heard his voice, but he would watch from inside the house as the two shared a smoke at night. Or if there were fruit on the trees or vegetables in the ground, the elder Lao would give some to the man. Kung Lao never knew what the two men talked about, nor did he ask: if his father had wanted him to know, he’s have told him.

  Kung Lao had never told his aunt the reason he suspected his father had become obsessed with concussive powders. The boy had once seen a drawing his father had tucked away, of boulders, boats, and chairs flying toward the skies on a ball of fire.

  The elder Lao wanted to go there. He wanted to find and harness a force that would allow him to soar free of the earth.

  You went about it your way, Kung Lao thought as he made his way toward the distant, dreamy foothills of the Ifukube range. I will go about it mine.

  Tired, but unwilling to stop as the sun went down and day became night, Kung Lao picked up a branch lying at the base of a dead and solitary tree. He kicked off the brittle twigs with the toe of his sandal, and used the limb as a walking stick as he continued ahead, toward the fast-fading glow in the west.

  And as he walked, the near-golden eyes still watched him – not from behind him but from a cliff well ahead.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Caught in a dark and slashing rain on the night of the fourth day of his travels, Kung Lao leaned against the wet rocks of the hill. He laid his staff against the damp, mossy stone and shielded his eyes with his hands, peering around, looking for a niche or tree or boulder that might provide him with shelter.

  But there was nothing on the muddy path in the low foothills, save for the sheer rock face to his left and the sloping, scrub-lined cliff to his right. Nor was there anything to eat. The peaches and a few wriggling grubs had gotten him through the first day, and he managed to capture and cook a pheasant on the second, a molting, ancient thing that seemed to welcome the broken neck he gave it. A few berries were all he had on the third and fourth day, and now his energy was seriously lacking. He was hungry, and didn’t know which was worse: the stomach that crawled and called out to him, or the head that was light and didn’t respond quickly enough when he called it.

  He sighed and wrung out his long, black queue.

  If only it were just the hunger, he told himself as he tried to focus on his surroundings. His flesh was cold because his woollen blouse and skirt were soaked through from the rain, and his back ached from the walking and now the climbing he had done. Though he was bound by tradition to mourn his father every day for three years, he knew that if he stopped to kneel now and pray, he would never get up again. Asking the elder Lao’s forgiveness, he leaned against the cliff and, as the cold rain slashed against his face, and lightning ripped the sky, he said a few words in his father’s memory.

  “It was written by the great philosopher and alchemist Ko Hung,” he said, “‘Not meeting with disaster may be compared with the fate of birds and animals passed over by hunting parties, or of the grasses and trees that remain unburned when a big conflagration has passed their way.’ You were not among the lucky ones, Father – and yet you were luckier than most, for you had a questioning mind and a seeker’s soul. I will love and revere you always.”

  Bowing his head to the north, toward his father’s birthplace near Shenyang, Kung Lao stood for a moment in silence, then picked up his staff and decided to try and continue along this crude road.

  He wondered, What choice do I have, after all? There was nothing behind him and there was still the promise of something ahead: if not the mysterious caves of the priests, then at least, perhaps, food or a fellow traveler or a hut or a stream. He had been filling his water pouch from the clean, crisp mountain waters since he’d left, and if need be, he could use his robe to try and snare a fish. Certainly a dip in the river couldn’t make his clothing any wetter.

  He moved ahead, guided by flashes of lightning, stepping tentatively as he came to a muddy stretch, using his walking stick to feel the way before proceeding. He did not know how far he’d gone or how high he’d climbed when, suddenly, a crackling blast of lightning exploded before him, reverberating in his chest and illuminating a man on a rise ahead.

  Or was it a man?

  Kung Lao stopped. In the short glimpse he’d had, the figure had seemed larger by a head than any he’d ever seen. And his eyes shone gold beneath the brim of his conical straw hat.

  Lightning flashed again and he saw the man more clearly. The figure stood with his arms at his side, his chin held high, his back erect and shoulders proud – the bearing of a nobleman… or a god. The hem of his luminous white tunic and the loose folds of his white leggings rode the wind in gentle waves, and the long blue sash around his waist blew gently beside him, twining in slow motion like weeds in the sea, somehow unaffected by the driving rain.

  The traveler wiped his rain-soaked eyes with the tattered sleeve of his blouse. Squinting ahead, he noticed now that the downpour didn’t touch the man at all. The rain seemed to evaporate as it fell near him… ei
ther that, or steam was rising somehow from the man himself. Kung Lao couldn’t be sure.

  Lightning split the skies again and, leaning on his staff, the traveler bowed slightly. As a peasant, he was accustomed to erring on the side of courtesy: he knew of farmers who had lost their heads for failing to acknowledge a man of rank or nobility. Yet that wasn’t quite why he had bowed to this man. The figure commanded respect, and it was more than just the fine clothing and stature Kung Lao had seen in his brief, flashing glimpses. Even now, in the dark, Kung Lao could literally feel the man’s presence, which was at once compelling, frightening, and strangely familiar.

  Kung Lao counted the time in heartbeats, and then in thunderclaps. The magnificent figure did not speak and Kung Lao said nothing; he only stood with his head bowed, waiting as he shivered from the wind that whipped down the mountain path, his feet nearly numb from the cold mud that seeped around the leather straps of his sandals.

  Finally, his eyes of the majestic figure turned from gold to a glowing, icy blue, and he spoke.

  “Kung Lao,” he said in a voice that was resonant but strangely ethereal, as though it rose from all directions at once. “You will come with me.”

  Water washed down the round, red cheeks of the young man as he gazed into the dark. “Sir,” said the youth, “how is it that you know me?”

  “I’ve known you for many, many years,” the voice declared. “I’ve watched you since you were a child.”

  Lightning exploded behind the figure, and Kung Lao caught a brief glimpse of a shroud that was there and then not there, a black wool cloak and a cowl fringed with leather. Even after all these years Kung Lao recognized it, and he raised a trembling hand, pointing.

  “The beggar–”

  “Your father was not the chosen one,” he said. “You were. You understood the duality of all things.”

  “I did?” said Kung Lao.

  The great head nodded, and those bright blue-white eyes seemed to pierce Kung Lao’s soul. “You once put your ear to a tree to try and hear the heartbeat of the earth. Do you remember, Kung Lao?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “That night, the sky was split by a single streak of lightning, which struck and destroyed the tree. And you were afraid.”

  “Yes,” said Kung Lao, “terribly.” He was suddenly aware that the rain was stopping, though the cold darkness remained.

  “To calm your fears you began to think about the lightning bolt,” the towering figure said, “and you realized the flash that destroyed also provided light… that there are two sides to everything. Darkness, light. Fear, courage. Life, death,” a smile seemed to flash across the figure’s strong jaw, “beggar, god.”

  Kung Lao’s thin eyebrows rose high. “You… you are a… a…”

  Even as Kung Lao spoke, the figure began to glow against the pitch sky, and was quickly enveloped by crackling puffs of white fire. The icy light blinded Kung Lao, and he put the backs of his hands against his eyes and watched through his fingers as the balls of light became one, and grew longer and sharper and then hovered, undulating like a gleaming snake, shoulder-height from the ground.

  “Come closer.” The figure’s sonorous voice echoed from everywhere.

  “I – I can’t!”

  “Think, Kung Lao. You saw my message in the village square, and you believed against the testimony of others that it was real. Now you must learn more about us, and about the great P’an Ku. But you must come to me. You must have the strength.”

  Still shielding his eyes but utterly unable to move, Kung Lao told himself, There are two sides to everything. Fear of the unknown and the courage to discover. Concentrating on taking a step at a time, he raised one foot from the mud with a slurping pop, put it down in front of him, then lifted the other foot and put it ahead of the first. He approached the light slowly, and as he did he had a fleeting recollection of what it had been like to be a baby learning to walk.

  One step and then another and then another, he walked over to the bolt as it twitched and whipped in front of him. He stood less than an arm’s length away, could feel the tingling heat as it rose in waves from the bolt, forced himself to cover the last two steps…

  As the young man reached the earthbound lightning, it began to twine around him, under his arms and around his waist and down his legs, swallowing him and lifting him from his feet and then suddenly carrying him into the sky with speed and fury that caused his mind and senses to whirl. And when he finally came to rest after what may have been a moment or a lifetime, he beheld and edifice that beckoned and welcomed and ennobled him…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Shang Tsung’s long, trying years of work were almost at an end.

  He had spent over ten years on the island of Shimura in the East China Seas, in the ruins of an ancient Shaolin temple on the slopes of Mt. Takashi. Years studying scrolls that his agents had stolen from alchemists and magicians worldwide. Years working with minerals and liquids, fire and blood. Years trying to find the incantation and formula that would open doorway between our world, the Mother Realm, and the demon realm, the Outworld.

  There were so many tales… so many myths… so much rumor. The fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher Joncles had written in one scroll that the mortal world and “dark reaches” were formed when the goddess Gaea died, her body becoming our world and her evil, unborn children being flung into the cold void to create the dark reaches. That would correspond to the legend of P’an Ku – though Shang Tsung had never read that P’an Ku had been responsible for the Outworld.

  Could it be so? he thought as he knelt on the dark, dirty marble floor of his laboratory. Shang Tsung continued to sprinkle a pouchful of black powder around him in a circle, a mixture which included the ground-up bones of the dead and phosphorous powder from the walls of the caves of the idiot priests in the foothills of Mt. Ifukube. Could it be, he wondered, that even the first and greatest god was subject to a Yin and Yang? The Yin was that which is negative and dark and feminine; the Yang was that which is positive, bright, and masculine; and the interaction of these qualities was what influenced the destinies of events and creatures, from the tiniest insect to the humans who believed they were more important.

  There were so many ideas, philosophies, and religions. The Egyptian scribe Am-ho-tep wrote that he was able to move through the barrier between this world and the “god-world” by feeding on a mold from the walls of tombs and holding hands with the newly dead. The Japanese alchemist Mosura Radon claimed to have reached the “dead place” by drinking a potion which allowed him to remain conscious while dreaming, and go wherever he wished. A scribe for the Syrian king Enkmisha swore that the potentate stood waist-deep in a pool of blood from seven different creatures and summoned by a demon comprised of all those creatures: the body of a horse, the horns of an ox, the wings of an eagle, the feet of a wolf, the tail of a snake, the eyes of a cat, and the voice of a human.

  So many theories, Shang Tsung thought. He smiled; coupled with his dark, deep-set eyes and high, hollow cheekbones, the grin made his face seem incongruously skull-like. Within minutes, he hoped to know which of the theories, if any, were true and which of them were false.

  After he completed the circle, Shang Tsung stood. Tall and lean, with his shiny black hair that hung straight down his back, the sorcerer studied his handiwork. There were no breaks in the circle. That was a common warning in the writings of all the wizards: Give a demon space to thrust a single hair, an African shaman had cautioned, and he will poke your eye and blind you with it.

  No breaks, and the ingredients proportioned correctly according to a consensus among the alchemists he had read. Beside him, within the circle, was a lighted brazier, the coals red beneath the diaphanous flame, the iron poker glowing nearly white-hot. Outside the crumbling temple, the sun was sliding below the horizon and the full moon was already in the sky. The time was right: the two eyes of P’an Ku were above him, looking down.

  Everything was in readiness, incl
uding Shang Tsung. Years before, he had left his position as a tax collector, feigned his death by killing and disfiguring another man, and changed his name in order to do what his wife’s brother Wing Lao had done: experiment… quest… seek knowledge.

  Wing had been lucky. He’d had a job that took up little time, and children who were able to help him, so he was free to spend his nights at home, experimenting. For as long as he could remember, Shang had tried to do the same, driven by his earliest memories, recollections of tormented dreams, of nightmares that told him to get up, to study, to explore, to understand. Visions of what seemed to be previous lives spent inhaling fumes of potions, poring over candlelit writings, digging in graves and killing for fresh souls –

  Now and then he had gotten to study ancient scrolls, visit distant temples, or spend time with herbs and minerals and roots, mixing them to see what they did. But when Wing was killed in an explosion, his misfortune was also Shang’s misfortune. Wing’s two sons were now orphans, and instead of turning the children over to the priests of the temple, Shang’s wife insisted that they raise their nosy nephew Kung and his little brother Chan themselves.

  Shang Tsung filled with bile as he thought of the bitter arguments they had over the boys. Not about money, for the children were nothing if not industrious, and continued to work as water carriers for the village. They argued about his research. Chen insisted that delving into the affairs of gods and the dead was not only dangerous for him, but was creating an unhealthy environment for the boys. Then, five years ago, just two months after Wing’s death, she waited until her husband was out collecting taxes from the village of Amiko. While he was gone, she sold his tools and jars, powders and scrolls. Upon returning in the small hours of the night, Shang saw what she had done and left – stealing back the scrolls from the library at the temple, placing them in his cart, and riding until he came to the shore of the East China Sea. There, he bought a boat and sailed into an area perpetually concealed in mists. Though the fishermen of Zhanjiang had warned him not to venture into the region, he knew it might hide what he craved: isolation. No responsible sailor would navigate into the mist, and superstition would keep the locals away.