103.

Maybe this is Chiun's idea of a joke. See how far he can jerk me around.

But no. There was Ancion. For the Inca, the Master's Trial had been serious, serious enough to die for. Remo would try again with Kiree, but he wasn't optimistic about the outcome. These people wanted to fight. It didn't make sense, but then nothing about this whole spooky business made much sense.

He stopped in his tracks. Ahead, in a small clearing, a group of men wearing fifteen-foot-high wooden masks and dressed in bizarre costumes of sh.e.l.ls and gra.s.s skirts danced and shouted in a circle. Apart from them, a few grizzled old men the color of ebony picked at the raw carca.s.s of a goat with their fingers. Musicians played on flutes and drums while gyrating dancers, brightly decorated with exaggerated wooden b.r.e.a.s.t.s to resemble women, wove through their column.

Onlookers clapped and chanted as they emerged from the precariously balanced houses on the cliffs. They were a striking people, very tall and long-limbed, with large eyes. The women, their heads draped with colorful turbans, wore silver hoops through their noses.

"Excuse me," Remo asked a group of pa.s.sersby bedecked in yellow beads. "Can you tell me what's going on?"

The people, all taller than Remo by a head, smiled politely and spoke something that sounded vaguely like water going down a drain.

"I'm looking for someone," he said, p.r.o.nouncing each word carefully.

The natives laughed apologetically and waved, talking the same incomprehensible tongue.

Remo exhaled noisily, wiping some grime off his face. Another b.u.m steer. This town was your standard African backwater. The other villages he'd pa.s.sed through at least 104.

had donkeys in the streets. There were nothing but scrawny dogs here, along with the dancing Africans.

It must have been hotter than a hundred degrees. Remo felt a rising tide of irritation inside him. How many more dusty, dry villages would he have to visit before the elusive Kiree finally acknowledged his presence? Mali was a big place.

"Thanks anyway," he said to the group wearing the beads. He made the universal gesture of resignation. The Africans nodded and ambled away.

"Are you searching for something?" a voice said in English, seemingly from out of nowhere.

Remo looked around. The only person near him was a dwarf who stood as high as Remo's belt buckle.

"Kind of," Remo said. "A guy named Kiree. You ever hear of him?" .

The dwarf shrugged. "One hears many things." He pointed to the dancers. "Would you like to join the funeral?"

"Funeral? That? Looks like a party."

The dwarf smiled as he led Remo past the gathering throng of women on the outer circle of the festivities toward the clearing where the dancers performed. "The Dogon do not believe in death the way westerners do. For them, it is a time of celebration when the spirit leaves, because it will be born again in another, stronger body. Ah, here comes the dannane, the hunter."

A dancer in a fierce-looking black mask, clothed in rags and straw, sprang out from behind a spreading bala tree to stalk imaginary prey. "It is hoped that the spirit of the departed will come to rest in the body of one who will grow to be a fine hunter and warrior, like him." He laughed easily. "The Dogon do not yet understand that the best hunters are not men with angry expressions, but the small beasts of many legs, who weave beautiful nets to capture their prey without effort. The spider is truly the 105.

king of beasts, but the Dogon are still too young a race to understand."

"Aren't you one of them?" Remo asked.

The dwarf took Remo's measure with kindly eyes, "Do I appear to be one of them?"

Remo had to laugh. "No, 1 guess not." The dwarf slapped him on the back like an old friend. What a strange character this little squirt is, Remo thought. "Where do you come from, then?"

"1 am of the Tellem tribe."

"Oh." Remo had never heard of the Tellem before. But then, he realized, he hadn't known or cared very much about the world outside of his work before the Master's Trial. "Are your people nearby?"

The dwarf squinted, surveying the ragged cliffs on all sides of them. "We are everywhere," he said. "The Tellem are an ancient race, older than time. We believe that the first men on earth were of our tribe. The spirits of those first men have stayed within us."

"And you live . . ."

"In the caves. In the hills. On the gra.s.s plains. The Tellem keep no home. We are like the spider-small, almost invisible, who can weave her nets anywhere. Yet she finds the prey she seeks because her net accepts all, watches everything, discards no being because of its appearance."

Remo looked at him for a long moment. There was no need to ask the dwarf's name. He reached into his pocket and produced the piece of carved jade.

The dwarf matched it with his own. "Kiree," he said.

"Remo."

"We will go to the cliffs."

"Kiree" Remo took the dwarf's arm.

"You do not wish to fight?"

"No. I don't like to fight men who aren't my enemies."

106.

"Ah," Kiree said. "I thought you did not possess the face of one who kills for pleasure."

"Then-"

"The choice is not ours, my friend. We fight not out of hatred for each other, but out of respect for the Master's Trial. For our ancestors."

Remo gritted his teeth. The longer he was involved with the Master's Trial, the more he hated it. "There never seems to be any way out," he said so quietly that he could have been talking to himself.

"Do not be confused. See, the kanaga, the dancers, are performing the dance of death. It is a happy dance, for the spirit of the dead is about to be reborn." He squeezed Remo's shoulder. "We, too, when our time comes, will leave this world to return, stronger, wiser, better."

He took Remo away from the crowd to the base of a cliff un.o.bstructed by houses. It was a slab of rock so sheer that an egg could have rolled down the height of it without cracking. From a leather pouch tied around his waist, Kiree poured some yellowish powder into his palms and spat, rubbing his hands together.

Remo knew better than to question the man's fighting ability. Pint-sized or not, if Chiun considered him in the same league with Ancion, Kiree had to know what he was doing. But he didn't expect the little man to climb straight up the cliff.

Remo watched in amazement. As far as he knew, no one outside of Sinanju could scale walls without tools.

"Do you need a.s.sistance?" Kiree called, his face anxious.

"No, thanks," Remo said. He began the methodical climb, using his toes and the suction of his palms to carry the momentum of his movement upward. It was an elementary move, learned during the first year of his training with Chiun, and Remo executed it perfectly. And yet Kiree was 107.

so much faster than he was that Remo felt as if he were ^ crawling.

The African moved on all fours, his limbs bent. He even resembled the spiders he so admired, swift, agile, modest. Remo remembered the way he'd disparaged the talents of his prospective opponents in the Master's Trial. He would never underestimate anyone again, ever.

When Remo reached the high plateau, Kiree was picking large handfuis of dried gra.s.s.

"What's that?"

"My weapon," Kiree said.

"Gra.s.s?"

The dwarf rubbed the blades together until they were powder in his hands. The movements he made were so fast that even Remo couldn't see them. Kiree spat into his palms and, with a series of intricate movements, worked his fingers until the mixture was a rubbery pulp. Then he poured some of the material from the pouch around his waist into the ma.s.s and worked it in.

"This is resin from the fruit pulp of the bala tree," he said. "To make it last."

"What are you going to do with that stuff?"

Kiree smiled. "Watch."

Throwing his arms wide, the mixture spun into a rope in the air. While it was still suspended, he tossed out another. And another, weaving them skillfully into a configuration of knots and s.p.a.ces. When he was finished, he held a finely woven net as translucent as gossamer.

"I can't believe what 1 just saw," Remo said.

"It is but a crude imitation. The spider needs no materials other than what she carries in her tiny body."

"The spider," Remo said. "If I'd listened, I would have known. Some of the people around here believe you're an insect."

108.

"I am a Tellem. Our lives are secret, so people will think of us what they may. Shall we begin?"

Remo hesitated. "I want to learn this skill of yours, Kiree."

"But you have already. I have shown you. The teachings of Sinanju have given you hands fast enough to weave the nets."

"But we don't have to-" His feet swept out from under him. In a fraction of a second, the net had engulfed him and carried him soaring into the air.

"Defend yourself, heir of Sinanju," the African said solemnly.

Remo was whirling over the cliff edge, unbalanced and frightened. The dwarf's easy manner, his friendly smile, had led Remo to believe that somehow the battle between them would not take place. But Kiree, like Ancion, obeyed the rules of the Master's Trial. And if Remo did not, he knew, he would die.

Slashing through the fine ropes with the cutting edges of his hands, he somersaulted through the, opening to land, sliding, on the face of the cliff. His hands burned and bled from the ropes. As he tried to regain his balance on the gla.s.s-sheer cliff, Kiree's net shot out, closed, and knocked him to his belly.

Remo rolled fifteen feet or more down the rock. Below, far away, the villagers stopped their dance and pointed. From somewhere, the name of "Kiree" was shouted in fear and reverence.

The net, bigger this time, came out of the sky like a cloud. Remo scrambled out of its way and grasped one of the knots. He felt himself being lifted.

The dwarf had the strength of an army, Remo thought. He let go of the net just as it reached the edge of the plateau. An army ... If there were more than one of Kiree, Remo would automatically have chosen an inside 109.

line attack. It depended on leverage and speed, and was designed to take out several opponents at once.

But why not? he thought, preparing the attack. Kiree's nets went out once more, and missed. Remo was in motion, a motion so upredictable that even Kiree's net couid not follow it.

Confused, the African waited, shifting his balance, trying to follow Remo with his eyes, his hands reaching out to establish the strange pattern the white man was using. By the time Remo reached him, the nets were in disarray. Kiree moved swiftly, but Remo struck. Kiree flew backward, landing hard on his spine. Remo was right behind him. But even as he was descending for the mortal attack, Remo saw the dwarf spit into his hands and pull apart a thin rope, translucent as a fishing line. It was aimed precisely at Remo's neck.

He broke his descent with an awkward motion and landed in a painful position on his leg. The dwarf was coming, the line in his hands stretched taut.

Reflexively, Remo's elbow jutted out and caught Kiree in the base of the abdomen. With a grunt, the dwarf shot upward, doubled over. Remo sprang to his feet, and on the African's descent, Remo jumped to full extension, slashing both arms in a scissor movement.

He heard the crack of the bones in Kiree's neck. The dwarf was dead before he reached the ground. As Remo stood panting, his leg and hands feeling as if they were broken into a hundred pieces, Kiree's body thudded onto the rocky plateau.

It was over. Remo clasped his own hands together tightly. "Why?" he called out in anguish, looking at the small body at his feet. "I didn't want to kill him. He didn't deserve to die."

It echoed through the empty hills. He was afraid to move.

110.

Maybe he should never have learned the teachings of Sinanju, he thought. He wasn't worthy of it. A true Master would have found a way to stop the fight. But then, neither Ancion nor Kiree had permitted the fight to stop.

Nothing made sense. Nothing. He had spent a lifetime fighting fools and mindless killers and human vermin, and within a week he had discovered two men who could match him in every respect. And he had killed them both.

Who was the mindless killer now?

I'm supposed to kill bad guys, he thought. Not Kiree, who accepted me as his friend. Not Ancion, so fair that he allowed me to live when he could easily have finished me in a stroke.

"Father, this test is too difficult for me," he whispered. But Chiun's voice did not come. Whatever he had to learn from the Master's Trial, he had to learn alone.

He carried Kiree's body to a far cliff and buried it beneath a small bala -tree. He chose the spot because there was a spider in one of the branches, spinning a net as fine as gossamer. He spoke to the spider, "May your spirit return quickly, my friend," he said.

The spider threw out a strand of silk and added^it to her net.

Chapter Eleven.

Tired. So tired.

The Dutchman staggered between the two wooden posts that signaled the division between Chinese Manchuria and North Korea along the rutted road where he walked. It was dawn again, and from the dawn when he left the Russian girl in the forest to the present one, he had known nothing. The beast inside him had run wild, feasting its desires at its every whim, not sleeping, not eating. The long path he had walked was strewn with death and calamity.

Perhaps his own death was coming soon. He hoped for it, longed for it. With death would come the peace he had never known. He trudged ahead, exhausted and burning from the spent incandescence of his power. The power was a volatile thing. With each exertion, it seared his brain and body like a firebomb. Without rest, the power would surely destroy what little sanity still remained somewhere inside him. Like a burning star, the Dutchman would consume himself in his own flames.

But without death. The beast would see that he lived, tortured and agonized, until he was an old man.

Ill 112.

By mid-afternoon, he could smell the sea. The voices of fishermen drifted toward him, their s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation complaining about the weather and the catch. The Dutchman followed the voices.

On a gravel path walked three men pa.s.sing a bottle among them. One of them stumbled, hanging on to the others for support. "Look, a white," he said in provincial Korean.

"Probably a spy. There was another not long ago. I saw him on the beach."