My mind was whirling. Why was no one ever what I thought they were? Women whom I had loved betrayed me. Men would put forward public faces of chivalry while carrying out beastly deeds in the dark of night. And now these peaceful villagers, who calmly tidied up after a slaughter that would have made the most barbaric of barbarians envious for its efficiency and totality.

What did I seek? What was thereto seek? Whatever I found, it would invariably, at some point, rebound to my detriment. I just didn't see the point of it, or the point of anything really.

"Nothing," I said with a heavy sigh. "I seek nothing. I'm empty."

Chinpan Ali nodded once, and then said, "Good. Then you are ready to learn. Come to my hut tomorrow morning. You will learn the way of total destruction through inner peace." And with that, he turned and walked out of the hut.

I stared after him for a good long time.

"Oookay," I said to the empty hut.

Chapter 6.

Zennihilation and the Art of Water Cycle Maintenance

When I entered Ali's hut the next morning, he was seated in the middle in a cross-legged position. His eyes were closed. He said nothing to me. With a mental shrug, I walked across the hut, eased myself onto the ground, and sat opposite him.

"Why did you do that?" he abruptly asked.

"Sit down, you mean?" I blinked. "Well... because you were seated."

"Do you imitate all others?" "No."

"Then why imitate me?"

"Because..." I cast about for an answer. "Because you were here. It's your hut. You establish how one is to behave within it. So I... thought it was what you wanted."

"And what did you want?"

"Truthfully?" I sighed. "I want to know what I'm doing here. I don't understand it at all. I don't understand my life at all."

"You think I can provide you understanding?"

"No, I think only I can provide that. I'm hoping that maybe you can tell me what I'm looking for."

"You are looking for that," said Chinpan Ali, "which you are not looking for."

I stared at him. "Thank you," I said tonelessly. "That was very helpful."

"No. It was not. Do you know why I said it?"

"No."

"Would you like to?"

"Not especially, no."

He nodded in approval. "You are a natural at this."

"At what?"

"Ahhhh," he said, raising a finger and pointing at the sky. Then he lowered it and folded his hands into his lap.

I was about ready to give up at that point, when suddenly he said, "What question would you most like the answer to."

That actually had some promise to it. I leaned forward and said, "How did you dispatch those men yesterday? Three of them against the one of you. Bigger, stronger, two swords to your one. And the way in which you did it... no matter how sharp your blade, there still has to be strength behind the thrusts. You cut through muscle, through bone, as if it were cheese. Yet you look..."

"Una.s.suming?"

"Yes."

"Helpless?"

"That's right." He nodded, his eyelids half shut. "But looks can be deceiving. You appear to be a lame fool. Have you not used that to your benefit in the past?"

"Yes," I admitted. "I've played to that. Put people off guard. But playacting is one thing. You... you killed those men. You... how? I mean... how? You reduced them to..."

"To nothing. They are now nothing."

I bobbed my head. "Yes."

"You walked here and made yourself as I was. Seated. Waiting. In order to reduce men to nothing, you must first be nothing yourself. When you have emptied yourself of all that you are, you can project that nothingness upon your opponent."

"Well... won't that just result in both of us being dead?"

"No," said Chinpan Ali sagely, "because while you may be nothing, your opponent will be less than nothing. That is the essence of Zennihilation: creating the total absence of your enemy by creating a total absence of self. Do you understand?"

I nodded, then said, "No."

"Excellent. Stand."

I stood.

"Hop on one foot."

I raised my right leg and proceeded to hop on the left one. Up and down, down and up, for what seemed an hour. He simply sat there and watched. I felt like a complete fool and was only glad that no one else was around to witness this absurdity.

"Stop," he said. "Now switch."

"Switch?" He nodded. "But... I can't. My right leg... it's lame. You see it."

"The weakness," and he tapped his skull, "is in your mind."

"No," I said patiently. "The weakness is in my leg. It has been since birth."

"And you would let yourself be limited by your body? Do you think I am limited by the body that you perceive?"

"I... suppose not," I said, feeling less certain of this by the minute. Then again, I supposed it was that lack of certainty I was supposed to be endeavoring to overcome. "No, obviously you're not limited."

"Then hop on your right leg."

Taking a deep breath, holding on firmly to my staff, I switched in midhop from left leg to right, and was actually thrilled to discover that my lame leg supported my body weight... for perhaps two seconds.Then I collapsed like a puppet severed of its strings. My staff fell to the ground a moment after I did.

"What have you learned?" said Chinpan Ali.

"That you know nothing!" I snapped in mortification.

To my shock, he nodded approvingly. "Excellent. You are an even faster student than I first believed.

Sit. Cross your legs."

I wanted to knock his head off with my staff. Instead, still steaming, I did as he said while wondering whether there was any point to it at all.

"A riddle," he said abruptly. "I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, to live and breathe on this terrestrial ball. What am I?"

I had always disliked riddles. They seemed a waste of time to me, providing the interrogator the chance to sit there and look smug while you struggled to come up with some sort of interpretation that fit all the clues.

"You are thinking too much," Ali said abruptly as if he'd read my mind. "You must meditate. You must relax and ponder the riddle. That is the fundamental concept of Zennihilation."

"I thought we were going to train. That you would teach me how you handled those men so easily.

How--"

"Master."

I stared at him. "Pardon?"

"You will address me as 'master.' That is the proper respect a student gives to his teacher."

I didn't like the sound of that at all. It was not a word that would come easily off my tongue.

But I was hooked, you see. Desperately consumed by curiosity and desire. Here was this frail old man, far more frail than I. Yet he obviously knew techniques, secrets that made him virtually invincible.

Once upon a time, I had been invincible. No one was able to defeat me in combat, and I was feared wherever I went. It was a good feeling. No. No, it was a great feeling. Granted, I did a lot of horrific and barbarous things during that time, and I regretted much of it. But I had spent my entire life up until that point feeling endlessly vulnerable to a world that was--for the most part--bigger and faster and stronger than I. I, Apropos, limping along while the rest of humanity sprinted past. It was galling to live that way, and the exhilaration I felt during the time that I was the peacelord of Wuin was unequaled in my existence.

The problem was, it was puissance that came with too high a price, and I'd had to divest myself of it.

In fact, I still carried scars on my chest from when I had done so. Since then I had gone back to my previous, and current, form. And if it was frustrating before when I'd had to deal with my a.s.sortment of fragilities, how much more so was it having tasted indestructibility only to have lost it once more?

But this man, this shriveled little man... he knew something. Something that could make me, if not omnipotent once more, capable of defending myself with far greater confidence than I had before. And ifI wanted that knowledge, I was going to have to play along.

"Very well... master," I grunted. "But..."

"And you will not question me. The student never questions the master."

My patience was beyond wearing thin. It was becoming so threadbare as to let chill winds through without obstruction.

This was getting ridiculous. As much as I wanted to be able to dispatch opponents the way he had, I did still have my pride. It was a tattered and pathetic thing, my pride, and really not all that fit for human company. But I had it nonetheless. It was at that point I decided that this was simply not going to work. I was just going to give up, that was all. Give up, forget that I'd wasted my time in this worthless attempt to find mental balance and a means of self-defense. I would just go back to my hut, or perhaps out into the fields to work--trying not to step upon freshly dug graves--and at the end of the day, go to sleep and hope that some clearer answer revealed itself on the morrow...

And then I stopped. I blinked, my expression going slack.

"Tomorrow," I said.

"Yes?" said Chinpan Ali calmly.

"Tomorrow," I told him with growing excitement. "'I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, to live and breathe on this terrestrial ball.' The answer to the riddle is 'tomorrow.'"

"The answer to the riddle is tomorrow... what?" he prompted.

I paused, and then smiled broadly. "Tomorrow... master."

"Yes," and this time a genuine smile crept across his face. "You see? Meditation leads you to be able to accomplish that which you did not know you could accomplish. To be able to rid yourself of all concerns. Once you find your core of inner peace, nothing can disturb you. All mistakes in combat stem from disruption of the spirit. With your spirit intact, you can be invincible."

"Invincible. Well, I like the sound of that... master," I added.

I look back on that exchange now and am, frankly, somewhat mortified by it. That I would have so quickly, so willingly given myself over to Ali and his teachings would seem to fly in the face of the inveterate skeptic that I have always painted myself to be.

I can offer you but one reasonable explanation, and indeed it is one that I have had to ponder long and hard to intuit.

The most fundamental impulse of a man is to please his father. But for all of my early years, I had no father. Just an unknown b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a knight who had produced a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a son. While I was growing up, the significant adult male in my life was an abusive tavern owner who employed my mother as a prost.i.tute. Eventually I did learn my father's ident.i.ty, and during our fleeting time together, all I wanted to do was kill him. Hardly an ideal situation for male bonding. In short, I had never had a significant, stable, fatherlike individual in my life. And although Chinpan Ali at first exuded a gruffness and emotional distance, I also believed that he wanted me to succeed. That he was looking for someone to whom he could pa.s.s on his techniques and knowledge, and considered me to be that person.

...I wanted more than I had. I wanted to be more than I was. My constant gnawing dissatisfaction was eating away at me like a cancer, and I believed that Ali might well be the cure.

I got to my feet with my usual clumsiness, and Ali said, "Another riddle to consider until tomorrow: Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

"Because they both require quills to truly take wing," I replied.

He stared at me. "Oh" was all he said, and then quickly he added, "All right. Come back tomorrow and I'll have another one for you."

"I'll be here," I said.

When I returned the next day, Chinpan Ali presented me with two handheld blocks, each of which had a rough, gritty texture on one side. They had straps on the back to make them easy to place on my hands. I held them up, studying them curiously. "What are they?" I asked.

"For sanding," he replied. "Smoothing down of surface."

"All right," I said gamely. "So... what am I supposed to do with them."

"Sand the floor."

I blinked. "Pardon?"