Jake turned away, saw the old Chinese, propped against the bole ofa tree. Pain made of his face a lopsided mask. He knelt beside him. "You"re Huaishan Han," he said in Mandarin.
The old man seemed surprised. "Surely your late father never mentioned my name."
"It was given to me at the point of death," Jake said, "by one of your diqui network. The diqui is yours, is it not?"
"Mine," the old man said, "and Chen Ju"s. It gave him power."
"And you?" Jake said. "What did it give you, old man?"
"Me? Why, it gave me back my life." Huaishan Han reached out with a taloned claw and drew Jake toward him. "A life that had been taken from me by your father. He took everything from me: my wife, my child, my career. He ruined me utterly. The diqui brought me a reason to live. It brought me back into the good graces of a Communist Chinese regime whose memory had grown dim. I was no longer remembered. The old guard was all gone: purged or died of natural causes. Except your father. He was the only one who would remember. And seek to stop my rise to power again inside China." He c.o.c.ked his head as if the barking crackle of the gargantuan fire were speaking to him. "He had to die, you see. Only he could have stopped me. And, of course, you."
"You had my father murdered." Only the mountain knows, Hige Moro had said. The Shan.
"Revenge," Huaishan Han said, "is its own reward. Your father destroyed me once. He did more than destroy me. He destroyed my future as well. My wife, my dearest Senlin, and my unborn child. In the well at Shuang jing. He threw me down into darkness. Into h.e.l.l." The old man"s eyes were fever bright. The chemical flames were reflected in their glossy depths.
"He had done something to Senlin, you see, your father. Something despicable, something unspeakable. Her mind, her entire personality was twisted beyond recognition. Still, I wanted her; still, I loved her. She was the only one I ever loved!"
It was a wail, a terror-filled, anguished sound unlike any Jake had ever heard before. The rain beat a solid tattoo against Huaishan Han"s white face. He breathed as if he were running a race he could never finish.
"In the well," he said. "I lived in that h.e.l.lish place for almost a week. My back was broken. I could barely move. But when I fell, I took my Senlin with me." His eyes were filled with tears. They made the flames, in reflection, seem chimerical, changing shape in the manner of windblown clouds. "She was above me. My own batteredbody protected her from serious injury. The same stone outcropping that broke my back now saved us from an endless descent into the depths."
His head drooped on his stalklike neck, his sharp chin brushing his fluttering chest. "Oh," he cried, "she could have saved me. She could have saved us both. But, no, she began to fight me. She was under your father"s spell. Some terrible, unimaginable sorcery he had worked on her.
"I could scarcely believe it. I begged her to save us. It was in her power to do so. I could hear your father calling to her from above. How I hated him! I sent my hate upward as if it could entwine itself about him and strangle the life from him.
"But my Senlin was gaining in strength and she began to pummel me. She was a madwoman. I looked in her face and knew that she was no longer sane, no longer mine. No longer Senlin at all.
"She was a stranger," Huaishan Han panted. "A stranger who was trying to kill me." He looked up at Jake. "I did the only thing I could, you see. She had told me that she was pregnant and at that moment I, too, must have gone mad. I remember thinking, It is his child, not mine!
"So I killed her and killed it. The baby. The future. In an instant it was all gone. Everything. And for a week afterward they were my sole companions."
Now the old man"s head came up and he clutched more firmly at Jake. "So you see, it was not enough to kill your father, Shi Jake." The tears were gone, the eyes were clear and colorless in their pa.s.sion. Jake imagined that Huaishan Han had gazed upon his Senlin with such a baleful expression in the split instant before he reached out and snuffed out her life and that of the baby growing inside her.
Abruptly nauseated, Jake broke the old man"s hold on him. But Huaishan Han"s taloned claws sought to hold on. It was like being in a field of nettles.
"It was not enough, Shi Jake," the old man screamed. "Your father took from me not only my love, my life, but my future. Is it not fitting that I destroy his now!"
With a great effort, Jake pushed the demented old man away from him. He was disgusted. Horrified at the depths to which the human soul could sink, he turned away toward the flickering fire. He meant to find Simbal and Bennett but, instead, he saw a figure walking slowly toward him.
The hair was cut short, the fire threw it into stark silhouette againstthe pelting downpour. Then it turned and he saw it was a woman. The figure came steadily toward him and at last he could see the face, that familiar face that had haunted his dreams from the moment Nichiren had shot her at the Sumchun River four years ago.
Lan, his daughter! Alive!
"Lan," he said, elation filling him. "Lan!"
"h.e.l.lo, bah-ba," she said and, as Colonel Hu had instructed her, pulled out the automatic, aimed it and pulled the trigger.
When Tony Simbal heard the shot, he whirled around, the rain flying off him. He got the briefest glimpse of Jake facing a shadowy figure. Then Bennett took off and Simbal went after him.
The combination of the storm, the explosion and the Shan diversionary raid at the other end of the compound had put the area into chaos. Bennett chose to dart in the direction of the fire. It was the smart move. The factory was on the southern perimeter of General Kuo"s encampment. Any other direction would take Bennett into the compound where he ran the risk of being stopped by Kuo"s men or, worse, shot by Simbal"s Shan warriors.
Simbal had this figured as well so he did not follow Bennett directly but rather made for the place beyond the burning factory he would have gone to were he in Bennett"s place.
He was at the edge of the jungle. Already a tangly web of undergrowth was building its way toward the side of the factory, although there was ample evidence that it had been hacked back quite recently.
In the trees, he turned, moving the muzzle of the AK-47 in a slow, steady arc. The rain destroyed perspective and the continuing conflagration just meters away cast bizarre shadows that rose and fell with sickening rapidity.
Bennett was nowhere to be found and Simbal cursed himself. He moved off farther into the jungle, began a sweep that would take him parallel to the sh.e.l.l of the factory.
Saw a darting movement and, crouching down, began to move as quickly as he could toward the spot. In that moment, felt all the breath go out of him. He doubled over as Bennett kicked him a second time in the kidneys. Lost hold of the AK-47 and saw Bennett"s bulk diving after it.
Simbal went after Bennett. He grabbed hold of the big man"s legs and twisted. Bennett went down but he was already rolling, kicking upward in a vicious thrust.
The toe of his cowboy boot brushed Simbal"s cheek and then theheel slammed into his jaw. Simbal reeled backward and Bennett lunged for the AK-47, took it up and aimed it hurriedly.
Simbal leapt at Bennett as the big man pulled the trigger. Felt the heat, the disintegration and he was inside the spray of bullets. Used the edge of his hand under Bennett"s chin in a short, sharp chop.
Bennett let go with a "Whoof!" of surprise and pain and Simbal brought him down, jamming an elbow into his sternum. But Bennett used the stock of the submachine gun, smashing it into Simbal"s groin.
Simbal saw stars. His breath was steaming in his throat and sickening bile rose upward, threatening to choke him.
Bennett scrambled to his feet, trained the AK-47 downward. "Christ, Tony, but you were always a pain in my a.s.s. What a f.u.c.king white knight you are. I really think I"m doing you a favor now by killing you. I"m saving you from a life slaving away in the gray corridors for men with little minds and even littler pocketbooks." He curled his forefinger around the AK-47"s trigger. "So long, Tony."
Simbal, his right hand holding his aching lower belly, flicked his arm upward and the thin throwing knife stuck to the hilt in Bennett"s chest. He looked utterly astounded and died with that expression imprinted on his face.
Taking three deep breaths, Simbal got to his knees. He took the AK-47 from Bennett"s grip and staggered back toward the encampment.
Jake felt the blood running along with the rain. It pumped from him: his life draining away. He slipped to his knees, regained his feet.
"Lan," he called. "Lan! Oh, Buddha."
Saw her leveling the pistol at him and thought, This is a dream, some terrible nightmare from which I will awake at any moment.
But the pain was real and with every beat of his laboring heart he could feel his strength ebbing. How could this be happening? he thought. How?
He struggled toward her. The wind and the rain scoured him. He was beaten again to his knees. Gasping, vision blurred. He tried to a.s.semble his thoughts but the sight of his daughter, and then the knowledge of what she had done to him, unnerved him. He was frozen. Shock and despair gripped him unshakably.
"Lan," he called. "Lan, I love you." Had he ever told her that? When was the last time he had held her, the last time she had come to him for comfort. Had he given it even then? Probably not. He had not wanted a daughter, he realized now, had been disappointed in his first wife that she bore him a female child instead of a male.
So he had deliberately set about making her as hard in spirit as aman.
Now he knew that he had squeezed all the joy, all the life out of her. What was left had fled his unhappy household to join the radical Triad, the Steel Tigers at the border of the Mainland.
And now, insanely, she was going to kill him. He looked up through his pain and his grief to see the muzzle of the pistol coming down. It was aimed at a spot between his eyes. There was nothing in his daughter"s face: no recognition, no rage, no emotion at all. She was a machine, programmed to perform this hideous task.
Jake made one last attempt to reach her. Got to his feet and took three quick, unsteady steps toward her. Then toppled to the muddy earth at her feet.
He was the only thing of which Qi Lin was aware. She heard him calling a name but was hardly aware that it used to be hers. Instead, he seemed to be mouthing some alien tongue, which struck her much like the rain. She was indifferent to its effect.
In her mind, Colonel Hu"s hand stretched out along the cradle of the night, caressing her while his mind talked to hers. He told her what to do and she listened. Her finger tightened on the trigger and, for the second time, she began the slow squeezing motion that would ensure a perfectly placed shot.
Then she was lying p.r.o.ne on the ground, gasping in air, staring up at another female face.
Bliss had come at her from the blind side, slamming into her with the full force of her body. She had led with her shoulder, driving her weight up from her planted right foot.
She had no thought other than to save Jake. Breaking away from the diversionary attack at the north end of the encampment, she had been searching through the chaos for Jake. She had been angry that he had placed her away from the main conflict but had seen no reason to argue with him at the time. She knew there were other matters occupying him. She knew she would get her chance.
The explosion at the factory had provided her with that and she had taken it. She had seen Jake shot and had instinctively leveled the AK-47 she carried at his a.s.sailant. Then she had heard him cry out and had recognized Lan.
At first, there was no thought of harming the girl, merely subduing her. But as soon as she came in contact with Lan, Bliss knew that something was very wrong. Now that she had been openly attacked, her lips drew back in a rictus, she snarled deep in her throat.
Bliss spoke to her as they wrestled along the ground but the girl either would not or could not respond. She was almost certainly mad. The decision was instantaneous. For the last time Bliss entered da-hei. Over the heaving bosom of the moonlit sea she flew toward the strange presence.
And saw the world turning, the world changing, herself changing. Felt the great karmic wheel lurch into motion, begin its swing forward, always forward, carrying her onward toward the edge of the moonlit sea, and the unknown that was beyond. Waiting.
Now she was at close quarters with ban"s qi. And recoiled in horror. Through the twisted tendrils she recognized the endless war that raged like a ravening beast. In and out, like a pristine moon revealed through storm clouds, Bliss could feel glimpses of the true spirit of the girl. But the movement of the beast always cut it short.
The essence of Lan was dying inside a mind that had been tortured beyond all reason. This wanton destruction was so cruel it made Bliss want to weep with pity and rage.
At the same time she knew what she must do, knew now why Shi Zilin had drawn her into da-hei, and why she felt the qi of the ages roiling through her like a howling wind.
She set about doing what Shi Zilin had trained her to do. In the back of her mind was the suspicion that he knew that this moment would eventually come. Because now she was no longer Bliss, no longer Jake"s beloved, no longer, even, Shi Zilin"s G.o.dgranddaughter. She was all these things and more. She was the messenger of the celestial guardians of China. The wisdom of the ages resided in her, the ancient magic of an ancient race, the animus of genius that lived on, that must be maintained.
Now she was all spirit. While, quite apart, her body continued its physical struggle with Lan, her qi, spread out across the shining skein of da-hei, began to infiltrate the tortured spirit of Lan, who had taken the name of Qi Lin, the mystical male-female beast of Chinese mythology.
The beast who possessed Lan"s spirit had incalculable strength. But Bliss was not alone. Shi Zilin was with her, and someone else, another female spirit, ancient of ancients.
The two slim forms rolled and battered one another in the mud, while the real struggle was carried on in a secret harbor that no human eye could pierce.
Jake, dragging himself centimeter by painful centimeter to where the two women fought, could only find fear in his heart. In the killing ground there could be only one victor. Death to the defeated.
He loved both of them almost more than he could bear and he had to defuse them before the unthinkable tragedy occurred.
He lurched forward but pulled up short. Startled, he heard the voice that was not a voice, repeating, Stay away, Jake! I can save her if you stay away!
"Bliss!"
He went on, stumbled over a root. On his knees, he heard it again. Jake, please! Stay where you are! You will kill your daughter otherwise!
His head reverberated with the words and he thought, I must be hallucinating. But knew that was not so. Now the changes that had worked themselves through Bliss leapt up to his consciousness. Ever since his father had died Bliss had been a different person. It was as if some mysterious current was running through her. She could tell lies from truth. What else was she able to do?
"Bliss!" Through the rain, his agony, he called to her as his father had done with Senlin. "I don"t want to leave you alone!"
I am not alone, Jake. This must happen if you are to have your daughter back.
"I don"t want to have to choose."
Joss, Jake. The wheel has turned.
"Bliss, I love you! Bliss!"
The sky was a sheet of iron, reverberating with the howls of the beast. A rain of zinc hurtled down upon forms inimical to one another. Clouds of tin and antimony tore at them and a moon of mercury dripped painful illumination.
Bliss or, rather, the essence of Bliss, had made her pact with Buddha. It was time to die. She could feel the comforting presence of Shi Zilin inside her. Lan was the chosen one, the descendant of the line of the guardians of China. It was Bliss"s responsibility to cleanse Lan"s mind, to rid it of evil just as Fazhan had done with Senlin so many decades ago, to keep the conduit of wisdom and magic alive that would guide China safely into the twenty-first century by transferring all that resided in her into Lan.
Bliss was one with the universe. Totally immersed within da-hei she felt the connection with the generations. She was young and old at once, large and small, male and female. She became the continuum of which life and death were but an infinitesimal fraction, the pa.s.sive receptacle rather than the fierce avenger. She stole the light from the world, she sought the low ground, became the rivers to the sea.
And the sea became her mantle of power. The wind as well, the rain, the storms. The dragons of the night rose to her beckoning, their fiercebreath startling the stalking beast within Lan. It had been made manifest to her that to cleanse the evil that ran rampant within Lan, to transfer the power she now possessed, she must relinquish her hold on her own corpus. That was the only way.
And Bliss found a joy in this, for she was playing a key role in the continuum of China, because she now knew the folly of the concepts of "life" and "death," ideas conjured up by the limits of the human mind.
Now Bliss was much more. She was the energy of the universe, moving and forming in an infinite number of directions. Cradled within the bosom of the eternal elements, she understood how much more there was to existence than mere life.
Bliss was all color, swirling: green-blue of the seas, blue-gray of the sky, gray-black of stone; red-orange of fire, orange-brown-green of the foliage. In her vision now was the hideous noncolor of the evil that gripped Lan"s mind. She flew toward it.
Bliss embraced the evil, felt its inimical chill and for an instant sensed her qi begin to shrivel in fear of what it could do to her. Then, thunder rolling through her heart, she understood it all, that fear was another human idea, that it had no meaning in the place within which she dwelled.
Gathering her power like a cloak, she opened her arms. She engulfed it, running through it and, in the end, absorbing it in a burst of light-energy-kineticism that shook her, that roared through streams and fields, oceans and mountains, that thundered in her world for all eternity.
Jake heard something then, like the snapping of a twig. Unmindful of the pain and her warnings, he made it to his feet and stumbled the last paces to where the two of them lay. Bliss was on top and, groaning, Jake went to his knees. He pulled Bliss off his daughter, brought her into his arms.
"Bliss!"
He saw the hole ripped in her chest at the spot where her heart was. Somehow the wound had been instantly cauterized. There was no blood, only, inexplicably, the scent of the sea.
"Oh, no. No!"
The rain beat against him and every drop seemed like a reminder of his sins. "Oh, Bliss," he whispered. It was impossible to believe that she was gone. I will take care of her, Elder Uncle, he had said to Three Oaths. She is most precious to me, your bou-sehk. Until this moment of utter loss he did not know just how precious.
Jake turned his head.
"Are you okay, Jake?" Simbal said.
"I don"t know."
Simbal knelt at Jake"s side, his fingers feeling for the wound. "What happened?"
Jake looked down at Bliss"s beautiful face. "I don"t know that either."
"Bennett"s dead. And the old guy with the broken back"s where you left him under that tree. He"s laughing his head off. Won"t stop for anything. I think he"s lost it."
Jake barely heard a word.
Simbal leaned forward. "How"s this other girl? Who is she?"
"My daughter," Jake said.
"She"s still alive," Simbal said, checking her pulse.