“My whole life I have been huge!” he cried in a harsh whisper. “And now
– to end like this!”
I had a sudden thought.
“Sibu, go and bring Jigme here, and Vel, if you canfind it.” He looked at me as if to say, Purba is dead, Jigme is dead, your Holiness, we are all going to die – what is the point?
“Go! Do as I say!” I yelled through my own tears and coughed in agony at the effort.
He obeyed and, circling the battle, ran over the other side of the hall. I turned back to Pemba.
“Pemba, I am going to try to take us out of here. I don’t know if I can do it, even for myself let alone for all of us.”
He had lapsed into a semiconsciousness, his mighty chest heaving with each laboured breath as he was slowly crushed by his own weight. I turned to see how Sibu was faring retrieving Jigme and was relieved to see him running back across the debris covered floor with Jigme’s arm over his shoulders. He was clearly alive but covered in blood and very much his usual size. In his free hand he still clasped Vel.
Just at the moment they got back to us there was a thunderous clamour and brilliant flash of light and the giant form of the tigress went sliding across the floor. The broken and bloodied form of Kusunda’s General rose from the ruins he had been buried beneath. In an explosive fit of sudden and convulsive apoplexy he leaped towards us.
Jigme, who seemed only half conscious, suddenly exploded in a fit of berserker fury. He screamed and jumped toward the advancing demon king. And Sibu, who saw his chance to avenge his friend, also leaped into the fray, a blast coming from the Shanka as a holy light shone forth from his necklace.
“No!” I screamed, but too late. Likmigya was burnt and broken but still had incredible power and strength. Jigme leaped from a fallen stone directly in the path of the twisted ruination wreathed in foul magic. Sibu plunged his kirpanin the creature’s massive thigh. Likmigya roared and caught the now human-sized Jigme in one hand while he lifted his huge leg to squash Sibu beneath his clawed foot.
I swallowed my grief and hurriedly prayed– a last, desperate gambit to save us all from this evil. I worked the spell in my head and created a swirling doorway to take us away from that place. I could not differentiate between friend and foe as the circlet of myriad swirling colours descended over us.
I cried with the mental exertion of holding onto the spell as the mighty black form of Likmigya railed against me. He meant to undo me and focussed all his loathing, his cruelty and his undeniable power at me. I felt myself losing control and even while I could see our egress, the doorway was slowly unravelling.
In his moment of triumph however, with all his attention upon undoing the swirling maelstrom that had invaded his kingdom, he had let the blackrobe fall to the floor and ignored Sibu, ablaze with holy lambency. Jigme took the opportunity and ran him through with Vel. As the diminishing circle enveloped us, I grasped my staff and the Sudarshana to me and I felt us falling away from the Silver Palace. It had worked. The demon lord could not undo my conjuration.
Instead, as the last of that arcane titian radiance waned and the mighty chamber of the underdark was transposed to a warm blue sky that shone over a fair land of rolling green and brown hillocks and tilled farms, I saw him, with his last ounce of strength, cast his black-bladed spear, forged in the depths of the land of shadow, evil steeped in evil, toward me. It struck me as the silken refulgence, now strengthened into a coronet of a thousand suns, closed completely over us.
In the magical explosion that blasted the Silver Palace to a million shards of glass I lost my grip on Pemba and remembered no more.
Part II: The Karākau
Chapter 14: Goldenhawk
“Mukakumana di zinda sa kilva munchagata bwina kusatira Te Waharoa (Nkhendae yi Waikato) npida miloongu idzakulometsani!” Kāwharu’s war -speech to the united Akalihondo (desert warriors). Translated to: “When you face the silver devils you will do well to follow Te Waharoa (the War Chief of the Waikato) and the gods will smile upon you.”
The slowly swirling waters of the river carried me around the base of the islet. It wasn’t deep here and I knew how long I could hold my breath– just enough to get from the place I had fallen in to where the slimy stones on the leeward side would give me a perfect opportunity to scale the craggy precipice behind them.
I rose slowly from the water and was immediately assailed by the grunts and exertions of unarmed combat from the top of the islet. My hands upon the shadowed rocks, I drew myself out and inched my way upwards, three fathoms towards the summit. I looked up sharply to see a body suddenly flung from above me and turned to see the tremendous splash as it hit the surface and was consumed in a watery grave.
Another few cubits that felt like leagues and I could almost see him. A deadly struggle had ensued. My heart leaped as a wild kick extended from a tirailleur above me that passed scant inches from my face and then, as my adrenal medulla saturated my body with epinephrine and my heartbeat raced and my pulse banged so that my inner ear resounded to primordial drum beat, I crouched as one stricken, in a moment where time slowed, and saw the look of shock and betrayal as he too plunged backward from the rock face, arms and legs splayed as though his hawklike fingers could clutch the invisible air and bring him back from his doom. But for as long as this Mother Irth has danced its orbit around our ageing yellow star, gravity has ever had the upper hand. With a muffled curse, that combatant was also consumed in a watery end. Now was my opportunity.
In a singular explosion of speed and dexterity, I leaped atop the summit boulder and was instantly into the fray. Such well-placed kicks and punches, blocks and parries had me leaping and bending, squatting and rolling to avoid being shunted over the edge. But I was not alone. Two others on the far side had crept within striking distance and together attacked from behind. I knew my competitor as well as I knew myself, better in some ways. He levelled a kick at me that would have sent me sprawling over the edge but needed to whirl around to parry the others so I was saved.
His attention was off me for a moment. I struggled to regain my balance and then I saw my chance. I twisted and twirled, kicking and punching and working in unison with the other two managed to work him to the edge. As blood trickled from my mouth and from my elbow, I saw what one intended and launched a high kick which I disguised within several feints. The subject of our combined attack whirled back to me but did not notice that one of the others hadsuddenly crouched behind him. By a look he told me “Now!” and with nowhere else to go, I exploded in a massive assault that succeeded in forcing him back. A last desperate gamble that attracted his incredible defences and counter-attack that without help would have been the end of me.
But luck was with me. My final kick caught him square in the chest and pushed him back where he met the crouching form behind him. In a gasp he yelled out and toppled backwards taking the other with him. The two bodies fell to the water below in a huge splash and I yelled in triumph from the top of the tower.
“Ha! You are beaten Dorje!” But suddenly I too was upended. A weight pushed me from behind. I left the rock and twisted in mid-air to see the insolent smirk etched across the face of young Puk– the victor!
I hit the water. And woke with a start. I lay exhausted. My whole body ached, especially my chest. Such impotent weakness as I had never felt chained me to the pallet on which I lay. It felt like I had slept on some uneven ground with a shard of rock poking into my back for days. I tried to move but I felt like I was a hundred years old. My whole body felt as though I had run around the base of the Holy Mountain ten times and been beaten with sticks and pelted with stones the entire way.
I opened my eyes and through my pain slowly focussed on the roughhewn rock of a dimly lit ceiling above me. Turning my eyes, I could see decorative wall hangings that provided some dull colour and hid the rock walls behind them. I looked down and beheld a stone floor covered with the same type of decorative rug.
Where was I? If this was a cave, w
e must still be in the underdark and my spell had failed. I was still alive though so something had happened.
I was lying on a low bier with a pillow under my head and crinkled sheet covering my lower half. I looked down at my chest which had been well bandaged in the style of a military field dressing. There was no sharp pain, only a persistent ache, but I dare not look under the bandage.
Some light shone through an open doorway across the room. I rolled towards it and beheld the strangest sight. A bearded, dark-skinned man, that I mistook initially for Master Panuaru, knelt quietly upon the earthen floor, with hands upon his thighs, as if in some fashion meditating, or perhaps praying. He wore some close-fitted black garb that in that shadowy room made all but his face invisible. I was going to say something but then thought better of it. Behind him another man, also dark-skinned, tattooed, tall and broadshouldered, with the same dark, close-fitting clothing and bald head stood with a long and cruelly shaped pike that in the darkness looked darker again. As soon as he saw I was awake he slowly turned and walked out through the doorway.
I pushed the sheet aside and saw I still wore my breaches. I rolled slowly onto my front and got up onto my knees, then tentatively stood up. My robes and shirt had been folded and placed on a small side table. I moved slowly towards the door and in the light noticed that the bandage wound about my torso was darkly stained with my blood.
I ignored the kneeling man and made my way out of the doorway into a corridor that seemed to be part of the same cave, carved out with whatever advanced tools or perhaps magic that these people used. What had happened to me? Where was I?
The corridor brought me to a larger chamber from which other corridors branched away in different directions. It contained couches and low-lying tables and appeared to be some sort of common area. It was also decorated with wall hangings and carpets and was lighted with several small, floating lüum balls. The tall man stood across the other side of the room and beckoned me to follow him through one of the branching corridors. After a few short turnings I saw a red glow that grew in brightness and knew it to be the cave entrance. I slowly stepped out and beheld, in a dull and reddish light, reminiscent of dusk, a dry, flat ocean of sand, surrounded by jagged, rocky mountains. Looking behind me, the cave entrance was gone. I saw only a rock wall. I was amazed. I looked towards the tall man who stood quietly next to me, still holding the spear. What kind of magic was this?
I looked back out over the desert. I did not know where I was but felt I must have been picked up somewhere by the nomads. The heat was oppressive! This was certainly not the Underdark. What had happened while we had spent all those hours in the blind darkness of that other place? Were these maybe nomads from the southern lands across the Great Divide? Maybe the shimmering doorway I had fashioned had brought us further south again? Maybe that’s why it was so hot?
A child suddenly appeared out of the blank rock wall and froze, seeing me in my trousers, heavily bandaged and slightly hunched with the oppressive heat. He ran back the way he had come screaming,“Dharka dahabka!”
“Wait!” I yelled after him in a croaky voice, but he was gone. The effort of yelling brought on a coughing fit that hurt my chest. My hand was speckled with blood when I pulled it away.
Where was I? What was all this? I could not recollect anything with any surety before waking in the dusty cave behind me. I crouched down, feeling ill. I looked at the ground as it rushed up to meet me and then blackness.
I woke again and this time someone held a bowl of water to my lips. I grabbed it and drank deeply. It was gone in a moment. “More”, I pleaded with a cracked voice. The bowl was taken away and refilled. I grabbed for it again and drained that too.
I looked up and around me. I was in the same room as before, but this time there were half a dozen people in the room with me; men and woman, young and old and all with the same dark skin, curly, unkempt hair and, all sporting elaborate tattoos on their arms and faces. All were thin and wiry, perhaps even gaunt, but sinewy and strong. All were dressed in the same kind of close fitting, somewhat featureless dark garb that seemed to drink the light.
I eased myself up into a sitting position, feeling no pain or discomfort, and said hello to them and nodded my head, with my hands clasped together at the height of my forehead.
They nervously looked at each other and then tried to imitate me. “Where am I?” I asked.
They all looked blankly at me.
“I am Tashi.” Again, the blank looks. I pointed to myself.“Ta-shi,” I said
again. They all bent forward until their heads touched the decorative floor rug and spoke in unison, “Dharka dahabka!” They then began chanting, but not in any language I had ever heard.
After a few moments I placed my bare feet on the carpeted floor and slowly stood up. They remained crouching and I walked passed them and followed the same path as before to emerge beyond the magical cave entrance into the dull red sunshine. My chest no longer pained me and I drew off the wrappings and let them fall.
With the oppressive noon sun shining down and bathing the rocky ground in a sanguineous hew, I saw the remains of scars. Five small scars ran in a roughly circular shape– just below my left nipple, the second just under my left collar-bone, then just left of my laryngeal prominence, and below that into my chest. But a long scar in my chest showed something large had pierced me that must have just missed my heart by a hair’s breadth. It had healed but was still tender to the touch.
The people from the room began appearing out of the magical wall behind me. Giving me a wide berth, they nevertheless encircled me. An older man was the last to emerge and came to stand before me.
“Takulandirani dzikumu wathu.” He held out his hand with something in it. I reached for it and felt a familiar shape as it dropped into the palm of my hand.
“Mwamuna mbalame mkanda,” he said, looking down at my palm. I beheld the necklace that had been my symbol of exodus from my old life; the enigmatic symbol that was both man and bird, the pellucid jade flowing and mixing with the lucent chromium more finely than the finest lapidarian could dream of. It was dull now though. It seemed no more than an interesting bauble. I remembered it afire with a brilliant and refulgent glare.
As I placed it around my neck I momentarily forgot about the people around me and took some time to remember what had happened to me; the journey through the underdark, the lake and the fight. I shivered, remembering the palpitating evil of that realm and of Kusunda’s general – hopelessly broken and defeated.I don’t know if the autochthons gathered around me saw the pain of remembrance suddenly etched across my face but I quailed, feeling a shadow and a weight fall upon my spirit.
“Poor Purba,” I whispered in detached affliction. I felt again the acute agony as the spear passed through my chest to bury itself in the rock behind me. My hand over my chest, I half walked, half stumbled in sorrow and guilt from that circle then, away from the people that had found and cared for me. I did not know where I was or how I came here but I knew that I should be dead too. I chose a direction away from where those people gathered about me and walked, hardly aware that they trailed along behind me at a distance, fearful, but curious. I came to stand at the edge of a low cliff that looked out across the immense ocean of sand, its storm-tossed waves and troughs frozen in a waterless death.
There was nowhere to go, but my grief was such that I wanted to step off that cliff, and free myself from the guilt that bored into me– Lhapka, Nimu and Purba. And then Sibu, Pemba and Jigme. All gone. Their final moments replayed themselves again in my mind. I saw each of their faces as the swirling doorway closed over them.
I sank to the ground, a cascade of tears pouring down my face, as if that would bring life to the desert before me, life that had been lost in abundance. The quest had failed before it had even really begun.
“Iye amalira bihara!” I heard from behind me and many hands were suddenly at me, crowding around my face, seemingly trying to catch my tears before they hit my rob
e. I was startled and the only escape from the press of hands and arms and bodies was forward.
I don’t know whether I actually took a step or whether they just thought I had but before I knew it, I was tackled to the ground. I fought and screamed but to no avail. I was weak after what must have been many weeks of little food and no movement. I could as easily have been brought down by two of Yeshe’s novices.
The days passed very quickly in this place. I had no way to accurately tell the time but they could not have more than six or seven hours in length, and so too with the nights. This was a strange place. There were two suns, a large, oppressive red star that burned ceaselessly throughout the day, and another brighter, smaller star that had prominence during the night, lighting the desert roughly halfway between a full moon and full day-light so that there was never any real darkness. The days were always hot and long and violent storms were common although there was never any rain, only wind and sand and dry lightening.
I ate, and gradually regained my strength. Deep in the pockets of my robes I found the small leather-bound book and beautifully carved statuette of a bodhisattva I had taken from the library in the Silver Palace. I erected a crude altar and sat in mani for hours at a time. The brown book was beautifully preserved and in an ancient and prodigious language that I had seen in many of the books in our own library which I could read. It contained a series of individual stories which I found incredible delight in reading. Through everything, that book was a constant companion from that point on. I have it with me still.
As the days progressed, sorrow and pity oppressed me. I could see nothing but death and darkness. The autochthons went about their daily lives, the novelty of the stranger wearing thin for most people whose need for food and water was greater than their need for the pitiable distraction that had suddenly become one more mouth to feed.
I took short walks away from the cave entrance and looked out over a stark and alien world. Massive fingers of jagged rock stabbed skywards, their bases from the tens, to hundreds to thousands of feet wide and the boles of the structures sometime wider again, tapering to narrow points as they jutted upwards sometimes many thousands of feet. They looked like trees; trees of stone and petrified branches interlaced many of them with many miles of tubular rock structures. It was amazing to behold. On the other side of the cave was the massive ocean of windswept sand. I could almost imagine a huge ocean must once have flowed here given the topography and the erosion I saw. But where was the water now, if such an ocean had ever existed?
The War of the Realms Page 24