“Come,” Bogorchu said, “Let me give you a rested horse and together we will get your horses back....”
Why did his words feel so strange... different sounding? He felt as if someone were inside him, having difficulty communicating. Bogorchu suddenly had an urge to fish... to “detect fish”... but had no idea what that meant.
No matter! He must help this man with the fire in his eyes...
* * *
Sheila-as-Yeke Chiledu sat upright on his horse, scanning the wind-blown steppes along the Onon River. Something wasn’t right. Up ahead. The river to their left was deserted, except for a young goat drinking from its waters. His recent wedding to Hogelun Ujin was still forefront in his mind, but something was wrong... terribly wrong...
Then he saw them. Three of them... galloping toward them at frantic speed.
Yeke looked to Hogelun, who was already looking to him with fearful eyes. They exchanged quick, emotional words, before Chiledu kicked his horse, and broke off toward a nearby hill at full bore. He would attempt to draw their attack. Riding hard, he whipped and kicked his horse into full speed, hoping to double back and return to his bride—
When the thought of him passionately kissing Hogelun, one last time, entered his mind—but as a woman...
* * *
Banner-as-Subetei had just sent a hail of arrows into the air against the Russians, while simultaneously ordering the lighting of dung and naphtha behind his troops. The battle was brutal and frenzied along the Kalka River, north of the Caspian Sea. The Russians, as was fully expected, charged. Subetei turned, catching glimpses of their standard
(Banner?)
banners flapping above their armies. He ordered his archers to retreat into the now heavily smoked rear. The Russians blundered right on through the smoke screen in pursuit... and were met not by lightly armed archers, but his heavily armed cavalry, wielding swords, mace, and lances. Subetei’s victory was swift and brutal as they routed the enemy...
* * *
Tiger-as-Şakir Istikbal’s eyes were wide with fear, his mind still filled with the painful echoes of screams and wails. His vision, fading fast on the one hand, grew clearer in another way he couldn’t comprehend. Ants ran across his face, but he couldn’t swipe them away for some, quite disturbing, reason, though he swore he felt his arm move...
Ants. Everywhere.
And he had crazy images of sitting at a bench before a group of people who all silently stared back at him. As he looked around, he saw his body—his full body—before him, separated by space from the him viewing it. He tried to scream, but nothing came out of his mouth... open and closed... open and closed...
Tiger-as-Şakir sat beside his head, staring at his body. Everywhere were dismembered corpses. He couldn’t comprehend—he knew he’d been slain—but why wasn’t he dead? Where was he? What was he—
Tiger-as-Şakir’s attention was suddenly diverted to a body next to him. He didn’t recognize who it was, but seemed to suddenly focus on the moaning the man continued to emit. He still lived? How unfortunate. How unfortunate for the lot of those not lucky enough to have been killed on this blood-soaked battlefield of what was left of their home, south of the Aral Sea...
A growing “whoosh” of noise built off in the distance, accompanied by a mounting rumble through the earth. It sounded like—but it couldn’t be, couldn’t possibly be—they were nowhere near the sea... yet what he heard was definitely the onrush of something that made no sense...
Water?
It sounded and felt as if the sea itself was—
The waters of the Amu Darya did not normally flow through the streets of Urgench, but today they did, and as their on-rushing torrents overtook him and those around him, Şakir watched as his severed head was kicked about like a bouncing, rolling ball ahead of the churning, angry waters of the diverted river, as it wiped clean the slaughtered town of his, and his people...
* * *
Kacey-as-Hogelun sat upright in her cart as she watched Yeke ride off without her into the hills. The three riders diverted after him at full gallop, and her heart leapt into her throat.
No!
Though she did not scream out, inside she screamed with all the fear and rage of a loved one for the life of their lover.
She must not lose Chiledu!
NO! Oh, blessed Tengri, this must not be!
She stopped the cart and jumped to the ground, watching as her husband valiantly tried to outrun them. There were three of them and they meant to have her—and at the death of her beloved. If she had to live a thousand lifetimes, she would find Yeke...
* * *
Banner-as-Subetei sat in an after-battle feast where he and another general laughed it up, enjoying the spoils of their victory over the Russians. As Banner’s point of view pulled back, he saw them dining atop a huge, crude, wooden box, sealed with mud and dung and straw in all its cracks, including its union with the earth. As he and his fellow commander dined, another portion of his mind entered the mud-and-dung-sealed box to find three captured Russian princes suffocating within. The after-battle fate of respected enemy among the Mongol required their blood be not spilled where they stood. Banner-as-Subetei was sure they didn’t quite appreciate the honor they were given...
* * *
Harry-as-Kioshu looked to a sky filled with literally screaming arrows.
Harry tried to flinch, to run away, but the samurai warrior he was also stood his ground. The first volley of arrows rained down upon them, and he watched as they buried their shafts deeply into their boats, though some bounced harmlessly off the sides and deck. He saw that the arrows that did not stick into the planking were dull. Picking one up, he found round, blunt heads with six holes drilled into them. He whipped it back and forth until he heard a slight whistling sound. Clever. Arrows that did, indeed, scream. Tossing it away, he looked to those samurai who remained. Many had taken hits, but many were restless to engage. This enemy would be stopped, or they would die trying.
Another volley, that same whistling scream filling the air, and, again, their boat, and those around them, were struck. But this time they returned fire. Harry felt that familiar
(what “familiar?”)
rush of adrenaline as he prepared for battle. But he also saw that the seas were quickly turning rough. They would have to strike hard and fast, before the storm...
Harry-as-Kioshu fast forwarded the experience and saw that the storm had finally hit full force. He and his men had taken shelter on the island, but the ships had not been so lucky. He watched as they smashed against each other and sank to the bottom of the sea...
* * *
The entity-as-Stoker, as if standing beside each person, in each person’s mind, spoke, while images of Mongolian history flashed through their minds.
I am he who was once known as Kokochu and Teb Tengri... shaman to the Khongkhotad clan, defeated by Odchigin, brother to Temujin, Chinggis Khan. I come with him, for we are no longer separated, and I help Chinggis speak through the one called Stoker, who is yet part of me in another place and time. We do this in an effort to, once and for all, conclude old wrongs that have been wrought upon those whom have not yet accepted the necessary conclusion.
All individual images within each person merged and flowed from a single gestalt. Teb-as-Stoker no longer spoke, as presented lives... lives that directly permeated each person’s consciousness. Each individual experienced, in exquisitely refined detail, all the lineages of their multiple lives across Time. Each had, in some way, been involved in the great and bloody warring of the Mongol empire, either under Genghis, or another khan’s rule... as well as many other lives, across other countries and times...
Images of captured, respected warriors, flew past... of these respected warriors having been rolled up into carpets and beat to death... of having been boiled alive... suffocated... other images of respected Mongols having been laid to rest in places of honor atop mountains...
Kacey saw how the aged and polite Jac
k and Hedda Hocker had been fierce warriors under Genghis.
Billy Williams and Ronda Ettbauer had been brutally dismembered on the eastern fringes of the advancing Mongol hordes’ kingdom, as was Tiger.
Harry... Harry had been one of many defending samurai against a later generation of Mongol attacks under Kublai Khan, across the Sea of Japan’s Korea Strait. Each and every person on trial for murder, on that distant, future, Florida peninsula, had been at the business end of swords, lances, and violence wielded by the great and mighty ruler Genghis Khan. Each realized, in their distant future, that what they had done was unconscionable, and had been the result of their inability to come to terms with their own deaths. Realized how they’d been distanced from themselves—and the Truth—by their blind, seething obsession with revenge. They had been unable to feel a final, fully exacted sense of revenge for their brutal deaths across many lifetimes. Felt that—though they had repeatedly, individually, killed their killers in other lives—this time would be different. They had constructed an ensemble attack, one their killers would least expect. It would be in the waning years of their most-comfortable existences, when they were least expecting any further reincarnational retribution. The remaining past-life Mongol victims would rise up and give their past-life butchers what they’d experienced, on a much more personal, hand-to-hand level. And it would never end... was still going on in other lives...
They... were the last of the dead... the rest of whom had already made peace with their past. But now they saw their futility, their ignorance, and hung their heads in shame.
None of this had been needed... but had been needed to be worked through. Each saw their relation, and how they were all one. But, now, each also saw that they needed to take full responsibility for their actions. No act is punished, though each lesson is experienced until learned.
Teb-as-Stoker smiled and bowed his head. He metaphorically stepped aside to again allow Genghis to reenter Stoker. Genghis’s entity was a far more powerful, all-pervading presence, and when he spoke, he shook the consciousnesses of each soul.
“DO NOT FEAR ME, MY PEOPLE!” the entity-as-Genghis-through-Stoker tried to whisper. “There is no need to any longer fear who I once was—or who you once were. As much as I am every bit of who I once was, I am no longer, in those terms, that personality. I am the slayer... and the slain...
Each person experienced Genghis in his different incarnations... as a knight killed during the Crusades, as a Russian killed in future Mongol raids, and as a samurai killed during the invasion of Takashima.
“Everything you are, I, too, have been. We learn both sides of the coins we live and are never immune from that which we do to others. That is the lesson, my friends.”
Everyone experienced Genghis talking with shamans, performing his own rituals... conversing with the Taoist sage, Changchun... and was with Genghis during his 1227 Yinchuan campaign...
Genghis came through to each person in both word and image. Through the souls of all present whirled the imagery of his death, the thousands of cavalry that had trampled his burial site into historical obscurity...
“Since my death, I have come to appreciate different aspects of existence as I had never known. Largely ignored, and not much is talked about in your histories, was my spiritual nature. In my later years, I sought to better understand it. Yes, I had, indeed, been described as a man of my times, but, with few exceptions, what has been overlooked is that I tried to better the times for those over which I reigned. In certain terms, and for my own purposes, it was—in your terms—merely the price of admission that I was as violent as I was... not unlike your current need to be... connected... through your current lives’ technologies. I cannot vouch for all my troops and their actions—they have their own responsibilities—but I did try to rise above it. I was physical. So, at times did indulge in certain physical aspects better left unexplored. However... I must insist my motives were honorable. To be honest? It was a shame I died when I did, for little of my good intentions or aspirations were carried on by those succeeding me!”
Genghis broke into tumultuous laughter.
“Much has been incorrectly and inappropriately attributed to me. I never consciously intended to be a conqueror, and personally cared little for material gain in and of itself, other than as the spoils of war for my people... a means to an end. When you lead warriors, again, in your terms and your terms alone, you need to speak their tongue, and theirs was a tongue of violence and riches. And none of this even touches upon the distortions!”
As Genghis imparted this information, all experienced events blasting through them like scorching winds... each became part of the thoughts, emotions, and intentions Genghis had had throughout his lifetime... each experienced firsthand everything Genghis had done... and why. They were with him as he prayed... as he distributed herds of goats among his people... as he rode alone across the steppe, staring pensively out across its vast grasslands...
“I needed to know how others lived, and needed those better off than us to help my people become better off than them. I knew we had not the needed skills to bring our empire to great levels, so I... imported... it. I did what any parent would do for their family. It is not under my control that those fearful and weak of mind or body attribute and focus only upon that which they lack, resultantly giving to certain conditions exalted, distorted, statuses. I lacked for nothing and tried to learn within the framework of my existence then. So, to that end, myself and my people complimented each other. If I am guilty of anything, that is it. There will always be distortions, for many did, especially following my death, greatly distort my efforts... or, at the very least, misunderstood them.
“All is cyclical, my friends, and though not in any way a good and valid enough reason, but what I did to you, you have all done to me, and those I commanded, in other incarnations. You have, finally, discovered your obsession... now grow beyond it, and with it. Take my blessings and eternal request for forgiveness, and forever be the better for it—learn the deeper truths and joys to your own incarnations!
“Once again, I apologize for my part in your lessons, and I will continue to do so until all is learned. In my killing you, price of admission or not, I also killed portions of myself.
“Each of you must now move on... to other systems... at the completion of your current existences. Take that knowledge with you to look back upon your journeys as a parent does a child who had made mistakes—but learned from them. What we do in our infancies allows us adult growth, and to develop in these other systems in which we now find ourselves. Learn from it, grow from it... then move on.
“But, before we go, one more thing...”
Here, Genghis radiated a light so bright not one could look directly into it.
“As much destruction as I’ve wrought upon this existence, I am returning—in your future’s future—to wield a different form of power! I am not yet done with your world!”
Genghis again broke off into profound, boisterous, laughter, fists thrust into his hips and head thrown back.
“My second coming, as it were, had been timed, in your current focus’s futures, with the re-entrances of other personalities to bring about a greater global facilitation of the Human Condition... in ways that will shake the very foundations of any Koko Mongke Tengri!”
“I look forward to our final kuriltai, in this system’s incarnations, with great anticipation and joy—for we will and have already brought about a greater expansion of consciousness that will, and has forever, changed how Humanity conducts itself—and which contributes to all systems of existence.
“We leave you now.”
As Genghis and Teb departed, all felt as if their souls had been knocked from their purchases. Tiger, Billy Williams, Pete Cooper, Margrit Malotki, Paul Magruder, and the others all saw, with stunning clarity, how, throughout their lives, they’d been constantly and tirelessly reliving, in one way or the other, the apparent righting of what had been their deaths at the hands of Gen
ghis and his army—though they’d conveniently forgotten the other lives wherein which they’d been the killers... as Sumerians, Assyrians, Romans, Celts, Egyptians, Bosnians, Arabs—even Canadians and Americans. Slayers had, indeed, also been the slain.
All returned to the familiar court room, in Gulf Coast Florida. Each, from gallery onlooker to Stoker himself, sat in muted contemplation of their experiences—including those still in their jail cells, scattered from Sunset Harbor to Punta Gorda. No one talked, moved, nor sneezed... but all sat quietly, listening to their breathing... contemplating their multiple existences, their multiple lessons...
* * *
Howard Stoker sat quietly, hands folded in his lap, and contemplated his gavel for a thousand years...
Harry Gordon still stood before Tiger, both hands clasped before him, and stared at a spot of court-room floor for a thousand years...
Kacey Miller stared at her two rings, while Sheila Petrova stared at her hands. Both did so for a thousand years...
Banner returned to his thousand-yard stare for a thousand years...
And Tiger remained on the witness stand, staring at the richly finished wood of the stand before him for a thousand years...
When time again kicked in for the south Florida microcosm of that Lee County court room, each silently went where they needed to go. Each suspect knew their part, and played out their roles to their needed conclusions, under the laws governing not only the state of Florida, but the physical existence in which they had all accepted their roles.
Because, what comes around does, indeed, go around...
Epilogue
The funny thing about life, Kacey Burnett mused (besides how good it felt to again use her married name), as she walked toward the awaiting, red, white, and blue Greyhound bus, was that it constantly changed. No matter what you thought you might be doing, or where you thought you might be headed, it could, and almost always did, change on you in an instant. Never say never, and never burn your bridges... if at all possible. You never knew when you might need to double-back over that very same bridge on a return trip.
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