by Sean Platt
“Why would I kill them?”
“Because they were trying to kill you.”
“They were following your instructions,” Amit replied.
“My instructions to kill you. Did that not anger you?”
“If it did, my rage would have been for you, not my brothers.
Woo laughed. “‘Your brothers.’ You sound like the abbot.”
“Are they not my brothers?”
“Not during battle. It matters not how they would have greeted you upon arrival, or how they might smile and bow when greeting you now.”
Amit had come to kill Woo, and here he was with another lecture. Woo controlled this place, and could probably defeat Amit in a fair fight. He had stopped the battle outside. If he hadn’t, Amit would be dead. Whether his vengeance still extended to his sensei or not, he had to proceed logically, without excess emotion. When Woo died, it must be because it made sense and because it was correct, not because he had driven Amit to action through anger.
“All the more reason to leave them alive. Their temporary desire to kill suggests that I rise above to see the bigger picture.”
“That is what makes this place different from the monastery where we once lived together. I know you have been to see Suni. What did he say? Did the abbot swear that we have turned dark? Do you feel we serve crime? That we have betrayed our vows in the service of money?”
“I do.”
“Or can you see how we are rising above to see the bigger picture? There are many wrongs in this world, Amit, and we serve but a small slice of those wrongs. There are larger foes — not to us, but to humanity itself. To the spirits of nations. What is the planet’s prevailing mood, Amit? Where are we going as a people? Do you think it’s in the correct direction? Do you even know of the strings behind it all, holding it up and making the puppet dance?”
Amit wanted to answer, but Woo’s cobbled questions made it clear that none wanted answers. He waited, relaxed but ready, unsure which way the encounter might tip.
“The organization thinks it controls us. They do not. We choose to serve them because of that old expression: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Their funds allow us to reach those who would upset the world’s balance of power in a direction that would be incorrect overall. Most cannot see it, but we do. Sometimes, bad things must happen before good can occur, just as the Christians believe the world had to flood — and everything had to die — before all was reborn.”
Amit’s skin crawled. “You want to manipulate the power structures. You want to kill and twist truths until the world’s governments do what you feel is right.”
Woo turned, then made a small gesture toward Amit with his beads. “No, Amit. That is exactly the point. We do not want to do any of it. We do it because we must, and because no one can. Just as those monks out there did not want to kill you. They were attacking you because I declared a sacrifice drill. We do them from time to time, because we must. Someone will volunteer to be prey, the others will fight until he or she is dead. We must always remind ourselves: Life on this plane is temporary and means little in the scheme of ascension, and we must always remember that it is our duty, when required, to kill.”
Woo continued rubbing his beads, eyes boring into Amit.
“In the old monastery, they say a monk must never fight or kill. Monks must train and become potentially deadly, but never cross the line to become actually deadly, as you yourself have recently crossed. I thought it a waste. I kept thinking of all the things we could do if we were willing to set aside prejudices about right and wrong. The Sri have always agreed with that, more or less — with one exception. You remember how I told you to question everything, even my teachings? How you must never fall into the trap of thinking, ‘We will walk our own path instead of blindly following orders … just as our teachers command us?’ That was the way with the Sri, and they never saw it. If the shadow monks had removed themselves from society and trained hard because they believed it was right to suffer short-term sacrifices for longer-term benefit, why would they never question themselves? Why would the Sri, who claimed to rise above, never question their own ways?”
Amit was trying to take it all in, and not react rashly. Woo had been like a father, and Amit’s inborn tendency was to listen. His words sounded almost rational. But unbidden, somewhere deeper in his mind, he saw the image of a beautiful girl with her throat slit, lying in a puddle of blood.
He swallowed, blinking it back.
“The monks were not all cold and dispassionate. Rafi wanted to kill me.”
“Rafi, yes,” Woo said. Amit cocked his head, watching as the older man paced, then paused by the window’s edge. “Rafi didn’t pick on you because you were smaller, Amit. Maybe at first, yes, but later, as you both grew older, Rafi had a second, more powerful reason that was not your fault. Rafi had a love. He should not have, as a monk of the Sri, but boys will be boys. The one he loved did not love him back. She loved another instead. Another, as it turned out, who did not appreciate her affections … just as she did not appreciate Rafi’s.”
Amit looked around the room, as if he might suddenly see someone standing between them — tall and pretty, with a birthmark on her neck.
“I could have allowed the battle to continue, Amit. But why bother? You had already proven yourself worthy of all I’d known you could do. A sacrifice was already made. Two sides of that old triangle had collapsed. Amala has killed before, but this time she took the life of a man who loved her to save the man she loved herself.”
Amit’s head had sagged. He looked up.
“You had something special, Amit. Something I thought Rafi had, though I was wrong. He had the fire, but was neutered by the impotence of his desire. You said he wanted to kill you, and was not merely acting in spirit of the drill. You are right; I’m sure he did. Can you imagine? Years spent stuffing unrequited love deep inside himself, struggling to be a proper monk, only to see you suddenly reappear? A shadow monk should not engage in affairs of the heart, so he watched Amala every day, never acting, always pretending that he did not feel as he did, despite his obvious glances, or how he held his body when she was nearby. Eventually, I imagine he found a kind of peace — as much as he could. It must have been terrible when you appeared. You were salt in an open wound, and Amala was again looking at you with doe’s eyes. For Rafi, that must have been torture — a reminder that he was not the only one with inappropriate desires. The object of his affection had those same desires, and aimed them at another.”
Amit shook his head. “You wanted him to kill me.”
“Not at all. I wanted to test the chemistry of passion.” Woo rubbed his prayer beads, then resumed walking. “I saw potential in you from the start, Amit. The abbot and others did not want you in the order because they felt you were too volatile. They were right; you were. That was why I wanted you in the order. You could do things few could, and no one at the same experience levels. You were fast and strong. When you fought, you always won, sometimes even against much bigger or more experienced monks. Why? Shadow monks all share the same training, the same disciplines, the same diet and the same exercise. It wasn’t due to inherent strength; those you sometimes bested could lift much more. It was your anger. The others knew they were supposed to train; you wanted to. The others were instructed to fight as part of their practice; you wanted to fight. The others knew they must sometimes cause pain; you wanted to cause it. How could a motivated fist not eventually do greater damage than a sensible one?”
“No,” said Amit, still sitting. “I learned. I grew. I contained my anger, and learned to control it.” But he wasn’t sure. Not only had Amit’s anger fled him when fighting the abbot; it had flat-out betrayed him. It made him foolish, not better.
“In a sense,” said Woo. “We worked to control your anger, but I never asked you to banish it. When the abbot learned of what I was teaching you, he became very angry. You wanted to hurt others, and I encouraged it. We simply focused your anger, neve
r trying to wash it away. The abbot said it was a crime, that a monk should never desire to do the worst of what he must do. But the abbot’s words were merely ritualism. Blind obedience to the rules. If rage made a better fighter, why were we not willing to experiment? But the abbot was in charge, and his word was stronger than mine. As the others intervened, you learned to mask your feelings. But they were still there — rage in you, love in Amala, and jealousy in Rafi. There was something about the three that made for a ticking bomb. Rafi kept himself to himself, and Amala to herself. Your training continued, and eventually the bomb stopped ticking. But the seed was planted. Here.” Woo tapped his sliver temple.
He turned and looked into Amit’s eyes. “Tell me, Amit. Why are you here?”
He considered lying, but there was no point. Woo was seven steps ahead. “Nisha.”
Woo nodded. “Nisha. She was lovely.”
Nisha came to the monastery after Woo left. Amit’s temperature rose; Woo’s saying he knew her was, Amit believed, an admission of guilt. “Who was she to you?”
“A girl from town. A girl who tried, once, to sell me flowers in the square.” He paused. “A girl who reminded me, Amit, of your mother.”
“You knew my mother?”
Woo nodded. “Very well. She was my own forbidden love. We are all hypocrites, Amit. We try to be pure, but pervert the word’s meaning. To men like the abbot, ‘pure’ means to purge ourselves of all that makes us human, and become like machines. But we are not machines, and must fight what our minds and bodies desire. Some, I feel, is for the best. Some is not. My time with your mother was like nothing I’ve experienced in a lifetime of being Sri. It lasted just one week, then my version of the abbot — a man named Boor — convinced me that my emotions were unbefitting a shadow monk. I let her go, but couldn’t stop myself from secretly keeping my eye on her.” He nodded at Amit. “Along with the child she had shortly after, and the man who pretended to be his father.”
Amit watched Woo, quelling an internal tempest. There was too much inside, and he needed to go somewhere and meditate. Woo could be lying, but Amit didn’t think he was. But really, what would it change if Woo was his father? He’d been like a father for all of his life, and Amit would still have to kill him. Blood altered nothing.
“When she was killed, it broke my stone-cold Sri monk’s heart. No one knew who had killed her or why, and nobody knew of my connection to her. Boor — the only one who had known — was five years dead by then. In the end, it mattered little. All monks were permitted to take apprentices, so I could argue my choice, even if my apprentice was too old, too traumatized, too unbalanced. When I met Nisha, I saw the same spark in her eyes that I’d seen in your mother. I knew, as surely as I know the lines on my palms, that you would love her as I had once loved a girl just like her.”
Amit stood.
“Sit down, Amit,” said Woo.
“You had her killed.”
“If I say yes, will you come at me? Will you choose misplaced anger over sense? As I have told you over and over, there is a fine line. Use your anger, and you will be unstoppable. Be used by your anger and you are as simple to master as a four-piece puzzle.”
Amit fought for control. His forehead was warm; spiders of heat crawled across his bald scalp, down his neck, and into the folds of fabric around his neck. Riddles. All riddles. When he’d fought Suni, had he been used by his anger? Was he a missile of rage with transparent intentions? If he went at Woo, would it be different? Or would it be as it was with his earlier foes, where anger was deep, guiding him like a trusted accomplice?
Amit breathed. He stood, pushing the swell down — asking it to wait rather than retreat.
Woo resumed pacing. “I thought Rafi could be trained to do what you could, Amit. I need men with passion. Women, too. I tried with Amala as with Rafi, but until today she has never had a compelling reason to act on her passions. I was not deceiving you; I did not stop the fight on a whim. I now have my sacrifice, and although none of the other monks know the nature of that offering, I do. Perhaps she can be the success that Rafi never could. Rafi was slow. His passion for Amala was soft and his hatred of you impossible to direct. Amala is fast. But her passion is similarly soft, and has little to fight for.” A small smile touched Woo’s eyes. “But you, Amit. You had that seed from the start. You can never repay the world for your mother’s murder, and will therefore always have an open wound. Even I do not know who killed her. Believe me, I tried to find out, but it seems to have been random — one of those things our karma brings us, or her, that we are not meant to understand. But an unpaid debt can be an asset, as we saw with your training. Every opponent was your mother’s murderer. Hate, Amit. Hate can be unstoppable.”
“And what if my hatred turned on you?”
Woo shrugged. “You would have a good reason to hate me. I befriended Nisha, then told her a secret that did not exist. I brought her to our compound and showed her what we did, to make her believe. I spoke of a government we would infiltrate, and told her why that government was dangerous to the world’s well-being. Then I told her that our most recent job had flip-flopped and that bad men threatened to crush us, as those who were seeking to unseat their power. I told her that I feared for my life, and that I may have gotten her into danger. I told her I feared for her life, then vanished, knowing she’d believe the worst had happened — and that she’d never be able to find our monastery again on her own. Knowing that when she asked around, the people below would send her to the only other monastery they knew.”
“You set her up.”
Woo nodded. His voice taunting he said, “How does it make you feel?”
“You killed her.”
Woo shook his head. His hair had grown long, and the movement of his neck caused the silver-white hair to dance like snow in a storm. “It is not difficult to manipulate the organization. They believe they control us, but their minds are simple, and it is easy to pull their strings as they think they pull ours. I told them that she was a problem. I made sure the order was given down the right chain of command, so that you’d be able to follow it. I told them to slit her throat. To make it painful. To make sure you were there. To make sure you wetted your palms in her warm blood, and ideally watched her draw her last breath. You were already a nut, halfway cracked. It would not take much to split you open the rest of the way.”
Amit felt hot blood rise through the artery in his neck and spill across his bare scalp like boiling water. He felt his face flush. His hands gripped the chair arms, nails scratching tiny lines in the wood. He tried to remember what both Woo and the abbot had said about being mastered by anger. He tried to recall countless incidents in his childhood, flying off the handle then having to be brought down. After every incident, he’d reflected and felt foolish, seeing how easily his decisions were hijacked by something foreign. If he’d stopped and considered — mastered the anger — he’d have made different choices. But even knowing all he knew — remembering how easily Suni had seen through him and laid him flat — Amit found himself unable to quell his rage. Slipping into it felt like donning armor. It made him strong. The anger, as it settled onto his shoulders, was powerful, as if he could tear through walls and bite through steel.
“If you wanted her dead,” said Amit, a pulse throbbing at his temples, “why did you not kill her yourself?”
“Two birds, one stone.” Woo’s manner and voice were both maddeningly casual. “I was bound to the organization, and while they are not far-thinking or morally minded, their reach is large. Defying them would be … complex. But you? You were not bound to them at all. You were not acting on orders. You could do what had to be done without leaving a trail for others to follow.”
“You had me do your dirty work.”
“For the greater good, Amit.” Woo’s eyes were practically begging Amit to understand. “The Sri are — and have always been, since well before my time and regardless of organization ties — the most elite of assassins. We are the reason
a madman did not rise in the shambles of the Soviet Union, to pick up the pieces and assemble an unstoppable war machine. We are the reason a nuclear weapon was not detonated in Israel in 1994 and 1997, or in Istanbul in 2001. The elders I grew up with were the reason the Cuban Missile Crisis did not become the Cuban Missile Calamity. Most of what we’ve done is not so visible, but we are not vain. Shadow monks do not seek credit for our work. We do not need or want it. We do what we do to maintain balance, no matter how many ill tasks there may be between a problem and its resolution. What we do is always for the greatest good, even if it looks like evil. Or betrayal.”
“You would kill an innocent to advance your quest?”
“She had to be innocent, Amit, to awaken the sleeper inside of you.”
“You are insane.”
Woo shook his head. “I am a teacher.”
Amit took two steps forward. Woo did not step back or flinch. His dark unblinking eyes met Amit’s.
“Why did I not take you with me, Amit? You must have wondered. You were like my son, well before you ever knew that you literally were. I taught you to nurture your anger, and to break the rules when you knew better. I taught you heresy. We are the bloody fist. We would go where the likes of Suni — who wished to choke the Sri’s function — would not. Where they emphasized more meditation, we emphasized training. Where they would hesitate, we would march boldly forward and do what had to be done. He feels that I am short-sighted and greedy in my closer ties to the organization, but I am merely ‘thinking outside the box,’ as the Westerners say. For a while, the organization’s aims were like ours, and they had the money we needed. We rode the horse for as long as we could, and when the horse went mad, we unsheathed our scimitars and slit its throat. Suni professes to do what is best for the majority, but stops short when faced with distasteful decisions. But to do so is arrogant and self-centered. It is putting his own desires ahead of karma’s.”
“This is not about karma.” Amit said it steadily, hoping it sounded wise and authoritative. Inside, rage churned like a red tempest. Mastery or mastered? He could let the tempest from its bottle, but had no idea which direction it might go.