Way of the Immortals

by Harmon Cooper

  “How many cities are there in Lhasa?”

  “That’s an odd question, but sure, let me think. There are little villages scattered about, but the main cities are Nagchu, Bamda, Sarpang, Mongar, the Forbidden City of Trongsa, and Gewog. So six.”

  “The Forbidden City?”

  “Yes, this one is where the cat people hail from. It’s not forbidden any longer, mostly because the cat people have branched out into other cities and brought people from around Lhasa back to their homes, but the name has stuck.”

  “And this is just one country, right?”

  “You mean the Kingdom of Lhasa?”

  “Yes, is it just one large country with several parts? I’ve heard of other kingdoms as well.”

  “People just refer to it as the Kingdom of Lhasa. It is by no means a unified country. There are various territories, usually controlled by the madames. Nagchu and its surrounding areas, including these mountains, are controlled by Madame Mabel. Madame Blanche controls Bamda, where I’m from, and its surrounding areas including Gewog. Madame Darwina controls Mongar, a mountain city that also contains a portion of Cultivation Hills. Sarpang and the Forbidden City of Trongsa are independent municipalities. The druk, or dragon people come from Sarpang, and the cat people from Trongsa, as I just told you.”

  “And the other kingdoms?”

  “I don’t know as much about them. The Kingdoms of Paro and Rinpungpa are very far away, and the Island Kingdoms of Jonang and Tsirang are only reachable by boat. I don’t know if they have a similar system to what we have here.”

  “And the madames? Why are all the leaders female?”

  “Ah, now that’s an interesting question. Mabel is the only one who has been a ruler since she was a teenager. The other areas were once run by men, but they killed each other in a war about five years ago, leaving their estates to Madame Blanche and Darwina.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Do you mind if I sit?” he asked, pointing to a place on the floor in front of me.

  “By all means.”

  I started chewing the jerky, happy to have some protein. “Any idea what kind of trials the, um, Exonerated One is going to put me through tomorrow?”

  “What kind of trials…” Lhandon sneezed, wiping his nose with his robe, only to realize that this looked impolite. He apologized and cleared his throat. “Well, you say that you have some sort of power to kill evil spirits, so I suppose he will test that.”

  “He didn’t really ask many questions about it, which leads me to wonder why he just believed what a stranger coming into the monastery told him.”

  “Why would he not believe you?”

  “Are you serious?” I asked Lhandon. “You said that he was a prisoner, and that he has been alive for well over a hundred years.”

  “Over a hundred and fifty years,” he corrected me.

  “And he hasn’t encountered someone lying to him?”

  “If he assumes you are lying to him, it’s bad karma on your part. You’ve come here seeking refuge, and you have a compelling story. So rather than immediately attack what you are claiming, he has chosen to test it instead.”

  “What kind of trials?”

  “How much do you know about the Path of the Divine?”

  “I only know what a…” I swallowed the lump of jerky in my throat. “I only know what a bird told me. Actually, a bird and a slave.”

  “You spoke to a bird?” Lhandon asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I did, or, he mostly spoke to me. He explained to me on the way over here.”

  “I see,” said the chubby monk, running his hand along his chin line. “The animals are speaking to you, then.”

  “None of the other ones have, just this bird. I named him Roger.”

  “A strange name for a bird, but you have a strange name yourself, so that makes sense to me.” He smiled up at me. “Well, you’ve come to this monastery, which means you are interested in the Path of the Divine.”

  “Actually, I’m interested in finding my friends, and the dakini pointed me in the direction of this monastery.”

  “It sounds like a being from a different plane guided you here, and she apparently wants you to start the Path.”

  “I don’t know if that’s exactly what I’m looking to do,” I told him. “I was with my friends when a portal opened up, and that portal brought me here. And ever since then, crazy things have been happening to me. I seriously just want to get back to my friends, and figure a way out of here.”

  “A portal?”

  I explained to him everything that had happened since Tom’s bachelor party, from the power I exhibited, to the fight I’d had with the big cat-man and the little girl. Lhandon rarely interrupted, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was hanging on every single word that I said, that he believed me.

  “I believe there’s prophecy about this,” he said once I finished. “But you’ll have to be tested first.”

  “We keep coming back to that, and that’s what I’m asking about: what kind of trials?”

  “All novices that take up the Path of the Divine are checked by a higher monk. He will test your abilities, your knowledge of runes, and he may even ask you to fight him.”

  “Fighting monks? Is that what you’re telling me here? Because that’s not something that monks do in my world…”

  “You have said it yourself, this isn’t your world,” Lhandon told me. “You mentioned this power of yours in the story you just told me, this ability to do things that are superhuman. That to me sounds like something that would need to be tested.”

  “As I told you, I can’t control it. The power only comes out at certain times. It has only appeared a few times, and not necessarily when I needed it.”

  “Don’t you understand?” he asked, smiling at me.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “If you cultivate your inner being through the Path of the Divine, you will be able to harness and use this power. Have you ever seen someone else use a power like this?”

  I thought of Sona, and the way she had moved. “Yes, one of Madame Mabel’s guards, a female.”

  Lhandon nodded, but the way he nodded told me that he didn’t quite agree with this answer. “You’ve witnessed the Power through the Path of Possession. That’s how the leader of Madame Mabel’s elite guard got her power, by killing another. We don’t practice that here.”

  “You asked me if I had seen this type of power in use before, and I answered your question.”

  “Good, because the Exonerated One will send you away if you ask about this path.”

  “I don’t plan to ask about it,” I said as I bit into my apple. “I would just like some answers, and really, I would like to find my friends. I believe that there are at least two of them that are alive, well, three, but the third isn’t my friend.”

  “And the fourth you believe to be dead?”

  “I mean, there was a sea dragon, and he was never really a survivalist, so yes, I believe Tom is dead.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Lhandon looked like he was about to say something, to offer his help in some way, but then he stopped, looking away from me. “We’ll see how the trials go tomorrow, and what the Exonerated One recommends to cultivate your ability.”

  “You mentioned something about a rune trial, right?”

  “I did.”

  “See that’s the thing, I don’t understand the written language here. I’ve only seen a little bit of it, and it makes no sense to me.”

  “You are illiterate?”

  “For some reason, we speak the same language,” I told him. “And trust me, this is something I’ve thought about over the last week. While I can understand you, I can’t read the script here.”

  “That may be a problem.” Lhandon got to his feet, dusting off his rear. Once he realized that this was possibly improper, he apologized to me, bowing his head. “After the tests are performed, we’ll know more about what you’re capable of and possibly have b
etter advice for you. But I’m just a practitioner, a novice, a Broken Sword. Please keep that in mind, and understand that I may not have the answers that you seek. But I’m always willing to help.”

  “Thanks again,” I told the man as he stepped out of the room. “Especially for the food.”

  Chapter Thirteen: Penmanship in the Courtyard

  I definitely had some strange dreams in the monastery.

  I dreamt that I had risen out of my own body, sitting on the edge of my bed as a ghostly woman came to me. She was instantly familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, and it was only after I woke up in the morning that I realized that she was Dema, my dakini.

  The sound of chanting met my ears, the ringing of bells, everything peaceful for a moment as I waited for a response from my guardian angel.

  I didn’t get one.

  At least I felt well-rested, and once I was out of bed, I saw that the blisters on my feet had healed some.

  Something was different about my healing capability here in Lhasa.

  There had been huge blisters on my feet last night, red bumps too from what looked like insect bites, and now everything was gone. I wasn’t experiencing any pain either, no cramp in my lower back from walking for so long in poorly made shoes, no indication that I’d taken such a long trek the previous day.

  Odd.

  A knock at the door startled me.

  “Breakfast,” Lhandon said, his tone indicating that he wasn’t allowed to stick around and chat.

  “I appreciate it,” I said as I took the tray from him. Several small eggs, a piece of bread and a boiled potato—it was good enough for me, and once I was done eating, I heard another knock at the door.

  “The Exonerated One will see you now,” Lhandon said, an indecipherable look on his face.

  “Did you wait out in the hallway for me to eat?”

  “I did.”

  “Is everything okay?” I asked as we made our way down the hallway.

  “We just have to be more formal,” he said as we took another flight down, coming to a door that led out onto a courtyard.

  The space was well-kept, a few small cracks in the stone, everything swept and tidy. There were flowering trees arranged in a grid-like pattern at the back of the courtyard, plump apples hanging from their limbs, a blue sky overhead.

  The Exonerated One stood at the center of the courtyard, the monks forming two lines in front of him. Lhandon moved to one of the lines, taking his place at the very back.

  “Approach,” the Exonerated One said to me. Once I was about halfway to him, he raised his hand to indicate that I should stop.

  The elderly monk leaned the rest of his weight on a cane, and while he looked older than any person I’d ever seen before, there was a light behind his eyes that told me he was still sharp.

  “Did you rest well?” he asked after a long pause.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you ready to begin?”

  I glanced to the monks on my left and my right. “Yes, but first, please explain to me what you actually want me to do. I’d like to know more about the trial.”

  “The first part of the trial will be simple,” he said as he hobbled over toward me. “I’m going to call out a rune, and I want you to trace them in the air.”

  “I don’t write your language.”

  None of the monks laughed, but I did catch a few raised eyebrows out of my peripheral vision.

  “You speak the language, but you do not write it?”

  “As I told…” I smiled at him, trying not to throw Lhandon under the bus. “As I’ve told other people that I’ve met here in Lhasa, I understand your language for some reason, but I don’t write it. I write my language.”

  “Fascinating, and what does your language look like?”

  “Do you have a pen and paper?”

  The Exonerated One said something and one of the boy monks at the back took off toward the main temple.

  His sandals slapped against the pavement as he returned with a small wooden table, which he quickly set before me. The young monk opened up the drawer to pull out a piece of parchment and a small bottle of ink, a quill as well.

  “I’ve never written with a quill before,” I told the Exonerated One.

  “Do you think you could figure it out?”

  “I’m sure I can.”

  Once the paper was in place, I dipped the quill in the ink and started to write.

  “Fascinating,” the Exonerated One said, peering down at what I had written. He called several of the high-ranking monks over, all of whom took a look at my words.

  “What language is this?” one of the monks asked.

  “It’s called ‘English,’” I told him. “It says: ‘hi, my name is Nick Barnette. I’m from Massachusetts, which is in a country known as America.’”

  “This isn’t a language,” the monk to my left told the Exonerated One.

  “I don’t suspect that he would make up a language such as this; the characters are too strange, too thought out,” the elderly monk replied.

  “I can assure you, I did not invent the English language. If anything, I have bastardized it.”

  “You what?” The Exonerated One started coughing, took a deep breath in, and peered at me again.

  “Never mind. Anyway, this is the language that I write, which is why I don’t know anything about your runes.”

  “If he has the Power, then he must know a rune,” one of the monks said in a whisper.

  “I will handle this,” the Exonerated One said, and as soon as these words left his lips, the monks stepped away, filing back into line. The boy monk, the one who had brought the writing-table, looked to his leader for a cue.

  “You may take the table,” he finally said, and the boy stuffed what I’d written inside the drawer and ran off. “Just because you do not know the runes, does not mean that you actually do not know them.”

  “It kind of does,” I told him.

  A couple of the monks gasped.

  “Excuse me?” the Exonerated One asked.

  “Not trying to step on your toes here, but you’re basically assuming I know something which I clearly don’t. It would be like if you asked me to speak Chinese. I don’t know how to speak that language.”

  “Chinese? What language is this?” he asked.

  “Another language that they use in my world.”

  “You are in your world,” he reminded me.

  “You yourself said I was an outsider, and that’s really what I am. But we don’t have to get into the details of that now. I’m just telling you that if you start calling out runes to me, I won’t know how to write them.”

  “I see,” he said, tapping his cane against the ground. “We may as well try. It will let us know how far along the path you are likely to progress.”

  “But…”

  He nodded, satisfied with the solution he’d come up with. “Come to think of it, it may be better for you to actually physically write the runes, rather than try to cast them. Maybe that will help you remember them.”

  “But I don’t know them…”

  The Exonerated One ignored what I said as he called for the young monk at the back of the line to fetch the writing-table again.

  After a moment of waiting for him to run to the monastery and return, the boy monk placed the table in front of me and prepared the parchment and ink.

  “The first one I want you to write is ‘Lha,’” the Exonerated One said.

  I took a deep breath in.

  “Trust yourself, see if you can look deep inside your soul and pull the rune from it.”

  “Pull the rune from my soul? Got it,” I said as I dipped the quill in the ink.

  Rather than tell him that this was impossible, I thought about it for a moment, and I was just about to write the sound he had made in English letters when something came over my hand.

  Energy guiding the quill, my hand traced a character that looked like a stylized box with a line hanging fro
m it, two curved slash marks the end of the line.

  The young monk standing next to me gasped. “You know ‘Lha?’”

  “I don’t know what I know,” I told him.

  “No speaking,” the Exonerated One chastised the younger monk. The old man took a meandering step closer to me, eyeing what I’d written. “I thought you didn’t know this language?”

  “I don’t,” I told him. “I just did what you told me to do.”

  “In that case, and just to make sure you are not trying to be clever with me, write ‘Gyal.’”

  “I will try,” I told him, looking at the parchment again.

  Rather than try to control what I was doing, I simply loosened my grip on the quill, letting my hand take over. Soon I had a symbol that looked like nothing I’d ever seen before.

  It was almost like a reverse square root sign with the bottom of the letter Z at the end, a circle beneath the house that was created by the top of the lines.

  “He wrote it,” the young monk announced to those in the lineup. “He wrote it!”

  There was some chatter until the Exonerated One banged his cane against the stone. “Silence! There will be no speculation,” he told the group, glaring at the young monk. “This is just the beginning of the test; anyone who has seen some of the forbidden manuscripts can write these characters.”

  “But I haven’t seen those…” I started to tell him.

  “Are you familiar with rebirth or any other concept of reincarnation?”

  “Yes, we have something like that in my world.”

  The Exonerated One grinned at me. “It’s very strange to hear someone call the world their own, but if that’s how you must refer to it, that’s fine for now. So you are then familiar with the concept of reincarnation, correct?”

  “Yes, in my world it is a Buddhist concept. You die, and you are reincarnated based on the things that you did during your life, the karma that you cultivated. That’s about all I know about it, aside from the circle of life and death, and a few other details. I wasn’t a practicing Buddhist or anything.”