The Kaisho (75 page)

And in the moment of Ao’s spirit passing out of his ancient body, the sacred white magpie, alighting on Do Duc’s shoulder, had spoken to him for the first time.

He stirred Ao’s body in the muddy current. Immediately, there was a stirring from the far shore, and two crocodiles slithered into the river, swimming directly for him.

They hit the body almost simultaneously, tearing great strips of flesh from the carcass. The water began to boil and change color. It became viscous. And as the beasts ate, Do Duc did as the white magpie directed him and joined in the feast.

The sky had been quite clear, he remembered that. And the sweetness of the air—it had been like slipping from the birth canal, taking air into the lungs for the very first time.

Now, running up the small grassy knoll, he felt the weight on his shoulder, heard the white magpie speak to him again, whispering the path that Nicholas had taken.

He crested the knoll, saw the slope downward to the lake. On the far side, a pair of cranes, perhaps sensing some disturbance, lifted off from the glassy surface, took to the sky.

In that moment, Do Duc’s nostrils flared and he turned back the way he had come, uncertain. He scented Margarite. Not her body, but her soul close to his and coming closer.

He crouched like a cornered animal, his spirit torn by utter despair and a love he could conceive of only in the form of a butcher’s bloody knife rending him.

He saw her, breaking through the stand of tall ginkgo, catching sight of him, coming still, unafraid, terrifying him.

“Margarite,” he whispered.

He shivered as she came closer. “I want,” he said. “I want...”

“I know what you want,” Margarite said. She was so beautiful, framed by the high, white trees, the lowering sunlight caught in her eyes. “I’ve always known.”

“You’re the only one.”

His breathing was ragged, and he longed to tug the mask off him so that she could see his real face. But it didn’t matter; he was naked before her as he had been all the time they had been on the road together, heading toward Minnesota, those days and nights he had never wanted to end.

She saw him—all of him, and she did not flinch or look away. She had seen clear through the beguiling mask he had donned for all his women. And just as astonishing, the essence that had once been Do Duc—before all the deaths and the incantations and the sin—did not wither beneath her gaze.

“I knew the moment I met you that you would be the end of me,” he said. “I saw you and somewhere deep inside I knew I could no longer go on being what I had spent my whole life becoming.” He felt himself beginning to lose control. He was battling emotions so clotted it felt like inhaling water. “I have learned to kill so easily, but the thought of harming you is intolerable. I would rather destroy myself.”

“I know. We’re inside each other.”

He was moving closer to her, wavering, the old and the newly birthed, half-formed, frightened thing inside him vying for control. “At first, I thought I wanted you to fear me as everyone else fears me. But you wouldn’t, fierce woman that you are. You defeated me, ended me, brought me down by piercing my armor, and now they’re all around me, the baying hounds who will tear me apart.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” She reached out a hand to him. “It’s over now. I can protect you, save you. If you’ll come with—”

But in a forlorn flash he saw that he could never have her, that he would never again experience the inexpressible emotion he felt at this moment, and he made a snakelike lunge for her and was struck broadside by a great weight. He moaned as Margarite gave a sharp scream.

“No! Wait! I can—”

He crashed to the earth, dirt in his eyes and nose, rolling, the weight alternately crushing and releasing him. The proximity of Margarite blinded him. He wanted to call out to her, to reach for her, to tell her—He had been so close to taking her hand, to making contact in that moment when all things but her had ceased to have meaning for him. He was a stag caught in the headlights of a speeding car, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps this was the time, the moment to choose between life and death. But how could he make that choice? Life was a desperate war to keep at bay those disenfranchised emotions he knew would destroy him, and death for a Messulethe was inconceivable.

He cried out as something needle-sharp pierced his flesh, and looking down, he saw a mechanical hand, the articulated alloy fingers surmounted by steel nails. With another cry, he pulled himself free, then kicked out once, twice, heard the heavy grunt, the thick body going down, and he drove his elbow into the midsection, pulling away, staggering a bit as he turned inward, his mind searching for Margarite.

But, as he had known, the moment was gone forever.

The man with his face came out of nowhere, struck him a blow close to the carotid artery in the side of his neck, and out of blind instinct, he countered with a sword strike to the major nerve bundle just below the sternum.

Both men hit the water at once. In this part of the lake, the bank was steep, leading out onto a shallow strip perhaps two feet wide where the floor of the lake came up, so that the water level was shallow. From there, a precipitous falloff brought them immediately into the deep water.

Nicholas, half-paralyzed by Do Duc’s sword strike, went immediately for the head. He knew he needed a killing blow, but the water worked against them both, slowing them down, making traditional percussive
atemi
ineffectual.

Nicholas tightened his hold around Do Duc’s head, began pressure with the heel of one hand against the spot where major nerve meridians converged. He drove his hand into Do Duc’s upper lip and nose.

Locked together, their legs churning, they spun out of control, farther and farther into the lake. Darkness and light interspersed with air and water, until they found themselves in a kind of twilight world between the air and the land, aqueous, chill, and darkening.

Do Duc, dizzying with the pressure on his face, struck again at Nicholas’s sternum, took possession of his own hold as they flipped over, went down beneath the silver surface of the lake.

They fought each other, fought to keep sufficient air in their lungs, but their extreme exertions and the chill of the water were taking a toll.

They kicked out, but could no longer keep themselves afloat. Down they drifted into the chill, unnatural night, locked together. They seemed to be moving, but Do Duc could not understand where. He was concentrating on his hold, the pressure he was putting on Nicholas’s windpipe.

He felt Nicholas’s hands scrabbling at his body, perhaps some pain, but he exerted the power of his psyche, blocked out everything but the pressure he must maintain on the windpipe.

He could feel the pressure building in his ears as they sank, but he had no time for that. His mind was filled with red blood, with the magic of the Messulethe, and the one thought that he must rise out of this blackness to get to Margarite, who was waiting for him on the near bank.

Nicholas knew he was drowning. The fact was, they were both drowning, but he doubted now whether the Messulethe was even aware of that. He could feel the concentration of the Messulethe’s mind like a dark star, dense with abnormal gravity and lethal emissions.

He had led the Messulethe here to the lake quite deliberately, for he knew what lay within its depths, what he had thrown there so many years ago when he and Justine were just starting out, full of love and hope. Now he must not only survive the assault on his mind and body, but he must move them closer, closer to what lay within the purling shadows of the lake bottom. He could feel it. He could...

Dimly, as if through the veil of dreams, his battered mind had picked up the Messulethe’s breakdowns at the robot factory. He could hear his sobs like echoes, almost see the image of the woman who swam in his thoughts like a prehistoric beast. And now it had happened again, stronger this time, as if the icon had appeared in the flesh. He could, for the first time, sense all the muddled and compressed emotions coiled within the Messulethe’s mind like a basketful of cobras.

He had been set to use the power he had found beyond the Sixth Gate, he had been fully prepared to blast the Messulethe with a fireball of psychic energy. And then they had come together and he had felt it all, burning there, like rubble from a disaster.

It had made him hesitate, compassion momentarily overcoming his rage for revenge. And now he was paying for that hesitation. He was drowning.

He looked inward, opening his
tanjian
eye, stepping through the Sixth Gate, ready now to summon the power to break away from this demon and destroy him. But he found the essence of the Messulethe already there, inside the gate, at the same place, and all either of them could do was to block the other’s access.

Stalemate.

Deeper into the lake they sank, Nicholas kicking out at regular intervals, propelling them farther toward the center until, during one of their slow revolutions, he saw the vague humped shadows of the lake bottom. He prayed as he kicked out, prayed that he had calculated correctly because he had only one chance now for life, one chance to keep the water out of his nose and throat, keep it from filling his lungs, all the breath going out of him, the end.

And there it was.

Illuminated by pale light like the ghostly finger of God was the tip of the samurai’s
dai-katana
his father, the Colonel, had given him. Its name Iss-hogai meant For Life.

His eyes began to roll up and darkness began to flicker at the periphery of his vision. He kicked out with his legs, propelling them toward the long, keen blade of the sword that he had thrown into the lake, thinking never again to need it. The heavy hilt had struck the lake bottom, embedding itself into the soft silt, and now there it was, the blade shooting up at an angle from the lake bed.

Do Duc, sensing Nicholas’s weakness, tightened his hold, and now Nicholas did not believe he would have the energy to get them the last six feet to the tip of the blade. His hands moved upward, clamping onto Do Duc’s face—
his
face. His fingertips sought the edge of the mask, finding it. He dug his nails into the adhesive, getting purchase, lifting a minute strip of it, breaking the seal. The lake water soaked the adhesive, and he lifted more of the mask away from the Messulethe’s face.

He moved it, so that the acrylic resin slipped across the Messulethe’s nostrils and mouth, covered his eyes. The Messulethe reacted, and as he did so, Nicholas drove his legs in a powerful scissor kick.

They rolled, and for a moment, Nicholas was dangerously close to the blade point. Then their momentum rolled them again, and the Messulethe’s back was coming up on the point.

Nicholas drove his legs one more time, beating them down toward the lake bed. He saw—and felt—it happen all at once. There was no expression he could see on the Messulethe’s face, hidden as it was beneath the grotesquely twisted mask, but the point of the
dai-katana’s
long blade popped through the Messulethe’s breastbone, piercing him all the way through.

The Messulethe’s legs kicked and churned, the muscles spasming as clouds of filmy blood drifted upward like kites upon a summer’s breeze.

Nicholas pressed downward, the blade rising upward as if itself alive, eager to rend flesh and bone. He felt the pressure come off his windpipe, and dizzy with lack of oxygen, he immediately struck upward for the surface.

But he did not move.

He looked down, saw the Messulethe’s hand gripped tightly around his left ankle. He tried to jackknife his body, in order to reach the death grip, but the angle was so acute it took all his energy just to get his fingers on the Messulethe’s. Then he found he could not release the grip.

So Nicholas hung there, exhausted, staring into the leering face at the blue crescent tattooed on the inside of the powerful wrist, and into his mind blew the last, scattered memories of his antagonist...

...the river in the jungle, sunlight filtering through the triple-canopied trees, heat, and a black leopard speaking runic promises and portents... an old man, his face weathered by time and magic, and the blue-white bloat of death... crocodiles lazily swinging their tails in the hot sun, jaws opening to feed... the taste of a man’s brain... a white magpie screaming in triumph as it rises, burning, into a copper sun...

Hung there, dying slowly with the Messulethe, whose deteriorating mind shed ardent thoughts like bubbles rising to the roof of this aqueous graveyard.

...
incantations of the earth and the air... and a beautiful dark-haired, amber-eyed woman... Margarite, I want to tell you... magnificent in your terrible beauty... tell you that I... like Circe... that I... more powerful even than Gim, the Blue Crescent, all the ancient rituals of the Messulethe... I can’t touch you... this is all that is left me... in this one moment... that I love...

And then Nicholas was alone in the utter silence and stillness of the deep.

Time seemed to have come to a halt; even his heartbeat seemed to flicker and slow. Blood turning to ice. And then, through the darkness of near-death, he felt a stirring of a current against his cold cheek. His head turned slowly, wearily. He thought he saw a shape emerging from the dimness, saw a man approaching, his cheeks puffed out as he held air in his lungs.

Air!

He blinked. It was Croaker, swimming quickly and efficiently, cutting through the water. His hand was extended as if in greeting—the biomechanical hand of stainless steel, titanium, and polycarbonate, the replacement for the one he had lost helping Nicholas. Nicholas had never forgiven himself for being the cause of his friend’s disfigurement—though Croaker had himself forgiven him. And now here Croaker was, offering that hand. Nicholas wanted to take it in his, in friendship, ready at last to forgive himself.

He watched in a haze as Croaker’s hand took the Messulethe’s fingers and, bending them back one by one, snapped the joints, broke the death grip.