Tisa had expected this was coming. Randall had done little to hide his leering interest since shortly after he’d pulled her from the Aegean. “Fine. By all means, rape me all you want. I just hope you understand that molesting me isn’t going to get you any closer to the person you really want.”
“Yeah, and who’s that?”
“It’s obvious you’re using me as a surrogate for Mercer. He’s the one you want to rape. He’s the one you want power over. You’re only with me so you can pretend I’m Mercer.”
Donny bristled. “Are you calling me some kind of fag?”
“No. I’m calling you a deeply sick person. And if you touch me even once, I am going to hurt you in ways you’ve never imagined.”
Randall pulled himself to his full height, the top of his head scant inches from the underside of the doorframe. “Brave words now. Let’s hear them again when your brother’s gone and I’ve got a knife to your heart.”
“Then I’ll do us both a favor and walk into it.”
Not understanding what she meant, Randall the Handle shot her a scowl and slammed the door, jamming the key in the lock as though it were an act of violation.
At another time, Tisa would have been scared, but she truly didn’t care any longer. Being raped by Donny Randall was nothing, a small taste of the shame she was just beginning to sense from her own failures.
The next day Luc knelt before an altar on the monastery’s second floor. The smell of incense was thick and the low dirge of chanting monks reverberated around the spartan temple. To the disciples behind him it appeared that Luc was deep in prayer. He was in fact thinking about his next course of action but he understood the symbolic role he had to play. While the Lama lived, he couldn’t don the sacred blue robe. However, by acting out the Order’s mysteries and rites he was laying the foundation for his eventual consecration.
In the months since the Lama’s stroke, Luc had steadily brought the Order’s younger brothers to his cause. Like him, they were drawn to the promise of power in the wake of the cataclysmic destruction of civilization. It was the old guard who resisted the changes he wanted to implement. Luc would soon leave Rinpoche-La again. Tisa had always been a poor liar and he knew Mercer was still alive. While there was nothing Mercer could do about the eruption, Luc wanted him dead. But before he could fulfill that mission, he had to solidify his position here in the monstery.
The prayers went on for six straight hours. As the voices of some monks faltered, others took up the chant. Even Luc added his voice, one more small deception. As the sixth hour ended, Luc came to his feet. Despite the forced inactivity, his muscles hadn’t cramped and he moved easily.
“My brothers,” he called softly. While the fifty younger monks stopped chanting immediately, it took several minutes for the dozen older monks that Luc had invited to this special prayer to return from their trances.
“My brothers,” Luc repeated. “Your voices have helped guide my thoughts at this troubled point in our history. I have been too long away from Rinpoche-La yet even just a moment home restores my spirit and clears my mind.”
“Time has no meaning when one has peace,” Yoh Dzu remarked. He was the Lama’s secretary and the voice of the more conservative arm of the Order. His words were part of a familiar litany, a not-so-subtle rebuke to the discord Luc’s actions had created.
“And yet time stalks us even if we have peace. Because peace isn’t a possession, but a state. That is precisely what I want to discuss with all of you. The state of the world and the state of the Order, for the two are more entwined now than ever.”
“That was not always the way,” an ancient monk muttered. “For many generations the world and the Order were separate.”
Luc seized on that comment. “Since our present Lama was given the right to wear the blue robe, he has changed the nature of the Order from passive watchers to active participants. He embarked us on a path of interference, of trying to correct the discrepancies between the oracle and physical reality. I stand before you and say that it was a mistake.”
Several heads nodded. A young monk Luc had coached said, “His mistakes have cost us and they have cost him.”
“Laying blame at the feet of a dying man is not taking a stand,” Dzu scolded.
“It is not blame, brother. It is fact. The world and the Order are no longer separate.” By invoking the Lama’s controversial decision to try to realign the earth’s chi, Luc had carefully sidestepped his own responsibility in drawing attention to the Order. “Even if we stopped now, our presence has already been detected.”
“This was debated many years ago,” Dzu pointed out. “We understood the risk then and accepted it. We all agreed that we had to do something to heal the earth and return the oracle’s accuracy. It is an unfortuante circumstance that we are without the Lama’s guidance when the time came to face the consequences.”
“Perhaps not unfortunate, but auspicious. Unlike our Lama, I have spent a great deal of my life in the outside world. I understand how it works. The La Palma eruption is going to spark unprecedented fear, and what people fear they hate. What they hate, they kill. Word will soon spread about us and how we knew about the volcano. The world leaders cannot lash out at a mountain, but they can come after us.”
“Why would they do that?” an older monk asked innocently. The man had never set foot outside the valley and had been sheltered from the corruptive nature of the world.
“Because that is their way. Startle a snake and it will strike. It doesn’t matter to it that you meant it no harm.”
“But I would not blame the snake,” the elder brother said.
“Nor I,” Luc agreed. “But the outside world does not think like us.”
The old man grasped the analogy. “I think I understand. When I was a young man I once burned my hand picking up a stone that was too close to a fire pit. In anger I kicked out the fire. Afterward I could not understand why I did it, for it was not the fire’s fault.”
Luc smiled. “You were given a taste of human nature’s darker side, one that is amplified outside the valley to the point where nations wage wars over rumors.”
“What can be done?” Dzu asked.
“I do not know, but I fear that we can no longer rely on the monastery’s isolation to protect us.”
“Is that why you and some of the others are carrying weapons?”
“Yes, brother. I fear for our safety.”
“Would you take a life to protect your own?” Dzu asked.
“No,” Luc lied. “But I still debate whether I would do it to defend the oracle.”
The statement sent a shocked murmur through the older monks. The taking of life, either a human’s or that of the lowliest insect, was anathema to everything the Buddhist Order believed.
Luc cut through the chatter. “That is the question that faces us all, the one we must answer before I take my leave of Rinpoche-La.”
“Is our situation truly that dire?” Dzu, who had been Luc’s sharpest critic in the months since the Lama’s stroke, was falling under Luc’s spell.
“It is. We must all recognize that our way of life will soon come to an end. It is how we go forward from this moment that will determine the Order’s ultimate fate.”
“I for one can never kill, no matter the circumstances.” Dzu crossed his arms over his chest as if that settled the discussion.