"All right," Remo said. "You've made your point."
Ancion moved in, the bola forming a complex pattern in the air.
"1 mean it. You're too good to be wasted."
"Get up," Ancion said contemptuously. "At least have the courage to die like a man."
Remo blinked. It had not occurred to him before that he might die. No one had ever been good enough to scare him, really scare him, in years. But Ancion was.
The bola sped by Remo's face. He swallowed. He couldn't move in forward. Ancion knew all those tricks. And he couldn't get to him from behind, because Ancion could control that, too. He had to stop . . . the arm. The easy, effortless swinging had to stop first. Then they could talk. Or something. Just stop the arm . . .
The bola came around on another pass. Remo waited. On the third, he leaped directly over the ball into a backward spin and landed hard on the Inca's shoulder. The bola spun wildly, but it never left Ancion's grasp. Remo arched backward, out of the way, as Ancion jerked the leather whip in crazy directions. His shoulder was broken, but he kept the weapon moving.
"Stop it!" Remo shouted. "You're hurt."
With a cry of pain, Ancion thrust the bola out once more.
The people watching scrambled out of the way. The ball hit a rock and careened backward at tremendous speed,
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thudding into Ancion's chest. With a groan, the Inca dropped to the ground.
Remo went to him. Ancion's chest was exploded open, the blood pouring in rhythmic spurts from the large wound.
"Where's a doctor?" Remo shouted.
"They do not understand your language," Ancion said slowly. "There is no need, anyway." He closed his eyes, then opened them again. "You were not a coward, after all."
"I've never seen anyone fight like you before," Remo said.
The Inca shifted painfully. "You will," he said. "The opponents of the Master's Trial are worthy, as you are worthy. You used no magic."
"1 don't have magic," Remo said.
"Then beware. The Other has magic. The Other will come for you. This is the year. He will come."
"I'm not going to fight anyone else."
"You must. It is the law of the Master's Trial. The other warriors will be killed by their people if you do not fight them, after vanquishing rne. It will be a grave insult."
Remo couldn't believe his words. "Are you saying you're glad this happened?"
"It was fair," Ancion said. "I die honorably. That is all any warrior can ask.''
Remo slipped his arms beneath the Inca's back. "I'll take you inside," he said.
"No. Leave me here. My people will see to me. They have buried their kings for five thousand years." His head fell back.
Remo rose, looking at the lifeless body of Ancion. There was a soft rumbling among the crowd of spectators.
"Hold it," Remo said to the advancing mob. "This was his idea, not mine."
The man Remo recognized as the warrior who led him
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to the palace stepped forward and fell on his knees before him. The others bowed, too, until Remo was surrounded by kneeling subjects.
Remo stared at them, horrified. "Get up!" he shouted. "Can't you see I've just killed your king? What's wrong with all of you?"
But no one moved. The law of the Master's Trial had prevailed.
Disgusted, he picked his way through the prostrate bodies of the people and walked away. He never looked back.
Chapter Eight
Sinanju.
It was the only purpose in the Dutchman's life now, a beacon signaling in the darkness.
Find Chiun. Find Nuihc's sworn enemy. Then he would find rest.
The moon was fuli, its light coating the budding trees in the Russian steppes where he walked. He had already come.a thousand miles, but he felt no fatigue. Nuihc's training had seen to that.
Nuihc had himself been trained to become Master of Sinanju, following the reign of Ghiun, his uncle. He had spent a lifetime of preparation learning the intricacies of the most difficult and effective of the martial arts. But Chiun had cast him out of the village before the title of Master could be bestowed on him.
Nuihc spent the rest of his life trying to regain the legacy that was rightfully his, but Chiun had bested him again and again. Even in his old age, the Master of Sinanju had devised a secret weapon against Nuihc. He trained another pupil, an American, to carry out his will.
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The Dutchman had heard Nuihc's story many times. His teacher had grown bitter and spiteful with failure. The disappointment of being cheated out of his destiny aged him before his time. Whenever Nuihc told the story, his eyes would glint with hatred.
And triumph. For even with his own skills lessened by the gnawing hate for his uncle, Nuihc had found a way to avenge Chiun's unfairness.
He got the idea when he heard of Chiun's new protegee. It was a perfect plan, a way to ensure his success even if he himself were to die. He would find his own heir, another to whom he would teach all the secrets of Sinanju that he had learned from Chiun.
But this heir could not be an ordinary man, as Chiun's was. The legacy of Nuihc would go only to one so powerful that neither Chiun nor his American "son" could defeat him. He searched around the world for such an heir. And one day, on a train in the plains of Iowa, he found him.
Jeremiah Purcell was just a boy then, but a boy such as Nuihc had never seen. He could direct others to do his will without speaking a word. An amazing boy who could set people on fire by thought alone.
The boy was a freak, doomed to a life of imprisonment, a laboratory rat whose tremendous power would be studied and written about behind glass walls. The boy himself had wanted to die, even at the age of ten.
But Nuihc changed everything. He took Jeremiah away from civilization and nurtured him. He secretly taught him the entire discipline of Sinanju. The boy was a magnificent pupil, made even more formidable by the dangerous abilities of his mind. And if those abilities caused the boy to suffer, it was of no concern to him. Jeremiah was a weapon, not a son to be coddled.
Nuihc protected himself from his creation by staying
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away from the boy as much as possible, teaching him the methods of killing that were the essence of Sinanju, and then leaving him to practice alone for months on end. As Jeremiah grew, his exercises became more difficult. Nuihc would absent himself for years at a stretch, returning only to check on the boy's progress and remind him of the debt he owed him.
Should I die, bring to death by your own hands the Master Chiun.
And then, after years of silence, Jeremiah learned that Nuihc was dead. The mission of his life had begun.
He panicked. He was still too young. He took himself to the small Dutch island to train with all the power at his disposal. He ranged his mind along the empty seacoast, perfecting its destructiveness. But something began to happen, something he had not counted on. The more he used his mind, the more he needed the awesome horror it begat. The episodes of mental work left him exhausted and frightened, but he couldn't stop. As the madness grew, it overtook his sanity.
He needed to kill, the way he needed to breathe. The power became an overwhelming thing, a wild beast that lived inside him, uncontrollable, unpredictable. He had to learn how to rein it in, make it manageable, before the beast destroyed him. He needed time.
Time was the one thing he didn't have. By sheerest accident, Chiun and his pupil came to the island, and the Dutchman met his destiny.
He was too young. It had come to nothing. He failed to carry out Nuihc's demand. He had not found the rest he so needed. He traveled around the world, confused and terrified. The beast had won. He was helpless in its presence.