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so much faster than he was that Remo felt as if he were ^
crawling.
The African moved on all fours, his limbs bent. He even resembled the spiders he so admired, swift, agile, modest. Remo remembered the way he'd disparaged the talents of his prospective opponents in the Master's Trial. He would never underestimate anyone again, ever.
When Remo reached the high plateau, Kiree was picking large handfuis of dried grass.
"What's that?"
"My weapon," Kiree said.
"Grass?"
The dwarf rubbed the blades together until they were powder in his hands. The movements he made were so fast that even Remo couldn't see them. Kiree spat into his palms and, with a series of intricate movements, worked his fingers until the mixture was a rubbery pulp. Then he poured some of the material from the pouch around his waist into the mass and worked it in.
"This is resin from the fruit pulp of the bala tree," he said. "To make it last."
"What are you going to do with that stuff?"
Kiree smiled. "Watch."
Throwing his arms wide, the mixture spun into a rope in the air. While it was still suspended, he tossed out another. And another, weaving them skillfully into a configuration of knots and spaces. When he was finished, he held a finely woven net as translucent as gossamer.
"I can't believe what 1 just saw," Remo said.
"It is but a crude imitation. The spider needs no materials other than what she carries in her tiny body."
"The spider," Remo said. "If I'd listened, I would have known. Some of the people around here believe you're an insect."
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"I am a Tellem. Our lives are secret, so people will think of us what they may. Shall we begin?"
Remo hesitated. "I want to learn this skill of yours, Kiree."
"But you have already. I have shown you. The teachings of Sinanju have given you hands fast enough to weave the nets."
"But we don't have to-" His feet swept out from under him. In a fraction of a second, the net had engulfed him and carried him soaring into the air.
"Defend yourself, heir of Sinanju," the African said solemnly.
Remo was whirling over the cliff edge, unbalanced and frightened. The dwarf's easy manner, his friendly smile, had led Remo to believe that somehow the battle between them would not take place. But Kiree, like Ancion, obeyed the rules of the Master's Trial. And if Remo did not, he knew, he would die.
Slashing through the fine ropes with the cutting edges of his hands, he somersaulted through the, opening to land, sliding, on the face of the cliff. His hands burned and bled from the ropes. As he tried to regain his balance on the glass-sheer cliff, Kiree's net shot out, closed, and knocked him to his belly.
Remo rolled fifteen feet or more down the rock. Below, far away, the villagers stopped their dance and pointed. From somewhere, the name of "Kiree" was shouted in fear and reverence.
The net, bigger this time, came out of the sky like a cloud. Remo scrambled out of its way and grasped one of the knots. He felt himself being lifted.
The dwarf had the strength of an army, Remo thought. He let go of the net just as it reached the edge of the plateau. An army ... If there were more than one of Kiree, Remo would automatically have chosen an inside
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line attack. It depended on leverage and speed, and was designed to take out several opponents at once.
But why not? he thought, preparing the attack. Kiree's nets went out once more, and missed. Remo was in motion, a motion so upredictable that even Kiree's net couid not follow it.
Confused, the African waited, shifting his balance, trying to follow Remo with his eyes, his hands reaching out to establish the strange pattern the white man was using. By the time Remo reached him, the nets were in disarray. Kiree moved swiftly, but Remo struck. Kiree flew backward, landing hard on his spine. Remo was right behind him. But even as he was descending for the mortal attack, Remo saw the dwarf spit into his hands and pull apart a thin rope, translucent as a fishing line. It was aimed precisely at Remo's neck.
He broke his descent with an awkward motion and landed in a painful position on his leg. The dwarf was coming, the line in his hands stretched taut.
Reflexively, Remo's elbow jutted out and caught Kiree in the base of the abdomen. With a grunt, the dwarf shot upward, doubled over. Remo sprang to his feet, and on the African's descent, Remo jumped to full extension, slashing both arms in a scissor movement.
He heard the crack of the bones in Kiree's neck. The dwarf was dead before he reached the ground. As Remo stood panting, his leg and hands feeling as if they were broken into a hundred pieces, Kiree's body thudded onto the rocky plateau.
It was over. Remo clasped his own hands together tightly. "Why?" he called out in anguish, looking at the small body at his feet. "I didn't want to kill him. He didn't deserve to die."
It echoed through the empty hills. He was afraid to move.
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Maybe he should never have learned the teachings of Sinanju, he thought. He wasn't worthy of it. A true Master would have found a way to stop the fight. But then, neither Ancion nor Kiree had permitted the fight to stop.
Nothing made sense. Nothing. He had spent a lifetime fighting fools and mindless killers and human vermin, and within a week he had discovered two men who could match him in every respect. And he had killed them both.
Who was the mindless killer now?
I'm supposed to kill bad guys, he thought. Not Kiree, who accepted me as his friend. Not Ancion, so fair that he allowed me to live when he could easily have finished me in a stroke.
"Father, this test is too difficult for me," he whispered. But Chiun's voice did not come. Whatever he had to learn from the Master's Trial, he had to learn alone.
He carried Kiree's body to a far cliff and buried it beneath a small bala -tree. He chose the spot because there was a spider in one of the branches, spinning a net as fine as gossamer. He spoke to the spider,
"May your spirit return quickly, my friend," he said.
The spider threw out a strand of silk and added^it to her net.
Chapter Eleven
Tired. So tired.
The Dutchman staggered between the two wooden posts that signaled the division between Chinese Manchuria and North Korea along the rutted road where he walked. It was dawn again, and from the dawn when he left the Russian girl in the forest to the present one, he had known nothing. The beast inside him had run wild, feasting its desires at its every whim, not sleeping, not eating. The long path he had walked was strewn with death and calamity.
Perhaps his own death was coming soon. He hoped for it, longed for it. With death would come the peace he had never known. He trudged ahead, exhausted and burning from the spent incandescence of his power. The power was a volatile thing. With each exertion, it seared his brain and body like a firebomb. Without rest, the power would surely destroy what little sanity still remained somewhere inside him. Like a burning star, the Dutchman would consume himself in his own flames.
But without death. The beast would see that he lived, tortured and agonized, until he was an old man.
Ill
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By mid-afternoon, he could smell the sea. The voices of fishermen drifted toward him, their snatches of conversation complaining about the weather and the catch. The Dutchman followed the voices.
On a gravel path walked three men passing a bottle among them. One of them stumbled, hanging on to the others for support. "Look, a white," he said in provincial Korean.
"Probably a spy. There was another not long ago. I saw him on the beach."
"In the shape you're in, you'd see mermaids. With three tits." The men snorted and doubled over with laughter.