"Relative," said Remo, beginning to move up the hill. "Thanks again."
"Anything for a fellow vegetarian," said Mary with a small smile. "See you around."
Remo moved to the top of the first hill in time to see Chiun disappear over the second. He upped his running speed and made it to the top of the second hill in time to see Chiun round a bend in the distance. Remo felt as if he was trapped in a nursery rhyme.
The bear went over the mountain and what do you think he saw? He saw another mountain. Remo went to the bend and saw Chiun pass through a bunch of trees. Remo went to the trees and saw Chiun move behind some rocks. Remo moved to the rocks and saw Chiun sitting on his bent knees 500 yards away.
Remo reached Chiun as evening descended. As he grew near he saw that the Korean had his hands deep into the hard, cold ground up to his wrists.
When Remo moved in front of him, Chiun lifted his arms and exposed a small hole filled with the gory remains of internal organs.
Remo recognized the heart and the liver before he looked up at Chiun. The old man raised one thin finger skyward. Remo looked up. Nestled in the crotch of a tree, silhouetted against the full moon, was a corpse in a bulky leisure shirt and gray doubleknit slacks. All that was left of Peter Matthew O'Donnell.
"They always bury the organs near the base of the tree," said Chiun.
"Who are they?" asked Remo, looking at the red, lumpy underground soup.
Chiun stepped away from the tree and folded his hands in the flowing sleeves of his kimono. "They are, my son, as old as Sinanju itself," he said.
And Chiun spoke:
"The House of Sinanju is old but it was not always old. There is nothing that was not young some time. At this time of which I speak, the House of Sinanju was young. Pharaohs there were in Egypt and they knew of us. And the great emperors of China, they too knew of us. The Middle Kingdom had great respect for Sinanju. Before the horseman, Genghis Khan, this was. And we had great respect for the Middle Kingdom, too."
Remo nodded. As he had learned to memorize the names of the Masters of Sinanju, each with his special deed and special legend, there was always respect for this long succession of Chinese emperors of the Middle Kingdom, which spanned dynasties.
"The Master's name was Pak and we were young but respected. Pak was not as we know a Master of Sinanju to be, for then there were several masters and we had not yet achieved the sun source of the power of the body. It was a few centuries later that this happened under the greatest Master, Wang, of whom many took his name in later generations. Thus you should know who and when and not think one is another.
"It was a time, Remo, when Masters of Sinanju still clung to weapons of sharp iron," Chiun said.
"The old days, Little Father," said Remo smiling. He had seen for the first time on the magnificently serene face of Chiun the jarring discord of fear, and this moment, allowing Remo to interrupt without rebuke, was an echo of that terror.
Remo did not like that thing that dimmed the shiny thorny glory of Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, his teacher. That which made Chiun quiet in respect was an offense against Remo's life breath.
"There was an emperor," said Chiun "and this emperor said to his Master of Sinanju, There is a province, near Shanghai, as it was later to be called, and there is a great forest and in this forest are knaves and disrespectful people who do not revere their emperor or the order of things. The emperor said there had been demands for ransom for his governor of that province. And his answer, he said, was Sinanju."
Chiun nodded deeply, this nod meaning that the situation was established. It was the form of instruction by story of Sinanju. First where and what and when, then what ensued, and what the House of Sinanju learned from what ensued. The early lessons of the House of Sinanju were dear. They were bought at the price of lives.
"And Pak took with him man servants and handmaidens, the last master to take servants. And he came to that forest near Shanghai and he said to the dwellers therein that he was Pak and he had come from the emperor. And he would wait a day by this forest and woe unto them if they had not returned the emperor's governor to him."
"That night, two maidens were missing from Pak's camp, and Pak sent two man servants to find them. But only one of those man servants returned and he wailed that the Master of Sinanju had sent servants where he himself feared to go. And the man had no fear of Pak for one of the maidens had been his own favorite daughter. And Pak said, 'Grieving father, it is right that you are angry and I have failed you for it is more important for a master to protect his servants than his own master. This is true virtue.' And he sent away all his servants and to this day we do not have servants," Chiun said.
"Okay. That solves Thursdays off," said Remo. "But what's all this about smoke and bodies in trees? I mean, what's the purpose of this story? I know we don't have servants because I usually end up carrying your trunks. What are you getting to?"
"A Master of Sinanju watching other masters die. Which was a good thing."
"A good thing?" asked Remo. He sat down on the ground and faced Chiun. "How can that be?"
"Because if Pak did not watch his brothers, his uncle, and his father die, we would not be here, nor would the House of Sinanju. Glory to Pak who could endure great wounds in the forest near what would one day be called Shanghai."
And Remo heard the gruesome tale. Pak went into the woods and saw why the servant had grieved. There was the delicate head of the girl at the foot of a tree and inside the hollowed trunk, the skeleton picked clean. And the organs were buried in a hole under the tree.
The face of the girl was white; "A pale disgusting death white," said Chiun. Remo shrugged.
"And Pak noticed smoke on a ridge and he wondered what was burning and went to it and from the smoke he heard little cries of triumph and heard voices in the dialect of that region.
"And those who spoke had seen Pak's servants leave and they thought Pak had left, in retreat, and this saved his life, for they did not see him when he approached, because it is common knowledge that what you do not look for, you do not see.
"At that time, Pak knew stillness as did other masters and was still and the smoke moved past him and behind trees it formed. And Pak followed, now knowing what to be aware of, for this was a new thing, that people could be in smoke."
"Are we working with people who are in the smoke or what?" Remo asked. "Hidden by it?"
"The smoke is one form of the people," Chiun said. "Now it is believed in the West that vampires suck blood from the throat but this is not so. It is a distortion from tales carried by Genghis Khan; and his farthest conquest into Europe was Eastern Europe where tales of vampires became well known.
"For the blood drinkers it was a religious ceremony. They did not eat meat but drank blood and this was done by opening the heart and suspending the blood-carrier over a giant copper vessel and he became disgustingly white."
"Enough on the disgusting white," Remo said.
"It is not I who made white the color of death," Chiun said. "It is nature."
Remo let it pass. Chiun went on to tell how first the men, then the male children, then the female children, and then the women drank from the blood in the pot. And the trunk of the body was boiled until the flesh and sinew were floating free. "And this was fed to the yapping dogs of the Shanghai forest.
"And Pak watched a tree being hollowed and the skeleton put into it and he learned that this was a gift to their ancestors. And Pak learned that these beasts believed their ancestors needed these offerings in the after-world and that someday there would be a great sacrifice to feed those many souls for all of time. And they looked forward to death.