The Seventh Stone, page 15
“Rutherford Wobley,” the man said.
“I thought so,” Remo said.
He looked away in disgust and saw the Wofans spinning around the ring, doing handsprings and cartwheels, back flips and rolls. Their bodies flew through the air like bright blurs of color as they passed over and under each other like whirling tops in constant motion. While the area they had to work in was not large, they managed to sail through a series of interweaving patterns as complex as a spider’s web made from pure energy and motion.
The pajama-clad performers grouped in the center of the ring and flipped themselves upward to form a human pyramid. They were good, Remo thought disgustedly, but he’d seen it all before. He wondered when they were going to start spinning plates on long bamboo poles.
The athletes dismantled the pyramid, rolling to the ground, to the applause of the spectators. Remo glanced across the clearing, looking for Chiun, but he could not see him.
The high-pitched piping of the flutes filled the air with a sound like a mournful wail. The cymbals crashed and then the gong again with its deep lingering echo.
The acrobats responded to the music. They flew across the ring, two, three, four at once, speeding smudges of color that seemed to defy the laws of gravity, tumbling over each other, seeming to pause in the air at the top of their leaps, working their way across the clearing. And then a blue-clad acrobat overshot the rest of the performers and came hurtling at Remo like a dive bomber.
It had started. Remo stepped to the side a half-pace and raised a hand. It looked as if he hadn’t really done anything, maybe just waved to someone in the crowd on the other side of the arena. But the acrobat’s feetfirst dive missed Remo completely, except where the Oriental’s shoulder brushed the tip of Remo’s outstretched hand. The contact was punctuated by the snapping sound of breaking bone, a whoosh of exhaled air and then a prolonged scream as the acrobat hit the ground. This time he did not bounce up.
Two more came lunging toward Remo. Red and green this time. Remo turned slightly, catching one with his shoulder blade and the second with his knee. He hoped that Chiun was watching because he felt that his technique was really good on the two moves. The acrobats’ bellows of pained surprise drowned out the frantic warbling of the flutes. The red-and-green-clad men popped skyward like bubbles in a breeze. Like bubbles, they were broken when they hit the ground. From the corner of his eye as he turned, Remo saw Reginald Woburn yank the cord that dangled from one of the rectangle-clustered poles. There was a blinding flash of light as a mirror on the pole picked up and reflected the brilliant intensity of the sun’s glare directly into Remo’s eyes. Remo blinked in surprise. As he opened his eyes again, he had to ignore the mirror because the remaining Oriental acrobats were coming toward him, with knives they had drawn from inside their clothing. Remo ducked out of their way and as he did there was another flash of blinding light. Then another. And another.
The harsh white light seared his eyes. Remo ducked away from the acrobats, into the crowd of people standing around the performance arena, his eyes screwed shut tightly. He opened them again, but he still could not see. The brightness had shocked his vision for a moment, and behind him, he could hear the yelling of the Oriental acrobats as they tried to get to him.
Remo fled, then stopped as a thin high voice rose above the sounds of a hundred different noises. It was Chiun’s voice rising above the crowd. It sounded metallic and strained.
“Remo,” Chiun wailed. “Help me. Attack now. Free me. Help.”
His blind eyes burning, Remo lunged toward the voice. Eight steps he knew would bring him to it. But when he was there, all he felt was stillness. There were people there, poised and waiting. Remo could feel them, hear their breathing, sense the coiled tension in their bodies, feel the small movements they made even when they thought they were standing perfectly still.
But there was nothing in the spot where Chiun’s voice had come from.
Behind him, Remo heard the voices of the acrobats moving toward him. And he caught the scent of perfume, a painfully familiar fragrance that stirred up far too many memories. It was Kim Kiley’s perfume, rich and exotic, as individual as a fingerprint when it intermingled with the scent of her own body.
She was there and then there was another scent.
It was the smell of the tiny particles of residue that linger in a gun barrel after it has been fired. No matter how many times the gun was cleaned, the smell always remained for those with the ability to sense it.
Remo felt the air change again, heard the whisper of motion as a slender finger pulled backward slowly on a trigger. He wanted to yell “No” but there was no time, and instead his unspoken word turned into a thunderous roar of despair that shattered the stillness as Remo, sightless but unerring, reached out for the sound and brought his hand down on the white fragrant neck. He heard the dry-stick sound of snapping bone.
Behind him, the acrobats were leaping toward him. He could feel the pressure of their bodies moving through the air.
But they never reached him. There was the sound of thump-thump-thump like three heavy stones dropped into a mud puddle. He knew their three bodies had ceased moving.
Suddenly, the air was clamorous with the sound of screams, shrieking and pounding feet as the crowd panicked and ran in all directions.
The searing pain of blindness still burned Remo’s eyes. He groped for a moment in a world of white night, until he sensed the tall metal structure nearby. He had to turn off the lights; he had to see again; he had to find Chiun.
On the ground near the pole, Remo found a stone-cut glass tumbler dropped by one of the fleeing guests. He sensed its weight and then tossed it upward in a spiraling arc.
He heard the shattering sound as the glass connected with its target. The mirror atop the pole smashed into a million crystalline fragments that rained down from the sky in a magnificent light show.
The other three lights still blinded him, but then he heard the glass of the lights break—pop, pop, pop—and a sudden darkness descended over the lawn. He blinked once and his vision began to return.
The first thing he saw was Chiun, turning away from having blasted out the three other lights with stones.
“You’re all right?” Remo asked.
“All in all, I would have preferred Barbra Streisand,” Chiun said.
Remo turned around and saw Kim. She lay next to Reginald Woburn III, the two of them stretched out amid a sea of glittering crystals from the broken light reflectors. To their left were the three last Oriental acrobats, their bodies twisted ungracefully in death.
Kim Kiley’s perfect face stared skyward, her eyes masked by a pair of dark glasses. A pistol rested on the curled fingers of her right hand. Remo turned away.
“How did you know to kill her?” asked Chiun.
“I knew,” Remo said quietly. “How did you know to kill him?”
“He was the leader; if we are ever to have any peace, he must go.”
“You waited long enough,” Remo said. “I was stumbling around there, not able to see, and you weren’t anywhere.”
“I found you though,” Chiun said. “I just followed the sound of an ox stomping around and, naturally, it was you.”
“I don’t understand what they were doing,” Remo said.
“They tried to make each of us think that the other was hurt,” Chiun said. “We were their ‘two plums’.”
“The two plums, cleaved, were bereft,” Remo said.
“Correct. They thought if each of us thought the other was in danger, we would lower our defenses and become vulnerable,” Chiun said.
“And you weren’t hurt? You weren’t in any danger?”
“Of course not,” Chiun said disdainfully. He leaned over and picked up the fragments of a small black box. “It was some mechanical device, one of those tape-recorder things that does not record a television picture but only noise. I stepped on it when the unrecognizable screeching from it became unbearable.”
“So we weren’t cleaved and we aren’t bereft,” Remo said.
“As if any group of barbarians could cleave the House of Sinanju,” Chiun said.
Both men paused to look around. The lawns were empty as far as the eye could see. The family of Wo had scattered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL,” Remo said when they were back in the condominium.
“Nothing has ended,” Chiun said.
“What do you mean? Woburn’s dead; the family took off for the hills, what’s left?”
“The House of Wo owes the House of Sinanju a public apology.”
“Chiun, drop it,” said Remo. “It’s two thousand years old.”
“A debt is a debt.”
Chiun was standing by the window, looking out over the ocean. “There is already a new prince of the House of Wo. Let us hope he has the wisdom his predecessors had not.”
Chiun stayed by the window until well after dark. Then Remo heard him move toward the front door. He heard the door open and a few whispered words and when he came back into the living room, Chiun was holding an envelope.
The old Korean opened it and read the message.
“It is an invitation,” he said.
“You go. My dance card’s filled,” Remo said.
“It is an invitation for the House of Sinanju to meet with the House of Wo. We will both go.”
“I’m part of the House of Sinanju?” Remo said.
Chiun looked up with an innocent expression. “Of course you are,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Remo.
“Every house must have a cellar,” Chiun said. “Heh, heh. You’re the cellar of the House of Sinanju. Heh, heh. The cellar. Heh, heh.”
* * *
They left at daybreak. Chiun wore a white-and-black ceremonial robe that Remo had never seen before. Emblazoned across the shoulders, in delicate silken embroidery, was a Korean character that Remo recognized as the symbol of the House of Sinanju. It translated as “center” and it meant that the House of Sinanju was the center of the world.
As the two men neared the porticoed front entrance to the sprawling mansion, the arched front doors swung open and four men emerged bearing two stretchers, which held the bodies of Reginald Woburn and Kim Kiley. Remo looked away as they passed and then back again as the island constable followed behind them.
“Ain’t no morder,” the constable muttered to himself. “Dat’s for sure. No arrow in the heart, they be natural causes.”
Remo and Chiun entered the mansion. Eerie silence testified that it was empty and Remo said, “I think maybe they’re up to something. I don’t trust them.”
“We shall see,” Chiun said quietly. “I am the Master of Sinanju and you are the next Master. This business with the Wos has gone on for too many years now. This day will see it end.”
“Sure,” Remo said. “We’ll kill them all. What’s a little carnage as long as it settles a score that nobody’s old enough to remember?”
He followed Chiun through the house and then out the front entrance. There, awaiting them on the front lawn, were all the living descendants of Prince Wo. Remo scanned the rows of solemn faces, red, black, yellow, white and brown. No one was smiling.
“Who said big families had more fun?” Remo muttered.
Chiun walked down the steps, his silken robe swirling about him. He halted a few feet from the front rank of men and inclined his head slightly, the smallest of small bows.
“I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju,” he said magisterially. “This is Remo, heir to the House of Sinanju. We are here.”
A plump Oriental man dressed in a simple crimson robe stepped out of the front rank and bowed to Chiun. “I am Lee Wofan,” he said solemnly. “The new prince in the long and illustrious line of the great Prince Wo. I have asked you here to discuss a matter of tribute.”
“A tribute denied my predecessor, Master Pak,” Chiun said.
“A tribute withheld by Prince Wo as a sign that showed the power of his rule,” Lee Wofan said softly.
“And for his arrogance and pride,” Chiun said, “Master Pak, one lone man, banished a prince and his army and his court from the face of the civilized world.”
“It is so,” Wofan agreed. “Here. To this very island Prince Wo came.”
There was a sweet sadness in Chiun’s voice as he spoke again. “And it was only for words,” he said. “A public acknowledgment that the prince recognized Master Pak’s performance of his contract.” He paused for a moment. The silence was absolute. “And because of that, so many have died,” Chiun said.
“It is as you say,” Lee Wofan said. “Our legacy has been a curse from Prince Wo the Wanderer. This curse has followed my family in all its branches for two thousand years. Now the curse will be lifted. For we, the family of Wo, now do publicly acclaim the work of the great Master Pak in aiding our ancestor Prince Wo. And we further affirm that the Masters of Sinanju are assassins without equal. In this age or any other.”
Chiun bowed his deepest bow. “I, Chiun, reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, accept your tribute for myself and for all Masters, past, present, and yet to come.”
“Accept it and more,” said Lee Wofan. He stepped to one side and then all the gathered descendants of Wo parted to reveal the stone itself, the stone whose message—to wait until the House of Sinanju had two heads and then to separate and kill them—had failed and brought only more death to the House of Wo.
“Our feud is ended,” Lee Wofan said. “Never again will we heed the words written on this stone. We wish to live in peace.”
Chiun turned to smile at Remo, then walked through the crowd until he faced the stone.
His voice raised above the crowd, he intoned: “So be our conflict behind us. But never forget Prince Wo or his legend or the Masters of Sinanju who will from this time forward be your friends and allies in trouble. Go back to your lands and remember. For it is only through our memories that the greatness of the past lives on.”
With that, Chiun thrust out his hand. Once, twice, thrice. The stone shattered into a million pieces that streaked skyward, wheeling and dancing, crystal bright under the rising sun.
“Welcome home, children of Wo,” Chiun said, then turned and walked off through the crowd.
They dropped to their knees as he passed among them.
Excerpt
If you enjoyed The Seventh Stone, no one’s gonna stop you from leaving a nice review with some stars attached. Cheesy? Yeah, but it really helps. That’s the biz, sweetheart.
And if you did like The Seventh Stone, maybe you’ll like The Sky is Falling, too. It’s the next novel in the Destroyer series, and should be available wherever truly fine ebooks are sold.
The Sky is Falling
HIS NAME WAS REMO and he walked among the explosions.
But that was nothing special. Any man could walk safely through this particular minefield. The mines were not designed to kill the person who touched them off. They were meant to kill everyone around him. Guerrillas used these mines, the Vietcong especially.
They worked this way: a company would walk along a trail. One man, usually the one walking point, would step on the buried pressure-sensitive device and set it off. Ordinary mines usually exploded upward, making hamburger of that man. Not this mine. It expended its force outward, not upward, and the singing shrapnel would cut down everyone in the vicinity. Except the one who caused the carnage. A soldier alone, conventional military wisdom said, was useless. No army fought with lone soldiers. Armies worked in platoons and companies and divisions. And if you built a mine that left one soldier standing alone, you rendered him useless.
So the mines went off under his feet, sending pieces of shrapnel cracking loudly along the prairie grass of North Dakota, setting fires where steel spanked off rocks and sending sparks into the dull dry grass. Remo thought that he heard someone laughing up ahead. That was special.
To hear a small sound in a great one was to be able to hear one hoof in a cavalry charge, or a can of beer opening during a football game.
He heard the laughter by not blocking out sounds. That was how most people dealt with loud noise, by defending their eardrums. Remo heard with his entire body, in his bones and with his nerve ganglia, because his very breathing vibrated with that sound and became a part of it.
He had been trained to hear like this. His aural acuteness came from his breathing. Everything came from his breathing: the power to sense the buried land mines, the ability to ignore the shock of the blasts, even the speed that enabled him to dodge the flying steel pellets if he had to. And there, as clear as his own breath, was the laughter up ahead. A very soft laughter coming from the high granite building set like a gray mountain in a plain that had no mountain. From its parapets, a person could see for fifteen miles in every direction. And they could see a thin man, about six feet tall, with high cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes that lay in shadows like the holes in a skull, walking casually across the minefield.
Remo heard the laughter from a mile away, from a thousand yards, and from ten yards. At ten yards, there were no more mines. He looked up at the parapet to see a very fat man with a gold hat on his head. Or a crown. Remo couldn’t tell. He didn’t care to tell. It was the right fat face and that was all that mattered.
The man yelled down from the parapet.
“Hey, you! Skinny. You know you’re funny,” said the man.
“I know. I heard you laughing,” said Remo. “You’re Robert Wojic, the Hemp King of North America. Right?”
“That’s legal. And so are the mines. This is my property. I can shoot you for trespassing.”
“I’ve come to deliver a message.”
“Go ahead and deliver it and then get out of here.”
“I forget the message,” said Remo. “it has to do with testimony.”
The barrel of an AK-47 poked out of one of the stone slots in the parapet. Then another. They came from both sides of the Hemp King of North America.
