Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 (10 page)

The scene cleared, and she saw it. Glowing with a bright silver light, one of the search drones burrowed its way through the werewolf’s back, it drilled its way in, going almost all the way out its chest, then it reversed direction and withdrew. It shot straight up into the sky, and she heard laughter echo from everywhere at the same time.

«I love it when they make themselves into such wonderful targets.» Rajani felt the rictus holding her fade as a shadow hand touched her on the shoulder. «Make the child safe.»

The world shifted abruptly, and Rajani found herself staring at the crumpled wolfman. Mickey looked at it, then her, and then waved his hand.

“Yes, Mickey, it went bye-bye.” Dorothy hugged her little brother, then stared at Rajani. “What happened? He

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stared at you and you stopped moving. Then he clutches his stomach and starts bleeding from the mouth and nose.

What happened?”

“Kishal.” Mickey pointed at the body. “Kishal.”

“Crystal, Mickey?” Dorothy looked very confused.

”What is he talking about?”

Rajani shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe he saw something. I think the beast had some internal injuries from the fight with his pack. Running after us did him in.

He was dead, but didn’t even notice it.” As she saw Dorothy’s face hardening, she added quickly, “I’ve seen that sort of thing happen in Eclipse.”

Dorothy shook her head slightly, then relented. “Maybe, but I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter, Dorothy. We’ll be safe for the rest of tonight. Then, tomorrow or the next day, we can be in Flagstaff and reunite you with your father.”
Then you’ll be
safe, and I can go to Phoenix and find this Coyote.

Sweat matting the dark hair on his chest, Coyote finished his hundredth sit-up and smiled as Mong appeared in the doorway of his cell. He uncrossed his hands from his chest and levered himself to his feet. Drawing his heels together, he bowed to the red-robed monk. “Good morning, Lama Mong.”

Mong studied him for a moment, and Coyote found the expression on the elderly man’s face unfathomable. The monk nodded, then smiled. “I am pleased to see you have recovered from travel lethargy. You have slept much and deeply since you arrived here.”

Coyote used a bedsheet to wipe the sweat from his face. “I must confess, I think it was more than just jet lag.

The last month has been rather stressful for me. I did not realize it until I lay down to sleep that first night, but there had been a background level of pressure on me throughout that time. It felt as though I was on a leash and constantly struggling against it. Here I feel none of that,
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and the exhaustion caught up with me.”

The monk pointed to the black silk robe that matched the pants Coyote already had pulled on. “Finish dressing, and I will lead you on a tour here. There is much for you to learn.”

The silk felt cold at first, but it warmed quickly as he belted it in place with a sash. “How long will it take you to teach me what I need to know?”

Mong shrugged as he led the way into a dimly lit, narrow corridor. “I do not know. The Dark Lords do not inform us of their training techniques or curriculum.”

Coyote nodded bitterly. “And I have no knowledge of it.”

“Conscious knowledge, you mean,”Mong mused. “We shall see what skills you possess and what you must learn.”

As the monk guided him through the lamasery, its antiquity impressed him. Of his life he knew little beyond what he had discovered in the past month. While Jytte Ravel had made available to him the files about his early life, much of the things he learned from them were rumors and probably exaggerated beyond reality anyway. In contrast, the building had a strength and history that he hungered for.

He let his fingertips brush along the rough-hewn wall, reveling in the gritty reality of the stones.
This place will
be a cocoon for
me.Remembering how Fiddleback had called him a pet and treated him like something subhu-man stoked his desire to destroy his former master.
Here
I will complete my chrysalis. I will become my own
master. I will turn what you gave me into what will
destroy you.

The lama paused beside a doorway and waved Coyote on through it. “This is our armory and training center.”

Coyote slowly descended the blocky stone steps.

Three dozen stone pillars supported the roof, and Coyote guessed the whole training complex sat directly below the main temple. The pillars broke the room down into small 10 x10-foot training areas, with longer strips in the outer perimeter. Thick mats, darkened by the dirt of thousands of feet, covered most of the floor and the soot from
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hanging butter-fat lamps blackened the ceiling.

Two dozen brown-robed
rapjungs
worked through a series of
katas.
They advanced, punched, blocked and kicked in unison, mirroring their instructor’s display.

Many of the young men wore broad smiles, as if what they were doing was play, but a select few looked serene and peaceful even as they fought against shadows.

Mong descended the long staircase behind Coyote.

”Awareness of self and the fragility of the physical body are important in our studies. All too often, the concept of self one has involves thought or a list of attributes. Only through a conscious integration of mind and body, to the point where the union becomes automatic and unconscious, is it possible to begin down the path of enlightenment.”

The tall man nodded and pointed to a wall upon which hung a full array of weapons. “And knowledge of these reinforces knowledge of life’s fragility?”

That, and it confirms more about mankind.” Mong gestured broadly, taking in all the weapons at once.

”Consider, if you will, that man’s earliest tools were rocks and sticks. Every weapon, every tool is, in effect, descended from those very humble beginnings. Things become vastly more complex as man refines his tools over and over again. Man is a toolmaker, and acknowledgment of that fact is crucial to understanding mankind.”

Coyote pulled a short weapon from the wall with his left hand. The blade ran perpendicular to the haft as with an ax, but was more slender as befitting a dagger with a single interior edge. From the point where the blade had been bolted to the shaft, a weighted length of metal chain hung down. With his right hand he grasped the chain about a foot from the weight and whirled it around.

”Kusari-gama,
Japanese in origin, favored by ninja.

Yadama Shinryukan dispatched many a samurai with one of these before Araki Mataemon tricked him into fighting in a bamboo grove.”

“And what is the sickle part but a stick, and the weight but a rock?”

Coyote acknowledged the monk’s comment with a nod, then thought for a moment. “Your point is well made,
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but are you not stretching it to suggest all tools, all machines, come from sticks and stones? What of radios and cars?”

The monk smiled. “Modern devices do make defend-ing my thesis more difficult. Bear in mind that mankind has always struggled against nature and the circumstances that would kill him. Sticks and stones allowed him to translate superior mental power into superior physical power. By bashing two sticks together, for example, he could alert other hunters in his band to potential prey. In doing this he would effectively double or triple his own strength by augmenting it with others, it may be stretching things to suggest a radio is merely two sticks that can be heard over vast distances, but the core of the reality is the same.”

“That reality being that man is a toolmaker and through his tools has learned to survive.” Coyote increased the speed of the spinning weight, then let the chain play out through his fingers. The diamond-shaped steel weight arced out and struck a spark from one of the pillars, then Coyote pitched the weight’s rotational plane sharply upward. The weight reached the peak of the arc, then looped back down and he caught it in his right hand.

“I’ve used this before.”

“Apparently.” The monk pointed to other weapons on the wall. “What of the others, Kyi-can?”

“All of them?” He hung the
kusari-gama
back in its place on the wall. “Spears,
assagai, yari, naginata,
a reproduction of a Roman pilum, an Inuit walrus spear and even a boar spear. The swords: claymore, rapier,
daito
,
katena
,
wakizashi,
shamsheer, scimitar, broadsword and obsidian-edged Aztec war club.”

As he looked at each weapon, he knew how it would feel in his hands. He knew its weight and its limitations. He knew what sort of damage itwould do, how best to employ it in attacks and how to defend against it.
If I was
Fiddleback’s
pet, then he was training me to be a fighting pet. Knowledge of these things is more than I would need to know to be an assassin.

“Iknow them all, lama. I know these and very much more.” Coyote shook his head grimly, “It would appear that much of your work has already been done.”

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“Perhaps, Kyi-can, perhaps.” The monk headed back up the stairs. “Fiddleback constructed you well.”

“You mean
trained.”

“I
meant
constructed.”

“What?” Coyote hurried up the stairs after the smaller man. “
Constructed
me?”

Mong nodded as he headed down a corridor with a sunlightopeningattheend.Throughoutthe 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, women claimed they had been kidnapped and forced to conceive children. They said their abductors were aliens or satanic cultists who were interested in breeding hybrids or innocent babies for sacrifice. Skep-tics pointed out that there was no physical evidence of these crimes and, in many cases, something as simple as psychoactively induced hypnotic suggestions were employed by their kidnappers to create this belief on the part of the victims. In fact, women were often chosen who had a history of mental problems and genetic defects specifically because no one would believe aliens had been stupid enough to select them for breeding programs.”

“Why would someone go to all the trouble of faking such horrible stories?” Coyote frowned. “And what has this to do with me?”

“Camouflage, Kyi-can.” Mong stepped out into the lamasery courtyard to the right of the long stairway.

”Amid so many people claiming truth where there was clearly falsehood, no one would listen to those who
had
been kidnapped. There
were
women who were taken and held in thrall to carry a child to term. There
were
men who were targeted, who had sperm samples taken from them, but were unable to tell their tales to anyone who would believe them.”

“You know who my parents were?”

The monk shook his head as he walked around and mounted the steps. “I do not, though you find it obvious that your parents were excellent physical specimens, with superior intellects and imaginations. Athletic, both of them, to be sure. Perhaps one was a chess champion or a wizard at computer programming or destined for a Nobel in physics. The other, I should think, would have had a creative side—indulging in painting or poetry.”

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Taking the steps two at a time, Coyote caught up with Mong. The athletics connection is logical. I assume the creativity is because that is a link into empathy?”

“Very good.” Mong pressed his hand along the flank of the stone lion balustrade as he worked his way up the stairs. “Your training would have maximized your potential in physical actions, and your creativity would have been indulged in other ways. No doubt your master would have wanted you to learn what we will teach you, but you would have received the training as a gift from him, not something you earn so that it belongs to you.”

“So I would define myself in relationship to him.”
Pet
and master.

“Yes.” The monk reached the flat foyer of the temple and pointed toward the interior beyond two open bronze doors. This is the
Lhakang,
the main hall in which Buddha is housed, it is used for prayer and meditation.

You are being housed in the
Dukhang
along with all the other monks. Beneath the
Lhakang
is the
Gonkhang,
which is reserved for our guardian, the Yidam. It is sacred and private, and I trust you will respect that by not attempting to enter it.”

“As you wish, lama.” Coyote stepped forward and looked into the
Lhakang.
Up front he saw an altar, in front of which a number of beaten gold bowls had been arrayed at the feet of the seated figure of Buddha. At least one looked to be full of rice and another with flowers. Flanking the main statue he saw smaller deities represented along with bodhisattvas, saints and monks. Instructional murals filled the walls between the pillars supporting the ceiling.