Remo didn't reply. Alert for the first time on their long drive through Luzuland, he expanded his nostrils, sampling the hot dusty breeze.
It was there, carried on the eddies that swirled around the speeding Blazer. The warm scent of rice and hyacinth.
The grass grew high on either side of the long road. As they flew toward it, Remo saw the mouth of a footpath leading through the savannah. It was angled off the main road.
"Stop the truck," Remo commanded abruptly. The driver twisted to him, a scowl creasing his ruddy face. "We're nowhere near the village," he snapped. "Now roil up the damn window." Remo didn't listen to him. He reached over with the toe of one loafer and tapped the brake. With a painful squeal of locked tires, the truck slammed to a dust-raking stop.
The men in the rear were flung against the back of the front seat. Only the pressure of Remo's hand against the driver's chest kept the man from crashing through the windshield. Even as the men were catching their breath, Remo was slipping the truck into park and pocketing the keys.
"Don't go anywhere," he said as he popped the door. It opened onto the foot trail.
On the seat beside him, the driver had already come through the shock of their jarring stop. "Gimme those keys, Yank," he threatened, rage sparking his dark eyes.
Remo shook his head. "Sorry." He shrugged. And to keep the men from following him, he fused the driver's fingers to the dashboard.
While the other two men pulled at their friend-whose hands had suddenly and inexplicably become indistinguishable from the surrounding plastic of the dash-Remo hopped from the front seat and took the path into the brush.
On either side, the swaying grass rose to his shoulders. The gray of dusk raked up from the ground like witch's claws.
He only needed to walk until the truck could no longer be seen when he came upon the little boy. It looked as if he'd been waiting there for some time. A circle of grass around where he sat on his rump had been crushed flat. The boy had picked much of the dry grass from the area. He had woven it into the shapes of huts, which he'd arranged into a model village. Roads had been carved into the scratched-up dirt. The tiny men he had chipped from small stones stood among the huts.
The boy didn't even note Remo's approach, so engrossed was he in play. But when Remo stopped above him, the boy looked up from the town he had built. His brown eyes caught the reflected red of the dying sun.
"I like to fish," he announced abruptly. "Do you like to fish?"
The non sequitur was certainly not what Remo had expected as the boy's first words. Remo didn't know what else to say. The kid was some kind of ghost, but he had the big inquisitive eyes of any normal fresh-faced youth. He found himself answering truthfully almost before he realized it.
"Not really," Remo admitted. "I like eating them, don't like catching them."
"I did." The boy nodded. "There was a big sea where I lived. I used to like to fish there when I was little. But the fishing was poor, and there was little fish to catch and so the men of the village hired themselves out to warlords and emperors." Sadness brushed his bright brown eyes. Looking down, he moved one of his little stone men.
The rice-and-hyacinth smell that had led him there was the scent that clung to Chiun's house back in Sinanju. But for Remo, the words he had just spoken clinched it. Just now the boy had started off talking like any normal child of six, but had taken a turn and lapsed into a rote recital of early Sinanju history.
Sitting on a cushion of grass, the boy moved another stone man next to the first. Remo noted that none of the figures he had made were smiling. All wore the same flat expression. Neither happy nor sad.
As the boy played, Remo crouched beside him. "Who are you?" Remo asked.
At this, the boy's eyes grew infinitely sad once more. Remo instantly felt guilty for asking the question.
"I am the Master Who Never Was," the boy replied. "I have been before and if fate so chooses, I will be again."
Remo shook his head. "I don't understand."
The boy scrunched up his button nose. "You don't? Most grown-ups do. Are you dumb?"
For a moment, Remo seemed at a loss. As he searched for the right words, the boy abruptly pushed away his homemade toys. He scampered to his feet.
"Want to see what I can do?" he asked, his eyes wide with the innocence of youth. Before Remo could answer, the boy held out his two balled fists. "You do it, too," he instructed seriously.
Remo was surprised at the way the boy stood. It was the light stance used for Lodestones, a training exercise meant only for two full Masters of Sinanju. If the boy wasn't wrapped in some ghostly disguise that hid his real age, someone of his years should not have advanced so far in Sinanju training.
To mollify the youth, Remo got to his knees before him and mirrored his posture.
"Now, the object is to not touch hands." His hooded eyes widened. "Do you understand?" He nodded slowly, in an open tone that wasn't meant to insult.
Before Remo could respond, the boy struck forward.
Remo matched the blow, hands drawn back with the child's knotted fists. He tracked the tiny hands out and allowed the boy to come at him again, once more mirroring the youth's darting movements.
"No, you have to come at me, too," the boy insisted with a frown.
Remo didn't feel comfortable striking out at a child, even if he was a ghost. But he didn't want to disappoint the kid. Keeping his movements slow and wide, he threw two broad strokes the boy's way.
He was surprised to find his actions matched perfectly. It was as if the boy's hands were locked in orbit around his own. Always near, never touching.
They played Lodestones for a few minutes, their movements growing progressively more complex. The boy seemed lost in the game. While certainly not up to the level of a full Master, Remo was amazed at his abilities. He was far more advanced than he should have been. A child of his age would have been a prodigy in Sinanju.
After a time, the boy finally grew bored.
"I learned that when I was very little," he announced, dropping his hands. "A long, long time ago."
"Who taught you?" Remo pressed.
The boy looked him deep in the eyes, tipping his head to one side. "Do you like toys?" he asked. "I wasn't allowed to have them. But sometimes I snuck away and made some with the other children. Like this." He picked from his small village one of the stone men he'd made.
When he held it out, Remo was impressed by the detail. The features on the toy man were Asian. "You can have it if you want," the boy said. When he pressed the figure into Remo's hand, Remo felt the same unnatural cold he'd experienced at the airport in New York and again on the sidewalk in Bachsburg. There was a total lack of warmth to the boy's body.
Once he'd closed Remo's fingers around the figure, he looked up. His eyes were bright. For the first time, Remo noticed flecks of hazel at the brown edges of his irises.
"Sometimes when you look at things, you don't see them, Remo," he said, with a wisdom older than his physical age. "Sometimes you have to look from the side to know what it is you've seen. It's almost your time. Be sure when you go to look that you see what you should, not what you want to see."
He seemed to want to smile. But the ability to do so had been trained out of him long before he'd shucked his corporeal form. Once he was through speaking, the little boy merely put his hands to the sides of his black tunic and allowed the growing night to claim him.
Remo was left alone in the endless soughing plain, a look of confusion seeping across his face. At his feet, the rocks and grass the boy had been playing with still sat. But the woven huts of a moment before were now simple piles of grass. The stone men, once more chunks of smooth gray rock. Remo opened his hand.
A carved Korean face looked up at him.
He slipped the figure into his pocket. Turning from the mashed-down field, he headed back down the path to the waiting Blazer, his face tight with silent reflection.
ON A HIGH BLUFF that looked out over the great, sweeping plains of the Luzu empire, a lone sentry stood.
Behind him, the dead rock mouth of a played-out diamond mine swallowed night shadows. Before him, the gods bled into the vast twilight sky.
Eyes trained keen watched the solitary truck as it traveled the off-road path from Bachsburg. When the vehicle stopped suddenly, the native grew more alert.
A dark figure emerged, vanishing into the tall grass. Dusk was nearly gone by the time he reappeared. After another minute, the truck resumed its stubborn path into the heart of Luzuland.