Inexorably, Kali was wrestled to the ground. Shiva-for that was the true name of the entity that animated the remains of Remo Williams, Chiun understood-assumed a superior position, straddling the kicking, screaming corpse-thing. The purple beam bathed it like hard radiation.
"What are you doing?" Kali screamed, averting her face from the awful light. "I only wanted to dance! This is our shared destiny!"
"My hour has not yet come," Shiva said in metallic tones. "The day of the Tandava has not yet dawned. You desire blood? I give you bile. "
And with that, Shiva's mouth yawned to its fullest and began extruding a black bile that was like cold tar streaked with blood.
The viscous matter poured over Kali's unprotected face. She kicked, she fought, howling like a cur. But in the end her nerve-damaged limbs lacked the power to resist.
Quivering and twitching, she subsided.
As Chiun watched, true fear a cold stone in his belly, Shiva dismounted his consort. He turned slowly. The three black eyes seemed to regard the Master of Sinanju like a doom.
"I do not fear you, Supreme Lord," Chiun said in a quavering voice.
"Then you are not worthy to call yourself a Master of Sinanju," Shiva intoned.
Chiun swallowed. "What is your will?"
Shiva raised both hands to his forehead. They swept down to his thighs like a benediction. "That this fleshly throne remain whole until I claim the right to sit upon it, " he said.
Chiun's facial hair quivered. "Remo is not dead?" he gasped. His eyes went round and unbelieving.
"The gas of death is strong, but my will is stronger."
Chiun indicated the prostrate form of Kali. "What of her?"
"She has tasted the excretions that, now purged, allow my avatar to breathe the air of this realm anew. "
The Master of Sinanju trembled, and fought back welling tears.
"Give me back my son, O Shiva, and any wish you desire, I will swear to fulfill."
"Remember that vow, Sinanju," said Shiva. "You may come to regret it. But on this day, in this hour, I need only to return to Chidambarum, the center of the universe, where I sleep. "
Chiun nodded. It was more than he could ever have dreamed. A lump rose in his throat and the air coming into his lungs was inexplicably hot.
Then, assuming a lotus position on the limestone roof, Shiva the Destroyer laid his wrists upon his knees and closed all three eyes. A wave of color, like the wind worrying sailcloth, rippled over the flesh of Remo Williams. Another. The slaty color began to fade. Magically, the lopsided head reoriented itself to the vertical, the livid blue bruise of the throat lessening, fading, growing pink and healthy once more.
Remo Williams opened his uncomprehending brown eyes. They blinked, focused, and seemed to accept the pale vision that was the Master of Sinanju standing before him.
"Little Father . . ." he began, his voice a bullfrog croak.
Chiun said nothing. He could not. His every thought was focused on holding back unseemly tears.
"I thought you were . . . dead," Remo said slowly, seeming not to know where he was. He looked around. At every point of the compass, smoke lifted into the intensely black sky, and fires raged.
"Is this . . . the Void?" Remo asked tightly. "The last thing I remember was killing Maddas Hinsein. Then Kimberly grabbed me by the . . ."
His gaze suddenly alighted on the prostrate form of Kimberly Baynes, only a yard away.
"Is she dead too?"
Before the Master of Sinanju could summon up an answer, the blackened arms of Kali flung upward. Her spine coiled and her legs jackknifed. Her tottering body came erect, surviving arms outflung as if for balance.
"What's this?" Remo asked nervously.
"A gift," said the Master of Sinanju, stepping up to the creature as it pawed slime from its matted hair and face. The sounds coming forth were confused and muffled. "The Supreme Lord has offered Sinanju an opportunity to extract full vengeance."
"Hold it!" Remo warned, trying to get to his feet. "She's more dangerous than you think." His legs, locked in a lotus position, were unresponsive, as if nerve-dead.
"Do you hear me, O Kali?" Chiun demanded, ignoring his pupil.
"I will eat you!" Kali roared, trying to see through the dripping slime.
"Perhaps. But first I have a riddle for you."
"What?"
"What has three arms and screams?"
"I do not know, foolish old man. Nor do I care."
"Little Father!" Remo shouted, uncrossing his legs by hand. "Don't take her on alone!" His eyes were wide with worry.
The Master of Sinanju lashed out with a stiff-fingered strike, knocking the maimed arm of Kali loose from its socket. It fell with a plop.
Kali screamed. Her three, surviving arms waved.
"Since you did not solve that one, I have another," Chiun went on calmly. "What has but two arms and screams?"
Kali obviously guessed the answer to that one, because her upper arms-the unimpaired ones-reached for the Master of Sinanju's face.
Chiun knocked her legs out from under her and grasped the swinging broken arm as she fell. The arm tore free like cloth ripping.
"I got one," Remo said, finally finding his feet. He strode over Kali's almost-normal form and asked, "What has no arms and flies?"
"And sprouts feathers in flight?" added Chiun.
Remo blinked. "Feathers?"
"Feathers," said Chiun, nodding.
His brow wrinkling around his closed third eye, Remo Williams set one foot on Kali's bloated stomach. He grabbed her wrists and exerted pressure.
They came loose like cooked turkey drumsticks and, flinging them one way, Remo drop-kicked the maimed armless shell that was Kali in another.