When it was over, he fell on the ground and sobbed.
Chapter Seven
Even before Remo got to Peru, he knew that he never wanted to see that country again. It had been the worst trip of his life. The small boat he had set sail in broke apart during a storm in the Sea of Okhotsk. He was picked up near dawn by a Russian freighter, whose captain was going to turn him over to Soviet authorities until Remo uncovered several crates filled with eight-millimeter porno films. The Russian captain didn't understand much English, but "contraband" was a word he understood. So was "Siberia."
Thus was Remo dumped overboard somewhere in the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands, where he was rescued by an American seaplane and carted as far as Juneau, Alaska. Slogging on foot to a U.S. military base some fifty miles away, he stowed away on an experimental supersonic fighter on a test run to Houston. At the Gulf of Mexico, he hitched a ride on a Mexican fishing boat in exchange for labor.
Several thousand mackerel later, he arrived in Merida, Mexico, stinking but richer by twelve dollars-enough to
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get him on a series of second-class buses crammed to bursting with chickens and pigs, through the middle American countries. It was touch and go at the borders of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Equador. By the time he arrived in the vast, unpopulated Peruvian highlands, he knew he'd been right. The Master's Trial was an exercise in lunacy. No one would ever find him in this place. He sat beneath a yew tree and slept.
He awoke in the middle of a sea of painted faces. Nearly a hundred men surrounded him, all of them decked out in feathers and tunics of bright cloth. They carried spears. The spears were pointed straight at him.
"Wait a second," Remo said, staggering to his feet. "Whoever you think I am, you're wrong. Donde est-" His high school Spanish deserted him. Not that it mattered. He didn't know where he was going, anyway.
He searched his mind for the name of the man he had come to see. Jildo? No, Jildo was the Viking. There was someone named Kirby, or Kibbee, and then the guy in Wales, Emory or something. Why didn't these people have ordinary names?
"Me Remo," he said, pulling out his jade stone.
The leader of the group took it out of his hand and examined it. He nodded to the others, then gave it back, motioning Remo forward.
"Ancion," Remo said, remembering. "That's the name of the guy I'm supposed to meet."
At the mention of the name, the warriors all laid down their spears and knelt. "Ancion," they chanted, bowing low.
"Ancion must be a big cheese."
"Ancion," they intoned.
They walked for half a day through the hills, over a rope bridge spanning a large river, and finally up a narrow footpath winding in a spiral around a high mountain. At
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the apex was a bank of stone steps leading to a massive building painted brightly and adorned with carved friezes. In the floor outside the main entrance was a smooth, domed rock bearing the same three characters as Remo's rock. The warrior leader took Remo inside, into a large stone chamber. In addition to the warriors, more than a hundred others were present, kowtowing toward a gold throne placed atop a pyramid of steps twenty feet high. On it sat a young man with refined, chiseled features. He was dressed in a checkered tunic weighted heavily with gold and silver, and a cape of what Remo recognized as bat fur. He wore a wide band of colored cloth around his head, and two large gold discs five inches wide over his ears. In his hand was a feathered scepter.
The warrior who had brought Remo held out his, hand and slapped the palm with two fingers. Uncertain of what he wanted, Remo gave him the piece of jade. It seemed to satisfy the warrior. He presented it to the man on the throne.
"You are the heir to the Master of Sinanju?" the one in bat fur asked. "A white man?"
"Nobody's perfect," Remo said. "Are you Ancion?"
"Ancion," the crowd murmured.
"Is that the only word they know?"
The eyes of the man on the throne flashed. "The name of the Inca is sacred. It is not to be spoken by outsiders."
Remo looked around. "Which Inca?"
"There is but one Inca. He who rules the Inca peoples, descended from a hundred generations of kings. Our ways are not like yours, where even a mongrel white American is designated to take the place of the Master of Sinanju." He stared at Remo contemptuously. "Do not dare to use my name again."
Remo fought down the urge to jog up the stairs and punch Ancion in the nose. "Whatever makes you happy,"
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he said. "Say, whoozis, it's about this fight we're supposed to have."
"The Master's Trial is not a 'fight.' "
"Well, it's not exactly a tea party. Look, You may not know this, but I'm supposed to kill you."
Ancion smiled coldly. "If you can, white man."
"Okay, okay. Maybe you'll kill me. The point is, this makes about as much sense as a circle jerk at the North Pole. Let's talk it over, okay?"
"If you are afraid to fight me, then acknowledge your defeat."
"Fine," Remo said. "You're the winner. Congrats. See you in church." He ambled away.
"Stop," Ancion shouted.
"What now? I told you you won."
"In the Master's Trial, only the victor lives. If you will not fight, you will be executed."
Remo said, "Hey, what's with you, anyway? I'm offering you an easy way out. We've both got better things to do than beat each other up like a couple of Tenth Avenue hoods. I just want to talk."
"The talking was done twelve centuries ago. Make your choice. The arena or the gallows?"
The man's English was definitely accented, but the accent wasn't Spanish. "How come you sound just like the Kennedys?" Remo asked.
"I was educated at Harvard. What is your choice, white man?"
"Harvard? Did they teach you there that it's okay to murder strangers?"
"I went to your country to study the ways of so-called civilized men. What I found was that civilization breeds war above all other things."
"And what do you think the Master's Trial breeds, hamsters?"
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"What we do today is not war, but a sacred tradition to avert war among the great remaining societies of the world. Without the Master's Trial, our peoples would fight one another openly. We would become known to the outside world. We would be absorbed into the huge, useless nations of the planet, wallowing in mediocrity. Without our traditions, we would lose our past. Do you not understand?"