Lightning flashed across the sky. A high wind gusted out of nowhere. Remo ignored them, and was left untouched. He concentrated on disintegrating the grass, as Kiree had done, his hands moving so fast that the moisture in the blades evaporated instantly. He spat, slapping his hands together in rhythm.
He had to take the Dutchman by surprise. No matter
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how fast he ran, the Dutchman would see him coming in plenty of time to perform one of his tricks. Remo knew that the changes in weather and the constantly shifting landscape were visual lies, but the Dutchman could be subtle. What if he made Jilda burst into flame? Or caused the top of Griffith's head to explode like a firecracker? They weren't invulnerable to his ugly games. No, this contest had to be between Remo and the Dutchman, one on one. Remo didn't expect to win, but he wasn't about to make anyone else take the loss with him.
"Fool," the Dutchman sneered. "You waste my time."
Remo spat into his hands again. The pulp was almost the right consistency. He pulled his hands away, and like taffy, the wire-thin fibers formed. He worked quickly, weaving the fine, transparent net around the rock. His hands were moving too fast to see.
"Your skin is burning," the Dutchman insinuated. "Your eyes are dry and withering. Blisters cover your body."
"Go eat a toad." It was ready. With'one swing, Remo wound the net around a tree and swung up. The second propelled him to a boulder. On the third orbit of the net, he flew toward the crag where the Dutchman waited and landed with both feet in the blond man's chest.
"Thanks, guys," he said to the spirits of Ancion and Kiree. Somewhere, he felt, from some unknown vantage point, they were watching.
With a whoosh of air from his lungs, the Dutchman fell down the hill. At its base, he righted himself awkwardly and ran. Remo followed him. The ground was soft and covered with holes. The snakes, Remo remembered. Watch it. He can make them come out your ears if he wants to.
But the Dutchman had no hallucination waiting. He stood beside an open pit, absorbed in its swarming interior. Remo approached, standing across the wide hole from him. The pit contained the skeletons of four men, picked
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clean by scavengers. They were loosely draped in rags that had once been uniforms of some sort. Over them crawled more snakes than Remo had ever seen in one place.
The two men circled the pit. The Dutchman's eyes were pale and lucid, the maniacal fire in them gone. Instead, they held a look of bewilderment as he searched Remo's face.
"Who are you?" the Dutchman asked. It was a plea. Strange music came to Remo on the wind. Faint but insistent, the dissonant melody was the same as the strains he had heard when he first came to the shores of Sinanju with Jilda and the others. It had filled him with terror then, but now the music carried no more fear than a passing breeze. It was the Dutchman's music, but devoid of the Dutchman's power.
He feeds on fear, Remo thought. When he had stopped caring whether he lived or died, he had lost his fear of the Dutchman. And without the fear, he was no longer a victim.
The music swelled again, and suddenly Remo recognized it for what it was. It had sounded oddly familiar the first time he heard it, but didn't understand why. Now he knew. He had heard the same notes long ago, in a small boat setting off to carry him to the first stop in the Master's Trial. It was Chiun's music, note for note, only distorted, a perversion of the songs of Sinanju.
And as he watched the Dutchman standing in mirror image of himself, he understood the music's meaning. "I am you," he answered.
Yin and yang.
Light and shadow, good and evil, Remo and the Dutchman were opposite sides of the same being. They were born of the same traditions, both white men taken out of their societies and created anew in the ways of Sinanju. They both claimed Masters of the discipline as their fathers.
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Only fate had kept them apart for so long. Now, together, they formed a whole that could only end in destruction.
"If I kill you, I will die," the Dutchman said, sounding almost relieved. "It was you all along. I have been seeking the wrong man."
"You killed him."
"As I must kill you," the Dutchman said.
In one perfect spiral leap, he crossed the pit and delivered a blow to Remo's chest. His ribs broke under the impact. He tried to right himself, but the Dutchman was too fast. Remo felt a shattering pain in his kneecap that sent him flying toward a boulder. He landed on his shoulder.
The Dutchman kicked him off the rock. "It can't be done quickly," he said softly. "I've waited too long. The victory must be complete."
He stepped back. Remo stirred. The Dutchman crushed his elbow with his heel. The pain flooded over Remo like a wave. His vision receded to a wash of color: black, red, iridescent blue. . . .
"You will hear me now, and obey," the Dutchman commanded.
It was the fear. Stop the fear in yourself, and his power will vanish.
But he was afraid. No man had ever attacked him so fast. No man had ever beaten him so completely. The Dutchman was better than he was, better than anyone. In the Master's Trial, the Dutchman would have conquered the world.
"Feel the knives in your legs, Remo."
Remo screamed with the pain. Thousands of blades were suddenly embedded in his skin, cutting to the bone.
"They are in your hands now, your arms. ..."
He felt his palms flatten. The knives, slicing his flesh by inches, moved up his arms. Each thrust was an agony.
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Each knife brought him closer to the welcome numbness of death.
"Oh, Chiun," Remo whispered.
His eyes fluttered open. In the distance were three moving figures, barely visible. Remo tried to concentrate on them to lessen the pain. He was going to die, but Chiun had once told him that death did not have to be painful. "Take yourself out of the pain," Chiun had said. Chiun . . .
It was Chiun. The old man was alive, walking between Jilda and the boy. The three of them stopped beside H'si T'ang, seated on the ground. Chiun picked his teacher up and moved in a wooden gait toward the cave. As he walked, Chiun turned his head right and left, searching.
"I am here, Father," Remo said, too weak to be heard. "I, too, am still alive."
Then, from a place deep in his soul, another voice spoke:
I am created Shiva, the Destroyer; death, the shatterer of worlds;
The dead night tiger made whole by the Master of
Sinanju.
Remo rose. He was covered with the wounds he had permitted in his fear, but the knives were gone.
The Dutchman regarded him, puzzled. When he spoke, his voice was full of false confidence. "You can't fight me now. Look at you."
Blood dripped off Remo's hands in pools. But the Dutchman's eyes were afraid. He prepared to strike.
Remo attacked before the Dutchman's hands could reach him. Through the pain, despite his broken bones and the blood that covered him, he struck three times, three perfect blows. The Dutchman fell, screaming, into the snake pit.