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dead. The Dutchman made no attempt to move. Instead, a thin half-smile spread over his face. A drop of bright blood appeared at the corners of the Dutchman's lips and swelled to a stream.
"It is here at last," he said weakly. "The peace I have sought all my life. It is a great comfort."
Remo wanted to turn away, but he was unable. His eyes were locked into the Dutchman's. He felt himself weakening, warming with a flood of quiet resignation. Involuntarily, he dropped to his knees.
"Don't you see?" the Dutchman said. "We are the same being. Not men, but something else." He grimaced with a stab of pain. Remo felt it, too, at the same moment. "We grow closer now, in death. I am sorry to take you with me, but it is the only way. With you, 1 can finally find rest."
Remo nodded slowly. He understood the prophecy.
The Other will join with his own kind. Yin and yang will be one in the spring of the Year of the Tiger.
The Dutchman had to die, it was necessary. And when he died, Remo would have; to die with him. Yin and yang, light and darkness, life and death, together. It was the prophecy come to fruition.
He arranged himself in full lotus before the pit and waited, his spirit entwined with the Dutchman's, to enter the Void.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Someone slapped his face. The jolt pulled Remo out of his deep trance. Jilda, bruised and cut, was kneeling close to him.
"I've looked everywhere for you," she said, kissing him. "You'll be all right now. Put your arm around my shoulder." Gently she tried to lift him up.
Still stuporous, he picked up Jilda's rag-bandaged hand. "I'm sorry," he said.
"You had no choice. It is forgotten."
He pulled away from her. "Chiun. He's alive. I saw him."
"Yes. He lost consciousness, but he is well now."
"And H'si T'ang?"
"Chiun does not think the Venerable One will recover. It is his heart."
Remo fumbled to his knees. "Wait," he said. In the pit, the Dutchman was still sitting, motionless, his eyes frozen into a stare. The snakes were gone.
"But he couldn't have died without me." He made a move to enter the pit.
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Jilda pulled him back. "Come, Remo. You have lost so much blood. What did he do to you?"
"Don't . . . remember," Remo faltered. "But he shouldn't be ... shouldn't be . . ." Confused, he followed her back to the cave.
Chiun was pale, but his eyes sparkled when he saw Remo. H'si T'ang lay on his back in a space cleared of the rubble from the Dutchman's lightning attack. The floor, stripped of its straw matting, was bare and cold, but Chiun had laid one of his brocade robes beneath his old teacher. Griffith knelt beside the old man, who smiled.
"Your return is welcome, son of my son."
"Thank you, Master," Remo said.
"There is no danger in the air. Has the Other gone to the Void?"
"Yes. 1 think so."
"You think?" Chiun asked.
Something was wrong. The knowledge that Remo and the Dutchman would die together was not a figment of anyone's imagination. They had both known it as surely as they knew the sun rose in the east. Yet Remo was still alive.
"He's dead," Remo said.
"Remo," H'si T'ang said, his ancient hands groping forward to touch him. "You are badly hurt."
"Not too badly. 1 can walk."
The old man frowned. "No power," he said. "I cannot heal you anymore."
"That's all right," Remo said, composing H'si T'ang's hands in front of him.
"But you are too weak ..."
"I'm all right. You're the one who needs to get better. You saved us both."
"Thank you," H'si T'ang said gently, "but only the young wish to live forever. I am but one step from the
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Void. It will be an easy step, one I am eager to take." He smiled. "Besides, it is our belief that a man's spirit does not enter the Void with him. It is passed to another, and thus lives forever."
Remo remembered Kiree, who had fought so bravely in the hills of Africa. "I hope that's true," he said.
The old man coughed. His breath came in spasms, swelling the features of his face. "Chiun?" He raised his trembling hands. "Chiun, my son."
H'si T'ang struggled to speak, but no words came. In time, the withered hands stilled, and the ancient parchment-skinned face sank into blankness.
After several moments, Chiun spoke, in a quavering voice, the benediction for the death of his teacher: "And so it came to pass that in the spring of the Year of the Tiger did the Master of Sinanju die, as was foretold in the legends of ancient times. And thus did the Master become one with the spirit of all things."
Jilda led Griffith away. "What was H'si T'ang trying to say?" the boy whispered. Remo left, too, to leave Chiun alone with his grief.
"They walked slowly back toward the pit where Remo had left the Dutchman. "He's got to be dead," Remo said, hurrying.
"Of course he is," Jilda answered. "I saw him myself. There's no need to go back to that awful place."
Oh, yes there is, a nagging voice inside him said. He ran ahead, stopping at the edge of the pit.