Grandmaster (A Suspense and Espionage Thriller) Read online

  What difference does it make what she looks like? he asked himself. There's nothing special about her anyway, except that she goes around all covered up while the others live as naked as jaybirds.

  Nevertheless, he turned around, walked back the entire length of the hall, and searched the other side.

  What if she's so horrible that I turn to stone just looking at her? he thought, seized with sudden fear. That would really shame Tagore. Taking a deep breath, he stepped back a pace.

  He turned to go back into the harem. But before he could take the first step back to reason, he glanced over his shoulder at the corridor of silent rooms. Duma was inside one of them. And suddenly, he didn't care if she was ugly or not. She was his friend, his first and only friend, and he had to see her.

  His mind shut off like a machine. His reason was gone. There was no fear of Varja now, no self-recrimination, no struggle with his better judgment. He wanted to look at her, just look at her, just once.

  He would never mention it to her or to anyone else, he decided as he raced down the hall, checking every room. Rakhta's vina was propped in the corner of one; books and scrolls were stacked neatly in the corner of another. And then he saw it. Hanging on the wall like part of a bride's trousseau was the long white veil.

  His breath caught. Trembling, he moved silently inside the room. She was sleeping on a mat on the floor, her long brown hair streaming out behind her. She was turned away from him. She was wearing a white cotton shift, and in her hands—they really were pretty hands, he thought, regardless of what the rest of her might look like—she clutched a thin sheet of pink silk.

  He tiptoed toward the other side of the mat, the thrill of adventure rising in him. He had never been disobedient to the monks at Rashimpur; he hadn't dared. But here, so far from home, alone, with no restraints ... He was supposed to be learning how to be a man, after all. Wasn't a man supposed to be independent, especially around women?

  Just as he bolstered his confidence sufficiently to reach the foot of Duma's mat, the unthinkable happened. His toe caught on the corner of her pallet, throwing him off balance. My toe! he cried inwardly in the half-second before he fell. To look on the forbidden face was bad enough, but to betray himself by his own clumsiness was a shame too great to bear. It was the end. He would have to run back to Rashimpur and beg the monks to accept him into the lowest beginning classes. He landed on his hands with a thud.

  Duma woke immediately, sitting bolt upright. "What... what? It's you," she said, aghast.

  Justin's hoarse intake of breath was louder than the sound he made hitting the ground.

  She was beautiful!

  She blinked, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands. Her skin was white as alabaster, making her large, dark eyes even more striking than they would have been on an olive-skinned girl like the others of the harem. Her nose was long and delicate, its tip chiseled. Her mouth was larger than the other girls', the lower lip thick and full.

  "I've never seen a face like yours before," he whispered.

  As soon as he spoke, Duma's eyes darted toward the veil hanging on the wall. She pulled the sheet over her head.

  He knelt beside her and lowered her hands forcibly with his own. "No... Don't cover your face. Your beauty pleases me," he said in formal Hindi.

  She stared at him in bewilderment.

  "Will you come to the garden with me, just for a little while?" he asked. She didn't respond. Her features remained fixed in an expression of stunned suspicion.

  "Oh, God, I'm so dumb," Justin said in English. "I forgot the lateness of the hour. Please forgive me for intruding on you." He bowed and backed away.

  "I'll come with you," she said.

  "You will?" He felt he was grinning like a baboon, but he couldn't stop himself.

  She smiled back. It was a brief, tentative thing, as if she were unused to happiness. Then she rose, put on a wrapper of bright blue silk, and reached for the veil.

  "Leave this," he said, taking it from her.

  She watched him replace her covering on its hook, then bowed her head and nodded slowly. Justin thought he saw the trace of a smile on her lips again.

  "Why do they consider you ugly?" Justin asked. The sky was glowing pink with the dawn. Fat droplets of dew gathered on the clusters of small, hardy orchids that grew only in the garden of Varja's palace. The ground was veiled in thick mist.

  "It is obvious," Duma said. "My nose is as long as an elephant's trunk. My mouth is large and coarse. My skin is white."

  "So is mine."

  "It is different with me," Duma said cryptically.

  Justin didn't understand how it would be different, but then, he thought, women were strange people with odd values. "I think you're the prettiest one here," he said.

  "You are kind," she answered, clearly not believing him. "Perhaps the one I am fated for will be as kind."

  "How can you be so sure this—this person will turn up? Nobody can read the future."

  "Varja can." Duma's eyes grew wide. "She can foretell incredible events. She predicted the downfall of the monasteries that were destroyed by the soldiers. She says there is more destruction to come."

  "Has she warned them?"

  Duma looked surprised. "Of course not. Varja is not concerned with mortals. She is a goddess."

  "Doesn't she care?"

  Duma shrugged. "The lives of ordinary people are too short to warrant Varja's time."

  "But if she's immortal, she has all the time in the world."

  She screwed her face into a grimace. "I don't understand these things," she said. "Anyway, the people who die don't mind. The monks of every monastery that's been ruined have sent the goddess their most precious relics as parting gifts."

  "Why would they do that?"

  Duma looked at him as if he were a small child. "She is a goddess. They worship her, as everyone does."

  Justin frowned. The monks at Rashimpur did not worship Varja. They didn't even call her a goddess. And Tagore had said that Varja's immortality was a legend. Nobody had even mentioned that she could see the future.

  "What does she do with them?"

  "She keeps the relics in the Sacred Chamber, her special room. You will see it during your rite of passage."

  A sudden fear crept over Justin. "What's she going to do to me?" he asked.

  Duma smiled. "Do not fear. It is a great honor to pleasure the goddess. She herself will initiate you into the Well of Love. This is very rare. It is because you are to head the monastery at Rashimpur that she accords this honor to you."

  "You mean I'm going to have to..." He remembered the bizarre drawing of the two figures sitting on each other's backsides. "How will she do it?"

  "Oh, the usual way," Duma said offhandedly.

  Justin looked down.

  "It's very simple. The woman lies on the bottom, and the man gets on top of her."

  "But how does it feel?"

  Duma stared at him for a moment, then turned her eyes away, embarrassed. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I've never done it either."

  He brightened. "You haven't?"

  "But I've watched. It looks easy, and the partners always seem to enjoy themselves."

  "Well, I don't know ... How old is Varja?"

  "She is as old as the forests and the sea, as old as the world, the heavens, and Brahma himself."

  Justin raised his eyebrows. He wasn't sure he wanted to assume the ridiculous posture in the drawing with a woman who was even older than Tagore.

  "It's getting to be light," Duma said. "I must return."

  Justin stayed in the garden, endlessly watching the tangerine-colored fish swim circles in the little pool. Spending more time in the palace of Varja no longer seemed like a terrible ordeal. In fact, he began to wonder what the time without Duma would be like.

  She was the first friend he'd ever had. As a child, being shifted around from one relative to another during his father’s long absences, he'd had no opportunity to be close to any
one his age. Even the other boys he met at the occasional chess tournaments he played in were opponents, not friends.

  There was usually little socializing during the tournaments, anyway. At Rashimpur, there were others of his age, but there had been too many difficulties. In the first place, Justin had spent the past five years just learning to speak the languages the monks used. No one in the monastery, with the exception of Tagore, spoke English, and Tagore had curtailed their English conversations as soon as Justin had learned an elementary vocabulary in Hindi. But the major obstacle with the other chela at the monastery was that Justin was set apart by his position. He was Patanjali, the Wearer of the Blue Hat, and the other young boys were not willing to risk the wrath of Justin's dormant spirit by accidentally offending him. They treated him with courtesy and deference, but never with intimacy. The short time he spent in the garden with Duma was his first real conversation with someone his own age.

  After I leave this place, I'll never see Duma again, he thought, and the thought made him sad. She was so like him, and yet so different. And she was beautiful, no matter what she thought of herself.

  When daylight broke fully, the women brought him baskets of succulent fruits, a bowl of rice, some smoked fish, some odd pickled vegetables, and a dish of spicy chutney. He ate, but he was preoccupied. He was looking for Duma, waiting for her to awaken. When she finally came into the room, again draped in her heavy veil, he nearly ran to her.

  "Will you join me for breakfast?" he asked.

  The room fell into an immediate silence. "It would not be proper," Duma whispered.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I am unpresentable. Please pick one of the others."

  "I don't want to eat with any of the others. I want you. And can't you take that thing off?"

  There was a low murmur in the room, and he heard a few giggles. Saraha, who had placed herself next to Justin, moved to make space for Duma.

  "All right," Duma said. "If you insist. But I must not remove the veil."

  He accepted her condition. For the moment. He had a plan. "Duma, you've got to get more confidence in yourself," he said as he took the first bite out of a pear.

  "How is that possible?"

  "I'm going to teach you. Is the garden always deserted? I haven't seen anyone in it besides us since I got here."

  "It is more seemly for women to remain indoors," Duma said formally. "But since you are our honored guest, we will accompany you to the garden if it is your wish."

  "It is my wish," Justin said. "But not everyone. Just you."

  Duma bowed slightly in acquiescence, then followed him out.

  Near the farthest corner of the garden, where the others could not see them, Justin took Duma by both shoulders and sat her down on a bench beside a huge white azalea bush in full bloom. "Now," he said, "I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I think it'll work. But first, you've got to get rid of this." He lifted her veil.

  "No, you mustn't..."

  "No one will see," Justin assured her. "Besides, if I don't think you're ugly, then what's the harm?"

  "It is only your strange eyes that find beauty where there is none."

  "That's not true. My eyes are as good as anyone's. It's your eyes that don't see what's really there. Now, look into my eyes."

  "Why?" she asked, smiling shyly.

  "Just do it. Okay, what do you see?"

  "I see myself," Duma said.

  "Keep looking. And say, 'She's beautiful.'"

  "Who is?"

  "The girl in my eyes."

  "But I can't. That would be a dreadful lie."

  "Do you dare to call your honored guest ugly?"

  "Oh, no," she said, confused. "That's not what I meant."

  "Your reflection's in my eyes, isn't it? It's part of me. So say it."

  Duma peered guiltily into the turquoise eyes. "She is beautiful," she said softly. She looked miserable.

  "Say it again. I command it."

  Duma hesitated. "She is beautiful," she said finally.

  "Once more."

  "She is..." She stepped back. "I don't look so different from you, after all."

  "Except for one thing. You're more beautiful." Duma could see from his face that he meant it. He plucked a sprig of blossoms from the bush and eased them into her hair behind her ear. "Now come with me," he said gently.

  He led her by the hand to the goldfish pond and made her bend over it. "Now what do you see?"

  The swimming fish caused the surface of the water to ripple, but he waited with her. Softly he placed his hand around her waist. Duma was a giantess compared to the other women, but in his arms she felt small and fragile. She made a point of not looking at him, but he could feel her trembling.

  "There," he said. "The water's still."

  For a moment, Duma's face shimmered in the water. With the white flowers next to her skin, she looked like some sort of forest sprite. Then a fat, shiny fish leaped in an arc out of the water, and Duma's reflection disappeared.

  She straightened up slowly. When she did, Justin was facing her. "She is beautiful," he whispered, raising her chin and kissing her on the mouth.

  There was a rush of activity from the harem. When Duma turned to look, five or six women had gathered at the doorway.

  "Oh, no!" she gasped. "I forgot to replace the veil." Amid the women's exclamations, she pulled the veil over her face and ran toward the palace. But before she reached the doorway, she turned to face Justin once more. Then slowly, deliberately, she raised the veil once more from her face.

  And Justin knew what it was that he had missed so much.

  The days passed quickly, and they were filled with Duma. She was constantly with him, and he was never bored. She taught him the basics of painting and sculpture, and persuaded Rakhta to show him some chords on her vina, although Justin never did accustom himself to the sound. In time, the other girls became used to the young man who had spurned their advances, and accepted him as part of the household. Justin gardened, filling the harem with huge bouquets of flowers. He delighted the women, and himself, with displays of strength learned during his six years at Rashimpur. He read the books of poetry that the women studied, and kept them spellbound at night with the stories and legends Tagore had told him.

  And always there was Duma. She refused to wear her veil any longer, and, to her surprise, none of the others objected. Wherever Justin was, she was at his side, and together they filled the palace with laughter.

  She was changed. She took his hand easily, smiled often; the weight of a hundred years seemed to lift off her shoulders along with the ungainly veil. But the one unspoken question remained hanging like a cloud over them all: What will happen when he leaves?

  "Patanjali, are there no women at Rashimpur?" Saraha asked, her fat cheeks dimpling.

  "No, little one, there are none at all," Justin said.

  "Then will you take us with you?" She looked despondent as some of the older girls giggled. "He is the only one who has not required us to give our bodies!" she exclaimed to them angrily.

  Duma stopped her. "It is an honor to give pleasure to those whom Varja deems worthy of us."

  Saraha made a face. "I still don't like it. They never even talk to us. Patanjali is different. Oh, will you take me with you?" she asked eagerly.

  Justin touched her hair. "This is not in my power," he said softly.

  Saraha's eyes moistened. Thrusting out her lower lip to control her tears, she left the room. An uncomfortable silence settled in the air.

  But no more than two hours later, the plump little girl was back, her chubby face radiant. "I have asked her," she announced breathlessly.

  "Asked whom, Saraha?" Duma asked.

  "Varja. I have gone to Varja herself!" The girl practically squealed with excitement.

  Duma blanched. "Saraha, you should not have done that. It is forbidden to disturb the goddess before one is called."

  "It was all right," she reassured the group. "I asked
her if we could all go to Rashimpur one day for a visit. Then we can see Patanjali again!"

  "And she said yes?" Duma asked.

  "Almost. She told me to visit her in the Sacred Chamber tomorrow to receive her answer."

  The girls clapped their hands over their mouths.

  "It is a miracle," one of them said.

  Duma explained to Justin. "We have never left this place, not even for a day. We have been here since we were children. These palace walls are all most of us remember."

  Justin looked around at the women, as if for the first time. "How did you all get here?"

  Duma lowered her eyes. "For many of us, like Saraha, the selection to serve in the palace of Varja was an honor for the entire village of the girl's birth. Saraha was picked because she has no marks. She is perfect," Duma said proudly.

  Saraha hugged her. "Oh, Duma, you're perfect, too. You're the smartest of all of us, and the nicest. What does it matter that you were..." Her eyes slid guiltily toward Justin.

  "It's all right," Duma said gently. She held up her head and looked Justin square in the eye. "I was sold by my family to Varja when I was five years old," she said. "This was not my doing, and so I feel no shame."

  "Where are you from?" Justin asked.

  "A cold country; I remember little about it. But it is the same place where the man I will be given to now lives."

  Justin felt a stab of jealousy. "You should be allowed to choose your own mates," he said.

  "Oh, we don't mate," Saraha said. "Only Duma. She's special. The rest of us—"

  "Silence!" Duma snapped.

  Her anger surprised Justin. Then he looked at the women. "You're all young," he said with wonder. "If you don't mate, then what happens to you when you get old?"

  Saraha blinked, thinking. "I don't know. Do you know, Duma?"

  A sound rose in Duma's throat. With a choked sob, she ran into the garden.

  "Duma," Justin called, going after her.

  "Leave me alone!" she cried.

  The other women left. Justin said good night to Saraha. He spent the rest of the night alone. It was not until late the next morning, after they heard the scream, that Justin began to understand Varja.