Grandmaster (A Suspense and Espionage Thriller) Read online

  They watched for some time, long after the ripples on the surface of the water had subsided and the lake returned to its perfect stillness. Justin began to panic. "What did I do this time?" he whispered.

  Tagore smiled. "Nothing. He has gone to tell others of your arrival. Many will come to see you. As he has the farthest to travel, he must leave first."

  "But he hasn't even come up for air."

  "That is not necessary." With only a small nod from Tagore, the remaining three men folded their robes. Each in turn bowed to Tagore and the boy. Then they, too, entered the water and were gone without trace.

  "How long can they stay underwater?" Justin asked.

  "As long as they must. There are those among us who have lived in death for years."

  "Lived in death?"

  "That is what we call the suspension of breathing, the slowing of the bodily processes. In our practice, we learn to control our bodies through the union of our spirits with the forces of the universe. It is called yoga."

  Justin made a face. "I've heard of yoga. It's where people sit around twisted into pretzels. They don't do what you do—walk without making noise, hold fire in your hands. They don't stay underwater for days, I know that," he said cynically.

  "You know, you know, you know," Tagore said. "Tell me, is there anything you don't know?"

  Justin was ashamed. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's just that the things you do don't look like anything I've seen before." He looked up. "I guess that doesn't mean it's not possible."

  Tagore smiled. "A beginning," he said, "Now you will swim the lake."

  "Me?" Justin was horrified. "But I can't do that," he said.

  "And why not? Do you not have the same limbs, the same organs as we?"

  "You know what I mean," Justin said dispiritedly. "I can't do magic."

  "Ah," Tagore said, raising his eyebrows. "It is magic you wish to perform."

  "Your kind of magic."

  The old man nodded. "Come," he said. He led Justin to a small stream near the thicket of rhododendrons and picked a hand-sized rock off the ground. "If this rock were made to disappear—not hide, but disappear completely, never to exist in the form of a rock again—would you consider such an act to be magic?"

  Justin looked at the rock. "Yes," he said.

  "Very well." Carefully he placed the rock in the middle of the stream.

  "What did you do that for?"

  "It is the magic you requested," Tagore said. "I have placed the rock in water. You see it now, but in a century the rock will be gone, disappeared forever. The flow of the water will have worn it to nothing."

  "I get it," Justin said, disappointed. "There's no magic."

  "You are wrong, my son," Tagore said quietly. "It is all magic." He sat down. Not a petal moved on the thousands of blossoms around him. "When you accepted to eat with the rest of us, you learned to endure hunger. When you gave up your blanket in shame, you learned to endure cold. Those small sufferings were like the first drops of water to come into this stream. With many drops, there will be enough water to flow eternally, with enough force to move through solid rock. That is the magic you will learn, my son. It is great magic, indeed."

  Justin picked up the rock. "A century?" he asked.

  "Only a century. Now cross the lake with me."

  He wrapped his garments around his legs and led the boy into the freezing water. "You will not die from the cold because you have learned to endure cold," Tagore said. "Your little puddle is already growing into a stream."

  He smiled, and then he was below the surface of the lake, pulling the boy behind him. Justin sputtered and coughed, trying to keep his head above water as he rushed away from shore. He was freezing. In a matter of minutes, his arms and legs felt numb, and his stomach knotted painfully.

  "Tagore!" he screamed, gulping water. "Tagore!"

  But the monk didn't surface. He continued through the water, dragging Justin's cramping, panicking little form with him.

  He couldn't breathe. He was sure he was going to die. Feeling faint, he loosened his grip on Tagore's hand. To his surprise, the monk released him without any effort to hold on. But it was too late, anyway. Slowly Justin began to sink, falling into unconsciousness.

  When he came to, he was still in the lake, but moving again, skimming once more over the surface of the water. He bucked in panic, filling his nostrils with water, cramping once again with the cold.

  And again, the sure hands released him.

  Justin understood.

  He let himself go limp. Immediately the hands of his teacher enclosed his wrists. He felt himself being swept with Tagore's powerful movement underwater, and forced himself not to fight it. It was difficult. His body wanted to fight, screamed with urgency. But each time he felt himself involuntarily stiffen, the hands that held his wrists loosened tentatively.

  Finally, to control himself as much as he could, he gulped in all the air he could and then submerged his head underwater. Without the fight for air, his body relaxed. When he could no longer hold his breath in his lungs, he brought himself up for another gasp. This time, he released his breath slowly, taking as long as he could. To his surprise, he didn't struggle when he came up for air again. It just filled his lungs as easily as ...

  As easily as breathing, he thought. That was all it was. Breathing.

  His periods underwater grew imperceptibly longer with each breath. At last, when he could see the rhododendrons at the far end of the lake, he stopped thinking about breathing, stopped thinking of his body. The only thought in his mind was a feeling of coming home, of seeing the tree again, the blue hat.

  The tree?

  Hail, O Wearer of the Blue Hat.

  He stiffened. Tagore released him and emerged minutes later on the shore behind the circle of flowers.

  Struggling, Justin swam the rest of the distance and walked over to join him. "I guess I don't learn very fast," he said, rubbing his hands over his wet clothes to warm himself.

  "You are here," Tagore said, "so it was fast enough."

  His robe was dry. He extended another to Justin.

  "Where'd you get these?"

  "They have been waiting for us for many years," Tagore said. He took him into a cave set at the base of the mountain and showed him the deep hole in the wall where the robes had been buried inside a silver casket, along with woolen cloaks and strips of cloth. "Ten years, exactly. That is how long it has taken us to find you."

  "What if I'm not the one you're looking for?"

  Tagore gathered sticks. "You are," he said.

  Justin stripped down quickly and put on the robe.

  "This, too," Tagore said, handing him a belt made of small bones.

  "What are these things?" the boy asked, fingering the strange white rosary.

  "The spine of a snake," Tagore said.

  "It's not like yours."

  "The snake is for you alone." Tagore built a small fire inside the cave, protected from the chilling winds outside. He took a dry bag of the tea mixture from the casket and cooked it in the bowl he always carried. "Tonight we will keep the fire," he said.

  Justin smiled. "Why? I'm not weak."

  "Because tomorrow we climb the sacred mountain of Amne Xachim. We will take no food until we reach the monastery of Rashimpur."

  "Rashimpur." The boy rolled the name on his tongue.

  Home.

  He looked up suddenly from the fire. "Tagore, what is the blue hat?"

  The monk straightened. "You know of the blue hat?"

  "I heard something. In the lake. A voice, sort of. Not really a voice, more of a feeling ... Oh, it's stupid."

  For the first time since their journey began, Tagore raised his voice. "Do not call stupid that which you cannot explain!" He set the bowl aside and stood over Justin, his eyes blazing. "Your mind and body are young, but your soul is among the most ancient. When it calls to you through ages of death and wisdom, do not seek to ignore it, or to treat it with scorn. For it is the voice
of Brahma, the Creator, which speaks, and without your faith, that voice will forever be silent."

  For a moment, Justin thought the man was going to strike him. Then Tagore turned and walked back to the fire, his anger gone. "It—the voice—said, 'Hail, O Wearer of the Blue Hat.'"

  Tagore poured a portion of the gruel into another bowl and handed it to Justin. "Then it is time I spoke to you of yourself," he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "At Rashimpur," the old teacher began, "we practice a faith that is very old, nearly as old as the Sacred Mountain itself. It is said that when Brahma completed the task of creating the earth and its inhabitants, he was weary and sought a perfect place to rest.

  "But the oceans, moving with the rhythm of the universe, made too much noise for the sensitive ears of the Creator. So, too, the plains with their shifting winds and the forests, filled with the chattering of the small creatures who dwelt there. Only the mountain remained as a place where Brahma could find complete peace. Yet even the mountains sometimes crumbled and fell from their heights, for this was the god's plan in fashioning the world. Change, death, and rebirth. Thus only can eternity be wrought, for without change there can be no life. Without life there can be no death. Without death, the spirit of Brahma's creations cannot be reborn to change and grow yet again.

  "It was for this reason that Brahma created Amne Xachim, the Tower of Peace, the last mountain. As it existed for his use alone, Brahma formed the Sacred Mountain so that it would remain forever unchanged, its stillness and silence unique on all the earth.

  "To shield it from the eyes of men, he hid it behind other, higher mountains which would draw their attention. But he wished to mark Amne Xachim in some way so that he himself might find it again when he returned to visit the earth. Toward this end he formed this lake at its base and ringed it with bright flowers, which bloom despite the cold mountain winds. Halfway up the mountain, near the cave where Brahma chose to rest, he placed another lake identical to this."

  "At Rashimpur?"

  Tagore smiled. "At Rashimpur. It is there still." He drank from his bowl and stirred the fire, enjoying the boy's anticipation.

  At last he spoke again. "His work finished, Brahma entered the cave in the perfect stillness of the sacred mountain to sleep. But once inside, he could find no comfort. For he loved the earth he had created, constantly striving in its imperfection, constantly changing and growing and living. In comparison, the absolute stillness of Amne Xachim was like death without hope of rebirth, and it saddened him.

  "So Brahma, in his supreme wisdom, brought life into the sacred mountain. For this life, he chose something of beauty and strength that would remain for the ages of the earth, something so silent it would not disturb the Creator in his centuries of sleep."

  "The tree," Justin whispered.

  Tagore studied him. "Yes," he said finally. "The Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms."

  "I saw it." Justin tried to bring together the vision he had experienced as he passed through the lake. "A big tree, not like anything that grows around here, as wide as five men, with dark leaves and a bark like iron. A tree that grows without light." He looked to Tagore in bewilderment. "But I never really saw a tree like that. Not with my eyes."

  "It is the tree, all the same," Tagore said. "It stands in the Great Hall of Rashimpur."

  Justin spoke with difficulty. "How did I know that?"

  "I cannot tell you," the teacher said.

  Justin's eyes welled with tears that shone in the firelight.

  "Do not be afraid," Tagore said softly.

  Justin looked up at him, his blue eyes as weary as an old man's. "What's happening to me?" he asked. "Why am I seeing these things?"

  "You are remembering," Tagore said. "This is as it should be. You see the Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms because the tree was beloved of Patanjali."

  "That's what you called me. In Paris, when my father..." He drew a circle in the packed earth of the cave. It had been weeks since he'd thought about his father. The rigors of the trip had overshadowed the nightmare of that night when his father, bloated and bleeding, fell lifeless into the street.

  "His eyes were open," Justin said quietly.

  Tagore touched him lightly on the shoulder. "My son, your life is destined to be filled with hardship. You cannot escape it. Your father's death was but the first ordeal. There will be others. That is why we have searched so long to find you. In Rashimpur, you will be protected as you could never be in your other world. We will teach you how to bring your body into union with the forces of the universe, so that you will not fear physical danger. We will hone your mind and your senses so that you may seek understanding. But that is all we can do," he said.

  Justin faltered. "But what do you mean ... ?"

  "You will learn in time," Tagore said gently. "Do not try to learn too much too quickly. There is time."

  "But the voice I hear ..."

  "It is meant for you." He held both the boy's hands and looked into his eyes, so deeply that Justin felt as if someone had entered his very soul. "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you," he said. "And do not color my words with pride, for I give this as warning. There are men who possess extraordinary discipline, who can teach themselves to achieve far beyond their natural abilities. We at Rashimpur are such men. And there are others who are born with exceptional gifts, who can see past and present, who can move objects and create energy by the power of their minds alone. You of the West call these individuals psychics, or levitators, or other such names. But there is a third personality, very rare, whose very being cannot be explained. His is the hardest life, because he must live forever alone, his spirit removed from the rest of humanity. In order to dwell on the earth, he must learn to be like others, yet he will never be like others. You are such a one, Justin Gilead."

  The boy's face was stony. "I don't want to be," he said.

  "It is not your choice, as it was not the choice of Patanjali to be born the first incarnation of Brahma." He let go of the boy's hands and stirred the fire. It leaped to life. Tagore smiled at him from behind the flames, his features serene. "Shall I tell you of Patanjali?"

  Justin shrugged.

  "Very well. If you have no interest, I will not."

  "No, go ahead," Justin said, betraying his eagerness.

  "As I thought."

  Tagore told the story of how Brahma, millennia after his first stay in Amne Xachim, returned to earth in the guise of a small snake. According to legend, the snake god lived in the Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms, but when he entered the world of men, he took the shape of a man and called himself Patanjali.

  During his life, Patanjali developed the discipline of yoga, which he claimed united man with the stronger forces of the universe, and it is as the first teacher of yoga that he is remembered to this day.

  Patanjali amazed the populace with seemingly supernatural feats of physical control, including holding his breath underwater or underground for astonishing lengths of time, lying on nails for long periods and rising unmarked, walking through flames, and changing his weight at will.

  As he aged, Patanjali's physical strength weakened, but he had grown to be a sage of wide renown, leaving writings that are still read. His reputation grew to immense proportions, and from hundreds of miles away, followers claimed that the yogi was capable of such feats as animating dead bodies and becoming invisible.

  Tagore related the famous story with the skill and expression born of many retellings. The boy sat, entranced, his eyes riveted on the face of his teacher.

  "It was then that Patanjali discovered the great sadness of his long life," Tagore said.

  "Why?" Justin jerked forward. "Didn't anybody believe him?"

  "It is not known if the sage revealed himself to be the incarnation of Brahma, or if he even knew himself. All he explained about his own life was that he came to earth as a snake, and for this he suffered much persecution. Many did not believe him. Of those who did, the Shamans, or Black Hats,
as they were called—practitioners of black magic who performed rituals of human sacrifice and held their followers in fear by claiming to control the weather—viewed the snake as an evil symbol, reckoned Patanjali as evil, and counted him among their own.

  "The Black Hats summoned him to their temple, a vile place filled with the skulls and backbones of the dead, to welcome him. But when he appeared, Patanjali mocked the Shamans by appearing in a blue hat, explaining that he was of the sky and the sea, which were filled with life, and that with his blue hat he denounced their unwholesome ways.

  "The Black Hats were outraged. They challenged him to match his magic against their own before the wisest men of the region. Patanjali, who was a humble man, said that he knew no magic, but that he would be pleased to meet such wise men and learn from them. He invited them to Amne Xachim.

  "There, before the sages and tribal leaders of the world as it was then known, the Shamans performed their conjuring tricks and incantations, speaking in inhuman voices and dazzling the onlookers with spells that produced flames out of air and terrifying visions in smoke.

  "When they had finished, they demanded to see Patanjali's own performance. By this time, the yogi had grown to be an old man, frail and weakened since the days of his youth. He told them again that he possessed no magic, but that there was magic enough in every leaf of every tree to fill the world.

  "Disappointed, the spectators jeered him and judged the Shamans in their Black Hats to be the greatest among them. As a gesture of their victory, the Shamans selected one of their number to punish the old man. He struck off Patanjali's right hand with a sword and threw it against the Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms. Then he plucked a leaf from the tree and tossed it down to the bleeding old man.

  "'Use this magic to heal yourself, then,' the Shaman said scornfully. And with that, the First Great Miracle of Brahma occurred. The cave was filled with a terrible noise. The severed hand of Patanjali had been transformed into a coiled snake whose hiss was so frightening it chilled the surprised onlookers to their depths. Moving with the speed of a lightning spear, the snake struck the Shaman in the forehead and killed him at once.