High Priestess td-95

  High Priestess

  ( The Destroyer - 95 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  When an American national ascends the throne in China and begins a territorial war, Remo Williams and his martial arts master, Chiun, rush in to restore peace.

  Destroyer 95: High Priestess

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  PROLOGUE

  The Bunji Lama lay dying.

  It was the second month of the Tibetan Year of the Fire Dog. Within the stone walls of the meditation cell whose Tibetan name translated as "Prayerful Refuge from the Temptations of the Sensual World," Gedun Tsering, forty-sixth Bunji Lama and the third Living Buddha, lingered as his regents fretted and paced the lamasery corridors in their boots of chewed yak hide.

  On the lamasery roof, the howling winds spun the prayer wheels to no avail. The skies would not accept their whirling entreaties. Yak butter lamps guttered before the altar of Buddha Maitreya, and other lamps flickered in the cramped unglazed windows of the simple houses of the village. The Bunji Lama was destined to die on this day. All Tibet knew this. There was a single communications line that stretched out of the Himalayan village called Bunji-Kiang through the trackless snows and impassable mountain passes, and the wind-whipped line crackled with Morse code carrying the grim tidings to the dead Dalai Lama's regents in Lhasa and the living Panchen Lama in Peiping.

  No one knew that the Bunji Lama had been poisoned. No one, that is, except the regents who had engineered the wicked deed and their victim, Gedun Tsering, the forty-sixth Bunji Lama, three weeks short of his fifteenth birthday.

  As he lay in the chill of the meditation chamber, his slight body growing cool even as his stomach burned like a coal, the Bunji Lama's dying thoughts were of home. Burang. The village in which he was born, where he had played with his brothers and sisters, the son of a simple yak herder. Until the council of regents had come and stripped the cloth from his left arm, showing the birthmark that had pitted the shoulder of every Bunji Lama since the first. They had dangled the jade rosary of the previous Bunji Lama before his curious child's eyes, and when he reached for it, they proclaimed to the gullible that he had recognized a relic of his previous life. No one could deny them, for they were priests.

  They bore Gedun Tsering away on a palanquin of gilt emblazoned with thunderbolts of bronze. It was a great honor. His mother wept, of course, but his father had beamed with pride. They were not allowed to visit him throughout the years in which he learned the five lesser and higher subjects, absorbed the tantras, studied the sutras and prepared to assume the exalted office of Bunji Lama, living incarnation of Champa, Buddha of the future.

  As the day he was to be enshrined approached, the council of regents revealed him to the terrible hidden truths: that the previous Dalai Lama had been a weakling unworthy of the Lion Throne on which he had sat and that the Panchen Lama was a tool of the wicked Chinese who gnawed at Tibet's sacred borders like greedy rodents.

  One day, he was told, it would be his destiny to unseat the next Dalai Lama, who had yet to be discovered, and cast out the Panchen Lama, who was a puppet of the Chinese. Only then would Tibet prosper. Thus had spoken the oracles, the regents had said.

  The Bunji Lama had accepted none of this. The abbots stank of worldly ambition. Even he, still yearning for the humble village he had left behind, could see that they were but slaves of the sensual world.

  So when he had refused their entreaties to denounce the rival lamas, and set the stage for assuming primacy over them, the regents had scolded him, argued and even threatened. Their worst threat had been to return him to the squalor of Burang. And when they saw in the Bunji Lama's eyes that he wished to go home more than anything else, they grew very still and locked him in his meditation room.

  Finally, realizing they could not control their creation, they had poisoned his food.

  Somewhere, they knew, would be found a child who could be molded into the forty-seventh Bunji Lama. It would only postpone their evil ambitions, not cancel them.

  Thinking of that nameless unsuspecting child, ordained to be born in the exact moment of his own death, the forty-sixth Bunji Lama raised his voice. "Attend me, followers of the virtuous way! For I have seen a vision."

  The ironbound teak door creaked open, and they padded in, resplendent in their scarlet-and-gold robes. They surrounded him, already laid out in his funeral robes of gold brocade in a long box lined with salt so that the embalmed husk of the Bunji Lama could lie in state, preserved, until his successor was brought to this lamasery in the mountains.

  "The inexorable Wheel of Time turns," prophesied the Bunji Lama, "and I must drop this unworthy body for another. These are troubled times, for the fourteenth Dalai Lama has not yet been discovered and the need for my divine guidance is great. And so a vision has been revealed to me, one that will allow the faithful to locate my next body with utmost dispatch."

  The abbots pressed closer, eagerness on their long faces. They believed. All save Lungten Drub, the high regent whose sour countenance curdled like day-old buttered tea.

  The Bunji Lama let the words tumble out of him. "The next body that I shall reside in will have hair that is the hue of flame and will not remember this life," he said, "nor any of the trappings of it. No trapping of this body will stir recollection in me."

  The abbots gasped. "But how will we recognize you, or you us, Presence?" one asked.

  "You will know this body because in my next incarnation I will possess a golden joss with no face."

  The abbots looked to one another. None had ever heard of such a figurine.

  "This defaced joss will wield a sword and will be found in a place distant from here. By these signs, and others, will you know me, and I you."

  "We will not rest until we find you again, O Presence," the abbots vowed.

  And closing his eyes, the Bunji Lama smiled thinly-which the abbots took for an expression of his forbearance in the face of pain. In his heart he was glad. For there had been no vision. The faceless golden joss was a figment of his imagination. No such joss was to be discovered in all the world or any other world. Of this the Bunji Lama was certain.

  He died in the next instant, secure in the knowledge that no innocent child would fall into the ambitious clutches of Lungten Drub and his council of regents, and that his cycle of reincarnations was at last over. Nirvana was his.

  The winds howled down from the mountains, tearing the flimsy prayer flags from their anchorage. Conch shells were blown. The white flags of mourning went up, and all Tibet was desolated.

  And in that exact moment, an incalculable distance from the meditation cell whose name meant "Prayerful Refuge from the Temptations of the Sensual World," a red-haired infant was born.

  On the next morning, the search for the next Bunji Lama began.

  It would go on for a very long time.

  Chapter 1

  The Most Holy Lobsang Drom Rinpoche sat naked in the cave that was his home high in the Himalayas. The winds that had howled around the snowcapped peaks relentlessly for the sixty years since the Fire Dog Year blew snowdrifts deep into the cave. Yet the stone floor in a circle around Lobsang Drom was moist with melted snow. It was as if his scrawny body were a human coal, giving off rays of warmth that defeated the accumulating flakes.

  He did not shiver under the lash of the elements even though he ate but once a day and then only five grains of parched barley washed down by melted snow.

  Distantly there was thunder. Not high above, in the howling sky, but far below, in the purplish black valley. The thunder came again. It climbed toward the sky, its echoes rebounding off the granite peaks. Somewhere a snow leopard growl
ed.

  Lobsang Drom listened to the thunder, knowing that it was not thunder but Chinese artillery. Below, Tibet was in revolt against the harsh rule of the oppressors from Beijing. It was painful to the ears, but there was many a painful thing in the world. Such as failure.

  For all of his forty-three years, Lobsang Drom had endured the yoke of Chinese rule. It was a bitter thing, but the Chinese had placed their heels on the necks of the Tibetan people more than once in centuries past. Sometimes they themselves had staggered under a Tibetan yoke, as well. So turned the Wheel of Destiny, inexorably.

  The combat would pass. The guns would fall silent. The Chinese dead would be shipped to their home provinces, and the Tibetan dead would be given sky burial. But Lobsang Drom's bitterness would go on the remainder of his days. For he had failed in his sacred duty, as had his father, Lungten Drub, high regent for the Bunji Lama, before him.

  For the Bunji Lama, reincarnation of the Buddha of the Future, had become lost in the translation between incarnations. This had never before happened. It was not known what had gone awry, for the previous Bunji Lama had rendered a great prophecy to Lobsang Drom's father, foretelling certain events.

  Lungten Drub had scoured Tibet for the forty-seventh Bunji Lama but found no redheaded boys. Nor any golden joss lacking a face but possessing a sword. He was forced to venture beyond inner Tibet. Nepal was searched, as was Bhutan, Sikkim, and even both sides of the Di-Chu, Ghost River, on the border of Tibet and China. India, cradle of Buddhism, was scoured, as well, before the Worshipful Nameless Ones in the Dark Who See the Light That is Coming-of whom his father had been first among equals-were forced to give up their sacred quest.

  For China had made her long-feared lunge and absorbed Tibet. The new Dalai Lama, now grown to manhood, fled into exile. The Panchen Lama remained, a servile tool of the Chinese, as Lobsang Drom's father had predicted. It was the perfect hour for the return of the Bunji Lama, who would have been a young man by that time, but the Bunji Lama remained unfindable.

  It was the year of the Iron Tiger, called 1950 in the west.

  Finally the day came when the regents were dragged off by the People's Liberation Army, and Lobsang Drom was left alone. At first Lobsang hid in a high lamasery that had escaped Chinese notice, where he studied to be a monk. Upon taking his vows, he was spirited to outlying towns where he could resume the great search. He was the last of the Worshipful Nameless Ones in the Dark Who See the Light That is Coming and while he greatly feared the Chinese troops, his duty was stronger than his fear.

  The day at last came when hope ran out. All Tibet whispered of the missing Much Sought for Red-haired Boy who Would Save Tibet. He could not be found. Perhaps he did not wish to be found.

  Broken in spirit, Lobsang Drom retired to a cave high in the mountains to meditate, subsisting on barley and bitterness.

  His meditations were broken but once a year, when a trustworthy farmer climbed the narrow footpaths to leave an offering of barley and announce tidings of supreme import.

  "O Most Holy," said the barley farmer one year. "The Panchen Lama is dead."

  "The Panchen Lama is a tool of the Chinese, so my father told me," Lobsang Drom had replied.

  "It is said that the Chinese poisoned him. The search is on for the new incarnation."

  "Let them search," said Lobsang Drom. "The next one will be no less unworthy."

  That was in the Fire Hog Year. By that time Lobsang Drom had lost track of the passing years. In the Earth Hare Year, the same farmer reappeared to speak tearful words.

  "There is word from the West that the exiled Dalai Lama speaks of eventual surrender to fate. He mouths words that are impossible to accept, predicting that he is destined to be the last Dalai Lama, and there will be no more after him."

  "The Dalai Lama has been corrupted by the West," intoned Lobsang Drom. "It is no more or less than my honorable father warned."

  "There is only the Bunji Lama left. Will you not seek him out, Most Holy?"

  Lobsang Drom shook his shaved head. "He does not wish to be found."

  "Then Tibet is forevermore a vassal of China."

  "It is the fault of Tibetan mothers, who refuse to bear flame-haired children, or surrender them if they do."

  But that was the past.

  It was now the Year of the Earth Dog, but Lobsang Drom had no way of knowing this. He sat in a puddle of melted snow practicing the art known as Tumo, which kept his naked body warm without benefit of sheepskin garments, listening to the thunder that was not thunder when, in a lull between peals, a snow leopard growled.

  The growl was long and low and was answered by the nervous whinny of a pony. Having had no entertainment in many years, Lobsang Drom lifted his lowhanging head and cocked it to one side.

  The snow leopard growled anew. Abruptly its sound was stifled. There had been no other sound. It was as if the leopard had been conquered by a magician.

  Presently the soft squeaking of desultory hooves in snow approached the cave where Lobsang Drom nursed his bitterness.

  "A thousandfold fruitful blessings upon you, traveler," Lobsang Drom called in greeting.

  The one who approached replied only with the squeakings of his coming.

  "If you are a Chinese soldier," Lobsang Drom added, "I am not afraid to die."

  "If I were a Chinese soldier," a brassy voice called back, "you should not be a man unless you strangled me with your bare hands."

  "I am a monk. Violence is not my way."

  A thick shadow stepped into view, leading a pony by its reins.

  "You are a failure, Lobsang Drom," the shadow accused.

  "With those words, I have no quarrel," admitted Lobsang Drom.

  The man stepped into the cave, and Lobsang saw that his face was like a flat gong of brass set on a treestump neck. Not Tibetan. A Mongol. He wore the black leather vest and quilted riding pants of a horse Mongol. A dagger hung from his waist by a silver chain. Across the wooden saddle of his war pony was slung the ghost-gray shape of a dead snow leopard, its pristine pelt unflecked by blood.

  "How did you slay that?" Lobsang asked.

  "I spit in his eye," laughed the Mongol. "He is only a cat and so he died. Where I come from, the suckling wolf cubs would tear him to rags in play."

  But Lobsang saw the Mongol's pole lasso hanging from the pony's saddle and understood that the snow leopard had been snared and strangled in one expert cast.

  "Why come you here, Mongol?" asked Lobsang Drom curiously.

  "I was dispatched by Boldbator Khan to seek out your lazy bones."

  "Why?" wondered Lobsang, not taking offense.

  "The new Panchen Lama has been found."

  Lobsang Drom spit into the snow by way of answer.

  "Well, have you nothing more to say?"

  "The Panchen Lama is not worth the breath required to curse his name," said Lobsang Drom.

  "And you are unworthy of even living in a cave," grunted the Mongol, planting one boot on Lobsang Drom's chest and giving a hard push. Lobsang Drom was sent sprawling into his pile of barley.

  Calmly the Mongol pulled the dead snow leopard off his mount and, taking his dagger from his belt, began to skin it.

  "What are you doing, Mongol?" demanded Lobsang Drom, sitting up again.

  "Wasting a perfectly good pelt," growled the Mongol, who then proceeded to cut the magnificent silver-gray pelt into bolts and strips of fur.

  When he was done, Lobsang saw that he had fashioned a crude robe, which landed at the Tibetan's naked feet. It steamed with the dead animal's fading warmth.

  "Put that on," the Mongol commanded.

  "Why?"

  "So that I am not offended by your nakedness during the long journey that lies before us."

  "I cannot leave this cave until I have proven to the Bunji Lama by my iron will that I am worthy to be his discoverer."

  The Mongol's eyes narrowed at that, and when he spoke again, there was a hint of respect in his tone.

 
"You cannot obtain the Bunji Lama's respect unless from his very lips. Come, I will take you to him."

  Lobsang Drom blinked. "You know where he is to be found?"

  "No, but there is one who, among men, can find him if anyone can."

  "How can that be? I am the last of the Worshipful Nameless Ones in the Dark Who See the Light That is Coming."

  "Which is why I am about to dishonor my fine pony by letting you mount him, unwashed one," returned the Mongol. "Now hurry. We have only fourteen or fifteen years to find the Bunji Lama. Otherwise, the damned Panchen Lama will ascend to the lion Throne, and the thrice-damned Chinese will control Tibet until the Kali Yug comes."

  Striding stiffly because he was unaccustomed to walking and not due to the bitter cold that had long ago settled into his bones, Lobsang Drom donned the rich snow-leopard pelt. It steamed as if cooking, and felt comfortingly warm against his wind-dried skin.

  Mounting the wooden saddle chased with silver filigree, Lobsang Drom struggled to retain his balance as the Tibetan led the pony around in a circle and started down the precarious two-foot-wide mountain pass.

  "Mongol, what is your name?" he asked after a time.

  "I am called Kula."

  "And who is this person who will locate the longlost Bunji Lama when the Worshipful Nameless Ones in the Dark Who Sea the Light That is Coming, of which I am the last, have all failed?"

  "He is the Master of Sinanju," said Kula the Mongol over the cannonading of Chinese artillery. "And if there is enough gold in the bargain, he will find the moon in a blizzard"

  "It is a long trek to Korea, where the Master of Sinanju dwells. All of it through Chinese territory."

  "It is even longer journey to America, where the Master of Sinanju will be found."

  "The Master of Sinanju is an exile, too?"

  "Hush, Priest. You will need your breath and all of your strength if you are to negotiate the Karo La Pass."

  By that, Lobsang Drom knew that the Mongol sought to escape into India.

  "There is a mighty ocean between India and America," he said. "How are we to cross it with only one horse?"