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  The Seventh Stone

  ( The Destroyer - 62 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  The deadliest stone of all

  A bigger chill than snow. Harder to kick than heroin.

  The Destroyer was stoned on star lust. Remo was losing it...and loving it...in the highly-trained arms of Kim Kiley, Hollywood sex specialist...and the hottest weapon in the Wo family arsenal.

  Okay, the House of Wo was steamed. But two thousand years was a long time to hold a grudge against the Destroyer. The Wos were like that, though. Give those guys a revenge motive, and it was carved in stone. The family stone. Where Prince Wo the Nearly Great had preprogrammed the Destroyer to self-destruct...unless Chiun could get his mind off sex and back onto violence where it belonged...

  Destroyer 62: The Seventh Stone

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter One

  Before there was an Out Island Spa owned by Del Ray Promotions, before there was a Bahamian government, before there was the black slave or the British colonizer, back when the little Out Islands were too small to bother with, even for the Carib Indians, and the beaches were truly-as centuries later, advertisements would say "without footprints," there came to what would one day be known as Little Exuma Island a foot.

  The foot was in a silver brocade slipper and before it touched the sandy beach a servant tried to place a gold carpet beneath it. The servant was waved away and so was the carpet as the royal feet were joined by others, wearing bronze and steel shin protectors.

  They were the feet of soldiers and quickly they spread out, beyond the beach, into underbrush, scaring birds to flight and sending lizards scurrying to holes in the sparse white coral rocks. Neither the birds nor the lizards had ever seen men before, least of all men with glistening chestplates and helmets, swords at the ready and spears poking bushes and shaking the low-growing scrub trees.

  On the beach, the prince shook off his slippers and pressed his bare feet into the pure white sand. He had never seen sand this white or a sea as turquoise blue before, and in the last few years he had seen many seas.

  He looked back at his great royal barks, anchored in the sheltered cove, each with the single great sail, now only white, but once embroidered with the crossed swords of his royal family to proclaim its presence and powers.

  But the crossed-swords crest had been shamefully unstitched years before on different seas as his men tried to disguise who he was. Even his standards had been removed from the prow of the boats and if his barks had not been so large, they could have belonged to any common merchant from any port in the world.

  "Do you think here?" one of his lords asked the prince.

  "Bring me the maps and my navigator."

  The navigator was rowed from the main bark, wine-sotted and weeping. One of the noblemen readied his ivory-pommeled sword, sure that his prince would demand the navigator's head.

  Two lords helped the weaving stricken man to stand. Another gathered the leather-bound tubes which held the maps. The iron breastplates and helmets, so good against arrow and spear, burned the flesh in this strange sun. By every lord's calculation, they knew it was winter, but there were no snows here, not even cold winds, just the burning sun and the scrub brush and that strange turquoise sea.

  "The maps were useless, your Majesty," sobbed the navigator.

  "Let us make sure of that," said the prince. The parchment maps, each protected by a thin wax coating, were laid out on the sand and held down by flat heavy swords at each corner. Some of the lords, seeing their passage on these maps, felt the anguish of lost homes and lost lands. They saw on the map the great city of Rome. They had been guests there of the great Augustus Caesar, emperor and god. They had been under his protection.

  And of course his protection had been useless too.

  On another map was the civilized China. They all remembered the courts of the Tang Dynasty. For an entire case of jewels, such as even the Tang emperor had never seen, they had been granted sanctuary within his palace walls.

  But after just a few days, the Tang emperor had returned the jewels and told them to leave. "Are you admitting, great Emperor, that you do not rule in your own courtyards?" their prince had asked. "For if you are afraid of one man-any man-then you do not rule in your kingdom." The Tang court was hushed at such effrontery to their emperor, but the emperor had only laughed.

  "You believe that?" asked the emperor.

  "I do," said the prince, righteously.

  "You still believe that, after all that has happened to you?"

  "I do."

  "Then let me give you more wisdom, Prince, because your throne-which you do not sit on any longer-was once almost as grand as ours," said the emperor. "When it is cold, one is not a coward to put on furs. When it is hot, it does not take fear to put on a shade hat. A man can rule only what a man can rule. Otherwise, he winds up as some who are too prideful, fleeing from one kingdom to another, without a throne, without lands, like a beggar on a dusty road."

  Angrily, the prince had responded. "If one man frightens you so much, my Emperor, then sit forever on your throne. At his indulgence and at his whim."

  Now everyone in the court knew such an insult would call for beheading, but the emperor had smiled again and ever so softly said:

  "Your life is not mine to take. I leave that to my friend who is your enemy."

  And so the prince and his lords had left the court of the Tangs too. And now their helmets burned their flesh in the month the Romans called January after the god janus. Foot soldiers came back from the underbrush.

  "He is not here, my lord," they called out.

  A white-bellied gull cawed as it lowered itself to a piece of gray driftwood. They all waited for the orders to remove their burning helmets. There were two hundred men now. When they had started, there were fifteen thousand.

  When they had started, they all expected to return to their prince's palace within a week or two. After all, it was only one man. And one man, of course, had his limits, hadn't he? Their prince was all-powerful, wasn't he?

  And their prince was right. The man had to be shown that he was just a hireling, scarcely more worthy of respect than a carpenter or a jeweler or a physician. After all, what did that man do that a common soldier could not do?

  What their prince had never told any of them was that he could have kept his kingdom for just a simple sack of gold, only a fraction of what the Tang emperor had refused from them or only a small part of what the Romans took as just a gift to provide brief sanctuary.

  The prince could have paid. Indeed, he owed it. But Prince Wo had found that out only later, when it was too late.

  He had hired, on the highest recommendations, an assassin reputed to be so good that his work was at an entirely different level from anything that had ever been seen before. The word was that this little village in the country known as Korea had provided assassins for centuries, but only now were they becoming really popular west of China and the backward and barbaric Japan.

  "You have got to try one," said a courtier. "They are wonderful. No excuses. No reasons why they fail. They just don't fail."

  At the time Prince Wo did have a problem. His brother was hungrily eyeing his throne and was also building an army, too large an army just to defend his limited lands. Yet Prince Wo could not kill him until he started an attack, and his brother was not ready to start an attack until he had a good chance of winning it.

  A quandary which could best be solved by his brother's death, and what Prince Wo wanted was for his brother to die by unknown hands.

  "I want no one to be able to point a finger to this throne and say we were respons
ible for our brother's death," he told the assassin when he finally arrived at Prince Wo's court.

  "You may begin composing the funeral dirge, your Majesty," said the assassin with a very low bow.

  But the next day, Prince Wo's brother died in a fall from one of the parapets of his castle and the prince dismissed the assassin, no longer needing his services.

  "Your Majesty," said the assassin. "Your brother's death was my services."

  "He fell," said Prince Wo.

  "You said you did not wish to appear to be behind his death."

  "His death was an accident. It was a sign of the gods that I should not be opposed on this earth. I do not pay assassins for a gift from the gods."

  "Your Majesty, I come from a small village, a poor village which if it did not get the tributes given my services would starve. Should it become thought that these tributes did not have to be paid, not only those living today in my village would starve but so would those to come in the future. So, your Majesty, giving full obeisance to your glory, nevertheless, I insist that I be paid, and paid publicly."

  "I rule here," said Prince Wo.

  "And greatly," said the assassin. "But I must be paid."

  Prince Wo flicked his fingers and guards came forward to remove the assassin who had the effrontery to use the word "must" in front of his royal highness.

  But the assassin moved as smooth as a stream through their arms and without guidance left the throne room.

  In the morning, the prince's favorite concubine was found dead from a fall. The court physician felt the bones and said that indeed she must have fallen a hundred feet. Yet she had been found lying on the floor alongside the king's bed.

  The message was clear. There was not the slightest possibility that the prince's brother had fallen accidentally. The assassin had sent his message. He wanted to be paid.

  Unfortunately, the entire court now knew what had happened because falling from a bed and breaking every bone in one's body was not something that could be kept secret, especially when it was the prince's favorite concubine and it was the prince's bed she fell from. They all knew now what the prince knew. His brother had not died by accident and the assassin had demanded payment.

  The prince sent a discreet courier to the assassin with not only the payment, but double the payment. Inside the bag was a note:

  "O Great Assassin. I cannot allow my throne to be disgraced by seeming to be forced to pay you. If I am forced to do anything, then how can I be said to rule? Find double the agreed-upon payment. The first part is for your service; the second to kill the courier, keeping his silence and yours."

  The courier returned alive with the sacks empty and with the assassin's demand. Payment must be made to him publicly.

  "Never," said Prince Wo. "If I am afraid of any man in my kingdom, then I do not rule. He does." He called his war council together and explained what the problem was. The greatest general among them pointed out that they were used to fighting armies, not assassins. Each army had its own special weakness. But none knew the weakness of this assassin.

  The general devised what he called the seven-sided death. Each way of death would be inscribed on a stone. The first stone called for the sword; the second for poison; the third for treachery, and so on, until the seventh stone. If all the first six failed, then and only would the seventh stone be used.

  "Why not use it first?" asked the prince.

  Now the general was old and had fought many battles even before the prince was born. Unlike other warriors, he did not lead his men just by jumping on a horse before them, but was known to think. He would spend weeks and months alone, thinking about the ways of war, and while he was a frail man, he had never lost a battle. Even the most fearsome warriors bowed to the wisdom of his mind.

  When he answered, he spoke slowly because everything he knew came from the work his mind had done.

  "For every strength," he said, "there is a weakness. If the six ways fail, then the seventh will tell you the weakness of your enemy. The problem with most battles is that the general comes in with only one plan and if that fails, he fails. The seventh stone will be the invincible way, but must only be used should the other six fail."

  * * *

  As a precaution, the prince and his lords and his army moved out of the city into an encampment on a flat plain where no enemy could hide. Every soldier was issued a sword, for the sword was the way of the first stone. The general himself stood guard outside Prince Wo's tent.

  In the morning, the general was found dead with every bone in his body broken.

  The first stone was shattered and Prince Wo and his army and lords moved off into a valley where food was scarce. He ordered his men to poison every berry, every bush and well and grain, keeping their own foods safe, hidden inside their clothing. There they waited for the assassin, with the knowledge that in just a few days, he would be dead and they would be returning to the palace.

  In the morning, Prince Wo's pet falcon was found dead at the base of his perch with every bone in his body broken.

  Through the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth stones they fled. Baghdad, Rome, the land of the barbaric Scythians with strange yellow hair. Even the favorite mount of the Scythian king was killed in the same manner, every bone broken.

  They were down to the last stone when Prince Wo with his remaining warriors ordered all the royal barks to provision and they sailed westward, carrying the stone sealed beneath his very bed. When they were a month out of sight of land, he ordered all the standards thrown overboard and the embroidered crossed swords on the sails removed, stitch by stitch, from existence.

  It was then that the navigator began to weep and drink and could not be stopped. When finally they sailed into the turquoise-blue sea, the prince ordered the little fleet to anchor, and when it was shown no living thing was on the island, the prince ordered the navigator to come to shore with all the maps.

  "Can anyone find this island or this sea?" Prince Wo asked.

  "Your Majesty," weeped the navigator. "No one will ever find this island or this sea. We have sailed off the very maps of the world."

  "Good," said the prince. "Bring the seventh stone and bury it here." He ordered the men to take off their burning helmets and throw them into the sea. When the stone, with its inscription on the seventh way to kill the assassin, arrived wrapped in silk, he ordered the ships to be burned where they were anchored.

  "Your Majesty, why didn't you try the seventh way? Why didn't we at least try the seventh stone before we threw away our standards and shamefully removed the sign of the royal swords from your sails?"

  Prince Wo said softly, "Is not the seventh stone the strongest way to overcome our enemy?"

  "Then why not use it, your Majesty? Swords failed, poisons failed. The great pit near Rome failed. Do you think, your Majesty, that the seventh way will fail?"

  "No," said Prince Wo and looked out on those who had come with him so many thousands of miles, who would never see the palace again. "It will not fail. This will be the way to kill the assassin. This was the way to be used when the others failed. It is the most brilliant way."

  "Why didn't we use it? Why didn't we use it first?" he was asked.

  Prince Wo smiled. "Would you all have come with me, in boats shorn of emblems, with standards surrendered to the sea like a retreating navy? Would you have sailed willingly off the maps of civilized men to an island like this where we rule only birds and lizards? Would you have done any of those things at the outset, willingly at the outset?"

  Everyone heard the waves, soft and steady, breaking on the pure white beach.

  "But, your Majesty. If we had tried the method of the seventh stone, at the beginning, we would not have had to flee."

  Wo smiled again.

  "Son," he said, addressing his subject warmly. "This is the seventh way and I promise you will destroy that house of assassins."

  "When will he come?"

  "Ah, that is the secret of the seventh stone," s
aid the prince and kicked off his brocaded slippers and wore only a cloth around his loins as was most comfortable in this strange winter without snow.

  Some thought that the summer would have snow, but it didn't. It got even hotter. Their skins browned and the years passed and wandering Carib Indians came and then the British and with them slaves to harvest the salt from flats flooded by the turquoise sea. And the islands became known as the Bahamas.

  And one day, a steam shovel, cracking the coral ground for a condominium development, lifted up a smooth pink marble stone with engraving.

  Shreds of tattered silk fell from it as it saw light for the first time in almost two thousand years. No one could make out the writing, not even the owner of Del Ray Promotions Inc. of Little Exuma.

  "It ain't a curse, is it? Because if it's an old curse, then, you know, forget it already. It goes back in the ground. Screw the Indians." This from the major partner of Del Ray to the linguistics professor he had brought down from the States.

  "No, no. It's nothing to do with Carib Indian. I would swear it's a form of Indo-European."

  "We own this beachfront. It's ours. The Brits have been out of here for years."

  "No. It's before the English language."

  "Over a hundred years?" said the developer, who had never made it through high school and, as a form of compensation, liked to hire at least a dozen Ph.D's a year for various projects. Not for big money, of course. Big money was for his girlfriends and bigger money was for the private detectives who found out about it on behalf of his wife.

  "Well over a thousand years," the professor said.

  "What does it say?"

  "I don't know. We may never be able to translate it."

  There were, however, two people who translated it almost immediately. The sales manager for Del Ray said the stone promised peace, beautiful sunsets, and a resale value so unbelievable that only ancient Indo-European could describe it.

  And Reginald Woburn III, called in by his father from a polo match to read the inscription on a photograph of the stone, did it too. Not as easily as the sales manager who was making up a sales pitch, but laboriously, step by step, picking his way carefully through the symbols of a language he had learned but never used. He sat in the dark polished room of the Woburn estate in Palm Beach and saw letters that he had learned as a child, when his father explained to him that the Jews had Hebrew, his Roman Catholic friends used to have Latin, and the Woburns had a language too.