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  Remo stood still and watched. There were no birds in the sky. The fields were quiet. The Dutchman was real, he told himself, no matter how many figments of himself he could produce. And that one real being moved on two legs like anyone else. Remo shifted his eyes out of focus and concentrated entirely on his peripheral vision.

  Through the fog, to the right of Remo, a figure ran, crouching. He moved swiftly and silently, using all the skill of a lifetime of training. He climbed the highest hill in the area, stopping behind a large dead tree.

  Another figment appeared directly beside Remo, prepared to strike. Remo clenched his jaws and walked through it. He had things to do now.

  Kiree . . . Kiree and Ancion. They had both known things that were new to Remo. Things that could help him against an enemy more powerful than himself. If he could just remember. He stooped to gather two handfuls of grass and a rock the size of a baseball. He stuffed the rock inside his belt and began to rub the blades of grass.

  Lightning flashed across the sky. A high wind gusted out of nowhere. Remo ignored them, and was left untouched. He concentrated on disintegrating the grass, as Kiree had done, his hands moving so fast that the moisture in the blades evaporated instantly. He spat, slapping his hands together in rhythm.

  He had to take the Dutchman by surprise. No matter

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  how fast he ran, the Dutchman would see him coming in plenty of time to perform one of his tricks. Remo knew that the changes in weather and the constantly shifting landscape were visual lies, but the Dutchman could be subtle. What if he made Jilda burst into flame? Or caused the top of Griffith's head to explode like a firecracker? They weren't invulnerable to his ugly games. No, this contest had to be between Remo and the Dutchman, one on one. Remo didn't expect to win, but he wasn't about to make anyone else take the loss with him.

  "Fool," the Dutchman sneered. "You waste my time."

  Remo spat into his hands again. The pulp was almost the right consistency. He pulled his hands away, and like taffy, the wire-thin fibers formed. He worked quickly, weaving the fine, transparent net around the rock. His hands were moving too fast to see.

  "Your skin is burning," the Dutchman insinuated. "Your eyes are dry and withering. Blisters cover your body."

  "Go eat a toad." It was ready. With'one swing, Remo wound the net around a tree and swung up. The second propelled him to a boulder. On the third orbit of the net, he flew toward the crag where the Dutchman waited and landed with both feet in the blond man's chest.

  "Thanks, guys," he said to the spirits of Ancion and Kiree. Somewhere, he felt, from some unknown vantage point, they were watching.

  With a whoosh of air from his lungs, the Dutchman fell down the hill. At its base, he righted himself awkwardly and ran. Remo followed him. The ground was soft and covered with holes. The snakes, Remo remembered. Watch it. He can make them come out your ears if he wants to.

  But the Dutchman had no hallucination waiting. He stood beside an open pit, absorbed in its swarming interior. Remo approached, standing across the wide hole from him. The pit contained the skeletons of four men, picked

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  clean by scavengers. They were loosely draped in rags that had once been uniforms of some sort. Over them crawled more snakes than Remo had ever seen in one place.

  The two men circled the pit. The Dutchman's eyes were pale and lucid, the maniacal fire in them gone. Instead, they held a look of bewilderment as he searched Remo's face.

  "Who are you?" the Dutchman asked. It was a plea. Strange music came to Remo on the wind. Faint but insistent, the dissonant melody was the same as the strains he had heard when he first came to the shores of Sinanju with Jilda and the others. It had filled him with terror then, but now the music carried no more fear than a passing breeze. It was the Dutchman's music, but devoid of the Dutchman's power.

  He feeds on fear, Remo thought. When he had stopped caring whether he lived or died, he had lost his fear of the Dutchman. And without the fear, he was no longer a victim.

  The music swelled again, and suddenly Remo recognized it for what it was. It had sounded oddly familiar the first time he heard it, but didn't understand why. Now he knew. He had heard the same notes long ago, in a small boat setting off to carry him to the first stop in the Master's Trial. It was Chiun's music, note for note, only distorted, a perversion of the songs of Sinanju.

  And as he watched the Dutchman standing in mirror image of himself, he understood the music's meaning. "I am you," he answered.

  Yin and yang.

  Light and shadow, good and evil, Remo and the Dutchman were opposite sides of the same being. They were born of the same traditions, both white men taken out of their societies and created anew in the ways of Sinanju. They both claimed Masters of the discipline as their fathers.

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  Only fate had kept them apart for so long. Now, together, they formed a whole that could only end in destruction.

  "If I kill you, I will die," the Dutchman said, sounding almost relieved. "It was you all along. I have been seeking the wrong man."

  "You killed him."

  "As I must kill you," the Dutchman said.

  In one perfect spiral leap, he crossed the pit and delivered a blow to Remo's chest. His ribs broke under the impact. He tried to right himself, but the Dutchman was too fast. Remo felt a shattering pain in his kneecap that sent him flying toward a boulder. He landed on his shoulder.

  The Dutchman kicked him off the rock. "It can't be done quickly," he said softly. "I've waited too long. The victory must be complete."

  He stepped back. Remo stirred. The Dutchman crushed his elbow with his heel. The pain flooded over Remo like a wave. His vision receded to a wash of color: black, red, iridescent blue. . . .

  "You will hear me now, and obey," the Dutchman commanded.

  It was the fear. Stop the fear in yourself, and his power will vanish.

  But he was afraid. No man had ever attacked him so fast. No man had ever beaten him so completely. The Dutchman was better than he was, better than anyone. In the Master's Trial, the Dutchman would have conquered the world.

  "Feel the knives in your legs, Remo."

  Remo screamed with the pain. Thousands of blades were suddenly embedded in his skin, cutting to the bone.

  "They are in your hands now, your arms. ..."

  He felt his palms flatten. The knives, slicing his flesh by inches, moved up his arms. Each thrust was an agony.

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  Each knife brought him closer to the welcome numbness of death.

  "Oh, Chiun," Remo whispered.

  His eyes fluttered open. In the distance were three moving figures, barely visible. Remo tried to concentrate on them to lessen the pain. He was going to die, but Chiun had once told him that death did not have to be painful. "Take yourself out of the pain," Chiun had said. Chiun . . .

  It was Chiun. The old man was alive, walking between Jilda and the boy. The three of them stopped beside H'si T'ang, seated on the ground. Chiun picked his teacher up and moved in a wooden gait toward the cave. As he walked, Chiun turned his head right and left, searching.

  "I am here, Father," Remo said, too weak to be heard. "I, too, am still alive."

  Then, from a place deep in his soul, another voice spoke:

  I am created Shiva, the Destroyer; death, the shatterer of worlds;

  The dead night tiger made whole by the Master of

  Sinanju.

  Remo rose. He was covered with the wounds he had permitted in his fear, but the knives were gone.

  The Dutchman regarded him, puzzled. When he spoke, his voice was full of false confidence. "You can't fight me now. Look at you."

  Blood dripped off Remo's hands in pools. But the Dutchman's eyes were afraid. He prepared to strike.

  Remo attacked before the Dutchman's hands could reach him. Through the pain, despite his broken bones and the blood that covered him, he struck three times, three perfect blows. The Dutchman fell, screaming, into the
snake pit.

  Remo watched the sinuous creatures slither over the stunned man who sat sprawled among the bones of the

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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.

  "Well, we have to do something with ourselves, I suppose," Jilda said.

  "I want to see the snakes," Griffith said.

  "The snakes were gone. There was only . . . only ..." She walked around the open pit. There was nothing inside but some scattered bones.

  "He is dead," Remo insisted, furious. He stared at the

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  bones as if he believed he could make the Dutchman materialize out of them.

  Jilda lowered herself into the hole and prodded the earth with her toes.

  "This is another trick of his," Remo said. His voice was harsh and rasping. He clenched and unclenched his fists, opening the congealed wounds in his hands. "He's there. We just can't see him. He's-"

  "He is gone, Remo," Jilda said. She uncovered a hole beneath a large, flat rock. The hole was big enough for a man to crawl through. "That's where he went."

  "No!" Remo shouted, shaking with anger. He vaulted into the pit and worked his way through the freshly dug tunnel as fast as he could. "No!" he called from inside the earth. "No!" at the tunnel's mouth beside the ocean's rocky shore.

  There was nothing ahead of him but a clear expanse of blue water.

  It had been a waste, all of it-H'si T'ang's death, Jilda's suffering, Chiun's humiliation, his own efforts. He had failed them all. The Dutchman was still alive and would spread his poison around the world. He had lived because Remo had been too weak to die with him.

  "Why didn't you take us both?" he screamed into the empty, indifferent sea.

  There was no answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Remo took a long time returning to the cave. Inside, Chiun, Jilda and Griffith kept watch over the body of H'si T'ang. A single candle lit the features of the dead man.

  The three of them watched Remo enter, his shoulders stooped. "He's gone," he said. He walked to the far corner of the cave and sat on a heap of fallen rock.

  Chiun and Jilda were silent. Only Griffith stood up. He walked to the center of the cave, to a spot where the afternoon sun poured through a hole in the rock. The light illuminated his dirty face. Without speaking, he raised his battered arms to shoulder level, palms up. In the sunlight, his wounds seemed to disappear.

  Remo rose slowly. They had disappeared. The boy's skin was as smooth and brown as seasoned wood.

  '"How in the-"

  The boy silenced him with a look. His eyes were glassy and faraway, and carried in them an innate authority far beyond his years. Chiun motioned Remo abstractedly to sit down.

  "My spirit do I bequeath to this child," Griffith began in a voice unrecognizable as his own.

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  "H'si T'ang," Chiu
n whispered. "He lives."

  "Only my spirit lives, the essence of what my life has been. The boy's soul and mind shall always remain his own. My knowledge only is added to what he already possesses. He has always had the Sight in some measure, and so will use the gift wisely and well, if he is taught correctly. Tell him, when I have finished, of his legacy, for he cannot hear my words, and will be afraid of his powers. I beg you, do not permit him to grow like the Dutchman, fearful and lonely."

  "I will not," Jilda said.

  "My fierce and beautiful warrior," the voice inside the boy said to the woman. "You have risked much, given much. Your courage has not gone unnoticed. Be strong, Jilda, for just a short time longer. Much will depend on you."

  She nodded, too overcome to speak.

  Griffith turned his strange, unseeing eyes on Chiun. "You called me your father, and that I am. For though you are not my natural son, you have pleased me beyond my expectations. For you, Chiun, are the greatest of all the Masters of Sinanju who have walked this earth. It was for this reason that the charge of Shiva was placed upon you."

  Chiun's eyes welled.

  "It was this that I tried to tell you while I was still among you. But I was weak, and the Void called irresistibly to me. And so I tell you now. I could not have found a better son if I searched all the world until the end of time."

  "Father," Chiun whispered.

  Finally, the boy turned to Remo. "And you. Do you yet know who you are? What you are?"

  Remo turned his head. "I've failed," he said.

  "You have failed only to alter the course of destiny." H'si T'ang spoke angrily through the boy. "Is your arro-

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  gance such that you believe you can control even the forces of the universe?"

  "What? No," Remo stammered. "No. It's nothing like that. Only-"

  "Then you must realize that even Shiva does not possess the power to take a life before its appointed time to die."

  Before its-"

  "The Other lives because you must live. Yin and yang, light and darkness. Both must exist. There is a great destiny before you, Remo. Have the courage to fulfill it."

  "I ... 1 ..." The boy's eyes seemed to bore into his very soul. He fell silent.