Mortal Kombat (2 page)

"Yes," she said. "And after we buried what remained of him, didn't you return to the hills, collect more of those rocks, grind them together, and burn them?"

"I did," he admitted. "I learned from Father's example the correct proportions to use. And now our village has a way of defending itself against invaders. The monks at the temple of the Order of Light no longer have to fear attacks by fanatics and wizards. We have magic of our own! We grow by learning, and we learn by daring."

Touching the moist cheek of the woman who raised him when his mother died giving birth to his young brother Chan, Kung Lao turned and continued walking toward the door. But the tiny woman held firm, digging the heels of her sandals into the dirt floor, and he dragged her two paces before stopping."

"Aunt Chen!" he said.

"I won't lose you!" she yelled, grabbing his shoulder and pulling back roughly, shaking the yellow peacock feather from her plaited gray hair.

Sighing, Kung Lao picked it up and gently replaced it. Then he looked at the slight woman who held him like a coiled serpent. She seemed dwarfed by her
haol
, a flowing white silk dress that was split at the sides, with long, narrow sleeves. She always wore this, her wedding dress, on the anniversary of the murder of her husband, Paipu, a tax collector who was beaten to death in a town that did not wish to pay their lord prince. The town was destroyed for its impertinence, though that did not bring Paipu back.

Kung Lao had no desire to fight with her, least of all on this day. But what he had read in the village made him realize that the time for fear had come to an end. That it was the dawning of an era for mortals to do more than prostrate themselves at the altars of their gods. That it was time to do more than simply accept the myths and lore the monks at the temple of the Order of Light handed out.

At least talk to me," his aunt said. "Tell me why you need to go
there
. Why can't you start this quest of the shrines of the other gods?"

"If I tell you," Kung asked, "will you let me go?"

"I'll try to change your mind," she admitted, "but if you talk, I promise... I won't grab you again."

The young man considered her proposition, then nodded."

Chen released Kung and he drew back his shoulders, pulling his long, brawny form to its full height. "I am convinced, Aunt Chen, that T'ien
is
one of the lesser gods."

The woman's round face seemed to grow longer, like ink running in the rain. It was several seconds before she could speak. "You...
are
mad. And if the monks hear you, you will be resting beside your father before nightfall."

"I don't think so," said Kung Lao. "I think I was chosen to know this." He looked out the open shutter into the bright, late morning sun and smiled, his white teeth appearing the glow amid the rosy hue of his full cheeks, his large, brown eyes smiling as well. "At dawn," he said softly, almost reverently, "when I had finished my work and went to see if there were any new verses in the square, I saw a clip of cloth that said:

He cannot die yet does not live, 'tis true.
He is more than all, and all is P'an Ku."

Kung Lao regarded his aunt. "Have you ever heard that name before?"

She shook her head.

"Neither have I," he said. "But as I walked home, I realized that I would never rest until I knew who or what P'an Ku is."

"Why?" she asked. "It might by anyone... any
thing
. 'He cannot die yet does not live.' That could refer to those stone-like tree limbs people have found. P'an Ku could be the name of the person who discovered them, or the village in which they were found. Perhaps the writer was saying that T'ien is older than such petrified life."

"You're clever," Kung Lao smiled, "but there's more to the story. Each morning, I meet the egg-girl Li and we sit and talk."

Chen brightened. "Li is interested in you?"

"We are interested in one another," Kung Lao said with a trace of impatience, "but that isn't the point. This morning, after I read that verse, I took her over to show it to her. And she couldn't see it."

"Why not?"

"To her, the paper was simply a blank. She thought I was teasing her, so we called over Dr. Chow, who was returning from a call. He, too, saw only a blank slip, and said most emphatically that there was nothing on it."

"Dr. Chow drinks rice wine, but
two
people disagreed with you."

"I didn't smell any wine," Kung Lao said, "but that isn't important. I didn't imagine the writing. It
was
there."

Chen thought for a moment, then started toward the door. "Take me to the square. I want to see this paper."

"There's no need," Kung Lao said. "You've already seen it."

She stopped and looked at him curiously. He dangled his queue in front of her again.

"The band," she said, and reached for the cloth that held his hair. She tugged it off, looked at one side of the fore-head-sized fabric, then at the other, then at both again. "Li and Dr. Chow are right," she said. "There's no writing on it."

"But there is," Kung Lao insisted, sweeping his fine, shoulder-length hair behind him, "and I intend to find out what it means... and why no one else can see it."

He gently removed the cloth from his aunt's hands and redid his queue. Chen looked at him with sad eyes.

"If you go," she said, "I'll never see you again."

"Of course you will, Mother," he said, using the honorific that signalled his regard for her. "I'll be back before the month is through."

"Your brother will miss you."

"My brother," Kung Lao smiled, "will be too busy building more of his bamboo-and-iron bridges across ravines and rivers to notice that I am gone."

"No. When he returns from the Yellow River, he will grieve."

"And recover," Kung Lao said, "when he begins work on the canal at Hangchow."

Chen began to weep as she ran the backs of her stubby fingers along her nephew's cheek and chin. "My boy, why must you try to know the gods? Why can't you enjoy being human? Take time to lie on your back in a field and watch the sun set. Court Li, read, care for seedlings while they grow. You used to love painting–"

Kung Lao moved closer to his aunt. "I would prefer to know how and why the sun moves than to watch it set. As for the others, love fades and trees die. Paintings fade or become quaint relics. Knowledge is all we can truly pass on, all we can build on."

The young man turned away and pulled a blue robe from a wooden hook by the door, slipping it over the robe he had on. The second robe was shorter than the first, reaching only to his knees. It was embroidered with green-and-yellow dragons and thorny brown vines, and had a red capelet in the back.

Kissing his aunt on the forehead, but avoiding looking into her eyes, Kung Lao bid her farewell. Then he turned and pushed open the bamboo door. It swung open on old leather hinges and he stepped into the bright sunlight.

"You're wrong," Chen said, running to the doorway, tears rolling down her cheeks as she watched him go. "Your father has been dead for two years, yet I love him as much as I ever did. Love survives... art inspires... and trees drop seeds to the earth to grow again. You will learn, my son, that I'm right."

Kung Lao looked back at her and smiled again. "Then that, too, is knowledge, Aunt Chen. One way or another, I will come back a wiser man."

"If you come back at all," Chen said.

She turned and shut the door, her sobs muffled as Kung Lao turned slowly from the small hut. Pausing to pull a pair of peaches from their tree, he put them in the deep pockets of his coat, then walked toward the sea, sorry for the grief he was causing but consoled by the fact that what he was about to do would have filled his father with pride.

He was unaware of the eyes that were watching him from behind the Temple of the Order of Light, eyes that were so fair and pale brown as to appear golden...

The nation is called Chung Kuo, the Central Nation, by its natives; it is also known as China, named after the dynastic family of Ch'in emperors who sought to unify the land and its inhabitants in 221
B.C.
, succeeding where other leaders had failed, as far back as the Chou dynasty of 1000
B.C.
and the Shang dynasty before them.

Following the unification under the Ch'in, China was ruled by the Han dynasty, for whom Kung Lao had little regard. They and their princes had discouraged so many of the advances made by the people under the Ch'in, shutting the nation off from the rest of the world and what was happening there.

China is so vast,
their emissaries said,
so rich in resources and people, what need have we of others?

They were fools, Kung Lao told himself. But as he walked inland now, toward the west, across a plain spotted with patches of yellow sand deposited by some long-ago flood, he had to admit that the geography of his homeland was as varied as it was vast. He had read accounts of the frozen lands and strange inhabitants of the mountains of Tibet, and he had seen with his own eyes the sweltering marshes of the lands that border the China Sea. When he was a boy, and his parents had moved to Chu-jung, they had traveled by the Szechwan Basin of the Yangtze River and crossed the ranges by the great mountains – including the range of Mt. Ifukube. He remembered the strange and fascinating creatures he had seen here: the long-tailed pheasants, the goatlike antelopes, the flat-nosed monkeys, the giant black-and-white bears munching on bamboo of the Cloud Forest.

He wondered why these glorious animals were found only here, why only the gods were permitted to have them. His father had said,
It is because they are gods, my son. They made these animals for their own enjoyment.
But that answer had not satisfied Kung Lao.

Why would gods be so selfish? Why would they not want to uplift and educate their other children, the ones to whom they had given minds and souls?

He learned to mix paints using soil and oils, and painted pictures of these beasts and gods... even daring, once, to render the face of T'ien, which he had quickly destroyed. If it had been discovered, his family would have been driven from the village. They were lucky enough to have arrived when the previous water carrier had died, childless; Kung Lao did not want to be responsible for costing his father his livelihood.

And yet, Kung Lao knew that his father often wondered about the gods. He would sit outside at night and contemplate the stars while he smoked his pipe. Once, Kung Lao had even seen his father stand, stretch his arms toward the moon, and say,
Why can we not reach you... embrace you
?
Why do birds not go to you
?
Why is there only one of you and not many – or are you one of the stars, come close to us to bring light to the dark night
?

Sometimes the elder Lao kept company with a beggar, a man in a black, tattered, wool-and-leather cloak. Kung Lao never saw his face or heard his voice, but he would watch from inside the house as the two shared a smoke at night. Or if there were fruit on the trees or vegetables in the ground, the elder Lao would give some to the man. Kung Lao never knew what the two men talked about, nor did he ask: if his father had wanted him to know, he's have told him.

Kung Lao had never told his aunt the reason he suspected his father had become obsessed with concussive powders. The boy had once seen a drawing his father had tucked away, of boulders, boats, and chairs flying toward the skies on a ball of fire.

The elder Lao wanted to
go
there. He wanted to find and harness a force that would allow him to soar free of the earth.

You went about it your way,
Kung Lao thought as he made his way toward the distant, dreamy foothills of the Ifukube range.
I will go about it mine.

Tired, but unwilling to stop as the sun went down and day became night, Kung Lao picked up a branch lying at the base of a dead and solitary tree. He kicked off the brittle twigs with the toe of his sandal, and used the limb as a walking stick as he continued ahead, toward the fast-fading glow in the west.

And as he walked, the near-golden eyes still watched him – not from behind him but from a cliff well ahead.

Caught in a dark and slashing rain on the night of the fourth day of his travels, Kung Lao leaned against the wet rocks of the hill. He laid his staff against the damp, mossy stone and shielded his eyes with his hands, peering around, looking for a niche or tree or boulder that might provide him with shelter.

But there was nothing on the muddy path in the low foothills, save for the sheer rock face to his left and the sloping, scrub-lined cliff to his right. Nor was there anything to eat. The peaches and a few wriggling grubs had gotten him through the first day, and he managed to capture and cook a pheasant on the second, a molting, ancient thing that seemed to welcome the broken neck he gave it. A few berries were all he had on the third and fourth day, and now his energy was seriously lacking. He was hungry, and didn't know which was worse: the stomach that crawled and called out to him, or the head that was light and didn't respond quickly enough when he called it.

He sighed and wrung out his long, black queue.

If only it were just the hunger
, he told himself as he tried to focus on his surroundings. His flesh was cold because his woollen blouse and skirt were soaked through from the rain, and his back ached from the walking and now the climbing he had done. Though he was bound by tradition to mourn his father every day for three years, he knew that if he stopped to kneel now and pray, he would never get up again. Asking the elder Lao's forgiveness, he leaned against the cliff and, as the cold rain slashed against his face, and lightning ripped the sky, he said a few words in his father's memory.

"It was written by the great philosopher and alchemist Ko Hung," he said, "'Not meeting with disaster may be compared with the fate of birds and animals passed over by hunting parties, or of the grasses and trees that remain unburned when a big conflagration has passed their way.' You were not among the lucky ones, Father – and yet you were luckier than most, for you had a questioning mind and a seeker's soul. I will love and revere you always."