Warren Murphy: Arabian Nightmare

"Give me back my son, O Shiva, and any wish you desire, I will swear to fulfill."

"Remember that vow, Sinanju," said Shiva. "You may come to regret it. But on this day, in this hour, I need only to return to Chidambarum, the center of the universe, where I sleep. "

Chiun nodded. It was more than he could ever have dreamed. A lump rose in his throat and the air coming into his lungs was inexplicably hot.

Then, assuming a lotus position on the limestone roof, Shiva the Destroyer laid his wrists upon his knees and closed all three eyes. A wave of color, like the wind worrying sailcloth, rippled over the flesh of Remo Williams. Another. The slaty color began to fade. Magically, the lopsided head reoriented itself to the vertical, the livid blue bruise of the throat lessening, fading, growing pink and healthy once more.

Remo Williams opened his uncomprehending brown eyes. They blinked, focused, and seemed to accept the pale vision that was the Master of Sinanju standing before him.

"Little Father . . ." he began, his voice a bullfrog croak.

Chiun said nothing. He could not. His every thought was focused on holding back unseemly tears.

"I thought you were . . . dead," Remo said slowly, seeming not to know where he was. He looked around. At every point of the compass, smoke lifted into the intensely black sky, and fires raged.

"Is this . . . the Void?" Remo asked tightly. "The last thing I remember was killing Maddas Hinsein. Then Kimberly grabbed me by the . . ."

His gaze suddenly alighted on the prostrate form of Kimberly Baynes, only a yard away.

"Is she dead too?"

Before the Master of Sinanju could summon up an answer, the blackened arms of Kali flung upward. Her spine coiled and her legs jackknifed. Her tottering body came erect, surviving arms outflung as if for balance.

"What's this?" Remo asked nervously.

"A gift," said the Master of Sinanju, stepping up to the creature as it pawed slime from its matted hair and face. The sounds coming forth were confused and muffled. "The Supreme Lord has offered Sinanju an opportunity to extract full vengeance."

"Hold it!" Remo warned, trying to get to his feet. "She's more dangerous than you think." His legs, locked in a lotus position, were unresponsive, as if nerve-dead.

"Do you hear me, O Kali?" Chiun demanded, ignoring his pupil.

"I will eat you!" Kali roared, trying to see through the dripping slime.

"Perhaps. But first I have a riddle for you."

"What?"

"What has three arms and screams?"

"I do not know, foolish old man. Nor do I care."

"Little Father!" Remo shouted, uncrossing his legs by hand. "Don't take her on alone!" His eyes were wide with worry.

The Master of Sinanju lashed out with a stiff-fingered strike, knocking the maimed arm of Kali loose from its socket. It fell with a plop.

Kali screamed. Her three, surviving arms waved.

"Since you did not solve that one, I have another," Chiun went on calmly. "What has but two arms and screams?"

Kali obviously guessed the answer to that one, because her upper arms-the unimpaired ones-reached for the Master of Sinanju's face.

Chiun knocked her legs out from under her and grasped the swinging broken arm as she fell. The arm tore free like cloth ripping.

"I got one," Remo said, finally finding his feet. He strode over Kali's almost-normal form and asked, "What has no arms and flies?"

"And sprouts feathers in flight?" added Chiun.

Remo blinked. "Feathers?"

"Feathers," said Chiun, nodding.

His brow wrinkling around his closed third eye, Remo Williams set one foot on Kali's bloated stomach. He grabbed her wrists and exerted pressure.

They came loose like cooked turkey drumsticks and, flinging them one way, Remo drop-kicked the maimed armless shell that was Kali in another.

Howling unimaginable curses, Kali described a shallow parabola over the Palace of Sorrows.

At the apex of her flight, she acquired a sudden halo of feathered shafts. They seemed to spring from her body like porcupine quills. But in fact, several plainly impaled her head and vitals, entering from one direction and emerging from the other.

Kali plummeted like a stricken bird. Her howl followed her down. When she hit the ground, she splintered. She didn't move until a group of men carrying great war bows descended upon her. And then she moved only because they flung her dead corpse into the nearby banks of the Tigris River, which was already running red with the blood of Iraiti soldiers.

Remo watched this from the palace parapet.

"We're in Abominadad, right?" he asked Chiun.

"Correct."

"Then why do I see Mongols down below?"

"Because you do."

Remo was silent a long moment. "Are those your Mongols or mine?" he asked at last.

"They are our Mongols," said Chiun, suppressing a smile as his proud eyes searched his son's face.

Boldbator Khan rode up to the Master of Sinanju and his pupil, his broad countenance beaming and bloodspattered. He dismounted his white pony, which dropped excrement with Herculean abandon. Boldbator wore a long del of blue brocade.

"Sain Baina," Master of Sinanju," he said gruffly.

Chiun acknowledged the hail with a formal, "Sain Baino."

"What're you guys doing here?" asked Remo, ever the informal.

"We followed the Seven Giants as our Master bade us."

"Seven Giants?"

Boldbator Khan of the New Golden Horde pointed a stubby finger into the night sky, where the Big Dipper shone. Remo counted seven stars and said, "Oh. We call it the Big Dipper."

"Everyone knows that it is really the Seven Giants." Boldbator addressed the Master of Sinanju. "We searched in vain for the Ishtar Gate, O friend of the old days."

"The barbarians never rebuilt it since you last visited their land," Chiun supplied. "Laziness, no doubt."

Another Mongol came running up, dragging something long and limp in one hand. He wore a black leather vest and his face resembled a weather-beaten brass gong.

"Remo! It is good to see you again, White Tiger."

"Hyah, Kula. What's with the freaking bag?"

Kula the thief lifted a long canvas bag. "It is for the freaking caliph," he said proudly.

"Not much of a present," Remo noted. "Looks empty."

Kula smiled happily, saying, "Soon it will not be."

"Where is the evil one?" asked Boldbator.

"Dead," said Chiun. "I have dispatched him."

The moon faces of the two Mongols collapsed into expressions so tragic they were almost comical.

"The horses will be disappointed," said Bolbator. Kula threw away the bag with a muttered curse.

"Am I missing something here?" Remo wondered.

"It is a fine Mongol tradition," Chiun explained. "One sews up the offending monarch in a bag and tramples out his life under the hooves of wild horses."

"If we're talking about Maddas Hinsein, it sounds good to me," Remo allowed. "Except I got him." He frowned. "Didn't I?"

"That he has been dealt with is all that matters, not proper credit," Chiun sniffed.

"If you say so," said Remo, tearing a length of scarlet silk from his disheveled harem pants and using it to wipe his brow. To his surprise, he encountered a round bump like a pigeon's egg.

"What the heck is this?" he demanded.

"Do not touch it!" Chiun said, slapping Remo's hands away like those of a child. "We will deal with that later."

"Hey, is that any way to act during a family reunion?"

"There would not have been need of a reunion had you not been so reckless in your ways," Chiun scolded. "Your obtuseness has caused me much suffering. How could you not comprehend the gesture my essence made as it appeared before you? Even Smith understood this."

"Bully for Smith. Where the hell were you the last three months-hiding? I thought you were dead."