Snow, Fire, Sword Read online

  “Your Majesty,” said Adi, “what of Snow, Fire, Sword? They were to help us in this task. We have Snow here already, if I am right, so perhaps we should endeavor to find Fire and Sword.”

  “I do not think we have time,” said the Sultan. “We have to gather together as many fighting men as possible. That must be the first thing of all.”

  “Sire, if I may?” The Shayk spoke quietly, yet with a certain authority. “If I am indeed Snow—and, like Adi, I hope I am—perhaps I could help in this task by gathering together as many of my men as is possible. We knew it would come to this one day, that we would have to fight against the Demons’ Army, and my boys have been well trained. May I propose my fighters help you?”

  “That is very kind,” said the Sultan doubtfully, “but you are a holy teacher, not a trainer of warriors. They are far away, are they not, and—”

  “Father, I can vouch for the valor of the Shayk’s men,” broke in Yanto. “They are God’s people, fighting for the truth; they are stern enemies of the demons. The Shayk is a great warrior as well as a great teacher. And if we are swift, they will be here in time. Grant permission, please, for us to take helicopters back to Gunungbatu and fetch the Shayk’s fighters.”

  “Oh, very well. It can’t hurt. I thank you, Shayk, for your offer, though I am not at all sure we will need your fighters, my soldiers being very well trained and utterly loyal.” He cast a rather mischievous look at his son. “How can they not be, when my son has been overseeing them?”

  “Thank you, Father, but I think you will be pleasantly surprised to see how good the Shayk’s fighters are.”

  “Is that so? Good, good. You seem to be a most useful man, Shayk Rasheed. Just what we need in these troubled times.”

  “The Sultan does me much honor,” said the Shayk with a faint smile. “I shall go with the Prince to get my men. I will leave my second-in-command, Ibrahim, here in Kotabunga with you, Sire.”

  “Do as you wish,” said the Sultan. “You are a good and brave man, and I thank you.”

  Adi thought of the boys and men at the community. Was it true they were good fighters, or was that just what the Shayk and his disciple Yanto believed? Some of them looked surly and aggressive, but had any of them, besides maybe Ibrahim, Jamal, and Ali, looked like they might know how to fight, like real soldiers? He thought of Sadik. He was a nice person, but a word fighter, surely, with no experience? And none of them would have seen the hantumu—they had no idea what terror these things struck in you. How could a gaggle of farmers and disciples, brought up in a peaceful village community, know how to fight such creatures? The Shayk himself was an extraordinary man, no doubt able to hold his own, and so was Ibrahim and perhaps Jamal and Ali. But the rest? He had seen nothing to really convince him.

  He started. Everyone was looking at him. It was apparent that the Sultan had said something to him, but he had not heard. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, I did not hear…”

  “I asked you, Adi, what you were going to do.”

  “Me, Sire?” This time, he was not going to be protected. He was not going to be trapped in safety while those about him risked their lives. “I will stay here, Sire, with you,” he said. “The spirits told us we must find Snow, Fire, and Sword. We now know why: to fight the Sorcerer. How we are to do it we still are not sure, but if the Shayk is Snow in his purity and goodness and whiteness, then his task has been decided by his own heart, and he will bring his men here. Perhaps Sword and Fire cannot be found just by looking for them; they must be recognized, understood, in one’s own heart. And so perhaps I can be Sword, if I am given one. I do not know how to use a gun, Sire, but my master has taught me how to use a kris. I can help to protect you from the plots of the Sorcerer. We need only find Fire—and perhaps we have done so already, Sire, in the fire of our own resolve.” He caught the Shayk’s glance then, and saw surprise and admiration shining there. It warmed him.

  “Hmm,” said the Sultan. “You are a brave young man. I appreciate…er…your offer. But you are very young, and…”

  Adi shook with a nervous excitement. The words flowed from him, direct from his heart: “Sire, we had wondered, Dewi and I, why we were chosen by the spirits for this task. Anda Mangil, a man whose courage I greatly honor, told us it was because we were children of modern Jayangan, and that it is not only the past that is under attack, but the present and future, too. Your Majesty, we are young, and the future will be what we make of it. I love my country. I have seen what this evil man has already done. I do not want him ruling our future. I will do whatever is needful, and will fight to the last breath to protect you, Sire. For you are the Sultan of Jayangan, the heart of law in our land, and if the Sorcerer harms you, he harms all of Jayangan.”

  There was a long silence. The Sultan stared at Adi. There were tears in the ruler’s eyes. Then, suddenly, he smiled. “You are a brave, loyal young man,” he said. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will never, ever forget it. How I wish all in Jayangan were as true as you!”

  “I have other men here already, with Ibrahim, waiting outside the palace,” put in the Shayk smoothly. “They can support Adi. It would be best, Sire, if you kept to quarters that can easily be defended.”

  “I was brought up to fight too,” the Sultan responded quietly. “I do not need your men, Shayk. Ibrahim may stay, to help Adi. The others would be best off going with you, to rally your fighters.”

  The Shayk smiled and nodded.

  “I am not an old woman,” the Sultan continued rather crossly, “to crouch behind walls when my kingdom is threatened. Yanto, there is no need to look at me like that. I know what your eyes are saying. I have a responsibility to my people. I must be there for them. I will stay here, but not cooped up. I am not afraid. I am the commander of my people.”

  “Of course, Father,” said Yanto gently, “but do you give me permission, sir, to go with the Shayk to Gunungbatu to get his men?”

  “As you wish,” said the Sultan, “but remember your own responsibility. You are my eldest son, the Crown Prince, the future of Jayangan. Don’t throw it away in absurd heroics.”

  “Of course not, Father,” said Yanto, bending his head, but not before Adi had seen the same light of excitement and nerves that was in his own eyes. At last! The wait would be over, battle would be joined. Nothing was surer, thought Adi, anxious and thrilled all at once. There was no need to worry anymore about the meaning of what the spirits had said. Snow, Fire, and Sword were what they made of them. They were qualities of heart—true companions. He was doing this for all who had tried to fight and were carried off or killed—for Dewi, for Anda Mangil, for his Empu Wesiagi, for Dewi’s father, and for all those people he did not know who were already victims of the Sorcerer’s war against the land of Jayangan. He would be fighting for them all. And the thought strengthened his heart, and his soul.

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT WAS NOT an easy scramble to the top of the pit, avoiding loose rocks and treacherous holes—but what was even harder, for Dewi, was not looking back. Her head was full of the last sight of her father; her heart trembled at the possibility that she might never see him again in this life. Something precious and irreplaceable, perhaps the innocence of childhood, was ripped away from her forever with every painful, stumbling step she took. The other frightening and horrible things that had happened since radical evil came crashing into the lovely, safe little world of Bumi Macan seemed almost as nothing now beside this: She was leaving her father behind her, perhaps to share in the sad fate of Anda Mangil and so many others who had died.

  Almost everything in her screamed at her to turn back, to stay with the captives. Yet she knew, deep down, that she could not do that. Her father did not want her to. He had made his choice, and as his loving daughter she must respect that. If she disobeyed, then they would have no hope of saving her father and his friends, and the Sorcerer would win.

  With their enemies assuming the spirit-lizard had destroyed them, there was a tiny chance D
ewi and Husam might get to Kotabunga in time to prevent or at least affect what was about to happen. They could concentrate only on that. Any other way meant failure, without question. She and Husam must not be taken by the hantumu or the afreet again. They would surely be killed this time.

  Husam toiled behind her, staying silent, out of deference to her feelings, or perhaps just from sheer tiredness. Dewi would normally have felt tired too, but she did not at the moment; it was as if she were carried up automatically, like a machine.

  When they finally reached the top of the pit, they stopped briefly. They would have to be very careful scrambling down the vertiginous slope on the other side. At the bottom of the bare, rocky hill was a thin silver stream. They started off down the slope without a word, sometimes having to almost crawl down, sometimes stumbling and falling over loose scree that rattled under their feet. Once, Husam fell very heavily indeed, and Dewi had to quickly come to his aid. There was blood on his forearm where he had fallen against sharp rock, and his face looked a little gray as he got shakily to his feet, but he managed to say, “It’s nothing…nothing…we must hurry…hurry…”

  At length, they were at the bottom of the hill, and they saw that a little distance along, the stream had been coaxed into a stone irrigation channel. Ibi Timur was right—the stream must lead to a village. If they followed the channel, they would come to it. After a much-needed drink of the cool, clear water, Dewi looked back once, at the quarried mountain rearing high above them, and shuddered, thinking of the men and women trapped in that strange place.

  Dewi and Husam walked precariously along the side of the irrigation channel. For a while, it was the only sign of human habitation; but soon they began to see others. A tiny garden clung to a small green patch by the side of the channel; skinny sheep began to poke curious, yellow-eyed heads from behind rocks; and then they came in sight of a shepherd boy, his back to them, sitting on a rock by the edge of the channel, whittling at something and whistling. Dewi couldn’t help stopping when she recognized the tune he was whistling, for it was “Beloved.”

  The boy must have heard a loose stone or something under their feet, for he whipped around and stared at them. Before he could speak, though, Dewi came toward him, saying urgently, “Please, don’t be afraid. We mean no harm.”

  “You came from Old Mountain, didn’t you?” said the boy, wide-eyed. “Are you ghosts, or demons?”

  “We are neither,” said Husam. “We need help.”

  “Oh,” said the boy, sighing. “I was hoping I might see the ghosts or the demons people talk of. It would be exciting; nothing ever happens here.”

  “You don’t want to see those sorts of things, believe me,” said Husam, catching Dewi’s eye.

  “Oh, but I do,” he went on cheerfully. “Then, if you’re not ghosts or demons, I suppose you must be one of them.”

  “Them?”

  “Beloved strangers, of course,” said the boy, looking curiously at Husam. “Have you forgotten all the while you’ve been in the Mountain?”

  Dewi and Husam looked at each other, perplexed, but all Dewi said was, “Please, friend, is there a village nearby?”

  “Of course. You know that. The Stone Village. That’s where my father comes from.”

  “We have forgotten,” said Husam hollowly, “in our long sojourn in the Mountain. Where is it?”

  The boy looked at him, something like awestruck fear now merging with his impatient curiosity. “So you are them!” Hurriedly, he went on. “It’s just up there,” he said, pointing to a little slope of scrubbily forested hill above where he sat. “Through the forest, through the doorway. I can’t take you there or my father would skin me alive for leaving the sheep on their own.”

  “Of course,” said Husam. “Thank you, boy.”

  “Not at all,” said the boy, still staring at them; and they could feel his eyes on their backs as they turned away from him and went up the hill.

  The forest the boy had spoken of was not much of a forest, but more of a haphazard collection of scabby, twisted trees and stunted bushes. What made it really strange were the stone pillars and boulders lining the narrow path through it. Set at irregular intervals, they loomed above Dewi and Husam like unsteady, giant guards. Dewi could not hide her amazement. She had never seen such things before. When she put her hand on one, she felt that same strange hum she had felt when she had touched the belly of the great lizard in the cave, and when they were in the tunnel. The stones were very old, she thought, old as the dawn of time.

  She and Husam walked quietly for a while; Husam, too, seemed taken with a strange, wary awe as he made his way through the crooked line of stones. Then Husam whispered, “If this village that bird witch saw in her vision was lost to the world, I hope we will not be.”

  “No,” said Dewi, “that boy almost seemed to expect us.”

  “We’ll have to be careful,” said Husam. “I’m not sure I like all this. I hope we haven’t gone from bad to worse. Who’s to know where the Sorcerer really is? And this place—these stones feel sorcerous to me.”

  Dewi was about to say something in reply when Husam suddenly shouted, “Get down! Get down!” and pulled her flat down on the ground. In the next moment, she understood why, for a throbbing roar filled the sky above them. Several vast shadows passed across the sun, a wind howling behind them, bending the bushes and trees. The roar became louder, the shadows bigger, the wind shrieked; then it all passed, fading into the distance, to be followed seconds later by more roars, more black shadows, and a howling wind.

  After a short while, Dewi and Husam crept out of the bushes and looked at each other. “Well,” said Husam, “that shepherd boy will either have been startled or excited out of the little wits he had!”

  “They were helicopters,” Dewi cried. “What were they doing here?”

  “The hantumu use motorbikes,” said Husam. “Why not helicopters? Perhaps they’re looking for us?”

  “Why should they be? They don’t know we’ve escaped,” said Dewi, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “Perhaps they’ve come to rescue the prisoners.”

  Husam grimaced. “Still, let’s keep in the bushes. Afreets can’t see well in vegetation, and the stones will also put it and the hantumu off, if they are afraid or wary of the old things. Let’s hope this village is close enough, and that someone can take us quickly where we want to go.”

  They reached the village a few minutes later, without further incident. It was a very small place and quite ordinary, mostly, just a cluster of some ten or fifteen bark-and-stick huts surrounding a central pavilion that was the most cheerful and upright building there. What made it unusual was that the buildings, and the gardens around them, were entirely surrounded by a vast stone circle. Some of the stones were like those on the path, tall or squat single pieces; but there were one or two that looked like gigantic tables—two uprights with a huge slab laid horizontally across. It gave the whole place a very strange atmosphere, the giant stones looming over the humble little houses, once again like giant guards watching speechlessly through uncounted centuries.

  There were people working in the gardens—men and women dressed in seamless robes of various pale colors, with sashes around their waists. Their hair was braided, they wore conical hats, and their faces were decorated with various designs in blue and green. They stood up from their work and looked at Husam and Dewi as they drew near. There was an expectancy, a lack of surprise, on their faces that reminded them of the reaction of the shepherd boy. The first words spoken to them only confirmed that.

  “Good afternoon, beloved strangers,” said a woman standing at the center of the group. Small and stout, she had an air of purpose and determination about her that suggested she was someone of importance and character. “Welcome here once more among us.”

  Dewi and Husam looked swiftly at each other. Follow their lead, Agung had said. “Er…thank you,” Husam said at last. “Could you help us, kind lady? We need to get to Kotabunga, to see
the Sultan, as soon as possible.”

  It was the woman’s turn to look at her companions. They all wore startled expressions. Then the woman said, “Beloved strangers, we must confer, if you will forgive us.”

  “Of course,” said Dewi, but the woman paid no attention, for she had turned away at once to huddle in confabulation with her companions.

  “These are strange people,” said Husam under his breath to Dewi. “I do not understand them at all.”

  Dewi nodded. “It is as if they were expecting us in some sense,” she said.

  The woman turned back to face them and said, “Beloved strangers! We understand what you are doing. You are testing us in some way, and though we know you could stretch your wings and fly halfway around the world should you so desire it, we know you are conferring on us a great honor by asking us thus to come to your aid.” As Dewi and Husam stared at her, stunned, she went on cheerfully. “And so I, Kembang, headwoman of this village, am charged to tell you this: We will indeed offer up the speeda you left behind last time so you can reach Kotabunga.” She beamed at them. They could only goggle back at her for a minute. What on earth—or off it—did she think they were? And what was a speeda? There was no car in sight—in fact, no transport of any kind, not even a bicycle.