Snow, Fire, Sword Page 6

  “He is a man, then,” whispered Adi. “He is not a demon.”

  “There are worse things even than demons,” boomed Senopati. “Demons are what they are because it is their nature. Men who become demonic through their deliberate embrace of evil are worse still, and far more dangerous.”

  “Great Lord Senopati,” said Anda Mangil quietly, after a short silence. “We need your guidance in one more matter—could it be possible that the spirit of Kris Rajadi is bound up with the ring that Adi wears?”

  “Kris Rajadi’s spirit is bound to the sky-iron,” growled Senopati. “It does not wander the earth but stays in Kotabunga. It is a different Sword you seek. You must not be fixed in your thoughts.”

  “Then, great Lord Senopati, the ring on the hand of my other friend does not bear the spirit of Fire either?”

  “It does not bear the spirit of Fire,” rumbled Senopati, “but it may call fire, if the right words are used and there is no other way. As indeed may the other ring. Both are rings of protection, and because you seek protection in the water realms, their power is bound up with the opposite of water, which is fire. Yet they are not, in themselves, what you seek.”

  Anda Mangil bowed deeply. “We thank you, O great Lord Senopati.”

  “There is nothing to thank me for, Anda Mangil. I am only pleased that I am not altogether forgotten in this world.”

  Why, thought Adi suddenly, there is a wistful sadness in Senopati’s voice. “O Lord Senopati, I was afraid to enter this place, but now I am glad,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Dewi. “You have been very kind to us, Lord Senopati.”

  Senopati let out a strange, scratchy kind of laugh. “Kind! It is a long time since anyone used that word of me. Even in life I was not given that name very often. But it is a good one. I will cherish it, in the long darkness of my stony sleep. Thank you.”

  “O Lord Senopati,” cried Dewi, “was it difficult to fight the Demon King when you were alive? Did you know what to do? We are so confused and uncertain, my Lord.”

  When Senopati’s voice came again, it was not big and booming, but soft, and touched with memory. “Yes, child, it was difficult indeed. We often did not know what to do. We were afraid, and confused, and sometimes despairing, for the Demon King was strong, and at first we were not. He was full of tricks and made us lose our way a number of times, but we fought because we could not bear to see everything destroyed. We fought because we could not live, otherwise. We could not be slaves.” The voice was fading, fading. They strained to hear it as it became softer and softer. “Do not forget that light and darkness are mixed, that the child comes out from the watery darkness of the mother’s belly into the light, that the sun’s heat can burn all in its path, yet without its distant light, all would die.” The voice had quite faded now, and Senopati was once again a strangely lifelike statue, stone eyes fixed eternally on some point behind those who knelt at the altar, massive hands clasped around the kris on its chest.

  They spoke little in the car as they pulled away from Chandi Maya and resumed the journey to Siluman. The gods and heroes of the ancient stories had once seemed so different to them. Yet now, both Adi and Dewi knew that was not the case. Senopati had become a great legend, a great hero, and eventually the guardian of the Temple of the Great Mother, but he had once been a young, confused person. He had not known from the beginning the outcome of his fight with the forces of the Demon King; he had suffered and been afraid, like them. The thought gave them immense comfort.

  NINE

  DEWI HAD SEEN the sea only in pictures, and even the best of them did not prepare you for the reality—and certainly not the reality of Siluman. As Anda Mangil cautiously crept the car down the narrow cliff road that led to the beach, Dewi’s heart beat fast and her scalp prickled with nervous anticipation.

  Siluman beach, of jet-black sand, lay at the foot of great gray cliffs honeycombed with caves. Makeshift shrines and tents huddled down one end of the beach, protected from the wind by a jut of cliff. The cold southern ocean that prowled at the edges of the sand was known throughout Jayangan for its massive waves and dangerous currents, but it was the sheer expanse of it that took Dewi’s breath away. She had never imagined that it could really be as big as this, stretching into the infinity of the horizon, abruptly cutting off the earth. She had always lived surrounded by land and sky, in a world bounded by green fields, with the quiet forest at its edge. She had always lived surrounded by people, gardens, houses, and the soft smells of incense and food cooking. The sea was big and wild, and not a track creased its surface, no road made by man could touch its wilderness. How could they ever think of going into such a place? The beach of Siluman was only the portal into Rorokidul’s realm, and even it looked mighty inhospitable to human beings.

  “Wah,” said Adi softly, beside her. “An amazing sight!”

  Dewi nodded. She was about to speak when he wound down the window of the car and put his head out, sniffing delightedly at the air. “This does me good!”

  Dewi stared blankly at him. He saw her expression. “My parents’ village is near the sea,” he explained, smiling. “My father is a fisherman, and I helped him on the boat before I got the apprenticeship with my master.”

  “You went on the sea?” It made her feel queasy just thinking of it. You would be so small on that vastness, a speck hanging from the jaws of a great, blind, greedy beast.

  “Of course! Not only on it, but in it. I even learned to swim,” he said gently. “The sea can be good to those who respect her and understand she is not to be treated lightly.”

  “It must be different in Jatimur,” said Dewi. “Maybe the sea is a tame thing there, and not enchanted. The southern ocean is not like your ordinary fisherman’s quiet sea, is it, Anda Mangil?”

  Thus appealed to, Anda Mangil smiled. “I do not know the sea at Jatimur, and so I cannot be sure,” he said diplomatically, “but the southern ocean is indeed a place of great renown, and its mistress a great queen.”

  The car bumped down the last few bits of road, onto the beach. Here, Anda Mangil paused, the engine still running. “Look over there,” he said, pointing to the cliffs at the far end of the beach. “Over there is a cave, which is the entrance to Rorokidul’s realm. Tuan Gelombang guards it. We will go there together.” He opened his door, and Dewi felt her throat flutter with apprehension. For a moment, she wished he would just close the door, turn the car around, and head back up the cliff road, away from this place. But she said nothing of it, only opened her own door and followed Adi and Anda Mangil as they climbed out of the car, carefully locked the windows and doors, and set off across the beach to the cliff.

  Despite the makeshift shrines and tents, which meant people must live here at least part of the time, or at least visit on pilgrimages, there seemed to be no one about. This could be explained by the fact it was the middle of the working week, but also because the weather down here on the beach was so unpleasant, with a vicious little wind whipping up stinging scurries of hot black sand. If there was anyone at home, they were staying inside their tents out of the wind and not bothering to come out and look at them. And why should they? Pilgrims often came to this spot to ask for the Queen of the Southern Sea’s help or blessings. They would be a common sight here.

  Dewi found the sand very uncomfortable to walk on. Hot and clinging, it slipped into her sandals. She had an unpleasant image of it as a thin coating over the entrance to hell. In her tight clothes, she stumbled more than once. The blustery wind blew the gritty stuff into her face and down her neck, adding to her discomfort. What made it worse was that Adi and Anda Mangil were surging on ahead, seemingly quite at ease on this unstable ground. Once, Adi turned to help her, but she gave him a glare, saying stiffly that she could manage perfectly well. She couldn’t, but she was never going to tell him that. She was the daughter of a great dukun, not some simpering little girl.

  She concentrated on her annoyance in order to stop thinking about the great beast ocean
that prowled and growled just a few meters away. She found it all very disturbing: the way the waves reached like the flickering tongues of frogs or snakes to catch at the sand; the way humpbacked billows of foam and glassy water rushed and roared from a great distance, to expire on the beach, then gather themselves up again and retreat; the way the black sand at the edge of the water, sheened by the endless passage of waves, acquired a weird mirrored translucence that seemed bottomless, and that she could imagine falling into, endlessly, like a hole in deep space. The briny smells and wild shouting of the sea set her teeth on edge; looking ahead at Adi and Anda Mangil trudging confidently, she knew that even if she shouted at them to wait, the noise of the wind and the waves would carry her words away.

  A picture of her home, of the garden, of her sister and brothers and her father came into her mind. O Lord of all creation, she prayed, dear Lord, please let us get home safely, back to our village, back to the smells of home, the routines of every day. I will never be dissatisfied and bored again.

  “Is all well, little lady?” The harshly accented voice at her elbow made her jump, and she turned hastily to see a curious-looking man regarding her. He had just come out of one of the tents she had passed, and stood there eyeing her with frank interest. He was very tall and powerfully built, dressed in flowing black robes, waisted with a thick bronze belt, and there was a black-and-white cloth wrapped around his head. His face was very wrinkled, with light-brown hawk’s eyes deeply set into strong, hard features. What could be seen of his hair under the headcloth was iron gray, but he wore a thick black mustache and a forked beard, both of which had been hennaed so that their blackness shone with reddish lights.

  Dewi lowered her eyes. The man’s foreign appearance and his direct gaze made her feel very uneasy, but she did not want to appear impolite, so she whispered, “Thank you, sir. All is well. I go to join my companions over at the cliff there.”

  The man shaded his eyes and looked across the sand. “Ah. You go to the cave, to visit Tuan Gelombang.” He looked down at Dewi. “You will not find him there. He had to leave this morning on most urgent business. He must have been in a hurry, for men on motorbikes came to fetch him.”

  Dewi’s breath caught. She stared at the man. “Men on motorbikes?”

  “Yes. I only caught sight of them from the back, mind. They took him up the other side of the cliff—there’s another road up there—What!”

  They had both jumped, for the deafening blast of a car horn had ripped at the air. Whirling around, Dewi saw four men all in black, mounted on motorbikes, right beside Anda Mangil’s car. They wore masks that covered the top halves of their faces. And at the front of one bike crouched a thing like a twisted monkey in shape—but whose eyes glowed red as fire.

  “The hantumu! The demon!” she shrieked. “Adi! Anda Mangil! They’re coming! They’re coming!” Her words were carried away by the wind and drowned out by the screaming of the car horn. She began to run toward her friends, shrieking warnings as she went. Before she could get very far, she fell over, sinking into the sand. She scrambled up, covered in sand, sobbing; and all at once, she was gripped around the waist and whirled into a black storm, disappearing into stifling folds of cloth. A fierce voice hissed in her ear, “Keep quiet. Very quiet.” Half dead with fear, Dewi did exactly as she was told. She felt her captor taking a step back, then another, then another, and another. Wrapped in suffocating, wind-rough cloth, she could see nothing at all, but she could hear sounds very well: someone else’s heart just above her ear, beating regularly and calmly; shouts; the car horn blasting on and on, like a scream for help; the roar of motorbike engines; and the hiss and sputter of sand thrown up by motorbike wheels racing past….

  Then silence. She felt herself being put down. “You can come out now.” The man’s voice startled her so much, she gasped. “But you still stay quiet, do you hear?”

  The cloak was taken off her. She blinked and discovered she was in a large, rather dark tent made of black woolen fabric. The owner of the tent sat cross-legged near her, on a carpet. He had a glass of something in his hand. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “It’s mint tea. Good for shock. Drink it,” he ordered when she showed no sign of doing so.

  She hesitated, then drank down the tea. “Thank you. It was very kind of you to—”

  “Don’t mention it,” said the man. He was looking curiously at her, and she felt rather uncomfortable under his scrutiny. She got to her feet. “I had better go. My friends…”

  “You can’t go out there just now, little heart,” said the man, also rising. “Wait a little while. They might come back, and you’ll be a goner if they do. They can’t see you in here. They can’t even see my tent.”

  “How can that be?”

  “My tent has been sprinkled with zummiyah water,” said the man, “and I have written ‘Adhubilah’ at the entrance.” He misinterpeted Dewi’s baffled look. “Zummiyah is holy water from the sacred well near the House of Light in Al Aksara, the Great Desert,” he explained, “and ‘Adhubilah’…”

  “I know, it’s the sacred formula that keeps evil spirits at bay, but only spirits from—”

  “From the world of the Jinns, that’s right,” finished the man. “Why do you look surprised? I had a few adventures in my time, in the world of the Jinns, and not all of them remember me fondly. Lucky I was so armed this time, for out there, with those wicked men who hide their faces, was an afreet, of that I am sure.”

  Dewi knew the stories of the Jinn. They were the Hidden People of the original Mujisal of Al Aksara, the Great Desert and, like the otherworlders of Jayangan, were of many and different kinds, living in different realms. Some were good, some bad, some in between. The worst ones of all, those who came from the demonic realm of Jehannem, ruled over by the dread Lord Iblis, were the afreet—shape-shifters with hearts of pure evil.

  “Oh, sir,” she cried, on the verge of tears. “Are you sure it was an afreet with those hantumu?”

  The man nodded. “I can smell an afreet from a long way away. It was good they did not find you.”

  Dewi whispered, “I thank you for—”

  “For nothing. What else would you have had me do?” He put his face to the tent flap and carefully looked out. “They are gone.”

  “I will go, then,” Dewi said. “Thank you very much, and may God be with you.”

  “No,” said the man. “You must not go from here on your own. It is not safe.”

  “My friends—”

  “Are not out there anymore. That is all I know, though we must hope they escaped,” he said.

  “I must go and look for them,” she cried, her lips trembling a little.

  “You will not go alone,” said the man sharply. “So you were going to the realm of Queen Rorokidul,” he continued.

  “How did you know?” she asked warily. He had saved her from her enemies, but could she really trust this strange foreigner?

  “It’s obvious,” said the man. “I know what Tuan Gelombang does, and you were going to see him. You are dressed like a princess. Strange creatures, including a bad Jinn, are after you. You are not at Siluman for no reason. And what better reason is there than to ask for the help of the powerful Queen of the Southern Sea in some matter?”

  “Oh,” said Dewi, rather blankly.

  “What is your name, little heart?”

  “Dewi. I am the daughter of the great dukun Bapar Wiriyanto, of—”

  “A dukun’s daughter!” The man stroked his mustache, smiling. “Ha! Well, well, that is well!” He rubbed his hands in a gesture Dewi found rather alarming. “Why were you going to Rorokidul’s realm? To find out why those hantumu and that damned afreet are after you, little girl?”

  “I am not a little girl,” said Dewi, stung. “I am almost fourteen.” She took a deep breath and said, rather haughtily, “And what of you, sir? Are you not going to tell me your name?”

  “Ha! The dukun’s daughter has teeth. Excellent!” said the man, smiling. “But
you may not like it, when I tell you my name.”

  “I believe I need to know it, sir,” said Dewi.

  “Very well, then. Long ago, I left my homeland of Al Aksara as an exile. I have been in Jayangan a long, long time now. And here, people call me Tuan Kematian.”

  Dewi stared at him. Lord Death! His name was Lord Death!

  Kematian smiled, reminiscing. “I worked for a long time at the Court of Kotabunga. I was the Sultan’s Chief Executioner. For many, many years, no great judgment was complete without me. I sent many traitors and murderers and villains to their deaths—and well deserved too.”

  Dewi took an involuntary step back, feeling cold all over. The man sighed. “People think I like nothing better than to cut off heads, and that I will seek any opportunity to do so. Not a bit of it. I worked for justice and was bound by its rules. In any case, I am no longer an executioner, merely an old fisherman who has finally found peace and reflection by the sea.” He saw Dewi’s expression. “You may as well trust me. I am the only one who can help you right now.”

  Dewi had never met anyone like this before. He had few manners, no graces; he looked fearsome and his past was fearful. In a play, he would have been cast as an ogre. And yet she remembered Anda Mangil’s words—he’d said new ways of seeing were needed, to face this new threat.

  This man had certainly saved her from the hantumu. Besides, he obviously understood something of the world of the Jinns, the desert spirits. If it really was an afreet with the hantumu, she would need his specialized knowledge, for she knew very little about Jinns, having never seen one before. She did not have her father, or Anda Mangil, or even Adi, to advise her on the proper course of action. She would have to make her own decision. “Very well,” she said, at last. “I thank you, Tuan Kematian.”