Champion of the Dead

Champion of the Dead

by

Steve Perry

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 - Steve Perry

A Buddhist Martial Arts Fantasy

DEDICATIONS

If you have read my books, it will come as no surprise that this one, too, is for Dianne, as are they all, and will be as long as I can write them.

This book is also for Maha Guru Stevan and the ongoing students of Pukulan Pentjak Silat Sera Plinck who show up for class in Washington state. There are new faces to go with the old ones, but there are some who have been around a while: Todd, Tiel, Cotten, Nessa, John, Michael, Serge, Ken, Toby, Edwin, Irene, Rodney, Tim, Tim, and Gregory. And down there in L.A., Barnes.

Selamat, brothers and sisters.

Oh, and for Rory, for making me think harder about it all, even though we still disagree.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks this round go to: Alan Maisey, Tosanaji, for the black steel.

Silat Sera Plinck players will notice many similarities between their art and the Tibetan war art of Dmag-lag-rtsal; frankly, I’d be astounded if they did not.

Some of the places are more or less real in general, but not specifically. I have taken some liberties with the geography of Oregon and Washington, as well as assorted hells and Buddhist doctrines, and made up a lot of things that don’t exist. The imaginary people and historical personages depicted herein behave as my mad brain has them behave–it’s all fantasy.

Special thanks to the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, on general principles, and a hope that the Tibetan people will get their homeland back someday.

And to Roger Zelazny, of course. He was the man.

First readers who offered input, to whom I am also indebted:

Dan, Edwin, Tiel, Todd, Toby, Brad, Dave, Jeff, Jeff, Jordan, Mushtaq, Peter, Scott, Travis, Todd, Wade,

FRONT QUOTES

"When this is, that is.

"From the arising of this comes the arising of that.

"When this isn't, that isn't.

"From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that."

Buddha, the Blessed One,

Assutava Sutta

(Translated from the Pali by

Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

Big wheel keep on turnin’/

John Fogerty,

Proud Mary

PROLOGUE

In the Bardo

Kane blundered upon Yama, the Lord of Death, in a sub-hell that seemed two parts fire and one part smoky limestone cave. It stank of rotten eggs and burned copper, but it wasn’t so bad as these places went. Sanjiva, maybe, or Kalasutra–no worse than one of those. Warm, but bearable. He preferred the hot ones to the cold ones

The Death God looked up from his counting.

When you died, it was Yama who measured your karma, and decided what reward, and what punishment you merited. He was usually depicted as having three eyes, huge fangs, and a wide and stout body. In this instance–one of the millions of his avatars–his look was in the general vicinity, but not quite what Kane beheld. This version of Yama had three eyes, though the third one, in the middle of his forehead, was a pulsing red orb, no sign of a pupil. He wore the traditional crown of miniature skulls, his hair was jet, and long and flowing, but his naked and obviously-male body was that of a bodybuilder on steroids. Intricately patterned tattoos, all in dark red, pulsed and glowed against his blue skin from head to toes. You couldn’t risk looking at those patterns long–they shifted, writhed, hypnotically drew you in, and if you didn’t pull your gaze away, you would be caught and paralyzed, to be harvested at Yama’s leisure. And he might wait a million subjective years to get around to it as you stood frozen in place.

The smell of the oil on Yama’s glistening skin was patchouli and brimstone, sharp, musky, heady.

The Death God, who had been separating small black and white stones into two piles, counting the karma of some poor soul Kane didn’t see, must be hidden in the smoke, glared at Kane. Then he smiled, and his fangs gleamed like old ivory. Kane, he said. Ah ... It was a voice like a locomotive rolling full out, resonant, penetrating, filling the chamber.

Yama knew who he was.

Oh, shit ...

Kane was a martial arts expert, he carried a gleaming sword half his own height, and his spirit body here was young, strong, and fit. He had trekked through the Fifth Bardo many times, fought and defeated many Wrathful Deities, from blood-drinkers to soul-renders, but–Yama?

Fuck this, Kane said. He turned and ran.

He heard the laughter echoing all around him, the amused triumph of a malevolent god, and his only hope was that Yama didn’t feel like working up a sweat by chasing him. He hated to be interrupted in the middle of a stone-count, so the word had it, but maybe he would rather finish than have to start over.

Or, maybe not. What man could know the mind of a god?

Kane sprinted for all he was worth. Usually, there were rules, but a god of Yama’s stature could bend those if he wanted.

After what seemed like a long time, Yama’s laughter faded behind him, and Kane slowed his run a little, to a fast jog. No point in wasting his energy. Yama wasn’t the only denizen down here, and he had a while before he could go home.

Years back, in his wildest dreams, Kane would never have imagined himself doing what he was doing now. Jogging through a Buddhist hell, looking for a lost soul.

Life–and death–how very strange they were ...

PART ONE:

THE WHEEL TURNS

ONE

Kelso, Washington

Now

We need your help, Chang said.

Kane nodded.

Kane’s grandmother’s house–his, now–was in Kelso, Washington, an hour’s easy drive from Portland up I-5 toward Seattle. The house sat on top of a hill outside the city limits, east of the interstate, with pastures fore and aft, ten or twelve acres altogether. No animals. Gram had given up the chickens, goats, and horses years before she passed on.

On a clear morning from the porch, you could see the Longview Bridge where it spanned the Columbia River. The city was reaching closer, but it hadn’t gotten there yet. The property was probably worth ten or fifteen times what his grandmother had paid for it thirty years back, but he wasn’t interested in selling it. It was home–as much as a place without Peek could be.

Kane had turned the living room into a half-assed office, and that was where he now sat behind his desk, looking at the potential client. The spring day was cranking up to be clear and warm, the morning fog mostly burned off. The air smelled fresh outside. Clean.

Wyndom Chang, a wealthy man from Seattle, was twice Kane’s age, in his mid-sixties, short, fit, gray-haired, with a lot of smile wrinkles. He was Eurasian, and there was a power about him, an easy grace–he was comfortable in his body–though his aura was ... odd. Kane couldn’t get the colors and flavors of it nailed down. Like a cuttlefish shifting through the spectrum, it flashed. Not just one or two colors, but a rainbow’s worth.

Huh. He’d never seen one like it, but, then, he wasn’t as good as reading them as Rinpoche had been. He worked with what he had, and in this case, that obviously wasn’t enough.

Well. It didn’t really matter, did it? Chang wasn’t the concern.

Chang’s face was composed when he spoke of his daughter.

We have had the best doctors in the world examine her, and there has been no conclusion. She is wasting away, and they don’t know why.

Kane nodded.

She is only thirty, he continued. And we are trying everything, but so far, nothing has helped.

Thirty. Two years younger than Kane. Eight years older than Peek had been when the drunk driver plowed into their car and killed her. They’d had only two years together. He still missed her every day.

The doctor I trust the most says she has weeks, maybe less.

Kane nodded again. Are you a believer, sir?

Chang shrugged. Does it matter?

Not really. Kane hadn’t been a believer, either. You didn’t need to believe in the sun to enjoy its warmth, Rinpoche had taught him. He still wasn’t a Buddhist–there too many rules that didn’t make sense to him. Now and then, he would have a beer or a burger or some fried chicken, and according to some of the doctrines, there was a special hell for meat-eaters: A ten-thousand foot tall mountain of human feces that the inhabitants had to climb. Every day, they had to start over, and they never lost their sense of smell or taste. Climbers, so the story went, tended to slip and fall face-down a lot ...

If you believed in that? Well, stopping at BK for a double Whopper wasn’t going to appeal. Eat it now, climb–and smell it–later ...

Then again, the Dalai Lama said that if meat was all there was to eat, then that’s what you ate. In the high realms of Tibet, that was a pragmatic choice: Not a lot of fresh veggies to be found three miles up the mountain. And, since once you achieved human status, you didn’t come back as an animal the next time you incarnated, you didn’t have to worry that the yak stew you were eating was your great-uncle Harold. Buddhism had changed with every country and culture who had embraced it. Kane wouldn’t be surprised if, a hundred years from now, that American Buddhists would have figured out a way to allow for fast-food from Mickey D’s. It was a most pragmatic philosophy. Adaptation was the key to survival.

Chang leaned forward. Kane could smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes, though he hadn’t tried to light one up here. Will you help me, Mr. Kane? Help my daughter?

Kane had never gotten used to it, that raw, naked emotion, when a parent or a spouse or lover looked him in the eyes and asked for his help. It hit him in the gut every time. Someone they loved was dying, and he couldn’t stop that, but he could help them. A lot of times, they didn’t believe it, but they were willing to try anything. Love was the most powerful thing in the universe, Kane believed. People could move planets using it–if they could find a spot to stand and figure out where to put the lever.

I will.

Chang leaned back, a look of relief on his face. He reached into his jacket’s inside pocket and came out with a checkbook.

Do we need to sign papers? A contract?

Kane shook his head. No. Not necessary.

Chang retrieved a pen from the same pocket. He wrote the check and handed it to Kane.

It was all filled in, save the amount.

Kane looked at him.

She is my only child. Write in as much as you want.

Kane nodded. He understood. He would give everything he had, everything he would ever have, to have been there for Peek. You couldn’t put a price on such things.

He had a sliding scale for his fees. A rich man would pay more than a poor one, but he wasn’t out to get wealthy from this. Shepherding a soul through the bardo and into his or her next incarnation wasn’t something a man did for the money. It was a task only a few men could accomplish, and one that a warrior did because he could. It was, Rinpoche had taught him, a sacred duty. So Kane charged a modest fee, and while it was tempting to fill in the amount for seven figures–an act at which Chang probably wouldn’t even blink, being worth at least a thousand times that–he knew better. Karma always came round for its due, and he liked to keep his as clean as he could. Yama knew his name, which couldn’t be good.

Anything else? Chang asked.

I would like to see her. To connect to her essence while she is alive. It isn’t absolutely necessary, but it helps.

Whatever you need.

Kane looked at his computer keyboard. He clicked on an icon. His calendar bloomed. I have a class this evening. Tomorrow, I can drive up.

The address is on the check, Chang said. Our home.

He handed Chang a card. This is my cell phone number, and the house number, here. If something should happen before I arrive, call me, immediately.

Chang took the card. Thank you. You can’t know how much this means.

Kane nodded, wordlessly, but Chang was wrong. He knew. The most important things in life were love and death. Everything else ran a distant second.

#

His garage wasn’t that large, space for one big car or two small ones, but Kane had cleaned it out, and it was room enough for his class, which currently numbered four, to be able to move around without hitting the walls too often.

At six p.m., three of his four students had arrived. Kane said, Anybody hear from Rosie?

Nobody had.

Rosie Helm, in her mid-thirties, was an accountant. They’d met when she had done his taxes. She lived in Portland, and came from aikido. Four years into this art.

Traffic was bad coming out of Vancouver, June volunteered.

Kane nodded. Well, let’s get started.

Kane stood with his legs spread just past shoulder-width, his arms outstretched by his hips, palms forward. He made the formal bow.

The students mirrored him.

"Okay. Let’s start with the zhabsbros, please."

The three students spread out and began to walk the patterned dances–named zhabsbros–that formed the core of the Tibetan martial art called Dmag-lag-rtsal, usually just called Dmag, which came out more like Maahguh.

These were short forms, only a few moves each, and there were but eighteen of them. They could be walked on various patterns, from a straight line to a triangle to a square to a cross, and various combinations of each or all. The dancer punched or elbowed or grabbed as he–or she–moved their feet, and the hand and footwork together made up all the possible moves a fighter would ever need, once you knew all eighteen of the forms.

They were simple, but not easy. Sometimes, those two weren’t even distant cousins.

Down the hill, a black Ford Taurus made the turn into the driveway, pulled up behind the other cars, and parked. Rosie Helm alighted and hurried to the garage.

She was a big woman, five-ten, maybe one-fifty, fit, and had been a volleyball player in college, before she got into aikido. She had a black belt in that. What his grandmother would call a handsome woman, she radiated good health.

Sorry I’m late, Sam, she said. She gave him a brief smile. Battery was dead. I had to call Triple-A.

Saul was in the squat in the middle of Zee Five. He said, Friends don’t let friends drive Fords.

That was good for a general laugh.

You should get rid of that car, Saul continued. Get a Chevy.

She looked at Solly, deadpan: Do they still make those?

Funny.

Rosie looked at Kane, smiled again.

Bow in, Kane said, returning her grin. We can discuss automobile preferences later.

He faced her, repeated the formal bow, then went and stood in the doorway to watch them. They were a good group, his four. All of them were worthy of the First Level. Past that, he didn’t know if any of them would progress to the next stage.

He didn’t look for students, didn’t advertise, and, frankly didn’t want anybody who wasn’t ready for the art. The saying was, "You don’t find Dmag, Dmag finds you," and that had been true for him, both as a student and a teacher. There had to be something in you that the art called to, and it was hard to know who would have that and who wouldn’t until you felt their aura. If they had it, they could train. If not, there was no point. He had turned away forty students over the years, not all of them happy to be told he wouldn’t teach them, but it was what it was. You were ready or you weren’t.

Kane smiled as he remembered how he had come to the art. Still funny, after fifteen years, that memory ...

TWO

Portland, Oregon

Then

Saturday, and Sam had gone to check out a kung-fu school over on the east side. He watched the class for thirty minutes, and even at seventeen, he was was pretty sure he could take anybody in the place, including the teacher, so he bugged out. There was a new guitar store downtown just opened, and he wanted to cruise the place and see what gear they had, so the trip wouldn’t be a total loss.

He cut through an alley on his way back to where he had parked his car. He was in a hurry, because the meter was about to run out and he didn’t want to get a ticket, but he came to a door, painted a bright red, inset into the dirty brick.

There was a sign, a little hand-painted thing on the door.

He had no clue what it meant, but it caught his attention:

The door wasn’t locked, and when he pushed, it opened.

Place smelled like the sandalwood incense his Gram burned. She was an old hippie who never got tired of telling him how great the fucking sixties had been, must have said that a thousand times. Yeah, peace, love, harmony. Where had all that gone? They hadn’t done too good a job, the hippies. Quit too soon.

Then again, Gram had taught him how to play the guitar, and he was long past Michael, Row the Boat Ashore, and Kumbayah, so he owed her for that.

The inside walls were painted red and yellow, electrically-bright, and there was a short hallway that led to the right.

He heard some men singing–well, droning, more like, four or five of them, and he edged toward the sound.

Around the corner, the first thing he saw was a large, blue plastic bucket full of sand, with several sticks of smoking incense stuck into it. That explained the smell.

The room was big, high ceiling, almost square, more red and yellow, and in it, there was one old man seated cross-legged on a cushion, eyes closed and mouth open, and all those voices were coming from the one old man.

Wow.

Kane recognized the clothes–a dark red robe over a yellow shirt, both sleeveless, exposing the old man’s arms. Tibetan. He had seen that movie with Keanu Reeves about Buddha, and this guy had the look, yeah, some kind of Buddhist.

He started to ease back into the hall, but the old man opened his eyes and grinned real big. Lot of smile wrinkles next to his eyes. Ah. You have arrived!

Well, yeah. But he must have mistaken Kane for somebody else.

The old man caught the look. You are a warrior, right?

Kane shrugged. Yeah. Sort of. If a black belt in TKD counted.

"You came for Dmag-lag-rtsal."

Kane must have looked puzzled again. Mahg log pretzel?

That’s what it says on the door. More of that wrinkled smile.

Right, like he could read that shit.

The old man stood. Well, actually, he ... arose from the cross-legged sit, floating slowly upward like smoke.

Nice move, for an old guy.

We might as well get to it, he said. He motioned with one hand to Kane: Come at me.

What?

What? You never saw a kung-fu movie? You are the young, but cocky warrior who considers himself adept at martial arts. I am the old master who can turn you inside out without raising a sweat. You attack, I demonstrate my superiority, you are then eager to become my student. He gave Kane that big, shit-eating, really-wrinkled grin.

Kane laughed. Yeah, he had seen that one a bunch of times. Half the kung-fu movies made had that scene in them.

The old dude was nuts. He didn’t need any part of that. He shook his head. I don’t think so. He turned to leave.

Are you certain? Better check.

Kane frowned. Check? Check what? He turned around–

The old man was gone.

Not there, here, he said. Behind you.

Kane spun, dropped into a cat-stance, his hands coming up into fists. The old man was between him and the door.

Holy shit!

Come, come, the old man said. Still smiling like a loon, and giving him that wave-in. Give us a punch.

Kane came out of his stance and lowered his hands. "If you can fucking teleport, there is no fucking way I’m swinging at you!"

You are smarter than you look. My students sometimes call me ‘Rinpoche,’ he said. Are you ready to learn?

It was beyond weird, but he felt it, immediately. Whatever the hell was going on here, he had to know. Just like that. Yeah. My name is Kane.

Oh, yes. I know who you are. And what.

Sam didn’t know what that meant, but it looked like he was gonna miss the new guitar store, and get a parking ticket, too.

But, turned out he didn’t get a ticket. Karma, maybe ...

THREE

Kelso, Washington

Now

After his class was done and the students gone, Kane shut the garage, and went inside the house. He thought about making some supper, decided he would rather play the guitar a bit first, so he headed into the living room. He could do a fair amount of rock and pop stuff, but