The barbarian had never intended to murder them all in their sleep; it was necessary that some survive, to report that a single giant had done it, and not the people. Circumstances had wakened them sooner than the barbarian intended, but the bailiff’s men had been less bold and skillful than he’d expected, and he’d had no difficulty escaping.
Between their reports and the grapple he’d left on the balcony railing, there seemed a reasonable chance that the emperor’s investigator would accept the story of a single killer. Especially if the investigator was a telepath.
Jampa Lodro turned to Hsu Min and spoke aloud. “Are your questions answered?”
Min stood silent for a moment, still not satisfied. Finally he replied. “He bears the karma of many killings.”
“Indeed? And you?” “I have killed no one!”
“Ever? Can you say that with certainty? Have you examined your past lives so thoroughly?”
295
Min swallowed.
“We have all had the karma of murders to balance. All of us. It is usual that he who murders will himself be murdered, though often not in that same life. Also, usually he who takes lives in one existence must save lives in another.
“Yet there are other factors. Do we not make agreements between lives to do thus and so, that we may experience? And when soldiers fight, is there not a mutual understanding that one or both may die of it? Is there then karma there?”
Min said nothing; simply stood dumb. Jampa put a hand on the novice’s shoulder. “Do not believe something because I or any other teacher says it. But if it seems correct, or if you need it as a tool, accept it as you will. And if later it seems incorrect, set it aside. In time, all shall be known by you, in the Tao.”
Jampa turned back to Nils then, and bowed slightly. Nils bobbed his head in return, feet still dangling.
As the master and the novice walked away, Hsu Min spoke again. “Master, you bowed to him. First. And he scarcely bowed back.”
Jampa answered drily. “Have you noticed his eyes?”
Min shivered. He’d tried to ignore them, forget them. “Yes, master,” he said.
“They are blind, you know.”
Min said nothing to that. He’d talked himself into believing otherwise. Jampa continued.
“They are pieces of glass, made to cover the nakedness of eyes punctured by the servants of another emperor, half a world from here.” The master looked at the novice who walked glumly beside him. “He to whom I bowed,” he went on, “is a tulku of much eminence. We shared our souls yesterday, when he first arrived. Thus I did not question him for myself this evening; I questioned him for you. You are a novice of more than usual promise. As for the depth of our bowing—to measure the depth of bows is to value the inconsequential.”
296
As they walked on, Jampa said nothing more, either about the barbarian, or about the broader questions still troubling Min. The novice would have to sort them out for himself or not, as the case might be.
FORTY-TWO
Hans Gunnarsson, though no longer Skinny Hans, was not overfed. It was true that for the ten centimeters he’d grown since he’d left the ting, he’d gained more than twenty kilos, but the weight was sinew. He’d been living off the land, eating small birds, mainly, and an occasional hare. Which had sufficed, but mostly without satisfying.
Just now he watched something much larger moving through the treetops. He’d seen something like it a couple of days earlier, out hadn’t had a clear look, and didn’t know what it was. Now it seemed he might, for it had stopped moving, as if looking down at him through a thin screen of leaves. He stopped his horse, and without dismounting, carefully drew his bowstring, aimed and let go.
It thrummed, sending the arrow up and through the leaves. He heard a meaty “thunk,” and watched whatever it was plummet; it landed with a “whump” on the forest floor. By that time he had another arrow nocked. When the animal didn’t move, he slipped from the saddle and trotted toward it.