The Yngling and the Circle of Power



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FORTY-NINE

Nils had not kept his “third eye” closed. Early on,
mind still, he’d peeked. And found the ogre—the
“troll” as he thought of it—with its own third eye
closed. Smoothly, like a stealthy tendril, he’d slipped an
awareness unit into its mind and discovered what kind of entity he
had to deal with. For hours the awareness unit had lain quietly,
absorbing what there was to learn. He’d come to know the
child, the jungle cult leader, and the demon of the Sigma Field, as
well as the beingness of the elemental ogre, Maamo.

He also sensed the power the demon would command with its third
eye open, far more than he himself could overcome in any simple
duel. For even outside the Sigma Field, the demon—the master and
his merged acolytes—had the skills it had gained there, and the
power of its own composite nature.

Thus as his horse carried him up the hill, Nils had no plan at
all.

Demon-Maamo peered uphill. In darkness his eyesight was more
penetrating than a human’s, though in daylight its resolution
was no better, if as good. The hint of dawn in the sky had
scarcely influenced visibility, but he could see the gomba
plainly enough, up the moderate slope across night-shadowed
gardens. The broad graveled path he walked curved, and would come
little nearer to it than it was then.

He spoke, and the other ogres stopped the two horses.
Demon-Maamo stepped to one of them. With his great ogre hands, he
grasped the blind man and lifted him from the saddle, then hoisted
him across one shoulder and left the gravel path, uphill toward the
temple.

He was more tired than he’d realized, and the blind man
was heavy. It might have been better after all, he thought, to have
stayed with the horses and approached from above. The older human
was soon puffing, and Demon-Maamo growled an order. With a slight
grunt, one of the other ogres picked Jampa up and carried him too.
Three times they encountered low stone walls, built for aesthetics,
not defense. They lifted their long legs over them without setting
down their burdens.

At the gomba, the yeti guards on the encircling porch
watched them come. When Demon-Maamo was thirty meters away, their
sergeant called firmly to him to halt. Demon-Maamo looked at the
half-drawn bows, then at the sword in the sergeant’s fist.
Then, especially, he looked the sergeant in the eye. But he did not
stop till he was two strides from the steps.

“The emperor is threatened by the monks!” he said
quietly. “I have come to save him from them.”

“The emperor says you are not allowed to enter this
place,” the sergeant countered. His voice was not as firm
now. The warrior he faced, he’d grown up with, and even as a
cub had recognized him as the pack leader, so to speak. Not long
since, there’d been a change in Maamo; his dominance then had
grown beyond challenge. Now it seemed he’d changed again; his
dominance intensified, grown threatening.

Demon-Maamo swung the blind man off his shoulder and flopped him
roughly to the ground, then drew his sword. The ogre carrying Jampa
put the older master down on his feet. Then both of
Demon-Maamo’s ogres drew their swords; though less decisively
than Maamo had. All of this felt uncanny to them, this uncertainty
of duty and counter-duty, this threatening other yeti guards with
weapons.

“Would you prevent me from saving our emperor?”
Demon-Maamo demanded, then started up the steps.

The sergeant gave way. The contradictions troubled him, but he
was reluctant to disbelieve Maamo; Yunnan ogres do not easily
lie.

Also, his orders had been to avoid fighting Maamo, to delay him
only. The emperor’s strategy, unstated, was to keep the demon
in the body and occupied until the Circle of Power had closed to
him the fabric of the Tao.

Then he’d want him killed.

In two strides, Demon-Maamo was on the porch. Behind him came
the other two, one pushing the blind man ahead of him. The other
brought Jampa Lodro. Demon-Maamo thrust open the door to the
hallway, and entered. Six ogres of the night watch followed, and
his own two with the humans. Others, he sensed, were in the
Sanctuary with the Circle and the emperor. Oil lamps lit the hall.
He strode down it to the far end and pushed the door open.

Two ogres stood just inside. They made no move to stop him. The
emperor stood beside the Circle, between it and the door, with four
more yeti guards arrayed beside him. The demon sensed more than the
emperor’s lack of fear; he sensed his readiness, his
confidence. And while he, as Maamo, was physically stronger, the
emperor, he thought, had the Circle to help him. He, on the other
hand, was not in the place of power given him by the Great God. And
to go to it would lose him the great ogre, the physical tool he
needed to destroy the Circle.

Tenzin and the Circle sat as if alone, as if none of this was
taking place. For them there was no gomba, no sanctuary,
no danger. There was only the Field. They hadn’t yet gotten
it closed to the demon, nor could the work be hurried. They worked
with total attention, total intention, divorced from all else. If
they died now, the demon could not be stopped.

As motionless as they were, as vulnerable, it seemed to the
demon that they somehow endangered him; at any rate it was time. He
gathered himself to leap, to attack.

The emperor sensed it, and moved to distract him. “You are
a reasonable demon,” he said. “Let us bargain. Tell me
what you most would like.”

Demon-Maamo gestured at the Circle. “These,
dead.”

“I understand. But let us look at alternatives.”

Demon-Maamo brandished his sword, and instantly the ogres by the
emperor stepped between them. He growled. “Out of my
way!” he said.

They faltered. It was Nils who broke the situation. He had
opened his third eye fully when they’d entered the Sanctuary
and the demon-troll’s attention had become fully occupied. As
was the emperor’s. Psychically, commandingly, the Yngling
spoke.

“Arnoldo Kkechuwa!”

Demon-Maamo stopped, spun around. “Who calls me
that?”

“Your father.”

“What!?” The word burst from him.

“And your mother. She who suckled you, who defended you
from your father and the others. She came to call you
Kkechuwa.”

Demon-Maamo stared at the Northman. “Who are
you?”

“I am he who knows.” He paused, using time. “I
am he who dwelt within you. I know your soul. I am he—”
Another pause. “I am he who saw you steal from your mother.
Who saw you rape your little sister, then strangle her so she could
not tell. I am he—I am he who saw you weep miserably in a corner
of the church, unable to confess to the priest, unable to find
solace in solitary confession to the Virgin. I
am . . . ”

Demon-Maamo howled his pain, drowning out the Yngling,
drowning out the patient droning of the Circle and its leader, who
sat oblivious. The ogres stared. None were telepathic, but it was
clear to them that something powerful was happening, something
uncanny between Maamo and the blind man. The fur stood stiffly
along their spines, and the one who’s held Nils’s arm
had let go and backed away half a step, staring not at his emperor
or his leader now, but at the captive.

“I am he who saw you sacrifice to a god who was not God,
saw him devour you all and give you nothing. Saw this would-be
ruler of the world, this emperor and his geshe, save you
unwittingly. I am he . . . ”

Hans watched through a window. Clearly Nils was in danger.
He’d nocked an arrow and half drawn his bowstring, surprised
at how stiff the blacksmith’s bow was. The largest troll, the
one who was clearly chief, was the one who threatened Nils, but
others were in the way. Hans had no decent shot at him, and
didn’t dare move to some other window; that might be when the
attack came.

This time the troll chief didn’t howl; he roared! Raising
his sword, he took a first step toward Nils, and Hans shot. Shot
the troll who’d held Nils’s arm, for he still had no
clear shot at the troll chief. The arrow struck deeply, for the
yeti guards wore no mail, only a breastplate. It severed the spine,
slashed through the heart, penetrated the cartilaginous sternum and
stopped against the breastplate. The troll collapsed while its
chief paused to stare. At the same time Hans shouted, “Run,
Nils, run!”

The ogre nearest Hans’s window turned and leaped toward it
as if catapulted. Despite himself the boy jumped back. The railing
behind him was buttocks high to his long frame; he toppled backward
over it and fell to the ground, a meter and a half below the porch.
The first ogre through didn’t see him at first, then did, and
hopped over the railing, sword in hand.

There was the sharp “blam!” of a pistol from a
corner of the porch, and another. The ogre jerked, turned, and came
back over the railing like a leopard. The pistol fired again, once,
twice. The ogre faltered, slapping at its chest. Another came
through behind it, and others through other windows, windows with
both glass and shutters closed. The pistol banged again, then
again, and was silent, empty.

Inside, Demon-Maamo had turned to the window and the shout, the
source of the arrow. Then realized that the ogres were moving
toward the windows as if in relief at having something they could
attack unquestioningly. Ignoring the blind man now, he spun and
pounced to the Circle, striking with his sword. As he killed the
first monk, the shared trance was broken, but before the others
could react and scatter, he’d killed three more. Tenzin fled
toward a window and the ogre rushed after him, cleaving the
geshe diagonally from shoulder to waist.

Outside, gunfire snarled, the racketing noise of an automatic
rifle. He didn’t notice. He turned toward Songtsan Gampo,
who’d drawn his own sword. The only ogres who’d stood
firm through the confusion were the four beside the ruler. The
emperor was pointing, shouting: “Kill him! Kill him! Kill the
traitor!”

Through the windows came roars of pain, screams of terror,
confusing them further. One ogre who’d gone out a window
climbed back in, yammering loudly in the ogre speech, then ran
across the Sanctuary, jumping corpses, slipped in a pool of blood
and nearly fell, catching himself with one hand, before bounding
headfirst through a window on the other side, bursting out its
glass.

The four beside the emperor neither left nor obeyed him. Now the
giant ogre turned to him and attacked. Only one of the guards
stepped to meet him, and Demon-Maamo overwhelmed him, cut him down.
The other three stepped back. Demon-Maamo struck, smashing down the
emperor’s futile parry, splitting him from crown to pelvis,
snapping bones like twigs.

Then he turned to Nils, snarling, big fangs bared, and took one
step. Gunfire hammered from a window, and the great ogre body went
down. In the interface dimension between reality as we know it and
the Sigma Field, there was a terrible psychic scream of frustration
and anger that seemed to go on for a long time, though objectively
it lasted for perhaps five seconds. Then it cut off abruptly.
Before it died, the Circle had done enough, accomplished its
work.



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