Shike by Robert J. Shea (the reading list txt) 📕

up at the edge of the sea. They boarded Chinese junks and crossed the barrier of water to the Sunrise Land. Jebu wept and cried out helplessly as he saw the samurai overwhelmed, first Kyushu taken, then the Home Provinces. The Mongols burned Heian Kyo, put all its people to the sword, and drove the Emperor into the east, just as the Takashi and their Emperor had once been driven into the west. The last stand was at Kamakura. Jebu watched in agony as Taniko herself stood on the battlements of the Shogun’s castle, shooting arrows into the waves of invaders. When it was hopeless she turned and threw herself into the flames consuming the stronghold.

The leader of the conquerors, Arghun Baghadur, turned his craggy face towards the mountain where Jebu stood and held out his arms, offering up his triumph. Looking up, Jebu saw that the giant beside him was now his old master, Kublai Khan.

Now the defeated people of the Sunrise Land began to work for the Mongols. New cities appeared on the ruins of the old. Ships were built, sailing ships after the Chinese manner but bigger and more seaworthy. They set out from the ports of the Sunrise Land, and from China and Korea. With hua pao mounted on their decks, they were able to demolish enemy fleets from a great distance, just as Mongol horsemen destroyed enemy armies with clouds of arrows. The huge new vessels transported the Great Khan’s armies to the shores of the islands and jungle kingdoms to the south. Where mountains or jungles impeded the onslaught of the Mongol cavalry, the Great Khan sent forth troops adept at other styles of fighting, experienced with other kinds of terrain. A new generation of samurai now fought under the banners of the Great Khan, devastating his enemies. The flotillas turned westwards, attacking and conquering lands and peoples of whom Jebu had only vaguely heard.

“My cavalry of the sea,” Kublai Khan rumbled.

Wonderingly, Jebu turned and looked in the Eour Directions. The world was no longer a patchwork of countries. Ruled by the Great Khan, the Central Kingdom was now the centre of an empire stretching from ocean to ocean, and the oceans were patrolled by the Great Khan’s ships.

Erom above Jebu a metallic voice said, “All people everywhere exist to serve and enrich the Golden Eamily.” Jebu turned and looked again and saw that on the mountaintop with him was a giant statue of gold, dressed in the voluminous, stiff robes of a Chinese Emperor. The eyes and lips and hands moved, but the rest was frozen metal. All the people of the earth were walking to the foot of the mountain. There they knelt in their millions and pressed their foreheads to the ground, worshipping the no-longer-human thing towering above him.

“And now, Jebu, return to us,” said a voice that seemed to come from the golden status. Then the face became Taitaro’s face, close to his own, the brown eyes, sparkling between wrinkled lids that were almost shut, peering into his. Gently, the thin old fingers drew the Jewel of Life and Death from Jebu’s hand.

“What did you experience?” asked Taitaro.

“A terrible dream. I’ve had such dreams before. I remember having many during the time I was nearly dead with wounds.”

Taitaro smiled. “Dreams tell you what you already know. But in this vision I added my knowledge to yours to help you see what would happen if the Mongols overun the Sacred Islands.”

Taitaro turned and tapped Moko’s hand with bony fingers. “Mokosan, I told you there was a great pattern in the events we have all lived through. The War of the Dragons was necessary. Without the samurai and the Shogunate, who would there be to meet a Mongol invasion? An Emperor who is a holy puppet … a venal government knowing nothing of the real world … an army made up of untrained courtiers and frightened conscripts. If the Takashi had ruled unchallenged until now, the condition of the country would not be much better. They were rapidly growing soft and corrupt as the Sasaki and the Eujiwara. We Zinja helped prepare the nation for a Mongol attack, first by helping Yukio get to China where he and the other samurai learned the fighting methods of the Mongols, then by helping Yukio and Hideyori win the War of the Dragons.”

“Was Yukio’s death necessary, too?” Jebu asked bitterly.

“Not at all,” said Taitaro calmly. “To unify the Sunrise Land both Yukio and Hideyori were needed. Yukio was a general but no statesman. Hideyori was a statesman but no general. It is unfortunate that Hideyori was the sort of statesman who is afraid of everyone around him and eventually destroys anyone he is afraid of. But that was something we could not control. We could only work with the material available to us.”

“I had no idea my mission was part of some larger plan,” said Jebu.

“And I did not realize your Order had such power,” said Moko.

“We are not so powerful, Mokosan,” said Taitaro, shaking his head. “In sheer numbers we are weak and growing weaker, because we have sacrificed our bodies to affect the course of events, as a man might throw himself into the path of a runaway carriage to turn it aside from others. Our only strength lies in the fact that we go a long way back in time and are spread throughout the world.

“We are called by different names in different lands. Here we are known as the Zinja. In China we were once the Ch’in-cha and are now the secret White Lotus Society, which works against the Mongols. Among the Mongols themselves we were formerly shamans. Indeed, it was shamans of the Order who guided and aided Jamuga the Cunning in his rebellion against Genghis Khan. Now we are represented by Tibetan lamas who have the ear of great Kublai and who will have tamed the Mongols in a few generations. In the far western countries we have such names as Hashishim and Knights Templar, which no doubt sound incomprehensible to you, Mokosan.

“What all branches have in common is the effort of each member of the Order to achieve direct contact between his or her own consciousness and the entire universe, which we call the Self because each of us is the entire universe. Eundamentally we believe in no superior beings, no supernatural or magical powers, not even rules of good and evil. We believe that one day humanity will rise above civilization and live as the earliest people did, without priests or kings or warriors. We believe that ordinary mortals are all that ordinary mortals can rely on.”

“That’s not so different from some of my own ideas, holiness,” said Moko. “Respect the gods, I say, but don’t depend on them. Still, how can we hope to get along without rules and religious teachers and warriors? Surely you’re not suggesting that we stop worshipping our sacred Son of Heaven. And you’re both a religious teacher and a warrior. So is Master Jebu. Erankly, holiness, most people don’t want to learn the martial arts and fight in their own defence. I’ve never wanted to.”

Taitaro’s little bow of acknowledgment was barely visible to Jebu in the dying firelight. “True, Moko. The ordinary man lets the warrior protect him, and soon the warrior has made a slave of the ordinary man. The Order’s answer to this is to produce trained, dedicated military monks who can be trusted not to enslave their fellow human beings.”

“Excuse me, holiness, but a warrior who doesn’t want power is like a shark that doesn’t eat.”

“We do not desire power because we are engaged in a far more satisfying pursuit, the achievement of insight.”

“Do you mean what the Buddhists call enlightenment, holiness? I have never understood what that is.”

“Insight is the same as enlightenment,” Taitaro agreed. “It is that contact between one’s own consciousness and the Self which I spoke of earlier. It is impossible to describe fully in words. It is the discovery that everything you have been doing all along is the activity of the Self.

“We think that the earliest people did not need rules of right and wrong. They believed that everything happens as it should, even one’s own death. It is said that some of them could even decide when to die. They would say goodbye to their loved ones and sit down peacefully and let go of life. It is even said that there have been great masters who did this among those who studied the ways of the old ones.

“We believe that there is a spirit of perfect action which exists in all people even now. It is often at odds with the rules of lawgivers and priests. It prompts slaves to rebel against harsh masters and warriors to show compassion for the helpless.”

“You Zinja observe very strict rules, holiness,” said Moko. “And though you talk of liberating all men, I know that the Zinja follow the orders of their superiors in all things. It seems you do not live according to your beliefs.”

The fire had gone out, and Taitaro’s voice coming out of the darkness was almost a whisper. “We follow the rules of our Order freely, because they help us maintain the state of insight we wish to cultivate. It is just as a samurai avoids drinking the night before a battle, not because drinking is evil in itself but because it would interfere with his fighting ability. We may appear to be disciplined military monks, but the reality of our Order is total liberation.

“Our Order tries to blend in wherever it goes, keeping our knowledge alive and sharing it with those who seem ready for it. We have found that it serves us well to present ourselves in the guise of warrior monks, similar to those of the Buddhist and Shinto temples. We are permitted by custom a certain degree of secretiveness. By training as warriors we have the means of protecting ourselves from suppression. And we can prevent the profession of arms from being the exclusive privilege of a warrior class. Anyone-farmer, craftsman, trader-can join the Zinja and train in self-defence. We must blend in because our ideas are wicked, utterly foreign to the people of the Sunrise Land.

People have been killed for saying openly some of the things I have said here tonight. That is why there are those who say we Zinja are devils.”

The. Zinja are devils. Jebu, lounging in the darkness on a soft bed of pine needles, sat up with a start. Was that what it meant, then, that deadly secret Taitaro had imparted at his initiation so long ago? If the Zinja beliefs and their ultimate aims were known, the people around them would think them devils and try to destroy them. And only by knowing that they would appear to be devils could they be kept from the supreme arrogance of trying to impose their beliefs on people not yet ready for them. It was the ultimate protection from the temptation of power and therefore the Saying of Supreme Power.

Jebu lay back again, turning this new idea over in his mind as he listened to Taitaro explain the Order to Moko. He could hear the weariness in the old man’s voice and he wished he would stop and rest. Jebu’s mind wandered. He let his thoughts go back to that time with Taniko just after Kublai Khan had released her to him and before he told her how Kiyosi died. Even if he hated her now, there was no harm in remembering a happier time.

It was very late when he heard Taitaro talking about things he had never discussed with Jebu before, and he began to listen again.

“Our ideals require a way of life so strenuous that there cannot