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blow continued traveling in a straight line-through the empty space where Don
Cooder had trembled and directly for the exposed breast of Maddas Hinsein,
tyrant of Irait.
The burnoosed figure took the blow like a scarecrow shot with an elephant
gun.
Arms jerking crazily, he was jolted backward, his burnoose flying like green
wings. He fell backward over the railing to land with a mushy thump on the
pavement below.
Grinning, Remo turned, joy in his heart.
"Little Father . . ." he began.
His grin washed away like a sand castle before a dam-burst.
For standing there was not the Master of Sinanju, but the abayuh-clad figure
of Kimberly Baynes, holding Don Cooder with two long-nailed hands as two more
pairs emerged from the ebon garment, snapping a yellow scarf between them.
"But I thought . . . ." Remo began. And he remembered. The Master of Sinanju
was dead.
With a careless fling of yellow-nailed fingers, Don Cooder was thrown aside,
and the silken scarf snapped around Remo's exposed neck. Kimberly wrenched.
The force was quick and brutal.
Remo heard the brittle snap of breaking vertebrae. He staggered on his feet,
his head lolling to one side brokenly.
As the reviewing stand shrank back in horror from the momentary impression of
the human spider in an abayuh, the scarf was whipped away, revealing a blue
bruise around Remo's neck. Remo's eyes snapped open. They were like burning
coals.
Gathering his precarious balance, he faced Kimberly Baynes, who jerked off her
garments, revealing blood-red eyes that were like twin suns in her face. Her
neck tilted left. Remo's tilted right.
And from Remo's mouth issued a thunderous voice.
"I am created Shiva the Destroyer; Death, the shatterer of worlds! Who is this
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dog meat who stands before me?"
"I am Kali the Terrible; the devourer of life!" a voice that was no longer
Kimberly's shrieked. "And I claim this dance!"
Their feet began to stamp the reviewing-stand flooring.
And in that moment, the world fell into the Red Abyss.
Epilogue
As if a small comet had struck a lake, Arab Renaissance Square exploded
outward in circular waves of fleeing humanity as the reviewing stand was
reduced to wood chips and splintering boards.
The great overhanging crossed scimitars trembled as if in an earthquake, while
in the settling maelstrom of wood that had been the reviewing stand, two
figures drummed their feet in violent discord, their heads thrown back, their
voices roaring to shake the very sun from the sky.
It was from that hellish roaring that the assembled citizenry of Irait
fled-unaware that they were but insignificant specks of bone and gristle and
plasma in the Caldron of Blood that had begun churning.
One insignificant speck of bone, gristle, and plasma who plunged through the
retreating multitudes wore a flowing black abayuh over shiny black paratroop
boots. With his thick arms, he beat and elbowed helpless Iraitis out of his
path, cursing in fluent Arabic.
He paused in his flight to glance back. Under the trembling scimitars-held
aloft by massive replicas of his own mighty arms-Maddas Hinsein beheld an
awesome sight.
The naked four-armed figure of Kimberly Baynes faced the American called Remo.
She howled. Remo howled back. Their feet stamped the planks and joists under
their drumming feet with such fury that the wood gave up tendrils of friction
smoke. Their hands were about each other's throats.
If this was a dance, Maddas thought, he would hate to see them at war. For
they looked as if they were intent upon strangling each other.
As they surged to and fro, their earth-shaking feet inched toward a prostrate
form in a green burnoose, who lay before the wreckage, where he had fallen.
One foot Remo's-stamped the kaffiyeh once. The green cloth turned red to the
accompaniment of a horrible melonpop of a sound.
And Maddas Hinsein knew that no one would ever identify the fallen man as
Selim Fanek, his official spokesman. The world would think the Scimitar of the
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