Mortal Kombat (5 page)

That second year was devoted to Kung Lao's indoctrination into the ways of the Order of Light, his first exposure to the collected writings of scholars and holy figures from different eras and from around the world, and his introduction to the daunting, exhilarating, mystical ordeal of Mortal Kombat – the great tournament held in the Shaolin Temple on the slopes of Mt. Takashi on the island of Shimura in the East China Seas.

At the beginning of his third year, Kung Lao had come back here to the Temple of the Thunder God to ponder one by one the writings of philosophers and martial artists collected by the high priests; to reflect on and write about the saga of P'an Ku; and to record his own thoughts on scrolls. Through the priests, he disbursed these writings to the pilgrims who came to worship, advising them on everything from spirituality to medicine to art. They, in turn, brought them to the temples that had become corrupted by local politics and petty disagreements, that had lost sight of the goals of the Order of Light.

There was also another task Kung Lao would have, one which Rayden had mentioned but never explained, and Kung Lao knew better than to press him. When the Thunder God was ready to tell him about it, then would he know...

Only once a year did Kung Lao venture from here, and that was to pit his increasingly formidable physical skills against fighters from around the world. And that time was now.

Kung Lao breathed deeply. Each year, before every battle, he thought about defeat but never about death. The amulet gave him strength and protected him from destruction, and advantage only he and the immortal Rayden had. But this year was different. This year, it might not be possible to hold on to the title of Grand Champion. This year there was a new competitor; and from all that Kung Lao had seen and heard he knew that this year it was possible he might lose.

Kung Lao turned and faced the temple. It would bother him to be beaten, but it would trouble him more deeply if the amulet were to fall into the hands of someone evil. He wished he could return the amulet to Rayden, but he knew
that
wasn't possible: what a god has given to mortals can never be returned, for it is no longer deistic. Even to touch it would make the god no longer a god, but a mortal.

There was no choice, even though his decision might well result in losing more than just the tournament. What Kung Lao was about to do might well cost him his life. And with his death, the age of enlightenment that Rayden hoped for might also come to an end.

Walking across the ledge to the cliffside adjoining the entrance to the temple, Kung Lao cocked his elbows at his sides, faced the rock, collected his thoughts, and with a flashing burst, sent the knuckles of his left fist and then his right fist driving against the gray stone. Shards of rock went flying in all directions as Kung Lao's expression remained unchanged, the flesh of his hands unbloodied. He cocked his elbows again and once more his fists flew out, blasting away more pieces of stone.

A third series of blows completed the task. When Kung Lao was finished, he gently removed the amulet from around his neck, lay it in the niche had had opened, picked up the pieces of rock, and carefully replaced them so that the precious talisman was completely hidden. He looked at the rock for a long moment, said a silent prayer, and then slowly – very slowly – he walked to the temple.

Feeling as though an essential piece of him had died, but knowing that he had done the right thing, Kung Lao began to gather his few belongings for the week-long journey to Mt. Takashi.

Shimura Island was a strange place, hidden behind fog that seemed to keep bright sunlight, seabirds, and even the turbulent waters at bay. A forbidding mass in a glass-smooth sea, Shimura was lit by the hazy sun and seemed always to be cold. At least, that was how it appeared to Kung Lao. He never bothered to ask what the other participants thought, since it was a bad idea to talk to them at all. These were people he had to fight. Getting to know them as individuals would only make it more difficult to attack them as opponents. When he had to strike someone's wrist, possibly breaking it, he didn't want to know that that was the hand the person used to earn his living as a tailor or to create beauty as a painter. People came here to compete in the greatest tournament in the world, to pit their skills against worthy opponents, and that was all Kung Lao needed to know.

During the tournament, the master of the island, the curious Shang Tsung, sent paddle-driven junks to shore to collect the participants. The boats came twice each day for the two days prior to the beginning of the matches, and temporary huts were erected with food and drink for the combatants' use while they waited, as well as a stable for horses and mules.

Kung Lao arrived on foot the night before Mortal Kombat was to begin. He had made the journey thirteen times, and knew the roads well – though he found it more tiring this time to keep up the pace. He knew why: it wasn't that he was older, for the victor of Mortal Kombat did not age for the intervening year, and Kung Lao had not aged for a dozen years plus one. He experienced this unusual fatigue because he had left his amulet behind. That did not bode well for the contest ahead, though Kung Lao resolved to fight harder than ever against mostly familiar adversaries, all of whom were older than ever.

But this year it was the unfamiliar adversaries that worried him. In his spectacular but curiously veiled way, Rayden had come to Kung Lao just two days before. Appearing in a burst of lightning that shot from a clear sky, the Thunder God had said only, "An image of T'ien will be present on Takashi, and not as a friend."

Since the only images of T'ien showed multi-limbed creatures, Kung Lao wondered if more than the usual black magic would be afoot – if the mysterious Shang Tsung had something new in store at his sprawling and resplendent temple. It wouldn't surprise him. For thirteen years, Shang Tsung had faced Kung Lao in the final round of the Mortal Kombat, and Kung Lao had won each time. After losing, Shang Tsung would present the winner with the Shaolin benediction of victory, and then leave without another word. And each year that Kung Lao returned, their host seemed considerably older – leaner and much more wrinkled, his eyes less lustrous and his hair whiter.

Kung Lao sat on the shore, first under the setting sun and later beneath the stars, and waited for the boat. He looked at the white band he'd tied around his wrist – the cloth he had found in the village square so many years ago. If he couldn't have his amulet, he wanted this token, the invisible message that had sent him on his journey to Mt. Ifukube.

He looked out at the moonlit fog, rolling and gleaming on the sea. It had never bothered Kung Lao that he won the Kombat with the help of the amulet. So many of the participants came armed with magic, some in the form of talismans, others in the form of blows powered by otherworldly strength, that the amulet was necessary just to stay even with them. Shang Tsung himself had reserves of energy that were formidable and not of this world, with flame and fog at his command. Without the lightning and blinding sunshine of Rayden stored in the amulet, Kung Lao could never have defeated Shang Tsung once, let alone thirteen times.

You mustn't think like that,
he warned himself. Though he would be participating without magic for the first time, Kung Lao still had his skills and his own inner resources. And that had always accounted for a great deal. If he couldn't tire Shang Tsung, or outlast his blasts of fire and blinding mist, he would have to defeat him quickly, before those powers could be brought to bear.

The prow of the junk with its distinctive dragon head eased through the fog and came toward the shore like a sea serpent. It bucked and bobbed on the waves, the sea seeming to hiss each time the sharp stem of the vessel sent it spraying upward, the foam rising up past the nose of the dragon, like wisps of smoke.

Kung Lao rose and collected his leather suitcase, neither acknowledging nor looking at the two other combatants who had moved from the huts to the shore. When the boat neared the shore, it turned starboard side in and a pair of black-cloaked figures lowered a plank to the sand. Their faces hidden beneath hoods, the figures worked quickly while seeming to move slowly – as though they were outside our time frame, yet somehow inhabiting it.

Though he was closest to the plank, Kung Lao permitted the other two men to board first – a courtesy he had never been able to shake. As soon as they had boarded, and even before the plank was raised, the vessel started back toward the island. The tournament was nothing if not efficient, from the moment the first guest arrived at shore to the instant the last one had departed.

After six days of travel, it felt good to sit and be carried. Kung Lao sat on a mat on the heaving deck, enjoying the motion as the junk approached and was swallowed up by the fog, then quickly settled down and sailed swiftly and evenly on the calm seas when it emerged. The vessel eased into a semicircular wharf that, when seen from the top of the temple, suggested the dragon-head motif on the bow. Or maybe it was a trick of the light from the lanterns that lined the dock. Kung Lao had discovered that the island was full of illusions like that, though he was at a loss to explain them.

Upon reaching the shore, the crews of the ships didn't disembark, though they appeared to vanish. The new arrivals were met by young men in white cloaks, who carried their bags up the long, winding mountain road to the temple. The combatants rode mules in front of them, and noted that the road didn't seem to wind quite so much in the ascent as it appeared to from the shore. The animals knew the way and didn't need to be prodded – something that always amazed Kung Lao, for mules weren't especially clever or cooperative. He suspected enchantment here as well, for one year he had asked Rayden to send a lightning bolt during the climb and he'd seen, in the flash, not the head of a mule, but the likeness of a dragon.

The recurrence of the image didn't surprise Kung Lao. The nation honored many kinds of
lung,
or dragons. There were imperial dragons, which symbolized the Emperor and were the only ones which were allowed to have five talons on each paw; the rest had four. The celestial dragons stood guard over the abode of the gods, the spiritual dragons helped T'ien and his deities tend to the winds and rains, the earth dragons looked after the soil, the rivers, and the seas, and the ferocious treasure dragons guarded the wealth that belonged to gods and demons. The dragon of Shimura Island, with its horse-like head and sharp frills that curled up from its long neck and head, was a treasure dragon.

As the temple and palace came into view, perched on the edge of a low cliff of the mountain, moonlight gave it a ghostly cast and Kung Lao felt a chill.

Something was different this time, and it wasn't just the absence of his amulet. He felt an ominous presence that he had never felt before – a new combatant, perhaps. He looked toward the two tall pagodas that were the palace living quarters, his eyes searching the open windows and looking for shadows on the drawn shades. But he found nothing out of the ordinary. His gaze shifted to the imposing marble-and-gold palace between them, with its torchlit crowds of life-sized jade princesses and ivory treasure dragons, its alabaster bowmen and giant onyx steeds and war chariots, and then to the older, darker, low-lying temple in front.

Nowhere did Kung Lao see anything, but something was most definitely there. Something powerful and something dangerous.

Something not of this world.

Outwardly, Shang Tsung was calm as ever as he uttered the words that kept the door to his laboratory locked. Inwardly, however, he was in agony.

His long, dry, white hair hung in a sheet down his back, and his skin, once as smooth as the seas that surrounded his island, was a mesh of fine lines and fragile creases. Though his posture was still ramrod straight and his eyes were as clear as ever, it was obvious that he lived under a great weight.

"I am to be admitted," he said in the gentlest whisper. "Open, open, open."

A row of bolts clacked open on the inside of the door, and the massive stone slab moved inward, slowly, on hinges the size of Shang Tsung's forearms.

Shang slid inside, turned, and said, "I am inside. Shut, shut, shut."

At that, the door stopped opening and began to move in the other direction. When it was shut, the row of seven thick bolts slapped shut by themselves, one after the other.

Shang Tsung turned and faced the brazier that burned without burning in the midst of the old circle he'd created on the floor in the center of the room. In there, in the portal between the Mother Realm and the Outworld, time stood still. The flame was frozen, like a red frond, still providing illumination though no fuel was consumed. The powdery circle was also where he'd made it, though it was covered with a crawling, greasy, and dull amber film, the essence of the poor demon that Shao Kahn had sent there thirteen years before.

Shang Tsung approached the circle, and as soon as he came near enough for his body heat to activate the powder, time there resumed. The flame crackled anew, motes of dust that had been suspended in the air began to move... and the room was filled with a moan that was both miserable and mad.

"Shaaaaaang!"

"Good evening, Ruthay."

"Whennn? Wheeennnnn?"

"Today, Ruthay," the wizard said as he reached the circle. "Thanks to you... today."

"Toooodayyyy," the voice sighed, then cackled, then sobbed. "I can... go baaaack... today?"

"I hope so," Shang Tsung said solemnly as he stepped inside the sacred portal. "I do hope so."

For thirteen years it had been a matter of the most stubborn pride. After remembering who he was and vowing to serve Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung had gone to the mainland, used a bamboo splinter to slit the throats of lone travelers, and with a magic spell provided by Ruthay, snared their departing souls and brought them to the island to begin enlarging the rift between the worlds. But much to his surprise and disappointment, the breach could not be widened.