Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master (16 page)

The sky above was
blood-red with the first fires of sunset when Rashan awoke. The soldiers were
gone at last, driven far down the mountain paths in fear and confusion; their
memories of the terrors they had faced in the high valley were garbled, and
would fade into fitful nightmares, but not before the legends had spread to the
villages below. The tales of the angry spirits atop the mountains would keep
the narrow pass free from intruders for a time, though for how long, not even
the Master could say.

Rashan walked slowly
amongst the bodies of the fallen soldiers, their blood now black upon the rocks
of the path that led into the valley. He walked in silence for a time, his face
betraying nothing of his thoughts.

His younger student
stood alone on the high rock wall where he took his exercises. Motionless, the
young man in the mask watched and said nothing.

Rashan’s elder student
waited smugly, as if expecting congratulations. Rashan did not hurry, but
walked up to him slowly and held his eye firmly, but with sadness.

“I have taught you
nothing,” he said quietly.

One started as if he
had been slapped. “But Master–”

“No,” Rashan said
firmly. “No. There is nothing that can excuse this slaughter.”

One’s jaw set firmly,
his cheeks flushed with anger. “I did what I had to do to defend this place. To
defend you.”

“Liar!” the Master’s
voice boomed. “You did what you did for your own pleasure and vanity. You reek
of self-satisfaction.”

The student’s eyes
were wide with disbelief. “You taught me. You gave me the power to control the
minds of men.”

“Yes,” Rashan said
with contempt, “I put a dangerous weapon into the hands of a cruel and spiteful
child. I am a fool. But we were talking about you.”

“I am no longer a
child, and you cannot speak to me that way!” One said, drawing himself to his
full height, and then seemingly still higher. Shadows lapped around his ankles
like a shallow pool that might engulf him entirely.

From his high perch,
Fenwick watched and said nothing.

“Get out of my sight,”
Rashan said quietly. His student paused and then began to move away quickly.

“No,” the Master
called. “I do not mean for you to go away and sulk as you so often have when I
have upbraided you. Waiting while I forget to be angry, all the while learning
nothing.”

One paused, as if
uncertain what to do.

“I mean for you to get
out of my sight, forever,” Rashan said in quiet fury. “Leave this place and
never return.”

There was a moment of
stunned silence.

“Master–,” the
young man said at last.

“Never call me that
again,” the old man said sadly. “You are no student of mine. You are a monster
and I have created you. That is to my shame, but I will bear responsibility for
you no longer.”

The younger man
seethed in anger. “You are jealous,” he hissed. “Jealous of my power. You hide
yourself with tricks like a coward. I fight like a soldier.”

Rashan shook his head.
“You steal like a thief and you boast like a child.”

“I am the true master
of the mind!” the younger man howled. “I bent them to my will and broke them as
I saw fit! They are lesser things – toys to me.”

“If I had wanted them
destroyed,” Rashan said with a cold stare, “do you not think I could have done
it myself? The soldiers, the men in the villages below, all the armies of man…
even you, my young braggart soldier. I could make you my slave or break you
like a toy. That is not strength. The strength is in choosing not to. In
choosing to protect life, the deserving and the undeserving alike.” The old
man’s voice was cold and hard.

“Like him?” the young
man said, his arm sweeping to point at August Fenwick where he stood, the
lengths of silk still sweeping behind him in the cold wind. “Like some
ridiculous rich man’s son playing games? The men he chased away could have come
back… could have destroyed us all.”

“Those men were
terrified,” Rashan said. “They will tell their tales, seasoning them with lies,
as men do. They will forget as the images fade from their minds, but not before
they have sowed the seeds that will spread the legends of this place a hundred
miles in every direction. Your foes are merely dead.”

“Bravo to the man in
the mask,” the young man spat. “Is this dilettante your new pet? He will leave
you soon, and then where will you be?”

“Here,” Rashan said
quietly, “where I have always been. Where I must always be.”

“There are other
teachers,” the young man said in fury. “Other arts of the mind. You cannot stop
me by casting me out.”

Rashan seemed to
consider. “Then perhaps I should destroy you now,” he said coldly. “Why should
the whole world pay for my vanity?”

“And I will make them
pay,” the young man hissed. “I will not rest until I do.”

Rashan smiled. “You
are weak,” he said, shaking his head. “Even now, you would provoke me into
killing you. You would rather die proving that I am no better than you than
live with the struggle between power and compassion.”

The young man stood in
silence a moment, his hands shaking in rage. The old man spoke again.

“There are other
masters, young fool. There are other powers to seek. The road is hard and
uncertain, but it is shrouded in darkness. You will become a creature of that
darkness if you walk that road.”

“Don’t frighten me too
much,” he said, pushing past Rashan into the kuti. A moment later he returned,
wrapped for his journey through the mountain pass, carrying his few belongings
on his back. As he passed Rashan, he hissed, “I will be back for you, old man.”

Rashan nodded. “Yes.”

“We will see who truly
is the Master of the Mind.”

“Perhaps one day.”

The angry young man
turned to face Fenwick where he stood, a silent observer.

“I will be back for
you too, masked man!” he called, his voice raw with anger. “I will find you. No
length of silk can hide you from my eyes!”

Fenwick said nothing,
but watched his fellow student disappear over the pass.

He climbed down the
hill and helped his master begin the long task of burying the dead in the rocky
ground.

August Fenwick stepped from his taxicab onto the threshold
of the exclusive Club Macaw, his brows knit with care. The normal mid-day
bustle around the entrance to the gentleman’s club was noticeably absent.
Indeed, past the gate that separated the grounds of the Club from the city
streets, there seemed to be an almost eerie calm.

Fenwick turned absent-mindedly to pay the driver, and was
for a moment astonished to find the man already pulling away, his eyes fixed
straight ahead. The wealthy young man did not even have a chance to shut the
door of the car as it sped around the circle and back out the driveway, the
driver never slowing down or looking back.

He stepped forward and paused a moment upon sight of the
doorman. The Red Panda felt certain the man’s name was Ryan, though he could
not recall ever using it himself. He did, however, recall several tirades his
usual driver had launched on the subject, and Fenwick found this man nothing
like Kit’s picture of him. Ryan stood stock-still, as if he were painted upon
the wall beside the door. He did not move to open the door, or bat an eye as
Fenwick approached, but stared ahead into open space as if rapt upon some
unseen wonder.

The Red Panda considered Ryan for a moment and then opened
the door himself, keeping the man in the corner of his eye as he passed. He
felt it unlikely that his enemy would loose a sneak attack upon him this late
in the game, but he felt it would be an exceedingly stupid way to die.

His footsteps were light and practiced, but still they
seemed to ring through the great foyer, now absent of any life. He passed the
front desk, which was normally manned every hour that the Club was open but
today stood deserted. Fenwick had come in search of information and now knew
that there was much more waiting for him here. He moved silently upon the
stairs, his caution a long-held reflex which he knew could not protect him from
this enemy, but which he found it quite impossible to shake.

He moved down the great hallway with its thick carpets and
paused a moment. There was music upon the air, music the likes of which the
very Anglo-Saxon Club Macaw had almost certainly never heard.

A few steps forward and Fenwick was certain of the source of
the music and stepped quietly into the Club’s conservative reading room.

If he was surprised by what he saw, he did not show it,
though no one who had known the Club Macaw could have expected such a sight.
The room was draped in fabric of a golden hue, and the air was thick with the
intense yet languid energy that one might find in an opium den.

Draped around the room were the pillars of Toronto’s high
society, the richest and most powerful men in the city. Some stood like
sentries, the rest were spread out on the floor, venerated before the figure of
a man in a high back chair. The chair itself had been draped with the golden
fabric, indeed the reams of gold that spread across the room all seemed to stem
from that seat, making it appear at once to be a throne of power and the centre
of a spider’s web.

The chair’s inhabitant was fanned on either side by female
staff members of the club, each in a state of semi-dress that would never have
been allowed. They stared straight ahead, unseeing, as Ryan had at the door. In
the corner of the room dignified old James Armwald was crouched, stooped low
and playing a haunting lament upon a sort of squat violin or lute from the highlands
of Nepal.

Fenwick considered this sight for a moment and turned back
to face the man in the throne, who sat with an easy smile upon his sharp,
hawk-like face.

“Do you know this tune?” the man asked.

“It seems familiar,” Fenwick replied.

“It is a funeral lament.” The man’s eyes gleamed with a
predatory light. “For you.”

“I wasn’t aware that Armwald could play the sarangi,”
Fenwick said casually.

“I am almost certain that he cannot,” Ajay Shah said, the
Cheshire smile still upon his lips. “And if he could before, he cannot now. His
mind is gone.”

Fenwick looked back and saw that it was true. Armwald’s eyes
were cold and empty. There was no spark of life left in him at all, he was
merely a puppet. As if to illustrate this point, Shah released his grip upon
the old man’s mind and allowed him to fall, sprawling upon the ground, crushing
the bow of the stringed instrument beneath him.

The Red Panda turned back to face his enemy, an ember of
fire beginning to glow in his own eyes.

“Does that make you angry?” Shah said, sitting forward on
the edge of his makeshift throne.

“What are you doing here, Shah?” Fenwick said coldly.

The smile on the enigmatic face grew larger and colder at
the same time. “If you have heard that name, you must already know.”

“Why here? Why now?” Fenwick snapped.

Shah nodded. “You know that, too. Because even if I were not
looking forward to your destruction, I was going to have to deal with you
sooner or later.”

“It could have been later,” the Red Panda said, his eyes
narrowing and the last traces of August Fenwick disappearing from his voice.

“Yes,” Shah agreed. “But I found I simply could not wait.”

The Red Panda stood and said nothing.

Shah looked at him, hard. “It is a wonder,” he said
admiringly. “I assumed that when I saw you I would know you. And yet even still
your face makes no impression upon my memory.”

The Red Panda raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure it’s me?” he
said with a small smirk in spite of himself.

“Oh, you have your many masks, rich boy,” Shah said with a
hiss. “But I would have known you at a hundred paces. You are the only man I
cannot read at all. All the world is laid bare before me… the rich colors of
their thoughts are mine for the taking. But there you stand, a mere fact. An
apparition of black and white like a figure in a picture show.”

The Red Panda said nothing.

“I am surprised to find you traveling alone,” Shah said
casually. “That is not your reputation.”

“She was injured in the blast at Cain’s house,” the Red
Panda said calmly.

Shah nodded. “Plausible, but we both know that it isn’t
true. You are keeping her from my mind,” he smiled, baring his teeth as he did
so. “How wise.”

“Leave her out of this,” the Red Panda said sternly. “This
is between you and me.”

Shah’s teeth gleamed in the morning light. “This is between
myself and all the world, little man. You are nothing but an insect that I
shall crush for my own pleasure.”

The Red Panda’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head slowly.
“You would like me to believe that,” he said quietly.

It was Ajay Shah’s turn to say nothing.

“I know why you are doing this,” the Red Panda said, his
voice hanging with quiet menace, like thunder rolling in off the lake.

Shah’s eyes widened and he thrust his face forward. “Because
I can!” he spit, losing his composure for the first time.

“Just as you say,” came the reply, his gaze cold and
knowing. “As I recall, you had promised to make two stops on your path to
glory. I was merely the second.”

Shah seemed quietly perplexed a moment.

“Rashan,” the Red Panda reminded him.

Shah nodded, his hawk-like gaze drifting to the middle
distance a moment. “I made that journey long ago. He was gone. You had deserted
him, just as I said you would.”

“Just as he knew I would,” the Red Panda said coldly. “I
left a lot of people back then.”

Shah smiled. “Perhaps we each have our ghosts. Perhaps we
are not so very different.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps that is why I must destroy you.”

“Perhaps.”

The room was silent for a moment. The Red Panda regarded the
men who surrounded him, the men of wealth and influence who now were the slaves
of his enemy.

“What about them?” he said. “I assume this tableau was for
my benefit?”

“You are so very cynical,” Shah hissed. “Is it not possible
that I am simply enjoying myself? There is to be a great party in my honor at
the home of Terrence Westing this very night. There, these… vassals will sign
the last of their wealth over to me. Thus armed with riches beyond mere
avarice, my march to power will become stronger. With each city I will move
less like a thief in the night and more like an Emperor. Soon no power will be
able to resist me. Soon all will bow before the throne of the Ajay Shah.”

The Red Panda nodded. “Then it is I who must destroy you.
Now.”

Shah grinned broadly. “Oh, dear foolish boy, I did so hope
that you would see things that way.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Come to
Westing’s party if you dare. Simply everyone will be there.”

“No,” the Red Panda said coldly. “Here and now.”

Shah shook his head. “We dance according to my tune,” he
said, “or your men will die.”

“What?” the Red Panda said, stopping short.

“Andy Parker, Jack Peters, Mac Tully…,” Shah said, rising
from his chair. “You can be proud, they would not speak a word. But their minds
were an open book to me.”

“What have you done with them–”

“Not very much,” Shah said. “Yet. But if you fail to appear
at the party, dear fool, they will die at the stroke of midnight.”

And with that, he turned and melted into the shadows.