"It was said of the Master that the Loni had given him their courage for safekeeping, while they used their heads for science and then hands for art. And then this Master from across the sea went away and the Loni who had relied on him were overwhelmed by an inferior people and our empire was lost. Our best men and women were sold into slavery. We were hunted and tracked like animals until we retreated, three small bands all that was left, into these hills where you now find us and where we hide from our enemies.
"But this Master sent word across the years and across the seas and across the mountains that one day he would return. He would bring with him a man who walked in the shoes of death, a man whose earlier life had ended, and this man would face in mortal combat an evil man who would keep the Loni in chains. That is you, Remo, and this is truth I tell you."
Remo looked up and saw that Princess Saffah's dark eyes were tinged with sadness.
"Does the legend say whether I win or lose the fight?" Remo asked.
"No," she said. "The legend is silent. But it tells what must happen. The Loni children must come home. And if you are victorious, the Lonis will again rule the land and children will be able to walk the streets and the blind again can be made to see."
"It sounds like I'm doing all the work," Remo said. "What does the legend say of Chiun? Does he do anything except lay in your hut down there like Henry the Eighth?"
Princess Saffah laughed, and the smile brought beauty back to her finely chiselled face. "You must not speak unkindly of the Little Father. Centuries of hardship have changed the Loni people. Where once we were kind, we are now vindictive. Where once we had charity, we now have malice; where love, now hate; where courage, now cowardice. It is written that the Master will purify the Loni people in the ritual of the sacred fire. In that fire, he will restore to the Lonis the goodness that once was theirs, so that they may again be fit to rule this land. The Little Father may perish in this task, which is why we revere him so."
Remo rolled over and searched Saffah's deep eyes. "Perish?"
"Yes. So it is written. The flames may consume him. He is a very great man to come back to us, knowing that here he may hear the clock strike the hour of his death."
"Chiun knows this?"
"Of course," Saffah said. "He is the Master, is he not? Did you not hear his words when first he arrived? No, of course not, you would not understand because he spoke the tongue of the Loni. But he said, 'I have travelled these ages from the land of Sinanju to stand here again with my brothers, the Loni, and to place my body on the sacred coals to purify their lives with my life.'"
"He didn't tell me," Remo said. "He didn't say anything about any ritual fire."
"He loves you very much," the princess said. "He would not worry you."
"What about you, Saffah? You believe the legend?'
"I must, Remo. I am first in the line of succession to the crown of the Loni Empire. My faith sustains my people's faith. Yes. I believe. I have always believed. I have believed in the past when others have come to us and we thought, perhaps here, perhaps this is the redeemer of the legend. But when they failed, it was just their failure, not the failure of the legend. Not long ago, another came and we believed that he might be the one but now, now that you and the Little Father have arrived, we know that he was not the one. You are."
"We who are about to die salute you," Remo said.
She leaned forward and said closely to his face. "Do you believe in sin, Remo?"
"I don't think anything is wrong between two consenting orang-utans."
"I do not understand." Her face assumed a look of quizzicality which softened when she saw Remo smile. "You jest," she accused. "You jest. Someday you must tell me of your jesting and what it means."
"I will someday," he said. "No, I don't believe too much in sin. I think sin is not being able to do your job. Not much else."
"I am glad you have said that, because it is said to be a sin for a Princess of the Loni to know a man before she is wed. And yet, Remo, I want to know you and I want you to enter into me."
"Best offer I've had today," Remo said lightly, "but I think you ought to think about it some more."
Princess Saffah leaned forward, pressed her lips against Remo's and kissed him hard. She pulled her head back triumphantly. "There," she said. "I have already committed the sin of touching a man. Now when your time comes, you will have no reason not to take me."
"When I'm sure you're ready," Remo said, "no reason could have stopped me. But first duty calls."
Duty for Remo meant two things: freeing the girls in the white house behind the iron gate and finding out what had happened to Lippincott
But princess Saffah could give aim no answers to either of those problems, although she suggested that if evil was involved, it was probably the work of General Obode.
"We have a friend," she said, "in Obode's camp. Perhaps be will be able to help you."
"What's his name?" Remo asked.
"He is a countryman of yours," Saffah said. "His name is Butler."
CHAPTER TEN
In the American circles that concerned themselves with the activities of the Four Hundred, it was well known that the Forsythes and the Butlers talked only to their cousins, the Lippincotts, and that the Lippincotts talked only to God or to whomever else could match His credentials.
So when the body washed onto the beach a few miles from Norfolk, Virginia, pummeled and battered by the stones near the shore, it became a big story because the body was identified as that of Hillary Butler. The identification was made through her blue-and-white dress and from engraved jewellery the corpse wore.
The Butler family bit its lip, as such families do, and refused to indulge in speculation for the press as to how their daughter, soon to be married, had managed to wind up dead and drowned in the ocean.
The family detested the whole idea, but part of the routine in such accidental deaths was an autopsy.
Clyde Butler was called by the county medical examiner that afternoon.
"Mr. Butler, I have to see you," the doctor said.
Resentfully, Butler agreed and made an appointment to see the examiner at his private medical office, where
Butler's arrival would not draw attention, as it certainly would have at the county administration building.
Despite the unseasonable spring heat, Butler wore a heavy dark pin-striped suit as he sat in the doctor's office, facing him across "a tan-painted metallic desk.
"I suppose it's about my poor daughter," Butler said, "Really, haven't we gone through enough without…?"
"That's just it, sir," the doctor said. "That body was not your daughter's."
Butler could not speak. Finally, he said, "Repeat that."
"Certainly. The dead girl who washed ashore was not your daughter."
"You're sure of this?"
"Yes, sir. In making the autopsy, I discovered that the girl whose body was found had syphilis. Discreetly, I obtained your family's records from your physician and dentist. If was very difficult because of the mutilation, but I can now say without a twinge of doubt that some other young woman is on the slab at the morgue right now."
Butler grimaced at what he considered unnecessarily explicit phrasing by the doctor.
He thought momentarily, then said: "Have you told anyone else?"