Chapter One - Richard Lewis

edroom. When I entered the room, it had fallen to the ground. It was unsheathed. I took
it to Temple Ped for a blessing, and fell into a trance. Listen to me, Nol, listen to me
carefully: the man who betrayed your father to the Red Berets. His name is Anak Agung
Mantera."
Nol held very still, the words falling like bars around him. But he wasn't shocked,
or even surprised. He'd known all along, hadn't he?
"I have waited patiently," Dharma whispered. "All these years I have waited. The
keris has spoken. It's given warning. Blood needs to be spilled. Starting now, with the
offering of the turtle."
Nol bent to the sea creature. His hand trembled. The lantern's soft yellow flame
danced and flickered, but it might as well have been the world shaking while the light
held steady.
A cry rose from the compound. "Bapa, Bapa, where are you?" Dian's high voice
was tinged with hysteria.
Nol straightened as a current jolted up his spine. Still holding the knife, he ran,
intercepting his daughter at the back gate. She wore her mall clothes tight leggings and
long blouse, and her face was artfully was made-up, but her hair was all a-tumble and
distraught tears filled her eyes. Nol's heart went wild. If somebody had hurt her—
"It's Putu," she panted, her cell phone clasped tight between blanched fingers.
"Wulandri called me all in a panic on Putu's cell and said some thugs beat him up and
they threw him out the car unconscious and bloody."
"Where?"
"I don't know, she said some temple, she wasn't clear but somebody grabbed the
phone from her and I can't call back."
Nol sprinted out the compound to his parked car. Sudana was right behind him.
As Nol clambered into the car, Sudana pried the knife out of Nol's hand and tossed it on
the floorboard. Nol's thoughts caromed all over the place, and his emotions veered from
fright to fury and back again. He pressed the accelerator, trying to catch up to his front of
his headlights as he raced to the temple. The bright beams swept across the empty burial
ground. The nooks of the banyan's fluted trunk were this time empty.
But there was the pool…
Nol slammed on the brakes and jumped out of his seat, forgetting to put the gear
in neutral. The car lurched forward and died, but the headlights still flared, catching the
pool's balustrade, its cement posts white as bones.
Putu lay slumped on the pool's steps, his face turned into his forearm. Nol jumped
over the railing to his son. Gingerly turning Putu's head to the light, Nol inhaled sharply
the sight of the brutalized face. The skin on Putu's forehead was split raw, oozing blood.
His eyes were puffed and darkening. A thick mass of blood was congealing around his
nose and mouth. Lips protruded, grotesquely swollen.
Putu's eyes fluttered but didn't open. He moaned, a deep and inarticulate sound.
Sudana jumped down beside Nol, and both men slipped an arm around each of Putu's
shoulders. His head lolled loosely. Scrabbling backwards, they tugged him up the steps
and over the railing. Nol gently laid him on the dirt and told Sudana to pull the car closer.
He took off his shirt and wiped the congealed blood from his son's nose and swollen
mouth.
Putu's teeth were shattered at the roots.
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