It was now hours later, and he was surprised that the sunrise found him back in such a deep sleep. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Pullyang climbed out of bed.
He got dressed with great deliberation. Everything he did these days seemed to be done slowly. At his advanced age there was little vigor left. But eventually, like every morning, he managed to get dressed and find his way outside.
The coal in the square lights had burned to ash. He would put in fresh coal and relight the braziers in the evening. As he had every night for the past thirty years.
Pullyang's house was directly on the main square. He stepped carefully down the single wooden step to the road. He didn't want to trip and break a bone. In time the morning sun warmed his tired body, and his stride lengthened.
Cooking fires had been lit in some of the homes. Smoke rose from crooked little chimneys. The scent of cooked fish and soup floated to his upturned nose.
Although his stomach rumbled, Pullyang put thoughts of food from his mind. Breakfast would come later, down the road at the house of his daughter, Hyunsil.
Hyunsil's husband was dead. Pullyang had lost his wife and son-in-law within six months of each other ten years ago. His daughter was old now, too, nearly in her seventies.
It was nice that they could share their meals. She would prepare him some curdled-beef-blood-and-intestine soup, as well as some rice and kimchi. And they would sit and eat and talk about their family and their village. About tradition and about the great Master of Sinanju who worked to keep the entire village safe and fed.
He was glad that his daughter shared his reverence for the Masters of Sinanju. These men, only one in a generation, left their beloved village in order to sustain it. They would go, sometimes for years, toiling for faraway emperors. And the tribute they were paid was returned to the village.
For their labors and their sacrifices, Pullyang revered the Masters of Sinanju, and he had passed on this great respect to his only child, Hyunsil. He only wished the others in the village shared their reverence. The other villagers didn't respect the Master. Oh, they didn't show him open disrespect. They wouldn't dare. The villagers feared the Master of Sinanju. The current Master had spent much of the past thirty years away from home, but on those few occasions when their protector returned to the village of his birth, the men and women whom his labors supported stayed from his path.
Of course, they knew he wouldn't kill them. For it had been passed down since the time of the Great Wang, the first true Master of Sinanju of the Modern Age, that a Master couldn't harm another from the village. And this current Master was slavish to the teachings of the past. But he had a foul temper and little patience and-despite his respect for tradition-there was always the hint that something furious could explode from him at any moment. The people didn't want to risk injury, and so stayed away.
Pullyang didn't stay away. He loved the Master for all he had done and for all he represented. And this was the reason that Pullyang had been chosen from all others in the village to be caretaker for the Master of Sinanju when he was away. It was an appointment he accepted with great pride.
Pullyang had been a much younger man when he was elevated to the post of caretaker.
As he shuffled up the long road, the simple houses fell away behind him.
Pullyang walked down the path to the bluff whereon sat the home of the Master of Sinanju when he was in residence.
The House of Many Woods looked as if it had grown from seeds planted at a dozen different architectural ages. Egyptian, Roman, Carpathian, Victorian and other mismatched contributions combined in a melange of styles that had grown along with the history of the venerable house of assassins.
Most of the clashing styles were functional gifts from grateful employers. Marble and mahogany, granite and teakwood fought one another at angle and arch. But there were also some more individual touches from the men who had taken up residence in that house. Some were of a practical nature, like chimneys and furnaces, plumbing and a telephone line. Others were of a personal nature.
There were the golden lamps presented to Master Noo's wife by the wife of King Ashurbanipal of Assyria in 650 a.c. The gold still gleamed like it had the day they were first hung alongside the front door.
A fresco around the back depicted a heroic Master Tho, the first Master to travel to China and whose work opened up a vast, untapped market for the House of Sinanju.
Nine hundred years ago Master Jopki's young son had fastened seashells around the door. Nine hundred years later, they were still glued in place. Preserved like shards of frozen time by methods unknown in the West.
The house wasn't just a piece of history; it was many pieces. As unique as the men who called it home.
Pullyang opened the wooden door and went inside. The first thing he checked was the basement Stones from Roman quarries lined the walls of the main chamber beneath the big house. In a private area was a labyrinthine series of off-limits rooms, as well as tunnels carved in rock that Pullyang was forbidden to enter.
The main room was open around the furnace.
Stacked high against the far walls were hundreds of mismatched crates and trunks, as well as a few boxes carved from solid stone. Each case was marked. with a different symbol.
Pullyang felt a swell of pride every time he saw those piled boxes. No outsider had ever seen them. Few in the village had been granted the privilege of glimpsing them.
Pullyang understood that he was gazing upon history.
Contained within those many cases were the personal belongings of each Master of Sinanju who had ever lived.
The old man moved among the boxes, making certain there was no water on the floor. Given the age of the house and its nearness to the bay, the current Master was worried about seepage. The floor was dry. As it was every morning.
The water was shut off, so the pipes hadn't frozen during the night. Everything in the basement seemed fine.
Pullyang shook the old spent coal and ash out of the slow-burning furnace and added new coal. Afterward he went upstairs. The floor warmed beneath his feet as he began to take his daily inventory.
Most of the Sinanju treasure was stored in the upstairs rooms. This was the tribute paid to the Masters over the years by employers the world over. Originally the riches accumulated by the Masters of Sinanju were meant to sustain the village in times of strife. Over time the Masters' tribute became the sole income of the entire village.
There were silver coins minted for Master Lik. They had been stamped with the symbol of the House by Themistocles-thanks from the Greek statesman for Sinanju's aid in his success in battle against the Persians at Salamis. Twelve bronze urns filled with flawless diamonds showed the gratitude of the Roman Emperor Vespasian for a Sinanju service. Bolts of uncut silk from every Chinese dynasty were rolled tightly and bound with gilded ribbon.
On a corner shelf sat gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, presented without condition to a Master two thousand years before by a trio of Zoroastrian mystics. A reward to Sinanju for a prophesied vision, as yet unfulfilled.
Pullyang passed through room after room, making certain nothing had been disturbed. As he did evry day, he took special care at the door of the library. A few years before someone had entered the house and stolen an old wood carving from that room.
As his tired eyes searched the corners of the library, Pullyang's heart sang a quiet song of thanksgiving. Everything was where it should be. Feeling great relief, the old caretaker left the Master's House.
It was two hours since he had awakened. There was life in the village now. Men and women were in the square. As he walked along, Pullyang smiled at the playing children.
A group of people had clustered together in front of the cobbler's house. In the middle of them stood one of the women of the village. She seemed greatly disturbed.
"I saw it when I took my washing down to the shore," the woman was insisting. She was out of breath.
"What did you see?" a man asked.
"The shore," the woman said fearfully. "The shore is like blood. It stains the rocks. Come quickly! It is already washing away."
She grabbed the man by the wrist and began dragging him along. A few others went along with her. Such idle time-wasting was common in Sinanju. The people had nothing better to do than invent foolishness to occupy their days. Pullyang alone had important work to do.
While the group led by the agitated woman went to the shore, Pullyang headed out of the village. At the outskirts he left the main road. He shuffled up a weed-choked path into the black hills that overlooked the shore.
At his age it was rough going, but he eventually made it to the top. The hill became a plateau. Behind him the West Korean Bay stretched out to greet the cloud-smeared sky. Two curving columns of rock framed the bay.
The Horns of Welcome had been placed above the bay centuries ago so that visitors searching for the glory of Sinanju would know that they had reached their destination. The twin stones raked the sky above frail old Pullyang.
At the top of the plateau opened the black mouth of a deep cave. Pullyang was not permitted to enter the cave, for it was a sacred place. Indeed, he rarely ventured up this high as part of his professional duties.
There were three trees at the cave's entrance. Bamboo, pine and plum blossom. It was Pullyang's responsibility to keep them healthy throughout the changing seasons.
The three trees had survived the windy night intact. Bending, the old caretaker swept some needles from the ground around the pine into his coarse hand. Shuffling over to the edge of the plateau, he brushed them away.
He was slapping the dirt from his hand and was turning back to the path when something caught his eye.
Squinting in the weak sunlight, Pullyang peered down the far side of the hill.