Beneath an Opal Moon (42 page)

Bnak clapped his fists over his ears but it was too late – the bitter truth was branded into his brain and he could do naught else but to follow Miira's advice and do what he would. He had to forget his son ever existed, wipe all the precious memories away. Start over.

Could he carry out such a heinous but requisite task?

He knew he must.

He defied his enemies, the enemies of the state. He remained loyal, he remained a man. But at what price?

The next morning, as they had threatened, their son appeared at the gateway to their villa, strangled with a blue cord.

After the requisite three day mourning period, Bnak returned to his duties at the ministry. He pulled in all the favors he had been hoarding for years and the directive went out across the length and breadth of the capital: find the abductors, the murderers.

But on his way home that night he was ambushed, his guards slain, and he was brutally murdered. At almost the same instant life was seeping out of him, men invaded his villa, looking for Miira. They found only empty rooms.

In another quarter of the capital, the chief ministers were assaulted in their bed chambers. Blood flowed in the streets, as Bnak had feared. Chaos reigned as the old was destroyed and the new sought to solidify its power in the corridors of the ministry and in the streets. Thousands died; the capital was turned into an abattoir as the loyalists battled the insurgents.

During those dark weeks of brutal warfare and death, Miira rose each morning in the cave at the northernmost outskirts of the city to tend to the wounded men and the women who had been beaten and raped. She no longer had the time nor the desire to make up her face, and yet, out of habit, she continued to look at her reflection in her Shinju mirror. She did this mainly to keep the memory of Bnak alive. In the moment just before he was ambushed, she had been pulled out of sleep by a harsh shriek that, upon awakening, she knew existed only in her Shinju mind. In that shriek was carried the crosstown assault and imminent death of her husband. Also, the hastening bootsoles on the street along which their villa was set. She had leapt out of bed, grabbed clothes, money and her mirror and had fled the villa by a secret passage just moments before it was invaded by those sent to kill her.

Now, in the cave of war, she looked daily upon her reflection. It was a wholly different image that greeted her. It had been frequently said that there was a kind of magic running through the Shinju. Rumors still surfaced, now and again, but no civilized man believed them, of course. Why would they? If the Shinju actually possessed magical powers would Bnak's people have been able to invade their land, slaughter them, take what had once been theirs?

And yet had anyone else been present to gaze into Miira's mirror they might have had grave second thoughts. For her reflection no longer bore the imprimatur of her husband's love. Bnak was dead; their son, as well. Miira's heart was cold, gray ash. Her normally calm and flexible spirit had become the dark adamantine jewel of fury.

Even as she tended the wounded and dying, counseled the psychologically battered, she burned for vengeance. And, staring into her mirror at what was reflected there, she knew what she must do to dissolve that dark jewel, though she had vowed never to do so and to break the vow meant certainly that she must die.

As Bnak's enemies had done so cleverly before her, Miira now made a comprehensive diary of the new regime's comings and goings. She listed all the key ministers and, after their names, the times of the day when they were inside the ministry building.

After a month of this diligent detective work, she sat down to evaluate her copious notes. By this time the worst of the fighting had subsided to sporadic outbreaks among the last remnants of the die-hard loyalists. The stranglehold of the new regime was all but complete. There was, she discovered, the hour of midnight when all the ministers met in council. Midnight, she thought, putting aside her diary. The hour of Bnak's death.

How she slipped past the phalanxes of guards is anyone's guess. In any event, no one saw her enter the ministry; no one saw her inside until she appeared within the central chamber of state and by then it was too late.

She passed around the great oval table at which her enemies sat, sleek and self-satisfied. Those murderers. There was still time to turn back, to forego vengeance. But her mind was filled with memories of Bnak and of her baby. And she broke her sacred vow.

She used her power; the power of the Shinju, for all the rumors were quite correct. As she passed behind each minister, she placed her mirror before them, and each had no choice but to look at his image reflected there.

What they saw no man, perhaps, can say. But I suspect it was different for each of them. One by one, they clawed the air as if phantasms were assailing them. Their faces twisted grotesquely in horror and dread. They fouled themselves abysmally; some wept uncontrollably in their death throes.

And when the last of the ministers had died, Miira too, looked deep into her mirror and, it is said, died on the spot (Moichi concluded).

Aufeya, who had been sitting up in the berth for some time now, her own aches and fears forgotten as she became more and more enthralled with the tale, said, ‘Is this story true? It is so fantastic. Terrible and fantastic.'

‘Aye, it is that, but though it makes a gripping tale I doubt its veracity.'

Aufeya seemed lost in thought for some time. Then she threw the bedclothes off and, padding about the cabin, began to dress. ‘I want to go on deck,' she said. ‘I'm stifling in here and dawn is breaking over the water. I want to see it. It has been a long, fearful night.'

Even in this early hour there was much activity on deck. Arasomu checked in briefly with Moichi. He had made two slight course corrections during his watch. According to the information that Moichi had provided him he believed they would sight the shore of Iskael before noon. The skies were fair, with scattered ribbons of high wispy cloud, and the wind was freshening out of the northwest quarter. It was ideal weather.

‘I find it curious,' Aufeya said when they were alone, ‘that you hold no truck with superstition yet you are a mariner and mariners are a powerfully superstitious lot.' She tossed her head, glad to be abovedeck in fine weather. ‘In fact, I've heard you call upon the Oruboros even though you believe in the One God.'

Moichi shook his head. ‘I call upon him, no. I curse him on occasion because one does not speak of the God of my people in that way. Just as one does not call upon Him to change the wind or ensure success in business. He is not like the tiny gods of smoke and stone other people kneel before. He is the universe; he is everything. He lives; He provides for His people. But He does not grant petty favors like some desert jinn out of legend.'

Aufeya smiled. ‘And the Oruboros does.'

He noted the mocking tone in her voice. ‘The Oruboros, the great ancient sea serpent, once lived, Aufeya. In another time his power was great, indeed.'

‘You talk about him as if he no longer exists.'

Moichi looked down at her, not knowing whether this was some game she was playing, needling him with her disbelief. Not for the first time, he was struck by how little he really knew her. ‘Ronin slew the Oruboros when he was transformed into the Dai-San.'

At the mention of Moichi's bond-brother Aufeya dropped her amused look. She knew full well how important this already mythical figure was to him. ‘But I don't really understand who – or what – the Dai-San is,' she said.

Now Moichi smiled. ‘Does anyone, really?' His tawny eyes were misty with remembrance. ‘Ah, Aufeya, what adventures we two shared.' His eyes cleared as he tried to explain the unexplainable. ‘He was once a man, not unlike me, perhaps. But his fate lay in another direction. On Ama-no-mori, he was transformed by ancient Bujun sorcery that was part of a grand design. Pulled apart, then reassembled, he was compelled to ride the back of the Oruboros, to slay this venerable creature who he held dear so that he might be reborn as the Dai-San.'

‘Dai-San,' Aufeya repeated. ‘That name is of a language unfamiliar to me.'

‘As it is to most. It is Bujun.'

‘But the Dai-San is not Bujun.'

Moichi shrugged. ‘Ama-no-mori has become his adoptive country. It was there that his transformation began.'

Aufeya's eyes were huge. ‘Is he really more than mortal man?'

‘In the time of magic from which he was born anything is possible.'

‘Even the legend of Miira's Mirror?'

She had him and he knew it. For a moment his brows knit darkly, then he burst out into deep, booming laughter. ‘Perhaps. But I believe the age of magic died when the Dai-San defeated the Dolman. This is the age of mankind.'

‘And what of Sardonyx?' Aufeya demanded. ‘Was she not the most powerful sorceress?'

Moichi considered this highly charged topic carefully, as he always did with her. Sardonyx, who had been born Adenese, had been sold into slavery. Eventually, she had killed her master and had been thrown into jail for her crime. Eventually, she managed to escape, bribing her way out with her body. The rest of her history was a mystery – he was not even certain of the veracity of what she had told him. She was a consummate liar; she actually enjoyed spinning tales, changing personalities as readily and effortlessly as others breathed air.

Sardonyx had become fixated on Aufeya, and when Moichi had prevented her from getting her, she had returned to Daluzia from her castle in the land of the Opal Moon and had murdered Aufeya's mother Tsuki by somehow using Aufeya's body, thus wreaking a diabolical revenge on mother and daughter both. One was dead and the other could never forgive herself for what her body had done.

‘As far as Sardonyx is concerned,' Moichi said, keeping one eye on the wind and the other on Aufeya's face, ‘it is my considered opinion that she was more prestidigitator than thaumaturgist. To put it in its simplest terms she was a highly accomplished illusionist.'

‘Then everything that happened to us in the land of the Opal Moon was a hallucination?'

‘Ah, no. You know it was not. But the Firemask, the artifact of power, that Sardonyx so desired, was real enough. And it was from the time of magic; its power was awesome.' Seeing her shudder and make the sign of the Palliate, he put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. ‘I think we'd both do best in forgetting all about Sardonyx. After I took the Firemask from her, her only thought was to avenge herself on your mother. Having, unhappily, accomplished that, she is now, I have no doubt, far away from here, back in her castle in the land of the Opal Moon.'

Together, they went to the rail, stared out at the rising sun.

Aufeya turned to Moichi. ‘You miss him, don't you?'

‘Who?'

‘Your love for the Dai-San runs very deep.'

‘He is my bond-brother.'

‘He's much more, I warrant.'

Moichi was silent for some time, as if he were wrestling with a thorny problem. ‘In some unfathomable way we are one. I cannot explain it further. He was created to defeat the Dolman and the forces of Chaos who threatened to claim this world and to put an end to the races of man for all time. My fate was to be at his side. He is the greatest warrior of all time; together we journeyed to the Kai-feng, the last great battle of mankind.'

‘Yet you were not with him in Ama-no-mori for the beginning of his transformation.'

He sighed. ‘Ah, Aufeya, all journeys have an end. My fate dictated that I return to Sha'angh'sei. I had my own role to play.' He chuckled. ‘And lucky for me that I did. I never would have met you otherwise.'

‘Or come to grips with Sardonyx.'

‘I am no longer interested in her or the land of the Opal Moon. They belong to our past, nothing more.'

‘Speaking of the moon,' Aufeya said excitedly as she pointed overhead, ‘it is out here during the day! Look, Moichi! Look!'

THREE

T
HE
H
OUSE OF
A
NNAI
-N
IN

The pure white buildings of Ala
'
arat
glowed in the tropical sunlight. The city was strategically situated on a series of nine clawlike hills which rose around the sweeping crescent of a generous and sheltering bay. In all ways, the city was the direct opposite of Sha'angh'sei, the main port of the continent of man. Beyond the bustling quays, the streets, avenues and alleyways of Ala'arat radiated out in a precise star-shaped pattern. Instead of a massive jumble of hodgepodge shapes, the buildings were neat squares or rectangles, or as the city rose up the slopes to where, inevitably, the wealthy and politically connected families lived, other more complex but no less methodical geometric shapes.

Standing on deck as the
Tsubasa
hove to and, with all sails furled, dropped anchor, Aufeya clapped her hands delightedly, crying, ‘How beautiful! The city looks like it was made of sugar cubes!'

Moichi, standing beside her with his arm around her slender waist, found his eyes wet with tears. How marvelous his home looked to him after long years traveling to the far ends of the earth with the Sunset Warrior.

But his joy was short-lived. A well-armed lighter rode the gentle waves out to meet them as he was ordering a boat into the water so that he could pay a call on the harbor-master and secure a mooring license. Even though he could see that the port was far too busy to allow him a berth at one of the quays, which were full of massive four-masted freighters loading and off-loading all manner of fruits, vegetables and grains, bolts of hand-dyed silks, voile cottons, tightly-woven linen, and raw materials such as cypress, ebony, precious marble and glossy obsidian, he had no doubt he could buy a mooring further out on either side of the main channel.

He was surprised to see a contingent of Iskamen navalmen boarding his ship. The leader was a very young man, bald but for a long tongue of thick hair growing from the top of his head. He swaggered across the deck, calling for the captain. When Moichi stepped forward, he was momentarily taken aback to see a fellow Iskaman.