Dai-San - 03 (19 page)

Her sea eyes like whirlpools spinning him down.

‘Which is Nikumu?’

The eyes closed for an instant, a universe blotted out. When she opened them again, they were wet.

‘Neither. Both.’

‘Riddles.’

He watched the slow path of the tears over her high cheekbones. Just the touch of a hand, reaching out. But he would not, now.

‘He is afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

Reaching the crest, they held for a moment, quivering with her emotion, then they dropped silently to the tatamis.

‘He is no longer Nikumu. Something—’

‘Why is he leader of the sasori?’

She shook her head.

‘I do not know. Something happened to him while I was away, something dreadful.’

‘Then he is as evil as Okami believes.’

‘No, no.’ She gripped his arms. ‘He has changed. Sometimes—sometimes he is as he was before and then, at other times, he is like a madman.’

By their cries, he judged that the gulls had found food. Small clouds of them skimmed the water in tight arcs. Their calling was incessant now.

‘Ronin, I fear that he is possessed.’

‘By what?’

‘There is someone with him always now.’

‘Yes, I have seen him. But he has no control over Nikumu.’

‘You must do something.’

‘I?’ He felt like laughing in her face. ‘Frost, Moeru, the man wants me dead! Now you ask me to help him?’

‘Only you can.’

‘What nonsense is that?’

Her face hovered near his, her lashes long and wet.

‘How did you free me?’

‘I did not think about it.’

‘No, of course not. If you had to, you would not have done it. Nikumu would have slain you.’

‘Something evil lurks within Haneda, Moeru.’

‘Yes, but it is not Nikumu. He is a human being, not a monster.’

‘But what he did to you—’

‘Ronin, you must help him!’

‘But I am in no position to—’

‘Only you were able to free me—’

‘What you ask is madness, Moeru—’

‘Only your power—’

‘Chill take him—’

‘He made me mute—’

‘—no!’

‘—so that I would not communicate with you.’

Even through the hissing mist of the downpour hurtling from out of the red, fulminating sky, he could see how enormous the pine was. Many tiered, spreading outward like the limbs of heaven, constantly in motion from the gusting of the wind and the torrential rain, it arched out majestically, dwarfing even the rooftops of the Kunshin’s sprawling stone castle.

They stood in drenched cloaks wrapped tight and dripping sedge hats. The wood and earth bridge lay before them, arcing over the moat which separated the domain of the leader of all the Bujun from the rest of Ama-no-mori.

Behind them rose the far eastern outskirts of Eido, blurred and indistinct, a painting in the rain. Beyond the last maple, where the road described a wide turning, an old woman sold tea to weary travelers from the inadequate shelter of a tiny wood station.

‘How can we be sure that he is here?’ said Ronin.

‘He is not in Eido,’ said Okami.

‘Why not the mountains, then?’

‘He is here, my friend.’

They stepped upon the earthen bridge, muddied now by the rain, and the world of Eido slipped away from them. Thunder rolled ominously from a long way off. The surface of the water spanned by the bridge’s arc was goose-fleshed.

The Kunshin’s guards met them as they stepped off the span and they were taken directly into the castle.

They were led into a small antechamber where a tiny robed woman took Moeru into an adjoining chamber after indicating their fresh clothes and the hot water in basins with which they could wash away the mud and dirt of their travels.

Moeru rejoined them. They all wore robes embroidered with the spoked wheel pattern of the daimyos. They were Okami’s colors.

Two armed Bujun in wide-shouldered robes woven with cloth-of-gold entered the chamber and led them up a flight of wide stone steps, past innumerable armed Bujun, down a vast hallway fully as large as a gallery, and at length, through double wooden doors, dark and highly polished. Brass glyphs surrounded by a circle were set in the center of either door.

As they entered the room, they heard again the hissing of the rain and Ronin looked to the large windows, open onto the storm. The brawny lower branches of the giant pine swayed and dipped. Rain ran along the window glass like cool tears, pattered onto the tatamis.

They were in a chamber of moderate size, not at all what Ronin had imagined the Kunshin’s quarters to be like. There were no chairs, just a functional stool, which stood in front of a large wooden desk along the far wall. Low lacquered tables were set on the tatamis in an informal grouping in the center of the room. The Bujun left them.

Ronin watched the storm outside.

They removed their sandals.

‘He reminds me of someone,’ said a deep voice. Ronin looked up, into the face of Azuki-iro. He was not sure to whom the Kunshin spoke. ‘That is significant.’

He was a man with a functional head, as if his features had been carefully and lovingly crafted, each for a specific purpose. He had not one centimeter of superfluous flesh. His face was rather flat, like Okami’s, yellow-skinned with long almond eyes and a wide, blunt nose. His thick black hair gleamed, bound in a queue. He had a wide neck and a barrel chest and he stood with his feet firmly planted on the floor. A warrior’s stance: confident, not arrogant. Beneath his cloth-of-gold robe could be seen the hard curve of his muscles.

‘A foreigner, yes?’ said Azuki-iro. He cocked his head to one side for a moment, as if trying to decide a momentous issue. ‘I am not so certain.’ His eyes never left Ronin. ‘Where did you pick him up?’ Only his tone of voice told of his shifting direction.

‘On the Kisokaido,’ Okami said.

‘Who are you?’ Ronin turned. ‘Have you lied to me?’

Okami’s face was placid. There was no hint of deceit in his clear eyes.

‘I told you only those things which you needed to know. I betrayed no trust. You are here now, before the Kunshin. Is this not why you came to Ama-no-mori? Why look beyond your own needs?’

‘I wish to know the truth.’

‘History shall record the truth,’ said Azuki-iro.

Ronin stepped back a pace, withdrew his sword. A laconic whisper. A deadly snake shedding its dry lifeless skin.

‘The time is forever past when I will take only what is given me. I would have the answers I seek and I would have them now.’

Azuki-iro’s eyes narrowed and his muscles tensed.

‘Hold!’

It was Moeru’s voice and for the first time the Kunshin’s face registered a hint of strong feeling: surprise.

‘Moeru,’ he whispered. ‘What—?’

‘It was Ronin.’

The Kunshin’s eyes shifted.

‘It was,’ he said. Then the cloth-of-gold swirled as he held out a strong hand. ‘The scroll. May I see it?’

The sword point poised, restive. Something swam in Okami’s eyes, half-hidden, unrealized. What? For this moment, Ronin had journeyed farther than any man on the face of his world. He had fought so many battles against foes familiar and strange. Had lost so many friends. Had seen the slow beginnings of the ultimate evil. Had felt the dark encroachment of terrifying forces. Yet now he hesitated. Here, at journey’s end, unsure. Just beyond the point of his sword lay the open palm of Azuki-iro. Where should his trust lie? From Okami’s eyes to Moeru’s. He found nothing there, had known that even before he looked. Reflex. The forebrain trying to protect the organism. The answer was not within any of them.

Staring into Azuki-iro’s eyes, he reversed his sword, unscrewing the hilt, withdrawing the scroll of dor-Sefrith. He handed it into the firm grasp of the Kunshin.

Without a word, Azuki-iro strode to the light of the open window. The rain had ceased momentarily but the great pine still wept its tears. A nightingale trilled sweetly, abruptly filling the room with song.

For endless moments, the Kunshin studied the scroll, his forehead furrowed in concentration, until at length he returned to where they waited. It seemed to Ronin that he had not drawn a single breath since Azuki-iro had begun to read the scroll. At last, an ending. At last, salvation for man.

The Kunshin addressed them all.

‘It is indeed the time.’ There was a sharp inhalation of breath from Okami. ‘The mind of dor-Sefrith reaches out through time, through space, past the ceasing that is death. For he returns now on the wheel of universal force.’

The Kunshin’s eyes focused on the warrior before him.

‘Ronin, I know not where you come from nor how far you have traveled. But these are irrelevancies now. With the return of this scroll to Ama-no-mori, a cycle ends for the Bujun as well as for all men. A new age commences. What it may bring none may say with any degree of certainty, save that the world, as we now know it, has passed from us.

‘Those of us who are able shall survive to see the dawn of this new age but I fear that for many that time shall, not come.’ He shrugged. ‘That is their karma. The Kai-feng is upon us and no one on this world may remain neutral for it is the Last Battle. Death is as nothing to the Bujun. It is but the manner of our death which concerns us. Thus shall history remember us all. As heroes and as men.’

Azuki-iro handed the scroll of dor-Sefrith back to Ronin, and with his fingers still holding it, he said: ‘I charge you now with the final part of your journey, Ronin. And you must understand that it is the most perilous part, for you know what will occur should you fail.’ His black eyes blazed. ‘Take the scroll of dor-Sefrith.’ His hand dropped to his side. ‘Take it and give it into the hands of the one man who can fully decipher it, the only man who can implement dor-Sefrith’s instructions.

‘Take the scroll to Nikumu.’

N
IGHT CREPT OVER THE
marsh with a furtive deliberation. A ragged line of geese, brown and white against the red and ocher sky, disappearing toward the distant, rising peak of Fujiwara. To the east, the wide veldt rustled in the soft breeze, the calmness after the violence of the evening’s squall.

Here and there, frogs began once again to croak after being startled into silence by the storm. Fireflies darted in amongst the high reeds, cautiously remaining on the verge of the marsh.

A salamander snaked just beneath the skin of the fecund water, crawled onto the tiny green island of a lily pad. It stared at the erratic flight of the fireflies, mesmerized by the patterns of cold, winking lights.

To the west, stillness reigned at Haneda.

Even the cicadas were quiescent. A blackbird flapped its wings, lifting off from the canopy of the cryptomeria wood. It circled high in the red sky, passing over the rice fields, then swept eastward toward the open veldt.

‘There is nothing I can do,’ he had said, when they were alone.

‘But you are the Kunshin—’

‘I am Bujun first. That is the essential issue. I would not listen if the situation were reversed, and if he were foolish enough to ask me, I would kill him.’

‘But he is your strongest ally.’

‘You must understand, Ronin, that if he needed to ask me, he would have lost all value, to Eido, to Ama-no-mori, as well as to me.’

‘It has nothing to do with position then.’

‘Nothing whatsoever.’

‘What then?’

‘History,’ Azuki-iro had said. ‘The code by which we live our lives is our most unshakable bond; nothing may stand against it. We will die by our own hands rather than lose it.’ The reflection of the rain which had begun again with far less intensity, dappled his round face as they stood near the open window. ‘What Nikumu decides now, he must decide alone. What he has been doing in Haneda recently, I cannot tell you, nor could any Bujun, I think. The magus within him has gained in power, thus he rescued Moeru where none other on Ama-no-mori could.’

‘What of the sasori?’

‘They are all under surveillance. We have nothing to fear from their virulence. It is Nikumu’s involvement which has my curiosity.’

‘Why?’

‘It is unlike him, and it is a clumsy manifestation of evil.’

‘This is too ironic.’

‘Ronin, you have journeyed long to deliver the scroll of dor-Sefrith into the rightful hands. Can you say why you did this? Would you forsake the obligation you took on so long ago? You do not fear him, of that I am certain. Still, it is entirely up to you, for you are free to leave this isle, as always you have been. The Bujun do not hold prisoners—’

‘But Nikumu—’

‘Precisely my point. What has Nikumu become?’

Outside, the great pine shivered in the last gustings of the passing squall, the thick branches scraping against the castle’s outer wall. Moeru’s voice came darkly to him:
He is possessed.

‘Who is Okami?’

‘One of my daimyos.’ He lifted a hand. ‘Do not be concerned. I sent him to find you.’

‘How did you know of my coming?’

They went away from the glistening window, the Kunshin’s arm around his shoulders.

‘In the mythology of the Bujun,’ he said, ‘the tiger rules the land.’ They sat in the center of the room and he poured tea. ‘The heavens are ruled by the dragon.’

‘You know of Kukulkan.’

‘Oh yes. By another name. But it is he.’

‘I must go,’ said Ronin, staring out past the bulk of Azuki-iro, at the nightingale wrapped in his dripping bower, just past the open window.

‘Yes, it is your karma. In these matters, there is no choice. One learns acceptance of certain basic life patterns and forces. The Bujun understand this even before they are born, I think. We accept and live in peace with ourselves. The rest falls into place of its own accord.’

‘Would you accept then the coming of The Dolman?’ Ronin said angrily. ‘Will you lie down and die in front of his might?’

‘Now you deliberately misunderstand me,’ said Azuki-iro softly. ‘We are not fatalists, merely realists. What is, is, and we train ourselves to live within that framework. That does not mean that we do not continually strive for those things we want.’ His round face was abruptly eclipsed by the shadows of the room. ‘We learned well from the agonies of our ancestors. In the end, our sorcery was inimical to us.’