Lord of the Darkwood (14 page)

Kinpoge must have seen him first, lurking in the shadows just beyond the firelight, for she cried out and jumped into Ima's arms. Mu looked into the darkness and saw two red eyes glaring at them. He felt for the knife that Ima had been using to cut up the rabbit that would be their supper. Ima slid Kinpoge off his lap, pushed her behind him, and reached for his bow.

The tengu was dressed in bright blue leggings and a short red jacket. He had a long, beaklike nose, and when he sat down opposite Mu, he made a curious shrugging movement to adjust something feathery between his shoulders, which, at first, Mu thought was a dead bird and then realized was wings. The wings were grayish white and shaggy, almost indistinguishable from the tengu's thick shock of hair. He pulled out a sword and a bow, which he had been carrying on his back between the wings, and laid them down, the sword on his left, the bow on his right.

He gave Mu a long, penetrating look and said, “We would really like to know what's going on. And that rabbit looks good. Give me a piece. I love rabbit.”

He reached out to the embers. He had only three fingers and a thumb.

Ima said, “It's not cooked yet.”

“I don't mind,” the tengu said, and crammed the half-raw rabbit's leg into his wide mouth.

“He's your brother, isn't he?” he said indistinctly.

“Who?” Mu said, thinking for a moment he meant Ima.

“So-called Master Kikuta, who claims to be Akuzenji's son and the new King of the Mountain.”

“Kiku?” Mu said, with pain, after a long pause.

“Is that his name? Kiku meaning the flower, or Kiku meaning ‘listen'?”

“Listen, I think.” Mu had never heard of the flower.

“Well, he writes it like the flower these days, with a fancy crest to go with it, a crest that now appears on the robes of fifty warriors and is stamped on tons of goods going between Kitakami and the east, by road and by sea.”

He had said all this while chewing vigorously, blood and grease running down his chin. Now he swallowed and reached for another piece.

“You know more than we do,” Mu said. “Why have you come to ask us? We can tell you nothing you don't already know. We have not seen or heard from our brothers since they left in the ninth month. Before that, they were away for years.” He pressed his lips together, trying to master the agony of remembering.

The tengu watched him intently over the rabbit bone he was chewing. He bit into it with his powerful teeth and sucked out the marrow noisily.

“And what were you doing all that time?” There was a note of accusation in his voice that Mu did not care for.

“What business is it of yours?”

The tengu hissed through his teeth in annoyance. “If I am informed correctly, you are the son of several powerful men and a sorceress of the Old People. I daresay you have many talents. Yet you are skulking here with the half-dead—and even they are ceasing to live—only kept from death yourself by the efforts of your brother, who may not have your abilities but is a lot more practical than you.”

“How can you tell that?” Mu said. “You've only known us for five minutes!”

“I know many things. I am not without some supernatural ability myself,” the tengu said smugly. Then he addressed Ima in a kind voice. “This rabbit is delicious. Well caught! Well cooked! In fact, well done, all around.”

Ima narrowed his eyes and said nothing. Kinpoge peeked out from behind him.

“Ah, a little child!” the tengu exclaimed. “I love children!”

Not in the same way you love rabbit, I hope
, Mu said to himself.

“So, what have you been doing?” the tengu repeated.

“Nothing,” Mu admitted. “What should I be doing?” He recalled his nightmares and immediately wanted to defend himself. “I have no one to teach me anything. Those you say are my fathers are either dead or distant—either way, they are no use to me and never have been. So I can do certain things real, ordinary people can't, but, as you pointed out, here in the Darkwood Ima's skills are more useful. I can take on invisibility to surprise my daughter, or use the second self to make her laugh, but even that I don't do often, and when I needed to, seriously, I was too slow. I was tied up for days, and now I am half-crippled.”

“Your brother tied you up?”

“Not himself, but on his orders. A warrior who serves him, called Tsunetomo.”

“I know Tsunetomo. He leads the band they called the Crippled Army.”

“Who are they?” Mu said. “Maybe I should join them.”

“Well, it's a possibility,” the tengu replied. “But that's some time ahead. They are a bunch of warriors, both Kakizuki and Miboshi, seriously injured in battle, mutilated, scarred, some blind, some without arms, some legless. They became ugly and imperfect and were turned out by their former masters, to starve to death or become bandits. Most of them are thickheads, but one or two among them have picked up some knowledge of this and that. Tsunetomo is not a complete idiot. Now they serve your brother, Master Kikuta. At first he seemed just another ambitious merchant, good at seizing opportunities and ruthless in eliminating his rivals—there are many men like that in Kitakami, but this year something changed.” The tengu had been staring into the flames as he spoke. Now he fixed Mu with his glittering eyes and said, “He has acquired some magic object from which he derives extreme power.”

Ima looked across at Mu and their eyes locked. Mu raised his eyebrows slightly and Ima made an almost imperceptible movement with his head. The tengu intrigued Mu, and, somewhat to his surprise, he felt he could trust him.

“It is a skull,” he said slowly. “The head was taken from the monk Gessho by Shikanoko when he killed him, and after Shisoku was killed in the same fight. Shisoku was the sorcerer who lived here, and made the creatures.”

“I know Shisoku,” the tengu said impatiently. “Or knew, I should say.”

“It was buried for years,” Mu went on. “Kiku returned to retrieve it and invest it with power in secret rituals.”

“Were these rituals conducted by himself alone?”

“With a woman,” Mu forced himself to say. “A fox woman.”

“Mu's wife,” Ima explained.

Mu steeled himself to meet the tengu's eyes. He felt they saw deep into his heart, even into his soul. They examined him without pity, saw through all the defenses he might erect, all the excuses he might make.

“Your name is Mu?” the tengu said. “Is that Mu written as ‘warrior' or Mu written as ‘nothing'?”

“I don't know. I have never seen it written.”

“Well, when I have finished with you, you will be both. You will be a great warrior, but you will be as nothing, free from all attachments. That is what I am going to teach you.”

The tengu spoke with such assurance, Mu could not help laughing. “You speak as though I have no choice in the matter.”

“That is correct.”

“What is your purpose?” Mu asked.

“I'm not going to tell you.” The tengu cackled with sudden brusque laughter. “Not yet, anyway.”

The tengu started the next day, waking Mu before it was light. There had been a deep frost in the night and the surface of the snow crackled beneath their feet when they walked outside.

“Since it is winter, we will start with a lesson on how to stay warm,” the tengu announced. He surveyed Mu by the light of a flaming branch he had plucked from the fire. “Look at you! There is nothing to you. You are as frail as a dead spider. Don't you eat anything?”

“I eat plenty,” Mu said, trying not to shiver.

“I saw you last night, toying with a tiny bit of rabbit, drowning your appetite with that vile twig brew. You should have grabbed that carcass and shoved the whole thing in your mouth. That's what Master Kikuta would do!”

“My daughter and my brother needed to eat, too,” Mu said. He had intended his voice to be mild, but it came out whiny. “Not to mention you, Sir Tengu, our honored guest.”

The tengu cackled. “Sir Tengu! That's a good one. No one's called me that before.”

“Do you have a name?” Mu said.

“You can call me Tadashii, because I am always right. Now, to work. Watch this.”

He handed the burning torch to Mu and began to breathe in a rapid rhythm. The snow beneath his feet melted immediately, steaming as he sank through the frozen surface down to the buried grass. Standing next to the tengu, Mu felt the heat radiate from him, making him believe for a moment that winter was over and spring had come.

“Now you do it,” Tadashii said.

“Just like that? You aren't going to give me any instructions?”

“It should be second nature for you, just like the other skills that you've neglected. Imitate my breathing and think of the warmth of your own blood. That's all I'm going to tell you.”

Tadashii took the smoldering branch back from Mu, waving it in the air so sparks flew from it and it crackled into flame again.

Mu began to breathe in the same rapid way as Tadashii had. He was watching the branch's fiery arc when suddenly he felt its heat inside his belly. His blood began to boil, racing through his veins. The snow steamed around him as he sank through it to the grass beneath. He felt mud under his feet.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Tadashii's laughter rang out through the silent forest. “Easy as breathing, isn't it?”

Mu did not reply at once. Within himself something was melting like the snow. He saw a life beyond the great drifts of grief that had all but buried him, a life where warmth and laughter—and power—were all possible again.

“What else am I going to learn?” he said.

“Everything,” Tadashii promised. “I am going to teach you everything. It will be very hard work, but fun, too.”

*   *   *

It was hard work such as Mu had never known, but he reveled in it. All that he had felt was empty was now filled. He no longer dreamed of Shida or yearned after the foxlight that flickered in the marsh. He had a new purpose: to meet every challenge Tadashii threw at him and to master it. He stopped caring what the tengu's intentions might be. The training had no end other than itself. By the time summer came he could use his own innate skills flawlessly and he had learned much more: the art of sword and bow; the roots and herbs of the forest that poisoned or cured; the names and properties of trees, plants, animals, insects; how to trap a stoat, whose meat when dried was a source of courage; how to track bears and wolves; how to recognize scorpions, spiders, snakes, and toads, and milk their venom.

His physical strength increased, as Tadashii showed him how to use his muscles and how to build them up. For hours he carried boulders the length of the stream and back again, and while he would never approach the tengu in strength—Tadashii could lift great rocks with one hand—he surpassed most ordinary men, despite his slight build and appearance. He was no longer lame. He kept the stick, but as a weapon. Tadashii forged a sword for him.

Tadashii could not give Mu wings, but he showed him how to leap to great heights, how to swing from treetop to treetop like a monkey, how to stride the crags like a mountain goat. He seemed to have an inexhaustible patience, which he also taught to Mu. Indeed, Mu thought he must have a different sense of time for, though he had spoken with some urgency on their first meeting, now he seemed to be in no hurry, either to solve the problem of Master Kikuta or to leave.

The seasons passed. It was winter again, and then another winter. Often in the long dark nights they played Go or checkers or chess, for the tengu loved all games, but still he gave no indication of what his original purpose might have been.

*   *   *

One spring night, two years after the tengu arrived, he took Mu by the shoulders and flew with him high above the forest toward the side of the mountain. It was the night of the full moon of the third month and they could see as clearly as if it were day. Mu caught a glimpse of water that was Lake Kasumi, and the river that flowed from it all the way to the capital, and, in the other direction, the Northern Sea.

Tadashii landed on a ledge where rocks had been placed in a circle, dropping Mu gently in the center of them. On each rock perched winged tengu; some, like Tadashii, had beaks, others long red noses. They were all armed with swords and bows. To see so many at once was alarming. Mu had landed on his hands and knees and he now turned this into a deep, reverent bow.

“Welcome,” said a number of voices, all low and gruff, like Tadashii's.

“So this is your pupil?” said one long-nosed being.

“It is,” Tadashii replied. “His name is Mu, the warrior of nothingness.”

“Does he understand the principles of being and non-being, of form and no-form?” the tengu asked.

“That's not as important as being able to play a good game,” another tengu interrupted. “Is he going to be a player or a stone on the board?”

“That is not yet decided,” Tadashii said. “I am hoping you, my masters, will look on him favorably and instruct him.”

“If he is able to learn we will teach him. Let us see if he can survive our lessons.” There was a ripple of laughter, as if the tengu did not really believe that was possible.

Tadashii touched Mu's head. “Be strong,” he whispered. “I hope we meet again.”

Mu shivered slightly. The uncharacteristic affection alarmed him as much as Tadashii's words. There was a faint rush of air against his face, as Tadashii flexed his wings, followed by a greater rush as all the tengu rose into the air, leaving him alone on the mountainside.

Alone, but not alone. Physically the tengu might have departed, but they were still present in some way, observing Mu, as the moon set and the stars wheeled overhead. He settled, cross-legged, in the meditation position Tadashii had taught him, reminding himself he had been tied up for a week, in a far more uncomfortable way, and had survived. The first light of dawn filled the sky and birds began to sing piercingly. The mountain air was cold, heavy with dew. Mu warmed himself, almost without thinking. The hours passed. He was neither hungry nor thirsty. He had no needs and no desires. He knew only the eternal being that includes all life, all death, in which each person exists for a tiny moment and is then absorbed back into the endless void of all and nothing.