The Book of Heroes (15 page)

Directly above the circular stage hung a glass orb that looked like a large light bulb. It was high above the floor, yet still looked big—so it must have been very large indeed. Yuriko walked slowly beneath it, afraid that if she were to make some mistake here, the giant light bulb might come crashing down on top of her.

A chill ran across her forehead.

At the same time, the bulb above the stage began to shine.

Now her forehead was shining too. It seemed like the light from her forehead was aimed directly at the glass sphere above her. Like a spotlight was emanating from her own head, illuminating the bulb.

She saw the magic circle appear on the side of the giant sphere. That light reflected back down onto the stage, making the floor glow. It was another giant magic circle.

“
Allcaste
!” the masses of nameless devout said as one, “step into the circle.”

Though her teeth were chattering so loudly with fear she was afraid they might fall out of her mouth, Yuriko walked into the circle upon the floor.

When she reached the center of the circle, it shone more brightly than before; then the light subsided, trapped inside the whorls and eddies of the pattern again, flowing along the lines of the circle. The lines went dark, and only the corners where two lines met sparkled. Then it seemed like a strip of light began to snake its way along the lines of the pattern, tracing out a figure eight.

“Lift your eyes. There is no need for fear.” It wasn’t a chorus. The thousands, no, tens of thousands of nameless devout were talking to Yuriko with one voice, and the sound was deafening.

Yuriko looked up. She was in the middle of the dais, the lowermost part of the amphitheater, surrounded by the nameless devout. The top row was so distant from where she stood she could barely make out the monks sitting there. But it was enough for Yuriko to see the faces of the nameless devout standing in the rows closest to her.

They all looked the same. They weren’t triplets, or quintuplets, or anything like that. They all had the same face, the same body.

All thousand of them, all ten thousand of them.

All one of them.
So that’s what he meant.

Yuriko’s internal surprise meter was completely overloaded. The needle spun around so fast it broke. Yuriko stood with her mouth hanging open, looking up at the sea of black robes.
Is this what it’s like to be a rock star playing the Tokyo Dome?
Except her Tokyo Dome was filled with monks. And she wasn’t singing. Though some kind of hymn might have been appropriate.

“Um…hi?” Yuriko said, her voice cracking. “N-nice to meet you.”

As one, the sea of nameless devout bowed in reply. The robes made a sound like waves rippling.
This isn’t some kind of hallucination. They’re all really there.

“M-m-my name is Yuriko Morisaki.”

The nameless devout bowed again, sending a shudder through the air of the dome.

“What’s, um, your name?”

“We are the nameless devout,” they replied.

It was her against thousands. She felt like the strength of their voice would crush her.

“S-sorry. Would it be okay if only one of you spoke?”

The room fell silent.
Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say.
She hoped she hadn’t inadvertently insulted them.

Then, a single of the devout broke from one of the rows directly in front of her. Cutting down through the rows, he walked toward Yuriko. Yuriko waited in the perfect silence of the dome for him to get to her. She could hear the faint
slap, slap
of his bare feet on the floor as he got closer.

The nameless devout stopped a short distance away from her and lowered his head, addressing her as “
Allcaste
.” She noticed his feet had stopped short of touching the magic circle on the ground. “Will this make it easier for you to speak with us?”

The devout had the same face as the one who had brought her here, with the same dark brows. His voice was the same too.

Yuriko nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

The nameless devout smiled a smile that had a far more powerful effect on Yuriko than she had expected. The tension seemed to drain from her body. She felt like she could breathe normally for the first time since she had entered the dome.

She looked up and saw that the masses of nameless devout were all looking down at her with the same face, the same smile.

“We who have no name have no true individual form,” the nameless devout said, spreading the sleeves of his robes. “We can change our appearance to make your dealings with us easier, if you wish. We are very young now, I fear. You were surprised to see us this way, weren’t you?”

Yuriko nodded.

“I believe that when you heard we looked like monks, you pictured someone far older—like this, perhaps.”

The nameless devout rubbed his face with his hand, and like that, he changed. His head was still bald, but now his brows were long and white, and wrinkles lined his face. His back was slightly bent, so that he stood no taller than Yuriko.

She looked up, and sure enough the thousands of nameless devout looking down at her had all become the same old man.

“Th-thank you,” she stammered. “I think I can get used to this face.”

I shouldn’t look up at them. I should just focus on the one here in front of me. I’ll think of the rest of them as…as scenery.

Not that it wasn’t an unusual and interesting experience to have tens of thousands of old men staring down at her so intently.

“I suppose you know why I’ve come here?”

The nameless devout nodded. “You seek your brother.”

“Yes. My brother, Hiroki. He has become the last vessel.”

When she said it, she felt something inside her harden. One astonishment after the other had thrown her completely off balance, but now she felt like she was finally starting to get her feet back underneath her.
That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’ve come to the nameless land. The place where the Hero was imprisoned. The place from which it escaped.

“The book who sent me here said that you might be able to help,” Yuriko said, taking a step back and bowing so low her face almost touched her knees. “Please, you have to help me. Tell me what I need to do in order to find my brother.”

There was silence. Yuriko closed her eyes tight.

Nothing happened. Slowly, she opened her eyes again. Then she saw the old monk’s withered feet stepping onto the magic circle on the floor.

The nameless devout put a hand on Yuriko’s head. “I am sorry for your plight,” he said in a voice that was low and gentle. “Most of the
allcaste
who come here are young. For only the young souls are able to find their way to this land.”

This confirmed what she had heard from Aju and the Sage.

“Yet even among their number, your soul is particularly small and lacking strength. You are but a girl. Your cheeks are soft, your arms thin, and your legs so weak they are barely able to hold your own weight. Yet still you would go on this quest to find your brother?”

Yuriko looked up, and the old nameless devout stroked her head once before drawing back his hand.

When she looked up at him again, she saw in his eyes that he was sad for her. He was truly sorrowful for her plight. All the words of sympathy and consolation she had received up to that point added together couldn’t match what she saw in the monk’s eyes that instant. It was a look more gentle than his hand on her head.

They know about the Hero. They know about the King in Yellow. They know about the vessels. And what happened to my brother. They won’t laugh it off, they won’t not believe. I don’t have to explain anything to them. They know it all.

The thought gave Yuriko great courage. “I am a little girl, but that doesn’t mean I’m weak,” she told the devout. His thinking was clearly a little behind the times. “We can do everything boys can do. Sometimes better. I’ll be okay. With your help, I hope!”

She would find her brother, rescue him, and help them find the King in Yellow again—but the old nameless devout raised a bony hand to stop her.

“
Allcaste.
I believe you are mistaken.”

“Mistaken? About what?”

“It was we who bound the Hero here in imprisonment.”

“Yes, I know. That’s why—”

“But now the Hero has broken free from its prison and escaped into your Circle. We do not have the power to hunt the Hero there. We are bound just as it was to this land. We are not warriors.”

“So then who’s going to capture the Hero? Don’t we have to capture it in order to imprison it again?”

The nameless devout shook his head. “No one can capture the Hero.”

For a moment, all Yuriko could do was stand there, gaping.

“All one can do is sap its power in order to pull it back into the flow. Because the Hero is a story it can be absorbed within the flow of the great story and placed upon the Great Wheels of Inculpation, which will bring it back here of its own accord. Only then might we seek to imprison it again.”

The great wheels of incul-what? What’s that?

“This land is the origin of stories,” the nameless devout continued, his eyes firmly on hers. This was a lecture. “Here, stories are born, emerge, and fade. It is from here that stories leave, and to here they return. The Great Wheels of Inculpation are those that speed the birth of stories—devices, if you will.”

It was their job, the nameless devout explained, to keep pushing the wheels; their “duty” was the word he used.

“But Aju and the Sage—and all of the books I met—they said you could help me.”

“If it is wisdom you seek then help you we can. We might also find the map which you seek. Yet we cannot give chase to the Hero, nor hunt it down. In truth, we cannot even stand up to the Hero, for we are the inculpated.”

There was that word again, but Yuriko didn’t have time now to wonder about what it meant. What the nameless devout was telling her was not what she had expected to hear.

“So I’m all alone? Nobody will come with me?”

There are so many of you!

Though her distress was certainly clear to him, the old monk spoke just as calmly as before. “
Allcaste
.” He stepped forward and placed a hand on Yuriko’s shoulder. “You have many allies other than us. The books are your friends. They know that the Hero has escaped, and even now they begin their hunt. The wolves too will make their presence known to you before long. And in regions you do not yet know of there are swordsmen and sorcerers who might aid in sapping the Hero’s power.”

Swordsmen? Sorcerers?

Yuriko had begun to shake her head—she was starting to lose track of what he was saying—when the nameless devout shook her lightly by the shoulder. She looked up.

“You must not despair. There are as many regions as there are stars in the heavens.”

“What are these ‘regions’? Are they like the world where I live? There are no swordsmen and sorcerers in my neighborhood, that’s for sure.”

The nameless devout smiled. “The place where you live is a region, yes. But there are many other regions. It is these of which I speak.”

The nameless devout explained to her then that all of the countless stories that flowed through the Circle were each in themselves a region. “Each has their own place within the Circle, closed to the others.”

Yuriko frowned, not quite getting it.
Stories moving through the Circle?

“You mean like books?”

“Not only books. Though that may be their original form, many regions appear in different forms as well.”

“Like movies? And comic books? And games?” Yuriko asked, her voice rising higher with each question. “You mean I have to go into those regions to find help?”

“Wherever your brother’s trail leads, you must follow. Whether it stays in the real or strays into fantasy.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“You can, because you are an
allcaste
.”

Yuriko touched the glyph on her forehead. Her head was swimming. The mark felt heavy against her skin.
I’ve been branded.

“You look tired. You should rest.”

How do they always know what I’m thinking? One more comment like that and I might just lose my temper.

“I will show you to your quarters.”

Then the old nameless devout lifted a hand, and another came down the stairs to the amphitheater floor. This one’s face was young, the same as the one she had first met. When she looked around, she saw that all of the nameless devout, save the old monk who had been talking to her, were young again.

“I alone will stay in this form, so that you may know me and take comfort in it,” the lone old devout said. Then he smiled, the wrinkles deepening at the corners of his eyes.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Great Wheels

Following the twisting paths and corridors that led from the Dome of Convocation,
Yuriko passed through three stone buildings, each one a different shape and size. For a moment, she was walking outside through a garden under the weak sunlight; then she was back inside yet another building. This was the lodge where the nameless devout lived. Yuriko was to be appointed a room here with them.

From the outside, the lodge also appeared to be made from stone, but inside she noticed rafters and posts carved from ancient, thick logs. Boards ran across the floor, the wood stained dark with age. The furniture was all wooden as well, with nothing resembling the intricately wrought metal fixtures she had seen inside the other buildings.

Following the young devout, Yuriko climbed up the stairs to the third floor—at least she guessed it was the third floor, based on the windows and stair landings she passed on the way up. The wooden stairs creaked under her feet, but the railing was made of a cold metal that resembled the smooth black material of the portcullis at the side entrance.

There were very few windows in the lodge, making it rather dark inside. The stairs were steep, and each step very high, so that Yuriko’s calves ached by the time they reached the top.

“This way.”

The nameless devout opened an iron-framed wooden door to a cell. The room was small, with a right wall made of what looked like clay. The ceiling slanted up to a triangular window at the top. The left-hand wall was a bookshelf, packed full of books.

A simple wooden bed sat flush to the wall on the right. On it, she saw a thin pillow with a white cover, and next to that, a folded blanket the color of camel’s hair. A desk and chair about the same size as the ones they used in her classroom back home sat at the foot of the bed. Atop the desk sat a lamp small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. A white wick, its lower end suspended in translucent oil, stuck out of it.

“Make yourself at home.”

The young nameless devout bowed once, then left. He left the door open behind him, however, making her think that he would be back. Yuriko sat down on the chair and waited.

The monk soon returned. He was carrying a tray in both hands and another blanket draped over one of his arms. “Please eat,” he said, placing the tray on Yuriko’s desk. The tray held a white dish with a piece of white bread next to a glass of water.

“Thank you,” she said, and the monk bowed silently in reply. Every time he bowed, he would straighten his back first, placing his feet together.
Very formal.

“Should you need anything, please ring.” The monk indicated a bell shaped like an upside-down lily on the tray next to the cup of water.

Yuriko looked closer at the monk’s hand and noticed with a start that it was criss-crossed with scars. His fingernails were chipped and split in places.

“I’m sorry. I can’t just sit around here,” Yuriko began. “I have to—”

“First you must rest,” the young monk interrupted her, placing the blanket he carried at the foot of her bed. “The rooms here are chilly. Use this blanket should you need it.”

This time, it seemed like the monk was leaving her for good. He put a hand on the door and was straightening himself to bow again, when Yuriko stood. “The books here are all fake too, aren’t they?”

She had noticed it the moment she stepped into the room. Every book on the wall across from the bed were sculptures, like the ones she had seen in the long curving hallway. With one small difference: these were made from wood, not stone.

“If this place is the Hall of All Books, then why are all the books fake?”

The young nameless devout stared back at Yuriko, unblinking, his thick brows lifting over jet black eyes. “They are not fake,” he replied. She was able to hear him clearly, though his voice was little more than a whisper. “These are what you might call emblems—or perhaps, remains.”

Emblems? Remains?
Neither of those words seemed particularly appropriate for books.

“The Hall of All Books is both the origin and the final resting place of every story. So you see, it does not matter what form the books take here. All that matters is what they hold.”

While Yuriko was thinking about this, the monk bowed.
Uh-oh, he’s leaving!
Suddenly, Yuriko didn’t want to be left alone in this place. Quickly, she asked him the first question that came to mind. “But don’t you read them?”

All librarians read books. They were experts. She expected most of them took the job because they liked books. Why would the nameless devout be any different?

The young monk tilted his head, thinking. His gentle expression did not change. “No, we do not read books,” he said. Then, as if to prevent Yuriko from asking yet another question, he quickly added, “We are, in a way, like books themselves, so there is no need for us to read them.”

This was confusing, and Yuriko made to ask another question when the nameless devout patted the air with his hands lightly, as if to say there would be time for that later. “Rest now,
allcaste
, for you are far more weary than you think.”

“But I—”

“Once you’ve rested and regained your strength, you’ll have plenty of time to think on what you must do and the path you must take. The Archdevout will wait until you are ready.”

“The Archdevout?”

The monk smiled faintly. “The old nameless devout you met earlier. You may call him that. We seek to make it easier for you to speak with us—who are many and who are one.”

So they’re keeping one of the nameless devout looking old and calling him by a special name for my sake.
Even if there are a thousand of them, or ten thousand, they all have the same face.

Yuriko wondered what that felt like.
What would it be like if all my classmates had my face?
No, it was more than just looking alike—they would all actually be the same person. They would all do the same things, talk the same way, think the same thoughts. There would never be any fights or bullying. They would never disagree.

It sounded nice, easy.

But how would I know which was the real “me” if everyone
was
me?

Yuriko pondered how she might ask the nameless devout about that when he stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him. Yuriko was alone.

Suddenly she yawned.
Maybe I’ll lie down,
she thought, when her stomach rumbled so loudly the sound echoed off the ceiling. Yuriko laughed.

She ate the bread and drank the water. The sounds of her own chewing and swallowing were unnaturally loud in her ears. Then she started to feel lonely, like she might cry, so she swallowed her sobs down with the bread.

The bread and the water were both unexpectedly tasty. She finished them in a few moments, and a wave of drowsiness hit her. She kicked off her shoes, flopped down on the bed, and managed to pull the blanket over her before curling up and falling asleep.

It was a deep sleep without dreams.

She had no idea how long she slept, but when she awoke, the room was much darker. Someone had lit the lamp on her desk. Yuriko lay there awhile beneath the blanket, watching the lamp’s tiny flame flicker in the darkness. The flame cast a warm circle of light on the desk. The wall of books across the room looked dark and solid in the lamplight.

Even though she was now completely awake, she felt like she was dreaming. It didn’t matter where she was or what she was doing. Somehow the feeling of it being out of her hands was a comfort to her.

Maybe I’ll just sleep here forever.
It felt like something she might actually be able to get away with here in the nameless land. In time, she would lose her name too, and her identity. She’d become another nameless part of the place.

It was like a strong desire had suddenly materialized inside her.
I want to become nothing.

Then an edge of the darkness moved near the door, just outside the circle of light cast by her tiny oil wick lamp.

Yuriko shot up in bed. She could hear footsteps pattering away.

Somebody had been outside her chamber.

Sliding off the bed, she tiptoed over to the door to find it had been left open a crack.

Were the nameless devout spying on me? No, why would they do that?
Then she thought that maybe it was the one who came to light her lamp.

They might have run away when they saw me waking up, so as not to frighten me.
That seemed far more likely than a peeping Tom.

She rubbed her eyes and gradually realized there was another source of light in the small room. She looked up. The light was coming from the triangular window near the ceiling. The light fell on the floor where it wavered slightly. It seemed to Yuriko that the light was coming from not one source, but many at once.

It’s coming from outside the building.

Yuriko quickly drew on her shoes. She stood, and noticing a chill in the air, she took one of the blankets and wrapped it around her shoulders like a shawl. Then she slipped out through the door into the hall.

Small candles burned in sconces set at intervals down the long hallway. By each pool of light, she searched for a door that would lead out, checking both sides as she walked.

She intended to follow the route she had taken when the nameless devout first brought her here, but it soon became apparent that she had taken a wrong turn. Yuriko went around a familiar-looking corner only to find a life-size bronze statue that she was certain she hadn’t seen on her way in. She leapt back in surprise, clapping her hand over her mouth to keep from shouting.

The statue itself wasn’t particularly scary. It was the figure of a monk much like the nameless devout, wearing robes and carrying a book in one arm. His eyes were lowered, his head bowed as though praying. Still, in the flickering light of the candles, what was probably intended to be a work of art ended up looking like some pop-up bogeyman in a haunted house. Yuriko blushed, ashamed at her own lack of nerve.

Calm yourself.
She looked around and found several other statues nearby. She was in more of a small chamber than a hallway now. The ceiling was vaulted, and the candles here were set much higher up on the walls. Double doors stood in the wall to the left, slightly larger than the single door to her room, and reinforced with the same iron frame.
That must be the main entrance.
The doors were open slightly, and a sliver of light spilled in from outside.

Yuriko put both hands to the door and slowly pushed. The door opened smoothly outward, and light spilled in from the widening crack.

“Whoa!”

It’s the Milky Way!

Except it was below her.

Thousands of points of light were flowing by like a river below, quietly, solemnly. She squinted and saw that each point of light was the torch held in the hand of a nameless devout. It was a procession. She was standing above them, somehow, looking down.

She could now hear their bare feet slapping against the hard-packed ground, even from her distant perch. Each of the devout wore a hood over his head, their darkened forms blending with the darkness around them. In the wavering torchlight she caught a glimpse of a narrow shoulder here, a thin back there.

Where could they all be going?

“We go to fulfill our duty,” a voice said from below. The Archdevout, a torch in his hand, was coming up toward her. One of the nameless monks—the young-faced devout with dark brows that had shown her to the lodge—followed close behind him.

For the first time, Yuriko realized she was on a veranda of some sort, up on the second or third floor. The Archdevout and the young monk with him were climbing a flight of exterior stairs. Yuriko decided to give up trying to figure out the layout of the place. Everything in the nameless land was too convoluted, it seemed.

“So they’re going to work?”

The Archdevout reached the veranda and stood next to Yuriko. The young monk stepped behind her and opened the doors wide.

“They’re going to work even though it’s so dark out?”

“It is the changing of the shift.”

So it’s like a factory?

“What kind of work do they do?”

Sorting books, maybe? Or maybe they make the fake books to put on the walls?
She supposed there would be maintenance to do on the buildings, and cleaning too.
But why did they need so many of them, and why are they heading away from the buildings?

The Archdevout held his candle off to the side so that the light would not hit Yuriko directly in the face. Even in the dark of night, she could see the thin wisp of smoke rising from the candle flame. The burning wick made a faint sizzling noise.

“Well then,” the Archdevout said with a smile, “will you come watch us at our labors?”

It seemed a plain enough invitation, but Yuriko sensed something else in his tone. It was as if watching them work would require no small effort on her part, and the Archdevout wanted to know if she was truly ready.

Yuriko looked at him more closely, marveling at how he seemed more like a little old man than any little old man she had seen in her entire life. He was a champion among little old men.

Of course he seems that way,
she thought.
That’s what I was expecting, after all.
But now, in the light of the candle, she noticed something else. There was a severity in the Archdevout’s eyes. She certainly hadn’t ever met an old man back home with eyes like his. She’d never met another person with eyes like his, period.

Yuriko felt her back straighten. Her improvised shawl pulled taut around her shoulders. “Is it all right if I watch?”

The Archdevout nodded. The eyes of the young devout with him were pointed firmly at the ground.

“When you see, you’ll understand why this land exists.”

Well, then I have to see it, don’t I?
“Every
allcaste
sees you at your labors, don’t they?”