The Book of Heroes (32 page)

“Teacher! Teacher!”

Someone was crying.
So now they call the teacher.
U-ri clenched her hand into a fist. The boy clinging to the window was staring at her, his mouth wide open.

U-ri undid the transformation. The policewoman vanished.

For moment, U-ri thought that a cloud had passed over the sun—then she looked up to see Ash towering behind her.

“Hardly actions befitting a lady
allcaste
,” he said, though there was a hint of mirth in his voice and a sparkle in his eyes as he looked up at the school building. “Were they involved with Hiroki?”

“I have no idea. I couldn’t let them to do that.”

The teacher had arrived on the scene. The boy clinging to the windowsill turned to look back toward the classroom. He flinched—the teacher was scolding him.

“It looks like he thinks it was all the boy’s fault. What are you going to do now?”

U-ri didn’t want to believe that the teacher could be so clueless—but there he was, roughly dragging the boy the others had been picking on away from the window. A man was shouting. U-ri gritted her teeth.
I don’t believe this!

“Time for round two?” Ash said quietly, drawing his right-hand sword. He spun it in his hand, muttered something quickly, then pointed the sword tip directly at the window.

A wave of force shot through the air. Not just the boy’s window, but all the windows around it rattled loudly. The teacher, his hand on the boy’s neck, was flung back out of sight while the boy at the window was tossed backward into the classroom.

Teachers were nervously looking out the windows on all three floors now, a strange line of bobbing heads. U-ri watched them for moment, then turned to Ash. “Hardly actions befitting a wolf.”

“Oh? I merely thought you’d like to see my mageblade in action.” He had already sheathed his sword. The wolf smiled. “And it appears you’re making progress in understanding the use of your glyph.”

“It’s embarrassing,” U-ri said. “The people in my region aren’t all like this, you know.”

Ash thrust his hands into his pockets and nodded. “I know that quite well. I’ve been around, you know. There is evil everywhere. Sometimes big, sometimes small.”

U-ri heard a commotion from the school building. Now the fire alarm was ringing.

“To the Haetlands,” Ash said.

U-ri turned away from the school and began to walk.

CHAPTER NINE

The Land of Fear and Loathing

Ash was able to jump from region to region at will.
According to him, it was a skill every wolf possessed. “It’s basic glyph magic. No one can become a wolf without the ability to use it. You need to be able to travel between regions for the chase, after all. But it only works for me.”

With their current numbers, they would have to travel a different way. It was decided that they would first go to Minochi’s cottage. From there, they could use the magic circle on the reading room floor to travel together wherever they liked.

U-ri felt a slight dizziness during the teleportation—that always seemed to be the case when she was moving through Yuriko Morisaki’s reality. Sky gripped her hand tightly.

“Ah, you have returned!”

Even before U-ri had found her footing on the reading room floor, the low voice of the Sage welcomed them.The reading room was as dim, dusty, and quiet as always. Even though it was brimming with the presence of so many ancient books, there was a sense of calm to the place. U-ri noticed it all the more, having come directly from the noise and brightness of the outside world.

U-ri was about to say something when Ash stepped outside the magic circle, looked up toward where the Sage sat, and announced himself.

“It has been too long.”

“I see it is you,” said the Sage to the wolf.

“Yes. The chase happens within my domain, you might say.”

Quite suddenly the Sage and Ash were engaged in a deep conversation of which U-ri understood only fragments. Aju and Sky looked equally confused. The three of them stood staring, watching the wolf and the Sage talk. They spoke rapidly, Ash occasionally nodding, occasionally shooting quick glances at U-ri and Sky. The wolf and the book were using so many unfamiliar words, U-ri felt completely out of her depth. On her shoulder, Aju squeaked irritably.

Then Ash turned to U-ri, took a half step back, and bowed. With a nod, he indicated that she should speak.

“We went to my brother’s school,” she began, looking up at the Sage.

“Yes, I have heard what happened. It must have been most difficult for you.” The Sage spoke gently, twinkling a soft, deep green as he spoke. “And you will next go to the Haetlands, whence comes the Man of Ash,” he continued. “You have found a strong ally.”

“You knew that Ash would find us, didn’t you?”

“We have known each other for quite some time,” Ash interjected. He pointed at the magic circle beneath their feet. “Yet it seems I am not the only one who has come. Observe—someone has touched up your glyph here.”

Indeed, the unskilled, erratic lines of the first circle that U-ri had drawn were bolder now, thicker, and more distinct upon the floor.

“Another wolf?”

“Indubitably, yes.”

“Wolves can draw magic circles too?”

“With ease. Who was it?” He looked up at the Sage. “Voont?”

“Carnacki, actually,” the Sage said, a happy ring to his voice. “Him I had not seen for an even longer time than you. He went right back after I told him you had already arrived, however. Said he’d leave things to you. He left a message saying that if we should require his services, he could be found hunting beastmen in the Barren Mountains of Dukaschy.”

“The old man’s still doing well, it sounds like.”

“He’s hardly older than yourself,” the Sage chuckled. Once again, U-ri and her companions were left out of the conversation. “Incidentally, while he was here, he put up a void-hedge around the cottage.”

“That’ll be a help. For you as well as us.”

“Okay, what’s all this then?” Aju interjected, unable to contain himself any longer. “Do you think you guys could talk in a way that we can understand? What the heck is this void-hedgey thing?”

“Sage in Green,” Ash said, ignoring the mouse. “Why did you choose such an unseasoned dictionary? Was this intentional?”

“Perhaps it is better to say that it was not I but the Yellow Sign that chose him. You of all people should understand this.”

“Indeed. But the mark on him is already quite faded. Perhaps because of his proximity to U-ri’s glyph?” Ash turned around to face U-ri. “Will you not choose another dictionary to bring with you?”

U-ri shook her head so vigorously she could hear her hair swish through the air. “Aju’s coming with us.”

“Thanks, U-ri,” Aju squeaked in a tiny voice.

Ash rolled his eyes and nodded. “That’s decided then. Incidentally, the void-hedge is a device that works to conceal this cottage from the eyes of people in the world outside. In addition, it will make it difficult for those who already know about the cottage—U-ri’s relatives specifically—to recollect the cottage and its location.”

“And what’s this about hunting beastmen?” U-ri asked. The unfamiliar word had piqued her interest.

“There is a book,” Ash said, moving his hands as though he were flipping pages, “that turns all who read it into beastmen. It’s one of the copies. Carnacki has been chasing it now for over five years.”

“Oh,” was all U-ri could say to that.

“Do not worry. This copy is not in your region.”

“Can the beastmen ever be returned to their original form?” Sky asked.

Ash fixed the devout with an icy stare. “No. Nor will they ever regain their former intellect. Leave them to roam, and they attack other men and eat them. They are simple beasts—twisted creatures. The most charitable thing one can do is kill them.”

Sky’s gaze dropped to the floor.

“That’s horrible,” U-ri said. The dark side of the Hero’s power worked in frightening ways.

Then a thought crossed U-ri’s mind, like a cold draft through the door.
What if something like that has happened to Hiroki? Maybe he hasn’t only been possessed; maybe he’s been altered in some irreversible way.

Ash stepped into the center of the magic circle, his tattered cape billowing around him. “If stories like that are enough to scare you, we are in trouble. The Haetlands is a far more terrifying place than that.”

U-ri looked up at his face, then over at the green light of the Sage. “But that’s where the Book of Elem came from, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is.”

“Then I’ll go. I’ll go anywhere I have to.”

Sky nodded and moved over to stand by U-ri’s side. “Let us be off.”

The magic circle on the floor began to glow with a pale light.

“Waachoo!”

The instant U-ri arrived, before her feet even touched firm ground, she sneezed loudly.

It was cold. The kind of cold that went straight to your bones.
What is this place? Am I on a mountaintop? In the middle of a glacier?
No—this is inside.

The floor beneath U-ri’s feet was wooden. The walls were made out of some kind of hardened clay. Rafters hung low above her head. There was a window. Strips of ragged cloth hung from the warped frame—a haphazard attempt at a curtain, she surmised. The cloth was fluttering. That was where the cold wind was coming from.

Something in the room was creaking rhythmically.

U-ri looked down at her feet. There was a magic circle—a glyph—here too. This one was slightly smaller than the one in the reading room. It hadn’t been drawn on the floor, but physically carved into the wood with a knife of some sort. The wood floor was damaged in other areas as well.

They seemed to be in a shack of some sort. There were signs of habitation. A bed stood against one wall, and next to it a crude wooden hanger for clothes. There was a table, a chair, and a desk. Here and there stood bookshelves, each stuffed with books—overflowing in fact. Books sat on the floor, on the chair, and in stacks by the bed.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Ash said as he stepped outside the magic circle with the ease of someone returning home. He took off his black cloak and threw it over the nearby chair. Then he removed his boots and tossed them onto the floor. Walking across the small room, he went to the window with the ragged cloth curtains and began tugging on something like a handle, trying to close it.

U-ri gaped. She had never been in a home so cluttered, so rough, and so bone-chillingly cold.

The desk was covered in books and bound scrolls. A pen holder lay on its side at one edge, and several pens were scattered across the top. The front side of the desk was plastered with documents and scraps of paper, attached with pins, so dense that the papers looked like strips of bark growing on the side of a stubby tree.

U-ri spotted some bottles atop the table.

There was also something like a chemistry set, complete with test tubes, and some items that were unmistakably weapons: swords, knives, and something like a bow. All of them seemed sturdy, their edges sharp. She stared at a larger roll of paper—maybe a map. Next to that stood a sphere in a holder.

“Is that a globe?”

U-ri stepped hesitantly toward the desk. On the other side of the room, Ash had finally managed to shut the window. The chill wind ceased, though it was still cold.

“Have to get that fixed one of these days,” he grumbled, walking back to the table and throwing himself down in a chair. Before he sat, he kicked aside a pile of stuff, clearing a spot on the floor. “Sit where you like.”

It seemed safest to sit directly on the floor, so that was what U-ri did.

“What’s the deal with the cold here?” Aju screeched angrily from U-ri’s collar. “Don’t you have a heater? Or a fireplace or a stove, or anything?”

“I’ve got a fireplace, sure. I just don’t know whether it’s usable.”

He pointed over to where a brick mantelpiece poked out from behind a mountain of books. Sky offered to take a look and gingerly walked over to examine it.

“That’s a globe, right?” U-ri asked again, pointing at the sphere on top of the table.

Ash raised his hand and gave it a spin. “Of this region, yes.”

That explained why none of the continents looked right from where she was sitting. “Are the directions the same? I mean, is up still north?”

“It is.”

“Where are the Haetlands?”

Ash extended a long finger and stopped the slowly rotating globe. He spun it a bit to the right. Then he pointed at a spot near the top of the sphere. “Here. We’re as far north as you can go.”

“Is it a big country? How large is it?”

Ash did not answer. He stared meaningfully at the spot where his finger touched the globe.

“You mean, it’s so small you can cover it with one finger?”

“That’s right.”

Creak, creak.
U-ri heard the sound again. It seemed to be coming from somewhere above them, but she could feel vibrations in the floor beneath her at the same time.

“What’s that sound?”

Ash pointed up. “There is a windmill up there. This village uses windmills for power.”

There was no electricity here, in other words. U-ri noted a few lamps sitting here and there, and a few candle sconces hanging from the ceiling.

“It is a cold, poor, and small country—and this village lies at its farthest northern reaches.”

The village’s name was Kanal. The locals supported themselves by hunting and farming.

“Take a look out the window if you like.”

U-ri walked over to the window, startled to see her breath white before her face. She noticed tiny icicles hanging down around the edge of the window.

Even though it was incredibly cold inside, the window was fogged with condensation. She wiped at it with one hand and discovered that it wasn’t just condensation—the window was incredibly filthy. Ash wasn’t a fan of housecleaning, apparently.

“It’s snowing…” Large flakes drifted down outside the window.

“It’s still early winter, actually.”

Aju hopped up to the top of her head and stuck his nose to the glass. No sooner had he done so than he began to sneeze uncontrollably.

U-ri noticed something else about the glass. Underneath the fog and the dirt, it wasn’t all that transparent to begin with. Like a very old window—
maybe they don’t have the technology to make good ones yet,
she thought, the realization dawning on her. The Haetlands weren’t like Japan and America and Europe in the twenty-first century. This wasn’t that kind of world. She was in the world of “a long time ago.”

U-ri boosted herself up as high as she could and peered outside. Beyond the drifting flakes, she saw a world encased in glittering white ice. She spotted rooftops, angled sharply at the top, and several of them had small windmill towers extending even higher. The houses were made of wood and bricks, with wooden planks running between larger rafters. Everything man-made was drab. Apparently there was no paint in this world. A few trees stood between the houses, but they were all bare—ice sculptures with pointy branches. There was no grass, not even the strange colorless grass she had seen in the nameless land, nor any flowers.

A small path wound between the houses, muddy and half frozen.

She heard a dog howling somewhere.
At least they have dogs here.
She had been beginning to wonder if anything lived here at all.

“There is much land around here that is too hard for hoeing, even in summer.” At some point Ash had walked up to stand beside her at the window. “Still, there is a wheat field to the south of the village. Harvest time has long since come and gone. From now until winter’s end, we hunt.”