The Book of Heroes (51 page)

I have no name!

Its voice was neither that of a man or a woman. It was neither old, nor young. It was unlike any voice she had heard before, and yet it tugged at her memory, the forgotten whisper of a story she had heard as a child.

I am no one and no thing.

Did that mean it was nothing? Was that even possible? How could
nothing
possess such oppressive power? How could
nothing
shine with such radiant beauty?

“Then let me change the question,” Ash shouted, spitting blood. “Why are you here?”

The Hero lifted its hands in front of its face.

All happens according to the will of the Circle
, it replied in a weighty voice. Then clapping its hands together, it thrust its arms into the dais where the two crosses had lain.

White light suffused the chamber, and the ground shook like something deep below the surface was awakening, rushing up toward the Hero.

And the Hero was waiting for it.

Then the tremor that had begun deep underground reached the surface, and the glowing outline of the Hero began to swell. Maintaining its human shape, it expanded to giant proportions. The ground trembled violently, cracks appearing in the rock beneath their feet, and pieces of the ceiling and walls began to break free and fall to the floor of the labyrinth.

“Kirrick, stop this!” Ash shouted, but he could not move. Neither of them could take so much as a step toward the Hero. A circle of incredible energy had surrounded it and was beginning to expand. U-ri had fallen to the ground when it shook, and now she found herself pushed backward across the rattling stones, as though driven by a powerful wind back toward the entrance. Ash too was steadily being driven back from the grave.

“Sky! Where are you?” U-ri shouted, her voice almost a scream, but there was no answer. The force pushed her further back. Her vestments of protection fluttered around her violently, whipping in the wind. She was afraid the buttons would snap off. This was no wind, no natural flow of air. This was an incredible energy erupting from the ground, clearing the gravesite, pushing away all the clutter, including U-ri and Ash.

“Can’t hold on! Auuuuugh!” Aju squealed as the force pulled him away from U-ri’s collar and sent him spinning into the air. U-ri reached out a hand to grab him, but the force pushed down on her with an incredible weight, pinning her to the floor. She would have been swept away herself if Ash’s hand hadn’t caught her ankle. He had managed to hold his ground, clutching the grip of a short sword he had thrust into the hard-packed floor with his other hand.

“Grab on!” He extended his empty hand. U-ri couldn’t reach.

Then everything was still. The flow of power ceased. The rumbling in the earth quieted. The light spilling from the grave began to recede.

U-ri lifted her head. Ash gave his own head a shake and sat up.

Then they saw it.

The Hero had grown until its head reached the ceiling over the grave. It appeared even more human now. Its face, perfectly smooth before, now had two eyes. There were no pupils, no distinction between the whites and the center of those eyes. They were just open pools of inky darkness in the shape of eyes. Though they were dark, they seemed to shine with even more strength and pride than the rest of the Hero. A new power roiled in their depths.

“So that’s what you left here, Kirrick,” Ash said, his voice a rasping lament. “Your eyes.”

And the Hero had retrieved them. Now the Hero looked out on the Haetlands through Kirrick’s eyes, once again able to see the breadth of the Circle it so desired to fill.

U-ri stood in a daze, entranced once again by the Hero’s sheer presence.
I wonder what those black shining eyes see?
she thought.
I wonder what the Circle looks like to it?

Little thing. Seed of my being.
That was another voice, one not her own, in her head.

There you are
, the Hero said.

U-ri blinked, coming to her senses.
What is it saying? Who is it calling to? Not me or Ash.

It was Sky.

He was there, walking past Ash and stepping over U-ri who was still lying where she had fallen on the ground. Sky’s robes gently swayed as he approached the Hero. They had fallen loose, revealing one emaciated shoulder.

Sky walked as though intoxicated. He took a step, and one of his legs bent, but instead of straightening himself he merely toppled over. Still, the devout did not stop. The Hero was drawing him in.

“No, Sky, don’t go to it! You must stop!” U-ri shouted, but Sky did not so much as glance in her direction. Standing shakily, he stepped inside the light that surrounded the Hero in a glimmering aura.

There he fell to his knees and bowed to the ground.

The Hero’s light washed over the devout’s thin body.

U-ri held her breath. Even her heart stood still. Everything stopped.

No. This can’t be happening. I don’t believe it!

Enveloped in the Hero’s aura, Sky was ceasing to be. His black robes melted in the light. Then a bright glow swallowed his shaven head. The last glimpse of him U-ri caught were his leather sandals worn from the long journey and those knobby ankle bones. And then Sky was completely gone.

Lying on the ground in his place was Hiroki Morisaki.

U-ri’s brother. Yuriko’s brother.

U-ri put a hand to her mouth.

Hiroki Morisaki lifted his head. She recognized him, everything about him. The arch of his back. His legs. The back of his neck.

He was wearing his school uniform. The soles of his favorite sneakers were coated with…
blood. The blood of the classmates who bullied him. He stepped in their blood as he fled.

Don’t look around
, U-ri shouted in her heart.
Don’t let me see your face.

Hiroki turned. Tears streaked his cheeks. His lips trembled. “Yuriko—”

Then the ground shuddered and a laugh erupted, shaking the walls and ceiling of the burial chamber.

The Hero was laughing. The King in Yellow was laughing.

The dregs of my vessel. You may have it, if you wish!

The laughter grew louder, and louder still. The Hero was shining ever more brightly, boiling with light like a sun going nova.

“Nooooo!” U-ri screamed, and Hiroki stood.

For a second, U-ri thought he would come to her, that he might run to her side. But he did not. He only looked at her with his tear-streaked face—a look that lasted for only the space of a breath.

“I’m sorry,” she heard her brother say. It was definitely her brother’s voice. His words. “Goodbye.”

He waved. His fingers were caked with blood.

Then Hiroki turned, ran to the Hero, and dove headfirst into its light. The light swallowed him and he evaporated. The Hero gave a last triumphant laugh, and the burial chamber began to collapse.

“No! Hiroki! No! No! No!”

U-ri made to dash after him, but Ash grabbed her and held her tight. The ground heaved and cracked, sending them flying into the air, while around them the walls began to crumble.

The Hero rose, levitating over the burial chamber. Its light and power spread, swallowing them.

“Use your glyph!” Ash shouted, but U-ri, still crying out for her brother, could not hear him. Ash forcibly grabbed U-ri’s hand, putting it to her forehead.

The Hero took flight. At that moment, the ceiling of the burial chamber fragmented and fell—and the two tiny shapes left behind vanished.

Darkness swallowed U-ri. It felt like they had resisted an incredible gravitational pull at the last moment, and now she and Ash were hurtling through the void. She could feel the power receding from them—its beauty, its brilliance.

The Hero left them, trailing a wake of light through the darkness after it. It was like everything she had ever wanted—her brother—had jumped onto a comet and sped off into space, leaving her behind.

Images of her brother flickered through U-ri’s mind as she flew. One after the other, like photographs in an album. All pictures of his face: smiling, scolding, angry, worried.

Goodbye
.

How could he say that, her only brother? After all she had been through to find him? After all her searching.

And he had been with her the whole way. How had she not noticed? Why hadn’t she been able to recognize him?

A shock ran through her body. Ash’s arms around her, U-ri was ejected from the void onto solid ground.

They were back in the nameless land. She was sprawled in the same spot where she had arrived when she traveled here from the magic circle in Ichiro Minochi’s reading room.

U-ri managed to get her arms beneath her, and lifting herself up, she stood. Giving her head a shake, she turned to where the lights of the Hall of All Books flickered in the distance.

There! There he is!
Ahead of them, a single nameless devout in black robes was running toward the hall, occasionally tripping and falling to his knees, only to stand again and continue running.

“Hiroki! Sky!”

U-ri broke into a run. Her vestments were practically coming off now, and where they wrapped around her limbs they only seemed to get in the way. She slipped and fell, banging her knees on the ground, shouting all the while, chasing after the devout.

The nameless devout never looked back at her. He simply ran and ran, running away from her.

He’s not Hiroki anymore.

He’s not Sky anymore.

“Wait! Wait!”

No matter how fast U-ri ran, she couldn’t catch up. Ahead of her, the nameless devout disappeared inside the outer wall of the Hall of All Books.

Still U-ri ran.
I’ll search the whole place, and I’ll find him! I’ll drag him out of there, I swear it! And then we’ll go home, together.

But U-ri’s exhausted legs would no longer listen to her. She staggered, tripped and fell, then stood up only to fall again. She was clutching the grass, trying to stand again, when she felt Ash’s hand on her shoulder.

“It’s no use. Give him up.”

U-ri looked toward the hall, gritting her teeth. She felt that if she didn’t keep her mouth shut, she’d bite out Ash’s throat, so full of anger she was. So full of hatred.

“He is once again a nameless devout. He does not remember you. He does not retain even a fragment of the individual known as Hiroki Morisaki.”

He had become no one, nowhere.

“It’s better that way. It’s better.”

U-ri’s hand lashed out on its own, slapping Ash’s cheek. The wolf didn’t even blink.

“You knew,” U-ri said. “You knew and you didn’t tell me.”

That’s why he was always so cold to Sky.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“If I had, would you have believed me? Would that have satisfied you?” Ash slowly shook his head. “Neither you nor he would have believed it. Until you both faced the truth with your own eyes, my words would have had no more meaning to you than the wind that blows across this nameless land.”

He’s right,
U-ri thought. Though it vexed her to no end, Ash was always right. U-ri thought to slap him again, but the strength had left her hand.

Tears welled in her eyes.
How many times have I cried already
? How many times had Ash laughed at her for being a crybaby? But she had never cried like this—cried tears that seemed to scorch her own cheeks.

“The nameless devout you named Sky was
incomplete
,” Ash said, kneeling on one knee beside the weeping U-ri. His hair was disheveled, his chiseled face as white as his ashen hair. “And an incomplete devout is a danger both to the nameless land and to the Circle. That is why we could not leave him to his own devices. Someone had to purify him,” Ash explained. “That was the reason for your glyph. That was the reason for your journey.”

Ash extended a hand to her. “Stand up. Let us go to the Hall of All Books. In the Dome of Convocation you may see with your own eyes all that you have accomplished.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Truth

The Dome of Convocation lay silent in the deep night of the nameless land.
The whole place seemed much darker than it had during U-ri’s last visit. Even the torches seemed to burn in shadow.

The Archdevout was waiting in the middle of the circular dais that U-ri had, on the occasion of her first visit, thought looked like a sumo
dohyo
of some sort. The casket containing the Book of Heroes—the Hollow Book—was there as well. Next to it, four nameless devout stood at attention.

When they saw that U-ri had arrived, all of the devout swept aside their black robes and knelt on the floor. A little unsteadily, U-ri made her way to the center of the dais. She approached the casket, its surface carved with innumerable symbols. Her eyes could see them all, and her feet could feel the solid floor beneath her, but U-ri felt nothing. She had no sense of anything—even distances seemed fluid and changing to her now.

Ash touched U-ri’s shoulder, indicating that they should stop. She brought her feet together, steadied her breath for a moment, then announced to the nameless devout, “I’m back.”

The Archdevout lifted his face. First he nodded to Ash, then his eyes went to U-ri. “We have been waiting for you.”

The eyes in that wrinkled face were dry and told U-ri nothing—though surely he must have noticed her tears. There was no consolation in them, nor any regret that U-ri could see. His eyes were black and deep as the darkness outside.

Next to U-ri, Ash spoke. “
Allcaste,
go to the casket.”

U-ri did not move. Her body felt like a giant sandbag with a small rip at the bottom through which sand streamed, leaving her to empty out on the floor.

“Your glyph has served its purpose and now returns to its rightful place. This ritual is necessary to close the Hollow Book. Step forward,” Ash said again. His voice was gentle. His words a request, not a demand.

U-ri took a hesitant step forward. The Archdevout righted himself, then shuffled up to the casket on his knees and bowed again. Moving as one, the four nameless devout went to the corners of the casket, inserted metal poles in the rings, and opened the lid.

Reverently, the Archdevout lifted the Hollow Book from its resting place. Then he shuffled away from the casket, still on his knees, and held the book out before U-ri.

“Look upon it.”

U-ri blinked. The cover of the Hollow Book bore a glyph. Though faint, U-ri could see it was the same as the mark on her forehead. The image was worn almost to the point of illegibility. The lines of the design were broken in places, like someone had tried to scratch it on with a pen that was running out of ink.

“Take it in your hands.”

U-ri did as she was told, picking up the Hollow Book in both hands. Her fingers were dirty from the hill soil and there was black mud beneath her torn fingernails.

The book felt incredibly light in her hands—almost weightless, like it wasn’t really there. The glyph on U-ri’s forehead began to give off a white light. U-ri started and tilted her head back away from it, but the Archdevout commanded, “Stay as you are. The glyph will now leave you.”

The glow from the glyph on her forehead grew stronger until the circle of light it cast enveloped her hands and the book. Then the faded glyph on the book’s cover began to absorb the light, its own glow increasing. First the outside arc, then the details grew more pronounced, the lines thickening with brilliant light.

My glyph’s returning
to where it came from.

U-ri’s eyes grew wider as she sensed the transfer of power in the light that streamed from her into the Hollow Book. Though the light was bright, it was not harshly so, nor was there any heat. It was simply pure light.

When the glyph upon the book was finally complete, the one on U-ri’s forehead dimmed and went dark. Only at that moment did the Hollow Book suddenly feel heavy in her hands and faintly warm to the touch.

Now the glyph on the book was beginning to fade as its power was integrated into the book itself, filling its pages with its power and light. When the glyph had entirely disappeared from the cover, the only light inside the Dome of Convocation came from the flickering torches set around it.

The Archdevout gently lifted the Hollow Book from U-ri’s hands and solemnly returned it to the casket.

Then the four nameless devout replaced the lid of the casket, bowed in unison, then passed their metal poles through the rings at the four corners and lifted the casket to their shoulders. They walked out of the dome, their black robes soundlessly sweeping the floor.

“Where will they put it?” U-ri asked, her voice clear even though the proceedings had rendered her mute for some time and before that she had been screaming and crying herself hoarse.

“Deep within the Hall of All Books,” the Archdevout replied. “We will guard it until such time it can be sealed once again.”

Ash stepped up and bowed his head. The Archdevout bowed back twice as deeply.

U-ri touched her forehead with her hand. It was smooth. No white light shone upon her fingers. The glyph was gone.

“So, what do you want to know first?” Ash asked. He straightened from his bow and turned to U-ri. The steel tacks on the soles of his boots clicked on the stone floor.

The Archdevout stepped back to stand by the wolf’s side.

“What…?” U-ri muttered, feeling dizzy. The sandbag that was her body was nearly empty now. “I don’t understand anything. I don’t even know where to begin.”

The only thing she did know was that Sky was gone. And that Sky had been her brother.

And how stupid I was for not realizing it.

The bell tolled, and Ash suddenly looked up toward the ceiling of the dome. The Archdevout joined him.

It rang once, rested, then rang twice before resting again. This pattern repeated three times before the bell was still, though the sound echoed through the dome for some time.

U-ri had her first question. “What was that bell for?”

“That was the Third Bell,” Ash said, his eyes cast downward, his head cocked, listening to the fading echoes. “It tells us that the gate has closed.”

“The gate to the Hall of All Books?”

Ash opened his eyes and slowly shook his head. “No, this ‘gate’ has a different meaning.”

Something about the word tugged at the back of U-ri’s mind. She had heard it used before in some unusual way, but where?

Ash was staring into U-ri’s eyes. It occurred to her that the reason he always seemed to know what she was wondering was that he knew things she didn’t and hid them from her.
That’s why he’s always one step ahead. Of course, with that intense gaze of his, maybe he really is reading my thoughts.

“I’ve heard of this gate before, I think.”

“You have. I remember it myself,” Ash said, nodding, and a smile flashed across his face—but whether it was the cold smile of an uncaring heart or a wry smile of regret, U-ri could not tell.

“When you asked me what it meant before, it took me some effort to make up something I could tell you.”

When was that?
U-ri thought back, picking through her memories, but she soon gave up. She was exhausted.

“Let me explain it to you from the beginning then,” the wolf offered. “This will take some time. You might want to sit.”

U-ri slumped down on the spot, hugging her knees. She would have been perfectly happy to sit there for an eternity and never move again.

Then the Archdevout walked over and sat silently down beside her—like a kindly grandfather come to console a distraught grandchild after she’d received a scolding from her parents for some trifling infraction. It was a gesture filled with gentleness and warmth.

The only difference between that kindly grandfather and the Archdevout was the way he sat, with his black robes tucked neatly beneath his knees.

“You must be angry,” he said. Though his eyes were still dry, there were tears in the Archdevout’s voice. “I will not ask for your forgiveness. We sent you forth knowing full well what awaited you. We set you on this path, your bags packed with nothing but lies and subterfuge, while we kept the truth to ourselves.”

U-ri marveled at how calm she felt. She had been so furious just a short while ago, but now she wanted only to bury her face in the Archdevout’s robes and cry.

“In order for the Hero to break free, a person must serve as the last vessel,” Ash began, turning his face slightly toward U-ri’s. “In order to return the Hero to the flow of stories, thus bringing it back to this land where it can be bound, it is necessary to drain the power from the last vessel who resides within the Hero. Only the
allcaste
, in whose veins flows the same blood as that of the last vessel, can hope to accomplish this. Why? Because only the
allcaste
’s voice may reach the last vessel, and if that voice cannot be heard, neither will the Hero know the power of the glyph.

“Thus does the
allcaste
join the hunt for the Hero, for the King in Yellow. This is when the Book of Heroes becomes marked with the same glyph that marks the
allcaste
’s forehead. If the
allcaste
should be successful in finding the Hero and the last vessel is released, then when the
allcaste
returns to this place, the mark upon their forehead and the glyph upon the book become one, and the Hollow Book is once again filled.”

Ash looked directly at U-ri. “All of this is true, and all of this you were told before you began your journey, more or less.” The wolf spread his hands, looking for her acknowledgment.

U-ri nodded. “That is what I expected my journey to bring, more or less.”

Next to her, the Archdevout’s face was lowered.

“Yet, rarely—extremely rarely—things do not go according to plan.” Ash paused, then asked her, “What do you think becomes of the vessels?”

“Aren’t they absorbed by the Hero? Used as energy or something?”

“That’s right. They fuse with the Hero, becoming a part of it. The Hero only takes them in the first place because they fulfill all the requirements: they possess great anger and an equally great desire to express that anger. This desire calls out to the Hero. Yet, once it has absorbed these vessels, nothing is left. Not even the anger which drove them in the first place.” Ash licked his lips before continuing. “There is one exception, however: the last vessel. For the last vessel serves as both vessel and Summoner. The Summoner is the one who calls the Hero, the one who gives form to the Hero. You might call them a conspirator—and conspiring with the Hero is a sin. Thus, even if the vessel loses their human form, the sin they committed remains. Now, U-ri, what shape do you think that sin takes?”

U-ri didn’t have to think long. Even as the details refused to come into clear focus in her mind, she knew the answer to the question her heart had been asking since her journey had begun.

“A nameless devout.”

Ash nodded deeply. “All last vessels, without exception, become nameless devout. And here, in this land, they do penance for their sin.”

All that remained of them
was
sin. They retained none of their individual hearts, forms, or thoughts. That was why all of the nameless devout were identical in appearance—they were literally without selves. They existed only as manifestations of their sin. The nameless devout were one and they were many. They were many and they were one. That was their truth.

“However,” Ash added, shifting his feet so that he now faced away from U-ri, “As I said, in very rare circumstances, something happens to the last vessel. Things, well, they do not go according to plan. I, and others, believe that this is because only the last vessel has the opportunity to face the Hero not just as a vessel, but as the Summoner, before being banished to the nameless land.

“In that instant—and it may last no more than an instant—the last vessel has access to the entirety of the Hero’s memory and the full extent of the Hero’s strength. In this, they reach a state of being that no other vessel, nor even a wolf, could hope to attain. It is there that they touch the mystery that lies at the heart of the Circle and gain the power of true sight.

“Should that moment give birth to regrets within the last vessel, it can result in an
incomplete
nameless devout,” Ash explained. “Though an incomplete devout is still a nameless devout, still lacking individual memory and appearance, their deficits are only temporary. They have only forgotten who they were, not lost it completely.”

“And that’s what my brother, what Sky was?” U-ri asked, her voice more shrill then she had intended. “Is that what you were talking about up on the hill?”

Ash turned, looking U-ri straight in the eyes. He nodded.

“But that doesn’t make sense!” U-ri said, her voice rising. “That’s not what Sky said at all! He told me that he had been waiting for me to arrive. That when he heard the First Bell ring, it moved him.”

Sky had been nothing, but in that moment, something was born inside him. He wasn’t just “remembering” something he already had—or was he?

“The ringing of the First Bell did not give him a heart, if that’s what you’re thinking. It awakened the fragments of the heart he once had. But the fragments were incomplete, and their number few.”

U-ri had to put a hand on her chest to steady her own breathing. “And he didn’t realize anything until then? He didn’t know he had a heart? He didn’t know that he was different from the others? I mean, if he knew when he had come to the nameless land, then—” U-ri drew a sharp breath.

There is no time in the nameless land
.

“He did not realize the truth,” the wolf stated bluntly. “He merely acted out of instinct. He had forgotten who he once was, yet when you came here, he knew he must join you on your journey. He wished it of his own accord. I believe it was Sky trying to make right for what he had done as your brother, whether he knew it or not.”

Ash sighed. “An incomplete devout is dangerous. They have touched the Hero, they have touched the King in Yellow. While they hold on to the fragments of who they once were as the last vessel, they maintain a tenuous connection to the terrible power of the Hero.”