The Book of Heroes (52 page)

Then the Archdevout, silent until now, spoke in a low, calm voice. “You might think of him as being a nameless devout who bears the Yellow Sign.”

U-ri stared long and hard at the Archdevout. He made sense. In fact, it was probably the best way he could have explained it to her at that time, she realized.

“You mean, he had to purify himself.”

That’s why Sky became my servant. That’s why the Archdevout cast him out of the nameless land. That’s why he told me to take Sky with me.

“So if he was near the glyph, that would purify him? Like with Aju!”

Ash shook his head. “It does not work for an incomplete devout as it does for a book. Mere proximity to the glyph is not enough to remove the Yellow Sign.”

As in the moment when the Summoner enables the Hero to escape, all must be brought together: Summoner, the Hero, and King in Yellow. Only then would the last vessel return to its former shape, Ash explained. “And when the last vessel has regained its self, it must once again throw itself to the Hero.”

This, Ash explained, was because the incomplete devout, with its tenuous connection to the Hero, was more like a reflection of the Hero than anything. Until it returned to its master and became whole, there would be no destroying it, nor purifying it.

“That is why they are so dangerous. The incomplete devout is none other than a bad seed that the Hero has planted in both the Circle and in the nameless land. Through that seed, the Hero can exert a direct influence on the world. To purify the last vessel and thereby make the nameless devout complete is the
allcaste
’s true mission.”

Ash fixed his gaze on her then. “You have completed your mission, U-ri. That was the very goal of your journey from its beginning. Or rather, when Sky appeared, your goal changed from the recapture of the Hero to purifying the nameless devout.”

And no one told me the truth.

“The culling of such bad seeds is as important and as vital as sapping the Hero of its strength and returning it to this land. It had to be you who purified Sky, and thereby Hiroki Morisaki.”

“You lied to me so I’d do it.” U-ri realized she had been gritting her teeth. Her hands were clenched into fists. “No one told me the truth. You deceived me!”

The Archdevout swayed under the barrage of U-ri’s voice. Ash stepped closer to her, kneeling between them as if to protect the ancient man. “Do not blame the Archdevout. Until he saw the sign, he too was unaware that an incomplete devout had been created.”

“The sign?”

The Archdevout looked up, blinked slowly, and said, “When we opened the casket, withdrew the Hollow Book, and saw that the glyph of the
allcaste
was not upon its cover, that was the sign.”

“That’s why you were so surprised!”

The state of the book had been a shock to the Archdevout, even more so the arrival of Sky—a nameless devout like them, but younger, different. The nameless devout who was not complete.

“He wasn’t just surprised by the turn of events, U-ri. The Archdevout was sad for you! He was sad because he realized you no longer journeyed to imprison the Hero.”

“But why?” U-ri shouted. She clutched the Archdevout’s robes, pulled his frail body toward her, and glared sidelong up at Ash’s stern face. “Why didn’t any of you tell me then? If I’d only known—”

“What would you have done?”

“I would’ve thought of a different way to do things!”

“What different way? You didn’t have any choice in the matter.”

“What if I had? What if I could’ve found one?” She turned to the wolf, grabbing his coat collar and shaking him. “I could’ve taken him back home! I could’ve taken my brother home!”

“Sky was not your brother. He didn’t even look like him.”

“But he used to be my brother!”

Why drag him to the Hero to purify him? He wasn’t some bad seed to be culled! He was my brother!

“Didn’t my brother become an incomplete devout because he regretted what he had done? Didn’t he regret getting sucked in by the Book of Elem? I would have forgiven him!”

Of course I would have. He’s my only brother.

“U-ri.” Ash shook his head, and his white bangs fell down across his forehead, making him look suddenly older.
Or maybe just tired.

“Didn’t I just tell you that an incomplete devout is a dangerous thing? Were you to bring him back to the Circle, it would mean calamity.”

“How do you know that? If I brought him home and he met Mom and Dad again, if he could have returned to his old life, I bet all his memories would have come back. Maybe even his old form!”

“They would not,” the Archdevout said quietly. “They can never come back, Lady U-ri. Once a part of the Hero, always a part, unchanging until the day they are purified.”

“The bad seed is also sometimes called the ‘gate.’”

U-ri’s eyes went wide at Ash’s words.

“It is a gate through which the Hero may exercise its power. It is an entrance. You said you had heard someone use the word before? Do you remember where? It was when that giant creature appeared at Hiroki’s school and took Sky in its tentacles.”

“Little dust puppet…you are the gate?”

“In their original forms, the Hero and the King in Yellow are nothing more than stories, invisible to the eye. Though they may reside in men’s hearts and guide their actions, they cannot manifest physically within the Circle.”

“But the Hero took Kirrick’s form back in the capital!” U-ri retorted. “That was because it took his eyes, wasn’t it? Not because of some gate!”

Ash smiled mysteriously. “This is because the Haetlands is itself a story. It is an imaginary place. Had you forgotten?”

U-ri put a hand to her mouth. “So stories like the Hero and the King in Yellow can take shape in regions woven of stories?”

“Yes, but this is a parlor trick, ineffective in the Circle. And yet, that creature appeared quite readily by the library in your brother’s school. Do you know why? It is because Sky was there. That giant eyeball manifested itself through Sky. That is what is meant by the ‘gate.’ Were you to bring Sky back home with you, you would be giving such creatures free access to the Circle. They would boil forth and destroy all within their reach. And the people would rise up to drive them back, weapons in hand. There would be war.

“I am sure you do not need me to tell you what war entails. It is nothing less than a most terrible sign of the coming of both the Hero and the King in Yellow to the Circle,” Ash said, his voice growing stronger. “What happened in Elemsgard could happen in the Circle, in your region, your country, your town, your school. The ones you love would be devoured by monsters, transformed into horrible things. Lamenting, they would bury the bodies of their loved ones and drift through the wreckage of their world, forced to hunt down and destroy former lovers, friends, brothers, and sisters who had become something other than human. Do you really want your hometown turned into Elemsgard?”

U-ri had forgotten even to breathe, had forgotten that Ash and the Archdevout stood before her. She had retreated entirely inside herself. Visions of the bodies she had seen strewn about the wreckage of the palace filled her mind. The terrible, deformed creatures that seemed to bubble forth from the ground, no matter how many they slew—

That could happen in my world
.

If she hadn’t seen what she had seen, her choice would’ve been simple. If the Archdevout had turned to her and told her the truth the moment he took the book from the casket and saw the sign, U-ri would have taken Sky by the hand and brought him directly back to Ichiro Minochi’s reading room. Then they would have gone home. No matter how much they might have pleaded with her, U-ri’s desire to save Sky—to save her brother—would have been stronger, pushing all such concern aside.

“So you did it to convince me, then,” U-ri whispered, and a tear rolled down one cheek. She didn’t even remember having wept it. “You hid the truth and sent me on my journey so that I would see it for myself.”

“And for that we are sorry,” the Archdevout apologized as he prostrated himself before her. U-ri looked down at him and sniffled. Her next tear fell from her chin onto the nape of the Archdevout’s neck.

“During your journey, did Sky not begin to recover fragmented memories of Kirrick and the Haetlands?”

So Ash had noticed too
.

“He did remember, and it made him worry.”

“The Book of Elem was the key to the Hero’s escape. That is why Hiroki Morisaki, as the last vessel, possessed a dim recollection of Kirrick. That is what Sky remembered.”

“And Morgan, the wolf we met in Elemsgard?”

Ash nodded.

“He said you were doing something terrible. He knew what was going on, didn’t he?”

Ash cast his eyes aside, as though he were ashamed to meet her gaze.

“He thought it was wrong to bring Sky along with me.”

“He has a good heart, that Morgan.”

“But he lacks wisdom,” U-ri said, startled that Ash’s wry smile from before seemed to have made its way to her own lips. “I had to go. There was no two ways about it.”

“Do not judge him so harshly,” Ash said. “It was only right for Morgan to censure me. And right for him to want to better your lot. Anyone with a heart would do the same.”

What was that Morgan said to me, there in the chaos of the broken city, with the mob thronging around us?

“…You can cry if you like, but don’t despair.”

Good advice,
thought U-ri. She let her tears fall.

“Did Doctor Latore know the truth too?”

Ash nodded.

So that’s why he stopped Sky from going with me to the bottom of the cavern to meet my great-uncle.

“And Aju?”

There was no immediate response, so U-ri looked up at Ash. His face was drawn in a scowl.

Then U-ri remembered something terribly important. “Back in Katarhar Abbey, after we met Mr. Minochi, I passed out—”
And when I awoke everyone was acting so strange.
“Is that when Aju discovered the truth?”

Ash sighed, his face still dark. “When you saw Minochi’s true form, you screamed, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“Sky heard that scream and came running down there, all the way to the bottom. He ran without thought, concerned only for you, wanting to save you, pushing aside all who tried to stop him. Yet he never reached Minochi’s cell. I barred his path.

“I do not believe that Sky fully understood why at the time, though he must have thought it odd, and perhaps even guessed at the truth—but Minochi knew. As soon as Sky came close, he sensed it, I think. It was to prevent this that I stopped him. But I was too late.”

Ash shook his head. “Minochi began to call out. With his power—the very power that twisted him into the form you saw—Ichiro Minochi could peer through Sky’s mask to see the remnants of Hiroki Morisaki within. He called Hiroki by name. His madness took him, and he howled with laughter, screaming ‘Hiroki’ over and over.”

Minochi had laughed and babbled words of apology that made no sense, then began to chant the jumbled words of a curse. Minochi had completely lost his mind.

Thankfully, none of his words reached Sky. But, Ash explained, Aju was not so fortunate.

“The
aunkaui
dictionary knew deep shame then. While you slept, we discussed it together. Aju spoke with the books in the abbey, asking for their advice.”

It had been Ash’s suggestion that Aju leave as soon as it was possible.

“But Aju swore he would stay by you to the last. He wanted to be there when you learned the truth.”

Warm tears streamed down U-ri’s cheek. “Where is he now?”

The last time she had seen him was in Elem’s burial chamber, when the Hero’s power had literally blown them all away. “I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.”

“Do not worry. I’ll find him and return him to his original form. Books cannot die,” Ash added, a genuine smile on his face for the first time in a long while.

“Archdevout,” U-ri asked, wiping her face with the sleeve of her vestments and turning to the ancient man. “If the nameless devout were all last vessels, that means you too were once a last vessel, yes?”

The Archdevout sat with his hands on his knees and nodded slowly. “Though I have no way of counting the time that has passed in this land where time stands still, I believe my own transformation happened in another age, far in the distant past.”

“I remember, before I left here the first time, when I asked you what bad the nameless devout had done, you told me that you were guilty of the sin of trying to live a story—trying to live a lie, to make the lie real. What does that mean? How could that be worse than allowing the Hero to escape?”

The Archdevout did not reply, but quietly raised his eyes and looked in Ash’s direction.

The response came from Ash, in the form of a question. “What is a story, U-ri?”

“Something a weaver makes, I suppose. A lie.”

“Not only weavers make stories. All people make stories simply by living out their lives.”

Doctor Latore had said something similar. He had told her that there was no other way for men to live.

“As people walk through their lives, they leave stories behind them, like footprints in the sand. Yet sometimes we place stories in front of us, choosing the brightest from those that hang in the firmament of the Circle to guide us—and when we try to live those stories, we fall prey to foolishness. For we are attempting to imitate the story as we think it should be, not as it is.

“These stories we follow have many names. Sometimes they’re called ‘justice.’ Other times ‘victory’ or even ‘conquest.’ Sometimes they are simply called ‘success.’ We charge forward, following a vision invisible to those around us. That is the sin of trying to live a story. In our pride, we place the ideal before the deed, and this brings only misfortune. The sin of living a story is great indeed. So great that the last vessel becomes a nameless devout sent here to atone for that sin over an eternity.

“But let me be clear,” Ash continued, “the sin lies not with the story. Yet the weavers know that sometimes stories can mislead our hearts. They know this, yet they continue their weaving. That is a conscious act that invites karmic retribution—still they are allowed to continue in their work because they also bring hope, goodness, beauty, warmth, and the joy of life to men.