The Nicholas Linnear Novels (190 page)

Tak emerged from behind So-Peng’s right shoulder and, in a blur, lunged for Zhao Hsia. So-Peng, too, was moving forward. He saw the glint of the knife blade emerging out of Tak’s extended right hand. At the same moment he heard the whir, like a mosquito in his ear, and he caught Tak’s ankle with his foot.

The star whirred past Tak’s head. Tak, sprawled headlong across the rocks, swiped with his right arm. The knife blade cut the skin of Zhao Hsia’s calf just as So-Peng reached him.

The moment they came together, So-Peng knew that it was a mistake to grapple physically with his half brother. While So-Peng was quite strong, he had not been trained in Tau-tau, and strength alone was not enough.

Caught unprepared for the nature of the assault, So-Peng felt himself bound to Zhao Hsia. He tried to strike out with his balled fists, his knees, toes, and heels. All to no avail. Zhao Hsia either deflected the blow with his body or twisted so that So-Peng painfully struck rock rather than flesh.

Out of the corner of his eye So-Peng could see Tak rising, pulling a pistol from his belt. But the two boys were so inextricably entwined that Tak could not venture a shot without the possibility of shooting So-Peng.

So-Peng tried now to pull himself away from his half brother, but as if sensing the danger to himself, Zhao Hsia kept him tight against himself. At the same time he managed to enclose So-Peng’s throat in his fingers. He began to squeeze.

So-Peng fought back as best he could, but he knew it was fruitless. Zhao Hsia would never release him, and would most certainly kill him.

So-Peng’s mind was in panic, searching this way and that for a way to survive. There was none. He knew he was going to die.

And with that knowledge he let himself go, relaxing into the very core of himself, until he discovered that place his gift had given him, and allowing that place to speak in the rustling of a tongue more ancient than any other, he discovered what he must do.

Using the weight not only of his body, but of his spirit as well, he offset their combined center of gravity. He leaned into Zhao Hsia instead of pulling away from him. He pushed hard with his spirit.

He heard the call of a bird in flight. He heard the rumble of the water, felt the first chill splash of the rushing water as it churned over the rocks.

Then they were spilling past the rocks, into the water itself. In that last moment of coherent thought, So-Peng was sure he heard Tak cry out.

Then the two struggling boys were cast into the falls. As So-Peng’s gift had shown him, the churning water acted as his ally, breaking Zhao Hsia’s desperate hold on him. So-Peng gasped, and water filled his mouth and throat. He began to choke.

Restless water, bellowing like thunder, overflowing with energy, carried them both down.

SHIN-YA

How often the fear of one evil

leads us into a worse.

—Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux

“T
ANJIAN.”

They all froze at Tanzan Nangi’s one spoke word.

“That doesn’t sound like Japanese,” Justine said.

“It isn’t,” Nicholas told her. “It’s Chinese, I believe.”

Tanzan Nangi nodded gravely. “You’re quite right.” He addressed Justine, but it was clear he was speaking for Nicholas’s benefit as well. “You asked me before about who could create
Shiro Ninja.
Now that it is clear that this is what has happened to Nicholas, I have no choice but to tell you.”

“No!” Nicholas fairly shouted this.

Nangi said, “If there is love between you, surely she must be told.”

“It is because of that love that I want her kept out of this,” Nicholas said, blind to the pain he was causing Justine.

“Love is sustaining,” Nangi said simply. “Cutting yourself off from it is but one manifestation of
Shiro Ninja.”
He waited long enough for this to sink in, then said, “The attack of
Shiro Ninja
is beyond a Black Ninja’s skills. It is beyond even a ninja
sensei’s
scope.” His good eye glittered. “It is the domain solely of the tanjian.”

Tanzan Nangi, cognizant that Nicholas had just returned home from the hospital and would fatigue easily, wanted to get right to the point. “There is no doubt that the creature you and the policewoman encountered at the doctor’s office was a ninja.” Nangi was watching Nicholas carefully. “Are we agreed on this?”

Nicholas heard himself say as if from a great distance, “Yes. A ninja.”

“Could you by any chance discern his
ryu
?” Nangi meant his school. For a ninja of Nicholas’s skill, it was not difficult to discover where another ninja had been trained by how he moved, which strategy he employed, even the weapons he chose to use.

“No,” Nicholas said, sick at heart.

Nangi nodded. “This is yet another manifestation of
Shiro Ninja.”

When Nicholas said nothing, Nangi went on in a more urgent tone of voice. “You must come to terms with the fact that you are
Shiro Ninja,
that you are under attack, and that your adversary is an adept in Tau-tau.”

“There is no evidence,” Nicholas said carefully, “that either Tau-tau or tanjian exists or ever existed.”

Nangi took out a cigarette, lighted it.

“I can’t abide cigarette smoke,” Nicholas said. “You know that.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded peevish.

“I know what I see,” Nangi said evenly, “and so do you.” He took another puff, let out the smoke slowly through this nostrils. “Will you stop me from smoking?” He grunted in disgust. “Look at you. You can’t even get out of bed. You are attacked by a ninja. Without
Getsumei no michi
you cannot discern his origin, let alone battle him one to one. Only by the grace of God are you alive now to tell us of the encounter.” He squinted through the smoke. “How much more evidence do you require?”

“Get out of here!”

Justine cringed as Nicholas shouted at Nangi. Perhaps that was the trigger. This colossal breach of faith in his friend cleared Nicholas’s head for a moment; he understood men what Nangi had done. What had it cost Nangi, Nicholas thought guiltily, to smoke after three years of abstention? He had broken his vow for Nicholas, a vow that meant a great deal to Nangi. The anger Nangi had quite deliberately engendered in him had sprung the gate that Nicholas had been holding fast with all his spiritual might.

Because as long as he denied
Shiro Ninja,
he could deny that anything was wrong with him. To accept its existence was to admit that his life had been turned inside out. That, worse, he might never be the same man again.

But
Shiro Ninja
was real; all he had left were the emeralds. Nicholas knew that he must do everything in his power to keep So-Peng’s precious magic—arcane and distant—out of the hands of his enemy.

It was odd, now that he thought about it, just how far removed his life had been from those invaluable gems. Only now that they were threatened could Nicholas recognize what they meant to him, although he still had no idea of their function.

And Nangi was right: Nicholas almost wept at how helpless and weak he felt. Another wave of despair swept over him.
The certainty of despair will crush you far more thoroughly than defeat ever could.

“I am sorry, Nangi-san,” Nicholas said. “Please forgive my bullheadedness.”

Nangi stubbed out his cigarette. “There are times when fear can devastate even the most stouthearted.” He leaned upon his dragon-headed walking stick. “Before you can learn to walk again,” he said, “you must accept that you are a cripple.
Shiro Ninja
has done this to you. And behind
Shiro Ninja
is a clever, deadly foe.”

“Tanjian,” Nicholas said.

Justine said, “Just what is tanjian?”

Nangi waited for Nicholas to answer, but when it was clear that he was not going to speak, Nangi said, “Quite simply, some believe that tanjian were the precursors of ninja; that the arcane discipline of Tau-tau is the origin of
ninjutsu.
But Tau-tau is far more primitive, therefore more powerful in ways a refined discipline such as
ninjutsu
cannot be.”

“Tau-tau is heavily laced with magic,” Nicholas said.

“Magic?” Justine echoed.

“Like the kind Akiko possessed,” Nangi said carefully. “Many sects of
ninjutsu
employ some forms of minor magic or quasimagic, sleight of hand, hypnotism, and the like, relics of Tau-tau adulterated by generations of verbal translation, by time itself and by Japanese culture. Tanjian are different. Their discipline has remained intact, pure and primitive as it once was. Their magic is quite real, quite potent. Akiko was a
miko,
a sorceress. It is clear that she was trained in elements of Tau-tau.”

“She was no tanjian,” Nicholas said.

“No,” Nangi agreed. “But the ninja you encountered two days ago certainly is.”

“Whoever this tanjian is,” Justine said, “he is after Nicholas. Does anyone know why?”

“The shadows inherent in
ninjutsu,”
Nangi said, “create their own danger.”

Seeing Justine’s lost look, Nicholas said, “What Nangi means is, the attack might not be personal at all. Being
Aka-i-ninjutsu
makes me something of a target.” That made him think of something, and he said to Nangi, “That detective-sergeant, Tomi Yazawa, told me of a supposed threat on my life from the Red Army.”

“What was this,” Nangi said, “some kind of rumor?”

“She said that her department had intercepted and decoded a piece of hard intelligence.”

“You cannot fight the tanjian alone and unarmed as you are,” Nangi said.

“I know that,” Nicholas told him. “In fact, I’ve known ever since I suspected the loss of
Getsumei no michi
what I must do. It’s just that—” He turned to look through the window at the grounds he loved so much. He could feel his aunt Itami’s spirit very close at hand, and took what courage he could from its aura. “—I’ve put roadblocks up to deflect my every step.”

“Or someone else has done it for you,” Nangi observed. He stamped the end of his walking stick on the floor. “This Red Army message is obviously part of the tanjian tactic of sowing confusion. The Red Army has no reason to harm you.”

“I know that,” Nicholas said.

Nangi’s hard stare penetrated the haze of aftershock. “Now tell me what strategy you have devised.”

A week later, as he ascended, the breath in his throat growing cold, Nicholas had cause to remember that conversation. It gave him some measure of spiritual comfort, something he was very short on. He blocked out the howling of the wind as he made his laborious way through calf-deep snow. This high up his breath condensed in front of his face, misting his vision. It was still summer, to be sure, but up here in the Asama
kogen,
the highlands of the northern Japanese Alps, it was always cold.

He adjusted the straps of his backpack and, despite his physical aches and pains, continued his ascent. It was his spiritual pain, far more severe than any his body felt, that drove him onward.

Upon the spine of Asama-yama, a mile and a half high, he paused within the lee of a mighty outcropping of striated gray granite. He put his back against the rock, cheered by its eternal presence, its elemental strength. He squatted down, scooped a handful of snow into his mouth, let it melt slowly. He chewed on a strip of dried beef.

He was more tired than he could have believed. The trek up the face of the mountain had taken an inordinate physical effort. Normally, such a journey would be nothing more than moderate exercise for him.

But these were not normal times, and he was not the Nicholas Linnear of old. He understood that he would have to get used to that painful reality. Still, he was only human, and once, on the high ridge of Asama-yama’s southern flank, he almost broke down, feeling an overwhelming urge to weep in fear and frustration. But that would have been self-indulgent, or worse, self-pitying. He had no room in his new life for such treacherous emotions; they could only undermine his resolve to enter into battle with the tanjian despite being
Shiro Ninja.

Nicholas, coming off the spine of Asama-yama, began a long, loping descent into a bowl-shaped alpine valley studded with larch, snow-white birch. Here and there he could see a peach tree, remarkable in such a climate.

He looked back down the path he had come. Far below, where the last of the roads ended, he could make out several villas, stone and wood structures fixed into the side of the mountain, where the rich of Tokyo made the eighty-mile weekend journey northeast from the metropolis.

It was not a villa that he was looking for, but rather a castle. As he searched for it, he thought of Akiko, Saigo’s lover, then his. The
miko.

It was Akiko who had described the castle in Asama to Nicholas. She might have learned
Kan-aku na ninjutsu
with Nicholas’s cousin Saigo, at the
ryu
in Kumamoto, but it was here in the Asama
kogen
that she had learned
jaho,
the magic of the
miko.

Then, coming down off the ridge, Nicholas saw it: Yami Doki castle, the Kite in the Darkness, where dwelled Kyoki, the master of
jaho.
Kyoki, the only man who could save Nicholas from
Shiro Ninja,
because Kyoki was tanjian.

Akiko had told Nicholas about Kyoki during her last hours on earth. She had felt compelled to describe him in such detail that Nicholas was certain he would recognize the tanjian on sight. Akiko had studied with Kyoki for seven years. That had been during the 1960s. He was then, according to her account, in his forties, relatively young to be the master of such powerful arcane disciplines.

Akiko had never used the word tanjian to describe Kyoki. Nicholas doubted whether he had told her what he was. But from what he had taught her, it seemed clear enough to Nicholas that Kyoki was tanjian. His physical description—a savage Mongol face, more Chinese than Japanese—gave added credence to this theory.

Nicholas had to believe now that Kyoki was tanjian: it was his only hope.