The Tengu's Game of Go (18 page)

All these thoughts raced through Masachika's mind as he watched Aritomo and his warriors leave and the house burn to the ground. Some of the servants made futile efforts to fetch water from the lake to douse the flames, but the spirits threw fireballs at them, followed by volleys of burning utensils and furniture. Eventually everyone gave up and ran away.

He spent the night in the pavilion where he had lain with Asagao such a short time ago. When day broke he saw the house was completely destroyed. Whatever had remained of Tama was reduced to ashes. Why had he treated her so badly? Why had he lied to her? He had satisfied his own desire even though it had wounded and humiliated her. They had had everything and he had smashed it. She and Matsutani had been given to him once, then ripped away by his father's cruel decision, then restored to him. She had made the estate beautiful, she had been its heart. He was as guilty of her death as if he himself had plunged the knife into her throat.

He would have thrown himself howling to the ground in grief, but the sight of Haru approaching made him restrain himself. He hid himself away, unable to face anyone, least of all her.

Haru knelt in front of the smoldering ruin, her eyes not leaving the destruction, her lips moving. There was no sound other than the two werehawks, which from time to time gave their piercing call. The spirits had fallen silent.

A little later two horsemen rode up. He was afraid they might be Aritomo's men, sent back to arrest him, but he saw the black silk coverings over their faces and recognized one of them as Eisei the monk. It was like a hallucination from the past. He remembered that Eisei and the other one similarly disfigured had ridden off with Shikanoko. Did their presence now mean Shikanoko himself was nearby?

The two men dismounted and spoke to Haru. Then they rode away with her. The werehawks followed.

When they had gone he left the pavilion and knelt in Haru's place. He could not decide what to do. It was as though the life force that had animated him had been abruptly shut off. All his ambition, lust, and greed had been reduced to ashes along with his house and his wife. Tama had destroyed him, but he did not resent or hate her for it. He admired her courage more than ever and he knew he had never loved anyone else.

“Forgive me,” he whispered. “You were everything to me and I did not know it.” Tears burst from his eyes then.

“What should I do?” he said more loudly. He felt the spirits' presence.

“You could kill yourself,” came the mocking reply.

“But we don't care if you do or not.”

“Live or die, it's all the same to us.”

“You no longer matter.”

He drew Jinan and laid it on the ground beside him. Last night he had been prepared to take an emperor's life with it. Now he could not even use it against himself. One part of his mind kept niggling at him that he would survive; he always did; he would find a way out. Eventually he decided to listen to it, mainly because he lacked the courage to kill himself.

Jinan: Shikanoko had given it to him, in exchange for Jato, and he had never seen another sword like it. Only its name had displeased him, reminding him as it did of his own status as second son. Yet he was alive and his older brother was dead, just as Aritomo would soon be dead. None of his rules and rituals, his codes for the way of the warrior, his ideals of honor and courage, could save the great lord from the illness that was killing him.
I will outlive them all
, he promised himself. He got to his feet and picked up his sword. The air smelled of smoke and beneath it another stench, as the piles of dead animals began to rot.

“Farewell,” he said silently to Tama. He skirted the lake and began to walk along the track in the direction of Kuromori. It was his childhood home; he had lost it and won it back. He would return there and see if anything could be salvaged of his life.

But his spirits failed to recover and he was thinking again of using Jinan to end his life when he heard a twig break, then another, the trample and splash of horses' feet ahead of him. He left the path swiftly and hid himself in the undergrowth.

A group of people on horseback were picking their way along the stream. An ungainly creature ran in the lead, its head swinging from side to side, its nostrils flaring. It was the fake wolf he had seen years ago with Shikanoko. It caught his scent and stopped dead, looking in his direction and growling.

Several horses followed in single file, the first a white black-maned stallion with no bridle, carrying a woman. It halted and neighed loudly. Masachika remembered again his dream about his brother, Kiyoyori, and a foal. He knew it was the same horse, full grown.

A rider on a brown horse pushed past the stallion, dismounted, drew his sword, and approached the bushes where Masachika was concealed.

“Come out and show yourself!” The voice was curiously high, like a woman's.

He came out, his hand on Jinan. Haru spoke from the rear of the line. “It is Masachika.”

She rode behind the man with the black face covering whom he had seen earlier, and Eisei followed them, his ruined face uncovered. Then came Shikanoko himself, on an older white horse, surely the stallion Masachika had found at Nishimi and sent to Ryusonji. He looked back at the black-maned horse and saw the young woman properly. Her expression chilled him to the depths of his being. He felt she saw through him and judged him, and so did the horse. It must be Hina. If she and Shikanoko had come a day earlier, surely Aritomo would have forgiven him everything.

He could hardly bring himself to care. He said, more from habit than any real conviction, “Aritomo has left. He must be taking Yoshimori to the capital. An attack is being launched even now, by sea, on Rakuhara. Take me to Kuromori and I will help you plan a counterattack to rescue the Emperor.”

Shikanoko's gaze swept over him. Masachika quailed before the expressionless eyes. Shikanoko said merely, “Ride on,” and as the others obeyed, “Ibara! He is yours!”

The black-maned horse gave a loud cry so full of sorrow and anger that Masachika felt another wave of grief engulf him. Within moments all but two of them had disappeared down the track. He called out helplessly, “Shikanoko! I could have helped you. We are on the same side now.”

Ibara was the one who had first spoken to Masachika. She was raising her sword. “Go ahead, Mu,” she said over her shoulder, to the smaller man who had remained with her. “I don't need you.”

“I wouldn't dare suggest you do,” the other replied. “But I like to watch you in action, so I'll wait till you've finished.”

“It won't take long,” the woman said.

“I see you are going to kill me,” Masachika said. “You don't know how great a favor you are doing me. But can you tell me why?”

“You don't remember me, do you?”

He searched his memory, but there had been so many women. He had forgotten all their faces, except Tama's.

“My name is Ibara. And the groom you murdered? Have you forgotten him?”

Now he was able to place her. “The man who guided me over the mountains,” he said. “You were at Nishimi. You were mad with grief. I spared your life.” It seemed almost humorous. He could have killed her then, all those years ago. Now that the end was so near his heart had lightened.

“His name was Saburo,” she said, as stern as the lord of Hell in judgment. “We loved each other. You killed him, you caused the death of the Autumn Princess, and because of you my lord, Yukikuni no Takaakira, was forced to take his own life.”

The dead crowded around him, clamoring for justice.

“Kill me now,” he pleaded. “Be quick!”

“With pleasure,” Ibara said.

His eyes were playing tricks on him. It seemed to be Tama standing before him with the sword. He felt profoundly grateful to her. She would punish him and then she would forgive him, be his guide across the three-streamed river of death as she had been in life.

The sword swept. He felt the blow but no pain.

“Tama!” he whispered as he fell.

 

17

ARITOMO

Once back in Miyako, Aritomo moved swiftly to secure the capital. Every road into it was heavily guarded. His warriors roamed the streets day and night, arresting anyone acting suspiciously and rounding up all those known to have had Kakizuki connections. The imperial lute, Genzo, was locked away. The prisoners were confined in cells in Ryusonji.

He waited anxiously for Masachika, for he was eager to conduct the execution. After several days passed and Masachika still did not return, he began to wonder what could have happened to delay him. Only then did he remember the testament the woman had handed over. He issued orders for it to be brought to him.

He read it in mounting disbelief at all Masachika had concealed from him: Kiyoyori's daughter was alive and was probably Lady Fuji's murderer; Akihime had had a son who also survived. Who were these people, weak and insignificant, women, children, who were undermining his rule? Who were the riverbank people who had concealed them for so long? Their existence was an affront to him. They lived beyond his regulations, they obeyed none of his laws. He set about interrogating and punishing them, starting with Asagao, Masachika's woman who had played the lute. She was only the first of them to die under torture.

It was no great surprise that Masachika had been ready to betray him: he had never trusted him. More unexpected and insulting was the Empress's plan to supplant him. The only thing that comforted him in his shock and rage was his secret: he would outlive them all. What if he did not sleep at night or eat in the day; what if his body seemed to be failing him at the time when he most needed his strength, his flesh melting from his bones; what if when he dozed briefly from exhaustion he was assailed by nightmares? He was not ill; these symptoms were the price to be paid for immortality, the way the body learned to cheat death. He continued to drink the lacquer tea and the water from the well at Ryusonji.

He let a day and a night pass after reading the testament while he reflected on all its implications. Masachika would never come back to the capital. Either he had already killed himself or more likely he had fled. Aritomo vowed to track him down. The Empress and her son would also have to be dealt with, but how would he rebuke them? He would separate them, for a start. The Emperor must move immediately into the new palace. Maybe Lady Natsue could be exiled. Now that Aritomo held Yoshimori, she would have to stop her ridiculous plotting against him.

Arinori's name had been mentioned several times in the interrogations, as the protector of Lady Yayoi, who had turned out to be Kiyoyori's daughter, the one who had found her at the temple and procured the privilege of being her first lover. Aritomo longed to question him, but Arinori had sailed to the west, leading the attack against the Kakizuki. No word had come from him. Aritomo did not believe the surprise attack could fail; he was impatient to hear of the annihilation of his enemies. But troubling signs began to manifest themselves.

Late the following afternoon when he went to Ryusonji a white dove inexplicably dropped dead from the sky, in front of his horse, feathers fluttering after it like miniature Miboshi banners. As he crossed a bridge, he heard a voice say, distinctly, “The white one is spoiled. Chuck it away.” In the cloister he heard another voice, accompanied by a lute, singing a ballad about the fall of the Miboshi and the return of Kiyoyori.

It was Sesshin, whom Aritomo had had confined in a room in his own palace. Wondering how he had escaped, he told two of his men to bring the old man to him. They returned, one of them carrying the lute, the other holding Sesshin by the arm. Sesshin again seemed to have forgotten who Aritomo was.

“What did those words mean?” Aritomo demanded. “Were they a prophecy?”

“The past and the future are one,” Sesshin mumbled. “Sometimes I sing of one, sometimes of another. But where's my lute?”

He rambled for a while in a way no one understood, before beginning to sing again.

The dragon's child

Sleeps in the lake.

Where is his father?

Where is his sister?

When the deer's child calls

He will awaken.

He broke off suddenly and sniffed the air. “Someone is very ill. Someone is dying. But where's my lute? Who stole my lute?”

“I am not dying,” Aritomo said in fury. “I am like you; I will live forever. Break the lute! Destroy it!”

“Shall we kill him, lord?” asked one of the warriors, while the other smashed the lute against a column and then stamped on it.

“No!” he replied, seized by superstitious fear. “Send him away. Banish him. Let me never hear his voice again.”

He did not wait to be announced to Lady Natsue, but burst into her apartment, pushing her ladies aside and ordering them to leave.

She sat immobile, outraged, indicating with her head that he should bow. When he did not her eyes flashed in anger. She said in an icy voice, “I must congratulate Lord Aritomo. You have found Yoshimori. You have achieved all I asked of you. But why do you delay any further? You must execute him at once.”

“I will,” he said, and then, “Your Majesty should know that you will not see the Matsutani lord, Masachika, again.”

She went still and lowered her gaze.

“I don't expect him to show his face in the capital, but if he does he, too, will be executed. I don't have to tell you why, but we will not discuss it further.”

When she said nothing, he went on. “I will not be overthrown.”

She sat in silence for several moments, only a faint flush at her neck revealing her rage. Then she said, “Where are the werehawks?”

“The werehawks?” he repeated. “They flew away.”

“They should have flown straight back to Ryusonji, if you were unable to win their obedience. One werehawk has returned, but it is older and has some gold feathers. It sits on the roof above the prisoners' cells and calls in an intolerable way. The other two must have gone to someone else—the only person who could control them is the one who destroyed my brother, the deer's child, Shikanoko. You will not be safe until he is dead.”