Thousand Shrine Warrior (38 page)

His white eyes slowly closed against the world. He began to crumble into ash, as though He had long ago been burnt to the core and was held together only by the strength of a lingering, sacred wish.

Her moment of inspiration dwindled and the bikuni was overcome by sudden selfishness. She clasped Heinosuke's fingers, thinking the Buddha's golden blood might by some miracle cure her own weakened, swollen hands.

There was nothing but soot on Heinosuke's hands.

The bikuni sat by the young man's quietly breathing form, staving off disappointment. If no one else were involved on this night, she would have withdrawn from the temple, returning sometime when her hands hurt less or the swelling was less evident. But there were Heinosuke and Mirume to consider, both of them helpless and unconscious; and something in her felt as though her mission must meet results tonight, or never.

Untying the remaining length of cloth that wrapped her hand, the bikuni drew her sword and began to tie hand and hilt together. Thus she need not fear losing her grip by some misspent attack on Green Fire Devil. The fiend had withdrawn to lick its own wounds. She hoped the bath of Buddha's blood would make the demon's handicap equal to her own.

While the demon was gone, she could accept no respite, but must move swiftly in search of the door. She took up the broken length of wood and began, board by board, to test the sound of each section of the floor.

Rather than detecting a hollowness, the broken staff struck a place that sounded thicker. The bikuni struck all around the area, ascertaining the dimensions of the heavy, well-camouflaged trapdoor.

As her eyes quested in darkness for some hint of crack at which to pry, a frigid wind tore through the hall, then died away as quickly. When she looked up, Lady Echiko stood at the rear entry from the cemetery. Thin as she was, she might have been some awful set of bones pulled out of a grave, done up in finery as a ruthful disguise.

Echiko saw Heinosuke prone before the altar of ashes. She began to walk toward him, her gait strange and unappealing. Tomoe looked quickly to the rafters, but no emerald flame appeared. She half expected any moment to find the fiend possessing Echiko; but when Echiko's eyes turned upon Tomoe, they were not green, but glistening cobalt. Her look was one of ire, as though convinced the bikuni bore responsibility for Heinosuke's state.

The princess became white as frozen Ittosai, then whiter; and then her whiteness faded into clearness. She metamorphosed before the bikuni's stunned gaze. Skin became transparent as ice; there were no veins beneath; and bones were glassy rods, nearly invisible in the depths of diaphanous flesh. Her costume became a robe of wind and snow, constantly in motion.

Transfigured Echiko radiated radical frigidity. A faint blue glow cast shadows all about the hall.

She moved toward Tomoe Gozen.

“Yuki-onna!” Tomoe cried. “Why possess poor Echiko and ruin the love she found? It was you all along, and not Kuro the Darkness, who leeched away her will to live!”

Yuki-onna's voice was sweet and other-worldly, like bells and tinkling crystals. “I possess no one,” she said. “I am who I've always been.”

Her hair had become a web of icy shards cascading down her shoulders. She was a pellucid carving in cold glass, miraculous in appearance, uncannily beautiful and frightful to behold. Tomoe held the Sword of Okio one-handed, but Yuki-onna feared that blade less than did other supernatural creatures. “If you cut me,” said the soft, tinkling voice, her teeth sparkling with prismatic color, “I'll die like any monster. But your blessed sword will become brittle, so cold am I.”

Tomoe backed against a wall. She could withdraw no further. Yuki-onna came near enough to be slashed, chilling Tomoe to the marrow; but the nun valued her sword as she valued her own life. She could not make the decision to attack.

In that instant, a longsword pierced the wall from outside, barely missing Tomoe's nape. She lurched aside. The blade retracted in order to stab through the wall a second time. Then, strong fingers dug between the siding. Some fiend was trying to enter at Tomoe's back, coming through the wall.

When the first boards were ripped away, Ittosai Kumasaku peered into the temple, thawed by the fiery demon whose inner presence colored his eyes. Yuki-onna lost interest in the nun and watched emerald-eyed Ittosai without evident emotion. Tomoe scrambled away as Green Fire Devil used Ittosai's tremendous strength, trebled by possession, to tear a gaping rent.

She started toward the place along the floor where she had previously located the hidden door. But Ittosai was at her back, forcing her to spin about and block a blow that stung her to the elbows. Ittosai's excessive power only caused his sword to break centrally. The sharp end whisked by Tomoe's face and clattered far along the floor.

She blocked another cut from the much-shortened blade. It was a less powerful blow, for Ittosai had performed it one-handed; and as the Sword of Okio blocked, Ittosai's free hand sprung forth like a serpent, latched onto Tomoe's throat, raising her so quickly that she was flung high into the air before realizing what had happened. She struck the floor at an angle and slid through rubbish, whirling to a stop upon her back, winded, vision dizzied.

Gagging and catching her breath, she found the broken tip of Ittosai's sword. She grabbed it and flung it at the big man who stalked near, taking him in the thigh.

The injury might not have slowed him even had he not been possessed with stranger strength. But this whole encounter had been observed by Yuki-onna, who moved about the periphery of the room, watching especially Ittosai with an aspect of curiosity. Green Fire Devil may not have been concerned about the broken swordtip that sank into Ittosai's upper leg; yet he turned aside to look hard at Yuki-onna.

For long moments, Yuki-onna and Green Fire Devil were locked eye to eye. Then the demon spoke with Ittosai's booming voice:

“I have striven longer than a hundred years to return to Yuki-onna. But you are not the one who was endeared to me. What are you to watch me so, if not the sweet demon I once loved?”

“I am Shin-yuki-onna,” said the Snow Woman, her tinkling voice weighted with sorrow. “Your fiery lust killed my mother after all; for the half of me that is fire burned within her womb, and birthing me was her first and final agony. For long decades unaware, I lay beneath the snow, a motionless child of ice, neither dead nor living. One warm summer, the snow level rose higher than ever before. My tiny body was uncovered and began to cry. Lord Sato, upon a hunt, heard the cry; and finding a perfect white infant, recalled his beloved wife's empty womb. Soon I was placed into the hands of Lady Sato, who raised me as her daughter, teaching me human sentiment, never knowing how much strangeness was dandled on her knee.

“These things being as I have said, you can have no grudge against humanity. These long years, there has been no Yuki-onna for you to return to as a lover.”

“Can my eternal Hell be made the deeper?” asked Green Fire Devil, making Ittosai's face expressive and sad. “By the testimony of my unknown daughter, I am the slayer of my love.”

“You have helped Priest Kuro trouble people dear to me,” said Shin-yuki-onna. “Because I could not fight my unwitting and cruel father, I pined and grew thin, shedding much of my human aspect. I struggle to remain human in my heart! The half of me that is fire is able to warm the half of me that is my mother; and my one wish has been to care for Heinosuke, who is now blinded by Kuro's hatred—and by you.”

Tomoe Gozen heard this strange exchange, still dazed from being dashed along the floor. She crawled upon her belly, unnoticed by the supernatural father and daughter, lost as they were in the woes of one another.

Unfocused eyes found the place upon the floor where the Lotus monks had made a door, had hidden Nichiroku's terrible grave. She rose to knees, using her sword to brace herself, then found unsteady feet. She stabbed downward, the Sword of Okio passing through the floor and into the pit beneath.

Ittosai Kumasaku threw his sword straight upward in an uncontrollable spasm. It stuck deep into a rafter beam. He lumbered backward, away from Shin-yuki-onna, tearing at his chest as though burning from inside. The green flame played through his eyes, appearing and disappearing, two uncertain beacons scanning wildly and finally shining upon Tomoe Gozen, who hunkered beside the secret door.

She tried to draw her sword back out; but it became an inadvertent handle, and Tomoe Gozen raised the door upon its hinge.

Green Fire Devil was too weak to escape from the big man's body. Ittosai fell to his knees with unnatural force, cracking the floorboards as though he had increased many times in weight and might sink into the world. Tomoe Gozen could not guess whether the man who had been Ittosai Kumasaku would be alive after the grim exorcism by steel. Once already he had died a freezing death. Now he might be doubly destroyed by fire.

Shin-yuki-onna's complexion became more and more blue, the light of her intensifying with upset emotions, as blood of humans reddens cheeks. Her father had caused loved ones pain; and now he was dying. Maybe she was torn between filial regret and a revenge-inspired glee that it was done.

Searing cold blue eyes turned upon Tomoe Gozen. The nun was uncertain of the Snow Woman's feelings. The bikuni wrenched her sword from the open trapdoor. Curiosity drew her attention down. There was no literal hole beyond the shallow pit from which Nichiroku's corpse had issued the year before. But there was a glimmering sort of darkness collapsing upon itself. A miniature green flame in the shape of a hunchbacked old man writhed at the center of the shrinking dark cloud. The shade of Green Fire Devil grew tinier and tinier, until he was but a pinpoint of light. And then that light winked out.

Several paces away, Ittosai Kumasaku plunged from knees to face without a sound, and lay still.

The hall remained bathed in underwater-light, the hue having changed to aquamarine. Shin-yuki-onna was a shimmering, transparent gem in the shape of a woman, cold light shining out of her. Her sweet, bell-voice inquired, “Why have you slain my father? I might have convinced him to return to Hell.” Then she raised one hand above her head and held her fingers as though upon the hilt of an invisible sword.

From those fingers sprung a two-edged sword, the one edge blue ice, the other edge green fire. As she brought the sword down from above her head, she placed her other hand upon the hilt and said with a lilting menace:

“This is more purely my soul than your steel is yours. It means I have invested more into the fight.”

Tomoe Gozen struggled to comprehend the full depth of meaning to each event. With a dawning which held no certainty, she said, “Do not fight me, Snow Woman. The more you use your power, the less you can remain human. Even if you kill me, you may lose. Consider Heinosuke, lying there like a useless rag. Look at moaning Mirume, who has worshipped you so long, and would serve you unto death, and after. What will become of them if there is never again a Princess Echiko? Think even of your foster-father, who loves Echiko as his own. I have slain Green Fire Devil, who had no claim on you. I have saved your truer father. At this moment, Lord Sato will be awakening from his year-long nightmare, becoming himself once more. Who will he seek first, if not his daughter, with apologies, and tears, and relief?”

“Think how you would reply,” said the tinkling voice of the Snow Woman, “if you had seen me slay your sire, and I said to forget.”

Tomoe backed away from the pit, ready to defend herself. She said, “I am bad luck for lovers, I assure you. It's the end for you and Heinosuke if you persist. Savor the earthly passions denied other supernatural beings!”

Shin-yuki-onna approached, her sword of fire and ice creating strange shadows. Tomoe took a ready posture, sword pointed down and held halfway behind herself. Across the room, Mirume moved one leg, then a hand went to her blindfolded face. Ittosai Kumasaku's huge body gave a lurch, whether death throe or painful spasm, the bikuni could not tell. Heinosuke was the quietest of all. Between these three people, Shin-yuki-onna and Tomoe Gozen held one another at point of sword.

The Snow Woman took another careful step and raised her shining sword a little higher. The bikuni bent her knees and slid one foot forward the least amount, her sword still held pointing behind. She began to chant the Kwannon Sutra as taught her by monk Kasha:

“Thy merciful heart is a wonderful cloud

From which falleth sweet dew extinguishing

The flames of earthly passion.”

For the first time, Tomoe Gozen knew this was truly her fate, as prophesied by the salamander. She felt that she was one among the many arms of merciful Kwannon, the hand that bore the saber. Even Otane's stoic grandmother had mistaken the bikuni for an avatar of Kwannon. Who could judge how much in error widow Todawa may have been?

The bikuni ceased her chant and said, “Yuki. Your two-edged soul is beautiful and strange, but you handle it mistakenly. If you attack, I'll destroy you, even at cost of my sword. Merciful Kwannon will dissolve your earthly passions. What will remain afterward, but everlasting emptiness in a colorless limbo outside of time?”

The Snow Woman came forth with alarming speed, snowy garments swirling. Tomoe dropped to one knee and felt the cold of mountain glaciers, and the heat of mountain bowels, sweep above her head. At the same moment, the Sword of Okio went forward in a deadly streak. Shin-yuki-onna passed on her own momentum, stopping at the bikuni's back, motionless, her strange sword melting into dew, which doused its flame.

The Sword of Okio had stroked the Snow Woman's body for the least possible moment, yet was rimed and chill. Tomoe Gozen could not remove even the hand that was not tied to the hilt, for both hands adhered by frost. The nun watched the blade, afraid that it might shatter.

The blue light behind her faded. As it did, the rime upon the blade became fluid, darkened, and dripped as common blood. At her back, she heard the rustle of court costume, not blowing snows. There was a final sigh devoid of the otherworldly tinkle, and the sound of a frail body falling. Tomoe Gozen swept her sword over her own head, flicking away blood as she stood. With slow purpose, she sheathed the Sword of Okio and slipped her swollen hand from the knotted cloth.