Dai-San - 03 (18 page)

Outside the cicadas orchestrated the passage of the moon. Wind rattled branches of a nearby cryptomeria against the closed window behind them.

He felt, for an instant, the keen edge of panic, a knife blade at his throat.

Then he closed his eyes and listened to the nothingness.

‘Moeru.’ His lips barely moved.

Blackness, pearling.

‘Moeru.’

An endless sky littered with the pale mauve clouds of sunset.

‘Moeru.’

A zigzag line of geese flying above the blue and gold marsh, calling, calling plaintively toward the vast low horizon.

Abruptly a wind caught his cry, tore it from his lips, wheeling it away, away beneath the dark vault of the heavens, and he was in pitch blackness, beyond the sunset, far past the last edge of his world.

Touch was all that was left him.

He used it, following the tingling at his finger tips straight ahead until it lessened. Turn to the right. No. Turn to the left, increasing. Onward, not walking, not running. Moving.

Tingling, racing up his arms until his hands are numb. Ears blocked. Shoulder sockets vibrating. Forward. And he hears it now. Music. A terrible liquid music at violent decibels that violate his eardrums. His teeth chatter and his body feels chilled. The music fills his world, his chest flying apart with the force. His head lifts now and his eyes blink of their own accord. He is absolutely motionless in the kinetic world, through the bass’s brown booming, past the heavily stringed chords.

Staring.

Before him black peaks, shining like obsidian, thrust upward into a black sky filled with black stars. There is no horizon.

He sees Moeru in bondage, chained to the black peaks. Or rather it is her essence, he realizes, her soul crying out in torment: the savage singing. The music of pain and despair.

Her eyes widen as she sees him and she calls to him. The terrible music intensifies and his body shudders. She heaves herself upon the rough-hewn peaks.

The sky billows like a sea shroud. Three black suns rise in funereal procession. The crags move as if breathing. Here, naked before him, in her unimaginable torment, he sees the recognition lighting her eyes. The music drives through him like pikes, drenching him. His muscles jump in protest. He wills his legs to work.

She howls in agony. Her skin gleams with sweat. The ebon chains hold her fast, spread-eagled in the center of her world.

He raises his sword, the long blade a bright arc, and as it comes abreast of her white body, the music lessens, the sound somehow deflecting off its honed edges, away from him in a spiraling crescent of dark energy. His numbed mind begins to clear.

And now he comes for her.

At the verge of the black peaks, writhing now, less shiny obsidian, more scaly hide. The thing grasps her tightly. Black and monstrous, it seeks his death, but he is berserk now, the love a living pulse within him, feeding his muscles, the fear an added inducement, and he strikes again and again, his long blade a white blur singing past her white body, two spots of reflection in the blackness of this pit. And the song is death.

The peaks shear away, the air trembles, a shower of hot, sticky slime, she climbs into his arms, and still the sword wields destruction—

Ronin, come—

Black cormorants wheel into the black suns. Black stars burst by them—

—
away, now. Oh, Ronin—

A wetness against his cheek, and the blade crying with a life of its own, demanding vengeance, a hot wind turns chill and a frost comes as the three black suns converge, trembling on implosion—

Now, now, now—

And with a mighty leap, Ronin carries her away into green mist, into the light of the sea shining behind her eyes, into the heavy air of Haneda.

Within his powerful arms, she pants heavily as his lips search for hers. His eyes open and he covers her naked body in his night-black cloak. She wrenches her mouth away from his, gasps:

‘Quickly. He knows and is coming. Take me away.’

Sheathing his sword, he raced with her to the window, but the shutters were locked. He grasped her hand and they ran from the room. Down the dim balcony. Above them, he heard a sharp exclamation and a muffled crash. Nikumu’s deep voice. Past closed doors. The pounding of boots. Into the doorway through which he had first come. Noise of pursuit, increasing.

Across the dimly lighted room to the window gaping open. Gulp of fresh night air, an intoxicating elixir. Thrusting her out into the embracing branches of the spreading cryptomeria. Then turning back into the room.

Nikumu burst through the doorway, sword drawn, eyes blazing.

‘Where is she?’ he cried.

‘Perhaps you begin to understand now,’ said the voice of the other from the inner balcony. He had not yet come through the doorway.

‘Who summoned you!’ Nikumu snarled.

‘Why,’ the voice said, equably, ‘you did, of course.’

This seemed to enrage Nikumu further and he ran at Ronin.

‘I will kill you for this. She is mine!’

And the tall man, lifting his long Bujun blade above his head, ran at Ronin. He was very swift but he was not reckless and Ronin saw this at the last instant, recognized the enormous danger, dodging the blow and, in the same motion, swept both legs beyond the window sash. Wood splintered behind him and he twisted his body in the opposite direction. Another blow fell across the window frame and stone shattered in a cloud of dust just as he leapt along the thick horizontal branch of the cryptomeria, then scrambled down the gnarled trunk, joining Moeru on the ground.

He peered up through the gloom of the night. Nikumu’s tall dark figure seemed bounded by two shadows. His silk robe whipped about him as if he were some spectral creature.

‘I will hunt you down like animals!’ he called wildly. He swung his sword in a great arc. Chips of stone and wood flew at them with explosive force.

‘You are dead now!’ he cried. ‘Dead!’

And a sound swept after them as they ran through the cryptomeria wood and Ronin could not tell whether it was the booming of laughter or the echoing of anguished sobs.

‘There is only one place now,’ he said quietly, ‘for us to go.’

‘Yes. It is not really a difficult problem.’ His voice was filled with fatigue.

‘So?’ The face registered surprise.

‘The castle of the Kunshin.’

They sat on the covered terrace of a quiet inn set high up on purple cliffs which dove headlong, as if suicidal, into the churning combers far below them. The cool light of the horned moon broke the froth of the surf into bright diamond shards, the spindrift into platinum lace.

Above them and to the right, dark pines swayed in the breeze coming in off the sea like drowsing sentinels. To the left, the cliffs ran downward somewhat, covered in a thick matting of scrub and gorse.

Somewhere high up, a snow owl hooted in the pines, then fell silent.

On the tiled terrace, covered in tatamis, tea steamed before them on a low lacquered table. Rice cakes lay on a tiny plate beside their half-filled cups. Okami, his wide round face serene, sat cross-legged, facing Ronin. Within the inn, Moeru lay in an exhausted sleep.

‘This adventure was a mistake, I fear,’ Okami said. ‘Nikumu is now your enemy and a more deadly, implacable foe in all of Eido would be hard to find.’

‘He was holding her against her will. If you had seen—’

‘She is his wife, after all, Ronin—’

‘Does that absolve her of her rights to live her own life? Is this the wondrous Bujun way?’

Rushing clouds obscured the moon for a moment. When its marbled light returned, Okami said:

‘My friend, I understand—’

‘Excuse me for my bluntness this time, Okami, but I must tell you that there is no way that you
could
understand this situation. In some as yet unfathomable way, Moeru and I are bound together.’ After a moment, he said: ‘She can speak to me.’

Okami stared out to sea, then he carefully poured tea for Ronin and himself. He lifted his porcelain cup with his finger tips and slowly sipped at the hot liquid.

‘There is no use moaning about events which have already transpired,’ he said quietly. ‘Forgive me, my friend. For good or ill, she is here now with us. It is our karma.’

‘And what of the Kunshin?’

Okami’s tone became more businesslike. ‘First, he is the only Bujun on Ama-no-mori powerful enough to repulse Nikumu’s vengeful efforts—’

‘But Nikumu is his friend.’

‘Let me finish, please. It is the scroll of dor-Sefrith which may save us all now for, you see, Azuki-iro, it is said, still retains some of the lost knowledge of the warrior-mages of Ama-no-mori’s past. If it is as important as you say, then he will have no choice but to hold Nikumu at bay until he can make some determination.’

‘And then?’

Okami shrugged.

‘When he has seen what you have brought, perhaps then he will come to realize the evil that lies so close to him, that has already begun to eat into Ama-no-mori. The sasori must be destroyed. If Nikumu is now their leader, then he must be the first to die.’

Long after Okami had retired to the interior of the inn, Ronin sat cross-legged on the tatamied terrace, listening to the relentless pounding of the surf against the purple cliffs. A gray mist hung in the branches of the pines like the spun web of an enormous spider. The stars were no longer visible. The moon had gone down some time before.

He stared outward into the mist, inward into the core of his soul. And he made a vow. No one would stop him. Not Nikumu. Not the Makkon. Not even The Dolman. He would finish what he came here to do, for he too had a karma and its power was too strong to deny. He had no clear idea as yet what would be required of him. No matter. He knew in his heart that the fate of the entire world would not,
could
not, be decided by either Nikumu or the Kunshin. It could be no one element. Just as one’s life was determined by a multiplicity of factors, so was history governed. The battle lines of his life had been drawn long ago, forged in blood and pain and loss. And he could not forget. Chill take Nikumu! And the Kunshin, if he decided against him. Yet one thing he had come to understand this night: he was surely close to the vortex of events toward which he had been journeying all his life.

And what of Moeru?

Her cool fingers along his neck.

She sat down next to him.

‘Free.’ Her voice was soft against his ears.

‘Did you hear me thinking about you?’

She threw her head back and laughed joyously.

‘It is like being born again,’ she said.

The strong lines of her face were etched softly in the glowing light of an opalescent dawn breaking in a thin brushstroke beyond the towering summit of Fujiwara. Gray-green and smoke. Her dark hair swept over one eye and she lifted a slim hand to take it away. He stopped her. Their fingers twined.

‘How?’ he said.

‘Come with me.’

They got up, went across the tatamis to the railing of the terrace. She stood with her hands flat against the wooden railing. Their shoulders and hips brushed.

‘We were separated when I left the
Kioku
during the attack. There was a storm that was not a storm.’ She turned to him, her long hair blown behind her by the wind. ‘What was it?’

‘I do not know,’ he said, but he was not certain that that was the truth. A stirring in his mind.

‘Look,’ she pointed delightedly. ‘The dawn.’

Lonely pines, black against a pink, war-torn horizon. Majestic Fujiwara. The skyline of Ama-no-mori.

Her face was a pale rose in the early morning mist. Her swirling silk robe, which Okami had bought for her in the inn, was in sharp contrast with her black hair. One hand rose to her throat, caressed the tiny silver flower on its chain, lying in the hollow.

‘I returned here because of the sakura you gave me.’ The dawn wind whipped at her hair and he saw her now through a shifting latticework crisscrossing her cheeks and full lips. ‘I was overjoyed when I saw them coming. The great waves had already taken the
Kioku
far from me. We fought on but the sailors were outnumbered. One by one they died.’

Their heads turned at a cry in the distance. Above the creaming waves, the first flock of gulls were already sweeping low over the burnished brass sea, searching for breakfast. The white of their plumage was stained pink by the rising sun.

‘It was Nikumu who made the sakura, you see, and he gave it special properties. When the decision was made to send a Bujun to the continent of man, the Kunshin requested that some form of check be used. Nikumu devised the sakura. He knew that the Bujun would not part with it while he was alive, thus if he met some resistance, those on Ama-no-mori would know. What was not known was who had possession of the sakura after the Bujun perished. But this person, Nikumu reasoned, was surely involved in the Bujun’s death. Thus he came for me.’

In the crying dawn, Ronin thought back, remembered the brief darkening of the sun above the obsidian ship which carried Moeru, said:

‘He flew then.’

She turned to him, her eyes startled for an instant.

‘Yes, but how did you know?’

‘I saw—something, very far away.’

‘The steeds of ancient Ama-no-mori bore him and three of his men.’

‘And the four of them defeated a shipload of warriors?’

‘They are Bujun, are they not?’

‘You still wear the sakura. Surely he will know where you are.’

‘No, its power to act as a beacon ceased when I returned to Ama-no-mori.’

‘Why do you still wear it?’

‘Because you gave it to me.’

‘Are you his wife?’

She did not even blink.

‘I am sure that Okami already told you that.’

‘I want to hear it from you.’

‘I am Nikumu’s wife.’

‘Then what were you doing on the continent of man?’

She turned her back on the light spreading itself over the far face of Fujiwara. Her slim body trembled against his.

‘How did you free me?’

A whisper, a caress, a warmth. What was behind that question?

‘Why should your husband imprison you?’

‘Husbands can be as good or evil as anyone else.’