L5r - scroll 05 - The Crab (28 page)

The son reached his great black claw down to his father. Still half-blind, Kisada accepted the gesture and pulled himself to his feet.

"You have winnowed out the last weakness from our cause," Yakamo continued. "You've focused the Crab Clan on a single vision, the single destiny for which we've fought for countless generations. When you sit on the Emerald Throne, then and only then will the empire truly be safe. You are the only man who can do this. Right now is your moment of temptation, Father. This is your moment of weakness. Step beyond it."

Letting go of Kisada's hand, Yakamo moved to stand next to the Shadowlands creature with which he shared a name and a purpose. "Many good and noble samurai gave their lives in Bei-den Pass. None of them thought it an empty gesture. They shared your vision. They believed in your goals. Do not let them die in vain."

"Nothing has yet changed within your empire," Yakamo no Oni said. "So far, all you have managed to do is get the other clans focused on a single problem."

"They do not understand the greater purpose you serve," added Yori. "They believe you are a renegade—a usurper like the honorless Scorpion, Bayushi Shoju. In their ignorance they will seek to destroy you."

"The threat of civil war has not gone away," Yakamo concluded. "In fact, it has moved beyond mere threat—civil war is here."

Kisada blinked. It was as though he were awakening from a deep sleep.

"The empire," mumbled the daimyo. "We must protect the empire."

"If we fail," the younger man began holding out his claw toward his father.

"The empire falls," finished the Great Bear, taking the claw and stepping toward his future.

"With you here, Father," Yakamo said, "and our forces bolstered by our new allies, we will retake the pass and crush Toturi and his traitorous army."

The Great Bear looked around at the fallen Crab—all these lives lost defending the best-fortified position in all of Rokugan. If Kisada did not rally the troops and retake Beiden Pass, did they die in vain? If he did, was it a hollow, meaningless victory? The point of this maneuver had been to shut down the other armies, to prevent bloodshed on a massive scale.

Measured by that standard, it had already failed.

The Great Bear wanted to look up at his youngest son's body, but his neck would not bend.

"No," Kisada finally said grabbing his remaining son by the right arm. "Every general must know when to abandon his battie plan. Forget Beiden Pass. Our karma lies elsewhere."

WORDS OF POWER

I have faced death in a thousand forms, but this is the most frightening scene I have
ever
witnessed." Speaking out loud was the only way Isawa Toki knew to keep himself from sliding into madness.

The Phoenix shugenja stood atop one of the towers of the Great Kaiu Wall. The bitterly cold wind whipped his long, graying ponytail behind him like a child's kite. Climbing up to the walkway had been treacherous—winter still held the land in its frigid grip, and the ladder was slick with ice—but Toki braved it because this would be his first chance actually to
see
the Shadow-lands after studying them for so many years.

The Wall itself was impressive enough.

Snow covered not only the Wall but also all the scenery beyond. Draped in white, with the wind blowing light curtains of snow across the plains, it looked beautiful—almost inviting. Then the shugenja remembered what was missing from both the landscape and the Wall—people.

The Kaiu Wail and the Shadowlands for as far as the eye could see were completely deserted. It chilled Toki to his heart. The fight along the southern Crab border had been going on for over a thousand years. No one liked the clan much, but nearly everyone pitied them—they never got a moment's respite from the brutality of war. Yet, here the Phoenix samurai stood surrounded by complete silence. No birds flew in the sky. No foxes or rabbits left tracks in the snowdrifts. It was as though Toki visited a poisoned land.

None of the other clans had seen either the Crab or Shadow-lands armies since the battie of Beiden Pass months earlier. They withdrew back into the heart of the Crab lands, just as winter settled on Rokugan. Gossip around the snowbound courts of the empire guessed that the two ancient enemies had turned on one another and resumed their centuries-old battie.

Now, standing on the Crab wall, surrounded by complete silence and solitude, it was clear neither army had returned home. The winter had been far too harsh for them to have traveled anywhere since the snows fell. So where had they gone?

Toki pondered the question but couldn't come up with even the beginning of an answer.

In the winter courts all the great generals and philosophers of Rokugan tried to answer the question: what caused the Great Bear to abandon his duty? They wanted an answer by spring— when the clans would march on Crab lands to kill the Great Bear and crush his army.

Once Toki returned with word of the Crab's disappearance, they would have to begin with a new question: Where did Kisada go?

The air was split by a horrendous scream that lasted longer than any man could hold his breath. Toki covered his ears, but the sound seemed to cut through the flesh of his hands and strike directly at his brain. As suddenly as it began, the ear-piercing racket ended with a faint gurgle.

Cautiously lowering his arms, the Phoenix looked toward a strange tower set slightly back from the Wall. It was of the same design but slightly smaller than the rest of the towers. The piteous waii had come from it. Toki's martial training told him the tower held no strategic significance, but clearly it was the one place in all the southern Crab lands that was still inhabited. Inhabited by what?

There was only one way to find out.

After carefully descending the icy stairs and trudging through I hick snow, Toki reached the tower. Standing in front of its entrance, he found his legs did not want to carry him inside.

"I've spent my entire life preparing to face any abomination the Shadowlands could throw at me," the shugenja said, trying to talk his limbs into cooperating. "No matter what is in that tower, if anyone in Rokugan is ready to face it, I am!"

The brave talk must have had some effect, because Toki's legs relaxed enough for him to press on through the doorway.

The place was steeped in magic. Toki could feel it. Certainly this tower was home to a powerful Crab shugenja. He thought it odd that he could not make the same determination from outside the tower. Usually sources of such powerful mystical energy were impossible to conceal. If this spellcaster could so effectively mask his presence, he was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

Though from the outside the building seemed dark and deserted, inside it was lit with torches. The tower was one tremendous room, and Toki could see all the way to the ceiling fifty feet ;ibove. The upper reaches were masked with flickering shadows. The walls were lined with iron cages, some of which held skeletal remains of creatures that the shugenja could tell were once goblins. Nothing moved.

The source of the scream, Toki reckoned, must be the odd house built in the center of the tower's floor. It was an unassuming cottage. In fact, the Phoenix might even call it charming if it weren't in the middle of such a frighteningly magical building. He took a few steps closer, then thought better of it.

"Are you going to stand outside all day?" asked a voice from within the house. It seemed filled with mirth, as though the speaker was enjoying the Phoenix's caution. "Come inside, please."

The shoji were open, but Toki could see only darkness within.

Toki realized he had two options: Do as the voice said or turn and run. Considering the power of the magic surrounding the house, he didn't think he would get very far.

He stepped up to the wooden deck and into the house, not bothering to remove his sandals as he would at any other structure. He wanted to be ready to leave without delay.

As he passed over the threshold there was no change in the lighting. The building really
was
dark. Away in the depths of the house, he saw a single, faint, flicker—certainly a candle. It showed the pale outline of the head and shoulders of a lone figure hunched over a table. The figure wore a black cloak with the hood pulled up and motioned with one hand for Toki to approach.

"Come in, my friend, or shall I say 'my brother'?" The voice still seemed to chuckle mockingly beneath every word.

"Brother?" As he approached the figure, Toki felt as though he were wading upstream. His breath came in even larger plumes than it did atop the Wall.

"We share so many interests, you and I," the figure said. "Our devotion to the mystical arts being but one."

"You are a shugenja then?" the Phoenix felt the need to say something. His limbs felt numb, and he wasn't sure he wanted to keep approaching the mysterious figure, but he could not stop himself.

"I am Kuni Yori, chief advisor to Hida Kisada and daimyo of the Kuni family."

This was Kuni Yori? Toki had heard many tales of the man. He was responsible for much of the knowledge the Phoenix possessed regarding Shadowlands magic. Toki had hoped one day to meet Yori and discuss his theories, but in his deepest nightmares he'd never imagined the meeting would be like this.

"I am Isawa Toki," he said trying to sound casual. "Yori-san, what has happened here?"

"Happened?" Yori seemed not to understand, so involved was he in his work.

"The Great Wall of the Kaiu stands empty. The largest army in all of Rokugan has completely disappeared. Not a creature moves in the entirety of the Shadowlands for as far as the eye can see!"

Yori lifted his head. For the first time, Toki could see what Yori worked on so diligently. He seemed to be reading or translating a scroU that had been rescued from a fire of some sort. It was blackened and gave off a lingering scent of burnt flesh. Kanji and odd glyphs glowed pale yellow on the blackened parchment.

"Oh, that!" his voice seemed very faraway. "It is nothing you need concern yourself with. Go home. There is nothing for you to learn in the Shadowlands. Not anymore."

"But the Element Masters have agreed, the Shadowlands are growing in strength," insisted Toki. "I am but one of many emissaries sent to these cursed lands to search for clues. It is my duty to do all I can to discover the source of this new power."

Kuni Yori chuckled darkly. "I now know all there is to know about the Shadowlands."

Looking closer, Toki became convinced that the letters on the scroll were not revealed through alchemical or sorcerous means. They were burned into the scroll and still glowed with their own (lame. He even fancied he could feel heat coming from the scroll,

"Share that knowledge then, Yori-san," he urged. "The empire stands on the brink of ruin. Our greatest enemy is now beyond our sight, as is the only defense Rokugan has ever known. Revealing the Shadowlands' plans could save your clan from the same dishonor the emperor visited upon the Scorpions. Why would you hold back such information?"

"You Phoenix like to say knowledge has a price," Yori began. The Crab shugenja turned to face Toki for the first time. Although his features were hidden beneath the shadow of his cloak, it was clear that something was wrong with Kuni Yori's face. His voice took on a quality that chilled Toki's blood—it sounded like ice cracking on a not-quite-frozen lake.

With slow, deliberate hands Yori removed his hood. He had been injured somehow. There was blood on his face, and his skin had an unnatural sheen. It almost looked as though he had been badly burned.

Despite the frigid air, Toki broke out in a sweat.

Yori's lower jawbone lay in plain sight, and no lip framed the skin above his teeth. Only one side of his famously long mustache remained—and it was matted with gore. His eyes were so red, no white remained. His skin glistened and pulsed and oozed blood. His mantle of hair was replaced with wide strips of gory flesh that ran from his forehead back over his scalp. Kuni Yori's face had been turned inside out!

"If you would know the ways of Fu Leng, you must be willing to pay," the monstrosity that once was Kuni Yori said. It held aloft the scroll, which Toki now recognized as one of the Black Scrolls that were the original doom of Fu Leng. "It is all in here. The cost is not so dear, really."

Kuni Yori began laughing long, low, and maniacally. The sound built and built until it filled the tower more completely than the winter chill.

Isawa Toki turned and ran. He did not think about trying to grab the scroll. He did not consider attacking Yori, who still seemed to be woozy from his transformation.

No, Toki simply ran. He ran past his horse and north into the heart of the Crab lands. He kept on running until he collapsed in a snow bank. And when he awoke, he immediately began running again.

All the while, Yori's laughter rang in his ears.

THE LAST PEACEFUL SEASON

You may not be a warrior, but you are
truly
a Crab!"

Yasuki Taka bowed deeply, his cheeks flushed with pride. Such a compliment from the daimyo was a rare honor for a member of the Yasuki family—even its leader. Merchants were not highly prized, though necessary to keep a clan successful. Like lowly heimin, most samurai considered merchants below their notice. Under Taka's astute guidance, the Yasukis had begun to trade in a most precious commodity—prestige. By gaining Kisada's trust and ear, Taka secured for his family a place of honor in the history of the Crab Clan and, if all went as the Great Bear planned, the annals of imperial recognition.