The Book of Heroes (29 page)

“W-what?”

“I was wondering if you could ask the Lady Michiru something for me. Ask her how your brother was looking at the books that day.”

“Huh?”

“That is, was he merely plucking books off the shelves at random, or did he seem to have some purpose in his search?”

Michiru sat with her face pale, lost in her memories of the reading room.

U-ri glanced sidelong at Aju. “Wait. You were there. Can’t you answer Sky’s question?”

Aju blanched. “Er, maybe.”

“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

“See, until Hiroki actually touched my binding and pulled me from the shelf I was, er, asleep,” Aju confessed, his eyes hidden behind his long tail. “Books sleep too, you know. When no one is using us or needs us, we kind of doze off.”

“And the Sage was asleep too?”

“Well, the Sage is a special case, that old geezer, he—”

“Wasn’t asleep like you were, then.”

At least that explains why Aju’s been mum about how he met Hiroki until now. He doesn’t remember!
It also explained why Aju hadn’t recognized Michiru.

“The moment when Hiroki stuck me in his backpack and I realized I was leaning right up against the Book of Elem, boy, did I scream. But it was already too late.”

U-ri called to Michiru. She looked up. Her lips were white.

“Did it seem like Morisaki was looking for a particular book in the reading room that day?”

Michiru thought about that for a moment. Her left eye wandered. At length, she shook her head apologetically. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I just felt so queasy, and I didn’t want Morisaki to know, see.” Then Michiru’s good eye opened wider. “But that reminds me. Morisaki did say something strange when we were planning the trip in the first place. He said that the reading room and all the old books in it seemed like something from another world.
He said,
‘I’ve been having this dream of that place since I went there with my family last year.’
He said that he had heard someone calling to him from the reading room. Just calling over and over. ‘Hiroki, Hiroki.’”

U-ri felt an icy chill stop at each nerve ending along her spine.

When they had visited Ichiro Minochi’s cottage together as a family in December of the year before, Hiroki had been right in the middle of playing knight in shining armor to Michiru’s damsel in distress. He was being a hero, looking for allies, trying to defeat his enemies. And something in the library called to him. Something had called his name—

The King in Yellow. No, it was the Hero itself. Both sides of the coin.

“That good enough for you, Sky?” U-ri asked out of the corner of her mouth. He did not reply. She looked and saw he was lost again, staring at Michiru’s face.

Aju lightly whacked U-ri’s cheek with his tail. “I’ve got a question for Michiru too.”

U-ri nodded. The girl looked up, her face drained of what little strength it had.

“Michiru, a little bit ago, you called out for Hiroki—you were groping for him with your hands. You asked whether he’d come back. What did you mean by that?”

Michiru’s face twisted with pain. She must be exhausted—first an attempted suicide, and now this inquisition. But U-ri wanted to hear her answer as much as Aju did. She walked over to the girl and put her hand on her back.

“I’m sorry. We won’t ask any more questions after this. We’ll take you home, I promise. If you could just tell Aju—”

Michiru grabbed U-ri’s arm. She could feel the girl’s warmth through the vestments of protection. U-ri put her hand over Michiru’s.

“When we got into eighth grade, and I heard that Morisaki was being picked on…”

“Yes?”

“I went to him and apologized…I apologized over and over again…I said that they could pick on me again if they wanted to, that I just wouldn’t come to school, that he shouldn’t protect me. I asked him not to.”

Of course, Hiroki would never have done anything of the sort.

“It’s okay, just leave it to me.”

“But I think they were getting to him. He looked really tired. I was afraid if things went on like that, they might wear him out completely. I talked to Mrs. Kanehashi, and she said we should go talk to Morisaki’s mom.”

But Hiroki had found out somehow and insisted Michiru do nothing of the sort. He told her that if she did, he wouldn’t ever speak to her again. Mrs. Kanehashi tried to convince them it would be for the best, but Hiroki wouldn’t hear of it.

“It’s all right. I can handle this. I know I can.”

Of course he was confident,
U-ri thought to herself.
He had the Book of Elem at home, and it was already starting to exert its influence over him. An influence that led to him stabbing two of his classmates soon after.

U-ri stopped her train of thought.
That’s odd. Why did he use any old knife? Not a knight’s sword—a cooking knife.
He didn’t need the Book of Elem or the King in Yellow’s power to use that.
It was something any kid in eighth grade could have pulled off.

Why would the King in Yellow bother possessing him if it was only to make him stab someone with a cheap old knife?

Then again, maybe it did make sense. After all, it was conflict. People injuring other people, drawing blood, taking lives. Maybe that was all you needed for there to be war.

“I…met Morisaki the morning of the incident.”

U-ri was so deep in her own thoughts, she almost missed what Michiru said. Seconds passed before she looked up with a startled expression on her face. “You met him? That morning?”

“Yes. I ran into him at the cubbies on the way into school. He seemed…Morisaki seemed really happy.”

“Get ready for a little surprise today,”
he had told her.

“A little surprise?” U-ri echoed. Michiru went pale and nodded.

“I’ll fix everything. The teasing will end for good.”

“And you believed him?” Aju asked. Michiru shook her head. “I was frightened. I guess I frighten easily. But I thought something was strange about Morisaki. He seemed so happy…”

Michiru had followed him into school, pestering him with questions. “
What do you mean ‘you’ll fix everything’? What are you going to do? Don’t do this alone.”

Hiroki had laughed.
“I told you it’s fine. Don’t worry. I’m sure it’ll go great.”

“You’re ‘sure’? What if it doesn’t go great?”
Michiru had pressed him, but Hiroki just laughed.

“It will go great, absolutely. And once it’s all done, I’ll explain everything to you, Inui.”

“I still didn’t believe him. All I knew was that he was going to do something he shouldn’t.”

She had confronted him.
“You’re going to do something bad, aren’t you?”

“Something bad?”
Hiroki had echoed back, suddenly sounding like a little boy.
“What do you mean, something bad?”

Something that would get him in trouble with the teachers, something that they would take him out of school for, maybe even to jail.

Of course, she had been absolutely right.

But Hiroki had just smiled at her.
“If in the unlikely event they do take me away, I’ll come back to meet you, Inui. I’ll hide so no one knows where I am, and come to meet you, and explain everything.”

That just made Michiru even more frightened. But Hiroki was resolute.

“I promise,”
he had said.
“We can even choose the place where I’ll find you. How about the library? Okay? No matter what happens today, I’ll come meet you there. Even if you can’t see me, you’ll know it’s me. All right?”

Which meant that the Book of Elem had given him considerable power already—power far exceeding that of regular humans. Power like U-ri’s.

“And you believed him?” U-ri asked.

She had, or rather, she had wanted to very badly. That was when she had given up trying to stop him.

“Which is why you thought we were Hiroki before, by the window.”

Michiru’s eyes were swimming in tears again. “I’ve been waiting since it happened. I knew he would come back to the library.”

But he hadn’t come back. Hiroki was gone without a trace. No one knew where he was. And how many days had it been since he disappeared, leaving Michiru in this lonely, frightening place.

She had come to the library with hope so many times before, but today she had come in despair.

“I don’t know why I thought this, but it seemed that if I just had the courage to throw myself from the window, I could go to the place Morisaki had gone…”

U-ri knew just what she meant. She knew it so well it hurt. “Thank you for telling me. I know it must’ve been hard,” U-ri said, giving the girl a hug. “You should go home and rest. Be good to your body and your heart. Try to get your health back.” U-ri stared hard at the girl. “And I want you to promise me you’ll not try to take your life again. Don’t even think about it. You’d only make Hiroki very, very sad. All right?”

“Yeah,” Aju added, “and we’ll find Hiroki for you, I promise.”

For all U-ri knew, they were just adding empty promises on top of empty promises, but that seemed to be enough for Michiru.

“I’ll be waiting.”

“You do that…” U-ri said, then she suddenly felt dizzy. A chill raced through her entire body. All around her, the books were calling to her in hushed voices. “
Allcaste!
Be careful! It approaches!”

U-ri tensed. Sky whirled around. Aju jumped on top of her head.

“What approaches?”

“Some
thing
that bears the Yellow Sign!”

“What, me?” Aju squeaked at the books. “You mean you didn’t notice until now? Yeah, I’ve got the Yellow Sign, so what? It’s all under control.”

“This is not one of your followers,
allcaste!
” the books said, their voices rising into a scream. “It’s coming closer. It’s coming! You must leave here at once!”

Leave here? Where to?

Sky grabbed U-ri’s wrist and began to run, leading her toward the exit. U-ri began to run with him, her arm around Michiru’s shoulder, dragging her along.

“This way!” Sky shouted, throwing open the library door.

The three ran out into the hallway. Aju clung to strands of U-ri’s hair, almost flying after her. Then U-ri came to an abrupt stop. Aju flew over her head, smacking square into Sky’s back.

“What’s the big idea?” Aju squeaked as he scrambled to dig into the devout’s black robes.

Sky stopped too, rooted to the spot by the scene before him.

The library was positioned at the westernmost end of the school building. From the library door, they could see straight down the hallway, all the way to where the L-shaped school building’s hall turned at a sharp angle. The hallway had been filled with sunlight coming in through the windows when they had first arrived. But now, unbelievably, it was dark—no, it was darkening.

The ceiling and two walls made a perfectly rectangular space that extended like a tube straight down to the corner. Except they couldn’t see the corner anymore, because it was obscured by a veil of absolute darkness stretched across the hallway. And the veil was coming nearer.

What was left of the lit hallway was disappearing behind the dark.

Sky looked with eyes open wide, transfixed by the darkness. He spread his arms wide before U-ri and Michiru, as if to protect them. U-ri moved Michiru behind her, pushing her gently back toward the library. Then she ducked under Sky’s arm and stood in front of him.

“Lady U-ri!”

“It’s all right!”

In the time it took for their brief exchange, the wall of darkness had come closer—it was now only three feet away from the tip of U-ri’s nose. And there it stopped.

U-ri threw back her shoulders, planted her feet firmly beneath her, and lifted her eyes to meet it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Man of Ash

U-ri braced herself.
The glyph on her forehead shone like a star, illuminating the darkness in front of her. At once, the wall lost its solid appearance and recoiled like a living thing.

This did much for U-ri’s courage. She steadied her feet, took a deep breath, and shouted at the thing. “What do you want of me?”

The darkness surged forward, filling the entire space of the corridor. U-ri strained her eyes until she saw something moving inside the darkness. It was undulating, throbbing. It heaved and shrank, as though its entire mass were drawing breath.

U-ri raised her voice again. “What are you? If you have a name, I would hear it!”

When the thing responded, she heard its voice not with her ears but with another organ—it seemed to speak directly to her heart.

I am an envoy of the King in Yellow.

Michiru grabbed U-ri’s sleeve from behind.
I wonder if she heard it too?
Atop U-ri’s shoulder, Aju’s whiskers trembled, tickling her cheek. Sky still stood behind her, arms spread wide.

You are the
allcaste
?

U-ri glared back at the darkness.

Don’t make me laugh,
the voice continued.
Why must it always be children who know not even the true value of the mark upon their heads who seek to bring balance to the Circle?

The darkness was quivering.
It’s laughing at me.
It began to undulate faster now. Something circular was spinning in the very center of its mass. Like a giant beach ball—no, larger than that. U-ri’s eyes were glued to the thing.

“Lady U-ri,” Sky said, “do not let it draw you in.”

U-ri took a quick breath and vigorously shook her head. She peered sidelong at Sky to protect herself. The writhing darkness was not reflected in his deep purple eyes.

“If you are an envoy, you have come on some errand,” Sky called out. “You are indeed before the
allcaste
, creature of the King in Yellow. Why have you come? Why has your king sent you?”

The spinning in the center of the darkness stopped.

“Or has the king tired of its freedom already and wishes to return to the Hall of All Books?”

Then the thing roared at them with a sound like the rumbling of thunder, and the circular shape in its center opened.
It’s an eye!
It was a giant eyeball. Where it should have been white, it glowed a dull gold, and the pupil was narrow and pointed like a cat’s. It glared at Sky.

You are nothing but a crude figure, shaped of the dust of this Circle, yet you dare call upon my master?

A huge vibration issued forth from the giant eyeball. The very air shook. A wave of force hit the party, and U-ri staggered. Behind her, Michiru was thrown back through the air. She collided with the library door and crumpled to the floor.

Then the darkness disappeared—swallowed by the golden eyeball that now hung suspended in the air. In the space of a breath, the eyeball receded to the back of the corridor, from where it released another wave of energy. U-ri lowered her head and braced herself, dropping to one knee as the wave hit. Behind her, Sky still stood with his arms open wide.

“Lady U-ri! You must escape into the library and take the Lady Michiru with you!”

U-ri looked down the hallway to see something else emerging from the eye—a swarm of tentacles. The tips of the tentacles gleamed like jet-black spears as they cut through the air straight toward Sky.

“Look out!” U-ri threw herself at Sky a moment too late. The tentacles whipped around him, and in an instant lifted him off the ground. Sky struggled in their grip, his shaven head only inches below the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

The tentacles retracted at the same time that the golden eyeball came barreling down the hallway toward U-ri. The tentacles constricted then loosened, wrapping around him, then unraveling. The eyeball came so close to him she thought they might touch.

Then U-ri noticed that the golden eyeball was coated in some milky white mucus-like substance that came dripping down to splatter on the floor next to U-ri’s hand where she lay. There was a sizzling sound, and the floor melted beneath the drops, leaving holes in the tiles. U-ri’s eyes went wide.
Acid!

She jerked back her hand and shot to her feet. Another drop of the mucus fell, right where her head had been only seconds before.

Above her, the tentacles had completely wrapped around Sky. By now she could only see his head and the tips of his fingers.

Ahh…
came a startled sound from the eyeball.
You are a very interesting little dust puppet, aren’t you?

Groaning with pain, Sky struggled to turn away from the eyeball’s gaze. The tentacles lifted him up and lowered him down, bringing his face closer to the eyeball. It blinked, causing a thick flow of mucus to drip onto the tops of the tentacles. The eyeball was examining Sky, with all the interest of a boy looking at a freshly captured bug through a magnifying glass.
You are the gate?
it shouted, its voice high with excitement.

Aju chirped, jumping from the top of U-ri’s head. He managed to reach one of the tentacles with his forepaws and began to climb up it at an incredible speed, biting with sharp teeth as he went. “Let go of him, you big eyeball freak! You don’t even have proper arms and legs!” he shouted.

Though completely dwarfed by the size of the eyeball, Aju made good progress at first. He reached the spot where Sky’s head emerged from the writhing mass, but then another tentacle whipped around from behind the eyeball and casually batted the mouse off into the air. Aju fell like a stone.

“Aju! Sky!”

U-ri didn’t even have time to stand. She felt like her heart would beat right out of her chest. Her mind was a blank.
What do I do? What can I do? How can I even begin to fight this thing?
She could only gasp for breath.

What did the other
allcastes
do?

Suddenly, U-ri heard a whistling noise in her ears.
Another tentacle! Where’s this one coming from?

She tensed, ready to move, when something small flew in through one of the windows. Moving faster than her eye could follow, it severed several of the tentacles. The eyeball howled with rage, flattening out sideways as though it was squinting against the pain.

The next attack came directly after the first. This time, U-ri saw it happen. It flew in an arc through the window.
A boomerang!
The steel boomerang flew clear around the golden eyeball, slicing off the tentacles it happened upon along its orbit. The ones clutching Sky loosened. The devout kicked hard at the eyeball, then plummeted headfirst toward the ground.

Wh-who’s there?
the eyeball sputtered in her mind. It drifted up toward the ceiling, shedding tentacle after tentacle. The severed ends writhed on the floor, steaming in pools of their own acidic blood.

U-ri saw a black-gloved hand grip the window frame. Then the owner of the hand swooped in, like a giant raven alighting in the hallway.

U-ri lunged toward the unconscious Sky, picked him up in her arms, and turned to face the raven. She found herself looking up at him—he was a man in fact, not a bird, but his countenance was bizarre. She had thought him old for a moment on account of his long white hair—so long it reached the middle of his back, bound in a long braid. It was as though a bucket of ash had been poured on his head. The jet-black robes that swirled around him were also covered with ash—
no, dust.
A thick collar protected his neck, and there were additional pads on his shoulders. His cloak, ripped and torn in places, was long enough to sweep along the floor.

The man walked forward, taking long strides, his thick-soled boots making a metallic clang. He walked forward and casually stomped on the still-writhing tentacles in front of U-ri before kicking them off to the side. The floor sagged ominously around the puddles of acid left by the eyeball.

His black-gloved hands moved quickly, replacing the steel boomerang that came arcing back to him inside the fold of his cloak. When his hands next emerged, they held blades—a pair of swords. Their hilts were wrought silver, and the blades themselves shone with a translucent light, like glass. They were each longer than U-ri’s forearm.

The man held the swords up to either side of his face and let them fall to the side, lowering his shoulders. He turned to the giant eyeball.

“Not someone so important that I feel the need to announce myself,” he said in a calm, deep voice. It was different than any grown-up’s voice U-ri had heard before. “In that respect we are the same, underling,” he addressed the eyeball, a teasing tone in his voice.

The golden eyeball howled with rage. The sound was like the grinding of gears in some half-broken machine—a sound to curdle souls.
You dare mock an envoy of the king!

Then U-ri saw a line form across the center of the eye. She thought for a moment that the eye was rotating in midair, but then the line opened and spread, creating a huge gash of a mouth, one bearing countless sharp fangs.

U-ri screamed. The nightmarish mouth bore down on her. But the man leapt into action, his every move as graceful as a dancer’s, dual blades slashing through the air. The first cut set the eyeball spinning, and the second slashed into its backside, sending it howling off a wall and back up to the ceiling.

U-ri looked up. She felt tiny fragments of something dusting her forehead and cheeks.
The fangs. The severed fangs are raining down on me.

The giant mouth closed once and the whole thing trembled—then it began to rain fangs like countless arrows. The man dodged the blast, his cape swirling behind him. His feet shifted beneath him and he deftly changed direction, taking another stab at the envoy. The giant mouth dodged to one side at the last minute, but the inertia sent it spinning down the hallway, its maw hanging half open. The man chased it, but it had been a ruse—the eyeball lurched around, and a bright red tongue emerged from between the fangs and whipped itself around the man’s right wrist. Without a moment’s hesitation, the man slashed it in half with the sword in his left hand. Black blood sprayed out of the wound, making the floor slick beneath it.

With a murky gurgling scream—
like a hundred drunks voiding the contents of their stomachs at once
—the massive sphere of fangs and flesh began to spin rapidly. It shot up, ricocheting off the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the windows. Everything smelled of the creature’s blood. The stench was unbearable.
Make that a thousand drunks.
The envoy whirled and slammed into the walls, spraying fluids and gradually growing smaller and smaller.

Youuuurrrgh!

The great mouth snapped shut, and the creature was an eyeball once again. It stopped in a corner of the ceiling and blinked. The white of the eye was now blood red.

The man in the cape bounded lightly over to U-ri. With his teeth, he pulled the glove off his right hand and swung it around toward U-ri. Before she knew it, his hand was on her forehead. He released her almost immediately, then turned back to the bright red eyeball, his hand up—the same hand that had touched U-ri’s face—raised.

A single band of light erupted from the man’s hand, striking the giant eyeball dead center. The eyeball screamed, then dropped down to the floor like a fly hit by a blast of insecticide. It morphed back into a nasty lump of toothy flesh on the way down, shooting out its fangs in a last desperate attempt. U-ri hardly saw the man move at all. His swords were a blur, and his cape swished, knocking every last fang out of the air. In one smooth motion he ran over to the fallen eyeball, knelt, and thrust his swords into it. This time, the envoy didn’t even scream. There was just a faint hissing sound, like the air escaping a punctured tire.

And then it was quiet.

The giant eyeball creature slowly collapsed—like a time-lapse movie of a sand castle eroding in the rain. Soon there was nothing but black dust on the floor where it had been; then there was nothing, leaving the man kneeling there with his swords in the shape of a V, stabbing the empty hallway.

The man withdrew his swords and stood. He turned, his black cloak billowing. U-ri was sitting where she had fallen on the floor, hugging the still-unconscious Sky. Behind them, Michiru lay flat by the library doors.

The man turned to look down at U-ri. Their eyes met, and U-ri unconsciously flinched.

The man looked much younger from the front. He was in his mid-thirties, his early forties at most. He had a long face with a dramatically pointed nose and chin, as if his features were carved from wood.

His brows were bushy over his eyes, black hair streaked with white. His eyes were black, and his lids were half closed, almost like he was sleepy. One of his ears had been pierced, and a silver chain hung from it down to his jaw.

Everything beneath his cloak was black too. His shirt with a raised collar was black. And on top of that he wore something like a vest made out of several overlapping layers of black leather. He wore a thick belt wrapped twice around his waist and loose-fitting black pants beneath that with ragged holes in them where something had burned through. U-ri noticed that his boots had straps at the top that wrapped tightly around his legs, like the sandals she had seen in history books.

He was still holding his swords, but when U-ri’s eyes went to them he seemed to notice, and spinning them around once, he sheathed them in two scabbards at his belt.

U-ri took a deep breath. Something was creeping up her back. She jumped, picturing a tentacle snaking out of the floor. It was Aju.

“You okay, U-ri?” Aju looked slightly flattened, like he had been thrown down one too many times, but otherwise he was none the worse for wear. She nodded, and he breathed a sigh of relief—stopping short when he noticed the man in black. “Uh, who’s that?”

The man smiled with half of his mouth. His skin was brown and had the look of tanned leather. “I am afraid I have not yet introduced myself.”