The Gate of Sorrows (75 page)

The wavering light from the torches reflected off the devout’s pate as he bowed. “Yes. The one you speak of is confined in the Hall of All Books for that great sin.”

“I ask you to release him.” Galla’s voice became suddenly menacing. “We are darkness. To continue as darkness, a guardian of the Tower may choose not to merge with emptiness. That is the law of the Circle.”

“True,” the devout answered. “But there is a price. Have you a scapegoat for the sin of Auzo’s story?”

“To be sure. He is here.”

Here.
Kotaro froze. He couldn’t grasp what he’d heard.
Here?

Countless eyes turned toward him—Kotaro Mishima, a helpless skinny kid, marooned in a world that was real but did not exist.

The devout nodded. “Very well. We accept the scapegoat.”

Several of his fellows stepped toward Kotaro. As they approached, their thin arms were already reaching for him.

“Hey, hold on a sec,” Kotaro said nervously. “What’s going on, Galla? What’s this about a scapegoat?”

She studied the flickering lights of the castle. Her face was a mask. Her hair flowed in the wind.

The nameless devout grasped his arms and shoulders and propelled him forward through the Gate of Sorrows.

“Knock it off! What the hell is this?”

They had the same face, the same bodies and movements, the same voices.

“You are the inculpated.”

“Inculpated for the sin of living a story.”

“Time will pass for you no longer.”

“You shall remain here for eternity.”

“Come, sinner.”

“You shall turn the Great Wheels of Inculpation.”

“Stop! Let me go!” He struck out wildly, trying to break free. He was outnumbered and helpless. The devout were strong, yet trying to get a grip on them was like grasping at shadows. His flailing fists met only air. His kicks connected with nothing. The devout were emptiness personified. Behind that emptiness was a single powerful will.

“Galla, help me!”

He threw himself to the ground. His captors started dragging him along faceup by the nape of his neck and his arms and T-shirt. His heels beat the ground impotently. He clawed at the dry grass. It was useless. They dragged him faster and faster past the shadow of the gate cast by the torches.

This was the fate that had awaited him from the beginning.

“Galla, why are you doing this?” He could only cry out in desperation. The distance between them kept opening. She was a dark silhouette, blacker than the sky.

“I’m not a scapegoat! We never made a deal like this!” His vision was blurred with tears. Her answer seemed to come across a gulf of emptiness.

“I am sorry.”

She’d said that at their first meeting. Then too, her tone was clipped and monotonic, because her apology was devoid of meaning.

“I told you you would regret it. You knew this would happen. This was the only thing that
could
happen. You sought to live a story instead of weaving your own life, Kotaro Mishima. You pursued an obsession, you wanted to hunt evil. The final chapter of stories like yours is always here, in the Nameless Land, where you and all those like you must finally go.

“I am sorry. I chose you in the beginning. But this? This you chose yourself.”

You will regret this.
She had warned him again and again. The guardian of the emptiness where words were born was the darkness of the void. The void has no need for meaning. It seeks no meaning, because the void has no heart.

He finally understood, though it was far too late. Shigenori was right. Galla was a concept. Human beings can’t resist formless things. Instead, their concepts color them and finally consume them.

We were bewitched by a demon.

Galla the warrior was a concept that transformed people into something inhuman.

Kotaro kept kicking and punching futilely as they dragged him through the soft grass. His voice became a single wordless scream of rage and terror.

I wanted to do the right thing. I couldn’t let evil go unpunished. I couldn’t let murderers get away with it, that’s all it was!

He was ready to become a monster, to spend the rest of eternity in darkness. The satisfaction of harvesting some measure of justice with his own hands would be enough, even if it meant gazing eternally at his hard-won justice, and the small measure of happiness he’d managed to salvage, as though it were a distant star.

But he didn’t want to merge with emptiness, merge with the void and lose all emotion and feeling.
That
was a deal he never signed up for.

He’d been tricked. Conned. He, Kotaro Mishima, had been Galla’s target from the beginning. She’d needed a scapegoat, one of the inculpated to barter for her child. And Kotaro had blundered into her flame like a summer moth.

A puny, fluttering insect that wouldn’t even notice if someone crushed it.

I am sorry.
Meaningless, empty words.

You will regret this.
Galla’s prophecy had baffled him, drawn him on.

Bait. Everything had been bait, and he’d pursued it, gobbled it up. What a fool he’d been. A hopeless halfwit.

“Liar!”

Galla was out of sight. He pleaded with his captors. “Wait—this is all a mistake—she lied to me!”

Yes, she’d deceived him, and he had
wanted
her to deceive him. He’d gotten drunk on the ecstasy of avenging evil, debauching himself with vengeance. He’d had chance after chance to run, and he turned away every time. People had warned him, and he’d ignored them all.

He was in love with the story he’d woven for himself, a story that became an obsession, about a young man with the power to weigh people on the scales of his personal vision of right and wrong. He’d believed with all his heart that living that story was the only thing that gave his life meaning and purpose—

No. I was tricked into believing it.

“You fucking liar! You’re not a warrior! You’re just a fucking fiend!” He wept and screamed and cursed Galla. He didn’t even know if she could hear him. The nameless devout dragged him relentlessly on. The grass caressed his back. The stars twinkled in the sky above. The torches danced and flamed.

His captors began singing in unison, their voices low and subdued. The words ran together like an invocation in a dark, unfathomable language. Kotaro wished he could cover his ears. The singing had an ominous rhythm.

“Stop! Shut up! Let me go! Come on, leave me alone!” He cried and screamed, but no one heard him. No one came to help him.

He had arrived at the center of the Circle, and its furthest reach.

If words must be born naked of meaning …

If they must be born pure and undefiled …

Why can’t people live without them? Why do they keep creating them?

The Tower of Inception. The birthplace of the souls of words was beauty beyond description, a world of pure silence, yet it betrayed the very meaning of the existence of words.

A thing that seals darkness into its own shadow and tries to be free from defilement is by that very act filled with deceit. Words can never be pure and undefiled. They can never be born free of meaning.

That was the biggest lie in the Circle. It was also just another story.

Galla the Warrior waited beside the Gate of Sorrows. Its shadow overlapped her own on the ground—a shadow inmate in a fortress of shadow, a prisoner waiting for the moment of liberation.

The night wind swept over the sea of grass. The lights in the Hall of All Books shone brightly.

Galla pondered the shadows and waited.
A warrior must be where he belongs.

In the region where words were born, words poured from the bell, bathed in light. For each word it bore, the bell sealed more darkness into the world beneath it.

We guard that darkness so that it may not encroach on the Circle. Be darkness. Embrace it, so that it cannot cause harm.

We shoulder the burden of darkness. As long as we are, the glory of the Circle will abide, even if that too is only a story.

Galla felt a word.

It was
Mother.

She raised her eyes.

“My child, my son. Auzo the Warrior. Oh, how ghostly you are! Hardly more than a trembling shadow in the night, less substantial and solid than my own.”

She released her human form. As a last gesture to the young man who would serve her son as scapegoat, she cast aside the appearance that had deceived him. She returned to her true form.

“Auzo, remember. This is what you truly are.”

Mother.

It was not the voice of Auzo. It was only a word, an echo of his will. There is no time in the Nameless Land, yet those who are confined there quickly lose their real form.

“Auzo, you are free. You shall return to the Tower. You must fulfill your mission. From the inception of the Circle until its extinction, you must stand in darkness.”

I cannot.

The two winged shadows faced each other beneath the gate. Of old, people knew them as demons.

Mother, I cannot. You practiced deceit to lure a child to the Nameless Land. That was an error. He cannot take my place. He is too pure, too weak. I shall remain here.

“Auzo, why?”

The dim presence wavered.

I saw the light that fills the Circle, if only for a moment. I glimpsed the world of light, and by so doing, Mother, I gained something you shall never have: a heart. To atone for my sin, I will remain here in emptiness.

Galla’s eyes narrowed, but she was not perturbed. She felt no sadness. She was not surprised.

She had no heart. She only was. She was a mother and Auzo was her child because that was how it was, and that was all. The two shadows facing each other were mirror images. Ultimately they were the same reality.

I will become a nameless devout. I will bear the burden of my sin. The sin of seeking the world beyond, if only for a moment.

Mother, I must leave you now.

The presence receded toward the Hall of All Books.

Galla did not follow. She stood by the gate, a prisoner in its barred shadow. Darkness embodied as a demon, imprisoned in shadow.

She understood now. Auzo would not return.

She raised her eyes to the vault of the heavens above the Nameless Land.

The wind rose again, blowing from the Hall of All Books. Something light rolled along the ground and stopped against the demon’s clawed foot.

It was a scythe handle. No blade, no Skull of Origin, just a simple length of wood. She reached for it and stopped. She would not need it anymore.

The handle burst into flame at both ends and was quickly consumed. The ashes blew away in the wind and disappeared.

The guardian was without her weapons. Her mission had vanished. She turned her back on the fortress and looked in the direction she had come. As though it had been waiting for this moment, the gate began to close behind her. The earth trembled.

The shadows cast by the pikes fell in stripes across the demon’s face, flowing over it as the gate closed.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Galla faced the heavens and spread her arms wide. She spread her wings and flapped them powerfully—once, twice. The shadow of the Gate of Sorrows covered her completely.

My child, Auzo, will not return. There is no hope. There is no craving.

I must pay the price for opening the gate.

The black demon cried out and kicked off from the ground. It rose into the sky over the Nameless Land.

An endless abyss.

Kotaro cried himself hoarse, fought and struggled until he almost blacked out from rage. But he remembered everything: being dragged for what seemed an eternity before the surface beneath him became something like cobblestones and his captors stopped their incessant singing.

Dragged faceup, all he could see was the flames of the torches. They had reached the fortress. Candles spaced along the walls cast their flickering light over shelf upon endless shelf of books. They went on forever, and between each book he saw a tiny gap, a sliver of darkness.