Thousand Shrine Warrior (28 page)

“I have faced him once,” said Tomoe, “and the result was unpleasant. I think the best that I can do is to leave Kanno province swiftly, though the passes will be difficult after the blizzard. Against my will, I am Kuro's weapon. Without me, a link in his scheme will be broken.”

“That would only make his vengeance linger,” said Heinosuke. “He was patient for a hundred years. He can be so now.”

“Yet, if I stay, I will be the one to kill those others, whose names you have compiled. I have no desire to do so. I've meddled over-much already. Pardon my saying it is your responsibility. If love between demons is a noble thing, then the love between you and Lady Echiko is twice as dear. You hoped that I could provide salvation. But I am taking a lesson from the Honorable Mister Paddy-Bird, who is reserved in matters of action. I refuse.”

Heinosuke sadly lowered his head and closed his one good eye.

The nun said, “If Kuro were a common fiend, I would strive against him. But I cannot deny that he heralds from my family's line. Though he is a vengeful spirit, yet must I consider him my ancestor. Our ancestors are our gods. Our gods control our destinies. I can be of no help to you.”

It was two more days before she felt sufficiently recovered to travel. The minor wound high on her arm was virtually healed; it itched a little. Her belly's injury did not seem apt to tear open. She set forth from Heinosuke's quiet retreat.

Early in the afternoon, she tramped the paths of White Beast Shrine, sensing something sorrowful, though there was no outward sign of violence or desecration. The stag was nowhere in evidence; there were no fresh tracks and no food placed in his stall. There was a hammering sound from the rear of the shrine-house; someone was boarding up the shutters. The door had been left open. The nun thought she saw spectral activity within; but closer investigation caused the vision to resolve differently. The albino woman—who a few days earlier had introduced herself as Priest Bundori's friend—was cleaning and storing everything, as though the priest's residence might not be used for a long time.

At the doorway, the nun inquired worriedly, “Is Bundori-sama well?”

The pale woman with tracings of blue veins at neck and throat turned her face toward the nun, then looked away without replying. The nun tried not to feel perturbed by the beautiful but strange woman's attitude of disapproval; but the woman's rudeness smarted.

The nun said, “There was an argument at the rope bridge yesterday or the day before. The peasants are talking about it. The guard refused passage to a group of wealthy-appearing travelers, who could not identify themselves sufficiently. There were children among them. As everyone was albino, like yourself, I may not be wrong in thinking they are your family, and White Beast Shrine has a special importance to your kind. There was a strong man among them; a farmer heard him say his name was Omo. He grappled with the guard and threw him in the gorge. You chastised me a few nights ago for killing. But your family is not above reproach.”

The woman, affecting the petulant attitude of a spoiled courtesan, spoke hotly. “Kill as many as it pleases you to kill. My only wish was for Priest Bundori's happiness. He has gone away to be a hermit instead. He left some things for you over there.”

The nun reclaimed her hat. She saw that her alms-bag had been repaired. “I meant to return these borrowed geta,” she said, “which in any case aren't quite sufficient for a journey through snow-choked passes.”

“You might as well keep them,” said the white woman, keeping to her work.

“I think so,” said the nun. “He has made me these straw boots, too; and prepared a container of the remedy for my hands. If he has left at random, I suppose it will be difficult to thank him.”

“Don't concern yourself about it.”

The nun tied the geta clogs together and attached them to her obi belt, then tried the straw boots on, which were the perfect size. The white woman's mate entered, as white and youthful and beautiful as she. He left slats propped against the outside wall, apparently eager to board up the entrance. “Akuni, it is about time we started for our rendezvous with the others. You've cleaned this place enough.” Then he turned his attention to the nun, and addressed her with less admonishment than was in Akuni's tone. “A girl came from the castle in search of you on three different days. I don't know what she wants. Her name is Mirume if you want to find her. I think she is a servant to Princess Echiko.”

The nun slipped the strap of her alms-bag around her neck, letting it hang at her front. She tied her amigasa's chin-strap, shadowing her face in the deep hat. She said, “If you don't mind my asking, are you human beings or some kind of spirits? I met a young albino man, less gorgeous than yourselves, who claimed actually to be a serpent. Are you snakes as well? I don't have a reason for asking. If it is too personal, it's unnecessary to reply.”

“We are not serpents,” the young man said, and immediately changed the subject rather than explain further. “Mirume was not the only one to seek you here. There were three others who came, astride thin black horses. They were well-armed and had traveled a long way. Akuni, who is clever, managed to mislead them without actually lying. If they believed her, then they've gone their way. I think they meant you mischief.”

“I wonder who they were,” said the nun.

Akuni, sealing a packed chest and shoving it into a closet, said to the nun, “They were women samurai, two of them younger than yourself, one older, taller, leaner, and severe. They were the wives of Yoshimora Wada, your foe of many years. As they asked about Tomoe Gozen, I said no one uses that name in Kanno.”

The nun stepped onto the shrine-house stoop. She gazed back at the albino couple, seeing them through the loosely woven front of her hat. She said, “Though you don't seem to like me very much, yet I feel indebted. Thank you for your help and consideration. Whether you are human beings or devils, I don't mind. Perhaps after all there is not much difference.”

With the top and bottom portions of the stone lantern strapped to her back, Tomoe Gozen started off toward the gorge, a walk that wearied her enough that she wondered if she were ready for a journey after all. The stone was heavy for someone who had spent several days convalescing.

There was an additional weight upon her. She had been blunt with Heinosuke, crushing his hope that she would strive where he had failed. There was also Echiko's handmaiden, seeking her out, no doubt, to beg intervention or succor. Lord Ikida Sato himself had managed to peer from the haze of his snared intellect and ask, however circumspectly, for a wandering nun's aid. Could she turn from so many and live her life without regret? But it was as she said to Heinosuke: No Naiponese could turn against her own ancestors. Were she bound, as in her past, by samurai mores, she might well be made to assist the vengeful spirit with conscious vigor; for duty lay with one's master, one's clan, and one's gods.

Near sunset, having rested often along the way, she arrived at the Temple of the Gorge, passing around it to the cemetery of derelict monuments, thence to the separate area of recent interments.

Everywhere among these graves, the snow was tracked and dirtied by horses and digging. A number of new graves had been dug, some not as yet receiving tenants. Even discounting the number of slain whose bodies would not resurface until spring thaw, there were yet a lot of corpses to be gathered and buried in this place. Ittosai Kumasaku had been kept busy at his hated task and had not quite caught up. The bikuni was glad not to have made better time, for she was not anxious to see doleful Ittosai, and it looked as though she had missed him by only a little while.

The western mountains sported violet halos and the first stars winked through the cedars which surrounded the insufficient graves. In the fast-dimming light, the bikuni found the one inconsequent grave among many, marked by a slat and an unsteady hand that had scribed the name of Chojiro. The bikuni supposed the unmarked graves to left and right to be the other two men she had killed on that first unfortunate night in Kanno. The majority of the newest graves were her victims as well; yet her sympathy focused on these three men, and especially upon Chojiro, who had degraded himself in her presence without obtaining mercy.

Every other individual who stood before her blade had pursued a grim fate without her having encouraged them to do so. But Chojiro had wished to run away, and she refused a second opportunity.

She set the lantern's hefty base upon Chojiro's grave. It was not perfectly shaped. Some might say it needed more shaping. But she had gotten to the point of fearing it would get worse instead of better, had she continued to chip at it. The lantern had the kind of rustic grace of a student potter's first works, whose later pots would outshine the first technically, but never equal it in naive invention, freshness, and imagination. Not that she fooled herself that it was special. She did not expect the ghosts of these men to suddenly repose joyously because of her small labor. Nevertheless, she addressed Chojiro and the others with apologetic testimonies and begged that they accept her meager offering as a fraction of recompense.

She let the sorrow of life wash over her. For wasn't it a poetic thing in which to be immersed? She sighed heavily, and from her kneeling posture, she leaned forward to place the lantern's top upon the base.

As she began to draw away her arm, a pudgy, gangrenous hand broke the grave's surface, reaching out of dirt and snow to grab the bikuni's wrist.

For a moment she merely stared at the worm-infested hand and the vile, swollen fingers that gripped her. She pulled a bit, enough to know the hand, now moveless, was stronger in death than it had been in life. Softly, the bikuni said, “Chojiro. Your aunty said you were a good boy, despite yourself. Don't upset her spirit by blaming others for your fate.”

There was no immediate response. The bikuni remained quiet and patient. At length the hand relaxed its clammy grasp. Chojiro's arm drew back into the grave. The bikuni, composed and relieved, brought forth her shakuhachi and began to play. She sat amidst those wretched, insufficient burial mounds and played a long while. The sonorous, tranquil strains rose above the cedars and were absorbed into the earth, speaking equally to Paradise and Hell. She was a noble presence in that place, the very boon for the mishandled dead, whose spirits ached with confusion and isolation.

When she was done, she went to the Temple of the Gorge, intending to pass the night spread out before the gaze of the blasted Buddha. She would begin her journey at dawn. Her coming to Kanno had raised a storm of trouble, although it did not seem to her that she had been the trouble's exact cause. However that might be, she could by no means stand against her ancestors by battling some spirit of her clan. For this reason she intended to flee Kanno, though it did her conscience ill.

The night did not pass easily, due to her uncertainties. The pride of a chivalrous streak grappled with better sense and wisdom. She awoke in the cold of the early hours, thinking she had heard a voice. She opened her eyes and turned her head; she saw the dark visage of the temple's damaged Buddha, his eyes shut against the nightmares of the world. What she had heard was the voice of a peasant lad proclaiming cruelly, “My thousand-year-love has shortened!” followed by the weeping of a girl.

It must have been a dream; for the only sound on waking was the drone of the gorge, mute and far-seeming.

She rolled forward to her feet, having no idea of the time, but feeling no longer wearied and trusting it was close to dawn. She pulled on straw boots, took up swords and hat, and went out into the cemetery. Her eyes were well-adjusted to the night. Still, shadows played tricks, and the monuments appeared to stretch across the land forever. They swept upward without reaching an horizon. The tombstones became smaller in the distance, until they turned to stars. The whole of the world and the universe was a graveyard!

She skirted the outer wall of the temple and passed through gardens gone wild, her boots breaking the crust of a snowy path that had not been used long and long. The route took her to the edge of the gorge, in which she could see naught but formless shadow.

The disturbing dream had brought her to this spot. It returned to her in snatches and replayed through her mind. An angered, vicious Shinji exclaimed, “Love you? Ha! I consider you barely human! What a sad fate to be bound thus! To roam this place forever part of you!”

“How would I be such a monster,” replied the sweeter yet ironic voice of Otane, “except that you cling with so much need? What a hypocrite you must be to recant the dulcet promise, to condemn me for being only what you've made me.”

“I've made you? Ha! Ho! How is it so? It is I who would be an ordinary soul but for your undesired presence! Who wanted such an amalgamation? Did I ask for it? Daughter of a samurai! Always wants her way!”

“Vile peasant!” Otane scolded. “Devoid of gratitude! I am faithful despite this unhappiness! What is my reward? One would think you loved me not!”

“Love you! I consider you barely human! What a sad fate to …”

The bikuni shivered at the remembrance of the nightmare, wondering what possessed her sleeping mind to such invention. She stood perfectly still, trying to free herself of the sick feelings the dream had planted in stomach and mind. She watched the shadowy mists ebb and flow in the black depths of the gorge. A fragment of shadow broke loose and lapped upward along the face of the cliff. The fragment floated and elongated and rose through air.

As it came nearer, the shape began to shine with choleric pallor. The bikuni stepped back, dropped the hat she had been holding in her right hand, thinking her Sword of Okio might be called upon to ward away the two-headed specter rising fast before her eyes!

The faces of the ghost were contorted and began to shriek from bloody mouths. The monstrously compounded fiend drifted over the gorge, a menacing duo joined at the waist, its four arms swinging wildly, as though hoping to scratch the bikuni. But it could not pass onto land. It must remain over or within the gorge.