“This is how we find him. Now, sit!” His voice was kind, almost amused, but brooked no resistance.
Django sat.
The monk’s head bobbed lower as he slipped into a drowse, staff cradled against his chest.
Shadows lengthened with excruciating slowness. Django took the opportunity to revisit his meditation. He still needed to fully replenish his pools. How many hours or days he meditated, with his Crown opened wide to receive the essence of the cosmos, he did not know.
His pools thrummed with energy.
The strange monk napped.
Django was roused from his meditation by the sound of footsteps emerging from the forest. A portly old man, perhaps five feet tall, tottered barefoot out of the trees, humming a tuneless melody. He moved with a bow-legged gait that, coupled with his apple-shaped belly, made him resemble a naked, featherless hatchling. His plain brown robe was too short, his snowy beard too long, his hair nonexistent on a liver-spotted pate. The sight of the onigiri next to the statue made his eyes sparkle with pleasure and his rosy cheeks flush. He ignored the two people sitting near the shrine, made a beeline for the rice ball, and picked it up.
The old man took a slow, sensual bite and sighed with pleasure. Only then did he seem to notice Django and the monk. “Oh, hello.”
“Hello, sir,” Django said. “We left that rice ball as an offering.”
“Oh, I can see that, thank you,” the old man said. “It’s very nice.”
“You are eating our offering.”
The old man took another bite. “I know, thank you!”
Django suppressed his annoyance.
Popping the last morsel into his mouth, the old man sat down across from Django and the strange monk, then raised a knee to release a raucous fart.
The monk snapped awake. “Ah, Hage! You’re here.”
Django held his nose. “This old gasbag is who we’ve been waiting for?”
The strange monk said, “I apologize. He is a rude boy.”
“I’ve known my share of those,” the old man said with a sniff.
Django frowned. “How is he going to help me kill a tsuchigumo?”
“Who said anything about me killing an earth spider?” the old man asked.
“Forgive his rudeness. My young friend is somewhat ahead of things,” the strange monk said, speaking in old, honorific language. “Hage, may I introduce Kenji Wong. Mr. Wong, this is the honorable Hage.”
Hage and Django bowed to each other.
Then Hage said, “Well, you brought me a nice rice ball, so obviously you want something. What is it?”
Django pointed to the amorphous statue. “That’s you?”
Hage shrugged. “Not a terribly good likeness.”
“Not even in the same ballpark,” Django said. “Who are you?”
“I am Hage,” the old man said, as if that were enough.
“And I’m Django. So what?”
Hage’s eyes narrowed and he peered closely at Django. “Not very respectful to your elders, are you?”
“A lifelong personality flaw. Maybe I should ask, what are you?”
“Old enough to know better than to waste my time with an impetuous puppy.” He made to stand in a huff, but the monk gestured for him to sit.
The monk said, “You must forgive my young friend. He’s new to Jianghu and doesn’t know who we are, or much of anything, really. But he does come with two things that might interest you.”
Hage rested an elbow on a bony knee. “I’m listening.”
Django said, “I’m a warlock. I live in Tokyo—”
“Where?”
“Tokyo.”
“Sorry, don’t know that place.”
“It’s the capital of Japan.”
Hage’s eyes narrowed. “There have been many capitals. Kyoto, Kamakura, Edo—”
“Edo!” Django said. “It’s what Edo is called now.”
“Very well, go on.”
Django told him about the Yamabushi Scroll, the Black Lotus Clan, and Yuka.
“And who do you work for?” Hage asked.
“The Gotairō.”
Hage’s face was steadfastly neutral. “The Council of Five Elders. They’re still around, eh?”
Django nodded. “And I’m on a mission to find the Yamabushi Scroll. If I find it, I might be able to save my friend’s life. Do you know where it is?”
“Sure, I know where it is.”
Django's heart leaped. “Really?”
“But I'm not going to tell you.”
Django’s fists clenched in his lap.
Hage said, “You're not the only one looking for it, you know.”
“Yeah, so is the Black Lotus Clan.”
“No, not just them. There’s a necromancer who’s also looking for it. He’s got himself a grand fortress on an island in the middle of a lake with an army of undead at his command. He’s been looking for it ever since I hid it.”
“You hid it?” Django asked.
“I’d just lived through a couple of centuries of constant bloodbath. Samurai and daimyō cutting each other to pieces, blowing each other to bits. Famine. Pestilence. Farmlands laid waste. No farmers left to grow crops.” Hage spat. “And for what? The warlords were worse than the Mongol invaders, and that’s a high bar to leap. One of the ‘great daimyō’ had a powerful shugenja in his employ. This wizard had possession of the Scroll and was flinging mahō right, left, and center. He wiped out more than a thousand spearmen single-handedly before a lone sharpshooter took him out with an arquebus.” Hage breathed on his nails and polished them against his robe with a self-satisfied smirk.
“You’re saying it was you?” Django asked.
“I’ve always been a good shot. Just ask the Mongols.” Hage joggled his bushy white eyebrows.
Django sighed, more confused than ever.
Hage went on. “So I grabbed that scroll off the battlefield and cut off that wizard’s head for good measure. Then I hid the thing in a burrow for about a century. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I wasn’t about to turn it over to any of those warlords. But then I started getting this itch.” He pursed his lips, considering. “It’s difficult to explain in words. But I had the powerful urge to hide it more thoroughly, or else something terrible would happen.”
“A premonition,” Django said.
“Or perhaps the pressure of destiny. I think now that the Scroll had itself Awakened with its own kami. Powerful objects can develop a will of their own, even shape destiny. I've seen it. There was a sword once that fed upon blood and death, and it gave the wielder the power to shape the destiny of the world. Or so he thought. What it was truly doing was shaping fate to bring it more blood to feed upon. It didn't go well for that warrior.
“So I hid the Scroll somewhere else,” Hage went on. “Presumably, it’s still there.”
“In the mortal world?” Django asked.
Hage nodded. “By that time, I had seen so much death and suffering that I was weary of the mortal world. All my friends and family were dead. So, I decided it was time to retire to Jianghu.”
That was when all three of them jumped and swore at the appearance of a huge white tiger at Django’s shoulder. “What have I missed?” Cat asked.
After all the initial scrambling and expostulations of surprise surrendered to introductions and explanations, the monk said, “So this is your infamous cat, eh?”
Cat raised an eyebrow. “His cat? I beg your pardon!”
Hage scrutinized Cat. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Cat bowed. “Not that I recall, tanuki-tono.”
Hage scratched his chin with a gnarled finger.
Lord Tanuki? Django wondered at the use of the honorific suffix, but then it hit him. “Wait, you’re a tanuki?” He opened his Third Eye and saw Hage’s true form—a venerable tanuki, its thick fur shot through with salt-and-pepper gray.
Sometimes translated as raccoon-dogs, tanuki were animals indigenous to Japan, about the size
of a plump raccoon with a similar black bandit-mask. Like foxes, they were notorious, shapeshifting tricksters.
Hage sat on his haunches like the old man he appeared to be, and winked.
The monk said, “Hage is a very old tanuki.”
Rocking on his haunches, Hage breathed, “Going on eight hundred when I jumped into Jianghu.”
The monk said to Django, “Now perhaps you understand why I brought you to him.”
“Frankly, I was hoping you were bringing me to a great warlock or warrior or something,” Django said. “We need firepower to defeat a tsuchigumo. I don’t even have a weapon, except for mahō.”
“I know this creature,” Hage said. “I know its lair. It’s been feeding on the unwary for...well, perhaps centuries. And why must you go to your death so urgently?”
“The monk here tells me it has captured my parents.” Django failed to keep his voice even. In the long walk here, he had often considered whether the monk was leading him to his doom; his pure white aura had offered no clues. But still, he sensed no duplicity.
Hage rubbed his chin again, and Django felt the pressure of his scrutiny like fingers. To the monk, Hage said, “You bring me a stranger—this rude, yapping pup—and ask two enormous favors of me for only one onigiri! And they say tanuki are ballsy.”
The two of them snickered at some joke Django didn’t get.
The monk said, “He’s American. Rudeness is in their blood.”
They laughed again, slapping their knees, including Cat this time, and Django’s ears burned.
“Very well, rude pup,” Hage said. “I don’t know what an American is, but you remind me of another foolish warrior I knew once. Let us see what we might do about your parents.”
Django bowed. It was rude to ask more, but he had to know. “And the Yamabushi Scroll.”
“One deadly task at a time. Besides, I’m not sure any human’s life, not even your friend’s, is worth what that scroll can do if it falls into the wrong hands.”
Chapter Nineteen
HAGE LED THEM ALL UP into the forested mountains, across rocky shoulders, through shadowed pine trees and rustling bamboo groves wrapped in deepening shadows.
He kept giving Cat suspicious glances, to the point where Cat, still in his tiger form, eventually said, “Fear not, I do not eat tanuki.”
“I would choke you on the way down, in any case,” Hage said. “But I’m certain we have met before.”
“Then you have me at a disadvantage, sir,” Cat said.
“Perhaps,” Hage said thoughtfully.
Trudging up and down endless rocky slopes was exhausting, but it gave Django time to consider strategies. “Perhaps I could find my parents with mahō and then sneak in to get them out.”
“The spider will know the moment you touch one of its webs,” Hage said. “It may already know we’re coming. I suspect your parents are trussed up in cocoons, which preserve freshness, you might say. Can you see through the cocoons?”
“I can try.”
“Maybe you’re not as foolhardy as you look,” Hage said. “Most warriors I’ve known would have simply charged in there and gotten their heads bitten off.”
As they walked on, Django said, “Maybe one of you can explain to me how my parents are here, right now. In the mortal world, they were murdered ten years ago.”
The monk said, “As I told you, time works differently here.”
Hage said, “Indeed. Imagine Jianghu as a timeless place. One who comes here from the mortal world is still bound to his original time. When you return to the mortal world, it will be as if only a short time has passed. I have met many human warriors who find their way here and spend many years cultivating their skills before returning to the mortal world to right some terrible wrong. Perhaps your parents have done the same.”
At what stage of their lives had his parents done this? Throughout Django’s childhood, they had never been absent.
Hours and hours they hiked and climbed, the sun slowly driven away by advancing dusk. They drank from the abundant gushing brooks and streams and found a grove of trees full of small, green citrus fruits Django could not identify.
Hage noted Django’s interest. “They are quite delicious.” He smiled and patted his belly.
All that hiking had worked up a ravenous appetite, so Django plucked one about the size of a golf ball and dark green in color, and tore it in half. A sniff, a taste, and a bite, and his stomach roared. He dug in with relish. It was tart and sweet at the same time with a touch of bitterness at the back. And then the mahō gushed into him, and a feeling of warm contentment suffused his body.
Hage chuckled. “They are kokoro-shikwasa.” Heart shikwasa.
Django had heard of the shikwasa, a citrus fruit unique to Okinawa. “Are you saying it’s—”
“Full of Heart essence, yes. In fact, pick several. If we find your parents, those fruits will help them regain their strength.”
Django managed to stuff about a dozen of them in his pockets and ate a couple more himself. He had never tasted anything quite like them.
It was full dusk when Hage paused at the foot of a tall mountain that loomed against the darkening sky. Amid ancient moss and lichen, a switchback path carved into steps traced its way many hundreds of feet up the mountain. “We’re here.” He pointed up the steps, which rose out of sight into the distance.
Django looked for signs of a great spider or its lair, but there was nothing amiss. “Where is the cave?”
Hage pointed to the top of the switchback stairs. “Up there.”
The strange monk sat on a rock with a grunt. “I believe I shall not make this climb. I am weary, and these old bones will slow you down. Besides, I am only an observer, not a warrior.”
“But you know Monkey kung-fu,” Django said. “Monkey Climbs the Tree.”
“I know the monkey,” the monk said with a wink. “I shall remain here to cheer you on in spirit. Perhaps you will even succeed.”
Django didn’t like the way he’d said the last part, but there was no more time to waste. He started up the path. Hage and Cat followed him. It was just wide enough for one person, carved from the rock, and set with meticulously cut paving stones, some of which had been shouldered out of place by a bush or gnarled tree. The hundreds of steps turned Django’s legs into quivering knots. He looked out over the sweep of treetops and felt a twist in his gut. The forested slopes and valleys fell into the shadowy mist of dusk.
The stone stair seemed to lead them farther into antiquity with every step, as if the gods themselves might roost at the summit. In Japanese folklore, mountains were sacred, the dwelling places of gods and yokai. Finally, after what seemed at least an hour of climbing, the stairs emerged onto an overgrown terrace.
Nestled among trees and foliage against the stone shoulder of the mountain summit was not a cave, but the ruins of an ancient manor house. The foundations of perfectly fitted stone rose taller than a man. Only the suggestion of a garden and outbuildings remained with the rest devoured by time and forest. If time worked differently in Jianghu, how long had this manor house stood here?
Gray, decrepit wood peeked from behind patches of crumbling plaster. Perhaps the house once stood two or three stories high but had collapsed into one. Shutters covered the first-story windows. A stone stairway led up to two massive, bronze-bound wooden doors on green, corroded hinges. The doors to a dark interior hung ajar. Near the door, under an eave choked with cobwebs, a heavy bronze gong dangled by one chain, the other chain broken.
“I thought you said there was a cave,” Django said, puffing slightly from exertion.
Hage shrugged. “I’ve never been stupid enough to get this close before.”
The architecture reminded Django of ancient scrolls depicting the Heian court of twelve hundred years ago, but this was different even from that, unfathomably foreign.
Mist curled in the shadows of the encroaching foliage.
Up the stone steps they tread to the doors.
Django tugged one farther open, inducing a deep, booming creak.
Beyond the doors lay a broad, empty hall, a once-polished wooden floor, and an intricately carved ceiling.
Django released the power of his Third Eye to enhance all his senses as they crept into the house.
The floor creaked and flexed underfoot as if any step might plunge them into a jagged hole. The wood carvings above had split and crumbled with time and rot. The strange figures defied recognition, but mother-of-pearl eyes peered from behind cobweb veils and lashing tongues taunted them with jeers and hunger.
On the opposite side of the hall, a steep, narrow stairwell led up to ruins, and the ceiling sagged dangerously. A chill trickled up Django’s neck. The place had a strange smell, an earthy mustiness. Something didn’t feel right. He opened his Third Eye but saw no sign of mahō or monster. For all its antiquity, the place was as mundane as it appeared.
Then the massive bronze doors slammed shut with a tremendous boom.
The carvings’ mother-of-pearl eyes glittered in the last shreds of light. A few spears of dying dusk found their way through deceptive wreckage.
Django ran to the doors and threw all his weight against them, succeeding only in bruising his shoulder. Checking all the windows, he found them all securely shuttered. The wood was not as flimsy as it appeared.
Throughout his search for an egress, it was as if clammy tendrils stroked his scalp, cranking his muscles tighter and tighter.
“If I had a sword, we’d be out of here in a heartbeat,” he growled.
“Perhaps ‘out’ is not what we want,” Cat said.
“But this is a trap!” Django said.
“Clearly, but are we not here to hunt the hunter?” Cat said.
“I don’t like having no escape route.”
“Remember the old samurai adage,” Hage said with a grin. “‘While you yet live, become a dead person. Then do as you like.’”
Django could imagine his mother saying much the same thing. The samurai and the ninja were two sides of the same coin, the Light and the Dark; both were willing to give their lives for their master but in different ways and for different purposes.
Tokyo Blood Magic (Shinjuku Shadows Book 1) Page 17
