Guardian of the Darkness

by Nahoko Uehashi

  Kahm looked up at his uncle, sick at heart. He revered Yuguro and knew that this deception was necessary if their great undertaking was to succeed. But piling one lie on top of another went against his honest nature, and he hated it.

  Yuguro’s eyes narrowed sharply. “I’m not blaming you for your failure, you know,” he said gently. “You’re young and you were hurt. There’s no need to be ashamed of not helping Dom when he fought on with his broken nose, or for letting the woman escape.”

  Kahm looked at his uncle in shock. “No! That’s not true! Dom was —”

  His father, Kaguro, cut him off. “Kahm! You should be ashamed of yourself. Don’t try to excuse your cowardice by blaming someone who isn’t here!”

  Kahm was stunned. Dom’s injury was fairly serious, but certainly not awful enough to prevent him from attending this meeting. He had heard Yuguro himself tell him not to come, advising him to rest instead. Kahm ground his teeth. He felt an invisible net tightening around him, for anything he said now would sound like he was making excuses. His only choice was to remain silent.

  “Kahm is still young, brother,” Yuguro said calmly. “Don’t be too hard on him.” He turned back to the crowd. “Well, it was a long story, but now you know the situation. Clearly this woman has escaped into Musa territory. As she fled without her cape or supplies, she won’t survive long in this season. Still, I’d like fifty of our best men to divide up and search for her. Get the Herder People to help too.” Then he added with a smile, “But don’t underestimate her cunning or her skill with the spear, and don’t be fooled by anything she says about me.”

  The men laughed.

  At that moment, a horn blast echoed long and high, weaving through their laughter. The room fell silent, then the men began talking excitedly again. The horn signaled the arrival of a message from the king of Kanbal.

  There came a loud knock, and the young men guarding the doors opened them. Two warriors stepped into the hall wearing the purple cloaks and silver headscarves that marked them as the king’s envoys. The crowd hushed immediately. Facing Yuguro, one of the men held high a scroll of goat’s hide sealed with wax.

  “Greetings to Kaguro Musa, Chieftain of the Musa Clan, and Master Yuguro,” he announced in clear, ringing tones. “We bear an urgent message from the king for Master Yuguro.”

  They walked forward under the eager gaze of the warriors, who were hoping desperately for news of the Giving Ceremony. After the messenger handed Yuguro the scroll, he bowed, broke the seal, and opened it. He read it without a word, then looked at the messengers.

  “You have traveled far and fast to deliver this. I’ll start preparing immediately. We’ll be ready to leave the day after tomorrow. Please rest and refresh yourselves here until that time.” He gestured to two of his attendants and they led the messengers from the hall. Then Yuguro turned to face the assembly.

  “Clansmen, great news! The Gate to the Mountain Deep has opened.”

  The men gasped and then, as the news sank in, they raised a thunderous cheer.

  Deep within a cave behind the king’s castle lay a massive door of natural rock that barred the way into the Mountain Deep. It could only be opened from the inside, but once every generation, the Gate slid open, signaling that the Mountain King would hold the Giving Ceremony in the winter of that year, and bestow much-needed luisha upon the people of Kanbal. Although there had been occasional discrepancies in timing, previous ceremonies had always been about two decades apart. But this time twenty years had passed, and then thirty, with no sign of the Gate being opened, and the people of Kanbal had grown steadily poorer and more anxious. Some whispered that the sacred bond between Kanbal and the Mountain King had been violated since the last Dancer, Jiguro, had dared to steal the gold rings of the King’s Spears and flee the country….

  Now, after thirty-five years, word had finally come. The ceremony would take place this winter. The bond between the two kingdoms had not been severed after all! The men’s faces shone with joy. When their king received the luisha, grain would once again flow into the country. He would present every clan with gifts. For the next few years at least, they would not have to worry about having enough food for the winter. For the people of Kanbal, this announcement answered all their hopes and relieved all their fears.

  “Everything seems to be happening at once!” Yuguro called over the tumult in the room. “Men, there’s much to be done. Divide up the work. The gifts for the Mountain King must be ready by the day after tomorrow.” The men began talking excitedly. Yuguro thumped his spear butt on the floor to regain their attention. “I’ve just had a thought for which I would ask your approval.” He beckoned his eldest son, Shisheem, who was standing nearby. He was almost the same height as his father. “Ordinarily, Kahm would attend me in the capital, but as you can see, he is injured. A ten-day horse ride will be too taxing for him. Instead, I propose to take my son, Shisheem, who turned sixteen this year. It’s time for him to mix with the other sons of the clan chieftains and learn from them. What do you say?”

  Kahm turned pale and looked first at his uncle, then at his father. But Kaguro merely nodded to Yuguro, a bitter expression on his face. If he agreed, no one else would even think of opposing the idea.

  “Don’t worry, Kahm,” Yuguro said to him. “The Gate to the Mountain Deep has opened, but it will be another twenty-five days or so before we actually enter the mountain for the ceremony. Follow me to the capital when you feel better.” Then he turned to the clansmen and shouted, “Men of the Musa clan — it’s time to work!”

  Kassa was pushed along with the boisterous crowd as they left the hall, but he turned for one last look at Kahm. Just before he passed through the doors, he caught sight of him and Shisheem. The contrast between their two faces — one dark and gloomy, the other flushed and shining — remained branded on his mind.

  For two days after the king’s envoys arrived, the village was caught up in a whirlwind of activity. The women rolled up bright wool tapestries and wrapped laga in clean cloth. The men decorated the carts that would carry these gifts until they were satisfied that they would outshine those of the other clans.

  Then Yuguro, Shisheem, and thirty attendants rode off amid the cheers of their clansmen. Kahm and his father, their thoughts bitter, stood watching the glorious procession recede into the distance.

  Kahm’s injury was slight, but he had spent the last two days closeted in his room, reluctant to meet anyone. He found that being alone gave him the chance to think things through. He felt betrayed by his uncle, which hurt all the more because he had worshipped him since childhood. He had spent more of his life with Yuguro than with his own father.

  A seed of doubt sprang up in his heart: Would Uncle Yuguro make Shisheem his attendant for the Giving Ceremony? He could be overreacting. Yet no matter how he looked at it, his uncle’s version of the story seemed designed to disgrace Kahm and convince everyone that Shisheem should accompany him to the capital.

  Traditionally, only those who had participated in the Giving Ceremony as attendants were chosen as the next King’s Spears. If the attendants returned alive from the Mountain Deep, they were promoted to Spear when they reached the age of twenty. If one of the chosen died or became crippled before the next ceremony, the King’s Spears gathered together to select a new candidate from his clan. A Spear who had participated as an attendant at the age of sixteen or seventeen would be in his mid-thirties by the time of the next ceremony — intellectually and physically in his prime. So it had been for centuries.

  But then tragedy had struck, for all the young men chosen as attendants had been slain by Jiguro, and the interval between the ceremonies had lasted too long. They had been forced to change the system. Ten years earlier, the clans had held a tournament before the king to choose nine new Spears from the best warriors of the chieftains’ lines. Yuguro, naturally, had been selected from the Musa clan.

  If the ceremony had been held at the usual twenty-year interval, Kahm would hav
e been the right age. But now he was thirty-one, which was old for an attendant, and his eldest son, Kahmuro, who lived with his mother in the capital, had only just turned nine. Shisheem, on the other hand, was sixteen, the perfect age to serve. Kahm’s jaw clenched. Does Uncle Yuguro plan to make me stay in Musa as the next chieftain while Shisheem becomes a Spear?

  Ordinarily he would have accepted this fate with good grace despite his disappointment. But it was at this ceremony that Yuguro would launch the plan they had been developing for some time — a plan so secret not even Chief Kaguro knew about it. Kahm had worked so hard on this plan; he could not bear to be excluded now.

  Another suspicion gnawed at his mind. He had not known that Dom’s spear was smeared with poison. Such foul play was inconceivable. Had Dom been acting on his own initiative, or under someone else’s orders? And why would he have thrown the spear, knowing it could hit Kahm? Had he been hoping to kill both him and the woman?

  Kahm dismissed the thought. That’s impossible. I must be reading too much into it. If he had died from togal poisoning, it would have exposed their plot to kill the woman without a fair trial. And surely his uncle would not try to murder him….

  Still, what an amazing spear-wielder! Never had he seen anyone move like that woman. Not even the Spears, the greatest warriors in Kanbal, could compare to her speed and agility. If Jiguro taught her, he must have been a true master.

  Suddenly he recalled something his father had said long ago, when they had been watching Yuguro train the warriors in the yard in front of the hall. His father, who would never wield a spear again, had a bleak expression on his face that made Kahm sad. Yuguro moved with skill and finesse and seemed to thoroughly enjoy displaying his superior strength.

  “Too much wasted movement,” Kaguro had remarked abruptly.

  Kahm did not respond. He thought that his father must speak from envy, although he could see no trace of jealousy in his profile. Rather, he seemed to be gazing at something in the distance.

  “Jiguro was far better.”

  Kahm could hardly believe what he heard. Jiguro’s name was taboo. None of the Musa clan ever mentioned him, and his father and uncle in particular never spoke of him. And yet his father continued, “I suppose it’s hard for you to believe, but I was always a better spearman than Yuguro. But Jiguro …” Following his brother’s movements with his one good eye, he muttered, “Jiguro was a genius. A warrior like that might appear once in a hundred years. That’s why my father chose him rather than me for the Giving Ceremony, even though I was the eldest.

  “And he fulfilled my father’s expectations. He was chosen as the Dancer. No sixteen-year-old attendant had ever served as the Dancer before.”

  Kahm knew that all the King’s Spears and their attendants competed in a tournament in the Mountain Deep to determine which one was the strongest. The victor became the Dancer and dueled one of the hyohlu, the Guardians of the Darkness and servants to the Mountain King. Only when the Dancer defeated the hyohlu did the Mountain King open the Last Door and invite the king of Kanbal, his Spears, and their attendants to enter his palace. Beyond that door, it was said, lay a vast castle made of luisha, the most beautiful gem in the world.

  “But instead of bringing honor to our clan, his skill brought misfortune on the whole country.” His father heaved a deep sigh as he stared over the practice field. “But you know, to be honest, even if I had been the one to go after him, I don’t think I could have beaten him.” He lowered his voice. “Which is why I think that Jiguro must have let Yuguro kill him.”

  At the time, Kahm had been disappointed in his father, believing that he belittled Yuguro’s feat out of envy. But now, as he recalled those words, new questions began to run through his mind. What kind of man could have trained a spearwoman like that? What did she really see when Yuguro fought Jiguro? His heart began to pound. And what if she saw something other than the glorious victory Yuguro proclaimed to the world? If she did, then I could see why he might use poison.

  He closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down. That’s impossible…. Damn! How can I think such things just because he was hard on me this once? He’d never do something like that. After all, he’s the one who saved Kanbal by bringing back all nine spear rings. He shook his head sharply. Using poison was not in his uncle’s character, although he wouldn’t put it past Dom. He decided that Dom must have been acting on his own.

  Opening his eyes, he looked up at the thick, smoke-blackened beams exposed in the ceiling. Once a year, the king sent Yuguro to the kingdoms of New Yogo and Sangal to barter luisha for grain, and Kahm had often accompanied him. The residences of New Yogo ministers were built of smooth unvarnished wood, and the walls were often covered in gorgeous brocade tapestries. Even the merchants wore clothes of finely woven silk. And in Sangal, he had seen breathtaking mosaics of luminescent shells on the walls of ordinary government officials.

  Yet even the halls of our chieftains are no better than this, Kahm thought as he gazed at the rough ceiling. True, commoners in those countries lived very frugal lives. He remembered the native Yakoo in Yogo in particular as extremely poor. But if they starved because of a bad harvest one year, they could look forward to a plentiful harvest the next.

  In contrast, there was hardly any land worth farming in Kanbal. The north was covered by tall snowcapped mountain peaks, while the soil in the southern lowlands was so poor that nothing grew there besides the tall pines. Only the highland plateaus where the clan settlements were scattered could really be farmed. Yet even here, strong winds blew the soil away so that each year the land grew more barren. All the people could count on was milk and meat from the mountain goats that populated the rocky crags, and gasha, which grew despite the poor soil. And it was thanks to the plentiful springs, which gushed from beneath the mountain, that they could grow anything at all. Thus most Kanbalese men, even those who belonged to the warrior class, had to work in New Yogo or Sangal every winter. Some of them settled in Yogo and lived there the rest of their lives. Without luisha to buy grain, the poor mountain country of Kanbal could not have survived.

  Kahm sighed deeply. I guess the king and Uncle Yuguro have made the right decision with their plan. There’s really no other way.

  Not even the clan chieftains had been informed of Yuguro’s grand scheme, for it would shake the country to its very foundations. Most Spears who had participated in the ceremony thirty-five years ago were dead. But if anyone like Laloog, the Yonsa Elder, learned of this plan, they would lay down their lives to prevent it. Which was why members of the older generation, who still revered the Mountain King, must not be told.

  Just twenty days to go. If Shisheem did not take his place, Kahm would accompany his uncle as his attendant in the darkness of the Mountain Deep. Then who would fate favor — the king of Kanbal, or the king under the mountain?

  Kahm closed his eyes.

  Search parties continued to comb the mountains for the woman, but all trace of her seemed to have vanished at a little hollow on a steep rocky slope. Even after three days, they still had not found her.

  The atmosphere in the clan settlement was unusually lively, but Kassa’s heart was heavy. On their way back from the great hall, he had accused his father of breaking his promise to defend the woman, but his father only told him that it was for the best.

  “You’re a man now, so you should remember this lesson well. Master Yuguro made a political decision to protect our clan. We don’t need to stir up any more trouble.”

  Even Kassa understood that much. But still …

  As he could not talk to his parents, nor tell the truth to his friends, he had no choice but to confide his frustration in the one other person who knew the secret — his sister, Gina.

  Out of view among the rocks on the mountain, Kassa told her what had happened in the chieftain’s hall. She frowned. “You know,” she said, “it seems like one lie just keeps getting added to another.”

  “That’s what I think too, and it make
s me feel awful. I can’t stand to think the lies started with us.”

  Gina leaned toward him. “Kassa, we should do something. That woman saved our lives, right? And now she’s being hunted because we broke our promise.”

  “But she’s trying to hurt Master Yuguro! And she snuck into the caves to —”

  “Just a minute, Kassa,” Gina interrupted. “That’s what Master Yuguro says, right? But we’re the ones who met her in the caves. Shouldn’t we consider that? I’d rather decide for myself.”

  Kassa stared at her in surprise. She was only twelve, but sometimes she impressed him with her logic.

  “Don’t you think so? We already know what he says isn’t always true. So let’s think about what we saw before we listen to him. Did she seem like a bad person to you?”

  Kassa shook his head.

  “You see? And if she really did come for the reason Master Yuguro says, then she could have just ignored our cries for help. If the hyohlu had eaten us, there would’ve been no one to tell on her. I don’t know why she came to Kanbal, but whatever the reason, it doesn’t change the fact that she risked her life to save us.”

  Kassa nodded emphatically. For the first time in days his mind felt clear. “You’re right,” he said. “Gina, you’re pretty smart sometimes.”

  Gina gave a shy, pleased smile.

  “But even though it’s true, I wonder if we can really do anything to help.”

  Just then a shrill whistle sounded, surprisingly close. They both jumped as Yoyo poked his face out from behind a nearby rock.

  “Kassa, you shouldn’t talk so loudly! Sound carries far in such a rocky place. There’s a search party over there. If they had heard you, you’d be in big trouble!”

  Kassa felt a sudden stab of panic squeeze his chest. “Yoyo! How much did you overhear?”

  Yoyo raised his hand in greeting to Gina and then whispered, “Everything. Sorry for eavesdropping, but I had a good reason.”