Black Wind

by F. Paul Wilson

  "I believe it does. It tells us of a man stripped of every last one of his senses, and that he becomes the shoten, the focus of the Black Wind. The surgeons of the Order can easily create such a state."

  Hiroki was almost caught up in Yajima's exhilaration, yet something held him back.

  "But the members of the Innermost Circle are stripped of their last senses before they are sent to see the Face, are they not?"

  "Yes, but this is different. Don't you see how it all fits, Hiroki? The Inner Circles of the Order give up their senses over a period of years, but a Black Wind shoten gives up all of his at once. He is abruptly thrust from all contact with the physical world. He can't feel the futon under his back, doesn't know if he is sitting or supine, can't see or hear or smell or taste. He floats in an endless, featureless void. And it must be from that void that he draws the Kuroikaze and sends it against the enemies of the Emperor. Our temple surgeons have the skills to put a man in that state. We can do it, Hiroki. The Black Wind can be ours to command again."

  If only you are right, Yajima.

  Then a discomforting thought occurred to him. "It will take a very special sort of man to subject himself to such an ordeal. Who do you…?"

  The glow in Yajima's remaining eye provided the answer before Hiroki finished the question.

  "I would be honored. In fact, Hiroki, I don't think we should search any further today. We should hurry back to the temple and present this remnant of the scrolls to Shimazu immediately. Won't he be proud of us?"

  "This will bring enormous honor to our sensei."

  "And if I may be so bold as to ask you this favor, my dear friend," Yajima said, bowing low. "Allow me to beg Shimazu for the honor of being the first to become a shoten of the Black Winds."

  Hiroki's throat was suddenly too dry for speech. The thought of those knives cutting into this man he had known since childhood, separating him from all his senses… he repressed a shudder. He might have tried to dissuade Yajima but knew from the look in his eye it would be a futile exercise. Yajima hungered to offer himself as a sacrificial lamb to the knives of the Order. He pitied him and yet envied him, for he knew what he wanted and was going to achieve it.

  "Does this mean…?" Hiroki felt his throat thicken. "Am I to lose my oldest and only friend?"

  "Never. Even if I cannot be at your side in the flesh, I will be with you in spirit. And together we shall crush the enemies of the Emperor."

  "How can I object, then?" he managed to say. "You have devoted yourself more fully to the search over the years. You should have your wish."

  Yajima bowed again. "Hiroki, you are too kind."

  "I also think that you alone should have the honor of presenting the fragment to the temple."

  A tear trickled down Yajima's right cheek. "You would permit me that honor?"

  "I insist upon it."

  Hiroki did not say that he was reluctant to stand by idle and silent while Yajima offered all that he possessed to the Order.

  "Oh, Hiroki, I will be there alone, but I shall not let Shimazu-sensei or the Elders forget for a moment that this fragment would never have been found without you."

  Hiroki thanked him and watched him hurry off. Poor Yajima. Always in such a rush to sacrifice himself. So intent upon the next life that he lost sight of this one.

  Not Hiroki. Something told him that much more needed to be learned about the Black Winds, and he would keep searching until he found the remainder. Let Yajima hurl himself upon the altar. Hiroki knew he had too much left to do in this life before he gratefully accepted the next.

  1943

  THE YEAR OF THE RAM

  JANUARY

  HIROSHIMA

  Hiroki returned to the Shinto shrine where they had found the fragment. Desperation was a hammer pounding at his skull. He had been to at least thirty of the major shrines and temples in an ever-widening gyre from this point but had found nothing new. He was losing hope. Either the scrolls were gone forever—rotted to dust or destroyed—or the ancient monk had hidden them too well.

  The search was made even more difficult now by the fact that he was searching alone. Yajima had remained in Tokyo at the temple this trip. And there he would remain forever. He would be unable to leave the temple after the Order's surgeons finished their work on him.

  Hiroki preferred to be elsewhere while Yajima was being cut off and locked away from the sensory world. He found Tokyo unpleasant in other ways. The Supreme Command had given up on Guadalcanal. Of the forty thousand troops poured onto that jungle island, less than seventeen thousand survived. Far more had succumbed to cholera and other diseases than to American and Australian weaponry, and it was a popular saying around the Imperial War Room that Japan had lost to the jungle, not to the Americans.

  But Hiroki knew differently. While the workers in the new factories studding the countryside toiled in round-the-clock shifts, they could match but a fraction of the tide of ships and tanks and planes and food surging from America. American soldiers, thousands of miles away from home, with their sturdy clothes and tents and miraculous K-rations, were better housed, clothed, and fed than many Japanese civilians.

  Yamamoto's prophetic words before the Imperial Conference on the Tripartite Alliance echoed in his mind: We can give the Americans the fight of their lives for six months ... after that they will simply overwhelm us with their material superiority, no matter how bravely we fight.

  Although it was vociferously denied in Tokyo, Hiroki knew that Japan had lost its initiative. His belly rebelled at the thought, but he had forced himself to face it: From now on it would be a war of attrition until the Kuroikaze could be brought to bear on the enemy. Yajima and many in the Order were sure they had finally regained the secret of the winds. Neither Hiroki nor Shimazu was so sure. The oral tradition of the Kakureta Kao seemed to imply that a chemical potion of some sort had been used to raise the Black Winds. Surgery was never mentioned. Hiroki had failed to convince Yajima to wait a little longer before he went under the knife, but he had never stopped looking for the rest of the scrolls.

  He no longer wanted to think about Yajima. Matsuo came to mind. His whore-queen wife had borne a child, but apparently not Matsuo's if reports could be believed. Yet Matsuo let the mother and child remain with him. Truly his brother was a twisted one.

  Hiroki set his candle down and peered about the rear chamber of the shrine. A tiny room, carved from the natural rock of the mountain against which the shrine had been set. They had pulled everything from the shelves, even looked behind them. He could imagine no place left to look, yet something had drawn him back. He let his gaze travel over the crockery and utensils littering the floor or upended on the shelves.

  Why had he come back? Why did he have this vague sense of foreboding? Had they missed something here? Impossible. They had turned the chamber upside down. There was nothing left to—

  The candlelight flickered off something smooth and yellow inside one of the urns lying on its side on the floor under a shelf. Hiroki leapt forward, grasped it—and almost dropped it as a gray mouse squeaked and darted out. He turned it upside down and shook it: Only dark little droppings fell out. It was empty of further rodents. He held the mouth up to the candle and there it was—old, yellowed paper, curled and crumpled inside. Hiroki's heartbeat picked up its tempo when he recognized the brush strokes of the ideograms. He reached in with two fingers and gently, gingerly, removed the strip.

  It was stained with a combination of mouse urine and feces, and gnawed in many places, but no mistaking it: He had found another remnant of the scrolls. He began reading the few areas that remained legible and realized this was from a section immediately preceding the remnant they had discovered last week. He could find no sentence intact and could make no sense of the content. One pair of ideograms showed up repeatedly in the text, however: kodomo. Hiroki leaned back, wondering why it appeared so often in conjunction with creating a Black Wind.

  Suddenly he cried out and leaped to his feet.
He knew! He stood in the tiny stone rear chamber, shaking with horror. He had to contact Yajima! He had to stop him!

  Hiroki would have raced for a phone but he knew it would do him no good—no telephone in the temple. He ran from the shrine like a man who had seen a ghost. He had to get to Tokyo. Immediately!

  TOKYO

  The next day's dawn was tinting the sky with a gentle pink when Hiroki's train pulled into Tokyo Station. He hailed a cab and made the driver race to the temple. After he was admitted through the heavy carved doors, he ran through the candle-lit halls to Shimazu's spare quarters and pounded on the door. The monk slid the door open.

  "Sensei!" he said without preliminaries. "Yajima—is he…? Have they…?"

  Shimazu stepped aside and motioned him into the room. He pointed to a dark corner. "He is here."

  Hiroki was suddenly weak with relief. He stepped toward the corner. "Yajima! Thank the gods I arrived in time! I—"

  "He can't hear you," Shimazu said.

  Hiroki's relief evaporated in a cold blast of remorse. "You mean, the surgery has begun?"

  "It is finished."

  "Then he is locked away from us forever?"

  Shimazu nodded. "Completely and forever. He has no ears to hear our questions and no tongue with which to answer them if he had. He has given us his remaining eye as well as his senses of taste and smell. His spinal cord was severed as high as we dared, cutting off all feeling and control to his body; the nerves to his head and face have been severed as well."

  Hiroki felt as if he were shriveling and shrinking inside his skin as he listened to his master's words. He lifted a paper lantern from its hook and brought it closer to the corner. He caught his breath as he saw his old friend.

  Yajima was propped up on cushions into a rough semblance of a sitting position. He looked like a limp, tattered doll. He was dressed in a clean, black kimono and his arms and legs were neatly arranged, but Hiroki could tell there was no power or feeling in those limbs. His right eye was patched now as well as his left. Below them, his face hung loose and expressionless. A thin line of saliva dribbled from a corner of his slack lips.

  Suddenly, a low, shapeless moan filled the room. Hiroki leaped back. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end.

  "I thought you said he could not speak."

  "He cannot. His tongue has been removed but he still breathes. He cannot form words but he can make sounds—sounds he cannot hear."

  "Is he in pain?"

  Shimazu smiled. "He is beyond pain forever. He does not even know if he is lying or sitting, supine or prone. He dwells now in a state beyond all care, in a void beyond all sensation."

  "And has he been able to raise up a Black Wind?" Hiroki’s voice sounded dead to him. He already knew the answer.

  "No," Shimazu said. "Tragically, no." He looked at Hiroki with a puzzled frown. "Why do I sense that you are not surprised?"

  "Because you are wise and know me well." Hiroki sighed and returned the lamp to its hook. He preferred Yajima in the shadows. "I found another piece of the scrolls just hours ago in Hiroshima."

  Shimazu's eyes lit. "More? You've uncovered more?"

  "Just a fragment." Hiroki pulled the envelope containing the fragile piece from his kimono and handed it to Shimazu. "But I think it explains why all the surgery on Yajima failed to produce the Kuroikaze."

  Shimazu pulled the fragment from the envelope and held it up to the lantern to read it. Then he turned wide eyes toward Hiroki.

  "Can this be true?"

  Hiroki nodded. "I see no other way to interpret it. I—"

  He started as Yajima's low, formless wail filled the room again. He stared at the darkened corner. Yajima's mind was alive in there, trapped and utterly isolated within that useless body. Soon he would be completely mad, if not already so.

  "Children?" Shimazu said, his tone still incredulous.

  Hiroki dragged his eyes away from the drooling lump of flesh his old friend had become. He concentrated on the new fragment, praying the hope and excitement of the promise it offered would wash away his pity and grief for Yajima.

  "Yes. The new fragment leaves little doubt that the ancient members of the Order used children to focus the Black Winds."

  Shimazu was silent a long time. Finally he spoke.

  "Japan is filled with children."

  JULY

  What's happening to us? Meiko thought as she trudged along the unkempt streets of Tokyo.

  A year ago she could see no sign that the country was at war; now it was everywhere. The entire city was scarred and pockmarked. Everywhere she looked, every twenty paces, she found holes and trenches, in the alleys, in the gardens, in vacant lots, along the sidewalks, some up to ten feet long, none more than three feet deep. These were the first and last line of defense for the city's seven million residents against enemy bombings. No bombers had appeared over Tokyo since that single raid in April last year, but who could say it wouldn't happen again tomorrow?

  All around her were signs of how the war was unraveling the delicate fabric of Japanese life. The countless country folk dragged into the city to work in the factories caused crowding that was almost unbearable. Queues were everywhere: for rice, for tea, for cloth, for train tickets, for bicycle tire patches, for everything. The kimono was fast becoming a relic of a more elegant past. The new, government-approved look for the woman was the monpei, a cross between army fatigues and harem pants, tight at the waist and ankles and billowing between.

  And the city. Meiko's heart broke for her beloved Tokyo as the army dismantled it by inches for scrap iron. Handrails and lampposts seemed to disappear overnight; grilles were pulled off windows. Boilers, radiators, and pipes were stripped from old buildings, abandoned cars were devoured, skeleton and all.

  Meiko wondered what damage was left for American bombers to do that hadn't already been done by her country's own military.

  She queued up behind a truck for her regular ration of milk. Usually she sent Nakanaori's nurse out for it, but Sachiko was sick today, so she had come herself. She wondered if she should have brought Naka along instead of leaving him home with Matsuo. Ever since he was thirty days old, when she had been sure that his life was firmly locked into his body and had presented him at the local shrine, mother and son had been virtually inseparable. She double-sashed him to her back—one band under his arms and the other under his rump—and they were off together to wherever she had to go.

  She loved her parents, had loved Frank, loved Matsuo, but had never imagined she could ever feel so at one with another human being as she did with Naka. Almost a year old now, he had spent most of his short life literally looking over her shoulder, pressed against her where he could share her warmth and she could feel every breath, every heartbeat, every move he made. She loved that little boy so dearly. More than life itself.

  She wished Matsuo could share that love. He avoided Naka. Meiko had feared that his coolness might put the little fellow off, but it seemed only to make Naka gravitate toward him all the more.

  Matsuo had not allowed her to refer to him as "Father" in front of the child. But since they lived together, and because he had begun to speak his first words at ten months of age, Naka had to call the man of the house something. Matsuo's proper name was unacceptable, of course; but after much trial and error and endless cajoling, he had finally agreed to allow himself to be called Oji-san—"Uncle."

  Despite the wall of rejection Matsuo had erected between himself and the child, Naka constantly asked for "Oji-san," saying the name over and over.

  Naka was with his "Oji-san" now. She had left the two of them together to give Naka a chance to work his little boy magic on Matsuo. Sooner or later Matsuo would have to yield. But now she wondered if that had been such a good idea. Matsuo had been so depressed since Admiral Yamamoto's death.

  She worried about Matsuo. He was alienated from his brother, estranged from his father, and he had few friends. He had worshipped the admiral, but
now he was gone, too. Matsuo seemed so alone, so out of place. She ached to help him, but there didn't seem to be anything she could do.

  An urge to get back home was growing swiftly within her. She feared the frustrations she sensed in Matsuo might break free when only he and Naka were in the house. Meiko was sure he would never take them out on a child, and yet she knew Naka was at a very trying age. She shuffled her feet impatiently and willed the milk line to move faster, but it still crawled along at a snail's pace.

  * * *

  Matsuo knew he was in a black mood. He didn't try to shake it off. He preferred to wallow in it. He liked the state of physical paresis and mental paralysis it offered. It allowed him to sit cross-legged here at the table and sip tea without the slightest twinge of guilt.

  What was there to feel guilty about anyway? He had codes to break, ship and troop movements to track, espionage agent reports to evaluate, but he was here at home doing something much more important. He was playing nurse for Frank Slater's son.

  Naka smiled up at him from the floor, then began to crawl away, his pajamaed legs rustling along the tatami. All the gods surely knew how he loathed the child. Why didn't the child loathe him in return? Or, at the very least, fear him?

  But no. Naka had only smiles for him, and hugged his leg when he could reach it.

  Matsuo forced his clenched jaw muscles to relax and took another sip of tea, barely tasting it. Frank Slater's son. He had hoped he would get used to that fact. The shock had worn off, and the disappointment had settled into a bitter lump at the back of his throat, but the sneering irony of it remained a white-hot coal behind his eyes.

  Nakanaori Mazaki, the embodiment of that pain, had just pulled himself up to a standing position along the side support of a nearby shoji. He seemed proud of himself. He had a big round face, dark eyes, and unruly black hair that Meiko combed down in bangs over his birthmark. He looked at Matsuo now and grinned.

  "Oji-than!" he said with his tongue thrusting over the last syllable.