The Book of Heroes

by Miyuki Miyabe

  The Archdevout lifted his face. First he nodded to Ash, then his eyes went to U-ri. “We have been waiting for you.”

  The eyes in that wrinkled face were dry and told U-ri nothing—though surely he must have noticed her tears. There was no consolation in them, nor any regret that U-ri could see. His eyes were black and deep as the darkness outside.

  Next to U-ri, Ash spoke. “Allcaste, go to the casket.”

  U-ri did not move. Her body felt like a giant sandbag with a small rip at the bottom through which sand streamed, leaving her to empty out on the floor.

  “Your glyph has served its purpose and now returns to its rightful place. This ritual is necessary to close the Hollow Book. Step forward,” Ash said again. His voice was gentle. His words a request, not a demand.

  U-ri took a hesitant step forward. The Archdevout righted himself, then shuffled up to the casket on his knees and bowed again. Moving as one, the four nameless devout went to the corners of the casket, inserted metal poles in the rings, and opened the lid.

  Reverently, the Archdevout lifted the Hollow Book from its resting place. Then he shuffled away from the casket, still on his knees, and held the book out before U-ri.

  “Look upon it.”

  U-ri blinked. The cover of the Hollow Book bore a glyph. Though faint, U-ri could see it was the same as the mark on her forehead. The image was worn almost to the point of illegibility. The lines of the design were broken in places, like someone had tried to scratch it on with a pen that was running out of ink.

  “Take it in your hands.”

  U-ri did as she was told, picking up the Hollow Book in both hands. Her fingers were dirty from the hill soil and there was black mud beneath her torn fingernails.

  The book felt incredibly light in her hands—almost weightless, like it wasn’t really there. The glyph on U-ri’s forehead began to give off a white light. U-ri started and tilted her head back away from it, but the Archdevout commanded, “Stay as you are. The glyph will now leave you.”

  The glow from the glyph on her forehead grew stronger until the circle of light it cast enveloped her hands and the book. Then the faded glyph on the book’s cover began to absorb the light, its own glow increasing. First the outside arc, then the details grew more pronounced, the lines thickening with brilliant light.

  My glyph’s returning to where it came from.

  U-ri’s eyes grew wider as she sensed the transfer of power in the light that streamed from her into the Hollow Book. Though the light was bright, it was not harshly so, nor was there any heat. It was simply pure light.

  When the glyph upon the book was finally complete, the one on U-ri’s forehead dimmed and went dark. Only at that moment did the Hollow Book suddenly feel heavy in her hands and faintly warm to the touch.

  Now the glyph on the book was beginning to fade as its power was integrated into the book itself, filling its pages with its power and light. When the glyph had entirely disappeared from the cover, the only light inside the Dome of Convocation came from the flickering torches set around it.

  The Archdevout gently lifted the Hollow Book from U-ri’s hands and solemnly returned it to the casket.

  Then the four nameless devout replaced the lid of the casket, bowed in unison, then passed their metal poles through the rings at the four corners and lifted the casket to their shoulders. They walked out of the dome, their black robes soundlessly sweeping the floor.

  “Where will they put it?” U-ri asked, her voice clear even though the proceedings had rendered her mute for some time and before that she had been screaming and crying herself hoarse.

  “Deep within the Hall of All Books,” the Archdevout replied. “We will guard it until such time it can be sealed once again.”

  Ash stepped up and bowed his head. The Archdevout bowed back twice as deeply.

  U-ri touched her forehead with her hand. It was smooth. No white light shone upon her fingers. The glyph was gone.

  “So, what do you want to know first?” Ash asked. He straightened from his bow and turned to U-ri. The steel tacks on the soles of his boots clicked on the stone floor.

  The Archdevout stepped back to stand by the wolf’s side.

  “What…?” U-ri muttered, feeling dizzy. The sandbag that was her body was nearly empty now. “I don’t understand anything. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  The only thing she did know was that Sky was gone. And that Sky had been her brother.

  And how stupid I was for not realizing it.

  The bell tolled, and Ash suddenly looked up toward the ceiling of the dome. The Archdevout joined him.

  It rang once, rested, then rang twice before resting again. This pattern repeated three times before the bell was still, though the sound echoed through the dome for some time.

  U-ri had her first question. “What was that bell for?”

  “That was the Third Bell,” Ash said, his eyes cast downward, his head cocked, listening to the fading echoes. “It tells us that the gate has closed.”

  “The gate to the Hall of All Books?”

  Ash opened his eyes and slowly shook his head. “No, this ‘gate’ has a different meaning.”

  Something about the word tugged at the back of U-ri’s mind. She had heard it used before in some unusual way, but where?

  Ash was staring into U-ri’s eyes. It occurred to her that the reason he always seemed to know what she was wondering was that he knew things she didn’t and hid them from her. That’s why he’s always one step ahead. Of course, with that intense gaze of his, maybe he really is reading my thoughts.

  “I’ve heard of this gate before, I think.”

  “You have. I remember it myself,” Ash said, nodding, and a smile flashed across his face—but whether it was the cold smile of an uncaring heart or a wry smile of regret, U-ri could not tell.

  “When you asked me what it meant before, it took me some effort to make up something I could tell you.”

  When was that? U-ri thought back, picking through her memories, but she soon gave up. She was exhausted.

  “Let me explain it to you from the beginning then,” the wolf offered. “This will take some time. You might want to sit.”

  U-ri slumped down on the spot, hugging her knees. She would have been perfectly happy to sit there for an eternity and never move again.

  Then the Archdevout walked over and sat silently down beside her—like a kindly grandfather come to console a distraught grandchild after she’d received a scolding from her parents for some trifling infraction. It was a gesture filled with gentleness and warmth.

  The only difference between that kindly grandfather and the Archdevout was the way he sat, with his black robes tucked neatly beneath his knees.

  “You must be angry,” he said. Though his eyes were still dry, there were tears in the Archdevout’s voice. “I will not ask for your forgiveness. We sent you forth knowing full well what awaited you. We set you on this path, your bags packed with nothing but lies and subterfuge, while we kept the truth to ourselves.”

  U-ri marveled at how calm she felt. She had been so furious just a short while ago, but now she wanted only to bury her face in the Archdevout’s robes and cry.

  “In order for the Hero to break free, a person must serve as the last vessel,” Ash began, turning his face slightly toward U-ri’s. “In order to return the Hero to the flow of stories, thus bringing it back to this land where it can be bound, it is necessary to drain the power from the last vessel who resides within the Hero. Only the allcaste, in whose veins flows the same blood as that of the last vessel, can hope to accomplish this. Why? Because only the allcaste’s voice may reach the last vessel, and if that voice cannot be heard, neither will the Hero know the power of the glyph.

  “Thus does the allcaste join the hunt for the Hero, for the King in Yellow. This is when the Book of Heroes becomes marked with the same glyph that marks the allcaste’s forehead. If the allcaste should be successful in finding the Hero and the last vessel is
released, then when the allcaste returns to this place, the mark upon their forehead and the glyph upon the book become one, and the Hollow Book is once again filled.”

  Ash looked directly at U-ri. “All of this is true, and all of this you were told before you began your journey, more or less.” The wolf spread his hands, looking for her acknowledgment.

  U-ri nodded. “That is what I expected my journey to bring, more or less.”

  Next to her, the Archdevout’s face was lowered.

  “Yet, rarely—extremely rarely—things do not go according to plan.” Ash paused, then asked her, “What do you think becomes of the vessels?”

  “Aren’t they absorbed by the Hero? Used as energy or something?”

  “That’s right. They fuse with the Hero, becoming a part of it. The Hero only takes them in the first place because they fulfill all the requirements: they possess great anger and an equally great desire to express that anger. This desire calls out to the Hero. Yet, once it has absorbed these vessels, nothing is left. Not even the anger which drove them in the first place.” Ash licked his lips before continuing. “There is one exception, however: the last vessel. For the last vessel serves as both vessel and Summoner. The Summoner is the one who calls the Hero, the one who gives form to the Hero. You might call them a conspirator—and conspiring with the Hero is a sin. Thus, even if the vessel loses their human form, the sin they committed remains. Now, U-ri, what shape do you think that sin takes?”

  U-ri didn’t have to think long. Even as the details refused to come into clear focus in her mind, she knew the answer to the question her heart had been asking since her journey had begun.

  “A nameless devout.”

  Ash nodded deeply. “All last vessels, without exception, become nameless devout. And here, in this land, they do penance for their sin.”

  All that remained of them was sin. They retained none of their individual hearts, forms, or thoughts. That was why all of the nameless devout were identical in appearance—they were literally without selves. They existed only as manifestations of their sin. The nameless devout were one and they were many. They were many and they were one. That was their truth.

  “However,” Ash added, shifting his feet so that he now faced away from U-ri, “As I said, in very rare circumstances, something happens to the last vessel. Things, well, they do not go according to plan. I, and others, believe that this is because only the last vessel has the opportunity to face the Hero not just as a vessel, but as the Summoner, before being banished to the nameless land.

  “In that instant—and it may last no more than an instant—the last vessel has access to the entirety of the Hero’s memory and the full extent of the Hero’s strength. In this, they reach a state of being that no other vessel, nor even a wolf, could hope to attain. It is there that they touch the mystery that lies at the heart of the Circle and gain the power of true sight.

  “Should that moment give birth to regrets within the last vessel, it can result in an incomplete nameless devout,” Ash explained. “Though an incomplete devout is still a nameless devout, still lacking individual memory and appearance, their deficits are only temporary. They have only forgotten who they were, not lost it completely.”

  “And that’s what my brother, what Sky was?” U-ri asked, her voice more shrill then she had intended. “Is that what you were talking about up on the hill?”

  Ash turned, looking U-ri straight in the eyes. He nodded.

  “But that doesn’t make sense!” U-ri said, her voice rising. “That’s not what Sky said at all! He told me that he had been waiting for me to arrive. That when he heard the First Bell ring, it moved him.”

  Sky had been nothing, but in that moment, something was born inside him. He wasn’t just “remembering” something he already had—or was he?

  “The ringing of the First Bell did not give him a heart, if that’s what you’re thinking. It awakened the fragments of the heart he once had. But the fragments were incomplete, and their number few.”

  U-ri had to put a hand on her chest to steady her own breathing. “And he didn’t realize anything until then? He didn’t know he had a heart? He didn’t know that he was different from the others? I mean, if he knew when he had come to the nameless land, then—” U-ri drew a sharp breath.

  There is no time in the nameless land.

  “He did not realize the truth,” the wolf stated bluntly. “He merely acted out of instinct. He had forgotten who he once was, yet when you came here, he knew he must join you on your journey. He wished it of his own accord. I believe it was Sky trying to make right for what he had done as your brother, whether he knew it or not.”

  Ash sighed. “An incomplete devout is dangerous. They have touched the Hero, they have touched the King in Yellow. While they hold on to the fragments of who they once were as the last vessel, they maintain a tenuous connection to the terrible power of the Hero.”

  Then the Archdevout, silent until now, spoke in a low, calm voice. “You might think of him as being a nameless devout who bears the Yellow Sign.”

  U-ri stared long and hard at the Archdevout. He made sense. In fact, it was probably the best way he could have explained it to her at that time, she realized.

  “You mean, he had to purify himself.”

  That’s why Sky became my servant. That’s why the Archdevout cast him out of the nameless land. That’s why he told me to take Sky with me.

  “So if he was near the glyph, that would purify him? Like with Aju!”

  Ash shook his head. “It does not work for an incomplete devout as it does for a book. Mere proximity to the glyph is not enough to remove the Yellow Sign.”

  As in the moment when the Summoner enables the Hero to escape, all must be brought together: Summoner, the Hero, and King in Yellow. Only then would the last vessel return to its former shape, Ash explained. “And when the last vessel has regained its self, it must once again throw itself to the Hero.”

  This, Ash explained, was because the incomplete devout, with its tenuous connection to the Hero, was more like a reflection of the Hero than anything. Until it returned to its master and became whole, there would be no destroying it, nor purifying it.

  “That is why they are so dangerous. The incomplete devout is none other than a bad seed that the Hero has planted in both the Circle and in the nameless land. Through that seed, the Hero can exert a direct influence on the world. To purify the last vessel and thereby make the nameless devout complete is the allcaste’s true mission.”

  Ash fixed his gaze on her then. “You have completed your mission, U-ri. That was the very goal of your journey from its beginning. Or rather, when Sky appeared, your goal changed from the recapture of the Hero to purifying the nameless devout.”

  And no one told me the truth.

  “The culling of such bad seeds is as important and as vital as sapping the Hero of its strength and returning it to this land. It had to be you who purified Sky, and thereby Hiroki Morisaki.”

  “You lied to me so I’d do it.” U-ri realized she had been gritting her teeth. Her hands were clenched into fists. “No one told me the truth. You deceived me!”

  The Archdevout swayed under the barrage of U-ri’s voice. Ash stepped closer to her, kneeling between them as if to protect the ancient man. “Do not blame the Archdevout. Until he saw the sign, he too was unaware that an incomplete devout had been created.”

  “The sign?”

  The Archdevout looked up, blinked slowly, and said, “When we opened the casket, withdrew the Hollow Book, and saw that the glyph of the allcaste was not upon its cover, that was the sign.”

  “That’s why you were so surprised!”

  The state of the book had been a shock to the Archdevout, even more so the arrival of Sky—a nameless devout like them, but younger, different. The nameless devout who was not complete.

  “He wasn’t just surprised by the turn of events, U-ri. The Archdevout was sad for you! He was sad because he realized you no longer jo
urneyed to imprison the Hero.”

  “But why?” U-ri shouted. She clutched the Archdevout’s robes, pulled his frail body toward her, and glared sidelong up at Ash’s stern face. “Why didn’t any of you tell me then? If I’d only known—”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I would’ve thought of a different way to do things!”

  “What different way? You didn’t have any choice in the matter.”

  “What if I had? What if I could’ve found one?” She turned to the wolf, grabbing his coat collar and shaking him. “I could’ve taken him back home! I could’ve taken my brother home!”

  “Sky was not your brother. He didn’t even look like him.”

  “But he used to be my brother!”

  Why drag him to the Hero to purify him? He wasn’t some bad seed to be culled! He was my brother!

  “Didn’t my brother become an incomplete devout because he regretted what he had done? Didn’t he regret getting sucked in by the Book of Elem? I would have forgiven him!”

  Of course I would have. He’s my only brother.

  “U-ri.” Ash shook his head, and his white bangs fell down across his forehead, making him look suddenly older. Or maybe just tired.

  “Didn’t I just tell you that an incomplete devout is a dangerous thing? Were you to bring him back to the Circle, it would mean calamity.”

  “How do you know that? If I brought him home and he met Mom and Dad again, if he could have returned to his old life, I bet all his memories would have come back. Maybe even his old form!”

  “They would not,” the Archdevout said quietly. “They can never come back, Lady U-ri. Once a part of the Hero, always a part, unchanging until the day they are purified.”

  “The bad seed is also sometimes called the ‘gate.’”

  U-ri’s eyes went wide at Ash’s words.

  “It is a gate through which the Hero may exercise its power. It is an entrance. You said you had heard someone use the word before? Do you remember where? It was when that giant creature appeared at Hiroki’s school and took Sky in its tentacles.”