Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Having the hero be a man of peerless beauty wasn’t actually a matter of my own personal tastes, nor was it a ploy to secure female readers—it was to make his coolness perfect and complete. Further-more, D is burdened with the fate of being a dhampir—a human/vampire half-breed. Until now, I’ve always said the reason for this was because a purely human hero would’ve been boring, and also because having D be both human and vampire—but shunned by both sides—only served to intensify his tragic nature. But the simple truth is that I really wanted to try and give him some of the wonderful vampire characteristics from Lee’s excellent portrayal of Dracula. And that’s how D was born.

  Next time, I’ll try to touch on D’s world and his partner after a fashion, “the left hand.”

  Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane is one of the great books in the series as far as the color and development of the cast of characters are concerned. In particular, the two heavies were my favorite characters, and I still regret only using them in this one volume—it seems like such a waste. Incidentally, there’s a scene near the end that’s borrowed from a certain American movie, and I wonder if my English-speaking readers will know what film that is. No one in Japan ever caught it.

  .

  Hideyuki Kikuchi

  June 28, 2006

  while watching Billy the Kid versus Dracula

  A VISION OF BEAUTY

  CHAPTER 1

  .

  I

  .

  After midnight, the wind grew stronger. The clouds rumbled as they rolled along. In accordance with the moon’s dips into that cover, the night alternated between glowing with white light and sinking into pitch blackness. Somewhere out there, something howled. A cry unlike anything she’d ever heard, it made the girl by the window grow stiff.

  “Nothing to be scared about,” said the master of the lodging house, wiping his mouth after another in a long line of drinks of cheap booze. The unlabeled bottle of what seemed to be home brew had been nearly empty of liquid, and was filled instead by a dark green surprise: a frog. In these parts, various species of back-leaping frogs were used to bring a full-bodied taste to the liquor. But even though this lodging house was near the northernmost extreme of the Frontier, it was still difficult for travelers to ignore the local practice. “That right there’s the sound of beast weeds blooming. We don’t get many dangerous critters in these parts.”

  Perhaps put at ease by this, the young woman turned from the window and smiled. It was a lonely little smile that suited the seedy lodging house, although the seventeen-year-old brimmed with a beauty that saved her from seeming too gloomy. Even the dreariness of her shirt and slacks, waterproofed with animal fat, seemed unable to counter the charm lent to her by the silver comb stuck in her red hair.

  Out of the collection of five rest houses that made up this unbelievably small community, this was by far the most squalid. There was no one in the brick hall save the innkeeper and three patrons, including the girl. But add two more people, and the room would’ve been completely packed.

  “How far you going anyway, miss?” the innkeeper asked as he turned his liquor bottle upside down and shook it.

  “To Cronenberg,” the girl replied.

  “Now, I don’t know where you hail from, but it’s a hell of a thing for a lady like you to choose this of all roads. If you were to take the main road instead, you’d get there a whole lot sooner.”

  “It’d be a whole lot more dangerous, too. Wouldn’t it?” the girl said, covering the leather pouch attached to her belt with the palm of her hand. “The road from the Belhistan region to Cronenberg, in particular, is swarming with monsters. I’d rather not run into any mecha beasts or mazers or any of those types, thank you.” Though her tone was colored with loathing, there was no fear in it.

  While the back roads that branched off from the main thorough-fares had less danger from monsters, they were beset by natural disasters such as landslides, quicksand, and impasses, as well as plenty of human monsters—thieves and bandits of all sorts. Traveling alone, especially for a girl at her tender age, wasn’t something to be undertaken unless you were quite fearless and well-skilled in the use of weapons. And though the girl’s facial features still shone with the innocence of youth, one could catch a glimpse of a resolute will in them as well.

  “Well, if you’ve come this far, there’s just a bit further to go—you should be there by tomorrow evening. Get yourself a good night’s rest. Fortunately, summer’s almost here. The road’s pretty rocky, but I suppose the season will make it a touch nicer.”

  At the innkeeper’s appropriately slurred words, the girl got a faraway look in her eye. “Yes, summer,” she muttered. “At last.”

  At that moment, someone beside the reinforced lacquer door said in a hoarse voice, “Florence.”

  The girl spun around. Surprise tinged her eyes.

  “Yes, I thought as much,” the voice said with apparent satisfaction.

  The girl noticed then that the speaker sat with the electric lantern on his tilting wooden table turned off, melding with the darkness. Despite the fact they were in a house that was all closed-up, the man wore a wide-brimmed hat as well as a woolen cloak. Although the gray hair and beard that hid nearly all of his face testified to his age, the eyes with which he watched the girl brimmed with an uncommon vitality.

  “There’s no reason to pull such a face,” the old man told her. “It’s a simple deduction, actually. You have the smell of salt and fish about you, and the comb in your hair is made from the bones of a lion fish, is it not? That’s a local specialty. If you grew up in Florence, I’d warrant you have all the pluck you’d need to travel on your own. If you’ll pardon my asking, just what manner of business sends you to Cronenberg?”

  The old man’s eyes gave off a light that seemed to draw her in, and the girl had to turn away.

  “Aw, look what you went and did. Now the little lady’s all pissed off,” the final voice in the room said, rising from another window directly across from the girl. The speaker was a young man, and he’d been the very last to come down from one of the rooms upstairs. Though his look of fearless determination fit his muscular physique, the pale line running diagonally across his right cheek couldn’t help but lend another impression—a less than reputable one.

  All present took in the young man’s face, but their eyes quickly shifted to his hands. Perhaps the sight of them had stimulated their hearing, for they now heard the sound of the little things sparkling between the fingers of his meaty hands. Squinting her eyes, the girl realized that it was a pair of thin metal rings.

  “Care to give it a try?” the man asked, grinning as he held out his right hand to her. The rings were shaking. To the man by the door he said, “You don’t ask anyone where they’re from or where they’re headed—that’s the rule of the road. For starters, you haven’t even given us your name. I guess as people grow older, they get all inquisitive and such, do they?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” the old man said, shrugging his shoulders. “But I suppose it was impolite of me not to introduce myself. You may call me Professor Krolock. It’s not an official title, mind you.”

  “I’m Wu-Lin,” the girl said with a bow. It was an ingrained reaction.

  “I’m Toto. Anyway, how about a little wager, missy?” the young man suggested. “It’s a simple game, really. All you need to do is separate these two rings. Like so.”

  Reaching for the loose end with his other hand, the man—Toto—pulled in either direction. The rings came apart without any resistance at all, but no matter how closely Wu-Lin scrutinized where she thought she’d seen them separate, she couldn’t find any opening or break. Toto quickly put his hands together again. And the rings were back the way they’d been.

  “You get three minutes. The bet is for one gold kraken coin.”

  Wu-Lin’s eyes bulged in their sockets. “Those are worth five times their face value on the Frontier,” she said in disbelief. “There’s no way I’d be car
rying that sort of money.”

  “Good enough. For something else then,” Toto said, his smile strangely affable. “What that pretty little hand of yours has been safeguarding the last few minutes.”

  Startled, Wu-Lin twisted her body to put her waist out of Toto’s view, but at the same time two more pairs of eyes concentrated on her from another direction. They were focused on her pouch.

  “You’re looking awfully pale . . . it must be rather important to you. If it’s not cash, I’d say it’s jewels . . . or maybe a youth elixir?” And with that, Toto suddenly got a serious look in his eye again. “Well, if it’s all that precious to you, I won’t twist your arm. What-ever money you’ve got will be fine. I’ll still put up one kraken coin. And I’m a man of my word.”

  Wu-Lin’s expression shifted. Judging from her wardrobe and her current accommodations, she wasn’t exactly traveling in luxury. Kraken coins were produced in extremely limited quantities and were quite valuable. That one coin would be enough for her to hire an armed escort and pay for a carriage all the way to the Capital.

  “Relax,” the young man said. “Even if I clean you out, I’ll at least buy you some breakfast tomorrow morning. Once you’ve eaten your fill, you’ll make it to Cronenberg somehow or other.”

  His smiling face and equally affable objections served to strengthen Wu-Lin’s resolve. “I paid for my room in advance, but that only leaves me with four coppers,” the girl confessed.

  “Well, that’ll do,” Toto said, spinning the silvery rings around his fingertip. “Okay, here’s mine.”

  His left palm went down on the table, and then came away again. The glitter of gold was reflected in all three pairs of eyes.

  Taking a seat in the chair across from him, Wu-Lin lifted the lid of her pouch and thrust her right hand into it. Her left hand kept it covered so no one could see inside. The faces of the four copper coins she produced were covered with a patina.

  “That’s the spirit!” Toto said. “You get exactly three minutes.” Handing the two rings to the girl, he gazed at the magnetic watch around his wrist. “Ready—Go!”

  As he gave the signal, Wu-Lin focused her entire being on the rings in her hands. On closer inspection, one of them did have a break in it. But while it had an opening, the gap wasn’t half as wide as the other ring was thick—it was as thin as a thread. But Toto had got them apart. Relying on her memories of what she’d seen, Wu-Lin tried every possible movement with her hands, but the rings remained hopelessly linked.

  “Three minutes—time’s up!”

  As Toto spoke, the girl’s shoulders—which were quite solid for a girl her age—fell in disappointment. Setting the rings down on the table, she let out a deep sign.

  “I like you, missy,” the young man said. “You’re not gonna raise a stink and call me a cheat, are you?”

  “If I did, would you give me my money back?”

  Toto broke into a broad grin. “Sure, why not? I’m not about to give you my coin, but you could walk away with your own. All you’d have to do is give me one little bitty peek at what you got in that pouch.”

  This seemed to be quite a generous offer, and after furrowing her brow for a moment, Wu-Lin soon nodded her agreement. She probably figured since he already knew she was carrying something precious, there was really no point in hiding it. Hers was a rather decisive temperament.

  “Hey, you guys better not look. This is just us gamblers squaring away a debt,” Toto coldly told the other two men as he watched Wu-Lin’s hand disappear into the pouch.

  Her hand came right back out. In it was a wad of black velvet. Brusquely setting it down on the table, Wu-Lin pulled the shiny black cloth to either side without pretension.

  “I see,” Toto said, pursing his lips. Rather than being impressed, he seemed a bit suspicious—and more than a tad disappointed.

  There lay a semitransparent bead that Wu-Lin could’ve easily concealed in the palm of her hand. Essentially a sphere, it was marked in places by faint distortions. While the material from which it was crafted was unclear, judging by its dull silver glow, it didn’t appear to be any sort of jewel or other precious stone.

  “Satisfied?”

  “What the hell is it?” Toto asked.

  As he reached out with one hand, Wu-Lin quickly jerked the bead away. Carefully rewrapping it, she said, “It’s a kind of pearl.”

  “It came out of the sea, did it? So, I guess you came all this way to sell it, then. I hate to break it to you, but that thing—”

  “It’s no concern of yours,” Wu-Lin said flatly. Quickly picking up her coppers and putting them and the velvet wad back into her pouch, the girl returned to her seat by the window—back to the sound of the wind, and the ever-changing hues of the darkness.

  At that moment, there was a dull sound off in the distance—the thunder of hoofbeats. They were drawing closer.

  The innkeeper set down the glass he was holding. “No one passes this way at this hour,” he said. His voice was stiff.

  “It’s a traveler,” Professor Krolock said, his eyes still shut.

  Toto stopped toying with his rings and muttered, “In the dead of night? They’d have to be funny in the head.”

  No sooner had he spoken than a beastly howl drifted eerily from the opposite direction of the hoofbeats.

  “They’re out?!” the innkeeper practically screamed as he got to his feet. “It’s those damn bronze hounds! They run in packs of ten or so. Can’t do squat to them with a sword or spear.”

  “We’ve got to let whoever it is in!” Wu-Lin said, dashing toward the door, but the innkeeper raced over like the wind and grabbed her tightly.

  “Oh no you don’t,” the innkeeper said. “It’s too late for that. If those accursed hounds get a whiff of humans, they’ll be in here, too!”

  “But—” Wu-Lin started to protest, but she caught herself.

  The cramped room was filled with the sort of silence that made the flesh crawl. The sound of the hoofbeats continued to steadily grow louder, and then they seemed to pull aside in front of the door, even though the rider had surely heard the hounds.

  A different sound arose from the end of the road: the clatter of countless paws scampering closer.

  “We have to help that person!” Wu-Lin swung her foot forcefully, and the innkeeper grabbed his crotch. The girl ran to the door.

  “Don’t do it!” Toto shouted from behind her, but even as he did, she was reaching for the doorknob.

  A split second later, the girl turned right around with her hand still extended and dashed back across the room. Stopping in front of the counter that served as both the bar and the front desk, Wu-Lin was frozen stiff in amazement, but the rest of the group didn’t get to see it. For at that very instant on the other side of the door—right in front of the lodging house—two kinds of footsteps collided, and the night was filled with the howling of beasts.

  Wild dogs with hides like blue steel made straight for the poor traveler and his horse. A bladed weapon swung down at the beasts, only to bounce off them in vain. Flesh-rending fangs and blood-spattered muzzles—it was a tragic scene any of them could easily imagine, but a second later it was over. The howls of the bloodthirsty beasts were suddenly cut short, and the thud of one heavy body after another hitting the street echoed out—and then silence . . . or almost silence. There was only a hard, faint sound steadily fading in the distance. The sound of hoofbeats.

  No one moved, or even said a word.

  After a little while, Toto got up and quickly walked over to the door.

  “Hey!” the innkeeper called out in a voice that was tiny and hoarse. He could only imagine what had transpired outside.

  Toto roughly threw the door open. The warm nocturnal air was heavy with the scent of aromatic night grasses. The wind struck Toto in the eyes but couldn’t tarry there, and the young man caught another of the night’s scents.

  The moon was out. On the road, the scenery was a stark contrast of black and white—but bl
ack seemed to be the stronger of the two.

  The smell was coming from a number of pools of blood. The heads and torsos of the bronze-covered wild dogs had already ceased twitching.

  “One, two, three—” Toto said, extending a finger with each number. “Exactly ten of the beasts! And all of them put down in less than two seconds—”

  Leaping out into the road, Toto gazed in the direction the hoof-beats had gone. The howls of the night wind made his well-trimmed hair and the hem of his coat billow in the same direction.

  “It might’ve been him . . .” the others in the doorway heard Toto mutter as he faced the darkness that swallowed the end of the road. “He can travel by night. And all alone.”