by Fuyumi Ono
Youko nodded. "I haven't come to any conclusion in my own regard, but I don't object to rescuing Keiki. But how?"
"We have no recourse but to force. Keiki is being kept in Sei Province, in the midst of the pretender's army."
"If Keiki can be rescued, then can I go home? I am asking a simple question."
The En nodded. "Keiki can precipitate a shoku. Because you have the constitution to cross the Kyokai, there would be no difficulty. Rightly or wrongly, if you wish to return and Keiki refuses, I shall have Enki carry it out."
He was a fair person, Youko thought. He could equally have threatened not to if she refused to become king.
"Frankly, I'd rather not," said Enki. "When the time comes, get Keiki to do it."
The En glared at him. "Rokuta."
"Since you're playing dumb, I'll fill her in. Calamities occur whenever there's a shoku. If it's only a kirin crossing over, a windstorm, maybe. But in the case of a king crossing over as well, we're talking massive destruction. And it'll happen over there, too."
"In Japan?"
"Yes. Here and there. Because here and there are not meant to mingle together. When you were brought here, the shoku caused widespread damage in Kou. But considering that it was royalty crossing the Kyokai, it was a pretty minor catastrophe. That's not bound to be the case next time. If it was up to me, I'd have no part of it."
"If I am able to go home, I wouldn't want to impose so on Keiki."
"Suit yourself," he said with a rather sardonic smile and a bob of his head.
The En spoke up in sterner tones. "Even if you do return to Japan, Youko, you will by no means be beyond danger."
"I know."
As long as the Royal Kou refused to relent, he could still send youma after her. Her return as well would likely occasion natural disasters. Innocent bystanders would get caught up in youma attacks. She was a goddess of death. Here or there, going home would be no good for anybody. But even knowing this, she couldn't make up her mind.
"Do you think that before I go back, I ought to settle the score with the Royal Kou?"
"That you cannot do. I would not help you in the least."
"You can't?"
The En nodded. "If nothing else, remember this. There are three sins a king cannot commit. The first is to reject the Mandate of Heaven and stray from the Way. The second is to choose suicide rather than accept the Mandate. The last is to invade another country, even, for example, to suppress an internal rebellion."
Nodding, Youko said, "Yes, but what about you? What about invading Kei in order to take back Keiki?"
"If the Royal Kei herself stands at the vanguard and leads the way, then it shall be done in her name. In such a case, we are only answering her call and assisting her as her allies."
"Of course."
The En laughed heartily. "In order to secure Keiki's release, I shall grant you the use of the Imperial Army. What say you?"
Youko bowed, a thin smile on her lips. "If you wouldn't mind. I apologize for giving you nothing but reasons to be disappointed by my presence."
Enki scowled, then smiled. "Shouryuu wants there to be more taika kings. But it's nothing to get worked up about. After all, up till now there's been only one."
"There's only one?"
"For the time being. There have been any number in the past, but their numbers were never that great."
"Aren't you a taika, too, Enki?"
"Yes. Me and Shouryuu and Taiki. You make it four."
"Taiki is the kirin of the Kingdom of Tai?"
"Yes. The hinasa of the Outland Kingdom of Tai.
"Hinasa?"
"A fledgling. A kirin who has not reached adulthood."
"Like you?"
"I am an adult kirin. When a kirin reaches adulthood, his outward appearance stops growing as well."
"In other words, you grew faster than Keiki did."
"That's it," he said, with no little pride in the fact. The En smiled to himself.
"So Taiki wasn't fully grown?"
"No."
"Wasn't, as in the past tense?"
Enki responded to Youko's question with a strained expression on his face. He exchanged glances with the En.
"Taiki died. At least, that's what was communicated to us. The Kingdom of Tai is in the midst of chaos. No one knows what happened to Taiki or to the Royal Tai."
Youko sighed. "So it's a bad situation, like it is here."
"Where there are people, there are complications. His name is Takasato. In human years, he would have been about your age."
"A man?"
"The ki in kirin indicates a male. The Tai kirin was a beautiful black unicorn."
"A black unicorn?"
"Have you ever seen a kirin?"
"Only in human form."
"The coat of a kirin is an orange-yellow, the back variegated, the mane usually gold."
"Like your hair?"
"Yes, but this isn't hair, really. It's a mane."
Makes sense, Youko thought to herself.
"The Tai kirin was black, the color of polished steel. The coat was jet black and the back silver. This variegation was rather unique."
"Is it rare?"
"Indeed. In all our history, there's nothing quite like the black unicorn. There have been red unicorns and white unicorns, too, but I have never seen them.
"Huh."
"If Taiki had indeed died, the Royal Tai could be expected to pass away as well. The Tai-ka--the fruit bearing the Tai kirin--should have appeared on Mt. Hou. But there was no sign of it."
"Tai-ka?"
"The tree that bears the fruit of the kirin is on Mount Hou. When a kirin dies, at the same time, the ranka of the new kirin should begin to grow. If Taiki had died, it would become the next Tai kirin. In the case of a female, then Tairin, from the second syllable of kirin. The ranka is named according to the name of its kingdom, in this case designated the Tai-ka. However, there was no Tai-ka to be found on Mount Hou. So he still must be alive."
"Don't kirin have parents?"
"No. Being a taika is beside the point. That's why kirin don't have names. Only titles."
"Keiki, too?"
Enki nodded. There seemed something quite sad about that fact. As if knowing what was on her mind, he put on a deliberately sullen face.
"The kirin are sad creatures. They live only for the king, have no parents or siblings, not even names. If the king chooses, he can work you half to death. In the end, you end up dying because of the king. And not even a grave awaits you."
Enki shot a look at the En. His lord turned the other way. Enki frowned and sighed.
"No grave?" Youko asked and Enki averted his eyes as if in self-reproach for having brought the subject up.
"You can't get somebody to prepare a grave for you?"
The En said with a forced smile, "It's not that he does not have a grave. King and kirin are interred together. He means there isn't a body."
"Why?" Perhaps, she thought, because the kirin were supernatural beings, no physical body was left behind.
"That's enough."
Enki said, "Look, it's no big secret. The kirin employs the youma as his servants. The kirin and the youma make a pact. The youma who accept the pact promise to obey the kirin. In exchange, when the kirin dies, the youma get to feast on his body."
Youko looked up, first at the En, then at Enki. Enki shrugged.
"That's what it comes down to. Kirin sure must taste good. Anyway, I'll be dead by then, so I can't say I really care. If it seems a sad end to you, well, then take good care of Keiki. Try not to let him down."
Youko didn't know what to say. So instead she said, "The Royal Kou must not have feared causing Kourin similar distress."
The En smiled sardonically. "Who knows what the Royal Kou is thinking."
Enki shrugged as well. "Interfering in the internal affairs of other kingdoms will lose you the Mandate of Heaven. Despite that, he couldn't refrain from launching on this idiotic course. H
e must have a powerful reason."
"You would think."
"And yet, acting without a thought in their heads, save knowing that at some point they'll have to face the music alone, humans go rushing in where angels fear to tread. They're fools. The more it hurts, the less they think."
His words hit home like a punch to the solar plexus. Youko could only nod. "It's scary."
"Scary?"
"Yeah. I can't help feeling I've just caught a tiger by the tail."
The En smiled softly. "The kirin cannot deny the king. But that doesn't mean that he will do everything you say without objection. Never forget you're just a dumb human. That's the best way to let your other half help you out."
"My other half?"
"Your kirin."
Youko nodded. She glanced at the chair to her right. The sword was sitting there. The Suiguu-tou, the Water Monkey Sword, that could see the future and the present and what was far from her.
The En hadn't said as much, but if she could control the sword, shouldn't she be able to tell what the Royal Kou was up to?
8-3
The kingdom had two armies. The Provincial Guard was entrusted to the province lords and garrisoned in their various locals. The Imperial Army answered directly to the king.
The regular cavalry would push toward Iryuu, the provincial capital of Sei in the Kingdom of Kei. This campaign, however, would take a month, and when it came to saving Keiki, a month was too long to wait. So it was decided that a combined squadron of a hundred and twenty elite horsemen, skilled at riding pegasi and other flying beasts, would be mustered for an aerial raid on Iryuu.
En and Enki left at once to make the preparations. They weren't back by lunch or supper. Leaving Rakushun to his own devices, Youko returned to her room. She placed the sword on the table and sat down in front of it.
She was the lord of the sword. Although she understood this in theory, what it meant in practice perplexed her. It must be quite difficult, but as she hadn't the slightest idea what to do, it couldn't hurt to give it a try and seeing what happened.
She didn't know how to deliberately bring about a vision. But if all she had to do was call it forth, perhaps it wouldn't be that hard.
Long before she had come to this world, she had seen the dreams and had heard the sound of falling water. When she asked the En about it, he told her that those visions had undoubtedly been shown to her by the sword. Most likely, the sword had predicted the enemy attack, and had been warning her, the lord of the sword, of what was going to happen.
But at the time, Youko hadn't yet met Keiki, had not covenanted with anybody. Yet the sword knew that she was its lord. Before receiving the Mandate of Heaven, before being chosen . . . .
Explaining all of this to the En, he ventured in turn that perhaps she had been born with the Mandate of Heaven upon her shoulders. Or perhaps the burdens of the throne had become her own as soon as Keiki made his decision.
"Who knows?" Enki had chimed in. "I can't say why I picked him. There weren't any obvious reasons, except that he was the one."
Enki said that a kirin chose a king by instinct. In any case, Youko did not think that communicating her intentions to the sword should be so difficult.
She extinguished the lights in the room, drew the sword from the scabbard and stared at the blade.
Show me the Royal Kou.
Up till now, the sword had continued to show her nothing but visions of her life in Japan. Youko had the feeling that it was because there had been nothing else on her mind but the intent to return to Japan.
Show me what the Royal Kou is up to. As she didn't yet know her own mind, it could at least show her the mind of a fool.
The blade of the sword began to flicker with a phosphorescent light. Faint shadows played within the light. She heard the sound of falling water. She concentrated on the shadows, waited as the shadows coalesced into recognizable objects.
She saw a white wall. A glazed window. A yard. She recognized the yard. It was the yard of her house.
No, not this.
She focused her thoughts and the vision vanished. She looked at the dark blade in front of her eyes. She had failed.
"You're not going to try this just once," she lectured herself. Again, she stared at the blade. Before, she had not seen multiple visions on a single night, but sooner than she expected, the sword began to glow.
Yet, once again, she found herself looking at the yard of her house. She didn't let herself get discouraged. She concentrated on pushing her conscious thoughts away from the image in front of her. Not this, she repeated to herself like a mantra. The vision wavered like the calm surface of water when disturbed.
What appeared next was her room.
No.
And then her school.
No.
As many times as she tried, she saw nothing but the other world. Scenes of her house, her school, her friends' houses. Nothing of this world.
It's just like the scabbard, Youko thought. Toying with her the same way the blue monkey did. Still, she knew it was her fault as well, not being able to put old thoughts behind her. And knowing that, she didn't give up.
Patiently, trying over and over, she finally recognized a vision that came from this world. At last! she rejoiced. But then she recognized what she was seeing. The gates of a city surrounded by piles of bodies. The road leading up the gates soaked with blood. From among the fallen, came wrenching moans. In their midst stood a young man with a dark expression on his face.
God, that's me.
"Stop!" she cried, hastily extinguishing the vision.
It was Goryou, where she had abandoned Rakushun. Even though she knew it was herself, she found her appearance astonishing. Had she really looked so miserable? She threw down the sword. Then conscious of how frightened she was of the sword, she laughed derisively.
But it's the truth, isn't it?
If the blue monkey were here, that's what he would tell her. This was the real world. She didn't have the right to avert her eyes. Better to face it head on. If she kept ignorantly looking away, who knew when she would ever wise up.
Again, she gripped the hilt. She steadied her breathing and concentrated on the blade of the sword. The gates of Goryou soon appeared. In the vision, her visage was suffused with malevolence. At a glance, she knew what she was thinking. She was looking at Rakushun, debating whether or not to kill him.
The guards came rushing out of the city. Youko beat a fast retreat. After running away, the vision wavered and changed. What next appeared before her was a mountain trail. Youko watched as she turned her back on the mother and child who had been so kind to her.
She saw Takki and the old man from Japan and the two men driving the horse cart who were devoured on the road from Hairou. She saw their weeping families. It's the fault of the kaikyaku, she heard them curse her.
She was shown the city of Kasai and the horrid aftermath of the attack by the youma. At Goryou, the bodies stacked up like cordwood. Refugees from Kei squatting at the foot of some wall outside some city somewhere.
Youko watched all these visions. She realized that if she tried to reject what the visions were showing her, they would rage against her all the more. If she accepted what they were showing her, the visions drew closer to what she wanted to see.
A palace, and in the palace, an emaciated woman.
"I wished no women to remain in Gyouten."
"But … . "
That was Keiki, trying to voice a contrary opinion. Youko guessed that the woman was the Late Empress Yo.
"Criminals refuse an imperial order. Why do you hesitate administering justice to criminals?"
The only life left in the Empress Jokaku was in her eyes. She had the skin of a corpse, sunken cheeks, the tendons stood out in her neck, there was a sickly pallor all about her. Youko sensed these were the woman's last days. She must be suffering much to be that shrunken and skeletal. Despite the mounting pain and knowing the foolishness of her crimes, she was
not able to stop herself from committing them.
Youko saw the ruin of the Kingdom of Kei. She thought Kou was poor, but it was nothing compared to the destitution in Kei. She saw villages decimated by youma, the burning huts of the poor caught up in the conflagrations. The land and fields overrun with rodents and locust, rivers overflowing their banks, inundating the paddies with mud and sludge, countless bodies bobbing in the water.
This is the destruction visited upon a kingdom that loses its king.
"The kingdom will fall into ruin," she had heard over and over. The stark reality of those words finally came home to her. Living in Japan, they would have meant very little. Here, she understood what she had been repeatedly told with such passion.
The next thing she saw was a mountain road.
8-4
There were two people on the road. One wore a dark shroud over his head like the Grim Reaper. The other had golden hair. They were surrounded by a horde of beasts.
"Forgive me," said the golden-haired woman, her face buried in her hands. The same woman Youko had encountered on another mountain road.
That would be Kourin.
"I assume, of course, that you were begging my forgiveness."
The Grim Reaper let the shroud fall from his head. What appeared was the deeply wrinkled face of an old man. Nevertheless, he had a large stature that seemed incongruous with his age. A brightly colored parrot perched on his shoulder.
"A helpless girl. It's too bad we couldn't finish her off, but wandering about in these mountains, she shouldn't last long. Though we seemed to have miscalculated about whether or not she had accepted the covenant." The man spoke in a disinterested tone of voice, devoid of emotion. "Oh, well. She'll die a dog's death at the side of the road, or try to sneak into a village and be arrested. Either way, Taiho. Either way."
"Yes."
"I'll be upset if something like this happens again. No matter what, that girl must be exterminated."
