"Five years in my service and he's still got all his limbs. He's still obedient, still sane. He's not even very bloodthirsty, but I still have a few years to train that into him. I cannot make him into a yamabushi. But I shall make him into something that can crush yamabushi and kami alike into boneless mush."
Toshi looked the huge bald apprentice over. "Yes, he's quite remarkable. You should be proud."
"Kobo's people in the forest are closely connected to spirits there. And I am on good terms with the local yamabushi."
"Meaning they're terrified of you and won't risk antagonizing you if they can help it."
"Precisely."
Kobo stood, stoic and silent. Toshi glanced from the apprentice to the ogre. "So you think clean-head's tribe might know something?"
"I think it will be easy to enlist the budoka monks' aid against the soratami and their kami. The spirit of the woods always move in opposition to that of the sky-it is the order of things. The warriors will be very interested in your story, Toshi. Their enemy is moving, and they might easily be roused to action.
"Great things are in motion, oath-brother, mystic and military events on a global scale. We must move carefully or be crushed by them. As you saw, the goblins and the bandits are taking their first tentative steps as allies. If you two can incite the forest monks while I bring the yamabushi into play, the moonfolk will have far more to worry about than a lone ochimusha and his freelance reckoners."
Toshi smiled. "So we're going to stir things up to draw the heat off of us? I like it." Then he reflected on what Hidetsugu had just said, and a cold sense of dread welled up in his stomach. '"You two?'" he said. "As in me and this walking slab of rock?"
"That is what I am suggesting."
"Then that is what I am refusing."
"Why? You came to find answers and assistance. Here is both in one sentence: You must seek elsewhere."
"I mean why him, why the forest monks?" Toshi was incredulous. "You said they wouldn't let him back in. What makes you think they'll listen to me if I show up with him in tow?"
Hidetsugu smiled unpleasantly. "They will listen, or he will demonstrate what a mistake they made in turning him away five years ago. Kobo," he suddenly barked at his apprentice. "Make sure to leave at least one of your former masters intact enough to answer Toshi's questions."
"Of course, master."
Toshi shook his head. "I absolutely refuse," he said. "If you want to send your boy on a revenge run, do it without me. Muscling a bunch of monks isn't going to get the soratami off my back."
"There are many monks in the forest. Some of them will be interested in your proposition. Kobo might not even find his tribe before you find budoka who are more… accommodating. In the meantime, you will need his protection along the way. Or do you expect to fight both kami and soratami alike by yourself?"
"I don't want to fight. I want to lie low." He looked up at Kobo. "He's not capable of low." "You cannot rely on that luxury," Hidetsugu said gravely. "Remember, they would have been waiting for you here if their plans worked out."
Toshi opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Hidetsugu nodded encouragingly. "Think about it, Toshi. Have you ever heard of a soratami in the forest?"
The ochimusha snapped back, "I haven't heard of anything in the forest, lump-brain. I never go there."
"Careful." Hidetsugu's grip tightened on his club, but he did not raise it. "The moonfolk hate the forest at least as much as you do. Their power is tied to their home in the clouds, to the spirits of sky and moon. The forest spirits will not welcome them, cannot sustain them."
"Or me. I'm from Numai." But Toshi was faltering. The ogre made sense, though Toshi could not imagine a prospect more dismal than a prospecting jaunt into the Jukai. He glanced over at Kobo. "Can he fight?"
"He's an ex-budoka monk who has been my student for five years." Hidetsugu smiled, the sly and victorious smile of a gambler with a winning hand. "Do you think I'd send him out as your bodyguard if he wasn't capable, oath-brother?"
"You planned this all along," Toshi realized. "You've intended to shuffle your boy off to the woods with me in tow ever since that fish kami flopped into your cave." Toshi blinked. "Is this why you branded him earlier, to make him part of the hyozan oath?"
"And I did not do it lightly. But Kobo will help us solve our problem. The least we can do in return is stand ready to solve his."
"The least we can do is leave him here and not oblige me to take care of him."
Hidetsugu leaned down into Toshi's face, and once more the ochimusha felt an instinctual urge to run and hide.
"That is precisely what you will do," the ogre growled. "I have marked him with the hyozan and you have consumed his flesh. He is nearly one of us now, a reckoner. And you, Toshi, will complete the ritual, so that you are as responsible to him as we are to each other."
Toshi was unable to hold the ogre's savage glare. "And if I don't?"
"Then we have nothing more to say to each other." Hidetsugu nudged him with a finger as thick and as sharp as a spear. "Do it, Toshi, and properly. This is my price for helping you. My student will return alive, or you shall avenge him according to our pact. Swear Kobo into our brotherhood, so that I know you will defend his life like your own. Otherwise, we can all sit here and wait for the moonfolk or even another kami to come collect you." Hidetsugu stood to his full height and Toshi heard the ridge on the ogre's skull scrape against the ceiling. "Who knows when or how terrible that visit will be? It may be beyond my power to protect you. I will, of course, look forward to avenging you according to our agreement."
Toshi glared up at the o-bakemono. As much as he hated Hidetsugu being right, he hated the circumstances even more. There truly was very little choice.
He drew his jitte and said to Kobo, "Hold out your hand." With swift, practiced motions, Toshi scratched the hyozan triangle and kanji into the bald youth's palm. Kobo's hand was callused and tougher than leather, so Toshi had to trace the symbol multiple times before it was scored into the bald youth's flesh.
Then Toshi repeated the symbols on his own hand and gestured for Hidetsugu's. The jitte's sharp tip was even less effective against the ogre's palm, but Toshi patiently kept at it until he had inscribed all the symbols he needed.
He gestured, and all three of them locked hands. They stood silently for a few moments, feeling a cold flow of nameless force traveling from one to the other like water through an aqueduct. They were all completely silent.
Then Toshi said, "We are free, bound only to each other. My life is yours, yours is mine. Harm one, harm all. The survivors must avenge. Whatever is taken from the hyozan, the hyozan recovers tenfold."
Toshi dropped the apprentice's hand and jerked free of the ogre's. "It's done," he said. "When do we leave?"
Hidetsugu looked over to the oni mosaic and the kami transfixed to the wall.
"Soon," the o-bakemono said. "Right after we have made the proper obeisance to the Ail-Consuming."
"I'd like to do some consuming of my own. I'm already sick of trail food."
Hidetsugu's eyes gleamed. "Have you ever dined on kami flesh? You'll never get a fresher cut."
Unable to determine if the ogre was joking, Toshi shuddered.
*****
Under Hidetsugu's orders, Kobo lit all the torches and braziers in the cavern. The interior of the cave was aglow with hellish orange light, and blood-red shadows danced on every wall.
The o-bakemono was kneeling before the mosaic altar to his oni. In the final stages before its death, the marine kami twitched and struggled against the crude iron nails that held it. Hidetsugu was growling in a language that Toshi did not comprehend, but he imagined its kanji were short, sharp, and vicious.
Kobo ran to and fro around his master, lighting torches and tossing them toward the altar. Sometimes Hidetsugu's chants would rise in pitch and volume, and then his apprentice would crack open a clay pot and spread the thick red liquid within across the cavern
floor.
Toshi stood well back from the ritual. He had seen Hidetsugu at work before and knew it was best to have a clear path of escape. Besides, the ogre had warned him that The All-Consuming Oni of Chaos was not particular about what it consumed. Summoned to feast on a kami, it would not hesitate to wolf down any extraneous humans nearby.
The smoke thickened and the air in the cavern grew foul. Toshi heard a faint sound, like the buzzing of a swarm of locusts as it descended on a field. The buzzing grew louder, and Hidetsugu's chants rose to be heard above the din.
Firelight played across the surface of the mosaic, and white sparks leaped from the spaces between tiles. Toshi's thought his vision had fogged for a moment, but when he looked away from the altar he could see perfectly. There was some form of distortion over the image of the oni, and it was growing.
The Ail-Consuming Oni of Chaos thrust one of its hungry mouths into the world of substance. Ghostly images of a dozen other mouths loomed in the distorted air around it. Hovering like insects, the bat-winged scavengers screeched and hooted in the distance, far beyond the oni in the widening pool of blurry air. A second pair of voracious jaws appeared, followed by a third, and a fourth. In moments, a dozen or more of the disembodied mouths had manifested in the cavern and were sniffing the air, jostling one another, zeroing in on the helpless kami. Above this storm of angry teeth and jaws, three huge eyes opened, arranged in an upright triangle. Two massive horns began to emerge over the highest eye, which scanned the inside of the entire cavern while the lower two fixed hungrily on the dying kami.
Like a school of carnivorous fish, the floating maws descended on the maritime spirit, ripping free huge chunks of its dense, blubbery flesh. The kami squirmed against its restraints and began lowing in a deep, mournful voice that brimmed with pain. Blood, scales, and bits of meat flew out from the altar, creating a terrible cloud of sticky gore. The lower eyes of the oni rolled up in their sockets, but the third remained locked on its meal, glowing an unholy blood red as the oni exulted in gluttonous carnage.
At the center of the ghastly maelstrom, the kami finally died and began to fade away. The oni's mouths faded too, following its meal from one world to the next, unwilling to give up even a single bite. The buzzing roar died down and the air began to clear. The last thing to fade from the grisly tableau was the oni's uppermost eye.
Hidetsugu continued to chant. Then, the ogre shaman stood with his eyes closed and hands open. He brought his massive palms together with the sound of a black powder keg explosion, and every flame in the cavern went out.
Toshi stood perfectly still in the sudden darkness, sweat rolling down the back of his neck. He could hear Kobo shuffling, moving things across the floor, but he could not hear Hidetsugu.
"Now we're done," the ogre said. His voice came from behind Toshi, and the ochimusha jumped. "Get ready to leave." Then, Hidetsugu chuckled. "Kobo."
A torch burst into fiery life with the burly apprentice below. Kobo was no longer in his red and black robes, but instead had donned a simple woolen wrap that covered him from his waist to his knees. He wore spiked wire wrapped around both wrists, and Toshi saw that he had a set of metal rings embedded in his torso. A strand of animal hide stretched from the ring on one collarbone down to the one on his ribs, then back up to the other collarbone. The rough strips of hide rubbed against the raw, weeping brand on Kobo's chest.
"Let me guess," Toshi said. "You're dressed like one of the forest monks."
Kobo nodded. It occurred to Toshi that he hadn't heard the burly youth say very much since he'd arrived.
"So," he said, "that Consuming Oni back there… can you summon that? Because things may get rough out there, and I want to know what you're capable of."
The ogre's apprentice held Toshi's eyes but he seemed somewhat embarrassed.
"No," he said. "I am nowhere near that powerful."
"Yet," added Hidetsugu.
"Good," said Toshi. "I don't want that thing anywhere near me unless Hidetsugu is there with his club and a suitable decoy. Keep things simple and we'll get along just fine."
Kobo looked to his mentor, who nodded. He echoed the nod to Toshi and said, "As you say, oath-brother."
"And don't call me that." He gestured between Hidetsugu and himself. "When we do it, it's kind of endearing, like a playful insult between friends. When you say it, it sounds far too ominous."
"But he is your oath-brother, Toshi. I will hold you to that."
"You don't have to hold me to anything. I'm bound. I will honor the oath."
Hidetsugu brushed past Toshi and crouched down to his apprentice. "Go now. Seek as I have instructed. Follow Toshi's example-he's an expert at staying alive."
"I will not fail you, master."
Hidetsugu jerked his head toward the incline. Outside, the morning sky was just starting to exchange darkness for dawn.
Without another word, Kobo turned and started up the incline. Toshi watched him go, then turned back to Hidetsugu.
"You think this will work?"
The ogre busied himself with the embers slowly dying in the brazier. "We'll all die eventually. The trick is to die well, with your eyes open."
Toshi shook his head. "You barely make sense to me any more, old man. In a few more years, you're going to need a second apprentice to wipe the drool away from your senile lips."
Hidetsugu strode away from Toshi, disappearing into the gloom in just a few huge strides.
"Find out what threatens you, Toshi." The ogre's voice echoed from every wall, and Toshi strained to spot him. "For it threatens us all."
Despite his best efforts, Toshi did gaze around as he exited Hidetsugu's cavern. He was not eager to spy more portents that might give him an omen for what was to come. But he was a kanji adept, and he could not help but look.
To his relief and his indefinable dread, he saw nothing but Kobo as the apprentice stood waiting outside the ogre's hut. Silently, they made their way north, leaving the shadows behind as the sun rose over the ridge behind them.
CHAPTER 5
Pearl-Ear stood looking out a window from the mezzanine of the Daimyo's stronghold. With a short turn of her head, she could change her view from the rich, crowded splendor within the tower and the blasted devastation without.
Towabara had changed dramatically in the twenty years since she went up into the tower to announce the princess's birth. Then, the view from this height would have shown a horizon dotted with villages and towns, with good clear roads and vast, unbroken fields.
Now, from her window, the fox-woman could still see nearly all western Towabara, from the fortifications at the base of the tower past the skeletal villages and towns, all the way across the smoke- and mist-blanketed wasteland to the vague horizon. Campfires burned below, and sentry patrols carried lanterns out in the haze, tiny pinpricks of light struggling against a field of dismal gray.
Once, the stronghold had been the center of Konda's vast holdings, the keystone of his kingdom. Now, the tower and its immediate grounds contained virtually all Konda's domain. His lands had been devastated by the Kami War, his people dead, driven off, or crowded behind its walls like rabbits in a warren.
Daimyo Konda's stronghold still soared hundreds of stories over the rest of his domain. Where it had once crowned a gleaming and vibrant society, now it was one of the few large structures still standing. The tower was begun as the young lord's first great act as sovereign, and it had served as both fortress and palace once the outer defensive walls were complete. From this powerful seat, Konda drove the bandits out of the Araba, consolidated a dozen different local warlords under his banner, and established his nation as the greatest power in Kamigawa.
The tower's foundation was carved into the very roots of the rocky mountain. It was called a tower because it stretched up so high, but it was broader even at its midpoint than any other castle in the kingdom. It had taken a great deal of powerful magic, thirty thousand laborers, and over a decade to complete. By the time t
he final spire was set in place, Towabara was a nation that deserved such a grand capitol and Konda had earned his right to rule it.
Pearl-Ear looked down at the rolling clouds of dust that roamed the ruins like a predator, then up to the sun, muted and faint behind an endless ceiling of yellow clouds. Twenty years of war had bled the entire land white, draping it in despair and pallid, sickly hues.
Far below, her sharp ears caught the sound of soldiers shouting. She peered through the haze and saw a company of warriors converging, moving, circling around an indiscriminate mass. The kami had come again, as they always did. Konda's retainers and soldiers had gone out to beat them back, as they always did.
Inside the building, a loud brass gong sounded, calling all Konda's top advisors to their weekly assembly. Despite the trouble inside the gates, Konda was determined to conduct affairs of state normally.
Pearl-Ear dreaded this meeting more each passing week. The bickering between diplomats was almost as painful as the tales of akki unrest and bandit raids that poured in from around the kingdom. If she were free to do as she pleased, she would have returned to her people in the forest years ago.
Lady Pearl-Ear gathered her robes and padded down the mezzanine stairs, to the great hall where the assembly took place. She was not free. She was bound by duty to her people, her position, and her beloved friends. Her greatest joy in Eiganjo was also her greatest burden-how she wished she could simply pack up the things that mattered most and go. To the forest, to the countryside, even to Numai. Anywhere but here, in the cursed kingdom of Daimyo Konda.
As Lady Pearl-Ear reached the final step, a pair of human girls approached her. The smaller of the two was dressed in a floor-length blue robe with wide white sleeves, the traditional uniform of the Minamo
Academy. The student wizard had short, straight brown hair that framed her face and accented her wide brown eyes. She was lean and ropy, with arm muscles that rippled like a soldier's. Pearl-Ear could sense an aura of varnished wood and bowstrings on her. The Minamo trained its students as kyujutsu archers as well as mages, and that this one, Riko-ome, was at the top of her class in both. The student archer's face and figure were both quite feminine, but compared to the young woman next to her, Pearl-Ear thought Riko seemed rather plain and boyish.
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