But he did not see where it began.
They chased me from the palace with dogs and bows, sent warriors to hunt me down. The word echoed in the halls of the Sendo Palace: kitsune! And I fled, abandoning my human mask, flying over hills in the form of a fox.
Yasuchika never guessed what he failed to see. He never saw the playful young fox spirit that once lived in China, free from care. He looked away too soon, and did not see an emperor take interest in her; nor did he see her fox-father refuse, knowing too well the corruption of humans.
Yasuchika closed his eyes, and did not watch as the great Shang Emperor Zhou, noble and wise, with the mandate of heaven behind him – a foolish, human conceit! – sent his soldiers to take the fox against her will.
That is where it began. But this, Yasuchika did not see. For he believed he had seen enough.
#
We have reached the base of the mountains, the noble hunters and I. My strength is at its end. Soon they will catch me, and then I will die.
I have died before. I no longer fear it. Toba will die as well, and that is all I ask for now.
Zhou is dead; Yu is dead; Toba will soon join them. The names of those I have brought down form a list whose recital would last hours. I take pride in that list, as I take pride in little else. What is beauty to me, or immortality, or the nine tails I have earned? What are love, joy, peace? These inner things, valued things, were taken from me long ago, and the outward things matter not at all. What matters is that Zhou has paid, and Yu has paid, and Toba will soon pay for his own crimes.
Oh, I heard what the ladies-in-waiting said, whispering in the corridors of the Sendo Palace as Toba weakened and moaned. He is a good man, they said. A wise ruler, guiding the country from behind the throne, retiring out of the light of court so he may concentrate on more important things.
Perhaps it is so. But his crimes would have come soon enough. They always do.
I learned that lesson from Zhou, centuries ago. Humans are of two kinds: mindless cattle, and the iron-fisted tyrants who herd and devour them. Those without power, and those who abuse the power they have.
Toba had power, and in time he would have used it for evil. For that, I have delivered justice. It is what I do.
The arrows thud into the dirt around me. I dart and leap, changing direction, but as I slip between the trees, I see something flash by.
A slip of paper, tied to the branch of a tree.
I realize at last that this chase has been different. My hunters have been herdsmen, leading me to this trap. Enchantment forms a net around me, and behind it I feel the hand of Yasuchika. He will bring his holiness to bear against me, Buddhist prayers, Shinto charms, and perhaps this is how I will die.
Holy men have killed me before.
The hunters pull their horses up short, shouting words I cannot hear. The chanting of Yasuchika fills my ears, and now, too late, too late, I feel what he is doing.
He will not kill me. He will do worse.
My hind paws drag in the dirt, cease to move. I cannot lift them. I rear up and am frozen thus, held by the trap I entered so carelessly. I curse this blind monk, who does not see that what I do is right and good, that it is necessary. He calls me an oni, a demon, and now he will bind me to this spot. My body grows heavy and stiff. I cannot move. He has caught me well, stealing my freedom, my ability to transform, leaving me on the edge of the Nasu Plain as nothing more than a twisted stone.
#
He won that day, and he lost.
The diviner put an end to my centuries of kings. He trapped me in this body of stone.
But my spirit survives.
Now my victims must come to me, and I care no more for justice. They call me the Death Stone, the Murderer Stone, an object filled with malice and hate. Those who understand avoid me, but there are always the strangers, the travelers, the ignorant.
The fools.
The enchantment that put me here will not last forever. Someday it will wane, and I will break free once more. There will be no mercy for the humans then. I will kill them as I find them, draining out their life, and no monk babbling prayers will trap me, ever again.
For I have learned the lesson of Zhou, the lesson of Yasuchika. Power is what matters, not the use to which it is put. I was a fool to think otherwise. I am a demon indeed, and will bring hell to them on earth.
Renaissance
Miles Cameron
THE LUPI FAMILY had always been knights, or at least, their right to the title had been uncontested for as many generations as anyone could remember. In the town square of Berona there was a mounted Lupi, and in the chapel—the oratory—a long line of kneeling Lupis served their maker, carved in stone—in their armor. At the Archaic gate to the town—the gate where the ancient statue of the Empress glowed, night and day, with the hermetical energies that the ancients had put into it—there, carved clearly in the ancient letters, it said:
C. AETRIO C F LEM TRIBU
LUPI
EQVO PVBLICO
IN QVINQVE DECVRIIS
PRAEF COH I ARELATUM
TRIB MIL LEG I ETRUSCAE
Tomaso was the last of the Lupis, and he had never quite managed to become a knight. It wasn’t for a lack of interest, or education. He practiced in the tiltyard, had lessons with the sword; rode well and fenced better. He could speak intelligently about dogs and hawks.
He could sing, and even write a song.
Most of all, he could read. He loved to read. He had worked and worked on his letters, and proved so adept that his drunken father had sent him to a magister.
The magister had tested him, and laughed. “Never in all my life have I met a man so utterly without 1essier1l,” he said, and patted young Tomaso Lupi on the head like a puppy. “Go swing a sword,” he said. “It’s all you are good for.”
And as Tomaso grew to adulthood, he could swing a sword—some accounted him a fine blade. He could read Archaic, both low and high—and that was useful skill in a priest or a magister. Sadly, Tomaso Lupi was neither a priest nor a magister. Nor did Tomaso’s skills run to the management of money, for he was the son and grandson of men whose skills had not included the management of money. Men and women who managed money better bought their town house, and then, when he was on the edge of adulthood, his father died and his mother collapsed in a wine-soaked frenzy of prayer, and Tomaso found himself penniless—and what is worse, he was publicly known to be penniless.
Their tiny keep—not even a castello—in the countryside paid for two funerals. Tomaso kept the last of the land. His father said the Lupi had owned the land since Archaic times. Tomaso often wished he had lived in Archaic times.
Tomaso had enough land to plow with an ox. He also had an ox.
In one winter, he sold the ox and lived well enough. He had kept his books—famous books, carefully written out by hand in a scriptorium. He didn’t tire of his Archaic masters. He didn’t do his eyes any favors, either.
Tomaso learned very quickly to live alone. He hadn’t ever expected to be quite so alone. One afternoon, his favorite among the older ‘young men’ rode into his yard. He was mounted on a fine Ifriqu’yan mare, and the horse’s furniture was worth more than Tomaso’s little farm.
Alfredo Frederico Alighieri di Tuva was an elegant young man with dark hair, fashionably cut, and a skin-tight jupon in the latest fashion, with a cote hardie over it so elaborate that the sleeves fell—unused, but edged in expensive silver buttons—almost all the way to the ground.
“People said you were living this way,” Di Tuva said. He didn’t dismount. “You have no money, I suppose?”
Lupi considered. “Perhaps I am practicing to be a hermit.”
The two young men had never been very close, but they had drunk a good deal of wine together, and chased their share of red-kirtled courtesans. To Tomaso, it seemed another age entirely. He couldn’t even remember what a red-kirtled courtesan was like.
Di Tuva smoothed his near-perfect pointed beard. “I
f I ask for a cup of wine?” he asked.
“It will be a horn cup,” Lupi replied.
Di Tuva shrugged. He handed a small package wrapped in silk. “A guest gift!” he said.
Tomaso Lupi pulled it open. Inside was a pretty copper rabbit, beautifully worked. A tiny silver spoon sat rested between the rabbit’s ears.
“Wild Honey from the Nova Terra,” Di Tuva said. “I love the stuff.”
Tomaso shrugged. “You know it doesn’t—affect—me.”
Di Tuva laughed. “Then I’ll come back and eat it myself!”
Two cups of wine later, Lupi leaned back. “You are the first visitor I’ve had—since my mother was buried.”
Di Tuva shrugged again. It suited him, with his hanging sleeves, his square, muscular shoulders and his air of indolence. He was good at shrugging. “No one speaks of you.” He leaned forward. “If you were some kind of sexual pervert, perhaps people would visit you. If you had a hideous disease, people would come, if only so that later they could tell stories of your disfigurement.” He set his horn cup down with a snap. “But poverty—we all fear it more than we fear God, my friend. See that horse? My soon-to-be father-in-law purchased it. And all the buttons.” He looked up. “I miss you.”
Lupi’s heart swelled for a moment. He hadn’t expected Di Tuva to be—a friend. They’d been rivals. He couldn’t remember what they had been rivals about.
He poured more wine. It was good wine—Lupi lived in an area that had made wine since the Archaics had been there. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Di Tuva shrugged again. “Painting,” he admitted.
“Ah!” Lupi suddenly remembered the cause of the rivalry and he laughed aloud. They had had an argument over the new paintings in the chapel of Saint Georgio.
That seemed foolish, in light of recent events.
Di Tuva looked at him. “I—my soon-to-be new wife has a sister.” He paused. “You have an ancient name.” He shrugged. “I’m not doing this well. Really, after two cups of your wine, I’m ashamed of my errand. I’m ashamed I forgot you so quickly. What do you do here? Rot?”
Tomaso took him to the low house’s one window, where there was a reading stand.
“I read,” he said.
“All day?” Di Tuva asked.
Tomaso pointed at the sword slung by its belt on the wall over the bed. “When I can’t stay inside anymore, I fence with the old apple tree.” He tossed his head.
“Marry the girl. She’s plain—I confess she is plain. So what? She’ll have a dowry, and you won’t have to live like this.” Di Tuva finished his wine. “There, it is said. Christ, when my soon-to-be mother-in-law told me you lived out here in a hovel, I thought she was lying.”
For the first time, Tomaso was stung. “It’s not a hovel.”
Di Tuva nodded. “True. I’ve been in smaller brothels, but this is cleaner.”
“No,” said Tomaso Lupi. “No, I won’t marry some poor third daughter with almost no dowry. Let them put her in a convent. It will cost more, no doubt. But I won’t bring some poor girl here to pretend she’s a lady.”
Di Tuva got up. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Marry the girl and become family. Then—you have a sword. Use it.”
Di Tuva reached out and hugged the younger man, despite his homespun peasant’s cote and his undyed hood. “Don’t rot here,” he said.
“Thank you for coming,” Tomaso said, and he meant it.
Di Tuva rode away.
#
In the spring, Tomaso Lupi rented his fields to local peasants who knew what to do with them, and reserved to himself only the hill behind his little house. It was wooded, except at the top, where there was a fine piece of stonework—clearly Archaic. His grandfather had once told him that it was the ancestral castello, from a thousand years before. There was a tiny vineyard on the hill, and Tomaso worked this himself. Increasingly, as the spring turned to summer, the local men gave him advice—good advice—about props for his vines and a thousand other details.
Giuseppi and Giancarlo, the leaders of the local men, came and drank wine with him one evening. They talked, of all things, about the stars.
The next day, Tomaso found that girls in the market smiled at him, and his jar of good wine at the 1essie cost less than it had a week before. He called to the wife of the tavern keeper, and waved a copper solidi at her.
She grinned. “Ah—Messire Tomaso. Giuseppe says you are people.”
And that was that. Tomaso walked home, wondering that it had taken him eighteen years to learn that peasants had a price for peasants and another price for the gentry. He knew the tavern keeper’s wife’s name now—Maria. Signora Maria.
They had a social structure all of their own.
He wondered where he fell in it.
#
He found out almost immediately, when Giancarlo, whose wine was considered the best in the valley, came to his door on a donkey. The man dismounted, accepted a cup of wine, and was delighted to accept a small treat that Tomaso had purchased—a single spoonful of Wild honey from the Nova Terra.
“This is how the nobles live, eh?” Giancarlo said. He licked his spoon for a long time, and then sipped wine and spat. “Bah! It makes the wine taste sour.” He laughed. “And makes all the colors so—so—alive!”
“Too much sweetness has that effect,” Tomaso agreed. He sighed. “It has no effect on me except to sweeten my tea. A friend brought it—he eats it while he paints.”
Giancarlo surprised his host. “Painting—ah! How I love it. On feast days, I sprawl on the floor in San Giorgio and look at the frescoes until a priest makes me get up.”
Tomaso covered his surprise by opening the little jar of Wild honey again. “I love painting too.”
Giancarlo nodded. “Good. You have a head on your shoulders.” He took another spoonful of honey and there was a long silence. Then he asked, “How are the grapes on your little mountain?”
Tomaso shrugged. “Heavier every day.”
“That is a good place. Your wine should be—as good as mine.” He thumped the ground with his stout staff. “Listen, then. I have a daughter.’ He leaned forward. “She is quite—pretty. Men look at her.” He leaned back. “If they look too long, I hit them.” He looked at Tomaso for a reaction.
Tomaso spread his hands, as if to claim—what? Abstinence? Chastity?’
“I would like to meet her,” Tomaso said.
#
By the autumn harvest, he had met her three times. To his immense surprise—and he was horrified by his own assumptions—she was charming, modest, and had beautiful manners, even by the standard of the castle-trained. Every day, he discovered that peasants were not what he’d expected. They were courteous in church. They were ugly when drunk, but then, everyone was. They had excellent taste—some of them.
Giuglia had wonderful taste. She dressed well enough that she might have been a poor knight’s daughter, or a merchant’s. Giuglia was also as lithe as a cat and as quick-witted as a magister. She could add and multiply numbers, and she could read—slowly, it was true, but patiently and with great focus. With her mother watching her, she came to his small house and read from his Petrarcha—his favorite book, about the lives of the great ancients. When she came to a word she had trouble with, she would bite her tongue, and the tip would emerge from her lips—
:You love me?” she asked, in wonder. It was the first day of the grape harvest. His grapes were ripe, and he needed men to help him pick them and a wagon to transport them to town, and her father provided both. She came on the wagon and they had their first long talk.
“I think I do,” he said.
“My father only wants your stupid hill,” she said. She put a hand on his hand, greatly daring. “I know you—expect better. But,” she looked fiercely at his cottage, “but I can help you make us better.” She looked around. “Listen—I thought I was damned to one of these louts, ten babies and never another book in all my life but what I might see in church.�
� She made an odd face, half smile, half embarrassed frown. “This is too much honesty, I am guessing.”
He looked away to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
#
The next day, with most of his grapes in, he took Giancarlo’s wagon into the city for barrels. He didn’t have to go, but the other men had all done little tasks for him and he wanted to prove to them that he was one of them.
He knew what awaited him there.
He waited in a line at the coopers. There were dozens of men and carts waiting for barrels—it was that time of year. A young boy came down the line with a wax tablet and asked him how many barrels he’d reserved. Tomaso was forced to admit he hadn’t reserved any. He used Giancarlo’s name. The boy’s face brightened and some marks were made in the wax.
“This is what you preferred to marrying the Cavalli girl?” said a voice to his right. Di Tuva was leaning on his cart, arms and legs crossed, wearing a hooded half-circle cloak worth fifty ducats.
Tomaso Lupi made himself smile. “Yes,” he said.
Di Tuva grimaced theatrically. “She’s not that plain.”
The peasants in the line were now eyeing Di Tuva—and Lupi—with some hostility. Di Tuva caught a look and brushed his sword hilt with his hand and a man went red in the face.
Tomaso, of course, was not wearing a sword. It was at home, hanging over the bed. But he put a hand on Di Tuva’s shoulder. “Relax. These aren’t bravos. These are peasants buying barrels, and you don’t belong here.”
Di Tuva shrugged out from under Lupi’s hand like an uncoiling snake. “Your new friends?” He spat and turned, walking away.
No one would meet Tomaso’s eye the rest of the time he was in line. He collected six big barrels—four for Giancarlo, one for a neighbor named Giorgio, and one on his own account—the last provided with an ill grace and unaccountably more expensive than the others.
Tomaso paid without complaint.
He led his patient, borrowed farm horse to water, fed him from a nose bag, and headed for the gates well before the sun was due to set. It had been a dull day, and he regretted Di Tuva’s anger. He felt—alien. In his own city.
Neverland's Library: Fantasy Anthology Page 36
