The young man smiled.
As she was being absorbed into the hazy nothingness of the queen’s mind, Sayaka smiled back at him. She had never seen his face before, but she knew it better than anybody else in this world. He was—
“Now you know?” Doctor Mephisto’s voice rang like a bell in her ear.
“I know myself,” Sayaka answered softly. Her head was clear. Doctor Mephisto’s drug had no side effects. “That person exists inside of me. You wish her freed to conquer me. When she conquers my soul, the queen will reincarnate.” Sayaka looked at the masked man, the man brought back to life from the ancient darkness. Nebuchadnezzar II. “This castle was surely built for that purpose. I don’t know what good it will do, but I will not lose.”
Doctor Mephisto turned to Nebuchadnezzar. “That is what it comes down to. What is your next move?”
“Seeing as you were so good to come here, let us continue with the experiment. Is that agreeable with the young lady?”
“Yes,” Sayaka nodded resolutely, willing to bet her life—her soul—on her own field of combat.
“Well, then. This way,” the masked lord said. “The work of saving my wife within you now begins.”
Part Six: The Mountain Peaks of God
I
White.
Only white.
White as far as the eye could see.
And within that white world something moved. A small boy of seven or eight. The round face peeking out from the earmuffs and the collar of the yak hair coat was dark and sunburned.
He was in the midst of the Gangkhar Puensum range. Rising almost twenty-five thousand feet above sea level, this trio of peaks was among the highest in the Himalayas. So close to heaven, the sun beat down, mercilessly scorching human skin.
The boy was climbing a ridgeline of the mountain. Though the slope here was not steep, the ground was blanketed with snow. One misstep and he would sink out of sight, not to mention the ever-present danger of avalanche.
His ancestors had been coming here for over a hundred and fifty years. Life in this mountainous terrain was lived at the mercy of the elements. But the boy’s gait was steady and sure, because since he was born, waiting for him at the end of the road was someone he enjoyed playing with more than anything.
Before long he found the trail along the ridgeline, and climbed the rock-strewn path to a strangely flat promontory. He’d long become accustomed to it, but still felt a sense of fear and an accompanying unfathomable feeling upon seeing it, this wild plain in the mountains known as the Seat of God.
Not a single rock conformed to expectations. Triangles and cones and mallet shapes resting on perfectly round sides—a jumble of boulders that only a mad geologist would assert that nature had formed.
The large number shaped like flat-topped pedestals stood out in particular. Statues of the Buddha and the Dalai Lama sitting cross-legged, or in the seiza style, were perched atop them, contemplating the universe and Divine Providence.
This place was called the Seat of God, and was also the place to know God.
The boy wove adroitly among and between them and approached a corner adjacent the opposite slope. There a young man sat cross-legged on what looked like a very large millstone, his eyes closed in contemplation.
“I brought it, Izayoi.”
He reached into the coat and brought out a British tabloid. The young man’s face was also darkly-tanned. His bright mischievous eyes opened.
“Thanks, Tarta,” he said, taking the newspaper.
A British tabloid arrived among the supplies three times a week at a village two hundred yards directly below them, where a British-American research weather station was located. The boy — Tarta — had brought a copy. Of course, it was a week late.
Izayoi unfolded the wrinkled newsprint and devoured its contents. This Seat of God was the place where his father Genichiro once arduously studied the mysteries of yoga. Following more or less in his footsteps, approximately two weeks before, Kyoya had jetted here from Tokyo.
Though considering the devotion he gave to the tabloid’s Page Three girl, his dedication to his “studies” might be said to be something less than a hundred percent.
“Izayoi,” Tarta asked. “How is your training going? Whenever I come here, you are meditating there. Have you come to a great realization?”
“Yeah.” Izayoi nodded. “Well, that’s what I’d like to say. But sadly, no. I can see where you’re coming from. It’s gotta be a weird sight, a seventeen or eighteen-year-old kid comes all the way to the Himalayas and sits on a rock every day. On top of everything else, if I suddenly came up with the meaning of the universe or whatnot, the Buddha himself would bust a gut. Fact is, I don’t know a damned thing.”
“But Izayoi, all day and night, you have such a serious expression on your face. You must be thinking about something. Even if nothing comes to you, it’s still an amazing feat.”
“Oh, please. A kid like you, nine years old and fluent in Japanese and English—that’s a lot more impressive in my book.”
“My village hosts mountain climbers from all over the world. Anybody my age can speak the same way.”
“Then everybody in your village is a genius.” He wasn’t kidding. His eyes were drawn back to the paper. “What the hell! Second Devil Quake assaults Shinjuku!” Ignoring Tarta’s startled reaction at his loud exclamation, he continued, “All those injured from the Second Devil Quake come to three thousand seven hundred. Total damage is currently estimated at five hundred million yen.”
He read the lead out loud, and then concentrated silently on the rest of the article.
The Second Devil Quake had struck Shinjuku two weeks before at three o’clock in the morning. There were reasons enough to reject this designation. Since the first, Shinjuku hadn’t experienced a single aftershock, and the destruction and confusion was hardly on a par with its predecessor.
Before and after it, Shinjuku had experienced a strange increase in potential energies that seemed to spur on all manner of crimes and violent behaviors. According to the newspaper’s account, the Second Devil Quake emerged as an outlet for those unconstrained forces.
“Not hardly!” said Kyoya, whacking the paper against his knees. “That’s definitely not it! This Second Devil Quake may be a violent outpouring of energy, but in any case the cause is that weird castle. Babylon Palace and that masked lord. He’s up to something. Man, that guy pisses me off.”
“At times like that, I always do this!” Tarta held up a large and small pair of skis and poles. “When I get angry, this always calms me down. Izayoi, you’re the first person to beat me. Let’s do a run together!”
“That really wasn’t what I had in mind.” Kyoya frowned. The kid looked like a puppy about to whimper. Instead of brushing him off, he grinned. In a small voice he said, “Sorry, Sayaka-chan,” and nimbly slipped off the stone platform. He snugged Asura under his arm. “Well, let’s go.”
A minute later they were sliding down the slopes, the wind whistling past at an intimidating speed. Needless to say, these slopes boasted nothing so civilized as ski lifts. After dropping a hundred and fifty feet in elevation, they’d have to climb back to the ridgeline and return to the promontory.
Nevertheless, depending on their abilities, a hundred and fifty feet became a quarter-mile, their youth being willing to pay the price later.
Kyoya was a few yards behind him when Tarta glanced back in surprise. Kyoya wasn’t using the poles. Instead, he maintained his balance with Asura, and changed directions with his feet and hips.
The slope steadily narrowed on the right. The two were running practically parallel with the grade of the ridgeline. A dull sound echoed like an enormous bass drum.
Kyoya looked over his right shoulder and shouted, “Faster, Tarta! Avalanche!”
It didn’t need saying. This Himalayan kid was a hundred times more accustomed to the snow and the environment. Without looking back, he quickened his pace. Behind them came the unmista
kable roar of the huge volume of snow as it tumbled down the slope, throwing up a curtain of white.
They weren’t going to make it.
“Izayoi!”
“Grab hold, Tarta!”
Mother Nature screamed her banshee’s war cry directly behind him. Kyoya reached out and pulled the boy to him, skidding sideways and slowing at the same time. The frozen tidal wave of snow reared up, the wall of ice filling his vision as it thundered toward them.
A hundred and fifty feet separated them, a hundred and twenty, a hundred—
“Izayoi!” shouted the boy.
The wooden sword traced an arc in front of his eyes. “Like you said, I’ve kicked things up a notch recently. Now for a little demonstration of Izayoi Kenpo.”
He brought down Asura in a vertical slash. A moment later, they disappeared beneath the crashing waves of snow. Except—the waves split in two. Asura divided everything it touched, sending the mountains of snow flying to the left and right.
Leaving the two of them untouched, the avalanche swept on down the mountain. When the primordial peace and quiet finally returned, the dome of snow over their heads also fell apart in equal pieces, revealing a sliver of the blue sky above.
Tarta looked at him with admiring eyes. “Your kenpo is something else, Izayoi.”
“Yeah, but stay close for the time being. The guys who caused that avalanche are in for a little payback.”
Kyoya concentrated strength into his legs. Manipulating the skis, he stepped out of the snow, and reflexively pulled back his head as a flash of black lightning skimmed past the tip of his nose and buried itself in the snow.
“What the—”
It was an arrow, the same as had been fired at the place where an avalanche could be most easily triggered. Kyoya directed his gaze to the top of the slope, from where the arrow had been fired.
And where there were now two of his foes. The lance-bearing knight in blue armor — Valen. The six-armed green knight bristling with bows and arrows—Mathias. Astride armored horses, they stared down silently at him.
Kyoya said softly, “I thought you weren’t big on the cowardly attacks.” Too much shouting could cause another avalanche. And these guys could tell what he was saying in any case. “Yeah, come to think of it, your big-talking boss isn’t around, is he? When the cat’s away, I guess. No honor among thieves.”
Kyoya’s voice dripped with sarcasm. Livid with anger, the two started down the snowy slopes. That alone didn’t start an avalanche, because of the anti-gravity or magnetic propulsion mechanisms housed in the horses or the armor.
“Vian is loath to leave our master’s side,” said the bow-bearing Mathias. “So we came instead. Think of that arrow just now as a test. Were it enough to kill you, it would have been better not going into battle in the first place.”
“You’re sounding awfully high and mighty for a two-bit rent-a-cop,” Kyoya spat out. He jostled Tarta on his left shoulder. “The kid part of your test too?”
The two knights exchanged glances. “Put him down,” Mathias said.
“Naw. No guarantee you’re not going to turn around and use him as a shield.”
“You plan to face off against us with him clinging to you like that?”
“Spare me,” Kyoya shot back. “While you’ve been sitting around polishing your armor, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone. Speaking of which, now would be a good time for the two of you to take a hike.”
The knights looked at each other again. Their shoulders shook with laughter. Valen raised the lance. “Then you can die with the child in your arms. I’ll skewer the two of you at once.”
“Showing your true colors, eh? So much for all that chivalry crap. I don’t know what you’re hiding beneath that armor, but after twenty-five hundred years, apparently the only thing that gets your rocks off is killing people. Don’t you find yourselves rather pathetic?”
Kyoya’s provocations had an effect, for Valen up and charged. The horse’s hooves pounded against the snow. The snow didn’t fly up and scatter. Because he was sailing through the air.
“Haa!”
With a fighting shout, Kyoya turned his back to the enemy and started down the steepening mountainside. Speed wasn’t the problem. Valen’s was nothing compared to the avalanche. But the spear flew at Kyoya’s back with the velocity of a rifle shot.
As if anticipating the course ahead of time, it turned down the slope. Kyoya raised Asura in one hand. A pretty chime of wood against metal indicated the collision. The spear jumped into the air.
The two of them crisscrossed and separated. As Valen brought up the horse and started after Kyoya again, he couldn’t ignore the strange sensation in his own body.
His right half was growing numb, the result of the blow from the kid. When they had fought in Babylon Palace in Shinjuku, he’d been forewarned of the kid’s terrific talents and after the fact had no reason to doubt them. But he’d experienced nothing like this strange damage.
Despite carrying on in his carefree manner, the kid must have engaged in rigorous, gut-wrenching training on this mountain. Checking his fear and wonder, Valen gripped the spear with his numb fingers and yanked on the reins. He descended the slope at a speed close to free fall.
“Doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson,” Kyoya muttered to himself. But that was all beside the point. The guy could do nothing but fight. Before coming here, he’d spent some time in the Shinjuku ward library going through the history books.
Perhaps because the colors of their armor—like they were scooped out of a carton of Neapolitan ice cream—called such attention to themselves, their names popped up in several reference volumes.
In ancient Assyria, three knights of Marduk served as the personal bodyguards to Queen Semiramis. Daring and resolute, it was said that on at least eighty-eight occasions, armed with a long sword, a long lance, and long bow, the three had taken on and destroyed entire army divisions fielded by their enemies.
The question was how they’d come to be reincarnated.
The memory restoration machines at the Japan section of the World Federation Government had informed Sayaka that she’d been Semiramis in a previous life, which would mean by implication that her husband was Nebuchadnezzar II. Except that how he had come back to life, and to what ends, remained up in the air.
According to the ancient manuscripts, in the vicinity of Assyria and Babylon at the time, there blossomed an advanced scientific civilization that developed methods of artificial hibernation and technologies for increasing human longevity.
The air shook. Kyoya swung his sword without turning around, relying on his senses alone. The five arrows flying at him scattered on the ground. With a sweep of Asura, one struck the other and it collided with the other, all obstructing the trajectories of the other.
Observing this may have rekindled in Mathias, closing behind him, a memory from long ago—the second knight—the skills of Semulia.
He shot six more arrows. Two burrowed beneath the snow, two veered to the right and left, the final two pounced upon him from the air. This was the secret technique called “Mathias’s Tiger,” from which no enemy could escape.
This time, he saw his target—the wooden sword—dip into the field of snow. The whole world went white. Snow erupted all around him, totally obscuring his surroundings. A second late in bringing the horse to a halt, he plunged through the wall.
“Returning the package to sender!” called out Kyoya.
The six arrows he’d shot came flying back at him, thudding into his body in six places. Together with the horse, he sprawled across the snowy ground.
II
Manipulating his nenpo, Kyoya passed through the wall of snow he’d raised and sought out his remaining opponent. Studded with his own arrows, Mathias lay there like a rock.
“I’m here,” reverberated a low voice.
Kyoya looked up at the black splotch carved out of the blue sky twenty yards above his head. “You still want to fight
? Maybe I should give that horse a little Novocain treatment too.”
“Now the true contest begins,” Valen said. “We three knights of Marduk cannot condone defeat. Nor can we allow any word of our defeat to be whispered abroad. Only to take our secrets to the grave. Except I won’t be dying today. This lance is packed with the same nuclear materials used in the construction of the dams and irrigation canals along the Tigris and Euphrates. In a second, I could reduce a radius of half a mile to ash without a speck of radioactive fallout. So no need to worry about that.”
“Well, that just makes me one happy camper.” Kyoya pointed Asura at the sky. But no matter how much he disciplined his Izayoi nenpo, there were limits to its reach. “Problem is, you got your big brother down here. What about that? Your bomb will take out him too.”
“Fools and losers should shoulder the weight of failure and die happily in recompense.”
“Oh, good grief,” Kyoya exclaimed, more annoyed than panicked.
The guy was going to drop a bomb on his head and there was nothing he could do about it. There was no time to run and no place to hide. He had one ace left up his sleeve. He wasn’t sure it was ready for prime time. But like they said, necessity was the mother of invention. Still—
“Hey, do you think you could give me a sec—?”
In that moment, a white object separated itself from the horse and rider. The long lance. A dozen feet or so above his head, it began to fission. Just as Valen promised, the fireball engulfed the ground for a half-mile around them.
The fireball dissipated. The light faded. The scorched rocks and boulders again came into view. Valen wheeled the horse around and set it down in a corner of the promontory.
He had salvaged the reputation of the three knights of Marduk—that was his only consolation. It was too bad about Mathias, but he would relay to Vian how he had fought. Though Valen had destroyed Semulia, Mathias had done his part too. Sleep well.
Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition Page 31
