Spirit of the Ronin

by Travis Heermann

  “I understand, Sensei.”

  “Now, may I examine your weapon? You must take it with you into the pentagram.”

  Ken’ishi untied it from his obi and offered it with both hands.

  Lord Abe bowed and accepted it. The moment he touched it, however, he stiffened, and his eyebrows rose. Then his eyes narrowed at Ken’ishi. “There is more to you than meets the eye, Captain.”

  “Is that not true of all men, Sensei?”

  “It is true that every man is an entire universe unto himself, an earthly incarnation of the Nine Heavens, and we walk this universe under the influence of the stars and planets, the kami and the Five Elements, the gods and buddhas. We all leave a mark upon this universe, but some leave larger marks than others. Some men leave a mark so large it leaves a scar upon the face of history.” His voice was grave as he indicated Silver Crane. “This blade can cut the world in two.”

  “I know of its power, Sensei.”

  “Such power in the hands of a mere man.... Do you not feel the burden?”

  “I do, Sensei.”

  “And you bear it willingly?”

  “It was given to me to bear by my father, a great warrior of the Taira clan.”

  “The Taira are no longer so great. ’Twas a terrible pity what happened to them. Echoes of their bloodline honor the halls of the imperial palace. Inauspicious for you to be born under the curse that name has become.”

  “The best way I can honor my ancestors is to make my own name.”

  Koumei ran up to them. “The pentagram is prepared, Master.”

  “Then let us not waste a moment,” Lord Abe said.

  The disorder of my hair

  Is due to my lonely sleepless pillow.

  My hollow eyes and gaunt cheeks

  Are your fault.

  —The Love Poems of Marichiko

  Ken’ishi sat in seiza in the center of the great pentagram, facing Lord Abe. Lord Abe sat at one point of the star, facing the remains of Ken’ishi’s house. At each point, a thick candle burned. Incense filled the air as Koumei circled the pentagram and waved fistfuls of smoldering sticks. The village was empty except for Ken’ishi, Lord Abe, and his apprentice, but as dusk deepened into night, the shadows seemed filled with ten thousand eyes. Even the waves had diminished to a mutter, as if in anticipation of a great struggle.

  Lord Abe was already deep in a trance, chanting syllables Ken’ishi could not follow.

  Then Lord Abe shouted, “Celestial warriors, descend and be my vanguard!” As he spoke, the fingers of his right hand made five precise vertical cuts in the air, then his left made four horizontal.

  The feeling of eyes in the darkness intensified, but Ken’ishi could not look away from Lord Abe.

  Lord Abe then intoned a long list of forces, entreating them for aid. The Five Elements—air, water, fire, earth, and void. A multitude of gods and buddhas, some of whom Ken’ishi knew and some he did not. The moon and sun and planets. The seven Northern Stars and their two attendants.

  The onmyouji intertwined his fingers before him, extended from his chest in a tight, intricate pattern. “I open the Seal of the First Thunderbolt!”

  A flash of lightning over the surrounding forest turned it into a stark, black silhouette, and a peal of thunder reverberated in the nearby hills. The rumble traveled through the ground, up into Ken’ishi’s legs.

  His belly writhed at the memories of last night’s encounter with Kiosé, of how nearly he had suffered an awful fate.

  Lord Abe changed his fingers to another interlocking pattern. “I open the Seal of the Thunderbolt of Divine Righteousness!”

  A distant flare of lightning slashed across Hakata Bay from a starry sky and turned the face of the sea to glimmering silver, the crash and crackle of it arriving moments later.

  The fireflies Ken’ishi had seen the night before came into existence at the edge of the forest, like tiny candle flames. And flames they were, not fireflies at all, but tiny tongues of greenish-yellow flame dancing at the verge of darkness.

  Lord Abe shifted his fingers to another pattern. “I open the Seal of the Outer Lion, the Exultant and Glorious Celestial Jewel, the Beginning of All Things!”

  In the corners of Ken’ishi’s eyes, some of the stars sparkled brighter, as if drawing nearer. The air itself hummed. Koumei had taken a position behind Lord Abe, mimicking the finger patterns and humming, but the humming in the air was greater than one voice could produce.

  Lord Abe extended fingers and retracted others into a new pattern. “I open the Seal of the Inner Lion, the End of All Things!”

  The humming took on a deeper rumble, like a sustained avalanche or great, crashing waves.

  Behind Lord Abe, a shadow separated from a building, a human silhouette with long hair. It had no feet. Mist swirled under the figure, seeping into the village from the forest. The silhouette hovered there as if watching. Ken’ishi squeezed Silver Crane’s hilt.

  Lord Abe’s fingers wove a new pattern, all fingers clasped in a double fist. “I open the Seal of the Outer Bonds, where all evil is devoured!”

  Mist curled around the foundations of Ken’ishi’s house, snaking along the black lines of the pentagram, but not crossing, not yet.

  Silver Crane began to thrum in his hands with the hum of the air. I am the devourer of evil, the drinker of blood, the granter of power. The sword’s voice chorused in Ken’ishi’s mind over the growing tumult in the air.

  Ken’ishi caught Kiosé’s scent on the air, so well remembered. The scent of her hair, of her neck, of her breath, of her sex. As if she were sitting beside him. Her silhouette behind Lord Abe was gone. The hair on his arms and legs spiked. A shadow moved in the corner of his vision.

  Lord Abe’s fingertips shifted inside his fists. “I open the Seal of the Inner Bonds, where the sacred fire burns!”

  A great rush of wind seemed to fill Ken’ishi’s breast, swell his limbs with strength, as if he could defeat a thousand men, crush them to pulp in his hands. In his belly, a pleasant heat began to build, suffusing every muscle, every hair. The heat grew and grew, like from a welcome fire in winter, driving away all chill and replacing it with comforting warmth.

  Tentacles of mist crept over the boundaries of the pentagram like a tentative octopus. The chill of it glided over his feet and buttocks. The scent of Kiosé was stronger now, but tainted somehow with astringency, bitterness.

  Lord Abe wound his fingers into the seventh pattern. “I open the Seal of the Fist of Wisdom, the Divine Radiance That Illuminates All Things, the bridge between realms!”

  Another tremendous slap of lightning tore across the hills, rumbling down, and endless fingers of it spread across the starry sky in coruscating claws.

  The mist behind Ken’ishi thickened, obscuring the pentagram. He caught sight of a head bobbing from the low mist like the head of a serpent, but swathed in impenetrable black hair, then dipping out of sight again.

  The mist rose and boiled, and a crawling presence like a centipede scurried up Ken’ishi’s back. Fetid breath washed over him.

  Lord Abe had admonished him not to move until ordered.

  Silver Crane thrummed in his fingers, sending vibrations up his arms, the earth sending vibrations up through his legs. The vibrations met in his belly, and stoked the flame there.

  Lord Abe unwound his fingers into another pattern, this one with fingers spread wide, touching thumbs and forefingers like two adjacent stars. “I open the Seal of the Ring of the Sun, the source of divine perfection!”

  A pale arm snaked over Ken’ishi’s shoulder from behind, down across his chest, cold as the grave. Small, limp breasts pressed against his back, dead and cold, a bony chin against his neck. Chill breath brushed the back of his head. Great purplish worms, as long as his forearm and fat as his little finger, wriggled out from the earth and squirmed around his legs, nosing blindly up onto his flesh. He clenched his teeth at their clammy sliminess.

  Do not move until I order it! Lord Abe h
ad said.

  Kiosé’s voice whimpered in his ear. “Come away with me, my love. I’m frightened. Let us be together.”

  Ken’ishi clamped his lips tight.

  “Let’s leave this place,” she said. “Why don’t you look at me?”

  Lord Abe clenched his left fist within his right. “I open the final seal, the Seal of the Hidden Form, the form that conceals!”

  An eyelid slid open in the middle of Ken’ishi’s forehead.

  The entire world burst with glorious color, endless rainbows, streaks of light and dark, colors so intense and vibrant they made everything he had seen before during his entire life seem dim and gray and lifeless.

  Worms writhed beneath the skin of the arm encircling his chest. Black nails became claws and dug into his chest. Cold seared into him at her touch. Her breath became the stench of a corpse bloated in the sun. Sinuous black hair snaked around his arms, around his body. A pale bone peeked through a rent in her skin. A blind, purple worm with minute teeth chewed a fresh opening and nosed toward him, seeking fresher meat. A cold, leathery tongue traced across the back of his neck.

  With his new sight, Ken’ishi looked toward the onmyouji, but he was no longer Abe no Genmei.

  “I am Fudo, of the Five Celestial Emperors, the Immovable One.” The voice was the voice of mountains, of the gulfs of Heaven, of the sea; his expression so fierce and wise that Ken’ishi could only marvel. Scarlet flames roared up around Fudo in a blazing nimbus, but they did not burn him. He sat naked to the waist, his chest and arms thicker and more muscular than a wrestler’s. His flaming eyes burned into Ken’ishi’s soul, then turned to Kiosé. “Dim spirit! In life, you were Kiosé. This is no longer your place. I order you to leave this place now!”

  Kiosé’s face split wide into a howl of fury, her mouth black and impossibly wide. A belch of grave wind swirled around Ken’ishi. “He’s mine!”

  “Leave now!” the god boomed with the power of the cosmos.

  “Never!” Her shriek pierced Ken’ishi’s ears like needles.

  “Then you leave us no choice. Great Warrior, become my weapon! Subdue this evil! Drive it from this place!” The celestial being clapped its massive hands, and the shock blasted over Ken’ishi as if he had been struck himself.

  Ken’ishi jumped up, spun on Kiosé, and whipped out Silver Crane. Free of its scabbard, Silver Crane shone with the light of a thousand stars. He gripped it, raised to strike.

  He had expected to see a monster. Instead, there was only meek, frightened Kiosé, trembling, eyes wide with terror.

  “Oh, my love!” she cried. “What have you become?”

  Ken’ishi towered over her, half-again taller than a man. His skin was darkened, mottled as if by a thousand bruises. A great gash above his heart lay open and bloody, revealing four pale ribs. Silver Crane seemed so small in his grip now, like a wakizashi.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she whimpered. “I cannot bear that it’s you.”

  “Strike, warrior!” the celestial being boomed. “It is the only way!”

  Ken’ishi had already hurt her too much; with his annoyance, with his aloofness, with his refusal to claim the son he had known was his, with leaving her unprotected to face the barbarians. His tusks gleamed in the light of the god’s flames. Innumerable scars crisscrossed his flesh, some from wounds he remembered, others from wounds yet to be.

  The force of the god’s will, however, drove Ken’ishi a step toward her. Fudo, the Celestial Emperor, would not be denied. She tried to edge away, but the line of black sand, the border of the pentagram, formed an invisible barrier that she could no longer cross.

  He raised his shining sword.

  “Please, my love. I’ll behave. I’ll do just as you say. Whatever has made you angry, I’ll never do it again! Please, don’t hurt me!” She cowered, arms upraised to protect herself.

  “Strike now!” the god roared. “Free her!”

  She had no feet.

  She huddled into a ball.

  Ken’ishi slashed, and his stroke opened a diagonal cut across her back.

  A cut he had seen on her before.

  She screamed in pain and collapsed onto her side.

  Guilt washed over him in a bitter deluge. He froze, sword poised to strike again. His skin turned blacker. The cut above his heart began to bleed. He should have saved her. He should never have left.

  “Strike!” the god roared.

  The god’s inexorable will seized Ken’ishi’s arms.

  He struck again, severing her upraised arm. Her arm clattered beside her, just dry bones. Black mist seeped from the stump.

  Her wail rose higher.

  He stabbed her through the breast.

  Her robe burned away from the puncture point like cinders, her flesh peeling away from the ribs, crisping in Silver Crane’s luminous heat.

  His eyes met hers, and the gulfs of bottomless sorrow and betrayal there turned his insides to water. Tears of blood burst from his eyes.

  “I trusted...” she rasped.

  Then he cried out and struck off her head. Kiosé’s head. The woman who had loved him, cared for him, for three years. It tumbled to the earth a charred skull.

  The body collapsed into a pile of bones.

  Ken’ishi sank to his knees, gasping. Blood poured from the wound over his heart, soaked his chest. Silver Crane fell from his fingers. His hands were hideous claws now, with bulbous knuckles and cracked, yellowed nails.

  “Your third eye sees all,” the god said.

  He could not bear to look at the god anymore. “Is this what I truly am? An oni?” Was it only a matter of time before the inner truth manifested, as it had for Hatsumi, Taro, and Hakamadare?

  “Your soul already bears a great burden. So much death and strife, so much struggle and desire. Everything you carry with you, every day. And it is not over.”

  Ken’ishi gazed up at the stars, wondering if his father was among them, letting the hot, coppery tears stream down his cheeks. The stars were so close now, as if they hovered just out of reach. “Am I to be condemned, then? Is it inevitable that I become this?”

  “For some men, the answer would be yes. But your fate remains as fluid as the shifting tides.”

  Ken’ishi faced the god. “I do not want to become a monster.”

  “Then look to your soul, samurai. Putting this poor, dim spirit to rest is one of many great deeds. The wound of this place must be allowed to heal.”

  The god clapped his hands, and thunder pealed again.

  The eye in Ken’ishi’s forehead slid shut, and suddenly he was on one knee before Lord Abe once again. No more fire, no more coruscating explosions of color. He had returned to his normal size. The stars were back in their places. The night was simply dark again, and Kiosé’s white bones lay beside him.

  He felt as if he had been struck blind.

  He curled up into a ball and let himself weep for the suffering of the world.

  “Men do not behave themselves prudently; they blame others and then pray to the gods and beseech the Buddhas for things they themselves are not equal to. This is what men of little caliber always do. Listen, the gods do not accept improprieties. Men think that no matter what they pray to the gods for, it will be granted, whether good or evil, correct, or perverse. Men’s minds are asinine.”

  —Issai Chozanshi, The Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts

  Yasutoki looked at the opulent breakfast laid out before him, and his stomach seethed its refusal. The servant hung back, bowing, and wrung her hands in concern over his welfare. His robes hung looser upon him nowadays, and the bones and veins in his hands were more pronounced.

  Tiger Lily’s departure had deprived him of Green Tiger’s last trusted servant, and the bitterness of the betrayal continued to eat at him even now, months after her disappearance. Seldom lately could he bring himself to eat a full meal. It was as if a burning coal had lodged behind his breastbone. Any time he took food, the coal grew hotter.

 
He would never have believed her capable of eluding him. She had vanished without a trace. He had trained her too well.

  Here in Kamakura, so far from home, insinuating himself into the underworld had taken too long for him to find her. The local gangs guarded their territory as fiercely as those in Hakata, and Yasutoki did not know them or their capabilities. Without a strong arm beside him, like Hakamadare or Masoku, he was too vulnerable. Now, without even Tiger Lily, he was alone; and with too much time spent in the company of nobles, his own skills had grown rusty as a dagger lying in a puddle. Nevertheless, he had made a number of late night sojourns to the pleasure quarter, familiarizing himself with the underworld landscape.

  For most of his stay in Kamakura, however, he had felt blind and ineffectual. And worse, the shogunate had steadfastly refused any contact with the Khan’s emissaries. They remained locked up tight and under heavy guard.

  Yasutoki chafed at this ineffectiveness. His attempts to ingratiate himself with their guards had been rebuffed. Most of his tremendous wealth had been lost in the invasion, as well as his enterprises for building more. He had limited funds for giving persuasive gifts, and while he could call for more from Lord Tsunetomo’s coffers at home, such a request invoked the risk of theft along the journey.

  Visiting representatives from the imperial court in Kyoto teemed in the noble districts. The imperial court wanted to accede to the emissaries’ demands from the Great Khan. The Golden Horde was too powerful to oppose for long. The Mongols had conquered lands farther west than the imagination could reach. Spies from China revealed that Khubilai Khan remained determined to bring “this small country” under the Horde’s dominion.

  Yasutoki aligned himself with that belief, but not the weakness that engendered appeasement. He did not want appeasement. He wanted the Horde to sweep through every village and hamlet, across every island, and rake the Minamoto and Hojo out like bones from an old graveyard. And in the aftermath, the Taira could reemerge and ascend again.

  Many of the imperial nobles still had Taira blood in their veins, but almost none professed it. Their effete lifestyles had made them soft and weak. They, too, should be swept away in the Khan’s cleansing fire.