The Bard of Sorcery

by Gerard Houarner

A rude demand. Never a good sign.

  He didn't think his flute had incited this visitation. Oni were not so easily misled. No, there were other reasons for the thing to wait for him in the fog of his own damnation.

  Too bad no one was paying him for the expulsion of this hidden apparition. Maybe he could slip past, find someone willing to compensate him for the trouble of handling a demon. There had to be somebody in the district willing to part with food seasoned by a dash of riches, someone tired of tossing soy beans and carving monkey statues to ward off a supernatural power unimpressed by folk remedies.

  The ox lumbered forward, immune to terrors lurking nearby.

  Aki put the flute away, flinching as his hand brushed against bone. No, he wouldn't play that one, either. And there was no need to feel for his sword. Not yet.

  “Will you not obey?” the voice asked, louder, sharper, with the crackling of young wood popping in the flames of its destruction.

  “I don't talk to strangers,” Aki said, relaxing, hips rolling with the massive beast's gait. A horse might have worried at the sudden thinness of the air, the faint ringing in the ears, the scents of peony, fresh with a touch of lemon, and pine needles, crisp, as if freshly uncovered from beneath snow.

  A woman. Of some kind.

  “You are not here to challenge me?”

  “I don't even know who you are. And I don't care.” He wanted to add, not yet. But there was no profit in provoking demons to duel for nothing.

  “You are not Shöki the demon queller?”

  Ah. Again. “No, I'm much less audacious. And also cursed.” And he lacked the size, beard and fierce demeanor of the legendary enemy of oni. He was easily dismissed by most in his farmer's straw cloak and sedge hat, which served to keep his armor dry in the perpetual dampness of his doomed state. And when Nagasawa Rosetsu painted a version of him, with his fingers and nails, in runny ink washes on a hanging scroll, stripping away armor and unbinding the samurai tea whisky style top knot to turn him into a fuzzy-headed boy riding an ox and re-interpreting his sharp-edged koto as a ridiculously long flute, Aki couldn't argue against the rendition.

  Perhaps he'd let his knot down that day. Certainly the fog made him appear insubstantial at a distance. And he was often an initial disappointment to those who called on him. They were always expecting someone fiercer.

  He was just glad his name had never become associated with the scroll as it hung in the halls of Kyoto's Floating World. He didn't need that kind of reputation.

  “Who are you, then?” the voice asked, ahead of him, now.

  Aki looked to the branches overhead, but of course couldn't make out movement. At least the foxes had fled and the tanuki had stopped their drumming. Or, perhaps, the spirits fleeing was not such a good sign.

  “None of your business, unless you have business with me,” Aki said. “And I don't think you do. Fare well, and hope we don't cross paths again.”

  “Brave words from a shrunken ronin who can't afford a horse. Maybe I should come down to sample your blood?”

  Another turn for the worse. Now came the delicate balance between intimidation and challenge.

  “My rank doesn't allow a horse. Nothing was said in the Shogunate's decree about an ox. As for blood, you must be a sorry spirit to bother with a ronin you'd consider shrunken.”

  Leaves whispered among themselves, talking about a breeze. A distraction, of course. His ears popped like he'd been climbing a mountain path. Instinct told him look to the left.

  He followed the nearness of his death, gazed to the right.

  The fog blurred the contours of the illusion so well, Aki's palm tickled from the urge to feel the fish-skin covered grip of his sword.

  The visage could have seemed real to a peasant, or even a merchant with his head half in his purse or cup. The horns pointed straight out of the forehead like spears, threatening in their perfect alignment with Aki's eyes. The twin curved fangs protruding from the gaping maw ringed with teeth promised to toy with what the horns left behind. Bulbous eyes stared, though they did not move when the ox kept plodding forward. Instead, the entire head turned slowly, watching him pass.

  A mask, dramatic and colorful in red, gold and black, that might have belonged to a character created for a fresh oni mono Noh play, a drama of demons unfolding on supernatural worlds. But Aki thought it close enough to the female demon character Hannya, in all her jealous fury. Certainly its maker had poured a great deal of emotion into carving the cuts. Rage limned its flowing lines. Such masks rarely left a Noh school master's chambers, and then only for special performances of the rarest plays.

  The face was perfectly cast for the tenebrous stage, and for Aki. There was only the play for which it had been chosen left to judge.

  The plain woven sack, barely visible next to where the demon's hip should have shimmered in an actor's silken garb, was an ominous touch, bulging unevenly and stained by unsightly blotches.

  In the mask, the thing was only playing at being a demon. But still, its wrath was equal to the role, seething in the air between them, reaching into Aki's heart and stoking his own carefully guarded anger over all that had happened to him and the unfairness of his curse.

  Dwelling on anger made his heart hot with the need to use his great sword. Too soon, he reminded himself. No payment, yet.

  Still, not everything was about money.

  What did the mask hide? A true demon? A ghost with the power to kill? Some half-mortal, half-divine abomination no one ever told stories about because they were too terrible to give breath to? Something new he'd never heard of or encountered?

  “What is your name, little thing?” the demon asked, fading with the road behind him.

  “Aki,” he answered. “Remember it the next time you see me. My blade will introduce us, then.”

  The ox's hoof beats counted the moments of their parting.

  Could their parting have been that easy?

  “Aki,” said the demon, ahead of him again, in the light of the lamp hanging before the ox's head.

  No, their parting was not going to be easy. He had no choice but to give in. “And your name?”

  “Izanami.”

  Aki rolled his eyes. 'She who invites,' indeed. “Somehow I don't think that's your real name.” But it was a woman's name, hinting at a female entity hiding behind the mask. “Do you want to sell me what's in your bag? Or are you here to add to your stock?”

  “I'm here for either, for both. Won't you stop and barter?”

  The ox plowed the fog and the mask drifted to the left without stirring the air.

  “I'm still hoping to find someone willing to pay me to destroy you.”

  “But I bother no one.”

  “You bother me.”

  “Pay yourself, then.”

  Coming up on Aki's left, the demon receded, as if it knew the length of Aki's sword and reach and would not test him, yet. “You're the one with a bag of treasure,” he said. “Give me something to make me stop and listen.”

  The bag rustled, bringing the situation into focus. Aki realized he'd made a mistake. Fallen into a trap, set with the mention of Shöki. He taken the bait, surrendered his name, asked the demon for its identity. The game of threats followed. All ploys. A seduction. The lulling, rhythmic pattern the demon had composed for the exchange that followed had led him to this moment.

  He wasn't used to this kind of dueling with demons. Shöki would have known better.

  Was he dealing with the ghost of a geisha?

  Something flew through the air, slow, vaguely round. Instinctively, he snatched the object from the air.

  His mother's head. Perfectly preserved, as if she'd been murdered only moments ago. Flesh warm. Blood from the severed throat hot on his hands, soiling his leggings.

  “You won't stop?” the demon asked.

  “The ox doesn't seem interested.” A cheap trick. He'd been banished to the fog long enough for the Tokugawa shogunate to change hands at least once, according to ne
ws on the road. His mother had probably been dead for a while, her head nothing more than a skull by now. Her murder was improbable. But not impossible.

  Such things happened.

  His hands shook for a few moments. Then they were empty, though still warm from the blood.

  “You drive a hard bargain,” the demon said and tossed another head.

  Aki didn't try to catch it, but the head landed in his lap. A child's.

  His brother's.

  Another death he hadn't been near enough to witness. He'd imagined the sound, though: a sharp cry, cut-off, as if the killers had not been able to bear the pain coming from such a delicate body. Perhaps that's why they chopped the boy up when he tried to protect Yuriko. What he'd lacked in a warrior's body, he'd tempered in his heart. Aki breathed his brother's name against the stitched-shut eye lids, but this flesh was cold, dry, leathery, as if preserved and carried by someone for a long while. His tears carved channels in the dust and dirt trapped in leathery folds of skin. The smell of nutmeg hung between them.

  “Huh,” Aki said. His heart ached and the weight of his torment and his exile from the living world weighed on his shoulders. The armor felt like a cage. He shrugged off the cloak, tossed away the hat. His shoulder tightened from the effort it took not to draw his sword.

  Another head came flying at Aki, this time from behind as the ox had taken him farther up the road. He caught it, eager to get rid of the other.

  An infant's head settled into his open palms. Eyes open and blank, wisps of hair flattened against the damp skull, the face was a serene reflection of an innocence that never saw its own death coming. There was no trace of blood in the pale, mangled flesh at the end of the neck. A freshening of the air, haunting in its sweetness, caught at the broken edges of his heart. He recognized the child, though he'd never seen him.

  He cradled his unborn son, soulless, dead before it ever came into the world, against the lacquered armor covering his chest. A few new tears burned through Aki's right eye and slit his cheek with burning pain. He blinked, sucked in breath.

  When he could see again, his son was gone. Rage billowed in his heart, spread like wild flames to climb up and down his spine and race along his ribs, consuming bone and reticence.

  “What's next?” Aki shouted over his shoulder. The mask was gone.

  The woods choked off the sound of his voice. He could barely make out the ox from one end to the other.

  “Your head,” the demon said, a breeze blowing into his ear. “Because you will want to give it to me.”

  And the demon was right. There was a corner of his heart where his death drove a shōtō into his abdomen and carved out his entrails, though he did not own a short sword, and had no companion to see him through the complex rituals of seppuku or serve as kaishakunin and chop his head off.

  His yearning for death was not founded on rage or despair. It would have been simple to succumb to any of the entities he'd encountered so far under his curse to end the injustice of his plight. His need was born from the union of honor and the damnation. His heart ached to atone for the dishonor he'd brought on himself.

  He'd tried, once. With the shinto, holding the long blade with his bare hands and feeling its sacred steel slice through him. He'd waited to bleed to death. He'd fallen willingly into the darkness that swallowed him after the pain had gone away. But he'd awakened whole, his sword not even bloody. The malediction would not let him escape its hold.

  Another thing he'd forgotten.

  “Do you still feel so formidable you dare challenge demons, little netsuke?”

  Aki took a deep breath. “If you were human, my answer would be no. But you're only a demon and know nothing of shame.”

  “And what do you know about shame, netsuke? Sneak a look in your parents' bedchamber?”

  He had. But, of course, that had been a long time ago. The warrior's way raised larger concerns. “I'm not as young as I seem.”

  “Why?”

  The question snatched the ox from under Aki, and the path, as well. He might as well have been falling forever through the fog. “My curse,” Aki said, before the shock of the answer had registered. He'd been expecting the usual “how old are you?” To which he always replied, “I don't remember,” which generally put a stop to that line of questioning.

  He was slipping deeper into the demon's pit, impaling himself on its poisoned stakes.

  “Which is…” the demon said.

  Too late to hold back. He couldn't help himself. The demon had him.

  “To remain as I did at the moment of my heartbreak. Never aging, forever lost in fog.”

  “I can cure your curse with these.” The demon offered its talons, raised to either side of the mask. They seemed sharp and real, not stage props or part of a costume.

  “I would meet your cure with this,” Aki answered, at last pulling out the sword from its plain wooden scabbard bound by shimenawa prayer ropes. The ancient, nameless shinto kami spirit inhabiting the steel welcomed his attention. It found flesh and blood, spirit, oni, the elements from which it had been born, all equally worthy of its blessing.

  The reality of the sword's weight and perfect balance brought him back into the moment. He rarely needed its edge, but what threatened him would never submit to the music of his flute. The creature demanded violence and would not be subdued by less than a reflection of its rage. Pay or no pay, he welcomed the fight promised to him. It was better than dwelling on what could not be changed.

  The thing laughed, with a hint of delight, and was on him in a flurry of clicking, pricking talons punctuated by the silent thrusts of horns. Aki regretted his failure to replace the kabuto lost long ago, in an accidental fight with a dragon, as he was thrown from the ox by his exposed top-knot caught on a horn. Blood trickled into his eyes and down his neck from cuts to the head as he parried and returned the blows, the keen edge of his sword trimming the demon's talons but clattering harmless off of the mask. The haramaki saved him from damage to his organs – the demon had speed, but lacked the power that came from the mass of a living body to penetrate his armor. But his opponent was immune to his koto's edge and the ancient spirit sanctifying the steel.

  It was the first time Aki had ever known the sword to fail.

  Searching for a new tactic, Aki leapt atop the ox, which had continued its sauntering march oblivious to the battle. Aki probed for a weakness from his momentary advantage in height, and when the demon rose to meet him, he searched beneath the creature for a flaw in its ethereal defense.

  But he found only air, or sometimes met mild resistance no stronger than a gentle waterfall that told him he'd passed through a supernatural substance. The blade sighed, and once it screamed like a distant voice caught by surprise by its own death, but did nothing to slow the demon's assault.

  They battled for what seemed like the passing of a moon before Aki lost track of time and place, curse and the reason he was fighting. The moment consumed him, and he was content to ride the skills of his bushido training as he'd ridden the ox, confident his skills would bring him to victory.

  Though sweat poured from Aki and stung the cuts he'd taken on his head, he never tired. As he'd learned from his fight with the dragon, his curse set him apart from a mortal body's needs and weaknesses. He could fight forever, if he wished. So could the dead and the demonic, if he could not prove himself the stronger through will and skill, the power of the living still burning within, and the old sword.

  But the battle's journey would not end. Training saved him, and his skills delivered him to what should have been his opponent's doom, but the advantage of will and sword and life were not enough.

  In this fight, he'd finally met his match. The thing that opposed him was his equal in every way.

  Aki stepped back, and his enemy did not pursue. He could only hope he'd stung it as the creature had marked him.

  As he took the moment of respite to study the mask, searching for another line his sword might take to reach the dem
on's heart, the heel of his foot bumped against a solid mass. The ox lay on the path, still breathing, one eye glaring at the mask as its wounds bled out.

  The hot moment of combat fell away, returning Aki to the truths of fog and damnation and the sound of the ox's footfalls on the path.

  “Why did you hurt the ox?” Aki asked. He felt foolish as soon as the words left him. What did a malevolent spirit care about any living thing?

  But to his surprise, the creature replied, with a hint of regret, “I only wanted you.”

  The mask drifted in a circle around Aki, coming in and out of the depths of mist as if licking wounds it did not want Aki to see. “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “To see what you are, and who. If the ox meant that much to you, why didn't you defend it? Why did you use an innocent creature as a ploy in your fight?”

  The question struck into Aki as the demon's talons never could, opening an old wound he'd forgotten he'd suffered. Once again, tears burned his eyes and clouded his vision. When had he ever wept so much, so openly?

  There had been a time…but the time would not come to him. It was lost, like the rest of his life, somewhere on the other side of the fog.

  He wasn't used to such intimate encounters with the supernatural. The creatures he'd exorcized were usually preoccupied with the twisted passions that had brought them to their state. The rest were ragged spirits, pitiable aramitama who proved themselves a nuisance rather than a danger to the living.

  This entity wanted to know him. He'd never heard of that, before. How would Shöki handle this?

  Of course. The demon hunter would never find himself in such a situation.

  At least now he knew how his petitioners felt when driven to lighting lanterns in sudden, inexplicable fog.

  “Is anyone, or anything, ever really innocent?” Aki asked, salvaging pride from frustration. He felt stupid as soon as he spoke.

  “Certainly not your sword. Where did someone so young find such a prize?'

  “In a shrine,” Aki said, brandishing the weapon. Maybe he'd done more damage than he knew, and his enemy was actually intimidated. “The priest gave it to me.”