Guardian, Saviors of Kamigawa

CHAPTER 16

The Heart of Frost stood among the dramatic Tendo Peaks, a day’s hike from where Toshi met Godo. Like all the Sokenzan Range, the Tendo’s most infamous mountain was a tall, narrow spire of rock that connected the drab soil with the clouds above. None of the locals would go more than a few hundred paces up the ragged trail, for the Heart of Frost was cursed by the yuki-onna. No people meant no victims, and in a few decades she became little more than a potent folk tale told on a snowy night.

That was before Toshi came. As he had several weeks before, the ochimusha ascended the base of the Heart of Frost, bound for the clearing the yuki-onna called home. It was there he had performed his ritual, bound the winter spirit, and taken her power for his own. It was there he intended to return, to restore the snow-woman and surrender what he stole.

The morning air was frigid and the trail narrow, but Toshi did not waver. He felt a hollowness in his stomach and a great weight on his back that had nothing to do with the cold or fatigue, but he took some pleasure in the monotony of the hike. Walking in a straight line was about as much as his dulled senses and distracted thoughts could handle.

He made steady progress until about a third of the way up the mountain. There, he found the first of a series of kanji he’d carved along the path several weeks ago. The character was meant to draw the yuki-onna in and keep her away from Toshi long enough for him to complete his preparations farther up the trail.

It had worked spectacularly well-somewhere, the spirits of dead kanji masters were toasting him. No one had ever managed to do what he had done. It was the equivalent of catching a lightning bolt and tying it into a bow. Even in his maudlin state of mind, Toshi took a small shred of pride from the novelty of his achievement. People would talk about it forever if they knew. They might not say nice things about him personally, but they would talk about the grand, terrible thing he’d done.

Pride evaporated when he came within reach of a trail marker carved into the bark of an evergreen. Toshi stared at the symbol for a moment. Then he pulled his jitte and set to excavating all the bark around the symbol, changing a series of lines and curves into a square blank patch of naked wood. When he was through, Toshi scooped up the shavings from the base of the tree and scattered them into the wind.

He repeated the process on the next kanji he found. This second one had been drawn on a smooth rock in his own blood, so Toshi poured some of his water on the rock and scrubbed it with the edge of his hand until the flesh was raw. With the kanji washed away, Toshi washed embedded bits of rock from his flesh and went on up the trail.

He had been very careful about making the marks so it was easy for him to remember where they were. He spent the better part of the day hiking, finding kanji, and obliterating them. Each time he erased a trail marker, he felt some the fog in his brain lift and the heaviness of his limbs ease. He didn’t feel right … none of this felt right … but he did feel better.

It occurred to him that he could have skipped the hiking and just gone directly from kanji to kanji by travelling through shadow. He barely considered the idea before continuing on foot. Something about the effort of walking soothed him almost as much as removing the symbols.

Overhead, the sun had set, and darkness colored the sky. Last time, it had taken him days to reach his destination. Today, he had covered almost all the ground he needed to in a few hours. This was another unexpected benefit of his fuzzy-mindedness: he had no sensation of time passing, no other weariness than what he’d started with. The entire day had blurred into one long, slow moment, from meeting Godo to scratching out the kanji in front of him now.

Toshi shivered under the blanket Godo had given him. It got much colder on the Heart of Frost at night, even without the yuki-onna prowling for victims. Cold enough to kill anyone who didn’t take shelter.

Toshi went on to the next kanji. He didn’t want to die, but he didn’t want to settle in for the night, either. The idea of falling asleep filled him with dread. Better to press on and finish the job while he still had the wits to focus.

Toshi wiped clean another kanji, and then another. The moon rose, peaked, and started to set before he stumbled and fell heavily to the cold, hard ground. Something cracked on his face, and at first he thought he had ice in his hair. A touch-inspection of his face revealed that it was the skin on his forehead that had dried and split. Blood trickled from the split flesh on his face, staining his fingers.

The sight of his own blood brought Toshi closer to consciousness. He hated to see it go to waste. The stuff was even more precious to kanji mages than it was to everyone else, for characters drawn in blood were always the most powerful.

Though his fingers were thick and clumsy, Toshi dragged them across his forehead again until they were smeared with crimson. He forced himself to stand and lumbered toward a rocky overhang that would blunt the cutting wind. For a moment he stood swaying in the quiet alcove. Then, he leaned forward and drew a ragged pair of symbols on the rock face.

The alcove quickly warmed as if he had lit a fire. The sensation returned to his face and hands, stinging as his nerves registered the damage done by the cold. Barely able to stand upright, Toshi wrapped the heavy blanket around him and leaned against the rock. He was asleep before his body finished sliding to the ground.

He dreamed not of the gray granite plain, but of the Heart of Frost. He found himself trudging up the same mountain trail as the same scathing wind tore at him. Now there was definitely ice in his hair, and his eyebrows, and crusted across his lashes.

He had lost track of how many symbols he had eradicated and how many yet remained, but he recognized the section of trail he was on. Over the next rise was the clearing where he had trapped the snow-woman. Almost done, he thought.

Toshi cinched the blanket around his neck and shoulders and proceeded over the rise. The large circular clearing was bounded by a series of sheer cliffs with a narrow opening on the north side that led to the peak of the mountain. Frequent snowfall had covered the floor of the clearing in a light dusting of white, but Toshi knew that the snow concealed a ring of kanji carved into the rock. He ought to know: he had spend hours making it.

He trudged through the ankle-deep snow and wondered why this dream was so different from the others yet so similar to the waking time he had spent on the mountain. He caught his foot on a hidden rock and fell onto his hands and knees. Was this his afterlife, then? An endless trek to erase the things he had done, with nothing to look forward to but an ever-increasing numbness of body and brain?

Toshi dug his hands into the ground and clenched two fistfuls of dirt and snow. No. This would not be his fate. This would end here. He straightened his arms and his back and continued toward the hidden ring of symbols on all fours. It took almost an hour, but as the purple-black sky lightened to cobalt blue on the horizon, he finally reached his goal.

He carefully crawled around the edge of the circle, wiping dusty snow off the kanji until he had exposed the entire ring. Taken together, the symbols laid out a long, clumsily worded sentence that described their purpose and effect. Destroying one of the symbols would break the spell, but he would have to remove them all to completely restore what he had altered.

Something white fluttered in the corner of his eye. Toshi rocked back onto his knees and shielded his eyes from the wind. At the center of the circle stood a tall, female figure in a flowing white robe. Her head was tilted forward so that her long black hair hung down and obscured her features. She stood motionless for a second as the wind whipped her garments, and then she took a single step forward.

Toshi recognized the yuki-onna but he was beyond fear. He didn’t feel anything save a wave of resignation, unable even to summon the energy for some clever last words.

The woman in white took another step toward Toshi. He simply sat and stared, his jitte held tight but almost forgotten in his hand. Then, the cold figure straightened and lifted her head, tossing back her silky black mane and revealing her elegant, sharp-boned face.

The yuki-onna’s skin was jet-black except for her lips, which were painted a vibrant purple. She scanned Toshi with her glittering black eyes and shook her head in disgust.

“What are you doing, oath-brother? What could you possibly be doing?”

Toshi blinked, sending flakes of ice fluttering down his cheeks. “Kiku?” It was definitely the mahotsukai’s face beneath that veil of hair. Confusion pricked the back of Toshi’s mind. The yuki-onna often took the form of someone familiar, someone beloved. Did Kiku qualify?

Had the snow-woman ever spoken before? And weren’t her eyes supposed to be bottomless black holes without pupils?

Kiku made a dismissive wave. “I am disappointed in you, ochimusha. With all the games you play, I expected you to recognize this for what it is.”

“A dream,” Toshi croaked. “This is all a dream brought on-”

This is no dream, my acolyte.

Toshi’s eyes opened wide. Kiku was gone, and in her place stood a thick black curtain with a bone-white mask at its center.

Look around you, Night’s Reach said. You are not sleeping in a rocky cubbyhole. You are here, on the Heart of Frost, in the very clearing you seek. You have been manipulated here by powerful magic.

The sight of his myojin and her voice helped Toshi concentrate. “Manipulated,” he muttered.

Since you arrived in the forest. Perhaps even before. You are no longer in control of your own mind.

Toshi shuddered. His voice became sharper. “Who is?”

You know, but have forgotten. Or rather, you know, but they will not let you remember.

He tried to stand, but his legs would not hold him. “Help me, then,” he said.

I could erase their influence with a thought. But I do not choose to reveal myself to them directly. Not yet.

Irritation seeped into Toshi’s tone. “What are you waiting for?”

The right time. Now be still. Gather your thoughts. When you call for my assistance again, I will give it gladly.

The myojin began to fade from view. Toshi raised his hand to stop her, but caught himself before he spoke. His eyes fixed on the jitte still clutched in his fist. Realization hit him and he said, “Those pale-skinned aristo bastards.”

Angrily, the ochimusha stood. His limbs were still leaden and unresponsive, but pure, clear hatred had punched through the fog in his mind. He steadied himself and looked down at the exposed kanji at his feet. Then Toshi snarled and fell to his knees once more, hacking at the carved character with his jitte.

Toshi. Night’s voice was still strong, though her physical body was gone. What are you doing now?

“What I came to do.” He barely interrupted his attack on the symbol. Chips of stone flew past his face.

That is what they want you to do, not what you came to do.

Toshi chipped away the last of the symbol so that there was nothing but a shallow indentation in the ground. “It is now.”

Back at the Sokenzan border, Godo faced alone the nightmare that was consuming his army one man at a time.

The bandit numbers had dwindled so much that Godo himself was reduced to standing watch on the border. He had been safe for two nights running, but this night his luck ran out. He had sensed this was his last night long before he saw the woman in flowing white robes and the long, concealing veil of hair.

When she came, she came slowly, walking up the ridge toward Godo on his yak like a long-lost friend. The bandit chief fought the urge to run-he was too weary and too stubborn to abandon his post. Visions of Konda’s army riding unchallenged across the border were even more hateful to him than his own meaningless death. When he died, they would say he died resisting Konda to the end.

The snow-woman crept closer, now mere yards from Godo. He flexed his cold muscles and took the heavy, spiked log from the yak’s back.

“Come on, then.” He tried to sound strong and sure, but he had used up the last of his reserves long ago. It was a challenge just to swing the heavy log, especially because he knew it would do no good. You couldn’t beat back the cold with weapons of wood and metal.

Just out of arm’s reach, the yuki-onna raised her head and tossed back her hair. Godo gasped when he saw the endless black pools of her eyes. He felt a flicker of disappointment in not recognizing the snow-woman’s features. Perhaps she was so gorged on his men that she didn’t feel the need to appear as someone he loved. Perhaps she had taken on the face of someone dear to him, someone from his distant past that his addled brain couldn’t consciously recall.

“Hail to you, curse of the mountain. I am Godo, chief of the Sanzoku bandits. Take me if you can, but promise me this: once I am gone, continue to haunt this place. Claim as many of Eiganjo’s men as you can. Make this border a bane to all so that none will try to cross through here ever again.”

His speech energized Godo, and he swung the spiked log with the last bit of strength in his powerful frame. The thick weapon plowed into the yuki-onna’s side, and for a moment it seemed as if she would be swept aside by it. But the log sailed past her and she still occupied the same space.

The snow-woman stepped within arm’s reach of Godo and extended her hand. Summoning all his courage, Godo stared directly into the face of the killing force and waited.

The yuki-onna seemed to wince as if stung. She withdrew her hand and slowly tilted her head back toward the Heart of Frost. Godo fought off a surge of relief as those terrible eyes turned from him.

The dread spirit folded her hands into her sleeves and tilted her head forward. Her face disappeared behind the veil of hair, and as Godo watched, the yuki-onna’s entire body slowly disintegrated into a stream of icy crystals borne up by the wind.

The cold, oppressive atmosphere on the ridge immediately warmed and lightened. Godo exhaled and sank to his knees. He giddily noticed that his breath no longer appeared as a thick cloud of white fog.

Exhausted but alive, Godo pulled himself back up by gripping the yak’s leather harness. For the first time in weeks he felt a faint stirring of hope. Many of his warriors had died or fled. Konda’s army was still waiting just beyond the border. The Kami War still raged across the nation. But the border was secure, and Konda would not come to enslave them this day. However it happened, the yuki-onna had gone just as mysteriously as she had come. And because of that, the Sanzoku bandits would live to fight another day.

Godo swung himself into the saddle and headed down to rally whomever he could find. As he rode off the ridge, the bandit chief leaned low and snared his spiked log, dragging it to him by its long metal chain.

Konda’s army could not possibly know how their situation had changed, and Godo was eager to exploit this to his advantage.