Heretic, Betrayers of Kamigawa

CHAPTER 28

“We can’t stay here.” Sharp-Ear was pacing nervously in front of Hisoka’s office door.

“We can’t leave,” Pearl-Ear said. “Out there is where the enemy is.”

“In here is where they’re headed. Surely we can find a way past them?”

“I believe we could, but Michiko and Riko would have a much harder time.”

Sharp-Ear turned to the girls. “What do you say? Care to make a run for your life?”

Michiko shook her head. “I know you don’t trust Toshi … and perhaps I don’t, either … but I do believe him. The ogre is out for blood. Toshi is his oath-brother. He can protect us.”

“But he’s not here, Princess.” Sharp-Ear anxiously twisted the end of his tail. “The longer we wait, the more certain it is that the ogre will find us and the more certain Mochi here will thaw out. Also, the o-bakemono might just a cast a spell and wreck the building. Has anyone thought of that? Toshi can’t talk the building out of falling on us.”

“Sure I can.” The ochimusha stepped from the same shadow he’d used only a few hours ago. He only came partially into the room, however, his left arm and leg still hidden in the darkness beyond. “I can talk anyone into anything. I talked you into waiting, didn’t I?”

“And we’ve waited long enough,” Sharp-Ear said. “If you can do something to help, do it.”

Toshi didn’t answer. He looked at Mochi and said, “How’s he?”

Pearl-Ear said, “As you left him.”

“Good.” Toshi came all the way into the room, carrying the huge stone disk in one hand. “I brought something for him.”

Pearl-Ear gasped. Riko and Sharp-Ear stared wide-eyed, and Michiko fixed Toshi with a penetrating stare.

Toshi glanced back at the stone disk as if he had forgotten he was carrying it. “It’s not me,” he said. “I used a touch of shadow to make it weightless.” He raised and lowered the stone disk as if it were no more than a dinner plate. “See? Give it a try, I bet you could-”

“That is what my father took from the kakuriyo,” Michiko said grimly.

“And I took it from your father.” Toshi crossed the room and set the daimyo’s prize down next to Mochi. “There,” he said. “If Mochi stays cold long enough, Hideo and the All-Consuming Oni of Chaos can wrestle Konda and O-Kagachi for the right to swallow him whole.”

Michiko was moving toward the stone disk, extending her hand. “I’ve never seen it in person before.”

“Don’t touch it,” Toshi and Pearl-Ear said together. Michiko looked at them, wounded, and Toshi added, “Your father touched it and it changed him.”

Pearl-Ear nodded. “It was also created by a spell that used you as a mystical fulcrum. This thing is tied to you somehow, Michiko, and it may be dangerous, especially to you.”

Michiko lowered her hand. “Yes, sensei.”

Sharp-Ear was strolling around the disk and Mochi. “So you’re just going to leave it here?”

“I am. I have it on good authority that O-Kagachi will come for it again as soon as he figures out where it is.”

“He will destroy Minamo,” Riko said.

Toshi grunted impatiently. “He’d better hurry, if that’s his plan, because Hidetsugu won’t leave much behind.” He turned to the others. “Who wants out of here before that happens?”

One by one, Toshi carried the princess and her friends away from the deathtrap that was Minamo. At Pearl-Ear’s request, he ferried them to the edge of the wild kitsune village in East Jukai.

They were relieved to be safe but not as relieved as he was. He spent the last few trips in a cold sweat, expecting to see disembodied jaws or golden serpentine heads as big as a mountain appearing at any moment. Or worse, he could be spotted by Hidetsugu, who would insist that Toshi join in the bloody reckoning he was performing on Minamo. It would have been almost worth it to watch Hidetsugu crunch Mochi up like a big blue icicle, but not quite.

“You have our thanks, ochimusha.” Pearl-Ear bowed. “You have taken a great step forward in earning our trust.”

“Not mine,” Sharp-Ear called. “I still hate you.”

“Should have left him behind,” Toshi muttered. He returned Pearl-Ear’s bow and said, “Thank you, Lady. I have changed much since I met you, and I think it’s for the better.”

Nearby, Sharp-Ear made a rude noise.

Pearl-Ear gracefully ignored her brother and spoke to Toshi. “What will you do now?”

“I still have some business to take care of.”

Pearl-Ear lowered her voice. “Mochi?”

Toshi nodded. “I don’t believe he was as helpless as he seemed. I may have surprised him at first, but it’s just as likely he was waiting to see what I’d do so he could exploit it.” He grinned. “I don’t think he expected me to drop the daimyo’s prize in his lap, in any case.”

“Probably not. Wasn’t it dangerous to just leave it with him like that?”

“Maybe, but I don’t want it, and I didn’t want Konda to have it. That thing’s a trouble magnet.”

“What do you think will become of it?”

“Oh, I’m sure someone will latch onto it. The world’s full of fools. Eventually, O-Kagachi will catch up to it, slaughter whoever has it, and that’ll be that.” He winked. “When and wherever that happens, I intend to be elsewhere.”

Pearl-Ear watched him for a few moments. “A friendly word of advice, Toshi?”

“Mm?”

“You would do well to be less guarded and less flip. You have a way of speaking that always makes it seem as if you’re up to something.”

The ochimusha nodded soberly. “I’ll work on that, Lady. Thank you.”

Several hours later, Toshi was sitting in a cave beside a crackling fire. The cave was his, scouted years ago and stocked with enough provisions to last a month. More recently, he’d brought Michiko here after rescuing her from the snakefolk. It was here that he first encountered Mochi. It was here where he first accepted the Myojin of Night’s Reach.

Toshi was naked to the waist as he stirred a stew pot above the fire. The kanji marks on his wrists, arms and forehead were all visible, but they itched uncomfortably. Toshi was still new to spiritual worship, but he recognized a clear sign when he saw it. Something was coming; someone was not quite finished with him yet.

Sure enough, the pressure dropped and a thin line of black thread crawled across the center of the cave at eye level. The thread doubled back on itself and returned to its starting point. It continued to travel back and forth, its speed increasing, until it had woven a solid black curtain across the rear of the enclosure.

Emaciated arms unfolded over the curtain and dozens of floating hands shimmered into view. A clean white speck formed at the center of the curtain, expanding to become a bone-white mask of a delicate female face.

The Myojin of Night’s Reach floated before Toshi, patient as a stone.

“Hello,” he said. He continued to stir his stew.

It is time, my acolyte. Are you prepared?

“I am. But first … you are adamant that this is necessary?”

I am. Your loyalty is a fickle, malleable thing. I would have you simplify your entanglements and clarify your dedication to me.

“I am your humble servant.”

Servant, perhaps, but never humble. You may begin whenever you are ready.

Toshi left the spoon in the stew pot. Still not looking at the myojin, he rubbed his left wrist. He gazed into the fire, past it, and far beyond. Then he moved the stew pot to the cave floor and slid forward onto his knees.

His hand moved up to the kanji cut into his forearm. He closed his eyes and faded from sight. Still in the same position, Toshi extended his left hand into the fire. He rotated his wrist so that the back of his hand was directly over the flames. Slowly, bit by bit, Toshi willed himself solid.

He had been rubbing the hyozan tattoo on his hand with special oils and extracts for hours, chanting softly as he worked. He was real enough to be burned by the fire, but it caressed his hand rather than consuming it, the flame flowing around his skin without ever touching.

Toshi stopped reforming himself and started to fade once more. He could still see his hand in the fire, but the flames flickered through it without resistance. Toshi waited until a single tall flame danced steadily through the center of his palm. He began chanting again and with agonizing precision, slowly drew his hand out of the fire.

The hyozan tattoo seemed to snag on the tall spike of flame. Toshi eased his progress but kept pulling his hand away. The tattoo pulled free of his flesh, clinging like a scab as it detached from his hand.

Clean, unmarked, and unburned, Toshi pulled his hand away. In the crackling fire, the hyozan tattoo fluttered like a flag on a pole. The symbol caught fire, withered, and disappeared up through a hole in the roof with the rest of the smoke.

Well done, my acolyte. Now our real work can begin in earnest.

Toshi looked up at the wide curtain of black behind the white mask. In it, he saw visions, glimpses of things that were true or could soon be true.

He saw Konda leading an army of twisted ghosts to the edge of the Kamitaki Falls.

He saw soratami warriors in chariots, raining magic and destruction down on the Jukai Forest.

He saw a vast field of dead soldiers and bandits, each frozen solid with a look of mortal dread on their faces.

He saw the All-Consuming Oni of Chaos and O-Kagachi clashing in the sky under a crescent moon.

He saw himself, trapped between Kiku with her camellia on one side and Hidetsugu with his spiked tetsubo on the other.

And he saw Michiko, her eyes bright and terrible, as she raised her father’s prize high overhead with both hands, preparing to dash it to the ground. There was blood on her hands and tears in her eyes.

“Yes,” Toshi said out loud. He was free of the reckoners for the first time since his teens. He had earned the personal enmity of the daimyo and re-earned the personal trust of the princess. A primordial beast had come to destroy the world, provided an ancient oni didn’t devour it first. And he was an open and declared enemy of both the soratami and their patron spirit.

He turned to the white mask, once more rubbing the back of his left hand.

“Yes,” he said again. “Now our real work can begin.”

As the Myojin of Night’s Reach withdrew back into herself, Toshi wondered exactly what work she had in mind. He wondered how vastly her plans differed from his.