Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
Far away now, the heron was a white smudge diminished by distance and the swirling mist.
He stared at her.
‘Moeru.’
His mind a receiver, waiting.
‘How—?’
Nikumu stood. He was a tall man. Thin, ascetic nose in the midst of a wide-cheeked face. His pinched mouth seemed full of tension.
‘Do we know you?’
Her eyes a murky sea, blank.
Away and away, finished in the mist.
‘Moeru?’
‘Where are your manners?’
‘I know this woman.’
Her pale face, still upturned, the ghost of a lost smile on her lips. And what ghost of him swam in the blue-green depths of her eyes?
‘It is quite apparent that she does not know you.’ Nikumu turned to her. ‘Do you know this man, my dear?’
A slight hesitation, then a quick negative jerk of her head, almost convulsive, as if someone had pulled a string.
‘You must be mistaken, you see.’ The tone matter of fact, the conversation ended.
‘No, I—’ Ronin bent slightly. Something in her eyes, a cloudy essence, a struggle, perhaps.
Nikumu sat. A muscle along his jaw twitched.
‘Ke’ema,’ he said quietly.
One of the men in charcoal gray rose and gripped Ronin’s bicep.
Ronin continued to stare, an edge of panic rising within him. Nothing.
‘You will leave us now,’ said the man at his side. His grip tightened.
The perfect oval of her face.
The man began to exert real pressure.
The glint of silver around her slender white neck—
Ronin was pushed back a step. He jabbed with his elbow, simultaneously positioning his left foot. He struck out with his right arm, straight and rigid as a board. A bright crack as bone shattered. The man’s mouth opened in a silent scream as he toppled backward into the river.
Nikumu rose, his face drained of blood. The remaining man in charcoal gray stepped toward Ronin.
Then Okami was at his side, his voice low and penetrating, and he took Ronin swiftly away, through the turning, curious faces, away from the shouts and the commotion, into the deepening mists of evening.
‘What madness made you do that?’
‘I know her.’
‘I cannot believe that.’
‘You must believe it.’
‘She is Nikumu’s wife.’
‘What? But that cannot be!’
‘My friend, what is, is.’
‘Her name is Moeru.’
‘Yes.’ Okami’s face furrowed in puzzlement. ‘That’s correct.’ He shook his head. ‘Nikumu’s wife! How—?’
‘Okami, she wears the silver sakura that I gave her—’
There was a silence between them for a time while Okami’s eyes, black as stone, searched his face for the answer to an unknown question. And Ronin knew that here was the true test of the friendship that had been forged along the Kisokaido, in a mountain station powdered white by snow, in a high gorge tilled with falling water and metal and death.
Beyond the oiled rice paper soji, the tall bamboo swayed in the gathering wind. The bright camellias were black in the night. A frog called to its mate, a lonely sound.
Okami went through the opened soji, out into the glowing dark. Ronin followed him. The sky was so clear that the stars seemed to be burning the fabric of the sky just above their heads.
‘The cherry blossom of Ama-no-mori,’ Okami said then. ‘How would you get a sakura?’
Ronin sighed, knew that this was all that was left him now. ‘On the continent of man,’ he said slowly, ‘in Sha’angh’sei, its great port city, I came upon a man being beaten in an alley. It was near to night and all I could see was that there were four or five against the one. I went to his aid but it was already too late. I slew two of them but the man was dead. In one hand he grasped a silver chain with the sakura. For some reason, I cannot say what, I took it from him.’
They began to walk to the pool.
‘He was Bujun, of course, though why he was so far from Ama-no-mori is a mystery.’
‘What has this to do with Moeru?’
‘I found her in Sha’angh’sei. She had come in, sick and starving, with refugees from the north. She would have been left for dead had I not taken her to Tenchō, where I stayed, to be cared for. When I sailed from the continent of man in search of Ama-no-mori, she was with me and I gave her the sakura as a present. I thought her killed in an attack by warriors in strange obsidian ships which rode above the waves. How she came here I have no idea.’
‘Why should she not be here?’ said Okami. ‘She is Bujun.’
The pool was silent between them.
‘You do not believe me?’
‘Why should she leave Ama-no-mori?’
‘Why should a Bujun be in Sha’angh’sei?’
‘Because—’ Okami’s face was in deep shadow, the light spilling from the house, at his back. ‘Ronin, Nikumu is leader of the sasori.’
The frog had ceased its croaking at their approach. Only the cicadas chattered on, unperturbed.
‘He is also the most powerful member of the jogen soru, the council which advises the Kunshin on vital matters of state policy. It is only recently that the sasori have risen. They are martialists, Bujun not content to live on Ama-no-mori. They wish to invade the continent of man.’
‘So the Bujun in Sha’angh’sei was a spy.’
Okami nodded. ‘Suggested by Nikumu, passed by the jogen soru, he was sent to inform us of the city’s strengths and weaknesses.’
‘Not all Bujun wish this.’
‘No, of course not. Just a minority. But recently, they have become much more powerful. And now that Nikumu is their leader—’
‘What does the Kunshin think of that?’
Okami shrugged pragmatically.
‘He has done nothing to stop the affiliation.’
‘Okami, you must trust me. I know Moeru.’
‘All right. I concede there is a possibility that she too was sent to the continent of man.’
‘You do not understand, my friend. There is something very wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She did not recognize me. There was nothing in her eyes. Nothing.’
Whisper of the bamboo. A fish broke the surface of the pool, a pale wisp of phosphorescence.
Okami got up.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
Inside the house, he called for food and their traveling cloaks.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Into the countryside. Away from Eido for a while.’
‘But the scroll—’
‘Nikumu will send his men here looking for you. We must be gone before then.’
‘But there must be other—’
‘He will find us in Eido,’ Okami said flatly.
‘I will not run from him. I must get Moeru back.’
Okami turned on him.
‘Back? She is his wife, Ronin.’
He felt again the edge of a peculiar kind of desperation. K’reen, Matsu, now—No! There was a chance.
‘Okami, I know her. She is not herself.’ Okami donned his long cloak. ‘I will stay here alone then.’
‘You will not.’ The eyes blazed and the voice took on the tone of command. ‘You will come with me and do exactly as I say.’ He gripped Ronin’s arms and his face softened. ‘Think, my friend! If there is to be any chance for you and for Moeru, we must both leave now.’ Behind him, one of Okami’s women settled his cloak about his shoulders.
Outside, in the garden, the frog began its sad song again.
They went south, out along the wide Tokaido, a more traveled highway than the mountainous Kisokaido and soon the vast sprawl of the city was far behind them, the flat yellow light like an aurora within the mist.
To the west, it was already raining; here the air was damp and still and electric. Above them, the stars were rapidly disappearing behind rushing black clouds. They wrapped their traveling cloaks more tightly about them and secured their sloping sedge hats on their heads. They were on foot although Ronin had argued against this, but his impatience was forced to accede to Okami’s common sense: on horseback, they would be far more conspicuous. Now they were merely two more travelers on the Tokaido.
The slanting rain, hissing through the night, hit them just as they left a forest of pine. They had reached the foot of a steep hill. Trees lined the Tokaido here, tall, slender bamboo, affording little shelter. On the road stood a huge boulder, like a marker on a page.
‘This is Nissaka,’ said Okami through the downpour as they passed the rock. The brims of their hats overlapped. ‘The stone is said to have witnessed the struggle between a woman and a mountain bandit who attacked her when she refused his demands. The woman was pregnant and, although she died, her baby survived because the stone cried out, invoking the merciful goddess Kannon, who reared the infant.’ The hill stretched out before them as they climbed. It was very dark and visibility was sharply decreased by the storm. ‘The child was male and when he reached manhood, he sought out the bandit and avenged his mother’s death.’
There was only rain now, in all the world.
‘Do you believe such fanciful tales?’
‘Whether the facts of the myth are true or not makes little difference. It is the spirit of the tale which is important. It is something by which all Bujun live.’
‘You are a vengeful people,’ Ronin said, aware of the private irony of his statement.
Okami wiped the rain from his face.
‘Revenge and honor are two separate matters, my friend. One cannot forfeit honor and live.’
‘What is the difference then?’
‘In the manner of the death. The truth of the life must never be clouded.’
It was a hard road to travel here, especially in the bleak weather, and they were glad, at length, to reach the crest. Then around a turning, they could just make out a smudge of saffron light, a beckoning hand in the wretched darkness.
The small inn was perched on the high, steep slope of a hill. They were welcomed, and leaving their soaked cloaks to dry in front of a crackling fire of thick maple logs, Okami asked that hot tea be brought to them out on the balcony. The proprietress made no comment, despite the inclemency of the weather, merely bowed and ushered them through the inn’s warm rooms.
Out on the roofed balcony, which ran along the far side of the inn and which overlooked a thickly forested valley devoid of all civilization or cultivation, they heard the woman calling for their tea.
Lanterns were still lit and by their glowing light they watched the silvered rain pour out of the sky. Far away, thunder rumbled like a bumbling giant. They unstrapped their hats and sat, the liquid beating of the rain on the roof of the inn soothing. The tea came, highly spiced and steaming, and as they drank, Ronin told Okami all he knew of the Makkon, the coming of The Dolman and the Kai-feng, which had already commenced at Kamado. More tea came. It was drained, then replaced far into the night until even the proprietress came to them, yawning, excusing herself to go to bed, leaving only two serving girls in the kitchen in the event they wished for food or more drink.
‘If what you say is true, then the Kunshin must be made aware of the circumstances,’ said Okami when Ronin had finished his tale. ‘There is surely an obligation which must be met.’
‘The Bujun never forget.’
Okami smiled with his lips but his eyes were grave.
‘Never.’
‘And what of Nikumu, he who wishes the annexation of Ama-no-mori?’
Okami’s eyes mirrored the rain.
‘I know him as all Bujun know him save the Kunshin. He is a complex man who spends much time in his castle at Haneda. He is a great intellect, one of the foremost patrons of the Noh, as is the Kunshin. When I first heard that he led the sasori I could not believe it. A year ago, they were laughed at.’
A moth had come in from the rain, attracted by the lanterns’ light. It darted erratically about the warm oiled paper.
‘And now?’
Okami shivered.
‘It is like the old days,’ he whispered.
Ronin watched the moth as it rose, circling closer to the open top of the lantern where the light was stronger.
‘Why then does the Kunshin do nothing to stop it?’
The other shrugged.
‘Perhaps we see only part of it. Certainly Nikumu is not a monster, though it seems to me that he has changed much recently.’
Caught in the hot downdraft, the moth fell into the flame at the center of the lantern. Ronin did not even hear a pop.
Rain continued to splatter against the bamboo roof above their heads, just as it battered the leaves on the maples in the valley below them.
‘Time is at an end, Okami. For man, the eons have run their course unless The Dolman can be stopped, unless someone here can decipher this scroll of dor-Sefrith’s.’ He gestured outward, to the valley. ‘All this beauty gone, as if it had never existed.’ Then, in a softer voice: ‘Where is Haneda, Okami?’
The face did not turn.
To the south.’
His heart leapt: they traveled south from Eido.
‘How far?’
‘A day,’ said Okami. ‘Just a day away.’
By the time they reached the foot of the Yahagi Bridge, the landscape had changed drastically.
In the early afternoon, they had come upon a winding river and the highway had commenced to follow it through the countryside. Now the near bank was thick with high, swaying reeds and the far side disintegrated into wet marshland interspersed with flat glittering fields of rice. Mountains, blue in hazy distance, strung themselves along the far horizon, gaunt, unforgiving sentinels.
They set out across the long arcing span of the wood and stone bridge, feeling naked and exposed. Below them, white herons stalked the marsh, occasionally climbing the stark face of a small granite outcropping on their left.
On the far bank, they struck out to the left toward a distant copse of high cryptomeria trees, a cluster, an asymmetrical forest, a dark island on the marsh.
Far away, to the east, they spied the tall white sails of several fishing boats heading out to sea. Overhead, a flock of geese circled the cryptomeria and wheeled away to the south calling to each other in lonely concert.
They trod a soggy, winding path through the fields, deserted and still. Water spiders skimmed the taut surface of the marsh like bright fingernails scoring a fine bolt of silk.
At length, they reached a thick copse of bamboo from which they peered ahead and for the first time Ronin was able to distinguish a square blue arch and, beyond, the angled roofs of Nikumu’s castle. Haneda.