Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
He awoke to find Haneda altered.
Nikumu’s high, open room was a litter of stone and wood. A holocaust had descended from the heavens. Or a titanic battle. Rage laced the room, a fine venomous dust hanging in the air. And a hate so strong that it beat on into the night. Haneda was a shambles.
He was alone.
All the castle, sheared and ruined, echoed to his heavy footfalls. Small fires danced where torches had been flung, guttering in the welter of powdered stone and mortar.
Naked, he descended what was left of the staircase, leaping the last four meters into the midst of the cryptomeria wood.
There were none to see him. Not a sparrow, not an owl. Not this night. Even the bats had fled in terror.
Through the fragrant, silent wood and out across the wide marsh. Above him, geese rode before the silver horns of the moon. The sky’s glittering face seemed to pulse.
The long reeds rustled, their pale stalks, illuminated by the fitful light of fireflies. The cicadas wailed shrilly.
He began to run, eastward, broaching at length the verge of the veldt. He lengthened his strides, exulting in his indefatigable strength, and he crossed the plain, leaving the sensation of time behind him.
To the deep blue slopes of the mountain.
Fujiwara.
He commenced to climb and as he did a painting grew in his mind, a work of great design and harmonious colors.
The clear air turned chill. The stars signaled their ancestral message as he went up the face of Fujiwara.
His coming was as silent as an animal’s passage across the floor of a jungle and, as he neared the rim of heaven, he could see the stars in the east fade and wink out. A rush of wind. A storm was coming.
At last he reached the cold purple summit of Fujiwara, crunched through the pale lavender snow.
It began to rain, despite the cold, the clouds roiling, seeming so close to his head that he was almost within their wreath.
He lifted his long arms as if to grab handfuls of moisture and at that instant the sky opened itself to him. Rain like platinum lances whipped his face and body.
And he lived now a moment that had come to him many times within his mind, in another lifetime, when he had been someone else.
Pink lightning gyred in the sky, an unearthly bridge and he began to laugh as the power surged through him and had his heart been an entirely human organ, it would have been split apart by the enormous force which rang through him. But Ronin was no more and he who stood atop Mount Fujiwara, the center of this startling storm, just below the billowing black and crimson clouds, ghostly ships shifting on a restless sea, was no longer truly human.
I am the Sunset Warrior, he thought ecstatically, marveling at the jump of his massive muscles, which stretched over his altered form with electric energy. I am come: let The Dolman beware.
Through the corrugate corridors of Time, he heard music from an age long destroyed or again not yet formed. Thick, wailing voices, replicated, mirrored, supported by instruments that seemed as if they created energy. The music skirled and thundered, aligning itself to his heartbeat. Crash like an exploding hillside.
Lightning crackled around his glistening shoulders.
Dor-Sefrith? he called silently.
But only the hissing of the rain pelting the mountain’s summit and the cracked rumble of the echoing thunder answered him. And he stood, immobile, realizing at last that he must now make his own answers. He was now only partly Ronin the seeker, was as much Setsoru, the founder.
What else waited for him?
He shrugged.
He was the Sunset Warrior.
With that realization, he willed his mind to relax, and as he let go of the comforting poles linking him to the physical world, his power was unleashed and his consciousness whirled inward to the core of his existence, where Ronin had feared to look, and he found at last the glittering axis of his power, the still center in the rushing vortex of constant energy. He reached out calm hands to embrace it.
Eternity.
T
HE SHIMMERING GRAY ICE
had crept southward during the long, agonizing time of the Kai-feng. As the three Makkon became stronger with the imminent arrival of their liege, as The Dolman swept toward the world from which he had once been banished, bent on a hideous vengeance, so the deathshead warriors burst from the confines of their spreading encampment. Led by great beasts with faceted eyes and shining blue-green carapaces, these warriors hurled themselves across the littered plain and against the high stone walls of Kamado, the last citadel of man.
Behind the deathshead warriors came the creaking and trundling of immense machines of war, designed to eject threescore pikes at a burst in a trajectory that would take them over the highest fortress wall, or hurtle liters of scalding liquid metal at oncoming warriors. There were towering scaffoldings housing immense horizontal pendulums sheathed in thick metal at one end. And more. Pulled by the dissolute and bedraggled hordes of the northern hill tribes, inveigled into The Dolman’s employ by promises of power. So the world of man shuddered on its axis as if it knew by the quaking movement of these vast machines of war the impending doom rushing headlong to its curving hazed surface.
The fourth Makkon was about to arrive upon the continent of man.
And the last allies of The Dolman were called forth, those who had waited in secret for the time of the Kai-feng. Arming themselves, they traveled across frozen, bitter land, turbulent, violent seas, by means neither human nor readily understandable.
The Aegir, adrift in the deep, was preoccupied with more important matters. It did not hinder their progress yet it was aware of them, since all karma is intertwined. It was content to be the protector of its murderer.
With the coming of The Dolman’s last allies to the flaming continent of man, the penultimate step had been taken to ensure the defeat of mankind. They watched with baleful, emotionless eyes, the torn, scarred face of the land, smoldering, ashen, blasted, a ribboning triptych through which they traveled, thinking only of their destination, a forest’s verge, blind to the piles of rotting corpses alive with gorging rats and nervous wolves. They were deaf to the pitiable cries of the old, the infirm, and the very young wretched creatures who had somehow escaped the slaughter. They rode onward. Assembling, the vultures began their spiraling descent.
As the last allies of The Dolman made their arcane way across the continent of man, Kiri, the Empress of Sha’angh’sei, was returning northward to Kamado. She rode at the head of a vast column of warriors more than a kilometer in length. On either side of her rode two contrasting figures, though both were powerful leaders. On her right was an enormously fat man with keen, intelligent eyes and forbidding manner. He was Du-Sing, taipan of Sha’angh’sei’s Greens. On her left was a small, slightly built individual with a flat nose and flowing wispy beard trailing from his strong chin. He was Lui Wu, taipan of the Reds, who held sway in Sha’angh’sei’s outlying northern districts. Now, after countless centuries as mortal enemies, the taipans of the Ching Pang and the Hung Pang rode together as did their men behind them. Kiri, who had united them in the common battle, dug her boot heels into the sweating flanks of her saffron luma, as if eager for the stench of Kamado, the clangor of the Kai-feng. Du-Sing took off after her, leaning forward in his saddle, the tourmaline which hung around his neck like a miniature sun, spinning with the motion. And Lui Wu, signaling to the trailing column to pick up the pace, rattled his reins, talking softly to his mount, urging him over the last rise toward Kamado.
Upon gaining the high ground that led to the great pine forest, one of the last allies of The Dolman broke away from the others, sought out the three Makkon.
Past tall, gaunt deathshead warriors with the deadly spiked globes swinging from worn leather braces tied about their narrow hips, past creatures with elongated skulls topped by plumes which flowed down to the center of their backs, past short, squat warriors with close-set eyes as dull as death, past beings who looked more like gargantuan insects than they did men.
He found these most powerful of all creatures save The Dolman himself in the frigid forest’s center, waiting for their last brother. A chill wind swept sheets of snow high into the air like giant wraiths.
The Makkon’s alien orange eyes, so terrifying, raked the shivering, snow-laden pines for a tangible sign of his arrival, for with it would begin the Summoning, when at last The Dolman would stand again upon the world of man.
‘I am here,’ said the ally.
One hideous, beaked head turned slowly in his direction. The slitted pupils pulsed. The great tail snapped back and forth. He inhaled their stench.
The gray beak opened and a shrill screaming, inimical to human ears, came forth. But he had been trained, thus he heard:
‘Yes. We know. We brought you on His instruction.’
‘Is he coming?’
‘Would you doubt, fool? It has been promised, thus it shall be. Even Time may not interfere now.’ The orange eyes glowed. ‘You are held to your vow.’ The outlines of the Makkon pulsed in and out of focus. ‘You know the penalty if you fail—’
‘You need not—’
The screaming increased to an unbearable level.
‘You shall pray for death!’
‘There are too many centuries of planning. I shall not fail. And then—’
The alien head swiveled away from him for a moment and it was as if a great weight had been lifted from him.
‘Our brother comes now. Leave us at once. Go to the southern verge of the wood. You shall command the central strike force at the time of the Master’s choosing. There will be direct communication with further orders. Now go, for no mortal may witness what is about to take place.’
‘But I am not—’
‘Go!’
And he went away from them, through the maze of the forest, at length rejoining the others, leading them southward into the vast, seething camp of the legions of The Dolman. And, using a smooth voice born to command, he set about deploying the warriors in his command for the coming conflagration. And all the while, he chuckled to himself, hugging the horde of his secret knowledge tightly to his mailed breast.
There came a screaming from the forest of pines north of Kamado. In its center stood the four Makkon, joined at last. Their outlines pulsed irregularly, then beat more swiftly as their curved beaks worked against the air as if it were a substance inimical to them.
As one, they called out again and again, setting a rhythm.
Cold fire streaked downward from somewhere past the heavens.
Within the high yellow walls of Kamado, the forces of man rejoiced at the coming of the Greens and the Reds and the safe return of Kiri. And that gray, snow-filled night, the oil lamps burned bright and long, flickering against the gathering gloom, as the rikkagin and taipan met to decide upon their strategies for repulsing the dawn attack.
Later, with the low ruffling skies turned red by a chill unnatural sleet, Kiri climbed the ramparts of the citadel. Her footsteps were hushed in the snow covering the stone.
Rikkagin T’ien, whom she called Tuolin, met her along the northern rampart and there they sat beneath a sharply angled overhang, listening to the harsh rattle of the sleet, looking out at the wood where the enemy was encamped.
Kiri was reminded of another night when she had sat atop the same ramparts with Ronin, knowing that she had lost him forever to the unknown quest which drove him.
When Matsu had been slain by the Makkon in Sha’angh’sei, part of her had died. It could not have been otherwise. Without Matsu, she was but half a person. Both had known the perils of such a life—and the fierce, intense joys—and thus had they each guarded the other most closely and carefully. But the Makkon had destroyed all that when it ripped Matsu’s soft white throat from the tendons of her neck. Because of Ronin. For it was searching madly for him.
Yet as she stared now into the dense wood alive with the minions of death and destruction, she felt only an overwhelming desire for him. She could sleep with other men, suffer being separated from him for long periods’ of time, and would, she knew, betray even her own people for him. Because beyond all else she wanted him. Other emotions, curious and hateful to her now, swam within the dark depths of her being, yet she would not touch them or even acknowledge their existence. Thus she numbed herself with the suffering of her losses for she sensed for the first time that her ultimate undoing would come only if she allowed herself to feel deeply.
After a time, she pulled forth from her heavy robe a long pipe and filled it carefully from a small leather pouch. She lit it from a small covered oil lamp.
She inhaled deeply, holding the smoke for long moments, reluctantly letting it go, her breath hissing in the night, a brief white mist dissipating upon the wet, frigid air. She heard the sound of distant voices and did not care, past knowing even whether they were her own creation.
Idly, she considered taking a long puff and never exhaling. An endless ecstasy-filled corridor. She wished to do this for she sensed dimly yet deeply the incipience of a personal tragedy infinitely more terrifying than the Kai-feng, to which she was now as indifferent as all the other outside elements of life. But, bitterly, she knew that her body would betray her and that with the soft furry smoke filling up all her lungs and all her body, entering her bloodstream, with consciousness failing, her automatic reflexes would take over and she would exhale without conscious volition. The organism, at least, wished to survive.
Beside her, Tuolin stared at her beautiful profile, pale in the red light of the sleet storm. Far away, across the blood-drenched field, in the deep shadows of the pine forest, something was happening. He felt the ground shudder. Still, his thoughts centered on her. What was she thinking?
He had known Kiri for a long time, for as long as he had been in Sha’angh’sei, for as long as he had been waging war, longer than he cared to remember. He knew her as the owner of Sha’angh’sei’s finest house of pleasure. She was also the city’s Empress. But, being a military man, this meant little to him. Titles were for figureheads. He was impressed only by deeds; talk was for those who were weak, afraid to act.