Authors: Lian Hearn
Kiyoyori said nothing for a few moments. Outside a kite was mewing, the wind soughed in the pine trees, a horse neighed impatiently from the stables.
Sesshin said, “You say you cannot afford to guard the North Mountain Road, but if you removed Akuzenji and his bandits the merchants would pay you for their safe passage.”
“Akuzenji is as cunning and elusive as a wolf,” Kiyoyori replied, “but if he can be enticed by my skull I may take him by surprise.”
“Wear armor under your hunting robe,” Sesshin said. “And send someone as a decoy on your horse: Tachiyama no Enryo, for example.”
“Enryo? Why do you name him?”
“He sends messages occasionally to your brother in Minatogura.”
“Does he, now?” There was another short silence. “His wife is a great favorite of my wife. They have been friends since childhood.” Was Tama also in touch with his brother, her first husband? Kiyoyori could feel fury building within him.
Shika, as the bandits called him, was neither happy nor unhappy in the service of the King of the Mountain, in the high fastness that was Akuzenji’s base. From time to time he wondered if this was to be the rest of his life or if he should return to Kumayama and confront his uncle. On the whole it seemed better to let everyone in his old life believe him to be dead.
He felt he was waiting every day to see what would happen to him. Akuzenji called himself King of the Mountain, just as pirates styled themselves Kings of the Sea, but in the eyes of most they were still pirates and Akuzenji no more than a bandit. Shika learned how he protected merchants and their goods on their way to the north and west, trading out of Kitakami and other seaports, where ships loaded with copper coins, iron, textiles, and medicines came from Silla and Shin, on the mainland. Akuzenji fought off other marauding bandits and made life safe for the woodsmen who cut trees on his mountain and sent the logs downstream to Lake Kasumi and then on to the capital. He had always been a superstitious man who liked to keep a number of shamans and sorcerers on the mountain and in the forest to consult about dreams and omens. Now he had become obsessed with obtaining a suitable skull for Shisoku’s magic and had settled on the Kuromori lord.
He soon realized Shika could move as silently as a deer, with the same keen eyesight and hearing, and began to send him on scouting missions to the land around Matsutani. Shika came to know Lord Kiyoyori well: his favorite horse, a tall black stallion; his manner of riding; and the retainers and pages who accompanied him, to whom Shika assigned nicknames in his mind: Gripknees, Wobbly, Neversmile.
When he was not scouting he practiced archery, shooting endlessly at the straw targets, or made arrows from close-jointed bamboo, some with humming bulbs carved from magnolia wood. He fletched them with feathers he found in the forest or took from birds he hunted, eagles and cranes. He also carried out the countless chores that were laid on him as the youngest of Akuzenji’s men, feeding and grooming the horses, including Akuzenji’s white stallion, Nyorin, fetching water from the well and firewood from the forest, skinning and butchering dead beasts.
Only when he was alone and certain no one was watching did he take out the mask made from the deer’s skull. He placed it over his face and tried to meditate. But what stirred within him was the ancient power of the forest, the stag’s drive to mate and make children. There were many women in Akuzenji’s fortress, but they already had husbands, lovers, or other protectors and favorites and were out of his reach. And then there was the one who had ridden with the bandit to the mountain sorcerer’s hut, whose name he discovered was Lady Tora. Men lowered their voices when they spoke it and whispered about her among themselves. She had some power that terrified them, though they would never admit it. He knew the mask was powerful in the same way, but he had not yet learned to turn that power to his own advantage, and it left him disturbed and confused.
One warm, sultry evening he went deep into the forest and came upon a waterfall that fell white in the twilight into an opaque black pool in which was reflected the thin sickle of the new moon. Hot and restless, he took off his clothes, laid them on a rock with the brocade bag that held the mask, and plunged into the water. When he surfaced, shaking drops from his eyes, he saw some creature moving on the bank. He thought it was a deer coming to drink, but then he saw the long black hair and the pale face and realized it was a woman.
Lady Tora stood where he had left his clothes. She bent down and took the mask from the bag. She beckoned to him. He came naked out of the water, his skin wet and cool. She placed the mask on his face and kissed the cinnabar-colored lips. Beyond the rocks was a mossy bank and here they lay down together.
She was without a doubt the same woman who had come to him in the sorcerer’s hut. She was using him for some purpose of her own, just as the sorcerer had used him to create the mask, but, as then, he had no will to resist. Skillfully she led him into the Great Bliss and together they heard the Lion’s Roar. A sudden gust of wind drove spray over them, soaking them.
Then Tora took the mask off and kissed the real lips, the real eyes. “Now you must lie with no one, woman or man, until you wed the one who is meant for you.”
“Will I never lie with you again?”
“No, our work together is finished.”
She stroked his face tenderly as though he were her child.
He was so unused to affection, he felt near tears.
“That was part of my mission, which one day you will understand,” she said. “And it was the final ritual of the mask. Love is bound into its creation but so is lust, the force that drives the world to re-create itself, unconstrained by human rules.”
“I understand nothing,” he said.
“Use the mask carefully—it will bring you wisdom, but it will also lead you into danger. Practice abstinence and all the other disciplines our friend taught you in the forest. Subdue your body and mind so that when you meet her you will recognize her.”
“Who is she?”
She did not answer him but told him to bathe himself again. The water was like ice on his body. When he came out she was gone.
* * *
The next morning just after daybreak Lady Tora rode out with Akuzenji and his men. She gave Shikanoko no sign of recognition, no glance, no smile. It was as if there were some other realm in which their meetings took place far removed from the conventions and relations of the everyday world. He wondered what Akuzenji’s reaction would be if he knew; he was a violent man and Shikanoko had already seen the punishments he handed out for minor disobedience: an eye torn out, a hand amputated, brandings …
He shivered and kicked the brown mare he was riding. She still lagged behind the others. She was the oldest and slowest horse in the group, given to him because he was the newest arrival and the youngest. There was something about him that unsettled her, as horses were often alarmed by deer, and she tried many ways to rid herself of him, rubbing his legs against posts or walls, carrying him under low-hanging branches, taking him by surprise by shying or bucking. Her name was Risu. He had lost count of the number of times he had fallen off, a source of endless entertainment to the other men.
In her contrary way Risu had formed a bond of affection with her previous rider, a lanky man called Gozaemon, and whickered after him as he cantered ahead on the sturdy dark bay horse to which he had been promoted. Now she swung her head back and tried to bite Shika’s foot.
Akuzenji was leading his men down the forest-covered slope toward the trail through the valley where Lord Kiyoyori rode every morning. The rest of the group were some way ahead, out of sight. Risu lifted her head and neighed as Gozaemon came trotting back.
“Hurry up,” he said. “Lord Akuzenji wants you to kill someone.” He grabbed Risu’s rein and led her alongside his horse. She moved faster than she had all morning.
Akuzenji and his men had concealed themselves in a grove of bamboo on a rocky outcrop above the trail that ran between the forest and the cultivated fields. The rice had been cut and was hanging in sheaves to dry. Farmers were already at work, spreading manure and mulch. Akuzenji beckoned to Shika and said, “Get off your horse and take up position. I want you to shoot him in the neck or the chest. Don’t hit his head whatever you do.”
They could hear the sound of horses approaching. At the same time Shika became aware of a woman calling in the distance. She was running across the rice field, shouting and waving both arms. She looked awkward, almost comical, a noblewoman not used to running, her layered robes tangling round her legs. She slipped and fell sprawling into the manure.
Why was she running? He frowned, trying to work out what was going on.
The riders, a small group, not wearing armor, swept into view, the black stallion in the lead.
“Now,” Akuzenji breathed. “Shoot him!”
“Shoot who?”
“The Kuromori lord! On the black!”
“That is not the Kuromori lord,” Shika said, lowering his bow slightly. “It’s his horse, but it’s not him.” It was the man he called Neversmile.
“Shoot!” Akuzenji screamed in his ear.
Shika shrugged and obeyed. The arrow slammed into the unprotected neck. The blood sprayed in an arc of scarlet glistening in the first rays of sunlight. Dust rose in golden motes as the horse reared and the man fell.
The other riders halted and fell back as the bandits surged forward, Akuzenji in the lead. He had slid from his horse, seized the topknot of the fallen man with a yell of triumph, and was in the act of severing the head when there came a pounding of hooves, the shouting of men, and a host of armed warriors appeared. At their head was Lord Kiyoyori.
Kiyoyori was possessed by both rage and exhilaration as he surveyed the kneeling prisoners. All that day they had been held in the riding ground between the stables and the residence, under a chill wind, for the weather had changed suddenly, bringing the first intimation of winter.
The rage was against the disloyalty of his retainer, Enryo, who had taken his horse and died in his place. The exhilaration was for his survival, for the stallion’s survival, for the painful deaths already suffered by some of those who had wanted his, and for the imminent execution of the rest.
Enryo’s wife had revealed everything before she died: Akuzenji’s scheme to take Kiyoyori’s head, letters between his brother, Masachika, and Enryo, their desire to see Akuzenji’s plan succeed and to seize the opportunity to regain the estate. His rage extended to his own wife, whom he had not yet questioned though she had been waiting for him, pale but dry-eyed, when he returned from the skirmish. She had expressed appropriate amazement at the audacity of the attack and equally suitable relief at her husband’s survival, yet he felt she was lying. Of course it was not her fault that two old men had agreed to trade her between two brothers, but since she obviously had no deep feelings for him it was not unreasonable to suspect she might still harbor some for Masachika. She stood to benefit as much as anyone from Kiyoyori’s death.
He thought for the thousandth time of his dead wife. If only Tsuki had lived!
If I had, you would not own Matsutani—would you really be willing to pay such a price?
He heard her teasing laugh and, looking across the riding ground, saw her standing in the front row among the prisoners. Surely it was her? The long black hair reaching to the ground, the slender form … he would recognize them anywhere even after eight years.
“I am sorry, lord,” one of his men, Hachii Sadaike, said at his side. “She refuses to kneel; she has stood like that all day.”
Oh, my beloved! You must be cold. One day in the frost and eight years in the grave.
“Lord Kiyoyori?” Sadaike said.
He came back to his senses. “Who is she?”
“A woman who rode with the bandits.”
He looked at her and saw she was not Tsuki, though there was a resemblance. While he wondered at it, their eyes met. Once he had been close to a lightning strike and had felt all his hair stand on end. He experienced the same jolt now.
The woman bowed her head and fell to her knees before him. She would kneel for no one else but she would for him. An almost uncontrollable passion seized him, a desire stronger than he had ever known. He would have the whole band executed at once and then he would have her brought to him.
He had thought to devise some special punishment for Akuzenji, boiling him alive or sawing his head off slowly, to dissuade anyone else from daring to attack the Kuromori lord, but now his impatience would brook no delay. He was about to order Sadaike to take the woman aside and remove the heads of the rest, when the sky darkened and a shadow loomed over the riding ground. It swooped low over Kiyoyori’s head and then rose to sit on the gable of the roof behind him. As he spun around to look at it, it began to call in a voice so ugly that everyone whose hands were not tied behind their backs immediately covered their ears.
Kiyoyori called for archers to shoot it down and his best bowmen came forward, eager to compete and win the lord’s favor, but it was obviously an evil creature with supernatural powers, for their eyes were dazzled by the sun and their arrows clattered uselessly on the tiles. It was hard to perceive clearly: one moment it seemed dense and black, the next Kiyoyori thought he saw golden eyes like a monkey’s above the needle-sharp beak. Its tail was long and sinuous like a snake and its legs were striped with gold, reflecting its eyes. It mocked them in a voice that was close to human, but inhuman, filling their souls with dread.
“Go to Master Sesshin,” Kiyoyori instructed one of his pages. “Ask him what this creature means. Is it a sign that I must spare Akuzenji’s life?”
He had spoken quietly, but the woman heard him.
“Do not send for the master,” she said. “The bird has nothing to do with Akuzenji. Let Shikanoko kill it now at once.”
Her voice thrilled him. He made a sign that she should approach him. “Who is Shikanoko?”