Linnear 03 - White Ninja (58 page)

an exquisitely trained actor, whose greatest triumph is the illusion of normality his art allows him to create.

So it was that even Mubao, with all his skills and power, was taken" in by the master illusionist. He believed, as did all the tanjian elders, that humility was at last coming to arrogant Senjin, that the baseness of his existence in Zhuji was an important lesson well learned.

How wrong they all were, and how ignorant of their mistake they were. Perhaps there was a lesson for them in Senjin's stay. Their own arrogance in their time-honoured methods caused them to treat him as they treated all novices in Tau-tau. But Senjin was unlike any other novice who had been born to their community. The tanjian elders had, though, over time, become comfortable with their powers, which had stymied even great Mao. How were they to guess that a mere boy could evade their methodology? They had taken a viper into their midst, and were unable to see themselves in the scales gleaming dully beneath his illusory facade.

Senjin rarely slept for more than an hour or two a night. By day, he was the willing slave of the kitchen apprentices who hated him. By night, he delivered himself up to Mubao or whichever tanjian elder was involved in the different phases of Tau-tau.

It was not Kshira, the form of Tau-tau that the River Man had been teaching him,-though, to be sure, there were certain similarities. Senjin saw-immediately how the discipline, despite the best intentions, had been corrupted by time, the vagaries of oral transmission, the needs and necessities of the Japanese culture.

What were the questions that neither Haha-san nor the River Man could answer, the questions that had driven him to seek out Zhuji and the tanjian? When he had arrived here, Senjin thought he knew: what had happened to the River Man here? Wasn't there more to learn than the musings of dead men that passed for philosophy? Where was the Truth in the world, the answer to the universal questions: why am I here, where am I going, what will I become afterwards?

But now Senjin knew that he needed to know more even than that. Why am I rage? he kept asking himself, his hands full of manure. Why am I anger? his mouth filled with beetles. Why am I fury? crouched in the night, his dark metallic aura clamped tightly around him, a bird with its wings bound.

Neither Mubao nor any of the other elders took the slightest notice when Senjin asked them about the experience of the River Man in Zhuji. He had been scheming for some time to find some way to get them to open up, when an opportunity presented itself from an unlikely-source.

There was a strictly enforced ban against the younger males and females getting together save for mealtimes which were always communal. Still, here and there boys and girls managed their-trysts. Senjin could never quite figure out whether these clandestine affairs went unnoticed by the elders or whether the lengths to which the couples went in order to hide their meetings were part of the Tau-tau training.

It happened there was a girl who seemed confused by much of the instruction. She seemed never to understand her lessons fully or to perform to the standards set by the elders. As a result, she was reviled and ridiculed in much the same manner as Senjin.

Her name was Xu, and she was very beautiful. She had porcelain skin and the face of a doll, almost hypnotic in its perfection. It seemed ironic to Senjin that she was so physically perfect yet so inept at her lessons. Senjin, ever the consummate liar, told himself that he was drawn to her because he adored perfection in any form. He saw himself as a sculptor and Xu as a half-formed lump of clay from which he could fashion a masterpiece. The truth was that in this strange community he could not bear his absolute

isolation. Yet he could not admit to himself that this inner pain drove him to seek out someone who was very much like himself: reviled, scorned, a beautiful outsider. And it was his own need for companionship that blinded him to her own weaknesses which in other circumstances he would have despised. He was aware only of Xu's degradation, and saw in her suffering face his own reflection.

At first, he observed her humiliation as the others did, although not enjoying it as they obviously did. But soon her treatment became so painful for him that he was obliged to intervene. He saw the concerted cruelty as a transgression, not against any spoken or implied law of the tanjian, which meant nothing to him, but against his own internal code, which was becoming more manifest to him, day by day.

Outside, in the cold surrounding the privies, he watched as Xu was taunted by a group of girls. They began by verbally abusing her. This quickly escalated to pushing and shoving, sending her stumbling over the rocky ground, until she slid into the cesspit he was digging.

Senjin stopped what he was doing. He saw Xu biting so hard on her lower lip that it began to bleed, trying desperately not to cry. She pulled herself into a ball, thrusting herself into the dirt of the pit's side in a pathetic attempt to hide from the laughing, mocking girls.

These girls were now standing at the edge of the cesspit, bending over, hands on their knees, calling out to Xu. One of them spat in her direction; it struck Senjin, on the cheek. This made the girls laugh even more.

'Oh, look,' they cried, 'it's Shit-boy! We didn't see you digging there, Shit-boy!' Tears of laughter streamed down their faces.

Senjin looked down, saw Xu trembling, staring up at the gob of spittle on his cheek. He saw the tears which she had been so valiantly holding back begin to

slide down her face. She wept for him where she would not weep for herself.

Senjin closed his eyes, found that place inside himself where dwelt the dark metallic rings of his aura. This place was distant in both time and place, very near the place where the membrane kokoro hung suspended. Now Senjin began his repetitions, and soon the energy he emitted began to excite the membrane, setting it vibrating.

Now he moved his essence outwards, grabbing hold of his aura and casting it into space and time. A moment later, the earth gave a lurch in the way a wild boar will convulse when a spear is struck through its back,

Senjin heard screaming, a rumble and, opening his eyes, he observed through slitted lids that the ground had given way beneath the feet of the gaggle of girls so that now they lay in a tangled heap below the level where he stood. They were screaming and crying in terror.

He laughed, threw down his shovel. 'Look, Xu,' he said, 'my morning's work is done. The new cesspit has been dug for me.'

Xu was wide-eyed beside him. He leapt up out of the shallow pit and, bending, drew her upwards beside him. He watched, content, as Xu lifted up her skirt, squatted and inaugurated the new cesspit.

Xu, her self-respect restored, took his hand, leading him wordlessly up along a twisting path. Solemn mountain goats, munching tufts of dried grass, observed their ascent with huge liquid brown eyes. Rabbits bounded out of their way and, once, they caught sight of a thick ruddy tail, then a glimpse of a large triangular head as a fox sought to avoid them.

She took him off the path a distance before it petered out on bare rock, and they moved carefully down the scree. Behind a pair of enormous boulders they came upon a small grassy clearing. It was shielded in every direction, utterly private.

'How do you know of this place?' Senjin said.

'I come here when I want to be alone, when I can no longer bear the taunts.'

'You won't have to worry about them any more.'

'Oh, no one else would have done that for me!' Xu said, then immediately blushed.

'You could have done that yourself,' Senjin pointed out. 'You didn't really need me, or anyone.'

'Oh, yes. But I do,' Xu said. Her eyes darted away at him as she spun around. 'It's so beautiful here.' She took a deep breath. "The air is so different high up, so sweet, like a baby's smell.'

Senjin had other things on his mind. He watched her, wondering how he could change her so that she would reach perfection. But then a sad thought crept into his mind: if he should ever form her into a masterpiece, he would have no choice but to destroy her.

He grabbed her wrist. 'Why did you bring me up here?'

'Why?' She seemed confused, as she did when asked to perform with her gift what the elder had just demonstrated. 'Oh, to share all this with me.'

'Share all what?'

'Well, this.' Xu threw out her arms to encompass everything around them.

'This patch of dirt and rock looks like every other one.'

'No,' Xu said, catching his eyes with hers. 'This one is different, special. Like you.' She took his hands in hers. 'Because it's mine.'

Then, for the first time, Senjin felt her gift. He thought that it must be very weak although, much later, after he had left Zhuji, he began to suspect that perhaps she was expert in shielding the existence of her gift from other tanjian, and he regretted not getting to know her better.

But for the moment he felt only pity for the feebleness of an aura that needed all this space and solitude to make its presence felt. Still, it was beautiful, as striking as Xu's

face, and he surrounded it with the powerful rings of dark steel so that its light would reflect back on itself, better illuminating it. Immediately he saw that Xu had been right: this spot was made beautiful by the projection of her will.

'It is said that you come from Asama.' Xu looked up into his face. 'Is this true?'

'Yes.' He felt the tension come into her frame, and decided to allow her to ask all the questions of him she desired.

'Do you know a tanjian from there known as Aichi?'

'No.' But instinctively Senjin knew that he had made a mistake. 'What does he look like?' he asked.

Xu described the River Man.

'I know him,' Senjin said. 'For many years he has been my father.'

'Your father!' Xu exclaimed.

Senjin explained how the River Man was Haha-san's brother, and how he had been his first sensei.

'Oh, that explains it, then,' Xu said. 'Why the elders are afraid of you.'

'Mubao and the others are afraid of me?' Senjin was incredulous. 'Then why did they take me in?'

'They were bound to accept you,' she said. "They had no choice. You are tanjian and they cannot refuse you. But coming as you do from Aichi, the man who tried to steal the emeralds of the tanjian - '

'Wait,' Senjin said. 'I thought the sixteen emeralds had been stolen many years ago by a traitorous woman named Liang.'

'There were originally twenty-four emeralds,' Xu said. 'Eight still reside here. These were the emeralds that Aichi tried to steal.'

'What happened?'

'He was caught,' Xu said. 'He was tried, sentenced and banished. Now I see that he returned to Asama and

has begun teaching his own version of Tau-tau. This is strictly forbidden.'

'It hasn't stopped him.'

'Obviously,' Xu said.

Then something occurred to him. "This law you mentioned, that the elders were bound to take me in. I have not heard of it.'

'It exists, I assure you.'

Something in her eyes drove him to say harshly, 'But that's not all of it.' He evoked the projection of his will, just a little bit.

'No,' Xu whispered, 'it's not all. The law affects only tanjian descended from the prime line.'

Senjin was stunned. 'Are you saying that I am - ?'

'You are descended from Zhao Hsia, the martyr who - '

'Was drowned in the falls by So-Peng.'

'Yes.' Sunlight drenched Xu. Her eyes were liquid. Her face was pure gold. She broke from his grip, moving until she was against his chest.

He felt a stirring of his darkness, the metallic rings that were the projection of his will, which still enclosed her aura. He felt a kind of expansion, a rhythmic pulsing that flooded him with pleasure.

Senjin had already discovered that he could enjoy an odd kind of non-tactile sex with his sister. For him, if not for her, it was a game of sorts, of mastery, of dominance. He had loved to feel Shisei's will dissolving beneath the onslaught of his own prodigious aura, his massive coils which encircled hers, until her pleasure was so great that it spilled over into him.

But this was something very different. It was happening to him, from the inside out, his coils being manipulated by that which they enfolded, and the intensity was so great that for an instant he was totally disoriented, floating in time as well as in space. He had no control, had ceded all movement to this other will which possessed him utterly,

which made even the questions that had burned themselves upon his spirit disappear behind a veil of delight.

"When it was over, Senjin was so shaken that he could not stand up. He slid down Xu's form, grasping weakly at her ankles. He closed his eyes and, for one brilliant moment, he was at peace. Then, the questions began to reassert their dominance over him, and he was himself again.

Senjin and Xu never returned to that spot in the Taihang Shan; they never came together in that way again. Perhaps she would have wanted to, but Senjin never gave her the opportunity to suggest it. Part of him revelled in the rape (for there was no other word to adequately describe what had happened), in the kind of wild pleasure she had given him. But another, deeper, more dominant part of him remained so terrified of the experience of ceding all control to another that it would not allow the merging to be repeated.