Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate (17 page)

“Yes.” The answer came slower this time but not because the thing was confused. I think it understood very well what I was asking about.

“I may require an answer that goes beyond a simple yes or no,” I said.

“That has not happened as of yet,” the walking stick pointed out.

“Do you know what the cloud was?”

“Yes. Considering the rather basic nature of the questions so far, I assume you eventually ask what you really want to know?”

I started to rebuke the ghost harshly, but it occurred to me that the thing had said nothing more or less than the truth. “What was that thing?”

“Everything,” the walking stick said. “Everyone.”

“What do you mean ‘everything, everyone’?”

“Just that. We were joined with it. It was . . . Satori. Transcendence. I lost it. I lost it.”

“You’re telling me you were one of the ghosts consumed by that thing?”

“Consumed? No. We were all still there, ourselves and yet not. Knowing each other. Understanding each other, for the first time. Can you imagine what that was like, to know that and to lose it? We all did. It will be back. We will be waiting. This time we will not run, those of us who shared that night. We will embrace the darkness.”

“Waiting? Embrace it? Why?”

“To become one with God.”

Your sleeves remain dry,

nor even the dew applied

to feign your heart’s ache.

How can I believe your love

on such threadbare evidence?

“The assumption has always been that evil enters the city through the northeast gate,” Prince Kanemore said. “We must face the possibility that the evil, whatever it may be, is already here.”

Kanemore had not returned to the city for three days, and when he finally did come back it was another day before we could arrange a meeting. The insight I had hoped to gain from his visit to Enryaku Temple was even slower in coming.

We sat together at an isolated table at the Widow Tamahara’s establishment. He sipped rice wine and I sipped tea. I rather wished we could trade cups, but at that moment I was afraid should I once more crawl into a saké cup, I might never have the strength to crawl out again.

“The pattern of attacks seems to argue otherwise,” I said. “The one thing those attacks have in common is that none, so far as I can determine, happened more than two miles from the Demon Gate.”

He sighed. “I don’t argue that point. Just that this may simply mean the focus of the creature, whatever it is, requires that it originate there. We have no real evidence it’s using the gate as a portal.”

I wanted to argue because I firmly believed otherwise but, strictly speaking, Kanemore was right. We did not know and could not prove the entity was entering through the gate, yet that had been my base assumption from the time I finally spotted some pattern to the attacks, and that was their proximity to the northeast gate. There was no other common thread and this was, so far as I was concerned, the only trail worth following. I didn’t like being reminded of just how tenuous a path it was, but Kanemore had said no more than the truth. As he sipped his wine, it was soon clear he had more to say.

“There has been an unspoken assumption all along in this matter,” Kanemore said. “We felt that Enryaku-ji was somehow involved.”

“Culpable, if not actively engaged,” I said. “How could anything like what I’ve seen enter the city without Enryaku-ji knowing?

“Master Dai-wu thinks that what we’re dealing with is a culmination of decadent and impious influences within the city. That in some regard the attacks are the work of the spirit of the city, attempting to cleanse itself.”

“ ‘Master Dai-wu’? Do you mean Lord Sentaro?”

“I mean Master Dai-wu,” Kanemore said softly. “Goji-san, I know what you are thinking, and believe me, I thought the same. But I’ve met the man. He has changed.”

I sipped my tea. The fact that Kanemore had used the more familiar “Goji-san” rather than “Lord Yamada” was not lost on me. He was telling me that he was a friend, in case I had forgotten, and he spoke as one.

“Prince Kanemore, you and I both know Lord Sentaro is incapable of being anything other than what he is. This is the same man about whom you once said: ‘to call him a pig is an insult to pigs.’ Did I remember that right?”

Kanemore reddened slightly. “I’ve met the man since, Lord Yamada. You have not.”

Again, I could not argue. As the willow bent to elude the wind, so I considered what Kanemore had told me. “What sort of ‘impious influences’?”

“The un-ordained priests, for one. Always going about alms-begging and drinking and whoring. Their numbers are huge within the city.”

“So why does the cloud not attack them, if it is angry with the mendicants?”

“I do not know. Perhaps the city is merely angry. Like a wounded thing, it strikes blindly.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Kanemore sighed. “Not really. Yet I stand by my opinion that the man once known as Lord Sentaro has undergone a transformation. I’m as astonished as you are.”

That part, at least, was the Kanemore I knew. I had known him to be fierce and headstrong but never quick to anger, and certainly not indecisive. His uncertainty now in this matter was troubling, more for the fact that some of it actually made sense. Not the part about Lord Sentaro, of course; I don’t know what false geniality Lord Sentaro had used to seduce Prince Kanemore, but I knew it could not be genuine. Still, the ghost had said something about being one with all. It was rather vague, but if the spirit of the city itself was on a rampage, how then would any single spirit or ghost subsumed into that maelstrom feel, think, or see? Perhaps they would have reacted the same as the little walking stick ghost that Chang-san had trapped in his alleyway.

“I gather the Enryaku-ji monks within the city were sent as observers with the Emperor’s permission?”

Kanemore indicated this was so. “I did not know the context at first and saw nothing of them from within the Palace Compound, so I thought little of the matter. Yet when I heard the Emperor was sending a delegation to Enryaku Temple for counsel, I volunteered. I wanted to see for myself what was going on there. I confess I rather thought to singe the dragon in its own den, but Master Dai-wu surprised me. He was quiet, calm, thoughtful, composed, and serene. None of which are attributes I’ve ever associated with Lord Sentaro.”

“Nor I,” I said, rubbing my chin. Was what Kanemore telling me actually possible? Had the man changed; was his devotion to his new station in life sincere? I could hardly believe it, and yet this new theory on the nature of the entity made as much sense as anything that had occurred to me so far.

“The monks will be back,” Kanemore said. “Armed, this time. There has been agreement between the Emperor and the Master of Enryaku-ji to attempt to weed out any evil influences within the city. It is thus believed that the
kami
of the city may be appeased. You might . . . well, you might want to mention this to that somewhat disreputable monk you’ve been known to associate with.”

“I might indeed. Prince, tell me if you know: how many monks are slated to enter the city itself?”

“No more than two hundred.”

“How many guards are stationed at and around the Imperial Compound?”

“That is something I don’t think I should reveal,” Prince Kanemore said, taking a long drink. “Even to you. Forgive me.”

I bowed. “No reason to apologize, and I did not mean to pry into matters that are not, strictly speaking, my concern. Yet are you going to tell me that such a large force within the city, a force whose loyalty is not primarily to our Emperor, does not concern you? Even from a tactical standpoint?”

“Of course it does, but the matter is out of my hands. Yet I will do what I think needs doing, Lord Yamada. Count upon it.”

I bowed. “I expected no less. Can you tell me when the monks are returning?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Well, then,” I said, “I guess we shall see.”

After Kanemore left, I went to the veranda outside my rooms and rested for a bit. I considered seeking out Kenji, but as it turned out the scruffy priest saved me the trouble. He appeared in the Widow Tamahara’s garden.

“I heard Prince Kanemore returned today.”

“You heard correctly. I’ve met with him.”

“And?”

I told him about the ghost I had spoken to, and what Kanemore had said about the monks and “Master Dai-wu.” Kenji looked thoughtful.

“If that is Enryaku-ji’s opinion . . . well, it almost makes sense,” he said grudgingly. “I think such a thing is at least possible.”

“I think the same, which is the frightening part. In either case the monks will do as they have been charged to do. There’s no help for that.”

“I will spread the word among the mendicants. Those who have sense to listen may avoid the net. Those who do not, well, they at least cannot say they were not warned.”

“And what of you, Kenji-san? You said the theory made sense. You did not say you believed it.”

“Neither did you, Lord Yamada,” Kenji said. “As for me, I’ll try to make myself less conspicuous. I may be fully ordained, but this net may not make such fine distinctions. You know where to look for me at need.”

“As do you.”

The fourth month surrendered to the fifth as the last
sakura
fell from the trees to be replaced with the green of late spring.

Over the next few weeks and despite Kenji’s efforts, several dozen itinerant priests were taken off the streets of the capital by the monks of Enryaku-ji, and placed in seclusion within the temple grounds outside the city. They were forced to bathe and meditate regularly, but were not otherwise mistreated.

The warrior-monks were now a common sight on the streets of the city. Many people had even come to welcome their presence, as they were polite and respectful and kept good order on the streets, even better than the Emperor’s ministers charged with that duty. They had even persuaded visiting officials and provincial lords to keep the number of their
bushi
retinues in check, and those present under stricter control. This had reduced the Widow Tamahara’s normal clientele somewhat, and she was not happy about it, but even she was of the opinion that things had not turned out as badly as she feared.

As for me, I was still worried; though I was, it seemed, just about the only one concerned. Even Kanemore viewed their presence with some detachment now, and told me as much when we met at our appointed time near the beginning of the fifth month on a warm afternoon.

“I have to admit,” he said, “that our fears do not seem justified.”

“Prince, it is far too early to close that particular scroll. I simply do not trust Enryaku-ji while Lord Sentaro is its master.”

He sighed. “You well know I bow to no man in my hatred of Lord Sentaro. The Priest Dai-wu is another matter. I do not know how it happened. I only know when I look into the man’s eyes I do not see Lord Sentaro. Not even a trace.”

“That only means he’s showing a blank face. He’s a skilled enough manipulator for that.”

“Not blank, my friend. Open and friendly and guileless.”

I frowned. “Are you certain it is the same man?”

“His head is shaved, of course, but it is Lord Sentaro, or at least the man who once was Lord Sentaro. There’s no doubt in my mind. Astonishment? I freely confess it. But no doubt.”

I scratched my head. “I must yield to you on this, since I have no argument to make save my own past experience, which to a great degree you have shared.”

“Just so. Then there is the matter of the attacks, which have apparently ceased. Nothing has happened since that poor man’s wife you told me about . . . or at least nothing we can attribute to this ‘dark cloud.’ So perhaps Dai-wu was correct about the source.”

I smiled. “I concede the possibility.”

Kanemore sighed. “Lord Yamada, I honestly don’t see what course we can take now. To all appearances, Dai-wu has been vindicated.”

I bowed. “While naturally it is in my interest to continue pursuing the matter, at the moment I confess myself at a loss myself as to how to proceed. I serve at your pleasure, Prince Kanemore. What will you have me do?”

“You must consider yourself at leisure, at least for now. I think we have done all we can do, unless you know something I do not.”

I thought, perhaps, I did. But it was nothing I could either point to or explain to anyone’s satisfaction, including my own. “No, Prince Kanemore. I do have one favor to ask, if I may.”

He smiled. “What is it?”

“If you are part of any more delegations to Enryaku-ji, I would like to be included, if possible.”

“Since I would feel better if your sharp eyes could confirm what I think I saw, that can be arranged. Is there anything else?”

“Just be on your guard, prince. For all our sakes.”

He grunted. “Always.”

There was nothing more to be said, and we parted. I still did not believe the danger was past, but had to concede that Kanemore was right about the attacks. There had been none, and my observations of the spiritual activity radiating outwards from the Demon Gate likewise showed nothing unusual, not since the day of the last attack and not for the last several nights.

Could the presence of the mendicants actually have been the key?

Some were pious men who chose not to associate themselves with any specific temple for sincere and personal beliefs. Others did not do so because no self-respecting temple would have them. Kenji was something of a special case; he had taken his training, albeit reluctantly, at the temple on Mount Oe to the northwest and remained on good terms with its chief priest. He had a place to go, if it came to that. I just happened to know he had not left the city, nor did I expect him to do so.

Still, as Kenji more or less predicted, it was the most unsavory, least disciplined mendicants who had been most likely to be snared by the monks of Enryaku-ji and removed from the city. Had the spirits of the city been enraged, and had this been enough to soothe their outrage? How I could I be sure?

And then, not for the first time and I was certain not for the last, I realized I was being an ass. I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand.