Monsters and Magicians (24 page)

"Upon arrival at his court, both of these aged people were received and treated most graciously.

They were asked to dictate questions that only the real Abe Shengin could have been expected to be able to answer accurately, and this they did. Yet, when the Shogun, himself, put these questions to the far traveller, almost all of his responses matched the list of proper responses dictated by the most venerable man and woman. Then the two were brought before the mighty Ietsuna and asked to pass among those men there assembled, all garbed and accoutered and armed in the fashions of six decades past, and choose he who was most like the Abe Shengin they recalled. They hobbled about for some time, then sadly told the Shogun that the man, Abe Shengin, was not anywhere in the room. All thought that Tokugawa Ietsuna would be angry or, at the least, show some disappointment at these words, but he did not, seeming neither angry or sad. He ordered that certain members of the court not in antique garb be told that they might return to his presence.

"When these men entered, the mighty Ietsuna waved casually at them, all clothed and equipped in the height of the court fashion of that day, and suggested that perhaps the man, Abe Shengin, might be found in their ranks. Again the two elderly people went from man to man, staring long at feces, studying gestures, but again they had to sadly report that none of the courtiers could be the Abe Shengin they remembered. At this, the assembled all thought to see one of his properly feared rages coming upon the Shogun, but when he finally spoke, he sounded only a litde sad and he ordered that the servants waiting with the gifts of appreciation for the old smith and the widow of Abe Shengin be summoned.

"When the majordomo came leading the servants and they came to stand before the two aged ones, the smith cried out, while the old woman screamed and would have fallen, save for the quick action of a courtier. When the Shogun demanded to know why their sudden cries, they both told him that one of the humble, plainly garbed servants was none other than Abe Shengin . . . but Abe Shengin almost exactly as he would have looked sixty years agone, having aged hardly at all in all those years.

"At this, the mighty Ietsuna showed much pleasure, as too did the whole of his court and household. He proclaimed that the Shogun was completely satisfied that, fantastical as it might seem, the far traveller was in truth none other than the original Abe Shengin, in the flesh and almost unaged in over six decades of elapsed time.

"My ancestor was thanked, most generously rewarded for his service, and carried home by servants and samurai of the mighty Ietsuna. At her request and that of Shengin, the old woman was allowed to stay at court with her long-lost husband until her death, at which time the Shogun had produced a rich and elaborate funeral for her and personally provided a very valuable, antique urn for her ashes.

"Shengin remained a favored and always honored guest of the Shogun for eleven years, travelling whenever the court travelled and otherwise making his home in Edo. Then, shortly after his aged wife at last had died and upon receipt of word of the death of his grandson by a fever, he asked of the Shogun permission to return to his family home, that he might present to his great-grandson the daichi that he had himself born for so many years.

"Tokugawa Ietsuna, regretting for all to hear that the press of official affairs would not allow him to himself accompany his long-time guest, friend and confidant on so old-fashionedly honorable and dutiful a journey, sent Abe Shengin off with his best wishes, in a style which would have befitted a powerful daimyo of an earlier time. On the very eve of the cavalcade's departure, Ietsuna summoned Shengin to wait upon him and at that time presented to him a daichi to replace that which he meant to pass on to his great-grandson. That daichi, sir, is one of the finest and most richly ornamented produced by my ancestors in that period; it still exists as an Imperial Treasure, at the Imperial Palace complex in Tokyo.

"But once the deed of honor was done, Abe Shengin did not go back to Edo. He sent the most of the cavalcade back, bearing a letter of explanation to the Shogun. Retaining only some horses, a handful of servants and two samurai, he travelled on about the countryside, visiting lands and places he had known so very long before, grieving within his own heart about the ugly changes that had come to pass, seeking out the very eldest of folk of every rank and class that they might talk to him of things that once mattered in life and did no longer in a world become crass and unknowing of honor and the proper obligations of duty, or oaths sworn, of the now-unheeded responsibilities of the holders of rank and power and wealth in the land.

"After a year of this, he sent back the servants, most of the horses and one of the two samurai, this one bearing not only another, final, letter for his sometime-patron and friend, the Shogun Tokugawa

Ietsuna, but word that the beautiful, precious ddichi would be left for the Shogun in the trust of the family which had forged the blades. Then he and the last of his samurai travelled directly to the home of my ancestors, anxious to begin the final leg of his long, long journey.

"The eldest priest of my family at that period, sir, was one Kawabe. He of course welcomed his esteemed visitor, whose clan had, from the very earliest days, always been appreciative of the skill of mine, treating us both fairly and generously—not always the case with which the powerful deal with humble craftsmen.

"Obedient to his guest's request, Kawabe accepted the gi£t-daichi to be held in trust for the Shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna; then showed him available wares, and Shengin purchased of him a fine but less splendid daichi 9 that he might not go upon his planned journey unarmed. Then he asked that Kawabe find him a boat with a sail, but small enough for two men to easily handle, for the last of the Shogun's samurai insisted that the constraints of his honor and his oath-sworn duty compelled him to accompany Shengin on his full journey, wherever it might lead, however long it might take. Touched by the modern warriors antique sense of honor and duty, Shengin had sadly accepted him into his service.

"However, when Kawabe had seen the boat secured and prepared and provisioned, Abe Shengin had had little gold left with which to repay him and so, after giving him all that he did have, he brought out and presented to my ancestor a singular stone. Black is that glass-smooth stone, looking like jet in

strong light, but as the light grows dimmer about it, it lightens in hue and thin bands of many different colors can be seen dimly, moving about just under its surface; then, in full darkness, it becomes of a milky translucency, all the colored bands stronger, brighter, moving more swiftly, while the stone itself exudes a soft light, a radiance. I have seen and even handled this stone, sir; it is a treasured possession of our priesthood now, and although our agents have searched for hundreds of years in every nook and out-of-the-way corner of all the world, anything like it never has been found. We have long believed it to be not of the world of men, but of the world of gods. And Abe Shengin told my ancestor, Kawabe, that the peaceful folk of that land whereto the tempest winds and seas had borne his ship used larger examples of such stones, which there were most common, to light their homes of nights. I believe, sir, that this land here is that land or one much like it, a land of the gods."

"Is that why you are always selecting pebbles from out the stream beds and polishing them, Sergeant?" demanded Kaoru. "You imagine you'll find a stone such as that you describe in some Burmese watercourse? Perhaps, if you are very, very lucky, you might find a garnet or even a ruby—such things have occurred at rare intervals in Burma, they say—but not anything remotely resembling the wonder that you say came down from your distant ancestor."

At that juncture, Kaoru recalled something had come up in the camp-area that had required the presence of Company Sergeant Kiyomoto, and the two had never gotten around to resuming the discussion.

Fitz shuddered uncontrollably when he delved into these memories in the Japanese officer's mind, for he had seen a stone very much alike to the one the sergeant had told about. It had been while he and Cool Blue and Sir Gautier were hiking back south from the fringes of the dangerous, wide-spreading swamp which had blocked their northern progress and impelled them to retrace their steps to change direction.

As the fire had died to embers on the moonless and cloudy night, a dim radiance had been seen coming from a mound of boulders and earth. Curiously, Fitz had cleared away enough of the soil and pebbles to reveal a rock giving forth a misty light, with threads of a dozen or more colors looking to move about within it and just below the surface of it.

When he had called their attention to the phenomenon, Gautier had muttered of demons and devils, signed himself and begun to mutter prayers in Latin. But Cool Blue had just yawned widely and remarked, "Man, like he's sure superstitious, ain't he? Them rocks that lights up in the dark, like I seen them before, lotsa times, you know. Ain't too many around here, mostly, but like it's places they's all over the fucking place, man. Believe me, man, 'cause like since I been in the lion getup, thanks to old Saint Germain, the gut-butcher, I'm like hep to wizards and witches and all and ain't no magic in none them rocks, see, man, they all like natcherul, you know."

Fitz would have like to have taken the "natcherul" lamp along with him, but when uncovered in the morning, the glossy, black boulder that Cool Blue

confidently assured him was what the light-producing stones looked like in sunlight was almost as big as his pack and far too heavy for either he or Sir Gautier to have packed any distance.

Was this a land of gods, he wondered? If it truly was and if he hung around long enough, despite the grey panther's endless insistencies that he hurry to pass his tests and meet the Dagda, would he get to see this god who was supposedly coming to take possession of the bronzen axe? If he did see him, perhaps he would also be able to speak to him and, conceivably, get some straight answers out of him, not just go on forever tramping through these endless woods and hills and valleys to no apparent purpose.

"But I'll be damned if I'm going to spend all that time up in this tree," he muttered to himself. "I wish to hell Cool Blue and Gautier, with or without his stinking pack of Norman cutthroats, would show up, so I could camp on the ground like normal people."

Kaoru, part of Fitz's mind still without his knowledge exploring his own, wandered idly west along the bank of the larger stream while Kiyomoto and the men butchered the dragon and what it had left of the red deer. Neither the host-mind nor the guest-mind even suspected that deadly peril waited hidden in the brush around the very next bend in that stream.

arms resting on his more than just meaty thighs. The rest of the desk was Uttered with carry-out containers from the nearest Chinese restaurant and the combined smells of soybean oil, soy sauce and spring onions almost—but not quite—masked the unwashed reek of Morris MuUins.

Nothing, no light in Fridley's office, David said, "Look, why don't we just unload here, then drive down to Scales's place for a drink?" At what he took for a look of uncertainty on her face, he added, "Let's dump the stuff and get out of here quick, before Mullins wakes up and invites himself along, huh?"

But in his Ford wagon, as he had sat warming the engine, she had said, "Klein, after that mess in court this afternoon, with that fat, fascist farmer-judge and that chauvinistic pig-turd witness—I knew there was a good reason why I always hated goddamn bankers! —f d just as soon not have to go into Scales's and have to even sit in the same room with that herrenvolk bunch of neo-nazis from the courthouse. Have to sit and pretend I can't hear them all snickering at me and saying that it's my fault that that black-robed motherfucker found that poor, disadvantaged young black man guilty . . . and it would hurt because they're right about that, but that's not going to be the end of it, you know, Klein. I think, with someone else handling it, an appeals court just might consider today to be grounds for declaring a mistrial." She giggled and added, "I'll have to remember to blow my cool more often in these jerkwater courts, Klein."

"Then you want me to drive you home?" he asked.

She had nodded. "Yeah, you do that . . . wait a minute, you have your own apartment, don't you, one somewhere in the new Darby section, isn't it? Okay, I'll tell you what to do. Drop me off at my place, then drive on down and turn right onto Vine Street. Go to the pizza place and get us a pizza with everything and double cheese. Then while you're waiting for that, go across the street, there, to that Little Giant Market and pick up a half a gallon of Gallo Pink Chablis and some Oreo cookies.

"I'll change clothes and pick up a few things, then we'll go to your place and fuck, okay? That way, Klein, you'll get your rocks off in me for a lot less bread than a restaurant dinner and enough booze to get me sloshed. You got any grass or pills or acid?"

He hedged. "Uhh, I haven't been in town enough to make a connection . . . but I do have a few grams of pot."

The sentences handed down in the courts of this semi-rural backwater for simple possession of something so innocuous as plain marijuana had early shocked David out of the easygoing complacency of school, grad school and the more liberal state from which he had come down to work in this archaic, near-medieval place. Therefore, he felt that he could not confess to actually holding much of anything until he had gotten to know this strange woman better* in more depth.

And more than six months after that evening, sitting in a vacant office in a rural, mostly farming community, studying the various file folders connected with the case of one Yancey Mathews, his client, he wished to hell and gone that he never,

ever had gotten to know anything more than had been absolutely necessary for his working relationship with her of the kinky, clearly demented, hung-up and quite possibly really dangerous Amy Fisch.

Glancing at yet another of the terse, concise reports of yet another arrest of Yancey Mathews by deputies of Sheriff Vaughan's department, David reflected that his feelings for and about the big, scarred, no-nonsense lawman had moved almost a hundred and eighty degrees in the three weeks he had been up here. Despite his patently adversarial position in the case of County versus Yancey Mathews, the sheriff had bent over backward to make many aspects of David's life and work in the area easier, had sent out deputies to ride with him and direct him to places whereat he could find those men and women to whom he wished to talk and try to learn more than mere dry records could provide about his client in order to build some sort of a defense.