Spirit's Chosen (16 page)

I knelt beside the pool and ran my fingers through the water. “This feels good,” I said. “
Very
good.” I sat down and paddled my feet. “Ah! Hot!”

“How hot?” Kaya asked.

I flashed her a smile. “Not too hot to keep me out. What about you?”

For her answer, Kaya dropped her gear, yanked her dress off over her head, and was up to her neck in the middle of the pool before I could undo my sash.

We soaked blissfully in the hot spring until our fingertips wrinkled and the shadows of the trees around us stretched themselves long across the clearing. The fading
light finally jolted me out of my daydreams and sent me scrambling to gather fuel for a campfire. Kaya dragged herself out of the water long enough to help me kindle a flame, then walked right back into the pool.

“What about dinner?” I called after her.

“I can eat any day.”

“Remember, it’s going to get colder soon.”

“Not where I am.”

“You can’t spend the whole night in there! You’ll drown.”

“Drowned, warm, and happy,” she replied, sighing with contentment. “Just fish out my body in the morning, will you?”

“You’re impossible!” I shouted, and began preparing my own meal. The hot springs had a peculiar taste, so I used half the contents of my water gourd to cook a small portion of our rice, adding savory wild greens and a bit of dried venison for flavor. By the time it was ready, Kaya was out of the pool, dressed, and shivering in the rapidly chilling air.

“Changed your mind?” I asked archly. “Had enough of a soak?”

“Y-y-yes,” she said. “Un-until tomorrow.”

True to her word, Kaya was chin-deep in the pool by the time I woke up the next morning. Her eyes were closed and there was a look of perfect peace and enjoyment on her face. I was heartily tempted to follow her example. I was also afraid that if I succumbed, we would lose a whole day on the march. The hot springs were a welcome diversion
from the hardships of travel, but it was time to get back on the road to the wolf lands.

“All right, Kaya, that’s enough,” I said amiably. “It’s time we were on our way.”

Without bothering to open her eyes, she answered: “I disagree.”

“Kaya …”

“What’s that?” She raised one hand languidly from the water and cupped her ear. “Is it the spirit of the mountain I hear, calling my name, telling me to stay here and serve him as a hot springs maiden? O great spirit, how can I refuse? I’m yours forever!” She flung her arms high and slipped her whole head under the water, blowing a small storm of bubbles.

“This is not funny,” I said when she emerged again. “We have to
go
.”

“Yes, but we don’t have to go
now
, do we?” she wheedled, pushing her dripping hair out of her eyes. “I’m not going to stay here the whole day; just until noon.”

“Noon is too long.”

“Half the morning, then.”

“Don’t try bargaining with me, Kaya. You have nothing to trade.”

“And don’t try playing chieftess, Himiko,” she shot back with a hostile glare. “You have no way of forcing me out of the delectable water until
I
decide I’m ready to go.” She closed her eyes once more. “Lady Badger has spoken.”

I made a face that my friend could not see and contemplated my choices. I could wait for her to get out of the water, I could give up and join her in the pool, I could leave
her where she was and continue on the road alone until she decided to catch up, or …

A short while later I stood at the edge of the flat stone outcrop over one end of the pool, my hands behind my back. “Kaya, dear sister?” I called in a too-sweet voice.

She opened one eye. “What?” she said, suspicious.

“It’s time.”

“So you said.” She closed her eye and made a rude noise with her lips. “And
I
said, I’m not moving.”

“Please don’t. Stay right where you are. You’re in just the right spot to help with the washing.”

Now she had both eyes open wide and was sitting up straight.

“Himiko, what are you babbling—?” Then she saw what I had whipped out of hiding and was holding over the steaming pool. “My arrows!” she wailed. “My bow! The water will ruin them!”

“It might,” I admitted. “We’ll find out for sure if you don’t get out now.”

“You wouldn’t
dare
. That bow is the best weapon we’ve got. It’s our protection. It’s been feeding your lazy belly for this entire trip. Put it down!”

“I will,” I said. “On the ground or in the water, your choice.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“No, just out of patience.”

“Fine, fine, stop pestering me, I give up.” She levered herself out of the hot spring to sit on the lip of the pool just below my perch. Wringing water from her hair, she grumbled: “I’ll be ready to go soon. Just let me—”

“Kaya, don’t move!”

She looked up at me, exasperated. “Himiko, will you
please
make up your mind?”

“Don’t … move.” I spoke urgently, in a low voice, and gestured with her bow.

The scaly reddish-brown body, splotched with black-rimmed areas of gray, was coiled on the bank less than an arrow’s-length from where she sat. The heavy triangular head looked as big as the palm of my hand. Kaya froze, staring into the black, unblinking eyes of a
mamushi
, a serpent whose poisonous bite never failed to kill.

“Hi-Himiko …?” she quavered, her voice scarcely more than a thin whisper. “Himiko, can you get your blade?”

My blade?
Ever since learning that Lord Hideki had given me an impressively made knife, Kaya had taken every opportunity to teach me how to use it … to no avail. No matter how long we practiced, I could never master a fighter’s skills. Her attempts at teaching me how to throw it with accuracy were our greatest failures. Maybe it was a fault in me, maybe the spirit of the blade had no taste for being flung rather than wielded in hand-to-hand battle, maybe both; who could say? The fact remained that I was not born to be a warrior.

Now this.

“Kaya? Kaya, what do you want me to do?” I was dreadfully afraid I knew the answer.

“Do?” she echoed. “Throw your knife the way I taught you. Draw it slowly. Don’t let the
mamushi
see you move too suddenly, or it will bite.”

And what will the snake do when my blade flies wild? I can never hit it at this distance, at
any
distance! O gods, why am I so clumsy?
I thought in desperation.

But I had to try.

I patted my sash and felt the familiar outline of my wand, the small, comforting roundness of my goddess, yet as for Lord Hideki’s gift …

“I haven’t got it,” I said softly, apologetically. “The knife—the knife is in my bag.”

“Oh.” Kaya’s breath came out as a sigh of hopelessness. We both knew that to reach the campsite where I’d left my gear, I would have to climb down from my ledge and walk past the place where the
mamushi
held my friend captive. The snake would see me, take fright, and then …

“Stay where you are,” I said, trying to encourage her. “The creature knows that you’re too big to be its natural prey. Soon it will lose interest and go away.”

“I don’t think so,” my friend answered in a distant voice that sounded as though it were already coming from the world of the spirits. “See how it’s coiled, how it stares at me? It’s waiting. It will wait as long as it takes for me to move, and then … then it will strike. When that happens, Himiko …”

I did not hear what else she said. My mind retreated, turning inward, seeking the glowing path that came to me in visions. The vapors of the hot springs swirled around me and I shared their breath, the breath of dragons. The sunlight turned them from white to gold and I wrapped their essence around me, cupping their warmth and strength in my hands.

I saw the serpent’s spirit through the gleaming mist. It was a tightly coiled, jagged shape of black and scarlet, like a basket woven of thorns. I reached out to it, coaxing the creature with honeyed words and softly spun threads of song. I praised its beauty, its unchallenged strength, its prowess as a hunter.

You who rule this mountain, mighty chieftess whose whole body embraces the earth, turn aside from the helpless creature before you!
I pleaded, spirit to spirit.
Show mercy
.

Mercy?
The word came back to me in a crackling jumble of witless pain and terror from the serpent’s mind.
No, what, how, this? Burn! Burn, hurt, burn!

I drew back, trembling, assaulted by so much panic and anguish. My vision sharpened and I saw a tiny seed lodged in the
mamushi
’s flat skull, a diseased speck already sending out tendrils of decay to devour the creature’s mind. Its suffering was unbearable. Its mind howled for revenge against a tormentor it could not see—
strike, eat, fight, hurt, strike, strike, strike!
—but its spirit wailed for release.

I do not know where I found the stone or how I was able to lift and throw something so cumbersome and heavy. I was still lost in the realm of spirits, vainly trying to comfort the serpent in its agony, when I heard Kaya cry out and saw the
mamushi
’s presence flare up white-hot, then sink into the misty ground.

I returned to the waking world and saw my friend gaping up at me, dumbstruck. The limp, lifeless tail of the
mamushi
stuck out from under the huge flat rock that had crushed the rest of the creature.

“Forgive me,” I whispered, and crumpled to my knees on the ledge.

As soon as Kaya and I recovered from what we had just experienced, we resumed our travels. It didn’t take my friend long to go back to being her old, jolly self, and to recover her courage by turning her near-tragedy into a joke.

“I wish you would have told me why you’re so awkward with that knife, Himiko,” she said. “You can’t teach a spearman how to use a bow, and you can’t teach the way of the blade to a—a—a rock girl!”

“Is that what you’re going to call me now?” I asked with a half smile.

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “We should find a storyteller to recount the adventure of how Rock Girl saved Lady Badger’s life from the dragon’s poisoned breath by uprooting a mountain and crushing the monster! The children will love it.”

“I think we’ve already
got
a storyteller,” I said, giving her a meaningful look. “One who can turn the simplest event into a heroic tale. Kaya, I dropped a big stone on top of a snake. That’s all.”

“And saved me,” she pointed out.

“All right, and saved you.” I linked my arm through hers and squeezed it affectionately. “But I only did it for selfish reasons, because I couldn’t stand the notion of a world without my Lady Badger.”

The longer we traveled, the more my thoughts became haunted by doubt. The aches of walking so far, for so many days, became as much a part of my everyday existence as
breathing, but the dark thoughts crowding into my mind brought pain that no hot spring could relieve.

What if we go astray? What if we can’t find the Ookami settlement? What if it’s so closely guarded that we can’t find a way to steal inside the walls? What if it’s so big that we can’t find my little brother? What if there’s no way to rescue him? What if we get through the gates and into the wolves’ lair only to find that Noboru is … gone?

O gods, how that last possibility tore my heart! I had grown up with the hard truth that children died. Before they gave birth to Takehiko and Sanjirou, my stepmothers had each buried an infant son. My own mother had lost two daughters before I was born. Sickness and accident could claim children’s lives even when they were in the care of those who loved them best. How much easier for death to find them when they lived enslaved among strangers!

I was held fast in the grasp of these dire thoughts when Kaya and I reached the village of the Inoshishi clan. At first there was nothing to distinguish our stay with the boar people from any of the other stops we had made along the way to the Ookami. Kaya no longer puffed up my shaman’s art with ghost stories when she introduced us. However, we still received extraordinary hospitality. I could tell how extravagant it was by the sullen looks our host’s clanfolk shot our way when he ordered them to fetch the makings for a feast in our honor.

“There’s no need for this,” I protested. “A simple meal will be enough.”

“It would not,” the boar chieftain replied firmly. Like all of the clan leaders we had encountered on our trip, he
was also a shaman, but he went about the village decked out in enough beads, bells, mirrors, and feathers to furnish Master Michio, Lady Ikumi, me, and half a dozen more of us with all the spell-weaving tools we would ever need. “I will not hear of it, Lady Iyoko. You are a great shaman on a sacred pilgrimage. If we do not show the proper respect to those of us who make peace between our people and the spirits, it would be a lamentable state of affairs.”

Meaning that if
I
am not given special treatment—whether I want it or not!—your people may start asking themselves why
you
should have it
, I thought.

We ate our meal in the company of the Inoshishi nobles. The chieftain’s house was large enough to shelter such a gathering, but it seemed rather bare inside. A young man seated to my left noticed my curious glances and murmured, “You should have come here many seasons ago, my lady. Our chieftain’s house held many beautiful things, in those days. We are a small settlement, but we always produced enough extra rice to trade. When I was still riding on my mother’s hip, I saw our men set out carrying jar after jar of rice and come home laden with woven silk, burnished bronze mirrors, and countless other wonders!”

“What happened?” I asked. “When did your harvests fail? Was there a blight? Fire? Locusts?”

His eyebrows met. “Wolves.”

I understood.

“I hear that your pilgrimage must take you through their territory, Lady Iyoko,” he said. “You will be pleased to know that you don’t have too much farther to travel. We are the last village until you reach the Ookami settlement,
though you still need to get through a mountain pass that might be rough going.” His frown deepened. “I wish it were impossible.”