The Book of Heroes (13 page)

The gray grass that covered the ground was surprisingly soft to the touch, supple even, and moist.
Maybe it’s not dried-up at all.
Maybe this is its natural color.
She held up her hand to her face and sniffed it. It smelled of soil. Drops of dew glistened on her fingers.

For 360 degrees around her, as far as she could see, there was only the sky and the grass. The ground was slightly uneven, like the ocean on a calm day, lifting and falling in gentle curves. The high parts weren’t quite high enough to be called hills, and the low parts not quite low enough to be called valleys.

She thought for a while before she remembered where she had seen something like it before.
Sand dunes. They look like sand dunes made of grass!

So this is the nameless land.

Maybe they should’ve called it the colorless land.

For no particular reason, Yuriko pursed her lips and whistled. It made a weak trill that the wind quickly swept away and carried across the plains.

So, which way do I go?

Just then, she heard the sound of a bell tolling from far away through the mists. Yuriko took a step back, hunching low to the ground. When she stepped back, it sounded like the bell was coming from behind her, and when she stepped forward, it sounded like the bell was somewhere in front of her. The deep, booming sound seemed to bubble up from the ground and rain down from the sky all at once.

Then the mist ahead of her split in two like an unbuttoned collar. It was as though the bell had been a signal telling the mists to open the way for her. Far beyond the gently rising and falling plain, Yuriko spotted the silhouette of a giant building, and her eyes opened wide. The wind in her face made her eyes water, but she found herself unable to look away, even to blink.

Was it a temple or some kind of church? Could it even be a mountain that she was just mistaking for a building? She had seen mountains something like it, with pleated edges and high ridgelines towering straight toward the sky, on a family trip to the Japanese Alps. It looked like some kind of massive folding screen. But the color was all wrong. From here she could see dark grays, darker even than the clouds, and tiny spots of something glimmering like violet crystals, and other spots that were as black as night. The way the colors were arranged reassured her that whatever it was, it wasn’t natural.
It must be a building.

Now the mist cleared further, and she could see a roof, triangular at the top, with columns like horns standing to either side of it. Actually, it was less a rooftop than it was a tower. Below it, the building was divided into stories. She counted three before the base of the structure disappeared below the horizon. What had looked to her like folds in the mountainside were rows of decorative columns lining the walls. And the spots of pitch black were windows.
The violet crystals must be light shining out from some of the windows.

The sound of the bell was coming from that building, she was sure of it.

And then, suddenly, it stopped.

The wind whistled in her ears. And then she heard voices carried on the wind, people talking.
No, they’re not talking. They’re singing
. Someone was out there, singing. Their refrain seemed to echo low along the ground, creeping across the grassland, coming closer.

Suddenly, a torch flared up in the mist, startlingly nearby. The flame trailed sparks behind it in the wind. Then another torch appeared, and another, and three torches soared over the rising curve of one of the grass-dunes. Heads appeared, one head by each torch.

The three people climbed to the top of the dune, and she saw that they were all dressed in the same black robes. The robes went down to just above the knobs of their ankles, and the hems were wrapped tightly around their calves. They were barefoot.

The trio approached. They walked evenly, all at the same pace, not in any hurry, but steadily. Yuriko took a few steps toward them, then stopped. She stood up straight, fixing her posture, though no one had told her to do so. It just seemed the thing to do in the presence of the nameless devout—and she was sure that was who they were.

The three came down the slope. When they had reached the bottom of the swale, they were only thirty feet or so away. The wind whipped across the grass between them. Sparks danced from the torches.

The three stopped. It had been they who were singing, but now their song ceased.

Then one of them lowered his torch from his face. Another, torch still held high, took a step forward. Before he or Yuriko could say a word, the glyph on Yuriko’s forehead glimmered brightly, then faded again.

“Young child,” said a youthful man’s voice, “new
allcaste
, we greet you.”

Yuriko looked at the monklike figure and then up at the giant building distant in the mist behind him. For a moment, it seemed to her as though it had been the building that spoke, not the man.

“Hello?” Yuriko ventured. Even though her throat was too tight and her voice too soft, the word seemed to ring through the air. Then the gray sky and chilly mist echoed her word back to her.
Hello. Hello…

“We are the nameless devout, guardians of the Hall of All Books,” the young man’s voice said. Then the one who had stepped forward bowed deeply, still holding his torch high. Behind him, the other two joined his bow.

Unsure of what to do, Yuriko merely stood as straight as she could.

The three nameless devout lifted their heads. “This is the nameless land,” the one in front said. “The sound you heard was the Second Bell ringing to mark the arrival of an
allcaste
. We have come to greet you.”

Come,
one of the monks motioned with his head, turning sideways to her to open the way. To Yuriko, it felt like an eternity passed before she could summon the nerve to take that first step. It took more courage than it had to step into the magic circle that had brought her here.
Now I really can’t turn back.
Once I go with them, it’s started.
Though, in a corner of her mind, she still felt like there was time for her to apologize and just go home. She was sure they would forgive her—

Yuriko stepped forward.

“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” the lead devout said in a gentle voice as she approached. “There is nothing in this land that threatens you,
allcaste
. Come, let us take you to our hall.” The two devout in the back now led them, and the devout who had stepped forward matched Yuriko’s pace to walk beside her.

“Is that big building the Hall of All Books?” Yuriko asked, indicating the silhouette on the horizon with her eyes. Somehow, she felt it wasn’t appropriate to point.

“That is so.”

“So that big building is filled with books? Like a library?”

For moment, the nameless devout walking next to her seemed to not understand the question, then he smiled and said, “Ah yes, a library. That is what you call them in your Circle. It is something like that. A very large library.”

The nameless devout’s features matched his youthful voice. He was a boy, and not a very tall one—Yuriko’s head came up to his shoulder. His head was perfectly hairless save the thick brows over his eyes, and he wore no clothes, jewelry, or any adornments other than his black robes.

Yuriko imagined them to be scholars watching over the staggeringly large library as if it were a church. It made her smile to think of them as librarians. Except the people who worked at the library near her school all wore colorful aprons, even the men. She wondered if the nameless devout would look good in aprons.

I’m just trying to calm myself down by thinking silly thoughts—and it’s not working.
Yuriko sighed and put the mental image out of her mind.

They walked steadily onward, but the hall on the horizon didn’t seem to get any closer. The way it loomed up into the sky made Yuriko jittery, and she racked her brain for something she could talk to her escort about.

“You were singing before, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What was the song?”

“It is the invocation,” the devout replied, explaining before she could ask that it was a song of prayer.

So they do pray, sort of.
“I couldn’t understand the words—what language was that—” Yuriko clapped a hand to her mouth. Not understanding the lyrics to their song was one thing. But how could she possibly be talking with them now?
What language am I speaking?

Again, the nameless devout answered her question before she could ask it. “We of the nameless land can understand the words of the
allcaste
and employ them ourselves. But the words of the invocation are something else entirely. That is why you are unable to comprehend their meaning.”

“Well, what language were the lyrics in?”

“In the words of the nameless land.”

So the nameless land had its own language.
Guess I’m not in Japan.

“I was wondering,” she began, “if you…if you could tell me what the words to your song meant?” She hesitated halfway through her question when it seemed to her that a dark look passed over the nameless devout’s face.

“It is a song about the King in Yellow, and the weaver.”

“Oh,” Yuriko said simply, then shut her mouth. She had lots of questions burning inside her now, but she didn’t want the monks to think of her as an annoying little girl.

She looked up to see that the building loomed even closer now.
Funny, it doesn’t feel like we’ve walked that far
—of course, she thought, maybe it was the lack of any reference points whatsoever that was throwing off her sense of distance.

Again, a bell began to ring, but with a slightly different tone, and at a different pace. Where the bell she had heard earlier was slow and booming, this one was light and up-tempo.

“This bell tells the nameless devout that the
allcaste
will soon arrive at the hall, calling them to gather at the Dome of Convocation.”

How does he always know what I’m just about to ask?

“Are there lots of you?”

“We are a thousand, and we are ten thousand,” the boy monk told her. “Yet we are only one.”

Yuriko frowned. How could “we” be one? It took at least two people to make a “we,” as far as she knew. And weren’t there three of them with her right now? The path curved gently downhill until they were close enough to the Hall of All Books that Yuriko could make out some of the details.

It’s a castle,
was her first thought,
like they have in Europe.
She had never seen the real thing, but she had seen plenty of buildings like it on television, and in movies and pictures, sitting on the tops of mountains or cliffs, rising from a forest by a lake in Germany or France.

Yet at the same time, it seemed different from those castles—though she couldn’t put her finger on why it did.

Was it a church, or maybe an abbey?
That would make sense, if monks lived there.
But no,
she thought,
it’s something else. Something that every castle has, but the Hall of All Books lacks.

Then it hit her. There was no wall around the building, not even a courtyard. It just rose abruptly from the surrounding grasslands. Because there were no walls, there was no gate. There was only a small, pointed roof over the main entrance directly in front of them. The double doors in the entrance were fashioned of some dark material, though she couldn’t tell whether it was metal or wood. Carved figures and shapes covered their surfaces.

Three semicircular steps led up to the doors. To either side of the steps stood two torch poles, each as high as a two-story building, their flames giving off plenty of light and smoke. Yuriko and the three devout approached, and the doors opened inwardly, seemingly by themselves. They moved like they were very heavy, yet made not a sound.

The two devout who had been walking in the front split off to the left and the right, opening the way for Yuriko and the one who walked with her. It was the first time she had gotten a good look at their faces.

So great was her surprise that she almost hiccuped.
At least
, she thought,
I didn’t shout out loud
. The two in front looked identical to the one walking with her.
All three of them look exactly the same!
Now that she thought about it, she realized they were all the same height too.

Are they triplets? If they don’t have any names, how am I supposed to tell them apart?

Then the devout standing by her side bowed lightly and walked ahead of her. Yuriko looked around, then followed him into the hall. It was dim inside, and the air smelled faintly of something pleasant—though not flowers or incense. It smelled like the air smells after a thundercloud has passed. A moist, pure smell.

When a lot of rain falls in a short amount of time, it releases negative ions. That’s why the air smells different after a thunderstorm.
Her brother had told her that once.

The place she was standing in now was more like a town square than a hall. Looking up, she could see a vaulted, six-sided ceiling high above her. Thin light streamed through small windows that had been cut out of the walls in each corner. Yuriko lowered her eyes and found that the floor of the hall was also six-sided, with six pillars standing around the edges.

The nameless devout in front turned to the left. Yuriko squinted her eyes to look at the carvings and statuary around her. Some of them sat on the floor, others had been carved higher into the walls themselves, and some were part of the columns.

All of them were shaped like people. It was like a Greek temple she had read about once. Gods in robes and sandals. But then she noticed one wearing long stocking-boots, like a character in an old samurai movie. Another statue, across from him, looked just like a general in the old Chinese warfare video game her father was always playing.

The floor was covered with overlapping patterns made from tiny, intricately arranged tiles.