The Disfavored Hero (25 page)

Toshima still held the end of the obi, which stretched back into the cavern's darker recesses and vanished. Carefully, she set the black length of cloth on the floor of the cave. The Lady then pushed Tomoe toward the mouth of the cave, where there was light aplenty. All around the interior were strewn evidences of habitation—including a firepit near the mouth, with coals still smoldering.

“An old woman lives here,” said Toshima, leading Tomoe to the light. They gazed down from the top of a volcanic mountain, a smaller peak visible across a forested chasm. In the lowlands was the ruined city Tomoe had visited earlier that day.

“When I found myself here previously,” Toshima continued, “there was an old woman sitting on that rock, digging in the firepit with a stick. But at the sound of my approach, rather than turning to see who was coming, she leapt up and ran outside. I tried to call her back, to reassure her I was no ghost, but she would not linger. She held back the briefest moment, and shouted without looking my direction: ‘I do not look upon who comes through that door!' Then she ran on down the steep mountain trail spry as a kid goat despite her age, heading toward the ruins.”

“I met her also,” said Tomoe, her voice without emotion. “I met her in the city, which she thought inhabited. She had no fear of me. Strange, she would have no curiosity about you.”

They returned to the rear of the cave, and Toshima took up the end of the sash from the floor, using it to guide herself and her samurai back to the presumed-farmhouse. It seemed a farther trip back, distances being entirely warped and inconsistent upon the invisible path. In a while, they arrived in the house, and Toshima rewound her obi about her waist.

“I think we should not go through there again,” said Tomoe, still holding her forced calm. “The old woman's name is Keiko. She does not like this house, or anything in it. We should leave her be.”

“There are other paths we might try,” said Toshima, her suggestion offered in an entirely tentative manner, for she clearly did not wish to frighten Tomoe more—and despite an air of calm, something of Tomoe's fear was yet evident. It was that fear, completely aside from the excuse of not invading Keiko's mountain retreat, which urged Tomoe's command against the supernatural openings in the wall. Toshima said, “I went into some of the other paths, but they must lead to far places. The length of my obi took me nowhere. I thought I was lost once, but my trick with the obi is fail-safe. I thought we might make a long rope, and see where the other paths eventually take us.”

“Please, no,” said Tomoe, her calm unraveling. “We must move from this house, go away from it. Live in a cave like Keiko! You have done without much comfort already, Lady. A little less will not injure you!”

“Why do you shout at me so? Why do you fear the magic? It is less deadly than your sword!”

“I do not like it! Last night, I dreamed of a place like Naipon, but without magic. I would rather live there! I killed your father, Toshima! I killed him because of magic, not because I willed to! A year later, I met a woman named Tsuki Izutsu and I was not kind to her, and regret it, for magic killed her also, and we can never meet again.”

Tomoe stomped from the panel as Toshima closed it. But she feared to stomp far, not knowing where the other doors were hidden. She stood in the center of the room, afraid to move in any direction, afraid even that the floor might hide some foul, black opening—and fuming about her own embarrassing fears.

She verbalized her fears, half to rationalize them, half with the conviction that she was hugely justified. “The Dragon Queen's monster brought us here! Something plots against us, Toshima; I know not what. Only, we are not in this place without interference. Who is to say what would come through those paths to snatch us away to some terrible land? Perhaps the Dragon Queen herself conspires against us, though surely we are beneath her notice. Perhaps she has a servant, or a worshipper, versed in jono magic—and that servant bears you or me some grudge. We are dishonestly manipulated, I know it!, possibly because we are faithful to the Mikado, or for some reason we do not suspect.” Her mind raced with its reasoning. “It could be the animosity of the Shogun which brings disaster upon us; though even the Shogun does not play with sorcerers. Our enemy may be unguessed.”

“You see ghosts where there are none! You are like that old woman!”

“There
are
ghosts! There are foes! I will tell you what I think, Toshima: even the jono have enemies. We have both had commerce with jono, and might be used against them …” Tomoe was not certain how much she dared suggest. Surely Toshima had suspicions, too. She had directed two jono to protect her father, and one of them to protect Tomoe, but only Tomoe survived that terrible Battle of Shigeno Valley. In that, there was intrigue, not fortune. The intrigues might have begun even before Toshima's birth, when a marriage was arranged between Shigeno and a woman of royal lineage: Toshima's mother. Despite this marriage, Shigeno held greater fealty with the Shogun. The Mikado insinuated through Toshima's contacts that Lord Shigeno would be spared. The Mikado even sent jono, ostensibly to be Shigeno's guards. But in fact, there was nothing to gain by pardoning the warlord from death.

It was possible Tomoe invented these ideas, in her desire to be less than wholly responsible for Shigeno's death. But it was also possible that neither jono nor the Mikado felt a need for the great warlord's continued exploits, whereas Tomoe might in some way be of service to the jono cult, to the Mikado, or both.

Toshima had followed Tomoe's thoughts, having much the same knowledge to work from, and a little more. She said, “You think yourself important, samurai!
I
asked the jono priestess to defend you. You think she saw to your safety for some cause of her own, but you are important to none but
me
!” She rushed to Tomoe and clung to her, but the look in her eyes was as much like hatred as love. “Your vanity exceeds all, samurai! To think your life weighed better than that of my father!”

The samurai twisted away, ridden by guilt, and crushed beneath the sudden knowledge that Toshima had indeed held Tomoe in some manner responsible for Shojiro Shigeno's death. But Tomoe could not bear to think of this any longer, and turned back to Toshima with equal anger, affecting a superior knowledge not much different from the Lady's haughtiness. She said, “Already, once, someone tried to trick me into divulging information about the priestess …” Tomoe said nothing else of the rokubu, who was ultimately responsible for the samurai coming in Toshima's time of need. “This is not ninja-house we have come to, no farmhouse, certainly not a jono temple. It is something
else
, and I would have away! Stay if you will; I will not.”

Livid with the rage she had invented to cover guilt, but which she now embraced as genuine, Tomoe left by the only door she trusted. Toshima ran to the door ostensibly to call the samurai back, but pride bit her tongue as well, and she watched the strong woman march away—both of them hiding tears.

Depression descended upon the samurai thicker than the night's sudden, heavy rain. She forced her every step up the mountain side, although in her present mood she would rather sit in the torrent and succumb to pity and exposure.

In the distance, the smaller of the two peaks glowed with activity, though Tomoe had earlier assumed both peaks equally dead. High against the face of the taller peak was a cavern's mouth, lit by a fire within. That was Tomoe's goal: the lair of mad Keiko.

What drew her to the madwoman, Tomoe was not yet certain. The spry hag was attractive in her pleasantly maniacal fashion; but, too, something of insanity
per se
appealed to Tomoe. There was a kind of wisdom in madness, and Tomoe had some faint notion that it was the sort of wisdom which might provide resolution to her varying sorrows, guilts, and confusions. Keiko was never confused! What she believed to be true became true for her, and contradictory information could be applied without ruining the original theory. Tomoe remembered a strolling nun named Izutsu, who had affected an evangelizing tone to say that, “All human reality is a vast lie. There is only one great truth, and that embraces even lies.” If this were so, then the reality of mad Keiko was no less valid than any other—and it was a far less painful reality than the one which Tomoe understood.

“Keiko!” she called, clinging to the slick, wet mountain trail. Pebbly ground gave way beneath her fingers. Streams of water furrowed the earth between her knees and legs. She could not continue further, the unhelpful weather holding her back. “Keiko!”

A torch blazed suddenly at the mouth of the cave, and the old woman stood with her head cocked left and her good right eye peering down. “Tada!” she cried gleefully. That toothless smile cut through her shriveled features, her silky tufts of white mustache moving with the smile.

Keiko reached behind herself where Tomoe could not see, then came back around with a coil of rope. She threw the rope out into the rain—the whole rope—and it uncoiled in the air, wrapped one end of itself around a solidly placed stone, landed its further end near Tomoe's hands. It was not done by magic, or Tomoe might have scurried back down the mount. It was done by rope-throwing skill, and Tomoe was more impressed by Keiko's mad talents.

“You are dirty, Tada!” scolded Keiko, and would not let the muddied visitor into her clean, warm cave. Tomoe saw the lit interior, saw that the old woman had piled good-sized stones between her living quarter and the place where Toshima twice and Tomoe once had entered without invitation through an invisible door. “Take off your clothes, Tada! Then you may come in.”

Tomoe stripped, hung her clothing on sharp rocks outside the cave, where the rain would clean them as it cleaned Tomoe now. Rivulets snaked down the flesh of her back, her buttocks, her legs. Dripping, she entered the cavern, placed her sword against a wall, then squatted near the fire and held her hands out. She felt colder as the heat raised evaporative steam from her naked shoulders and glistening wet hair, gorgeous hair which had been allowed to grow long and thick and unruly.

“Wear this.” Keiko handed Tomoe a dry, scratchy garment, heavy and warm. “So,” said Keiko. “Why does the dangerous samurai's feet bring her to my retreat during weather ill as this?”

A dour reply: “I disliked the farmhouse.”

The madwoman jerked back at the very mention, but composed herself instantly, smiled more broadly so that Tomoe saw the old woman did indeed have a few teeth left in the back.

“Wise of you,” said Keiko. “Do you know who built the house?”

Tomoe shook her head, hunched inside the overlarge garment.

“I did,” said Keiko.

Tomoe looked shocked.

“It is true!” The woman skipped around the fire with delight of her confession, laughing madly, and then stopped suddenly. She stooped down so that her face was a finger's length away from the nose of Tomoe, and she said, “I had a husband then. Lazy man. Fat! Filthy! But I loved him. Too much I loved him. Do not ask why!
Love has no reason
. I built the house alone; I built it for him and me. He was too lazy to help, but I did not mind, for we would live together and be happy.

“But when I was done, he ruined it. Ruined it! Wrecked it!” She looked woebegone, or angry, or both, and stood up again, paced her cavern quarters with nervous agitation. “You found the doors he added? Useless things! Pah! But I lived with him in the place; I lived there anyway, I loved him so much, despite his stench, despite how he had ruined the house I made with these hands.”

Keiko looked at her hands as though they were not her own. Old, mapped with veins, crooked at the joints of every finger, the thumbs drawn back by some crippling disease. She whispered more to herself than Tomoe, “They were stronger hands in those days, smooth, without a blemish, without a line. I seem to remember … I seem to remember …” Her back was to Tomoe, Tomoe who still crouched near the fire, wrapped in a scratchy robe, listening. There was a long silence, during which Keiko stood motionless seeming to contemplate the nature of her own mortality. Age had crept upon her like a specter; she had not seen it come.

Then she reeled about, and continued her story as though she had never left off:

“All the while, my husband investigated the depths of his doors, for he did not understand them entirely himself. I forget who taught him the magic—priests, priestesses—but they discovered some corruption in his soul, and cast him out, his lessons half learned. I think he wandered through the doors in search of those who rejected him, or to converse with monsters who would aid him in his vengeance. And how I understand the hot emotions of one rejected! How I know it now! For, you see, he did not age when he walked those paths, and sometimes walked them years before returning to me, to my bed. I grew older than he, and soon he came to my bed no more. ‘Hag!' he called me, grabbing my silken mustaches. ‘Hag! I would not sleep with you!' And I said, ‘Why not? All these years I have slept with someone fat and filthy! You can sleep with someone old!' But he laughed at me, and went through one of his doors, and never came out again.

“Was I sad? I was not! I was! Not! Was! At least, I had thought I would be sadder. Something … something I have forgotten … I think … I think … I might never have grown old but for him; I might always have been young. It is mad to blame him for that? I remember a palace, in which I lived like an immortal goddess, until I met the filthy man, and chose of my own will to shed eternal vigor, to grow old with this man I grossly loved. He took me for his wife, loving me for my beauty—but after all I sacrificed, vengeance yet gripped him more than love, and he let me age without him. My sacrifice was for nothing!”

“Keiko,” whispered Tomoe. “Keiko. How much of what you say is true? How much of what you say is madness?”