The Disfavored Hero (29 page)

The doorway of the adjoining rafters-room slid aside, and there stood three torturers, armed with knives-cum-scalpels, something worse than murder in their expressions. Tomoe spat in their directions; they did not care. They started forward …

… but she did not see them enter the room.

In her ears, a ringing began, which became the chattering of a thousand minuscule creatures. Coldness enveloped her. The loft in which the priests had placed her had disappeared, so that she felt as though she were adrift in chilly limbo.

“Keiko?” she hazarded, but knew Keiko would never manipulate the invisible paths. Keiko's mystic husband? “Who?”

In the distance a figure was walking, slender shadow against shadow. It approached with nonchalance, and Tomoe was not certain if it were wiser to urge the person to hasten and untie her bonds, or to lie silent as a stone under the delusion that she might go unnoticed.

As the figure neared, she knew it for a magician-ninja, the face mostly covered, the dark robes like midnight darker than the darkness in which Tomoe found herself. The magician-ninja was still far away, and still approaching slowly, as though nothing in the empty universe was urgent. Tomoe cried loudly for assistance, her voice echoing through eternity, but the jono moved no faster.

“Noyimo!” cried Tomoe. “Noyimo, help me!”

And then the figure was at her side instantly, and cast off a shadowy disguise to reveal someone not tall and slender but squat and rotund. She recognized the rokubu, the filthy man she had met twice in Naipon, with whom she had exchanged a mon on each meeting, like beggars sharing alms.

“I am not jono,” said the rokubu, looking down on her helplessness with sadistic glee. “But I thank you for the name of Noyimo! I dared not fight any jono, without their master's name, and Noyimo rules them all.”

“Free me!” she rasped, breathing heavily through teeth still clenched. “Free me and I will kill you!”

“An unconvincing argument,” he said, and reached into a fold of her obi to withdraw the mon she had kept since their second meeting. “With this, I have followed you. I bound us this while, for I had worked a year of charms upon the coin before returning it to you. Your larger destiny was manipulated through the coin, and through the aid of my unsuspecting wife. She made this ghostly habitat, not I; but I have used it better! I used it as a trap!”

“You trapped me well,” said Tomoe.

“Not for you. For jono! You are the bait!”

“Because they cast you from their order?” Her tone was contemptuous of an obsession borne of trivialities.

He laughed. “That is what Keiko thought! But I am larger than that! There are other cults than jono. They serve Shinto; my clan has served Buddhism, but that is not why we are less famous. Long ago, when certain ninja spies discovered and guarded methods of controlling various magicks, it could not help but create revolution and many factions among the ninja clans. Over all these, the jono prevailed. My clan was all but destroyed, though some of us linger, and seek vengeance. Once, I infiltrated their very order! When I was found out, they thought to kill me, to drown me in the sea. They could not have guessed the Dragon Queen would take a fancy to me, raise an island beneath me, saving my life. She even made herself mortal for me!”

“Keiko?” Tomoe's head spun—from these revelations, from the blood clamped by her bonds.

“She was the Dragon Queen, but now she is a weak old woman—the price of mortality!” The rokubu preened and puffed himself larger, his ego tickled by the cost of loving him. He said, “I wish that I could claim it was only my suave nature, but it was her curiosity more than anything—her curiosity to know what it was like to love a mortal. She had previously longed to try a man unmurdered by the sea, still warm as it were. I was the lucky villain she came upon, to touch with experimental ardor. A matter of sheer fortune, perhaps, being in a given place at a given time; or a well-deserved destiny, if I may be so vain. I do not know. At the time, I knew only that she had filched me from death for a little while, but would tire of me in a single night, no matter how well I performed. When done with her sport, she would draw the island, and me, back into her country—and I would reside among the slaves of the sea-folk.”

“But something changed her plan?” said Tomoe, buying time, urging him to tell her everything, boastful as he was; for she hoped to learn some small thing which would improve her situation.

“I wove a spell around her,” the rokubu continued. “I thought it would fail, for how could a mortal wizard place a glamour on a god? Nonetheless, I tried, for I had nothing to lose but my life, which I would lose anyway. And the spell worked! Possibly the Dragon Queen was so infatuated with her experiment she chose to allow my success as part of
her
scheme; I hope not. Perhaps the cause is that I am mightier than I knew! In whatever case, none could have been more surprised than was I.

“The spell was one which should have faded quickly, at least it would have if set upon a mortal woman. But on the immortal Dragon Queen, it took a different measure. The spell endured, and she has ever loved me with vengeance.”

“A goddess who makes herself mortal,” said Tomoe, “is only playing for a while. Death is an interlude to their everlasting lives. And divine love, whether gift or booty, is not to be spurned. Such fools are men! You might have lived with a goddess, and you took the road to revenge instead.”

“And you? What kind of fool are you?”

“As vast a fool as you. For I have betrayed a friend.”

“You have indeed! So now it is time that I return you to the hairy men of my Buddhist sect. They are the only ones among the sea-dead I could convince to serve me before Keiko; they think me, in fact, the personification of Smaller Mountain, for I have more disguises than you have seen today.” He laughed again. “They think they have defied me, defied the spirit of Smaller Mountain. But they serve me better by torturing you. The jono priestess will surely come when she hears you screaming. And I will have her name!”

“I regret it,” said Tomoe. “I regret all that I have done.”

The coldness passed from her numb limbs, and she was again in the rafters, three hairy men brandishing knives around her.

In the corner of the room stood the magician-ninja, and Tomoe was sorry to see her. She did not wear her mask at all, as though she knew it would be to no avail to hide herself from the rokubu, who thanks to Tomoe knew her only too well.

Tomoe could barely see the figure standing there, but still she would recognize that shining face, even in the misty world to which the rokubu had returned her, even with the agony of tight bonds blurring her vision more.

The magician-ninja raised a hand, and the saffron robes of the menacing, hairy beasts turned crimson with fire! They fell upon one another screaming, trying to put each other out. Their hair quickly caught fire as well, the whole of their bodies aglow. They hurled themselves like meteors through the opening in the floor, plunging to the large temple chamber below. The smell of burning fur and flesh lingered. The sound of their wails and writhings faded into moans, then ended altogether. The magician-ninja said,

“Only fire can permanently put the enslaved sea-dead to rest.”

The voice was deeper than Tomoe had expected, and relief engulfed her aching body when she realized it was Noyimo's brother and not Noyimo who had come to the aid. He walked forward, knelt beside Tomoe, but made no effort to unbind her. He looked upon her with a kind of sorrow but not a hint of anger at her inadvertent treachery. She was attracted to him, she realized, because he looked like his sister.

“You must flee!” she said. “The rokubu is somewhere near, upon the invisible path.”

“I am not afraid,” he said. His voice was at once serene and mighty, wise with years but very young; and it sounded far away. Tomoe wondered if the jono priest were truly standing over her, or was a kind of projection as had visited her behind a waterfall long ago. Then, Tomoe had struck out with her swords, and found a jono priestess as intangible as air.

In the distance, Smaller Mountain rumbled with an angry sound, the first noise Tomoe had heard from outside the city's walls since Keiko sent her here. Tomoe said,

“Your manner of killing the hairy one does not please the volcano.”

A throaty growl rose again, vibrating the stone building.

“The one you call a rokubu invented the story of necessitated sacrifice, to encourage the hairy Buddhists to serve him in lieu of Keiko. They were of a race which came originally from a mountainous land called Llusa, further than the Celestial Kingdoms, and they preferred to worship mountains. Because they hailed from far inland, the Dragon Queen's hold on them was less than on other peoples she has managed to drown through time; and the rokubu was able to sway them from her with ancient Naiponese magicks, and his lies.”

The magician-ninja pulled his mask up around his face, a face too much like another's for Tomoe to bear not seeing. He finished, “If the mountain erupts, it will be because Keiko wills it, not because of the hairy priests or the story the rokubu made them believe.”

“He told me something similar,” said Tomoe; “but not all his power is a lie. You will fight him? I would make myself useful in that battle!”

“I will fight him if I have to.”

“Cut my bonds for me! I will fight him for you, to redeem myself.”

“You cannot fight him, any more than you were able to fight me in Shigeno Valley.” He raised his palm to remind her how he had once pushed her away though she had not been close enough to touch. “If the fight must be, it is for me to do; but for the moment we are safe. He will not know that I am here until the moment you are free—then a battle will begin, if he cannot be wavered.”

“Then leave me tied!” she said. “I am very sorry to be the cause of all this trouble, and deserve to die in this place.”

“Your blame, too, the rokubu invented. He is master of lies! You are one of many tools, and not necessarily his. Do not think yourself blameworthy. But you will stay bound a while longer, until you and I have said all that we must say to one another. When you are free, it could be that we will not meet again.”

“You doomsay!” said Tomoe, trying not to show the pain of her arms and whole body, so that he would not unbind her suddenly, bringing the inevitable upon himself.

“I urge you against worry,” he said, soothing. “The felon lies even to himself, if he thinks to defeat the jono. Even with our leader's name, we do not fear his kind. Our clan defeated his many generations ago, and the few who straggle have gained only one new sorcery against our many advances: the one who poses as a rokubu has discovered a method of conversing with the vague creatures upon the invisible path. We cannot do that, and are uncertain of its import. But it will not be enough for him! Even if I am slain, others will defeat him in time.”

These words did not much encourage Tomoe, for the magician-ninja spoke still of his possible demise. She said, “He does have further aid. He has Keiko.”

“That remains to be proven,” he said. “A dangerous game he entered, to cast a spell upon a goddess. The greatest mages are careful of simple demons. But deities! Only idiots compel them.”

“Still, he has the name I gave him.”

“That is an annoyance, but will serve him very little. He might use it to call Noyimo upon himself, then contend with both of us at once.”

“If it is of slight circumstance that I betrayed her name, why is it that your sister stays away?”

“Not for fear of him,” said the magician-ninja, and looked at Tomoe with sorrow richer in his eyes. The eyes were all that showed of his face. “She will not
see you
.”

Tomoe was stricken, and gasped.

“It may be that I should not tell you,” he said, “but I will. My sister came to you one time, to a place behind a waterfall, intent on saving you from jigai. Toshima Shigeno had asked her aid especial, but in truth, Noyimo later said, she would have helped you anyway. But when she came, twice you swung with swords, slashing through her image. It was not possible to hurt her bodily, but your attempt injured her love for you.”

“She thinks I would wish her dead? Tell her for me—tell her that I knew that I would fail. I had already faced you on the battlefield, and you pushed me back with one raised hand. I did not know my swords would pass through her as through smoke, but I knew by some means I would be unable to hurt her. I slashed to show contempt! Not to kill. But I have no contempt for her anymore, and even then, it was contempt for myself, who slew the lord Shojiro Shigeno.”

“I will tell her,” said the magician-ninja, “if I survive to do so. She will be glad to understand you.”

“Then it is imperative you survive! Will you cut my bonds now, that I might return to my life among the ghosts?”

“I cannot unbind you. You are not bound.”

“I am! It hurts!”

“The objects of the sea-dead are no more real than are themselves. You must escape this misty place altogether, not merely the ropes you think bind you.”

“Keiko says I can never leave.”

“The Dragon Queen is mad. The one called a rokubu saw to that many years ago.”

“She was mistaken?”

“What she said to you is true only for those who come to her by drowning. You may return to the living world as you did once before, when you were cast onto the road to hell.”

The remembrance of Ushii Yakushiji brought pain to match that in her rope-constricted body. She asked, “Have I ever truly left the road to hell?”

“Take heart, Tomoe. Do not imagine defeat. You can succeed again.”

Tomoe was encouraged. She said, “I fought my way from hell with swords! Give me my weapon, and tell me whom to slay!”

“Slay only your fears, Tomoe.” The jono priest moved away, to take up Tomoe's sword where the hairy men had put it with the magic saké bottle. That he could lift objects bodily made her wonder if he were a projection or not. Jono magic was beyond her understanding! He told her, “Yet you may in every case require a soul.” So saying, he thrust the sheathed sword into her obi, but still made no effort to unbind her.