The Disfavored Hero (30 page)

Tomoe struggled against the ropes, but it remained of no avail. She nearly swooned from the agony of every pulled muscle. She had been bound so long; pain was cumulative, save in parts of her gone numb. It was difficult to believe she was caught within illusion. The hairy men had tied her cleverly. It could not be denied.

“That is not the way to struggle,” said the magician-ninja.

She stopped pulling at her bonds, looked up at him pitifully, like a wretched captured wolf. He reached forth and touched the double-scar on the samurai's forehead, and said, “Focus on this. Place all your will near the center of your brow. You must relax your body, as you would before a battle. You have been trained to find your center in your belly? Move it up your spine. Move it up until your center finds the scar.”

“You are a Shinto warrior,” said Tomoe, reminding him of things he knew quite well. “You would teach me Zen?”

“Another taught you Zen, not I. I help you use what capacities you have already gained without knowing. Shinto magic alone cannot free you, for it is magic of Naipon alone, and we are far from Naipon. The Dragon Queen is as much a deity of the Celestial Kingdoms as of the Eternal Isles; indeed, her domain encompasses the whole of the ocean, touching the shores of many Buddhist nations, extending to lands of which we know nothing. From certain of these countries Naipon inherited the forerunners of Zen; thus Buddhist magic is useful to preserve against the Dragon Queen. I will aid you with Shinto magic; you must aid yourself with Zen. Think of it as
ryobo-shinto
, the Two Ways of the Gods, the Mikado's own faith. Together, with your strength and mine, the two magicks may return you to the unmisted world.”

He held her with his eyes, eyes remarkably like Noyimo's. She could not look away, could not help but listen as he intoned, “Focus. Focus.”

Saiminjutsu
, the art of hypnosis, was among the jono repertoire. He pointed with two fingers at her double-scar. “Focus. Focus.”

At first she was sinking deeper into the sea, captivated by the magician-ninja's mesmeric intonation. Then she was rising, moving upward through the central axis of her being, toward the top of her spine. From the middle of her brain, her attention moved forward to a point, until it seemed she was peering outward through an eye she had not known she possessed.

Light shone from her forehead, brighter than the face of the jono priest who looked so much like someone else that Tomoe wished to touch him, trusted him entirely, allowed his spells to weave around her and help her with what she must do within. The light began to grow, the light which was a part of her, and she imagined that the scar of her forehead came unattached and floated before her face, shining like a shuriken from a burning kiln. The scar—her family crest—two waves of the sea—the sea which held her captive on an isle—two waves like a vagina, growing large. She could no longer see the jono priest beyond the expanding, whirling circle of light.

The haze which had for so long surrounded her dispersed, burned away by the waves of light. The ropes which bound her legs to her arms behind her back also disappeared, like mist. She moved slowly to hands and knees, crawled to the yoni-light, the vaginal portal, the glowing funnel—and when she had passed through it, she found herself surrounded by the all too familiar coldness of the invisible path. In nothingness she drifted—freed from the deathly city at last, but arriving in something by no measure more pleasant.

The light which had sprung from her forehead winked out the instant she entered the path. Utter darkness enclosed her, and the sensation of weightlessness—no up, no down—was worse than it had been before. Before, it had been possible to find one's feet, and to walk. This time she kicked her feet and could in no manner place them on anything. She made swimming motions, and thought she might be propelling herself through the frightful limbo, but was not certain.

Another thing was different from other visits here: the half-seen winged things which chattered and the shambling beasts who groaned a soundless dirge were not in evidence. The eeriness of those inhabitants had lent substance to the nowhere-place, and their absence made Tomoe feel completely deprived of sensory input. She tried to cry out, but no sound burst from her lungs. A horrific thought crossed her mind: she might only
think
she was moving like a swimmer. Since she could not feel her own body, it was possible she only imagined she still had one and that it moved.

Had it gone on longer, madness might have gripped her. But it became evident that she was moving through the emptiness, for at length she sensed the chattering and the dirge far off through the ether.

She realized her bodilessness was a kind of defense, wrought by jono magic, not by danger. Below her was a single figure in the darkness, the fat dirty rokubu. He held his arms out from his side in a dramatic pose of entreaty, as he addressed his half-visible audience of large shamblers and minute fliers. They did not perceive the witness adrift above the rokubu's pretended theater, for she was less tangible than they.

She could not hear the rokubu speak, but the fliers and shamblers did hear, for they grew excited. They closed in around him, the shamblers swaying to their dirge, the fliers a cloud of anxious swallows. The rokubu was laughing soundlessly, joyously, so that Tomoe Gozen guessed the beasts were convinced of his reason, won to his intent.

The rokubu would free the monsters from their limbo-world, to defeat all among the jono cult, beginning with Noyimo's brother. For this end he had wandered, unaging, upon the invisible path, resolving one of its riddles which the jono only suspected.

As if this knowledge were the only thing she had come to witness, Tomoe Gozen was drawn out into reality, swam out of the cold, black pit. She escaped from the invisible path on the moment of her realization, and lay upon wood, not the city's stone.

Her hand went instinctively to the double-scar which had glowed and grown and provided the initial escape from Keiko's deathly city. But the scar was gone, and Tomoe somehow missed its smooth presence upon her brow. She had used it like an eye, and now she felt by some means partly blinded because it had left her.

She lay in a place of rafters much smaller than the temple's loft had been. She heard a prayer-drum beaten in a rhythm, and a woman's voice chanting below. Around her was a cache of weaponry, and she remembered that Toshima had mentioned a gymnasium and armory hidden between the ceiling and the roof of the false farmhouse.

The invisible path had led her back to Toshima.

Looking about for a trapdoor, she found it, and slid it noiselessly aside. Below, Toshima sat on her knees before a little shrine, beating on the tiny drum and chanting a prayer against destruction of a friend or lover, with no mind for herself. For a moment Tomoe thought she could still hear the dirge of the shamblers on the invisible path, but realized quickly enough that she heard the rumble of a volcano, the source of Toshima's concern.

Yet Tomoe was more disconcerted by the sight of the Lady than by the sound of the mountain. It was Toshima whom the samurai had fled, though the workings of her mind caused Tomoe to believe she fled for fear of magic.

The Lady was more beautiful than Tomoe had ever realized, although always Tomoe saw the surface beauty. Lady Toshima had changed miraculously while her samurai lover was away (and how long had Tomoe been gone? The hairy priests said she had slain each of three a dozen times, but only one per day. Forty days, therefore, had Tomoe dwelt among ghosts). It would be difficult to imagine this new Toshima hiding a more impressive nature behind coy allusions and childlike mannerisms ever again.

Among the courts of Naipon, the changes in Toshima would not be appreciated. The lady was a little weathered, her hair long and straight and bound back with a scarf. Her burns were long healed, but the pallor which was so highly regarded among the feminine nobility would never be Toshima's again. The woman had become strong, independent in her retainer's absence, and unselfish. These things the samurai saw, or heard within the prayer. Before that little shrine knelt a woman Tomoe could well imagine returning to Naipon and rebuilding the wealth of Shigeno Valley's rich farmlands.

The samurai whispered, “Toshima. I have returned.”

Toshima fell from her knees in surprise, peered backward at the ceiling. Tomoe smiled sheepishly, then said, “Come up here with me and choose weapons. Two sorcerers will do battle in the ruins, one jono, one seemingly a rokubu but powerful. We must aid the jono priest. He does not know that the things on the invisible path will aid his foe.”

Toshima stood, with many questions forming, but less need of careful explanation than of action. She had changed indeed, and welcomed the necessity of mystery and danger. She reached up to Tomoe's down-reaching arms, was pulled into the rafters. Tomoe said, “I was right to suspect ghosts, for ghosts abound, and monsters too. But the enemy is a man, who manipulated our very fates to bring us here, all to trap the jono. If you can throw knives as well as I once saw you throw a hairpin, then we might be of aid in the battle which is promised. I am told we cannot prevail against the rokubu, but I know from experience that monsters can be felled.”

Already Toshima was selecting daggers at random and slipping them in her obi or inside her kimono. The kimono's large sleeves she tied back in preparation for the battle. There was a fine, long
naginata
halberd which she took up and swung around her head twice with expert speed and precision. It was a traditional weapon among women; even court ladies were instructed in its uses, expected as they were to protect their castles and their virtue. Tomoe would not be surprised to learn that Toshima had always been, though secretly, more skilled than most.

Tomoe strung a bow, and strapped a quiver of iron arrows to her back, beside the bow. The sword of Okio was thrust in her obi where the magician-ninja had kindly placed it there for her. Next to it, she wedged a good dagger. To each hand, she took a yari spear, testing the balance and nodding approval.

Together, Lady and samurai descended the rafters, and left the house in favor of ruins beyond a hill.

From the ruined city's gate, Tomoe and Toshima saw this:

In the air whirled what seemed a cloud of bats, which on more careful observance were tiny flying monkeys, nocturnal eyes dominating their narrow faces. They swirled about the head of the magician-ninja, who stood frozen with his arms held outward from his sides, one palm facing toward the rokubu, the other facing up. The fanged fliers were held at bay by some unseen barrier, and were angry to be so thwarted.

About him a ring of larger beasts had formed. They had extremely broad shoulders, much narrower hips, relatively stubby legs, and fatty tails which draped to the ground and dragged like those of lizards. Their heads were so short and wide it seemed they had no heads at all, only humps upon their shoulders with reddened slits for eyes. From these eyes there flowed a continuance of tears.

The fliers chittered angrily, unable to break the barrier by aerial assault. The shamblers stood shoulder to shoulder, hemming the magician-ninja within. They swayed from side to side and hummed their mournful, eerie dirge.

This, too, the women beheld before they stepped through the arched gateway: a fat and dirty rokubu with arms above his head and fingers spread, frozen as firmly as the jono priest by the exchange of spells. His face was a twisted mask of glee; he appeared a happy Buddha. Neither rokubu nor magician-ninja revealed awareness of the women in the archway.

Ruined stone buildings provided the backdrop for the two men facing one another at far ends of the courtyard. Doubtless theirs was a mortal combat, though the women could see no movement, could not fathom the manner of battle.

The circle of shamblers appeared to be slowly penetrating the barrier made by the magician-ninja. The fliers were managing by equally slow stages to lower themselves closer and closer from above, teeth and talons anxious.

Toshima began the activity. She tossed three daggers in rapid succession. Three fliers fell against the barrier, and slid to the ground as down the curve of a bell-shaped glass. They flapped awkwardly with knives through their little bodies. The cloud of fliers above the magician-ninja immediately burst in all directions, at first seeming to flee, but circling to investigate the woman who had killed three among their numbers. Above Toshima's head, they began to reform their obnoxious conglomeration.

The rokubu's gaze did not waver. His attention was riveted to the magician-ninja, who also was oblivious to Tomoe and Toshima. The intensity between the two sorcerers caused the women to stand unnoticed; that, or the sorcerers were so ensnared by each others' powers that the rokubu could not stop the interference, and the magician-ninja could not encourage it.

Tomoe heaved one of the two yari. The long, straight weapon tore into the back of one of the dirge-sounding shamblers, so that their circle was disheveled and their progress toward the magician-ninja halted. Half the dirge-sounders turned upon Tomoe, revealing those hideous faces squashed upon their shoulders, deformed countenances of parodic sorrow, the eyes draining a constant stream of sad, thick, yellow tears.