Chapter One Demons #2
“Better?” She gestured at the small shrine room, the decrepit hut. “Yes. Maybe this is better.”
“The gods will forgive me,” he stammered. “I am their servant…”
“As am I,” she said.
He paled at that, said nothing. Outside, the wind howled. “I don’t have much,” he said at last, “but, if you would have it, I can offer you some food. Then I would ask you to go.”
She smiled again, as if amused. But her eyes were dead.
“The fighting will be over soon. Even now, your father is out hunting traitors… while you sit here in the rain. Soon the Gensei clanline will be broken. Their leader, Katsusada, will never be forgiven for insulting your father. He will be found. He will be killed.”
“Why are you here?” He was shaking now, unable to move.
The woman withdrew the small sword she kept tucked into her belt.
The scabbard gleamed, inky black and lacquered, with reflections of the hearth.
She set it on the maggot-eaten wood. “When Katsusada rebelled against the Ten’in emperor, he left two heirs behind,” she said.
“Your father has decided to spare them.”
“He left one heir behind. Kai Gekko’in is a child… She caused none of this. She’ll be a ward, she’ll grow up under my father’s control.”
“It won’t help you if you lie,” the woman said.
The monk stirred, taken aback. “What?”
“There is another heir. His name… is Sen. And you know where he is.”
“No…”
“You know where they’ve hidden him away. You helped them.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you don’t like what your father Lord Keishi is doing. You think his ambition has gone too far. You think he deals with gods beyond his control. So, you turn. You think, something must be done… Tell me, where is Sen of the Gensei family?”
“… I can’t,” he said.
“You must.”
He shook under the flat glare of her eyeshine. The writing on her skin began to change, glimmering: “Speak,” she said.
He choked. Words gasped themselves out of his throat. “I heard only whispers. But… he is an infant. He will never come back…”
“Tell me where, prince.”
“He is protected. Your magic cannot harm him.”
“Where?”
His hands shook as he clutched his prayer beads. His breath shuddered, and when he spoke, it was as though against his own will:
“East.”
The woman made a slicing movement, like a blade across his heart. He jerked, pale, gasping. “Take the sword,” she whispered. “Take it.”
So he did.
Suddenly, drawing a vicious hate from within himself, he slashed at her, but he was clumsy with fear, and only the tip of the sword caught her across the jaw.
The moment it did, he fell back, clutching his own jaw with a hiss of pain. The sword went clattering to the wood. His fingers were covered in blood. The moment he struck, his own jaw was sliced open, as if an invisible knife had cut the skin, exactly where he tried cutting her.
The woman, on the other hand, remained untouched. The spellwork marks that crossed her features shifted into different words. Then faded.
He held his face, blood already seeping through his fingers. “What are you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “When you look at me, what do you see?”
“I see a monster—”
“A monster?” she echoed. “Maybe. Yes. Maybe.”
“The gods will strike you down,” he said, shuddering. “And you will die. Your body will burn.”
“Burn?” She repeated him again. “No. I don’t think so…
but, in truth, only time will tell. I don’t know what will happen to this body.
Maybe it will burn, as you say. Maybe. Either way, what does it matter?
One day it will die, as all things die. Then I will return and find another.
Such is the way of things. Now take the sword. ”
“I will not…”
“You must take it.”
Under the power of her words, he reached for the sword again. His hand moved as if on its own; he gasped, his arm following her command, shaking and convulsing as he tried to stop it, but he couldn’t, he continued. She whispered:
“Do it.”
He impaled himself in the abdomen, slicing through his own belly, then up toward the heart.
“This is what you want,” she said. “Accept it. This is what you want. This is how you end your disgrace…”
He made a heavy, choking sound, drowning in his own blood.
“Higher,” she said. The hissing of her voice hung in the air.
He tried to say no again, but his arms obeyed, pulling the blade up, and with a thick, wet gasp, he cut through his own ribcage, fat and tissue, organ, bone.
His body trembled. His hands shoved higher yet again, forced by her spell.
Blood bubbled through his lips. He continued until there was a final shudder, and the sword in his hand reached his heart, and he stopped. Viscera pooled in an ocean before him.
“Thank you, prince,” she said. “As you see, I am a mirror. You wanted to die, for the guilt, deep down… and so, you did. Such is the will of the gods.”
She wiped her hands on her white robe. He fell forward.
His intestines, or what remained of them, spilled out over his legs; his ribcage, sawn almost in half, opened awkwardly as it landed on the floor.
The sword remained where it was, where she’d made him bring it into himself, jutting from the gory blossom of his bones, and organs, and his heart.
Quietly, she stood, and turned from the folded body on the oak.
The floor and the hempen mats were a mosaic now, red and white and brown.
She drew her sword from the mess, began to clean it with a cloth, before sheathing it again.
“Not yet,” she whispered. Then a second time in the stillness, “No, not yet.”
A wash of embers and bright ashes from the hearth had spilled onto the wooden floor, but she ignored them. She crossed instead toward the thin sliding doors, and when she stepped outside, she found the child waiting for her on the steps. “Come, child,” she said. “It’s time to go.”
They left behind them four dead bodies and a burning shack that no one would remember. Already the flames had started to take hold, growing hotter as the child followed her into the dark.
“Sister, look,” the girl said, nodding toward the shadow of the mountains. An immense shape lingered there, high above them, moving slowly. A giant. “Gods.”
“Yes,” she said. “The pilgrims.”
Above them, great shadows churned and shifted in the sky, elemental shapes in human form, but skeletal, made of a darkness thicker than smoke and far off as the moon.
Huge, they lingered, so huge it seemed they might reach out, carve the entire mountainside away in one soft scoop of bone and shadow.
As the white-clad woman tightened her black cloak, and took the girl’s hand, the giants vanished, floating through the edge of the horizon and merging with the night itself.
“They come when there is blood now,” the woman said. “Soon, perhaps, they will return into their world, and ours will have some peace.”
When they had passed the gate and found the road again, the girl tugged at the woman’s hand. “Sister,” she said, “I can’t remember anything. About before.”
“I understand, child. It’s all right.”
“How come?”
“You have been harmed by great evil, child. Your spirit is hurting. Are you scared?”
The girl shook her head. “I just want to remember.”
“That may come, in time,” the woman said. “Until then, we must continue on our path. But remember, this is all for you, child. You must remember that. Everything that happens now, it will all be done for you. Now come.”
The temple burned behind them, slowly at first, but then with a surge and a great sheet of flame that consumed the right-hand wall and showed no sign it would abate. The cobbles glinted bright as tiny mirrors in the rain.
The girl spoke. “Sister, you said you’d tell me why so many people have to die.”
“I will,” the woman said, “but it’s a story that will take some time to tell.”
“Sister,” the girl asked again, “where are we going?”
The temple burned, flames rising to the black of night, and as they left, the roof began to collapse. A stream of life-streaked embers shot into the sky and the darkness came again. The woman watched, for just a moment. Then she led the girl down the road.
“To end a war, my dear,” she said. “To end a war.”