Chapter Six Sen #2
Sen had grown up on stories of Jobo the Shugenja and the crows, how they knew magic, how they were half-gods themselves.
How they took a young woman named Iyo Ogami’in as a student, taught her mysteries and the secret-sword.
Jobo Kensei, people called him; Jobo, the sword-saint. Jobo, the great master of the woods.
By nightfall they’d arrived at the fortress, and Sen watched them, from the windows of his stewardmother’s house. He watched, and remembered what his tutor Yozora once told him: “Evil crow-dogs live in those woods. Ruled by ogres who will eat your head. Take no notice.”
The next morning, he slipped a few of Yozora’s books from the library under his robe and headed to his favorite spot on Kitaiji hill.
The rain had stopped. The Taga boys were on the fields, riding in the brightened day, and Jobo and his monks were taking laps around the grounds before they went in for their councils.
The top of the hill was ringed with a pillared wall, mud and clay packed at the bottom, as though the great hilltop were a shrouded porcupine.
From there, Sen could see across the lower slopes of Mount Kanzan, which reached up to the heavens; the entire city of Kitano lay spread below the main gate, on the south side, protecting the fortifications and their sloped rooftops within.
He took a turn across the battlements, enjoying the fall’s fair wind.
The flags were flying. The hill, the valley, the mountains were all lit by blinding sweeps of sunlight through blue-dotted clouds; birds sang, farmers traveled on the road.
He rested against the balustrade, gazing out at the old city.
The Taga clan once ruled this place, before it was a city – it was just a little river town back then, winding streets and the manor houses.
A residential area, but its bones were made by old Iteki families that were the first estate-owners here.
As he crossed back, Sen was surprised to find the sickly smell of flowers permeating the top of a slow, twisting hill.
The day had settled into a beautiful sunset, and the air had the bright, crisp quality that followed a rain.
Evening fell; soon Yozora discovered the absence of his books.
His cracked-whip voice rang across the battlements, crying out for the rat-rogue, Sen Hoshiakari.
“Akuma Dai-oh will have you for this!” he shouted, creaking about on his bad leg as Sen darted from the hill where he’d been reading.
“Hoshiakari!” Yozora hollered, huffed, and coughed with every step. “Those are not – your – books!”
Sen grinned, stuffing the books into his bag.
Spinning around the turn of Kitaiji hill, the path split and he left the temple behind, going down a steep incline toward the fortress.
It curved the side of the slope, stone and earth and gnarled tree-roots on his left, open hillside on his right.
He allowed a little laugh to escape his lips, and was turning a corner when something came out of nowhere, flew from the side of the path, and tripped him between one step and the next.
Sen went sprawling, books spilling from his bag.
When he looked up, Jobo the crow monk was standing over him, long oak staff in hand. There were two metal feathers at the top, among the prayer rings. He looked at Sen, ponderous and silent as an owl.
“Hoshiakari,” he said. “You are stealing again.”
The crow monk was an imposing figure, with graying bird’s-nest hair over a long nose and squinting eyes. He must be eighty years old, people said, but now Sen was struck by how solid he was, immovable in his stride.
“I…” Sen stood, trying to be more presentable before Jobo’s calm, half-lidded eyes. “I’m just… I’m trying to learn.”
“Oh?” Jobo’s voice had a high, hooting quality, as though everything was a jest. “Good. But don’t go stealing your tutor’s books!”
“I’m trying to learn about magic,” Sen said. “Yozora won’t go near it.”
“Magic,” Jobo mused.
“You know who I am,” Sen said.
Jobo’s smile fell. “I do.”
“Well, I know who you are, too… I know what people say.”
“Oh? And what is that, star-child?”
“They say you can do magic. They say you summon gods.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Jobo said, and moved on.
“Master,” he began.
“Ame’in,” Jobo replied politely, “I am not your master.”
Sen followed him down the curve of the temple path. Evening birds were singing. “They say you speak with them,” he said. “You can summon ghosts. The little gods, the spirits, you bind them to a paper curse and they have to do what you say.”
“Is that what they’re saying in Kitano,” the crow monk mused.
“They say you raise them, bound to your seals… you conjure them.”
“No.” Jobo stopped, abruptly. “Calling a god to be your servant is dangerous. Shikigami… they are all dangerous.”
“Why?”
“Because no being, human or god, should be a slave. Observing good and evil within people is one thing. We all have both violent and tranquil souls. Tell me, Hoshiakari, you have a teacher. The old servant of your family, Yozora. He cares for your education. Yet you resist him. And, at the same time, you break into his rooms. You steal his books. Why not be content? Why break away? Hm? What is it that you want?”
“I want to know more about my family,” Sen said.
Jobo shrugged. “Your father started the war that led to his death and the exile of his surviving family members. Perhaps there was some ill magic in that.” He poked his long nose forward. “You’re saying that is who you are?”
“But… that’s not the truth,” Sen said. “And anyway, I’m not like that. That’s not me.”
“Good,” Jobo said, and nodded: good day.
“I know what people say about my family,” Sen called out. “People say we’re evil.”
“You don’t have to be,” Jobo said, lightly.
“Train me.”
Jobo looked at him, face blank as a cloud. “Why?”
“My mother wants me to train with you.”
Jobo laughed.
“You asked me what I wanted,” Sen said. “The truth is… I hate my father. He’s the reason I’m here, the reason we were outcast, hunted down, and killed…”
“You think your father was a coward and a selfish man who only wanted to take the power he saw others have.” Jobo waited.
“Why should we be outcast?” Sen asked. “Because of something that happened almost before we were born?”
“Some things don’t go away,” Jobo said. “It was unwise to make fools of those monks.”
“I don’t care about them,” Sen said. “I don’t care about the capital. I don’t care about… about titles, or lands. I just want to be able to go freely. To use my name. My own name, and not be punished for what they did… The way it used to be, before the war ruined everything.”
“Then let me ask you this,” Jobo said. “If you had the chance, to bring your family back again, undo the damage that your father caused. Would you?”
Sen searched for an answer. He had known only life in exile. He was safe in Iyo’s lands, but he knew if he were ever to leave, he would be hunted down by the Keishi forces, who, if they found out he was alive, would still brand him an outlaw by nature of his birth.
“I have been told,” he began, “that if… if I were ever to return to the capital, they would either just kill me outright or, more likely, trap me in the courtly prison that my sister has been in since the day our father died and she was brought before Seikiyo. So, you ask if I had the chance, if I would undo that? Then I have to say, yes… But more than that, I want to change things. I want to help people in the world. If I can learn to do something good, then that might – it could undo the evil, like you said. In the past.”
“And this is why you steal your master’s books.” Jobo sighed. “Then, Sen Hoshiakari, what will you do? Be a lord?”
“Train me,” Sen said again.
Jobo looked at him. “Try.”
He held his prayer staff before him, and tapped it twice upon the ground. When he let go, the staff stood vertically where he had left it.
“Take the staff,” he challenged.
Jobo had no other weapon but a white bird-feather fan. He stood there, palms open.
Sen tried to take the staff.
Jobo moved like lightning. Sen had never seen anyone move so fast. He knocked Sen aside with the fan, easily, and when it blew past he felt as though a hurricane had hit him, as though he’d been struck by a falling tree.
Before he knew what had happened, Sen found himself sprawled out on the path a dozen paces off, reeling, with an ache in his side where the blow had struck.
Jobo looked down at him and shook his head. Then turned to where his staff still stood on the path, and made to leave.
Sen burned with humiliation. “Please. You must train me!”
“No,” Jobo said.
And walked away.
This was the first time that Jobo would decline to train him.
It happened two more times after that, in different parts of the fortress, and the temple too.
With the sound of the construction hammers tocking away on planks of wood, Sen sought him out, hurried before him to lie prostrate on the stones, but the old man ignored him, waving his soft white feather-fan or clasping his hands to the staff as he strode on.
Sen watched him for days, but every time he tried to approach, the crow monk would only meet him with the same, blank expression, staring at him, staring through him, as if demanding something he was not prepared to give.
Then the morning came when the councils had ended, and the crow monks were preparing to make their way into the woods again, to return to their high home in the forest of the Godspath. Sen found them at the gate.