Chapter Twenty-Eight Sen
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sen
They crossed the Oiriguchi, the gates of the barrier, on the tenth day.
The Kanden plains lay before them, the largest fertile lowland in the realm: in spring, it would be a country of grass and sprouting buds, rice paddies carved into lines on flat portions of the earth, and to the east, small towns built for fishing and sail.
Now the paddies lay fallow, harvest done.
It would take up to eighteen days to reach the Gensei-Bodai temple at the southern border of the mountains.
Sen rode with Tokuon’s blood-guard, the red-armored Akazonae, as they went south and the Kanden barrier plains opened before them, moving slowly westward with the mountains to the north.
They trailed the feet of the great Gisan range, heading into Tokuon’s lands.
Six hundred riders meant well over a thousand horses, hundreds of pack mounts, and other animals to pull the wagons. They met the majority of Tokuon’s host south of the border, and when they approached the rocky pass, Sen remarked he’d never seen an army so big.
Ohori laughed. “Army? These are our retainers. We haven’t seen the army yet. That’s what Kiseda-town is for.”
“For what?”
“The muster.”
Tokuon’s bannermen had been gathering in the mountain strongholds of Yamakaji, and now Sen felt a tingle along his spine – real mountain lords. All the realm knew of Tokuon’s fighters, even in the east, where his stewardfamily ruled apart.
Now they would gather at the Gensei-Bodai temple, from which they would travel south and west again, not to Tokuon’s home of Yamakaji, but to Kiseda, in the middle of the farmland, and meet the barrier clans.
Mercenary killers, Jobo had said in distaste, and the fear and sadness that filled his voice lingered in Sen now, but so did pride.
This was the high army of Gisan, and as Tokuon’s famed Akazonae rode toward them, the vassals shouted in reverence.
Tokuon called to each of the commanders in turn, commending them, giving recognition to the men of lower houses who led their retinues in his host.
On the twelfth day, they cut southwest toward the lower alps and through the foothills at the base of the Gisan mountains.
The Jibashiri – led by the sisters Myorin and Tsuna – had not gone with them.
They were the outriders, leading the edge, and went directly south, bringing scouting parties to the farmlands in the Kanden; or as Tokuon put it, “carving their path”.
And Rui, too, Sen learned, from a messenger who came back to report. Somehow, she’d gone with them. Jobo rode with her.
Sen hoped he’d keep them safe.
One midmorning, his uncle Kiie introduced him to Tokuon’s son, Takayoshi, a bright-eyed boy of thirteen.
The mountains loomed to their right; soon they would turn onto the pass.
Sen did not know what to expect here, in this foreign land.
He felt a stranger to it, yet, at the same time, it was Gensei territory, and had been since his ancestor killed the ogre Hiradoji long ago.
These are your people, he told himself; and remembered Tokuon’s first words: I am here to bring you home.
Home. What place is that for me now? He had no answer. The road curved slowly upward, mountains above and a vast meadow to one side, harsh and beautiful.
But what was home?
What of Amayari-by-the-sea, which he’d heard of, and never seen?
What of the capital?
Kitano was the only home he’d known, and only now that it was gone did Sen truly understand. The hills and rivers and streams, the brilliant flames of autumn, the white winter, the first flowers in spring.
I’ll see it again, he told himself. I have to.
By evening they were forced to slow in the face of a storm.
Snowfall, not cold but terribly heavy, lay waste to the road ahead.
Wind shrieked, mist fell across the peaks, and the world swirled about in shades of white and gray.
Sen found himself riding alongside Tokuon’s son as they waded through the murk, feeling the bite of the air and the sting of ice in a flurry.
“Hear that?” the boy, Takayoshi, called. “The gods are coming back to life!” His cheeks shone bright with cold. “Want to know a secret? I never liked it here. In summer. It was too wet. Too dirty; just fields of mud.”
Sen joked with him. “Well now you have a snowstorm, lord. Anyway, rice grows in water.”
“I know that. The sisters came, they trained me down here. Every day, at the temple, then winters in my father’s keep in Yamakaji. Father says the sisters, they’re the best teachers in the realm, and best warriors, after my mother.”
“The sisters, lord?”
“The Poet’s daughters,” said Taka. “Tsuna, Myorin. They grew up in Satsuki but had to live in the capital for a while, I don’t know how they could stand it. All those rules, those painted-faces. I woulda died!”
Sen couldn’t help but laugh.
“They issued a call to arms,” the boy went on. “Father said. He’s been working with the houses of the barrier, they like the Keishi no more than we do. You’ll see. My father said. You’ll see.”
Tokuon’s heir proved an imaginative, excitable young boy who couldn’t wait to become a warrior.
But he was different from his father, a dreamer thrilled to be on an adventure in the world.
One evening as they made camp, Sen found him drawing on an old piece of mulberry-paper.
He’d been practicing his calligraphy, but soon abandoned it to draw pictures of dragons over an ocean full of little boats.
Sen found himself liking the boy; maybe he saw a little of himself.
“Here,” he said. “Wanna teach me how to write your name?”
On the fourteenth day, they arrived at the Temple of the Mountain Pass.
Built on a steep cliff-face on the side of the lower Gisan like an eagle’s nest, the temple appeared as something out of myth: misted cliffs of dizzying height, meadows above, a winding path over deep ravines, and the jarring crag-hall, surrounded by mountains, like a hidden jewel.
“This is one of two main temples associated with our clan,” Sen’s uncle Kiie told him from his saddle. Sen liked Kiie, with his thick belly, round shoulders and easy laugh, who’d taken it upon himself to teach Sen about his family.
“The other is in Amayari, your father’s domain. But they both keep the records. They were blessed by Enno, the Ascetic.”
“Enno,” Sen said. “I know that name…”
“You trained under the crow master,” Kiie mused.
“Enno was his teacher. Your roots here go deeper than you know.” He gestured.
“The ancients built this place using magic and connection with the gods. They threw pieces of wood off the cliffside, which changed shape and became the beams that support this temple’s halls. ”
Tokuon had heard them; he nodded to some white flowers by the path.
“Lion’s paw.” He then gazed north, to where the road dwindled, and the mountains rose like the gods had lifted them from the plain.
“Gisan lies behind those mountains; if we traveled west instead of south, in three days we would reach my fortress in Yamakaji.”
Just then, bells chimed, and a group of monks came out to greet them, waiting in the grove of small winter flowers outside the gate. Behind them, over the edge, a vast nothingness expanded into clouds.
The head priest met them with a bow, led them to the god’s shrine, on the end of a winding path at the cliffside, by an ancient oak.
“When the god-spirit of the sun withdrew from the heavenly face of the world,” he murmured, “and the universe fell to darkness, only the prayers and the gentle words of the god of fate could reach her. Ever since, we place the sacred rope to demarcate the line between the world of the darkness, and the light.”
Sen found himself following Kiie down long back-hallways and rooms full of praying monks.
They went to a dusty library, filled with books, with a low roof and the smell of ancient paper in the air.
The books were everywhere. On shelves, in stacks, folded leaves hand-copied on paper, and even some that had been printed using the wood-block technique.
There were also older scrolls, and bamboo strips with calligraphy even older than that.
In a corner, a statue of the god of war, to whom the Gensei ancestors prayed.
“What’s in here?” Sen asked.
Kiie smiled. “Family.”
He found a tome made from sheets of paper bound with glue.
“Our history,” he said. “Names and dates of birth, leading all the way back to when our kin-group was founded, four hundred years ago…” He turned through the great book, showing Sen a page that listed members of the Gensei lineage.
Every branch, every house. Sen flipped through several sheets before he found his own.
“This is amazing.” Sen felt tears coming to his eyes.
The family history branched out like an unending tree, and he traced his finger along the line: his father, his grandmother, and the line of matrilineal ancestors all the way to the founding of their clan, each name seeming to add power and legacy in his mind.
He read the names back again, ten generations in order, feeling the weight of time with every name.
But then he paused. The place beside Kai’s name, where his own name should have been, was empty. A strange pain welled in his chest, and he was shocked to find tears in his eyes again. Bitter tears. Harder ones. He put the book down, looked away.
“We really were emperors,” he said. “Once.”
Kiie sat. “We were many things once. Our name was given by our ancestor-the-emperor when she split her children from the Ten’in line. Too many people fighting for the right of succession. So we became nobles.”
“I can’t imagine you being a noble,” Sen said. “Studying over books, telling poems over tea…”