Chapter Forty Rui
CHAPTER FORTY
Rui
Rui found herself walking through the dark hours, unable to sleep. She wandered toward the small sanctuary garden at the heart of the temple, with its ancient ceremonial well. The other two, she knew, were at the north and east gates.
“What’s on the other side of the bridge?” she asked, seeing the young noble, Atsu, sitting on the steps in borrowed armor.
Atsu shrugged. “Other temple.”
Rui had come to like the young woman, whom Myorin had found fleeing the capital. They were both outcasts, in their way, surrounded by people they didn’t know. She tried to make a joke. “What, you nervous? Never killed anyone before?”
“No.”
“It’s not so hard…”
She began to say more, to laugh it off, but her voice caught in her throat.
Again Idachi Honnen’s startled face floated before her, and she fell to silence, overcome by thoughts of home, of hands on her shoulders like iron; of the spear in her grasp, and of the surprise, the terror in the young man’s eyes before he fell.
She spent the next moments trying to say something else, to somehow undo what she had said, but by then the Jibashiri had called, and Atsu left, and Rui was alone again.
She walked for an hour. The temple bell began to chime, and she found herself drawn toward the biggest of the three wells, in the courtyard.
Beyond them, the little path between the buildings led east toward the Onji River and its bridge.
All around her, Nioh’s guard were preparing for battle alongside the river monks who’d sworn to defend them.
She could hear the distant tock-tock of their hammers, building an improvised barrier they knew would never hold for long.
The Jibashiri were deep in conversation by the belltower, planning how best to make sure Prince Nioh got out before the fighting came.
They would leave at first light, after the horses had a chance to rest, and make their way east, toward Tokuon’s army.
“I pray we make it in time,” she heard Tsuna say.
She sat beside the well, trailing her finger along its edge. The stone, dark and polished, felt slippery under her touch. She thought of a bird landing lightly on her shoulder. She thought of eaten dreams.
“Rui.” Jobo limped toward her with one hand on the spear he now carried at all times, instead of his staff. “You shouldn’t wander alone. Come back to the dormitory.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“Eyah, I understand.” He sat beside her. “Your mind gets so riled up, neh? Ties itself to knots. Before a battle… it’s always the same.” He pulled off the wooden sheath, and the long blade flickered in the moonlight.
“It may snow tomorrow,” he said. “Those clouds. At the very least it’ll be an icy fog. Perhaps that’s better.” He chuckled with grim humor and began to polish the blade.
“Well,” he said, with typical understatement, “there might be fighting. Are you ready?”
She couldn’t answer. She was awash with the sudden, intruding thought of how she had killed those people who’d attacked Sen, how the god took over and unleashed something in her, something evil, how they’d made her into a killer once again.
That’s all you are… She wanted to cry. She wanted to give up.
She felt she would never get it off, the stain of it, the feeling in her bones.
Instead, she simply asked, “Teacher… how do I find out what they want me to do? The Hososhi. How do I know?”
“Sometimes you never know.” He sighed. “Sometimes, there aren’t any answers.
Twelve years I spent studying the precepts of the Middle Path.
Twelve years of training and abstinence and peace.
And now I have to accept that there will be blood on these old hands again.
Such is life. I don’t like it, but such is life.
The god brought you here because this is where it will happen.
The warriors, the prince, they’re all here.
Their war will begin. And the demon will come.
” He turned to her, sudden and focused. “We must not let her take them, Rui. When the time comes… We must not let this go on.”
“I wish there was something we could change,” she said.
“So do we all,” he said. “So does your friend.”
Rui thought about that, glancing down the well. “Do you think he’s happy?”
“Happy?” He nearly laughed. “There’s about to be a war, no one’s happy.”
“I meant, he has what he wanted now, he has his family.”
“They are not his family,” said Jobo, voice low.
“Sen doesn’t want to hear it, but he has to understand that family is not your blood.
It’s more than that. I know what it looks like from where you are, believe me.
But people are just… people. They contradict themselves.
They go the opposite way from what they really want.
Sometimes they push it away. Everyone does.
Everyone does things that confuse them later, that don’t make sense, and they try to rationalize why they did what they did, but the truth is, sometimes we have to accept it.
We make mistakes. You can give all of yourself to someone.
You can move apart. When you reach my age, you’ll have people who you’re connected to so deep it’s in your bones, and your spirit is in line with theirs – even if they’re gone.
Even if they move away. Two bodies, one heart.
That little part of you is theirs for ever.
And likely, that little part of them belongs to you. ”
“But sometimes things just die,” she said. “Sometimes, I think all the gods ever did was show me what was already inside me. Like a curse in my blood. I was cursed the moment Yora found me in that house with Sen… cursed for ever.”
“The teachers say, only by meeting the evil inside you can you understand that you’ll never be rid of it,” he offered. “That is the only way to finally become free.”
“But I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know how.” The tears were threatening her again, and she hated them. “I need someone to show me.”
His eyes twinkled, like stars.
“You know,” he said, gazing softly at her with those shining eyes.
“No matter how much one has – how much wisdom, how much insight, how much faith – a teacher can only teach what they know.
That means there comes a day when you must rid yourself of them.
Let go. Of your conceptions. Of your fears.
And of the teachings themselves. They hold you back. Then you may move on.
“The masters say, ‘When you cross a river, make sure you leave your boat behind.’ A boat may help you once, maybe even save your life. But once you’ve reached another shore? You no longer need it. Don’t carry your raft with you everywhere you go.”
Late that night, she found herself watching the rock-running water of the river once again. The air grew brittle in the cold, the sound of the current rose like music, and she thought she saw a lantern on the other side. There must be monks there, she thought, finishing their tasks.
Everything sharpened, crystalline, in her ears: the wet night turning to rain, the soft shifting of the water, the sound of ice, the tink-clink of the builders and the bamboo walls.
I’m here, Rui thought. I came, just like you asked. You wanted me here, Hososhi. But now that I am, there will be a war. I’ll be useless in a war. These monks and lords are warriors, I’m surrounded by them, but I have nothing I’m supposed to do.
She walked, awash with feeling. The smell of the river rose around her, mixed with frost that had lingered through the day; wet soil, pale dying grasses, reeds.
At the far end of the bridge, someone was singing.
Soft, a child’s song. Rui squinted through the darkness, moved inexorably toward the bridge and the flicker of the torches there, and the strange voice with its lonely melody on the other side.
Her ears rang slightly. She wasn’t sure if what she heard was real, or a specter, or something else. It could have been the wind.
She pulled her cloak tight around her shoulders and walked across the bridge.
They would cut the planks when fighting started, dismantle half the span so the Keishi couldn’t get across; Yora Shijin said they’d move to the far side, but slowly, and hold the enemy at the crossing, and give the rest of them a fighting chance.
Now Rui stood on the bridge alone, with the night and the water below her feet, and the singing ghost she heard on the eastern shore.
On the other side she found a small grassy area not unlike the lawn she’d walked with Jobo.
The temples had wide, sloping rooftops lined with tile, wooden prayer-gates at every entrance.
It felt strangely abandoned now; everyone had gone to the western end to help with the defense.
She passed a courtyard, two cherry trees standing leafless in the cold.
What am I supposed to do? she asked inwardly, again.
I did what you wanted. I made it to the wells. The prince is here. Is that what you wanted? For me to meet him? For me to help? What am I supposed to do now?
No answer but thin sibilance of wind on the eaves, and the trickle of water over stone.
“Please,” she said. The god in her heart remained silent.
For a hopeful moment, she wondered if they were gone for good, if she was free.
But she couldn’t be. She hadn’t done what the Hososhi wanted.
She hadn’t fulfilled her role. I have a use for you, they said. You are mine…
The wind whipped past, billowing across the courtyard, around her ankles, sharp as ice. Above, clouds tilted over the earth, making shadows, skeletal, and thin.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “What do you want me to do?”
But the wind fluttered off. The god wasn’t there.
She found a gate, a lawn, with gardens, and a far pagoda to the east. An artificial lake surrounded the main hall, which was painted deep red and stood with high arches and wooden sliding doors, and a flat veranda overlooked the stony shore like a moat.
In the dark she saw a small boy on the stones, bent to one knee, peering down into the water.
It was Prince Nioh’s son, Noyori, six years old.
“Hey,” she whispered. “What’re you doing? We can’t be out here.”
He turned, blinking, and said, “She’s here. I have to help her.”
Then ran away.
Rui went after him. She stumbled, suddenly woozy; she heard a laugh. She heard another voice.
Sighing, the wind pulled shadows of blue and green across the winding hills.
She thought she could see the mountain still rising to the east, where the dip and curve of the river brought them closer to the fertile valleys.
Here she stopped, and turned her head. There was a voice in the wind, it seemed, sighing at her, just as softly as the sighing of the trees.
Then another sound, a child’s cry.
Someone was hiding behind the pagoda by the wall.
“Hello?” she called out. “Who’s there?”
Nobody answered. The boy had made his way to the east-side fence, and stood ankle-deep in tufts of sedge grass, brownish winterflowers waving in the wind.
“Look,” he said.
Beyond the gate, something was coming. The edge of the field drifted in a brush of cold, the frozen mud and barley hissed, and a low, rising sweep seemed to shimmer like blown grass: in it, shadows, moving, to the east.
Soldiers, she saw. Hundreds of them, crossing the frozen barley-fields in darkness. A cloud passed. Everything grew dim. But she could see the movement of them, silent and numerous, making their way stealthily toward the gate.
It’s them.
“Ame’in,” she said at once. “Go back to your father. Hurry!”
“Who are they?”
“Keishi. Run now! Run!”
At the bridge, they found Jobo and two Onji monks tense as lightning. They’d sensed something was wrong.
“Teacher!” she cried, and the monks scooped the little boy into their arms. But Jobo shouted, “Quiet!”
An arrow pierced the air. Whistling, like a dying bird.
A signal.
To the west, where the highroad led up to the capital, a conch began to moan. And beyond, a deeper rumbling, a violent, angry sound. War drums.
“Teacher,” she gasped, stumbling, gripping at his hands to help her up.
“They’re here.”