Chapter Forty-Six Rui
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Rui
Rui landed hard on the cobblestones between the buildings. She shouted in frustration, and when she rose, a deep pain cut her heart, a pain so sharp, so sudden that it brought her to her knees.
The pain of her curse.
The pain of the angry god, Hososhi.
“What do you want?” she screamed.
Instead of an answer, she fell, seized by another shock, one that sent her doubling over, gasping for breath. An arrow whizzed past, struck the fencepost where her head had been. Keishi foot-soldiers flooded the grounds behind her. Another wave had come. Another arrow flashed, and missed.
Hososhi. She could feel the god reach out, taking her hands, her feet, moving her body as their own. Another arrow. Another. Again she felt the Hososhi in her blood. They guided her, wordlessly at first, and then, at once, she heard them:
Kill.
More soldiers arrived. The god – the demon – wanted blood.
Not yet, they whispered. Child, you’re not there yet.
She killed. And killed again. The anger grew. The more she killed, the stronger she became; the hungrier she was for blood.
You have a role to play.
Killer, killer girl.
Rage billowed from her. Her curse took over, and it felt good.
As her teacher fought the demon on the roof.
“Come out…” she said. “Help me… You wanted death. This is death!”
An echo of the Hassho’s words:
“It’s in your heart, child; the only way to kill it is to die.”
Then let me die if I have to, she thought.
Just end this.
End it now.
Then: a silence. She became aware of the ringing of a bell. She looked down. Somehow, a dozen men were dead at her feet. Her hair was loose. Everything felt cold, wet, and yet burning all at once. Her hands were streaked with blood.
Her clothes. Her chest. Her face.
The dead lay all around her. Is this who we really are?
She remembered the smell of manure, and the sight of old Goro tilling his field, the green of the rice plants and the flowers; she remembered the smell of leaves, the cries of the cicadas, and the dry, dusty smells of the hillside in late summer, when there was no wind and the sun seemed to hang for ever, curling into dusk and shining madder red.
She remembered the hands of her people, the no’in who helped her to the top of the ladder when they laid out rice stalks in the harvest. The flutes they’d played. The drums.
And now this.
Hurry.
Everyone shouting. A million things all around her, but she saw only one. She fell out of herself. Time slipped. She was lost. Vaguely aware as the god moved through her; as in a dream. I might as well be dead, she thought. She saw nothing, heard nothing. I am no one.
No.
The voice came from somewhere far away. Her own voice.
Rui. You are the god; the god is you.
She was the source of her power and the victim of it, and when she blinked, when she came back to herself, she was surrounded by the fallout.
She blinked, and was back on earth.
Keishi soldiers lay around her, grotesque, motionless in death.
The sword in her hands, a charred taste of fire, thick smoke. Killer. Killer. She heard the god’s whisper through the fast wind along the hills.
She tried to take a step. She sank to her knees on the cold dirt and grass of the lawn, wet with melting ice and blood. Her heart pounded. Every muscle screamed in agony. She heaved.
It’d be so easy, she thought, to just stay here and let everything pass away. I won’t have to do anything. I could just give up.
Then she thought: Jobo.
She thought: The demon.
The sound of fighting still rang faintly from the garden, across the temple path; it rang from the little village, with its thatched huts and dirt.
He needs my help.
She tried to rise. Her body disobeyed, falling to the stone.
Her knuckles, raw and bleeding, skin shredded from where she’d punched and clawed and smashed her fists.
She fell out of herself again. It was more terrifying this time because she felt it coming, and when she did, a vicious glee erupted in her. She welcomed it.
She lay back among the corpses, and smiled, blood on her teeth, an animal shout rising unbidden from her lungs, chest and ribcage aching, as if a boulder had fallen on her, as if she’d leaped from a waterfall onto the rocks below.
Remember who you are, she thought. There is a story of your life and you are the creator of it. And what happens can be met along the road, and changed.
Hososhi, what do you want?
You still have a role to play, bird-child, the god said. Get up.
Get up and fight. Get up and stand for yourself.
Get up and you can thank yourself, for you managed to survive.
And you can take it, take it into who you are, and you can leave it behind.
It’s a part of the story of your life. It will always be there.
But it is not what has to happen now. It is part of the story, but it is not the entire story.
You don’t have to run away.
She thought these things and felt them. She thought, Instead, you can reach. You can hold. You can be held.
This body, this air. This breath. This is who you are.
This is who you are, Rui. This.
I’m ready to go.
In the darkness of the world, I hear them.
A shout, a small cry; a shout of fear.
Jobo.
He was somewhere past the southern gate, fighting the monster, and he was alone.
He is hurt, she thought. He’s hurting.
He’s calling my name.
Rui rose. She found her sword, pulled herself up. She heard her master shout again. It sounded desperate. The god waited, quiet.
“Hold on! Teacher! I’m coming!”
And she ran. Ran back into the emptied village. Ran toward the enemy. Toward her teacher. Toward the end.
You want my soul, she said to the god. Help me stop this monster and it is yours.
Amid the sound of the fires and the roar of the battle at the riverside behind her, she felt something in the world shift, a veil falling, or being pulled away. The ground moved beneath her feet. The Hososhi rose with her. Within her. She heard their voice.
We have a deal.
She’d last seen him facing the demon, the tall woman in white, on the roof. Over the corpse of the imperial prince, Nioh.
She’d last seen them as Jobo leaped high into the air, spear raised in mid-strike; as the woman stood there, motionless, as if waiting.
She arrived at a garden path below persimmon trees.
Jobo and the demon had brought the fight to earth. Their blows rang high and shrill across the courtyard. Jobo had the sacred spear; the woman swung her sword. Metal on metal, blades cutting air.
Rui had her own sword in her aching hand, and ran to help her teacher. She cut at the demon, and was herself cut in the arm.
“Do not strike her!” Jobo shouted.
“How are we supposed to kill her if we can’t strike?”
But she saw small lines of blood soaking his clothes, saw how he shifted to a defensive stance. They couldn’t attack. Every blow they landed only hurt them.
The demon looked at her, with blank and staring eyes.
“You.”
Rui’s sword fell. Her arm dropped, heavy, as if out of her control. Jobo shouted, struck at the demon again, but she evaded without breaking step.
“You.”
Rui leaped at her; she didn’t have a chance. The demon jabbed sideways with the hilt of her sword and hit Rui so hard she fell back against the garden fence and flipped over.
Jobo struck at the monster again and again, landing three blows from his spear and bearing the damage that should have been inflicted upon her. His words echoed in her mind. Any who strike such a demon will bear the injury themselves…
Hososhi, now, do it now.
Rui felt a flash of pain, and when she rose, she saw through the god’s own eyes. She saw two souls in the demon’s body, one young and afraid and in pain, one dark and full of malice.
She ran at them again.
The woman cried, “I don’t want to kill you, child!”
It stopped Rui in her tracks.
“… Who are you?” she asked.
Jobo struck. Chanting a prayer, a vow to the gods of the mountains, he attacked the monster with an overhand swing, but she avoided it, spinning at the last second, bringing her own blade to bear.
The spear broke in two.
Jobo smashed the broken shaft at the demon, who dodged again. He called an invocation. Rui recognized the words: the god-spear, the spear of heaven, bound with magic, the spear that killed the gods, strike down, strike now, strike now.
He held the broken shaft near the blade, made a desperate cut against the demon’s heart. Again she evaded. Again she retaliated, but this time he jumped. The sacred spear blazed with power, blinding her.
Rui saw it an instant too late.
He leaped over the demon’s head.
And landed behind her.
The demon’s eyes widened with shock.
And he struck. Cutting across her heart as she turned.
The demon gasped. And stood motionless. Jobo remained, staring into her eyes. The keen edge of the spear glinted in pale light.
Blood erupted from his chest.
Rui screamed. “Teacher!”
He sank to his knees. Blood pooled on the dirt around him. He coughed. He made a wet sound; he tried to breathe.
“Rui,” he said.
And fell back.
Rui could only scream in horror. The demon stood before him, motionless again.
“Teacher!” She rushed to his side.
“Rui,” he gasped. “Get away. Get away.”
She couldn’t. She stood, her master sorely wounded beside her, and faced the demon alone.
For just a moment, the demon seemed to change. Instead of a monster, Rui thought she could see the woman as she used to be, before the demon possessed her, before she’d become its servant.
Time hung around them.
The spear lay broken where it fell.
You wanted my soul, Rui thought again. You want it, help me stop this monster and it is yours.
Rage filled her blood. She could feel the demon within her too, a mirror of the woman in white who stood looking down at the body of the man who had tried to stop her, and who failed.
Rui shouted with fury and threw herself at the demon, who pushed back like it was nothing. The dark, smoke-like blade hung loose in her hand.
“It won’t work.” The demon’s voice was strangely sad. “You’re a victim in this, too.”
Rui attacked again and again.
“This should not be you,” the demon said, each time she parried. “This should not be you.”
“Die!”
Rui slashed at the demon’s face, ignoring everything, thinking of nothing but death and the red blood boiling in her, the fury of hate and the man who had saved her, who’d been kind to her, who taught her how to heal.
“Stop,” the demon said.
Rui hacked at the monster and hurt only herself when she did.
She cried out in rage and greed and hatred – hatred for this demon that had crossed the barrier between the worlds, hatred for this war that had destroyed her life, for the lords and highborn who so casually wrecked their way across the earth, who murdered and stole and pillaged, who used monsters instead of gods; hatred for the Hososhi in her heart, cursing her, and leading her onward, even now.
She slashed at the demon’s face and was grazed across her own face in return, along her eyebrow.
The demon dodged, elbowed Rui in the throat so hard she thought her neck had broken with the impact.
Falling: falling back, hitting a thatched hut, a smash of her head against the wood.
The world went dark, then came again; she struggled to draw breath, each ragged heave sending needles through her throat.
She’d lost her sword. She had nothing but her bleeding knuckles and the hate that filled her heart.
The broken spear lay before her on the dirt.
“Hososhi,” she said, gasping. “Hososhi.”
The demon stood before her.
You see it yet, bird-child? the god said. Do you see?
She tried to see where her teacher had fallen. He was nowhere to be found.
You would spend your soul to help these people? they asked.
Yes. Yes.
Then help, Hososhi said. And I’ll help you.
She wrapped her hands around the sacred spear, broken halfway down the shaft. She scrambled on the muddy ground. She could feel the god Hososhi in the air around her, a ghost, a shroud that rose and shimmered, sparking flame and lightning.
She held the broken spear.
The voice, the specter, the aura of the god held it with her.
She attacked. An explosion burst through the air, the power of a wave cracking upon the rocks, a thunderclap.
The Hososhi screamed.
So did the demon. An inhuman wail.
She fell. They both fell.
The demon staggered, clutching her heart. “What is this?” she gasped. “What…”
“This is how you kill a god,” Rui said.
There were tears in the demon’s eyes. She laughed. A laughter of pain, and fear, and a horrid, rancid hope. Then she spoke – to herself, or Rui, or someone else:
“Don’t you see?”
The god whispered in her heart. The demon fell to her knees.
Is this not good? To find the barrier, and break it?
The demon – the woman, now – she was so small, so human. She staggered about, her knees, her hands before her, like she was trying to pray.
Is this not what we want?
Who can comprehend the mind of a god?
I have a use for you.
Rui rose. She knew, now, what she had to do. She gripped the broken spear, cried out in fear and strength, and stabbed the demon in the heart. Her own chest rent with blood.
And she died.
In the dark, there is silence.
Then, there is something else. Something calling to her.
Rui is alone. She is nothing.
She is formless, endless, nowhere and everywhere at once.
The shroud on her heart has been cut.
She becomes aware. Of herself. Of the dark.
Of the barrier between worlds.
The darkness shifts.
It becomes. It coalesces.
It starts to change.
It appears before her, solid: an awakening.
A vastness of earth, cold air and nightfall, wind, soil, sodden leaves.
There is rain. There is a tree. A growth of vines and roots. There is a voice.
The dark takes shape; the silence alters once again.
She hears the world. She hears everything. She feels it in her bones.
She hears a distant sound, like bells, like laughter. Like a life she knows.
It is calling to her, familiar and painful, and too far off to see.
The barrier: a reach of darkness.
It shifts into a face.
There is a breath. A new change, far away.
The Hososhi smiles.