Storyline de BoK

Patron des akki : Ik-Uk the akki was damned from the moment he spotted the bottle, though he would not realize it for another week. He found the bottle in the rubble down slope from the entrance of a massive cavern complex, a set of caverns occupied and abandoned by different akki tribes over the centuries. Each tribe dealt with its detritus in the same time-honored akki manner – by tossing it out the door. As a result, there was an ever-spreading vale of trash, layer upon layer from generation upon generation of the akki. And Ik-Uk, low among the low, scavenged among the debris for those bits he could eat or trade. Ik-Uk had been fairly good at his craft, and he knew his territory well. So when the gas bubble erupted the night before from deep within the trash heap, sending a flaming geyser of blue-white fire into the sky like a flare, he knew that the bottom layers of the midden pile would be disturbed, and old, lost treasures might be brought to the surface. And laying his hands upon the ebon bottle and dooming himself, he knew he was right. The bottle was thin-necked, in the style of the elder dynasties, and inscribed with fluid characters that wrapped around its ebon surface. The runic inscriptions flowed as if incised with fire, and seemed to dance and meld as Ik-Uk watched them. Were Ik-Uk a human, he would have taken the bottle to a place of safety. He would have sought council from others more learned than he. He would have had the writings untangled and made plain. He would have been cautious. But Ik-Uk was an akki, and though knowledgeable in scavenging and other old things, was not the wisest of his lump-backed, horn-shouldered breed. So he rattled the bottle. Something solid thunked within. Encouraged, he pulled the lead stopper from the neck. And fire jetted from the neck of the bottle. Had Ik-Uk been just a touch more eager, he would have caught the force of the explosion full in the face, and would have been spared what would later happen to him. He was not fortunate (having placed the butt of the bottle against his belly and used both hands to unstopper it), so instead he merely pitched backwards as the orange-red flames erupted outwards. And, having left the bottle, the flames now swirled in the air before him. Now despite his low status, Ik-Uk knew many things, and one of them was that fire needed something to burn, else it would dwindle and die. Wood. Clothing. Flesh. Even rocks would burn, given enough heat. But this flame was different, hanging in the air. And as Ik-Uk watched, twin dark splotches appeared in the flames and resolved into eyes, watching him intently. Ik-Uk scrambled backwards. “Stay away!” he sputtered, grasping the neck of the bottle and brandishing it like a club. Another dark splotch formed beneath the eyes. “I am remaining away,” said the fire, which continued to resolve itself as Ik-Uk watched. The flames folded upon themselves, the tongues of fire resolving themselves into recognizable forms. It had a body that looked like fish drawn by an akki child, with lumpy folds of flaming flesh and a small dwindling body supporting an oversized head. The two upper dark spots resolved into flat bronze coins, solid and floating in a face of fire. Tiny useless arms or fins hung at its sides made of insubstantial flame. The creature had the tadpole shape of an unborn akki – it resembled nothing more than a flaming fetus. Now despite his low status, Ik-Uk knew of old things, and could identify a kami when he saw one. The kami were spirits, otherworldly creatures – beautiful, horrid, and very, very hostile. And this was definitely a kami, though by its size was one of low status. Though even a kami of low status could destroy an akki with but a thought. Ik-Uk scooted back over the detritus, club-bottle still brandished before him. “Do not fear,” said the creature, “May I serve you?” Another pause, while Ik-Uk wondered how far he could get if he bolted. Not far, he decided. “You are a spirit,” he said at last. The burning tadpole of a creature nodded, and would have blinked had its eyes permitted it. “A minor one, once part of a greater being. May I serve you?” Ik-Uk stopped his retreat. The scavenger akki was of low status, but he knew the tales of helpful kami as well. Particularly he thought of the tale of Laughing Riko, an akki of whom it was said to have aided a fire kami, and was rewarded with great power. Laughing Riko became a great shaman among the akki, though many thought that he was little more than a pet of the fire kami. This seemed like a fire kami, and it seemed friendly as well. And the idea of great power appealed to Ik-Uk. “Why,” said the akki slowly, gathering his wits, “Why were you in that bottle?” “I am a minor spirit,” replied the burning fetus, “Shorn off from a greater being. Against whom I trespassed and by whom I was imprisoned. Why do you fear? Are not kami good spirits to mortals?” “Once,” said Ik-Uk, lowering the bottle just a fraction of an inch. “Long ago, in grandfather time. Now the kami war with the living, and are kept shackled by spells, or supplicated with sacrifice.” “Why is that?” asked the unblinking spirit. The akki shrugged his oversized shoulders, “I don’t know, but I bet humans are responsible. They always are.” The spirit crackled thinly for a few moments, hovering in the air before Ik-Uk. Then it said, “I have been away for a long time. Perhaps long enough that I have been forgiven by the greater being.” “Perhaps your greater being no longer exists.” “Perhaps.” Another pause, filled with crackling of its insubstantial flesh. “Yet you released me. Payment is called for. May I serve you?” Ik-Uk opened his mouth, but as he spoke he heard other voices from further up the trash hill – heavy, raspy voices that grated on his ears and put fear into his soul. Other akki. Other scavengers, who slept in this morning and were only now descending the pile. Any one of the other akki would be a fair match for Ik-Uk, but in a pack they would quickly try to take his find away from him. Ik-Uk waved the bottle at the figures approaching over the hill of refuse. “Protect me!” he shouted, trying to keep as much of a frightened squeal out of his voice as possible. “As you wish,” said the burning spirit, and motioned towards the lead figure that was just topping the rise. The lead akki, a large, broad-shouldered bruiser named Hu-Hu, screamed as his head erupted in a ball of crimson-white flame. He slapped at his face and ears ineffectively with wide, clawed hands, but quickly slumped, smoldering, to the ground. The screams became sobbing prayers, then soft wet noises, and at last nothing at all. The other akki, four in all, were stunned to silence by the sudden turn of events, but only for a moment. Two screamed and charged towards Ik-Uk, the other two screamed and fled back up towards the cavern’s mouth. The spirit motioned again, and the heads of all four of them exploded in bursts of bright-red flame. Each of them slumped and fell, their last curses lost in the crackling flames. Ik-Uk stammered, “What did you do?” “Protected you,” said the unborn thing, wrapped in a nimbus of flame, “Is that not what you wanted?” “Yes,” said Ik-Uk, but then shook his head. The newly-fried scavengers were rivals in his trade, but they had families. Families that would put together two (Ik-Uk appears with a new fiery friend) and two (the crispy remains of their brethren are discovered), and come to the logical conclusion. “No,” then shook his head again, “You must keep me safe from harm,” he added. “I can protect you,” said the spirit, smiling, and for the first time Ik-Uk noticed the spirit had very, very sharp teeth -- bronze triangles floating, like its eyes, in a puddle of congealed flame “Protect me, yes,” said the akki, “But don’t hurt anyone without my say-so. Can you do that?” The spirit looked at him blankly, and Ik-Uk wondered if he had exceeded the creature’s ability to comprehend. The kami were powerful, but they were not necessarily versed in the ways and subtleties of the mortal world. And this particular kami had been away from the world longer than most. But it nodded and said, “How long shall I protect you?” Now despite his low status, Ik-Uk realized that there was the rub. Say forever and the kami would resent it. And bad things happened around resentful spirits. To even say something like “For the rest of his life”, the duration of said life would likely be very short. So instead he said, “For a year and a day.” Yes, that would be it. What is a year and a day to a creature that had spent an eternity trapped in a bottle? And after a year and a day he would know enough about the spirits and their limitations to protect himself from any type of resentful kami. “For a year and a day,” repeated the flaming creature, whipping its tadpole tail back and forth in apparent contentment. “That will be sufficient” “And another thing,” said the akki, “What you did to them,” he motioned towards the smoking piles that had been other scavengers, “Don’t do that to me. Ever.” “I would never think of that,” replied the kami. “Now,” said Ik-Uk, “I need to get away from here.” “Where do you want to go?” asked the spirit. “Away,” repeated the akki, “From here.” He thought again for a moment. He would need to find some powerful old relic to keep the kami in line. Yes, that would be it. He waved the bottle at the spirit and said, “You have been sealed up for some time?” “It appears so, if the spirits now make war upon the mortals,” said the kami. “Then you know of old places of power,” said the scavenger. “I do. But such places may no longer exist,” said the spirit. “That is true,” said Ik-Uk, “but their bones may yet remain. Take me there.” So for eight days the two moved westwards, deeper into the Sokenzan Mountains. They spoke little, save for occasional questions from the spirit. “How do the akki live, in these later days?” said the flame-wrapped creature. “As we always have,” said the akki, “in the mountains.” “And they fear spirits?” “Everyone fears spirits,” said the akki. “They even fear the patrons of the races?” asked the kami. “In particular the patrons,” said Ik-Uk. The spirit was quiet for a moment, and then said, “The patron spirits were good for their people.” “Once, perhaps,” said the akki, “but now they have gone mad, and are nothing but voracious appetites incarnate. The Patron of the Orochi was once beautiful, but now is nothing more than a great worm made of woven vines. The Patron of the Nezumi was once radiant, but now stalks the swamps, a set of ravenous jaws on thin, stalking limbs. And the less said about the Patron spirit of the Moonfolk the better.” “And your race’s patron?” said the flickering creature. “The Patron of the Akki?” Ik-Uk suppressed a shudder and tried not to think of it. Instead he said, “No better or worse than the rest, I’d guess. The Patrons, and all the great spirits are feared now, thought of as little more than great beasts. They are to be hated and feared.” The kami, which resembled a burning, unborn akki, did not have a response to that, and they continued in silence. They had moved out of the lands that Ik-Uk knew after two days, and now were in wild lands where few akki tread. The spirit banked its flames, looking no more than a warm flicker of air, the better not to attract attention. They were ambushed twice: once by sun bears, and once by ogres. Each time the kami proved the truth of its promise by waiting for Ik-Uk to give permission, then immolating their assailants with but a thought. From the ogres Ik-Uk found a knife that he wore as a short sword. From the sun bears he gained fresh meat. At last they arrived at an ancient mountain, its peak riddled with cavern entrances. To Ik-Uk’s practiced eye, this had been home to numerous goblin civilizations, and yet it was lacking the traditional mounds of garbage at the base – had the natives of this abandoned complex found a better place to dispose of their trash? “This is the place?” said Ik-Uk. “Yes,” said the kami in a voice that sounded like a sigh. “It looks abandoned long ago,” said Ik-Uk, dreaming of the treasure that would be within. “Yes,” said the kami, is a voice that definitely was a sigh, “It looks that way.” However, Ik-Uk was wrong in his estimation, as he discovered only a few hundred feet into the main hall. Dark-cloaked figures moved from the shadows, slender, strong fingers wrapped around his arms, and booted feet slammed into the back of his knees. Before he knew it he was pitching backwards, and he was unable to order the kami to protect him. He had a quick vision of another akki, this one with a tall golden headpiece, then a quicker vision of a club coming towards his face, and then nothing but blackness for a long time. When Ik-Uk awoke, he could not move. He was bound at the wrists and ankles by strong cords to an x-shaped frame. He opened his eyes and found he was staring into a great void at his feet. It was a chasm, deep beneath the mountain. The primal fires of the mountain itself flickered deep beneath his feet and huge shadows cast upwards from the depths. He was on a spur of rock hanging perilously over the lip of the abyss below. Above him there was a cascade of drums and looking up, he saw other akki lining the upper ledges overlooking the cavern. Viewed from below, they looked as dreadful as ogres, and Ik-Uk noticed more than a few of them wore ornate headdresses similar to that the akki with the club. He wheezed, his throat dry from the heat below. “Spirit!” “Here,” said the burning tadpole with its bronze eyes and teeth, floating a few feet from him. “What happened?” “You were attacked and knocked unconscious,” the kami regarded him with a wide, unblinking stare. “You were supposed to protect me!” hissed the akki. “True,” said the kami, “But you reacted badly when I killed your brethren mortals before, so I waited for you to tell me to. And when you were incapacitated, I waited for you to recover.” “You call that protecting me?” snapped Ik-Uk. “They meant to kill you outright,” said the spirit calmly. “I manifested before them and they changed their minds. They brought you here. So yes, I protected you.” “Well, protect me now,” snarled the imprisoned akki. “Free me and kill them all, now!” The kami remained floating next to Ik-Uk. None of the leering akki overhead burst into flame. Not even the ones with the golden headpieces. “Well?” prompted Ik-Uk. “I cannot,” said the spirit, sounding almost regretful. “We are in the presence of a greater spirit, a kami as far above me as I am above you.” “You promised to keep me safe!” cried Ik-Uk, and now terror was creeping into his voice. “I did,” said the spirit, “And I will keep my promise. Payment is required. Yet I will move most carefully to keep all of my pledges. You will have to trust me. I will serve you. I will keep you safe.” And with that the spirit banked its flames and vanished from sight. Ik-Uk cursed, but when that failed to make the spirit appear again, began talking to the space where it was moments before. “You can come back. You just get me out of this and we will be even.” “I keep my promises,” said the spirit, in a voice inside Ik-Uk’s head. The drums started up again from above, and this time were joined by an assemblage of rude horns, carved from the skulls of creatures extinct before these tunnels were first bored. A chant went up with it, a hellish mishmash of akki shouting and exulting. On the upper levels, the akki priests, resplendent in their golden, multi-pronged headgear and crimson and black vestments, capered along the edge of the precipice. “What is . . . “ Ik-Uk’s throat burned now. “What is happening?” “What do you remember of your patron, akki?” asked the familiar voice within his head. “I don’t know!” whined Ik-Uk, and tears began to run down his face. “You spoke of the other patrons, but not your own,” said the voice of the unborn flame, “What about your own patron?” Ik-Uk gasped, “He was as great as mountain and as powerful as an avalanche and as warm as a volcano’s blast.” The akki gulped at the increasingly warm air. “Our patron was a master scavenger, the greatest warrior, the most powerful bully. But he fell and now hates the akki and is nothing more than hunger incarnate . . .” The akki’s eyes grew wide as he realized where this was going. “No.” “As you said,” said the spirit, speaking in his head for the drums were too loud now. “Kami are kept shackled by spells and supplicated through sacrifice.” “You promised to keep me safe!” “And so I shall,” replied the kami. Deep within the pit something large and malignant stirred, sending ripples of light and shadow upwards along the chasm walls. The air moved from warm to hot now, and there was a rumbling far below. The rumbling grew in intensity, first rivaling, then eclipsing, the thunder of the drums. Now the shadows were moving up the pit as well, presaging the arrival of something huge from the depths. Ik-Uk bellowed for the spirit to rescue him, to protect him, but his own voice was lost in the cacophony that filled the chasm as the Patron of the Akki surged up from the depths. It was huge and terrible and beautiful, forged from the fires at the heart of the mountain itself. It was the color of molten bronze and the heart of its rasp-toothed maw glowed with soft flesh the color of blood. Its head was in the shape of a huge armor-headed turtle, its hooked beak gaping wide to reveal uneven rows of curved, lamprey-teeth, and its tail was lost within the fires at the roots of the mountain. Flaming shapes like living torches danced around its gaping, circular jaws, worshipful in its presence. The great beast’s unblinking eyes were filled with hate, and its head was wreathed with flicking, floating bonfires. It was the Patron of his people and it was beautiful and horrible and deadly. Ik-Uk screamed, and a part of his mind saw that the flaming shapes orbiting the Patron’s head had the tadpole-shape of unborn akki, and each resembled a flaming fetus. The patron loomed up above the trapped akki like a serpent swaying above its prey, and for an instant Ik-Uk realized that the drums had stopped, and everything was silent, save for his own ragged shouts. Though even he could no longer say if he was shouting curses, or pleas, or prayers. And then the beast, the great kami, the spirit of the Akki people, fell upon him, and he prayed in earnest for a quick and merciful death. The Patron swallowed him whole, and Ik-Uk fell within the belly of the great spirit for an eternity, screaming until his voice was raw. But he did not hit bottom, but continued to fall. And when he has passed out and awoken and screamed and passed out and awoken a few more times, he gathered his remaining wits together to remember the kami -- the one that he had originally thought was a fire spirit, the kami in the form of a large-headed wisp of flame -- and called upon it. And its voice was in his head and its form was next to him in the rippling blood-red darkness. Ik-Uk cursed it with what was left of his mind, and cried at with what was left of his heart. “You betrayed me!” he bellowed, and at the same time pleaded, “Save me!” “I have kept my word,” said the flickering spirit calmly. “You have fed me to a beast!” screamed Ik-Uk, his sanity falling away from him at last like sand through a sieve. “I have brought you to a safe place,” said the kami, this small kami, the smallest shard of a greater being. “Where is it safer than within my own bosom? Here no other akki may attack you, no ogre may ambush you, and no rival may steal your treasures. In bringing you here, I have been forgiven as well, reunited with my greater part. And you will be safe here for a year and a day.” “And when the year and a day is over,” said the kami, “You shall not burn. I promised you that as well. I shall pull the flesh from your bones bit by bit, but you shall not burn.” And at this the kami, shard of the Patron, cast in the form of an unborn flame, smiled fully, and showed row upon row of sharp bronze triangular teeth. And Ik-Uk screamed with the last of mind and the last of his heart and fell into the reddish darkness in the belly of his Patron, and screamed for almost a year and a day. Iwamorie du poig ouvert : Iwamori’s fist slammed against the oak, and the tree, which had stood for hundreds of years, fell with a deafening crash. The renegade orochi in its highest branches leaped to a neighboring tree seconds before the ground shook with the fall’s impact. “You’re starting to irritate me, monk,” Shisato hissed, venom dripping from her fangs and pooling a sickly green on the forest floor. “You’ve been hunting me and my kind for too long,” came the flat, rumbling reply. “I think it is I who should be irritated.” Shisato’s eyes glittered in the shadows of the rustling leaves. “You know that I could leap down there right now and fill you with poison before you could even blink.” “You could try.” The monk was tall and massive, with a chest like boulders and arms that were as thick as the oak that lay at his feet. He cracked his knuckles, a snapping sound that rang through the quiet of Jukai. “I think you might find that my skin is thicker than you may think. Or, I could simply pluck you out of the air and wring your neck. Do you think your father would be terribly displeased with me if I did that? It would save him the trouble of doing it himself.” The glitter in the orochi’s eyes became twin pinpricks of fire. “I know what you’re trying to do, monk. Goad me into making a mistake. Well, it won’t work. I’ll kill you on my terms, at a time of my choosing. I suggest you make peace before then.” Iwamori’s powerful legs sent him flying towards the tree, towards the voice. But Shisato had vanished before the last syllable of her words evaporated on the wind. Iwamori grunted. “You’ll not escape me for long, renegade. I swear I’ll have your skin decorating the walls of my rooms.” * * * Iwamori bowed low, reminding Ansho of the little boy, so filled with awe and respect, who had joined the order all those years ago. “I’m sorry, Master Ansho.” “You have no reason to apologize. You never do. Shisato is a problem, but she is hardly the most pressing at the moment.” The old monk’s face was wrinkled, but his body still held much of the power it had during his youth, still burlier and more muscular than many men half his age. As one of Dosan’s most senior students, and a fighter whose deeds were still told in poems, he kept a predator’s eye on his duties administrating the defense of the monastery and Jukai. “In fact, I question the wisdom of seeking her in the first place.” The younger monk’s body rose, horror etched onto his face. “You think I should not have left the monastery without a defender? You’re absolutely right, Master, and I apologize for…” Ansho waved a withered hand. “Calm yourself, young man. If that’s what I meant, I would have said so. But it’s not.” Iwamori climbed to his feet, towering over his mentor like Boseiju. “Nevertheless, my failure in stopping Shisato means that I have been lax in my training. After my meditations, I will train harder, I swear.” “If there is one thing I know I can always depend on, Iwamori, it is you training.” He said this with a tight little smile that Iwamori wasn’t sure how to interpret. “I know you will do well.” Ansho paused, his eyes drifting over his student. “May I ask you a question?” “Of course!” “I would like you ask yourself what your purpose is, in your life and in your training.” Iwamori blinked. “To reach enlightenment, and defend Jukai against all who wish to destroy it, of course. Isn’t that a question you ask of your newest acolytes, to test their inner strength?” “Perhaps, but I think you would benefit from it too.” A silence passed. “Go on, now, go on with your training. I’m sure we’ll speak later. Iwamori bowed and left his master’s chambers. Ansho shook his head. “So much trouble, that young man…” * * * When Iwamori meditated, it seemed that the entire world stopped just to give him peace. Birds ceased their singing, leaves refused to rustle, and the gentle breezes whistling through the trees held their breath. He found it easy to slip into the inner depths, where the outside world ceased to be; he wasn’t really sure how. He sensed that Master Ansho was somewhat disturbed by this, but he had no idea why. As always, when his meditations were done and his eyes opened, he found himself filled with an odd sense of disappointment. Perhaps it was because he had failed to find an answer to Master Ansho’s question, other than the one he’d already offered? Frankly, he wasn’t sure if there really was another answer. Iwamori knew that he wasn’t the most learned of Dosan’s pupils; there were many who’d reached greater paths of enlightenment than him. He wasn’t the strongest; there were some who were even stronger than he, though not nearly as many as there were wiser. But for some reason, everyone knew his name, even in an order like Master Dosan’s, whose ranks were swelling with desperate refugees the longer the Kami War raged. A low tolling echoed through the forest, sending the monastery into a sudden flurry of activity. Women dropped their bundles and ceased their training. Men scooped up children and grabbed weapons. Iwamori, his blood pounding through his veins, failed to fight back a small smile as he broke into a run, rushing to the high wooden gates that kept the rest of Jukai at bay. As soon as the gates came into view, he was immediately beset upon by monks, some armed with spears, others carrying nothing but fists. They shouted and gestured and pleaded for orders. There was no official hierarchy among the monks; they accorded each other respect based on what they knew of each other’s path and wisdom. But whenever the warning bell sounded, whenever the monastery was in danger of attack, there was only one man to turn to: Iwamori. “Calm down!” he roared. The babbling halted at once, the silence only broken by the continual rumbling of the warning bell. “What is the danger?” “A kami has been sighted over Jukai,” one of the monks shouted louder than necessary. “Just one?” Iwamori’s voice grew sharp and irritated. “I hope that there’s more to it than it sounds right now, or I’ll be very disappointed in whoever had the warning bell rung.” The monk swallowed. By now, Ansho had toddled up to the crowd, his ears pricked. “It’s not a matter of number, Brother Iwamori… It’s a matter of… stature.” “It’s the Kami of Honored Fallen!” one of the others burst out. “Korin could see him even while he was still in the western reaches! He’s coming this way!” Iwamori’s face was now grim. Even in Jukai, word had spread about Eiyo - a great kami, mightier than most, who’d laid waste to a legion of the daimyo’s best officers. “I see.” “We’re ready to defend the monastery in any way you see fit.” The rest of the monks nodded, their faces hardening and their hands wrapping around their weapons. “You will trust me to do the right thing?” “Of course!” “Good.” He looked over the group, a hodgepodge of builds, heights, ages, and hearts. “Then here is my command: stay here and defend this place with your lives. I will go out and attempt to turn Eiyo aside.” A murmur wove through the group; Ansho frowned. “Alone?” one of the monks asked tentatively. “Yes, alone. We will need every defender we can if the Kami of Honored Fallen makes it this far, and having others with me would slow me down at a time when speed is of the essence.” He fixed the others with a harsh glare. “Unless you doubt my capabilities.” With mutters and shakes of the head, the monks reluctantly disbanded and took up defensive positions. Only Ansho stood his ground, that frown still on his face. Iwamori turned to his master. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you are all safe.” “And yourself? Who will keep you safe?” Ansho asked quietly. “Does it matter, if the rest live?” He turned away. “Open the gates!” Ansho watched as his student strode alone through the monastery gates, watched until the massive doors slammed shut behind him. “Oh, Iwamori… I see you haven’t answered my question yet.” He made no move to seek shelter or move from his spot. He stood staring at the gates, as if already searching for the young monk to return. * * * The forest was eerily silent, except for Iwamori’s own footfalls crushing leaves and branches underneath his feet. This already was a sign; there were no birds or animals at a time when Jukai should have been teeming with them. Even the minor kami that harassed hunters and travelers were strangely absent. They knew what was happening, even if it took a while for humans to realize. With three leaps, Iwamori jumped into the heights of an ancient tree, and his head peeked over the vast green canopy of Jukai. To the west, slouching forward as if it were walking on the treetops, was a metallic figure whose armor shone a dazzling glow in the midday sun. It might have been mistaken for a passing samurai, if most samurai were thirty feet tall. Massive claws, made up of hundreds upon hundreds of katana, raked the upper reaches of the trees, cutting a swath of broken branches and ripped-apart leaves. From its head (or where a head would be, were it human), a kabuto’s mask glared hatefully. Iwamori did not know why Eiyo was passing through Jukai, nor did he care. “Lord Kami!” he roared in a voice that shook the sky. The massive kami slowed to an aching crawl, and turned, the kabuto mask staring down at him like the face of a judging god. “For the good of Jukai, I challenge you in single combat! Face me, if you are not afraid of a mere human!” The kami’s pace stopped utterly. It stood, frozen, staring down at the small monk before it. A rattle passed through its form, the sound of a hundred thousand pieces of plated mail clattering against each other. But the sound was not careless; it rose and lowered, like the rhythm of a human voice. If that was indeed what it was, the human couldn’t understand a word of it. After what seemed to be hours, the Kami of Honored Fallen raised one of its massive hands, and it swept towards Iwamori. He leaped out of the way, his body still battered by the winds that its passing kicked up. Without pausing, he leapt again and again, luring the kami away from the monastery. Fortunately, the kami seemed content to try and eliminate this blasphemous upstart, the empty helmets that surrounded it glowing an angry, intense white. A mighty gauntlet batted Iwamori out of the tree before he could react. His hands flailed for a hold, barely managing to grab a branch before he could fall uncontrollably to the forest floor below. He looked up, and was immediately blinded by a massive flash of pure white light. The kami’s magic sent daggers of fire throughout his body, and his grip slackened. He fell into a cradle of branches, which groaned underneath him from the impact. Iwamori blinked the flashes from his vision in time to see fingernails of bloodstained spears lash out towards him. He swung himself out of their path, but one of the blades slashed at his left shoulder. The monk winced as he tugged himself back to his feet on a neighboring branch, his blood oozing hot over his wound. Eiyo’s mask brightened with a dazzling flash that washed Jukai in glare. Iwamori leaped instinctively. The blast barely missed his legs, but shattered the upper reaches of the tree; he realized as he fell that he would find no more foothold here. He hit the canopy, feeling the scratches of leaves and bark as branches broke underneath his massive weight. He reached out, and grabbed one of the thicker branches as he passed. The swing rocketed him forward, easing his momentum enough for him to bounce off two more branches before landing neatly on the ground. “Enough of this,” he muttered under his breath. Ignoring the pain still stinging his shoulder, Iwamori charged towards another mighty tree, facing Eiyo once more eye to eye. Again, spear claws hurtled towards Iwamori, but this time, his dodging leap landed him right atop one of the kami’s plated arms. The monk’s joints and muscles ached as he jumped and climbed his way up the gigantic arm. He glanced to his left; the other arm’s deadly swipe hadn’t yet finished. He had a little time. But only a little. Finally alighting atop the kami’s shoulder, Iwamori reached down and grabbed one of the massive metal plates that formed Eiyo’s corporeal shell of armor. Sweat streamed down his face and veins popped out of his arms as his grip strained at the metal. Finally, with a bestial roar, the plate wrenched itself loose. “Not the most fashionable of weapons, but it must do.” By now, the kami’s baleful stare had turned towards him, the empty eyes of the kabuto mask screeching with indignity. “I assume you wish me to replace this slab of armor,” Iwamori muttered. “Very well, then. You shall have it.” Screaming a kiai that had always echoed through his soul, ever since his earliest years, Iwamori threw the brass plate. The chunk of metal slammed into the kabuto mask, which shattered under the speeding projectile. The kami shrieked, a high-pitched, aching sound that rasped on the monk’s brain. Rivulets of some glittering liquid flowed from Eiyo’s shattered visage like tears. Iwamori quickly snatched up another metal plate, throwing it again towards the kami’s head. This time, the piece of armor slammed through Eiyo’s ruined face and hurtled out the other side, shattering one of its surrounding helmets. Another scream erupted, and Iwamori could see the broken helm dissolve into tiny yellow sparks that rained down on the forest below. His fingers gripped another plate. But before he could rip this one out too, the kami’s form began to shimmer and waver. Iwamori found the terrain beneath his feet grow misty and soft. Within seconds, the kami was gone utterly. Iwamori fell once more, but on his own terms now. He grunted as he landed, wiping the sweat off his brow. When he returned to the monastery, cheers and accolades rained down on him the instant he appeared into view. Master Ansho was still standing in the same spot as when he left, looking over Iwamori with appraising eye. “A hundred of Lord Konda’s best men couldn’t beat it. And you did!” “You saved us!” Iwamori shook his head, his face grim. “No, I failed. I could have rid this world of a major kami, kept it from harming other innocent mortals.” Ansho finally spoke. “But you hurt it, enough for it to retreat to the kakuriyo, something no one man has ever succeeded in doing. And you speak of failure?” “I do not speak of it. My actions shout it loudly enough.” Heedless of the stares and continuing cheers, Iwamori departed. Ansho later found him in the training yard, punching wooden posts and kicking bags stuffed with leaves until his entire body was strained and reddened with exertion. “We are having a celebratory feast in honor of your accomplishment. Aren’t you joining us?” “No,” came the solitary grunt. And that was it. Back to the punching, kicking, lifting, chopping. Ansho quietly withdrew and returned to the roaring fires and cheery laughter of the dining quarters. * * * Morning broke over the Jukai Forest clear and warm. Though none of the pampered and perfumed nobles at Eiganjo Castle had yet lifted an eyelid, the monks followed the course of nature, and were already deep into their day. There was training to do, koans to write, food to grow, and repairs to be made. They scurried like ants, carrying their parcels and lumber and problems around in a flurry of activity. In the center of it all, as it often was, were two unmoving men. Ansho sat in his chambers, and Iwamori bowed before him. The elder’s face was etched with concern. “I will not attempt to stop you. But I strongly urge you to reconsider.” “No.” The massive monk rose. “My failures of the past few days will not stop haunting me until I act. I will not return until Shisato is either a prisoner of her own people, or dead at my hand.” “You would do this, even if it means leaving us without our strongest defender?” “I do not plan to be away that long. But my actions are for the good of all, and I must follow through if my honor is to remain intact.” “Ah, honor,” Ansho sighed. “Such a noble concept. Yet the daimyo’s men also die needlessly because of it.” “Master?” “You’ve always been one of my most frustrating students.” Ansho said this with a smile that held not the least bit of malice. “And so much potential, too…” Iwamori blinked. “Master?” he repeated tentatively. “Have you found an answer to the question I asked you yet?” came the casual question, tossed out as if they had just started conversing. “Question?” Iwamori’s face scrunched in puzzlement for a moment. “Oh, that! Not beyond the one I already gave. Why do you ask?” “If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand my reason.” Ansho paused. “Think of it on your travels, Iwamori. And consider why you came here in the first place.” Then he closed his eyes. “Why I…? What do you…?” But the elder’s shallow breathing and ramrod stillness told Iwamori that Ansho was not truly present anymore, at least in the spiritual sense. He quietly got up, slung his meager cloth pack over his shoulder, and left the monastery. He said goodbye to no one; there was no one he wanted to say goodbye to. A few monks saw him, and wanted to question him, bid him good journey, but they knew better than to try. Thus the departure of one of the strongest fighters in Jukai, perhaps in all of Kamigawa, came and went without a word. * * * Iwamori’s fingers caressed the ground, running riverbeds around the footprint stamped in the bare dirt. Tracking was never one of his greatest suits; Azusa could always surpass his meager skills. But he knew the track of an orochi when he saw it, and it was relatively fresh. The pace was of someone in a hurry, and the direction took the path far away from any region the orochi deemed safe. That meant Shisato. He followed the trail as best he could. Though the tracks soon vanished, he thought he could see signs here and there of someone passing: a broken branch or stamped grass. The sound of crunching leaves brought him to attention. Someone was stumbling about in the underbrush, and not taking very much care to hide the fact. Shisato wouldn’t be that carefree. Or perhaps it was a trick, to get him to rush into a trap. This was certainly no region for the casual traveler… at least none without a hidden agenda. Iwamori crouched behind a tree. The crunching sound grew nearer, until the footfalls were almost upon him. Climbing to his feet, Iwamori took a deep breath, waited for one more footstep, then swung out from behind the tree, bringing his fist forward in a powerful sweep. His clenched fist met empty air. The monk blinked, looking about. He could see no one. But how? He knew human footsteps when he heard them, and he was so sure that they were right there… “Hmm. I guess that kanji was worthwhile after all.” The smooth voice sprang up from behind him. Iwamori spun around to find a tall, thin man in black robes. He was leaning casually against a tree, his arms crossed, and his mouth crooked in a small smile. “You never know when you’ll face the unexpected. Which is what being unexpected means, of course.” Iwamori’s fists squeezed into boulders. “Who are you?” “Does it matter? Just a normal traveler taking a little shortcut through Jukai.” A sword and scabbard hung at his belt swayed gently in the wind as the man looked Iwamori up and down. “You’re one of Dosan’s monks, aren’t you? Kind of far from home, isn’t it? I didn’t know the old man taught his students to attack strangers without reason.” Iwamori’s senses were reeling. Something was not right about this man. His attitude, his stature, his aura… Whatever it was, it screamed of wrongness, of something that it was his responsibility to destroy. “You are a samurai,” he returned. “But you aren’t dressed like one of the daimyo’s men.” “That’s because I’m not. And you are…?” “Someone who knows that you are up to no good. You are not welcome in Jukai.” The samurai chuckled. “And you’re the sole titan, the lone defender of the forest? Your patrol days must be rough indeed.” “Shut up and fight me!” Iwamori rushed forward, his arm swinging in a great chop that could crack boulders. His opponent simply responded by leaping over his head and landing behind him with feline grace. He drew his sword, sending flashes of reflected sun across his eyes. “I can’t waste time sparring with some strange monk I’ve just met. I’ll have you know that I’m a close personal friend of Daimyo Konda’s daugh…” “Be quiet!” Iwamori brought forth another blow, only to see the samurai duck it. Another punch, another, a vicious sweeping kick. All were avoided with ease. “What the hell is wrong with you?” The samurai calmly regarded Iwamori with eyes that bored into his skin, into his mind, heart, and soul. “Short-tempered, eh? I’ve seen your type before. Big, strong, stupidly brave, filled with honor and duty. You know what always happens to them?” “What?” “They die. Which is usually what they want.” The samurai’s face cocked into a questioning half-grin. “Why do you want to die, monk?” A deathly silence whistled across the forest for a moment, as the two men locked eyes. Iwamori shattered that silence with a bestial roar, like a wounded animal. He charged the samurai with arms extended, fingers curled as if already preparing to grasp and crush the other man’s throat. “Hit a nerve, did I?” The samurai dodged Iwamori’s rush with a casual roll. The monk only bellowed in reply, picking up a fallen tree trunk and hurling it towards his foe. Two swipes of the samurai’s sword sent the trunk clattering to the ground in pieces. “I guess so. You seem to have lost the capacity for rational thought.” “I’ll kill…” The words were more growls than speech. Iwamori jumped forward, sending meaty fist after meaty fist towards the samurai’s face, each swing whistling through the air with the force of a smith’s hammer. The monk struck out with a fierce chop that would immediately kill normal men, and cripple even minor kami. None of the blows landed. By the time the red-faced Iwamori swung about, his teeth clenched, the samurai was behind him, his bones whole and his flesh unbroken. With another animal cry, Iwamori charged, not feeling the warning swipe of the samurai’s sword that scratched his chest. His mind barely registered the fact that his opponent was drawing back his jitte, as if preparing a stabbing blow that Iwamori couldn’t possibly stop or dodge. But instead, the samurai seemed to change his mind at the last moment, simply avoiding Iwamori’s mindless assault. “Still at it? You know, I kind of like you. You’re simple and direct.” The half-grin curled up again. The samurai dropped to one knee and traced a kanji symbol in the dirt. Stone spines erupted from the ground, encircling Iwamori in an earthen cage. Iwamori’s fists pounded at his stone prison. The spines groaned and cracked, but only barely, not nearly enough to free him before the samurai could run him through. “What are you waiting for?” he roared. “Finish what you started!” “I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you? And if I remember correctly, it’s you who started this.” He regarded the monk with an air of mild interest, as if examining an exotic animal at a zoo. “A little advice. You can take it or leave it - it doesn’t matter to me. But you might want to think about just why it is you’re so determined to defend Jukai alone.” With that, the samurai vanished into the trees. Stillness once again blanketed the clearing, leaving a stone cage and a monk, his shoulders sagged, his knees weak, and his head dizzied in thought. An hour later, as Iwamori finally shattered one of the stone spires, he was still thinking, thinking of things that hadn’t entered his mind in years. He woke up to shouting, screams, and the pattering of running feet. He blinked the sleep from his eyes just as his father burst into the room. “Iwamori! You must run!” He was just eight years old, but even he knew that the terror in his father’s normally stern eyes could only mean one thing. “I want to help!” The monk stepped over the broken stone. There was no sign of the samurai or his path. Even if he could pick it up, he had too much of a head start. Not that the man was worth following. He must be demented. What ridiculous notions! “Your brothers are already at the town gates,” came the oddly calm reply. “You are needed on the road. Help your mother and sister escape to Jukai.” “No! I want to stay here and fight with you!” Iwamori didn’t think about Shisato; the orochi had totally escaped his mind. Nor did he think of the rumbling of his stomach or the sweat pooling under his eye. He started walking. After that, he only remembered bits and pieces: his father’s arm wrapped tightly around his waist, his screaming as he was carried into the cold night air. He remembered being almost thrown into his mother’s arms, and a glint of light running down his father’s face, just before he turned and rushed back to the town gates, spear tightly in hand. The glare of the burning homes around them danced on his quickly vanishing shape. Then it was swallowed up in the flames. Iwamori looked about. He was already at the gates of the monastery. Slowly, one beefy hand reached out and pushed them open. The monks were still on their daily business, much as they had been when he left. None bothered to look up as he passed among them, entering Ansho’s chambers. The master was expecting him, of course. He remembered his lungs burning and aching, gulping barely enough air to keep his small legs pumping. Then came the screams behind him. “Don’t look back, Iwamori!” his mother shrieked. “Run!” Snaps, tears, howls, hot breath on the back of his neck, the heavy footfalls that rang in his ears and shook his body. He could still feel the cold moss under his feet as he sprang into the confines of Jukai, hear the yells of the monks who engaged his pursuer, feel the splinters of wood that stuck in his hands as he collapsed against the walls of the monastery. Alone. “Welcome home, Iwamori.” He bowed low. “Thank you.” “I take it you have considered my question?” “Yes.” Ansho raised an eyebrow. “And what is your answer?” He paused, the words still forming in his head. “I’ve done much for the monks here in the name of my family. I want… wanted… more than anything to join my parents and siblings, having honored their name dying for a cause I could not protect as a child.” “And now?” “And now… I don’t know what my purpose is anymore.” The elder nodded. Iwamori got up and turned to leave. “Wait.” The massive monk turned. “Do not think that I do not appreciate all you’ve done for us all these years. But the important battles are fought not just on vast fields. Nor are they fought merely to save mortal lives. Meditate on that today.” Iwamori nodded. He left for the meditation fields, in order to think about all that had happened today. Training could wait. [ Edité par legob Le 03 fév 2005 ]

[ Edité par Skelleton Le 05 fév 2005 ]

Kentaro et igure ne sont pas passé:

Toshusai ducked underneath the flail as it swung past, then callously thrust his katana into the nezumi’s furry chest. He spun, bringing up his smaller wakizashi blade and skillfully blocking the long curved knife wielded by another of the swarming vermin. He twisted, wrenching his katana free from the body of the first before it had even fallen, whirled in a complete circle and sliced easily through the nezumi’s rusted do-maru, cutting deeply into his flesh. The rat man hissed, its yellow eyes rolled into its head and it fell over sideways, landing in the muck with a muffled gurgle.

Toshusai completed his turn and paused to survey the damage. He stood alone in the center of a muddy clearing among the bodies of seven nezumi. The dead lay strewn like broken twigs around several large stone blocks that had fallen from the crumbling wall to his right. The structure, once a border outpost for Numai, the long forgotten human city in the heart of Takenuma Swamp, had mostly collapsed. To either side of the ruins, the dark stalks of the bamboo forest cast claw-like shadows over Toshusai and the clearing, despite the light from the full moon wheeling overhead.

These nezumi would never complete their dishonorable task. By slaying them, Toshusai had saved lives that night, but this noble deed did little to stir his dead heart. He was ochimusha, dishonored by a single choice on a night so long ago, banished by his daimyo to wander the swamp. Once, anger would have pounded through him at the mere thought of the man, but nothing could penetrate the numbness that had settled into his soul.

He looked at the nearest corpse and something strange caught his eye. A feathered arrow stuck out of the creature’s neck. At the site of it, the distant memory of an emotion awoke within him. He did not own a hankyu. Someone had aided him in his fight; someone with the bow of a samurai. He backed slowly against the wall, his weapons held at ready, and stared dispassionately into the dense underbrush beneath the bamboo canopy. There was no sign of the warrior who was surely watching him.

He sniffed the air, but the aroma of damp earth mixed with the rotten stink of swamp gas made it impossible to smell anything else. He closed his eyes and waited.

* * *

Toshusai’s right boot slipped against a root and he nearly went down. He deftly caught himself on the trunk of a sickly thin bamboo tree. He looked down the dark, narrow trail at the armored forms of his three samurai brothers, Yoshinobu, Sakoda, and Muro, and the black clad form of his sensei, Kentaro. He was relieved that none of them had noticed his near fall. The last thing he wanted was to appear clumsy in front of them. He paused for a moment to marvel at all that had happened in the week since he had spied Kentaro’s arrow. At the time, he had been a pale shadow of himself, staggering through the swamp as if in a dream.

Kentaro had changed all that.

As Toshusai watched, his master vanished into the swamp mist. The others soon followed. Finding himself suddenly alone jarred him from his reverie. He risked a nervous glance over his shoulder and then hurried after them.

The mist closed around him heavy and foreboding. It caressed his flesh with icy fingers, but it could not crush his newfound sense of purpose. The funeral shroud of numbness that had enveloped him for so long had been lifted. As he ran, he allowed himself to revisit the memories of his redemption….

* * *

Toshusai heard the stone shifting on the wall above him when it was almost too late. Given the condition of the structure, he had not considered that someone might be fleet of foot enough to perch there. He would pay for that mistake, perhaps with his pathetic life.

A black shadow spun overhead as someone somersaulted through the air in a high arc. Toshusai reflexively dropped into a fighting crouch.

The man landed a good dozen feet away in a similar stance. A hankyu was slung over his left shoulder marking him as the owner of the arrow. The silver blades of his katana and wakizashi gleamed even in the near darkness. His black and crimson do-maru appeared unmarked by either combat or by the ravages of the swamp. This was no mere swamp bushi.

The stranger stood there watching, but made no move to advance.

Toshusai interpreted his intense brown-eyed gaze as a challenge, but held steady.

“What do you want?” His voice fell flat against the cool swamp air. There was only one thing anyone here would want from him: his life. Toshusai had killed everyone who had tried taking it from him, fighting with a vengeance at first, and later with cold detachment.

“Do you recognize me?” The man straightened and grinned like a cat.

“Kentaro,” Toshusai breathed the name. “The slayer of the dishonored.” Kentaro’s skill as a warrior was legendary. He roamed the land slaying ochimusha and any others he felt unworthy of life. Neither man nor beast had ever defeated him in combat. It was whispered that he had once killed a powerful kami of fire single-handedly.

“Yes.” Kentaro crossed his blades and bowed as one facing an opponent.

A wisp of relief blossomed within Toshusai. He examined the feeling and then let it fade. If Kentaro had come to offer redemption, he was two years too late. He returned the bow. Death fighting against an honorable opponent, hard fought, would restore his honor and his family name. It was finally over. But what once would have offered him sweet relief now tasted like ashes in his mouth.

“If you can find the will, step forward and fight.” With a trace of a smile, Kentaro swiped each blade through the air.

Toshusai had nothing to lose. He advanced.

Kentaro made no move to attack, instead simply watching him.

Toshusai circled reluctantly to the left, closing the distance, and was mildly surprised when the samurai did not turn to keep him in view as he passed behind him. It was true that a samurai engaged in single combat would never attack from behind, but an ochimusha might. Toshusai completed his circle and paused to make eye contact with the man.

Kentaro nodded as if he had passed some test and then leapt forward, blades spinning. He moved so fast that even standing at ready, it was all Toshusai could do to parry. Steel clanged against steel as their blades slid against one another. In the space of a breath Kentaro somehow knocked Toshusai’s weapons aside and brought the tip of his katana to his throat.

Toshusai froze and the world went deathly silent. He looked into Kentaro’s dark eyes and then lowered himself slowly to his knees. A feeling of calm acceptance settled over him. It was finally over.

“I am prepared to die.” Here at the end, his honor and his name would be restored. A pang of sadness swirled in the depths of his numb soul.

“But I am not prepared to kill you.” Kentaro withdrew his blade and. “You are ochimusha.”

Toshusai’s sadness turned to dull anger. “Why would you deny me an honorable death?”

“There is no honor in a senseless death. I am not your enemy.” He turned and walked towards the gaping hole in the ancient wall.

* * *

Toshusai’s face reddened as he thought about the ease with which Kentaro had disarmed him. When it became apparent that Kentaro did not intend to kill him, the seeds of an anger that eventually brought Toshusai back to himself had been planted. At the time, he had not understood Kentaro’s motives or just how clever the smiling cat really was.

“Have some.” Sitting next to him on the mossy log, the stern-faced Yoshinobu handed him a piece of bread.

Toshusai looked at him.

Yoshinobu had been recruited by Kentaro just prior to him. He, like Sakoda and Muro, had been redeemed by the smiling cat just as Toshusai had. It had created a feeling of brotherhood among them.

Toshusai nodded his thanks and glanced at each of them in turn. Five men did not seem like enough to take on an oni, despite the rumors surrounding their master’s abilities. Everyone in Kamigawa had heard the stories of such beasts crushing entire armies of men, yet Kentaro sat at the head of the line, his legs crossed and his eyes closed in meditation. He did not appear concerned. Toshusai envied his internal balance.

A breeze stirred around him. Toshusai coughed as it scratched the inside of his lungs. As they had traveled, the air had grown fouler, as if it were influenced by the filth of the oni’s dark soul.

Yesssss.

Toshusai blinked at the serpentine voice. The others did not seem to notice.

They cannot hear me. They are too strong. But you….

Toshusai’s hand dropped to his katana and he scanned the forest around him.

No, I am not there, but you will see me soon enough. The others cannot save you, Toshusai.

He gasped, his fears taking his breath from him.

Yoshinobu glanced at him, eyes narrowing.

“I’m fine.” Toshusai waved dismissively. He could not tell the others. If they sensed weakness in him, they would not trust him in battle. He would bear his secret in silence. He forced himself to take in a long slow breath, steeling himself against the heavy foreboding that threatened to pull him down.

Not for long….

You do not frighten me, oni. Toshusai lied.

The oni did not answer.

Toshusai forced the creature from his thoughts and sought solace in the events of the past….

* * *

Kentaro waited for him atop a dirt mound in the middle of a small clearing. Three other samurai, each in battle-scarred do-maru and dented kabuto, stood off to the left at the forest’s edge. They stood with their hands folded in front of them and stared straight ahead.

Toshusai paused, resisting the urge to draw his weapons. He did not know what Kentaro’s goal was, but to shame him in battle and then mockingly deny him a chance at redemption was not the act of an honorable man. Despite his anxiety, Toshusai acknowledged a small but growing spark of curiosity.

“Come.” Kentaro beckoned him with one hand.

Toshusai strode into the clearing, watching the other samurai out of his peripheral vision, and stopped several paces from the man.

“These men around you are samurai,” Kentaro motioned with a wave of one arm. “But it was not always so. They were once as you, ochimusha. I offer you the same chance I offered them; the chance to reclaim your honor.”

Toshusai glanced at the others, but they remained stationary and unblinking. As he studied them closer, he noticed that their battle worn armor was covered in mud and filth from the swamp. They had clearly been there a long time; perhaps as long as he. Yet now they stood together and carried themselves like samurai.

Toshusai returned his attention to Kentaro.

“How?” He was certain that the man spoke the truth, but that there was more to it than that.

“Remove your armor and weapons and stand in the center of this mound.” Kentaro stepped back revealing a small square stone. He pointed to it.

“Why?” Toshusai had worn his do-maru unceasingly for months.

Kentaro said nothing.

A small part of Toshusai’s soul screamed at him to obey, to do anything to end his pointless wandering and soulless existence. The rest of him was indifferent. He shrugged, and removed his daisho and his do-maru and let them fall to the ground. He walked onto the stone.

A pulse of energy shot through him and he found his feet rooted to the rock. His arms froze against his torso and he realized he was completely paralyzed and vulnerable.

Kentaro drew his wakizashi.

“If you just planned on killing me, why didn’t you do it before?” Toshusai demanded. How dare he lead him around by a thin leash of hope only to slay him there.

“I did not bring you here to kill you.”

“Then why?” Toshusai stopped struggling.

“I brought you here to help you.” Kentaro paused. “You must answer one simple question.”

“What question?”

“Why have you no honor?”

Toshusai bristled, but was in no position to do anything about it. The question brought a stream of memories to the forefront of his mind. A ball of anger swelled within him.

“Because I chose my family before my daimyo.”

Kentaro’s eyes darkened. “Wrong.” He slashed Toshusai across the chest. His blade bit through clothing and flesh.

Blood flowed from the wound soaking into Toshusai’s forest green tunic. He winced.

“What in the sun’s name are you doing!” His anger roiled beneath the protective wall of his numbness.

“Why have you no honor?” Kentaro ignored his question.

“I disobeyed the decree of my daimyo!” A maelstrom of anger opened a crack in the wall that had protected him from feeling anything for so long.

“Wrong.” Kentaro slashed again, crisscrossing the first wound.

Toshusai gritted his teeth as pain and his desire to attack the samurai pushed through the fissure transforming numbness to raw emotion.

“Why have you no honor?”

“I violated the way of the samurai!” The fissure widened and rage tore through him.

“Wrong.” Kentaro jabbed the blade into his side.

Toshusai cried out and the wall shattered completely. The numbness fell away as his anger at Kentaro’s actions burned through him, singeing his veins. His opened his eyes wide as the years of hatred and self-loathing flooded into every part of him. His soul screamed for vengeance.

The first drops of his blood hit the ground causing the earth to tremble. He shook with it and would surely have fallen if not for the magic holding him in place. The mound collapsed inward on itself, pulling Toshusai downwards and surging up around his legs. His liquid anger turned to panic as he struggled to move lest he be swallowed whole.

His descent slowed as the damp soil reached his knees.

Kentaro nodded grimly.

“What have you done?!” Toshusai’s chest tightened making it difficult to draw breath. “You will pay for this act of betrayal!”

“Your blood has awakened the swamp’s hunger.” Kentaro’s eyes challenged him.

“You brought me here as a sacrifice!” Toshusai imagined throttling the smiling cat with his bare hands.

“Why have you no honor?”

“You ask me why I have no honor, yet you give me up to the black heart of this swamp!” He roared.

Kentaro‘s smile slipped into a frown. “I merely ask the question. It is you who give yourself up to the swamp.”

Sweat dripped from Toshusai’s forehead into his eyes as he fought against the invisible bonds that held him. It was no use. He could not break the spell. His salvation, if any existed, lay in the correct answer to the treacherous man’s question. And time was running out. The dirt now reached nearly halfway up his thigh. He shook with effort as he focused through the red flames in his mind and pondered his dishonor.

“Why have you no honor?”

“Because my daimyo unjustly took it from me, just as you seek to rob me of my redemption now!” His soul demanded he find a way to make Kentaro pay for this crime.

Kentaro’s face clouded over. “Wrong.” He slashed at him again, this time opening up a gaping wound in his left side.

Blood flowed from this deeper wound, dripping to the damp earth around him. The mound shook again. Toshusai could feel its hunger pulling against his feet as if a great earthen tongue had latched onto his ankles. He sank up to his shoulders. The pressure of the dirt around him made breathing nearly impossible.

“Your time grows short.” Kentaro knelt down.

“I told you the truth!” Toshusai’s voice was a pathetic croak now.

“But you have not told yourself the truth.”

Desperation filled Toshusai. He had to figure out the answer now! He closed his eyes and pushed the chaos from his mind.

The earth flowed over his shoulders. Each breath was a nearly impossible task now.

“Why have you no honor?” Sorrow was etched in Kentaro’s features.

His daimyo had stripped him of his honor, reducing him to ochimusha for saving his family. They had been innocent of any wrongdoing and yet his daimyo had demanded their lives. It was he who had no honor.

The soil touched the bottom of his chin.

“Why have you no honor?!”

Toshusai clenched his teeth in utter frustration. He had never committed a dishonorable act in his life. It was not right that the petty whims of a pathetic man could so destroy him. He opened his eyes and met Kentaro’s gaze one last time.

“I have always had my honor!” The truth shined through him, piercing all of the dark recesses where his aguish had hidden for so long and purging them from his soul. Tears flowed freely as he struggled to dig himself out so that he might live again.

Kentaro smiled and straightened.

The soil tickled Toshusai’s face. He inhaled and held his breath as the ground covered his nose. Whatever happened now, the prison of his creation had been destroyed. His honor had not restored—it had been remembered. Somehow, the smiling cat had known this truth all along.

Kentaro took his katana in both hands and thrust downward into the earth. The mound rumbled and the sounds of stone scraping against stone tore through the silence. Kentaro pushed the blade downward until only the hilt remained visible.

Toshusai’s vision dimmed as blackness closed in on him.

“Release him!” Kentaro twisted his blade.

The ground shuddered and then hurled Toshusai upwards wth great force. He soared over the mound and hit the ground with a jarring thud. He blinked and realized that Kentaro stood over him, his catlike smile betraying a surprising pride.

“You are redeemed… samurai.” He held a hand out.

Toshusai sucked in several lungs full of air and only as the darkness receded did he realize that his wounds had healed completely. He took Kentaro’s hand and let the man haul him to his feet. Kentaro’s smile broadened.

Toshusai’s face flushed with shame at his earlier behavior.

“I owe you my life.” He bowed deeply.

“Then I offer you a way to repay that debt.” Kentaro motioned to the other samurai. “We would have you join us, if you are willing.”

“What must I do, sensei?,” sensei Toshusai’s.

Kentaro’s smile faded, but he accepted Toshusai’s use of the honorific. “At the edge of the swamp lies an ancient shrine to Terashi, the great kami of the sun. Decades ago, a powerful oni killed the hoto who guarded it and cursed the land upon which it stood. His corruption and darkness were so great that it pulled the swamp with him and thus the Takenuma swallowed the lands around it. We are going to smite this oni and restore the shrine. We will push back this dark stain on the land.”

* * *

Toshusai had pledged his life and his service in that moment, and in their eight-day march he had not once regretted his decision. The smiling cat had given him purpose again, allowing him to live with honor instead of dying with it. These thoughts helped him to remain steadfast in his resolve and to keep his fear of the oni at bay.

It had been hours since the oni’s thoughts had disturbed him, but the palpable feeling of dread made it clear that the creature was getting closer. As they traveled, the trees became twisted and misshapen, their leaves dripping with ichor as if they bled. The mud grew deeper and soon the path led them into shallow water.

Kentaro held up his hand, bringing the group to a halt. He listened in silence for a moment.

Yoshinobu and Sakoda, took up positions to their leader’s right, Muro moved to the left where Toshusai quickly joined him.

“Be ready,” Kentaro said quietly.

I’m ready. The oni whispered from the dark corners of his mind.

Harsh laughter echoed through the swamp.

The other samurai drew weapons instantly and peered into the murky woods.

Toshusai unsheathed his own daisho, relieved that the others had heard it as well.

A special death waits for you, it mocked.

Our honor shall lead us to victory! Toshusai challenged, but the doubts the oni had placed in his mind hatched like maggots to gnaw within him.

“There.” Kentaro pushed back a branch and pointed.

Toshusai followed the samurai master’s gaze.

A small stone shrine rose up out of the swamp. Half-rotted bamboo had grown up from the inky water, its roots snaking into the windows and forcing their way though cracks in the walls. A latticework of tree limbs blocked the main entrance.

“The evil of this place is thick,” Yoshinobu muttered. He blinked behind his green kabuto.

Muro grunted in what Toshusai took to be agreement. Sakoda merely nodded.

Kentaro looked at them and grinned. He studied each of them, his gaze falling lastly on Toshusai. “Regardless of what we are about to face, I want each of you to know that I am proud to fight with you.”

A sense of profound purpose radiated through Toshusai, warding off the oppressive dread that permeated the place. He was ready.

“All right.” Kentaro’s grin faded. “We have waited long enough.” He nodded to them.

Sakoda and Muro drew their hankyu and disappeared into the underbrush. Toshusai readied his blades.

Kentaro drew his weapons and stepped through the thick underbrush into the brackish, knee-deep water. His boots created ripples that expanded until they lapped at the walls of the shrine.

Toshusai followed, remaining in position on his left flank while Yoshinobu held the right. The muck pulled at his boots, sucking him down and making it difficult to maneuver.

Kentaro paused near the doorway.

Toshusai took a deep breath and waited next to him.

A shrill scream, like cry of a dozen wailing children, echoed through the swamp. It raked through him, shaking his center and chilling him so deeply that he thought his own scream would soon join it. Somehow, he remained silent. He would not let the oni ruin him.

“You walk as dead men.” It cackled. Your death will be the most painful, Toshusai!

Toshusai froze as the creature’s promise pierced his mind. He shivered despite his desire to remain steady and felt his palms sweating. He tightened his grip on his weapons.

“We gladly offer our lives to our Kami!” Kentaro called boldly. “But it is you who will die!”

“I will paint the walls of my shrine with your blood!” Its hatred washed over them.

The bamboo lattice writhed like waking snakes and slowly parted to reveal a dark entryway. From within, a nightmare emerged from the darkness. Shadows clung to it as appeared in the doorway to tower over them from a frightening height. Its skinless face was raw bone and sharp, pointy teeth. Its broad shoulders were bound with roping muscles that brushed the walls to either side while its long horns scraped against the ceiling as it advanced. It swiveled its dreadful skull back and forth, the empty eye sockets finally settling on Toshusai. From within those empty holes, the flames of a frightening intelligence and intense hatred burned directly at him.

Aid me, Toshusai. It is your only chance to avoid the horrors I have planned for you.

Toshusai’s legs threatened to buckle. Why had it singled him out?

“Leave this place!” Kentaro dropped into a fighting stance.

Drawing strength from Kentaro’s resolve, Toshusai sank into a ready position. The rattling of armor told him that Yoshinobu had assumed a similar pose.

“I will gorge myself on your flesh!” The oni gnashed its gleaming fangs and clawed angrily at the air, eager to rip at them.

Yoshinobu screamed, broke formation and ran towards the woods.

“Yoshinobu!” Kentaro roared.

The fleeing samurai stopped abruptly. He made no move to return, but neither did he flee farther into the swamp.

He dies first, the oni’s thoughts reached Toshusai. The beast cried out, its voice shattering the quiet around them as it launched from the shrine. It soared over them in a smooth, strong arc.

No! Toshusai reacted quickly, thrusting his katana upwards, but the oni was too high.

Sakoda and Muro stepped from concealment. Bows twanged. Their arrows hummed as they flew towards their target. Several of the long wooden shafts bounced off the oni’s thick hide, one buried itself into the creature’s massive right leg. Thick, black ichor bubbled from the wound, but the oni’s speed was not hindered. It landed in front of Yoshinobu.

Yoshinobu raised his blades in a vain attempt to parry as the oni brought its arms together, one to either side of his chest. There was a sickening crack as his armor crumpled and his ribs snapped. The hapless samurai coughed, spattering blood on the oni’s broad muscled chest, and then crumpled into the water.

Toshusai’s anger seared his insides. He sloshed through the water toward the oni, intent on gutting the fiend.

“Your deaths are sweet nectar!” The oni whirled towards him. Help me kill the rest, Toshusai. It’s voice slithered through his mind.

“Don’t listen to it!” Kentaro scored a deep gash in the oni’s right arm releasing a spray of the thick blood.

“If you kill me, I die with my honor!” Toshusai’s faith was strengthened by the oni’s wound. He circled to the right and stabbed upwards, spearing the creature through the left bicep.

“Treacherous Toshusai!” It flexed its arm and tore Toshusai’s katana from his grasp. It kicked at him with one claw toed foot.

Toshusai launched himself backwards and the creature’s giant foot flew over him. He fell into the water, the oily liquid invading his mouth as he sank beneath the surface. He gagged, pushed himself back up and spit out the nasty fluid. He wiped the slime from his face and blinked to clear his vision. As his eyes refocused, he saw that Sakoda and Muro had dropped their hankyu and joined the fray. They circled the oni with Kentaro, dancing in and slashing at it with impressive speed.

Now was his chance. The oni was occupied. He searched the water and spied the still form of Yoshinobu floating just beneath the surface. He sprang up and ran to his comrade’s side, desperation pulling him along. He hauled Yoshinobu up through the water’s surface. His eyes had rolled up into his head. Blood smeared ribs stuck up from his chest, through his clothing and armor. There was little doubt that he was dead.

Toshusai pried his friend’s katana from his hands and then allowed him to gently sink to the bottom. Righteous hatred exploded within him, scorching his insides. He stood up just in time to see Muro fly through the air. The samurai smacked into a tree with an audible crack and slid into the underbrush and out of sight.

“No more fear, no more doubts.” Toshusai gripped Yoshinobu’s blade so tightly that his hands ached.

The oni dodged Kentaro’s katana and batted aside Sakoda’s wakizashi. Toshusai’s fierce anger propelled him forward.

The oni struck Sakoda in the shoulder. There was the crunching of breaking bones and the samurai dropped to his knees. The oni pulled back one mighty fist above him.

Kentaro pushed Sakoda out of the way and thrust his katana into the oni’s side.

Toshusai was relieved as Sakoda managed to back away from the raging battle.

The oni staggered. Toshusai, you must help me!

Does this help? Toshusai threw his wakizashi. It struck the oni’s chest, sinking in up to its hilt.

Kentaro twisted his blade.

The oni vomited black liquid, coating them with its vile blood, and then dropped to its knees.

“For the honored dead!” Toshusai lunged forward and struck the oni’s thick chest. His katana slipped between its ribs. A jolt of vile energy burst from the creature, surging up the blade and burning Toshusai’s hand. He released the weapon and staggered back.

The oni looked down at him through those dark eye sockets. It shuddered and its muscles suddenly writhed beneath its skin. Cracks opened in its body as if it were made of stone, spreading outward in a web of fissures that rapidly covered its body. Finally, it slid apart into pieces, each of them falling beneath the surface of the water and disappearing from sight until nothing remained.

Toshusai gasped and then steadied himself as the heavy weight of his hatred for the creature faded and his pain eased.

The ground shuddered and a beam of pure sunlight broke through the pall of darkness that hung over the shrine. It grew brighter with each passing second. The bamboo shrunk back and retreated towards the heart of the swamp taking the water, the mud, and the underbrush with it. The warmth washed over Toshusai filling him inner peace even as it healed his wounds.

Slowly, the brightness faded leaving them in the normal light of day. When it finished, the shrine bore little resemblance to the one they had first entered. It stood in the middle of a broad plaza of polished cobbled stones. Toshusai found himself standing between Kentaro and Sakoda before it.

Kentaro turned and grinned at each of them in turn, then slowly became solemn. Without words, the three samurai knew it was time to put Muro and Yoshinobu to rest, and to honor their sacrifice. Kentaro moved toward their fallen forms, and without hesitation, Toshusai followed.

Higure :

He looks down a low wall of gray stone, topped by red tiles washed to a dull brown by the moonlight. Here and there, kudzu creepers from the surrounding forest have caught on the wall, working their way slowly up its face, finding small natural pockmarks in the lava-rock and cracks where the wind and rain have done their work, then winding between and over the feeble defense of the tiles, falling down into the well-kept orchard beyond. He places a tabi boot of soft black felt, cleft between the first and second toes, on a vine finding purchase. When he vaults over, he is as quiet as an owl leaving its tree-bower to hunt. A cricket chirps and from a dozen other places down the wall his deshi rise and follow, spilling over the wall to pool under the boughs of the plum trees. They are his disciples, he has trained every one of them from a young age and now they move as extensions of his own will. They are moon-shadows, the thin blue of watered milk and no more solid; their movement through the air is the swaying of rushes; their soft footfalls the scampering of mice in the fields.

The villa proper is clearly visible through gnarled, leafless trees. Here is the summer residence of an affluent samurai merchant who once profited from his trading house's location on the road that stretched between the high walls of Eiganjo Castle and the libraries of Minamo. Since the war began, he had been forced to abandon his wares and live here full time, with a small retinue of guards and his sole heir, a young noble by the name of Kio. All this Higure has read in a scroll that he destroyed in last night's campfire. He burned the words, turning their meaning to ash, and tonight, they will kill every man here and finish what he started. In three days time, a harried official will arrive escorted by mothriders from Eiganjo, begging for the noble to release his stores of rice to feed the war effort, and he will find an intricately wrought puzzle of death. With shaking hands on abacus he will subtract the calm expressions of the corpses from the obvious traces of violence and the residue of his calculations will reveal nothing but blue-gray shadows and the glint of steel in the moonlight. Higure checks the ink-dyed cloth covering his short blade, and slips forward, toward the inner wall. A gentle night wind blows up from the road that approaches the villa's front gate, stirring the torch fires on the inner wall and shifting the dim light that trickles through the boughs of the empty orchard.

* * *

The wind was always tricky in the valley where he was born, under the shadow of the lofty Sokenzan mountains. Even on a warm summer day, the clouds could shift high in the peaks, sending a stiff breeze down the Johyo glacier to snap the hanging festival flags to attention and set the gilt-green leaves of the gingko trees to shivering in an early anticipation of autumn. Down between the rice-cake stalls and the soot-darkened eves of the merchant quarter, the boy would crouch and wait for the wind to pass, one hand kept on the yellow shawl that covered the basket of apples he carried for his mother. In the market, the gourd hawker would stop his song and scowl at the whirling street-dust. Standing in a doorway nearby, the tea-seller would pause before pouring another bowl and smile. Cold weather is good for business, and war had made his money-pouch lean of late. Two months later, on a windy autumn evening, the tea-seller would be killed by a bolt of green lighting falling from a clear sky.

It was windy the night that the kami came to the boy's village and slaughtered his family and everyone else he had ever known. From under the loose floorboards, he could hear the wind buffeting the broken shoji screens that ran between the veranda and the gathering room. In there the thing that ate the light had knocked down the flimsy screens and devoured his sister while his father cursed it and waved a smoldering poker from the firepit where they had just cooked dinner an hour before. The boy saw it-- a roiling mass of black tentacles with one protruding arm, furred, like that of a monkey, and incongruously small. It wielded a long, ebon thorn that it waved, knocking aside the poker, then jabbed deep into his father's shoulder. The thorn must have been very hot, for there was a sizzling sound when it struck and his father's blood steamed out of the wound in a cloud of saffron smoke. The boy had tried to reach for the dropped poker, where it lay singeing the tatami mats--but his father had shouted for him to run, to hide, and that is what he did.

* * *

The inner wall is smooth, kept free of vines over the summer by an overzealous gardener. It stands higher than Higure can easily reach. He places his straight ninja-to sword against the base of the wall, blade down, and steps on it like a ladder, catching the top of the wall with one gloved hand. He snares the sword between his feet and relays it to the other hand before pulling himself up and over the wall to crouch on the raised walkway that runs along the other side.

Ten paces down the walk, a sentry in an angled helmet of green bamboo slumps at an odd angle against the outer wall, the tall pennant that he had held now holds him. His eyes are open, looking uselessly out into the night. Blood drips slowly from the long, black-lacquered shaft of an arrow that has gone through his neck, right at the place where the thin tendons of speech lie, his dying breath robbed of sound. Higure's thumb traces the worn leather of the sword handle, polished to a dark blue by use. It is strange not to have to use it now, to cut his way into this ill-guarded place. He knows he is only a sight-seer here, a grim observer of his deshi's death-work. This is way it should be. They will handle these distractions. His business is further inside, in the main hall, on the second floor, in the lotus chamber.

* * *

The boy was good at hiding. Always, he was the last to be found when the children played the oni in the festival of masks. On days with no errands, he would walk up to the cold river that ran down from the mountains, and creep up unseen behind the men where they fished and steal their bait, leaving a wet leaf in place of the fat worms, so that they would think the kappa spirits that live in the water had enchanted their eyes and robbed them. It was a game he never tired of, yet now he almost felt that he should not be crouched here under his house with the kami taking a final grim offering from his family above. He shouldn't hide, not from the kami who make the rains fall, and the rice grow in the fields.

He remembered how, when he was very young, the people from his village would walk down the path from the fields, into the cedar forest where a little shrine sat hunched beneath the oldest and most sacred of the trees. There, they would leave a rice-cake for the kitsune who tended the shrine and a small copper coin with a hole cut in the middle for the kami. It was important that the coin be round, so that the kami might receive the offering and in return, give wealth in the form of a good harvest. Always in a circle, coming and going. He thought back along the treacherous paths of memory then, wondering if there was a coin he had not given, or a time when he neglected to set out enough rice-cakes. Somehow he knew it was his fault that the kami had come. He should go out and meet them. He should offer himself to the terrible gods and they will spare the rest. But he knew it was already too late for that and so, miserable, he crouched and waited.

When the first light of dawn crept through the foundation stones, letting him know that the night of terror was over, he slipped out from his hiding place under the house and did not stop running until he was on the outskirts of town. As he ran, he saw bodies. There were more people lying dead than he had ever known by name. Worse, he found, than the dead were the poor wretches the kami left alive. He saw them huddled, whimpering, their clothes shredded, their eyes blank, nightmares clawed into their waking minds. Of the kami he saw nothing, save for one time when he came across something like a dog, feeding on corpses that had gathered in small ditch on the edge of town where water ran only during the wet season. Instead of hair, the dog-thing bristled with human skulls. He gasped, and one of the skulls turned, and fixed him with a sightless glare. Then the skull's mouth opened and it spoke in his mother's voice, saying "come, my little sparrow"--for she had always called him this--"I have saved you breakfast. Come, eat." The boy knew then it was time for him to leave. It was many years later, after he had become a man, and well after he had joined the students at the Temple of the Black Scroll, that he first slept through a night without waking in a cold sweat, his heart racing, the dry taste of death in his mouth.

* * *

Higure moves under the twisted branches of the shaped pines in the inner courtyard. For a moment he pauses, considering the tight-wound copper wires and cleverly placed bars of metal that bind the aged tree limbs, torturing them into shapes that at once seemed utterly natural and yet more perfect than anything found in nature. The ninja, he thinks, is not all that different from the bonsai artist. Both wield sharp blades, shaping life as they see fit. The tree limbs are the bonsai artist's disciples. To some he gives support and training, that they might achieve their purest possible form. Others he prunes, ending life where it does not conform to the client's wishes. But to work one tree over so many years--Higure lacks the patience for this, and already he has lingered here too long. A night thrush calls from between the buildings of the villa proper up ahead and he moves swiftly, crossing an ornamental pond on a bridge of stones. The bridge, too, shows the exquisite skill of the gardener. Each of its stones has a different texture beneath his feet, yet they are cut so they link intimately to one another like the verses in a court poem: each unique with its own character, yet its shape subtly suggesting and leading to the next verse.

Over another bridge, he runs faster now, ducking through an open gateway with an intricately carved wooden archpiece. He knows the design, sensing its meaning without actually seeing it. It is a landscape: long grain rice growing under a chrysanthemum sun, the symbol of the merchant house of Nitta--longtime allies of the Konda clan, and now their main supporter in the war against the kami. Odd that one of them should be marked for death--but his training kills the question in his mind before it forms. Words on a scroll float in his memory. There is no motive, no client, no self. There is only what must be done.

* * *

"This," Master Kagero said, stroking a long grey whisker as he stepped away to give his students a view of a single black kanji character drawn on the scroll, "is nin. It is shinobi, the one who walks at night. It is ninja, the one who endures." He pointed to the top of the kanji. "See here the blade that strikes downward...to here." His hand traced down the stylized drawing of a blade complete with fleck of blood that formed the top half of the kanji to the strangely curved line and three dots at the bottom that symbolized a heart.

The boy sat with three others in the tea-hall they used as a lecture room for calligraphy lessons. The other boys were older than him, and, for the most part, they preferred the other sort of lesson--where they would run through the high reeds of the plains like gazelles, dance over lily pads like the water-strider, and throw shuriken at dragonflies to practice their aim. Master Kagero stood, brush dripping with black sumi ink in his gnarled hand, and stared at them. Outside, a lazy cicada droned loudly in the summer haze. Sh-sh-sh-shhhh... The master paused, then smiled. "Next lesson!"

"What does it mean, master?" The words were out before the boy could stop himself. "Why does the blade cut the heart? Who must endure, and what? Is it our enemies who must endure the pain of death by sword, or is it us who must endure the harshness of our training..." He faltered. Master Kagero threw his brush toward the side of the room where it stuck, buried halfway into the wattled straw and clay of the wall, and walked out. The three others looked at the boy, stunned that he had actually asked a question, but before any could speak, the master returned, brandishing a long stick. It was the pole the younger disciples used to knock away the dung piles left in the road outside the temple by the swale-oxen that came bringing food from the village. He jammed the grimy end of the stick into the boy's ribs. The boy grunted, stifling a cry of pain. "What is this?" cried Master Kagero.

"A dung-stick, master?" the boy gasped.

"Tell me then, what does this dung-stick mean?"

All was still. The cicada called again from its leafy perch. SH-sh-sh-shhh... The sound trailed off and the master stood glaring, as though he were waiting for the little insect to finish. Then he grunted, and tossed the dung-stick out the window. "Dismissed." He walked toward the open doorway, then stopped and turned to look back at where his students sat quivering. "The meaning," said their master, a deep sadness in his voice, "is yours alone to find."

It was three years later that the boy, now a young man, learned the first part of what Master Kagero hinted at that summer day. He was walking down a mossy path in the forested hill-lands north of the road to Eiganjo in the guise of a traveling paper-seller. He wore a small green cloth upon his head, and carried a heavy satchel of oiled rice paper, cutting tools, and mesh for making more paper should he actually sell his stock. The purpose of his guise was twofold. One, he was to gather information on how the merchant houses were supporting or failing to support Konda's war against the kami, and perhaps more importantly, he was to practice being a paper-seller. "A fool can walk down the road wearing the raiment of an emperor, yet the blind mendicant will still know him for the fool," Master Kagero had said. "When you can stand before me, ninja-to sword in hand, clothed in your gi, and still walk as though you carry these rolls of paper on your back, then you may return." And so he was to sell paper, and then, perhaps, he would be a blacksmith, or a samurai, or a weaving woman, as met his master's fancy.

He continued down the path, his feet sinking in mud and leaves sodden with water from a nearby stream that must have overflowed in the recent rains. He could hear the cheery burble of the stream waft up through the trees and it took his mind off the heavy and ill-weighted pack that dug into his back. The path passed between two tall, moss-grown boulders and down to a small wooden bridge that crossed the stream. He stepped out onto its wet planks and was halfway across it when he noticed her.

A woman bathed below the bridge, where the stream widened into a still pool before exiting to rush down a rocky gorge beyond. She had not seen him. Half fearing she was some kind of river kami come to lure him to his death, the young man quickly hopped back to the bank and behind the shadow of one of the large boulders.

From his new vantage point he could see her profile, and his heart leapt in his chest. He had never seen someone as beautiful. Her limbs were pale and slender. She had the high, painted eyebrows of the nobility, and lips stained with indigo dye. Her eyes were clearer than the blue glacier ice of the Sokenzan mountains, her cheeks the color of plum blossoms, blushing in the first sun of spring. If indeed she was no kami then, he thought, she must be a well-born daughter of some merchant who lived in a longhouse along the main road in town, and came up here to bathe. Then she swam, her every motion a dance of beauty in the young man's eyes, and he watched her for what seemed like an eternity before he reluctantly came to his senses. Hefting his pack once more, he quietly made his way out of the river vale. It was in the following weeks, when his every waking and sleeping moment was consumed with thoughts of her, that he realized the meaning of the character "nin"--to endure. His was the heart that must endure separation from his own kind. He would never take a wife or have a family. Nor would he ever know a community other than the Temple. More than this, he could never have her--and the knowledge cut his heart like a blade.

* * *

The blade of a night-guard's spear flashes to his left as Higure vaults over the railing of the main hall's veranda. The hall retinue is alert now--the missing sentries have been noticed. Body flat against the wall, he fishes in his pocket for a small sphere. He pulls it out, twists the small cap on one end. Flint and saltpeter grind and the sphere coughs black smoke. He tosses it towards where the guard has emerged into the courtyard. There is a soundless flash, and smoke fills the air, a patch of true night where the moonlight cannot penetrate. More blades shine as his deshi seem to slip out of the air itself and bear down on the blinded sentry. Three pairs of hands catch the body before the armor clangs on the fine gravel path. All happens before the sentry can even cry out. Higure turns and pushes a veranda screen to the side, and disappears into the hall.

* * *

The young man was now grown. He had taken thirty-two other lives. Some were human like himself, some foxes, some the graceful soratami. All fall to his blade, and with each successful mission he received another deshi to follow him and learn. He had his own enclave, a satellite to the Temple but growing stronger with every new pupil who joined him. Already he taught more students than Master Kagero had. As a matter of practicality, he dealt directly with his own clients, so it was with some surprise that he received the summons, inked in the familiar hand of his master. Setting his affairs in order and canceling the remainder of the day's lessons, he set out for the temple at once.

The day was waning when he finally arrived at the temple gardens. The pond where he first learned to walk on the lily pads so many years ago was a steel mirror, reflecting the ruddy light of the setting sun. The grounds seemed deserted, a twice-abandoned temple to faithless gods. From up ahead a gong sounded softly in the falling dusk, the only sound in the still twilight. The man approached, stepping through the doorless gate, and around the trees that smelled of fragrant cedar and the sweet pawlonia wood that is slow to rot and favored when building temples, and the sacred catalpa wood, once used to draw the kami down from the heavens, now as a ward to keep their mischief at bay. The man stopped, smelling the air. Then he began what seemed to be a sort of strange, solitary dance, swaying to blend his movements into the sounds of the dusk, and the wind blowing through leaves. The very rhythm of his heart slowed to echo the gentle drumming of the gong. He became one not just with the gong-hammer, but with the hand that held it, the man inside the Temple hall. After moments of sidestepping and prancing forward he reached the door to the hall, keeping every motion in careful harmony with the world around him. He rushed forward with a surge of the wind, then when he felt the wind begin to stop he too held...and a lingering beam of sunlight broke through the trees on the hillside to the west, stirring up a twilight breeze.

Hastily, he flung open the door. The golden gong hung in the middle of the hall, gently swaying on its stand, the beat of the soft hammer still shimmering in the air. But as for the one who wielded the hammer, nothing could be seen. The man's face twisted in chagrin at the wind's treachery and his failure.

"It is an easy thing to be invisible, like the kami " said a familiar voice. "They walk the veil between worlds. Step to the other side, the kakuriyo and to a mortal, you are gone. Step to our side, the utsushiyo and you are one of us." Laughing, Master Kagero dropped down from the hall rafters with the eerie grace of a spirit kumo. "Did you know, Higure, that some among the kitsune have trained themselves to smell the kami? Yes, even the gods have weaknesses. Let the kami have their veils of invisibility, it is a far harder thing to remain in this world yet be unseen."

It was a lesson the man had heard many times, yet one thing his master said gave him pause. "Higure?"

"Yes, Higure...twilight...that is your name now, for you come to me in the evening when the sun's light fades and fails us."

"But only a master ninja may..." Suddenly, the answer to his question was plain to him before he could speak the words.

"You are a master now." Master Kagero straightened, taking a formal stance. "Higure, I name you, but also I name you 'the Still Wind' because you were the still wind at my door, even while the twilight breeze blew around you. It is to your good fortune that I am no enemy to you. Never forget that you are mortal, Higure."

Master Kagero's shoulders dropped, and for a moment it seemed as though the wearying burden of age he had stealthily evaded all his life had finally caught up to him. "We have a new client," he said, shuffling back to his desk against the wall, drawing out a scroll trimmed with exquisite gilt brocade. From over his master's bent back, Higure could see the silvery flow of moonfolk calligraphy. He wondered who one of the soratami would want dead, and why, but he was much older now than the boy who had so foolishly asked his master a question in the learning hut with the walls of wattle and clay. Master Kagero swiftly rolled up the scroll and turned to face him. "You will be going back to the hill-lands."

* * *

Higure moves silently up the tightly wound mahogany stair, coming to the hallway that runs alongside the lotus chamber of the villa, where the noble folk would reside when not greeting visitors in the reception hall below. A screen slides open. He presses against the wall and listens to a voice from down the hall.

"No, Kio, I told you it is safe here, and here you shall remain." A pause, then the voice continues, softer. "I am your father and you will obey me." He moves three screens down to see the man where he stands talking to someone in the inner chamber. "Do not worry," the man says, hands fumbling to fasten the leather strap of his heavy iron helm, "they're probably just gambling in the orchard again. I will see what has happened and be right back."

The painted screen slides shut and the man walks down the hall, passing not more than a hand's-width away from where Higure stands. The samurai merchant Nitta is heavy-set and walks down the mahogany stairs with a slight sway, as though he was favoring his right leg--an old injury, perhaps. Out from his hiding place, Higure pads to the screen, throwing it open.

He enters the room walking heavily, the limp in his right leg barely noticeable but there all the same. A charcoal brazier in the corner suffuses the room in smoky light, but dark enough for Higure's deception to work, and the nobleman's son looks up from where he sits, bedecked in resplendent purple robes. No, not his son--his daughter. The pale and slender limbs. the high, painted eyebrows, lips stained with indigo dye, eyes clearer than glacier ice and cheeks the color of plum blossoms--all are exactly as he remembers the woman who bathed in the river by the bridge those many years ago. It is her.

Higure's mind boils. He hears voices--a boy, a young man, a man inside him clamoring to be heard. Then, another voice, the voice of wisdom giving a lesson on a hot summer day. "The meaning is yours to find." Suddenly he knows what it means. The sword that Master Kagero drew on that scroll a lifetime ago was the ninja-to he now carries, and the heart was his own.

The lady Kio rises, protesting her confinement, only realizing something is amiss when she sees the charcoal-light shine on naked steel. "You are not my father," she whispers, her voice as cold as the mountain stream in which she once bathed. "My father was a warrior who fought on the field of battle--a true man. You are no man."

"No," Higure replies, "I am ninja."

A scream echoes in the wood-paneled halls. In the light of charcoal embers spilled from a kicked-over brazier, a crimson stain spreads over indigo and onto the tatami mat floor of the lotus chamber. Outside the night is still, the moon hangs heavily in the sky. The only sound is the chirping of crickets. Then they, too, fall silent.

Amuse toi à traduire si tu veux, en attendant, post-it Résumé de la traduction : “Such a pretty little thing,” Muzan croaked. His thick thumb and forefinger held Ink-Eyes' chin. The ogre's four-fingered hand could crush her delicate skull with ease, a thought that seemed to pass through his eyes, briefly, before he brought her face closer. Fetid breath stirred Ink Eyes' fur, breath that smelled of meat, blood, and wine. “So pretty, and so cruel.” Ink-Eyes stared back, unblinking. “Ah, how you taunt me, little sweetling,” Muzan continued. “I found you alone in the swamp, cast out by your own rat people. You came to me starving and cold, now you are well-fed on carrion, well-warmed by chores, no longer alone. You would have died without me, little rat.” The ogre laughed maliciously. “Yet do you love me for it?” The grip on Ink-Eyes' chin became painful. Bone creaked under the pressure. The ogre's leathery face filled her vision, its skin a grayish purple. “I have made you everything that you are, and I get no expression of thanks. You are nothing but a wretch, my nezumi sweetling, a thankless, loveless, cruel wretch.” With a flick of his arm, Ink-Eyes sailed through darkness. Her back struck stone, then her head, and she fell in a heap on the cold floor. She rose, unsteadily, to her knees. “I am what you made me, Master.” “Bah!” Muzan yelled. With surprising speed he hurled a heavy chair at her. The chair would have crushed her lithe form had she not moved, but Ink-Eyes rolled sideways. Wood cracked against stone, splitting the chair in two. Before she could stand, the ogre was towering over Ink-Eyes with fists clenched. Muzan was massive, all muscle and bony protrusions, and his roar was deafening. “Look! You have ruined my favorite chair!” Muzan closed his fingers over her throat. He raised her, dangling, above the floor. Once again his rotting breath billowed around her face. “You will fix my chair!” he demanded. “Of course,” Ink-Eyes wheezed. She could no longer breathe so her voice was a whisper. “I will fix it, as I always do, Master.” Darkness began closing at the edges of Ink-Eyes's vision. “That's a good sweetling,” Muzan said. He dropped her then. “So sweet, so tender.” Ink-Eyes grasped her own throat, coughing and gasping for air. Muzan had turned his back to her and shambled unsteadily into the shadows. Darkness consumed him. Ink-Eyes could hear him fumbling with another bladder of wine, filling another broken mug. His voice echoed to her eerily off of the bare stone. “The Master requires more blood. He tells of a nezumi gang camped nearby.” Ink-Eyes sat erect. Her black eyes glittered in the meager light of the room. “Nezumi gang?” she asked. “Are you sure that is what he said?” “Of course, of course. The Master was quite clear. You want to know if it is your precious Okiba gang, eh? Who can know? All rats are the same: pathetic and sniveling. Ask me to which family the frogs outside belong, and my answer is the same. Who can know, who can know?” Ink-Eyes heard him take a long draught, then exhale wetly. His voice carried across the room from the shadows. “All you need know is who leads the rats, sweetling. Find the fattest rat, slit his little rat throat, and bring me his little rat blood.” Ink-Eyes bowed. “As you wish, Master.” “As my master wishes,” Muzan corrected, then belched. “But fix the chair before you go, my pretty little thing.” * * * A poet had once called the Takenuma Swamp the Stealer of Dawn. Sunlight had not touched its murky floor since the kami wrought their rage upon the world nearly twenty years ago. Now, no matter what time of day, the sprawling bamboo swamp glowed faintly gray in perpetual twilight. Ink-Eyes pushed through thin, rotting bamboo weighed down by moss. A mist curled around her legs as she splashed through shallow water. She knew these parts of the Takenuma well and was able to avoid its most deadly traps. She stepped around sinkholes, beds of flesh-eating beetles, and haunted graves as easily as if she were gliding through a field of lilies. It was still early in the night, her prey not yet asleep. The Great Master would receive His blood tonight, but not for several hours. Ink-Eyes hacked at a section of bamboo with her long-bladed tanto, approaching the clearing she sought. Standing in the open muck and mist, Ink-Eyes unstrapped the naginata from her back. She planted the butt of the polearm into the soil, then sunk the blade of her tanto next to it. Ink-Eyes inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and stretched. Slowly, she began to hear the full melody of the Takenuma. Frogs croaked. Insects chittered. Every so often a nightbird called, suddenly and hauntingly. These were the first sounds into Ink-Eyes' ears, the sounds of nature, yet gradually they faded into the background as stranger noises replaced them. Ink-Eyes heard the moaning of voices—kami of dead humans lost and wandering amidst the bamboo--rise to drown out the sounds of the swamp. She was sure these voices were nothing her ears should be able to detect, yet they rose nonetheless whenever she chose to focus on them. Few of the words were intelligible, but Ink-Eyes sensed the emotions driving those ghostly moans--vengeance, or sorrow, or sometimes nothing more than lost, pitiful confusion. As her focus deepened, even the specters’ cries slowly faded. A third melody rose then, wholly unnatural, apart from the world rather than part of it. Shrieks of tortured animals, incomprehensible gibbering of a thousand voices speaking at once, and bubbling gurgles of someone drowning in quicksand all surrounded Ink-Eyes. These were the eerie mutterings of kami who made the Takenuma their home, Ink-Eyes sensed; they were the reason for her meditation. The dark noises of the kami swirled around Ink-Eyes in currents and eddies. At first they were nothing more than a murmur. Murmur became tumult, tugging urgently at her mind. Tumult grew to cacophony, screaming in her ears, threatening to rip her sanity to shreds. Ink-Eyes braced herself against the onslaught of unnatural sound, using her soul to search for what she sought there. After several frantic moments, she had found it--a silent, peaceful eye to the storm of the kami’s rage. The cacophony remained, swirling and pounding at the muted sphere she wrapped around herself, yet Ink-Eyes focused only on the silence. In that silence lay the knowledge she sought. As she touched the cocoon of silence with her mind, she surrendered to unseen forces, and Ink-Eyes' body began to move. Her left foot slid sideways in the soft mud, disturbing nightcrawlers beneath. Her other foot slid forward. Body weight shifted. Soon arms moved, along with head and tail. Alone at night in the Takenuma, Ink-Eyes danced as if on invisible puppet strings within her silent bubble of meditation. She danced for hours in that silence, guided from beyond. Ink-Eyes believed herself the most skilled ninja of the nezumi, yet she had never been trained by a mortal sensei. When she could manage it, she returned to this clearing, the place where she found she could most surrender herself to her training. Years ago, the sounds of ghosts and kami that only Ink-Eyes could hear had offered little to the mind of a tortured girl. Somehow, that she could hear them at all was a comfort, albeit a small one. It was not long, though, before Ink-Eyes found herself searching for something more than comfort amidst the unnatural babbling, some pattern in the song of the kami. When she first found the pocket of silence, the place where her mind was not flayed by voices beyond the veil, Ink-Eyes began to change. She became noticeably faster and stronger after these meditations, more proficient with her weapons. Already her abilities outstripped what she could have learned at her age from a hundred teachers. These skills had ensured not only her sanity, but her survival. Ink-Eyes had been sent on countless bloodletting missions by Muzan and his dark master, and she had never failed them. Muzan had never questioned how his sweetling managed her success. That Ink-Eyes always succeeded was enough. Ink-Eyes slowed her movements, then stopped. The sounds of the kami faded as if dropped into a deep well. For a few moments, the phantom voices replaced them, yet those too quickly ebbed. Soon she was surrounded only by the frogs, insects, nightbirds, and the heavy sound of her own breathing. As was always true after her subconscious lessons, she found the naginata in one hand, the tanto in the other. At the edges of the clearing in a wide circle, rotten bamboo had been cleaved almost to the ground. Ink-Eyes straightened. Despite the weird luminescence of the swamp, the moon was plainly visible overhead, a pale white disc. It was midnight, or near enough, and time for her to move. * * * Rising before her in the gloom stood what had once been a grand temple. Its steepled roof was still intact, yet missing nearly as many tiles as remained. Its walls were the same, worn bare in places yet hinting at the temple's former grandeur. Ink-Eyes did not stop to wonder who had worshipped here hundreds of years before the Takenuma swallowed it. Instead she scouted the terrain to plan her approach, choosing her entrance into the structure. Pausing, Ink-Eyes secured the black mask that was the mark of her trade over her nose and mouth. She wore little besides the mask, for Ink-Eyes had as much use for armor as she did modesty. She padded silently through the mist, circling to the side of the desecrated temple. Above her, a second-story window lay open and black like an empty eye socket. With one flex of her legs, she vaulted upward to scrabble through the vacant window. No guard appeared. No alarm sounded. The hallway before her was almost utterly black. Ink-Eyes moved slowly, weapons in hand, with her back against the stone wall of the temple. She stopped, listened. A soft snore echoed from a nearby room. Ink-Eyes moved in the darkness towards the noise, eager to fulfill her mission. With a whispered word, an orb of red light appeared before Ink-Eyes. It throbbed and pulsed like a dying heart, illuminating the hallway. As Ink-Eyes moved the orb moved with her, always in front to light her way. Her mastery of ninjitsu had not been the only result of her Takenuma meditations. Almost casually, Ink-Eyes stepped into the room after the orb. In the crimson glow lay a figure on a straw mat, wrapped tightly in a tattered blanket. The room was bare otherwise, except for obscure symbols that littered the walls to form a crude mosaic. These were not writings of the temple's original inhabitants. Indeed, the marks looked primitive against the master stonework of the temple walls. Ink-Eyes scraped the edge of her tanto lightly across several of the symbols, sending dried blood flaking to the floor. Whatever blood-magic power the marks once held had long since dissipated. Ink-Eyes spun her naginata lightly, gripping it when the blade pointed downward. She stepped forward and plunged the weapon into the sleeping figure's stomach. With a lurch, Muzan sat upright, opening his mouth to scream. Ink-Eyes passed her knife sideways to slit the ogre's throat. In the pulsing light, Muzan's eyes seemed to focus on Ink-Eyes only briefly before he died. Blood from the wounds poured over the straw mat. Ink-Eyes used one foot to push Muzan on his side, emptying the corpse of its remaining blood. When the stuff began pooling on the floor, she tossed her weapons aside and knelt beside her former master. Ink-Eyes placed her hands palm-down into the warm blood. On the floor, she drew two quick arcs, then dipped her hands again to make a series of sharp lines intersecting the arcs. Blood continued to flow from Muzan's corpse, and Ink-Eyes scrawled her pattern in a wide circle around the ogre. After several minutes, the red orb of light moved to hover over Muzan's body. The orb began to grow. With each pulse, the light expanded. Soon it was as large as a skull, then twice, then the size of Muzan's torso. The light stretched, upward and outward, until it resembled a pyre consuming the corpse of Muzan. Ink-Eyes bowed, arms outstretched before her, and waited. She did not wait long. “Good,” a voice like ten-thousand cicadas said. Ink-Eyes looked up. The light now hung above Muzan's corpse like a shimmering curtain of blood. Beyond the curtain, Ink-Eyes could see an enormous figure. The figure seemed to be some distance away, allowing her to view it in its entirety. It looked roughly like a man in head and torso, though it bore two downturned horns as wide as its shoulders. Its arms and legs were like that of a distorted skeleton, all knobby joints and lacking any discernable muscle. Each arm ended in a mass of tentacles that writhed like snakes. What Ink-Eyes noticed most, however, were the oni's eyes. Three perfect globes of red peered at her intently. “I am most pleased with your treachery,” the demon intoned. “Rise, my servant.” Ink-Eyes rose. “You have brought me more blood, yet I require still more, and will require more after that. Muzan was weak. He tried to hide you from my gaze. However, I have seen the true servant who has fed me all these years. You will receive bounties for your faithful deeds, my servant, and power beyond what you have already discovered alone in the Takenuma Swamp.” “You know? How--?” Ink-Eyes began. “Be silent. I know of your meditations, yes, and I know what they have brought you. Do my bidding and what you have already learned will be as nothing. Let my gifts be a reminder to you of the need to serve me well, and let Muzan's corpse be a reminder of the price of failure.” Ink-Eyes' body went rigid as a bolt of red light struck her. For a moment, she screamed with pain unlike anything she had ever experienced. Her blood seemed to boil beneath her skin, her eyes prepared to burst from her skull. Every muscle felt as if it were being pulled from her bones. Yet as quickly as the pain had come it disappeared, leaving only a memory of torment. Ink-Eyes gasped, laying sprawled on the floor. “Rise. Rise, Ink-Eyes, Servant of Kuro. Rise, Ink-Eyes the Desecrator.” Ink-Eyes rose. Power leaked from her eyes in the form of red mist. Her body felt stronger, faster than it had ever been. Always after her meditations she had felt refreshed, yet nothing could compare to what she now experienced. Her former abilities seemed almost laughable by comparison. Every limb tingled with the hunger to kill. Ink-Eyes paused, cocked her head sideways. A different awareness struck her suddenly. She looked below the shimmering portal and reached out with her power. Muzan's finger twitched. The ogre's corpse stirred amidst straw, bathed in red light. Muzan climbed to his feet, naked except for the gory gash in his stomach. His head lolled to one side, the neck nearly severed by Ink-Eyes' blade. “What--?” the ogre said thickly. His hollow stare regarded the nezumi before him. He bowed before Ink-Eyes. “What is your will, Master?” The oni laughed, then, from behind its curtain, a sound that drowned out everything. Ink-Eyes looked at her new servant standing before her new master. The ogre looked back patiently, waiting. Kuro's laughter filled her ears. A black mask still covered her mouth, yet for the first time she could ever remember, Ink-Eyes smiled. “Come,” she motioned to Muzan’s corpse. “We have much to do, sweetling.” _________________

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[ Edité par Skelleton Le 05 fév 2005 ]