Emperor of the Eight Islands: Book 1 in the Tale of Shikanoko (The Tale of Shikanoko series) (12 page)

“It is true,” Shika said. “Last year I fell while we were out hunting. I believe he tried to kill me then—but whatever his intentions, he certainly left me for dead.”

“Did his men not recognize you?”

“At least one of them did.”

“Yet none of them came to your aid and most of them were prepared to take your life. He must rule his little domain with an iron hand and a cruel will. They are all afraid of him. He is Lord Kiyoyori’s vassal, I believe. Are you?”

“I don’t know,” Shika replied. “We always served the Kuromori lords, and Lord Kiyoyori spared my life and took me into his household. But he was in two minds about it since my uncle, he said, is one of his staunchest allies.”

“Indeed. Just as Kuromori protects the capital, so it is itself protected by Kumayama.”

When Shika made no response, Gessho said, “I don’t know what my master, the Prince Abbot, intends to do with you, but he rewards those who serve him well. Maybe one day your estate will be restored to you.”

It will
, Shika promised himself.

*   *   *

Sesshin said very little on the journey. He seemed to have withdrawn inside himself. He made no complaints, though his body alternately burned with fever and shivered as though it would never be warm again. Shika tended to all his needs, washed him and tried to feed him, though the old man would take hardly more than a mouthful of broth or hot water. From time to time he pressed Shika’s hand in thanks. He did not speak to Gessho. Often his lips moved as if in prayer.

They followed the course of the Kumagawa as it flowed toward the sea. The river was fast and shallow, splashing over rocks and boulders, its noise constantly in their ears. The first night, they came to the high road that ran along the coast between Miyako and Minatogura, and stopped at a small place on the corner. From here on there were a few scattered villages along the road, with stalls that supplied food and drink, wooden clogs, fur boots, cloths, and other traveling needs, and one or two lodging places. After the first night, they did not stay at these but at temples that belonged to Ryusonji and where the dragon child was worshipped. The rooms were austere and cold, the food meager. The monks rose at midnight, and the dark hours till morning echoed with their chanting and the dull reverberation of gongs and bells.

On the third morning they came to a crossroads. To the south lay a small seaport where vessels plied between Akashi and Minatogura and fishermen went out to the islands of the Encircled Sea. On the northern road two partially decomposed heads had been placed on stakes. Crows flapped around them, pecking at the rotting flesh. The eyes had been taken and the teeth were beginning their eternal grin. They were beyond recognition yet Shika knew them, remembered hearing them fall, when he thought his own would follow them.

“That is the road to Matsutani,” Gessho said. “But we will not be going there.”

“Is Lord Kiyoyori there?” Shika asked.

“That is no longer a concern of yours,” Gessho replied.

Every morning Sesshin seemed smaller, as though he were withering away. Not only physically: some inner light was fading from him. He was becoming an empty husk, an old bean pod ready for fire or earth.

Gessho never left them alone and at night tied their hands and feet, but even monks have to obey the call of nature, and the day they were to arrive at the capital, before he untied them, he went off to the privy at the back of the temple where they had stayed for the night. Sesshin spoke for the first time in days.

“Shikanoko! Come here, my boy. I must pass something over to you. Quickly, there is very little time.”

“What is it?”

“Remember the night you drank from my mouth? I have another gift for you. If I don’t give it to you the Prince Abbot will take it from me. Come, place your mouth over mine.”

“What is it?” Shika said again.

“It is my power. I have concentrated it down into—well, into a sort of pellet. Take it inside you. It will grow like a seed. But be quick.”

Shika rolled over to the old man’s side and placed his mouth over the other’s, tasting the fever and the decaying flesh. Then he felt a smooth, hard object on his tongue. Its flavor was sweet and fiery, bitter beyond words and smooth as honey at the same time. For a moment he thought he would gag on it, but it slipped down his throat and, like wine, spread instantly. He felt hot and cold all at once. The fires of earth rushed from his feet upward through his body, where they crashed hissing into the freezing snows of heaven that fell through his skull. His limbs bucked against the ties, throbbing. Snakes swam through his veins. A catlike animal purred in his brain. His skin sweated drops of ice.

He lay panting. Sesshin rested his brow against Shika’s cheek. “Good,” he whispered. “I was afraid it might be too strong and would tear you apart. Don’t do anything for a while. Just let it grow.” He began to speak more hurriedly. “There is one more thing I must tell you. About Lady Tora.”

“She did not die in the fire?” Shika questioned, astonished as well as relieved.

“She escaped and has gone to the sorcerer in the mountains. She took something from me, and from you and Lord Kiyoyori, and from two others, I am not sure who they were. Maybe that bandit chief, and the old sorcerer himself. She needed it to make her children. From five fathers, five children will be born. Find them and destroy them. They will be demons. She is one of the Old People. I should never have succumbed to her. No wonder all these disasters followed. Well, I can do nothing about it now—but you can. You have shown me you have a kind heart despite your rough appearance and your bad temper. Don’t be kind to the demons.”

Gessho returned with food and untied their bonds. As they approached the capital the meals had become more refined and flavorsome. This morning they had rice with grilled fish and pickled radish. For the first time, Sesshin ate healthily. Gessho peered at him with suspicion.

“What’s happened? He looks different.”

“Perhaps he is feeling better,” Shika said.

“I am the same as when you met me,” Sesshin said. “A harmless old man, preparing to pass over to the next world, blinded for no reason by a poor woman driven mad by grief.”

A new merriment had come over him, and indeed he seemed exactly what he said he was: an old man, joyful and serene at the end of his life.

Gessho ground his teeth in exasperation and, without giving them time to finish the meal, called for the horses. They set out immediately, riding at a gallop toward the capital.

*   *   *

They arrived at Ryusonji late in the evening. Guided by the Prince Abbot’s men who had come to meet them, they did not ride along the wide avenues of Miyako but skirted through the hills of the northeast, passing many temples lit up by a thousand candles and oil lamps and echoing with the endless sutras that bound earth to Heaven and kept the city safe.

The temple of Ryusonji lay a little way to the north of the capital, near the riverbank. In the low-lying ground between the temple and the river was the lake where the dragon child dwelled. As they passed through the great main gate and into the first courtyard, snow began to fall, making swirling patterns in the torch lights.

The horses, too exhausted to protest, were handed over to grooms, and Shika and Sesshin were taken to an outdoor hot spring where the dirt of the journey was scrubbed from them. They were purified with incense and dressed in old robes of bleached hemp, patched and darned but spotlessly clean. Shika’s hair was untied, washed, combed, and tied up again. All this was carried out by low-rank monks who worked silently and carefully with no sign of emotion, neither hate nor fear. Then Shika and Sesshin were led through a series of corridors and courtyards under great gates and through dark halls where carved images of the gods of Hell, saints, avatars, and the Enlightened One himself glimmered faintly, until they came at last to the rooms of the Prince Abbot.

As the door slid open Shika saw Gessho was waiting inside. He had changed from his armor and traveling attire into temple robes. Silently and with an impassive face he put his hand on Shika’s neck and forced him to his knees. Shika lowered his head to the ground and remained there for several minutes. He heard Sesshin say cheerfully, “Ah, it’s good to be clean. All thanks to you, mighty priest, whoever you are. Truly you follow the teachings of the Enlightened One. Your worship could be in the paradise of the pure land, but you have chosen to remain in this world and relieve the sufferings of the afflicted, as did the holy Jizo,” and he went prattling on, praising the Prince Abbot and recounting the lives and miracles of holy men. Finally his voice dwindled away and he sat nodding and smiling.

The Prince Abbot spoke to Gessho. “What happened?”

“My lord, his eyes had been put out before we arrived. The Matsutani lady’s anger was inflamed against him—she suspected him of involvement in the disappearance of her son. He and this young man had been turned out into the Darkwood. There was a woman whom Lady Matsutani accused of being a sorceress, though her judgment may have been clouded by jealousy, as the said woman was Lord Kiyoyori’s concubine. She apparently burned to death in the fire that consumed the old man’s books and instruments. I left Kiyoyori to deal with his wife and followed these two, catching up with them at Kumayama, where the local lord, Jiro no Sademasa, was of some assistance. I said you would reward him, by the way. He was eager to get rid of the young man, who it seems could be the nephew who was believed to be dead—you may remember?”

“Interesting. I do remember and we will come to that by and by. First I must consider my old friend here, Master Sesshin. We were novices together many years ago. Sesshin excelled in esoteric practices and eventually chose the way of a mountain hermit. I had not set eyes on him for years, but from time to time I heard of some miracle, some challenge to the unseen powers, and knew it must be him. He would surface and then disappear. I tried to keep an eye on him, but he vanished for many years until something drew my attention to Matsutani and there he was! So it was your power at work, behind Kiyoyori, all this time?”

“Your Holiness must be confusing me with someone else,” Sesshin said. “I knew all this attention was too good to be true. Well, that is the wheel of life. We all must pay for our misdeeds from past lives.”

“I am sorry, my lord Abbot,” Gessho said. “I could not get him to you quickly enough. It was as if some change took place in him on the road. One moment you could see that despite his suffering he was a powerful sage; the next he had become this old fool.”

“What a pathetic end to our years of rivalry,” the Abbot said. “Why did you not fight like a warrior of the spirit? I have dreamed of confronting you most of my life. Is this what you have become?”

Sesshin smiled and nodded. “I am what I am and what I have always been, a poor soul on a journey.”

“Is he genuine, my lord, or a very good actor?” Gessho said doubtfully.

“I sense nothing in him, no depth, no secrets. If he had any power he has divested himself of it utterly. We will keep him for a while and watch him. Treat him well, keep him occupied.”

“Perhaps he could join the blind lute player and the singers,” Gessho suggested.

“Ah, music.” Sesshin gave a deep sigh. “To devote my final years to music, under the protection of the mighty Prince Abbot, in the holy precinct of Ryusonji! It is more than I could have dreamed of.”

Shika, by turning his head slightly, could see the Prince Abbot’s disconcerted expression. One of the monks took Sesshin away. After a few moments he heard the priest’s voice telling him to sit up and come closer. He shuffled forward on his knees.

“So, this is my young stag?” The Abbot placed his hands on Shika’s head, gazed into his eyes and touched the side of his face, almost like a caress. Shika could not help trembling. He remembered the gaze and heard again Sesshin’s voice,
Don’t speak
. He lowered his eyes and remained silent.

“Well, you are pleasing enough to look at. I don’t mind keeping you by my side for a while. Especially if you will show me the use of this lovely thing.”

He made a sign to one of the young monks who knelt behind him and the man stepped forward holding out the seven-layered brocade bag. The Prince Abbot drew out the mask. As always Shika felt a rush of pleasure at the sight of it, the long black lashes, the cinnabar-colored lips, the polished antlers, the memory of its making, the knowledge of its power.

“Where did you come by this? Who made it for you?”

He did not reply immediately and then a false memory began to create itself in his mind. He saw himself coming upon the mask. It was half-buried in sandy ground, on the riverbank.

“I found it. It must have been washed downstream after a flood.”

“You found it and then dared to use it? Just like that? Even I have not dared do that.”

“I thought it was mine because I found it.”

“That is a dangerous idea. Let’s see what happens if just anyone puts it on.” The Abbot beckoned to the young monk without turning and held the mask out to him. “Put it on.”

“Don’t!” Shika said, suddenly knowing what was going to happen. “He should not!”

The monk was very handsome, with fine, regular features and smooth, almost golden skin. He hesitated for a moment and then put the mask to his face.

Immediately he began screaming. He tried to take the mask off, his hands tearing vainly at it, but it clung to him. Gessho ran forward to help him, holding him still, pulling with all his great strength, but with no success. The young man broke away from him, shouting and crying. He rammed his head against the wall, and then, falling, on the floor. The Abbot stood, a movement shocking in itself, and stretched out his hand, speaking solemn words of power that unlocked rocks and summoned the dead back to life, but nothing shifted the mask until Shika went to the writhing figure and touched the polished surface. It slid into his hand. It was burning hot; it had only ever felt cool before. He felt its distress, its panic and pain, the fall from the cliff, the broken leg, the cut throat, the ebbing blood.
Nothing is ever lost
, it whispered to him.
It changes and takes a new form. All suffering mutates and persists.