Brilliance of the Moon

by Lian Hearn

  Kenji sighed. “The situation’s become intolerable. What’s the point of wiping each other out? The reason the Kikuta claimed you in the first place was to try to preserve your talents. If anyone ever spat upward it was them! I know you have the records that Shigeru kept. I don’t doubt that you can deal a terrible blow to the Tribe.”

  “I would rather work with the Tribe than destroy them,” I said. “But their loyalty to me must be total. Can you guarantee that?”

  “I can for all except the Kikuta. They will never be reconciled to you.” He said nothing for a moment, then continued bleakly: “Nor I to them.”

  I said, “I am very sorry about your daughter. I blame myself terribly for her death. I can make no excuse. I just wish I could say that if I had my life over again, I would act differently.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Kenji said. “Yuki chose you. I blame myself because I brought her up to believe she had more freedom than she really did. Ever since she brought Jato to you, the Kikuta doubted her obedience to them. They were afraid she would influence the child. He is to hate you, you understand. The Kikuta are very patient. And Yuki did not hate you and never would. She always took your part.” He smiled painfully. “She was very angry when we took you at Inuyama. She told me it would never work out to keep you against your will.”

  I felt the corners of my eyes grow hot.

  “She loved you,” Kenji said. “Perhaps you would have loved her if you had not already met Lady Shirakawa. I blame myself for that too. I actually arranged your meeting. I watched you fall in love with her during the training session. Why, I don’t know. Sometimes I think we were all bewitched on that journey.”

  I thought so, too, remembering the pelting rain, the intensity of my passion for Kaede, the madness of my foray into Yamagata Castle, Shigeru’s journey toward death.

  “I might wish things had been different, Takeo, but I don’t blame you or hold any grudge against you.”

  I did not pick him up on his familiarity this time. He went on, sounding more like my old teacher: “You often act like an idiot, but fate seems to be using you for some purpose, and our lives are bound together in some way. I’m prepared to entrust Zenko and Taku to you as a sign of my good faith.”

  “Let’s drink to it,” I said, and called to Shiro’s daughter to bring wine.

  When she had poured it and gone back to the kitchen, I said, “Do you know where my son is?” I found it hard to imagine the child, a baby, motherless.

  “I’ve been unable to find out. But I suspect Akio may have taken him north, beyond the Three Countries. I suppose you will try to find him?”

  “When all this is over.” I was tempted to tell Kenji about the prophecy, that my own son would destroy me, but in the end I kept it to myself.

  “It seems that the Kikuta master Kotaro is in Hagi,” Kenji told me as we drank.

  “Then we will meet there. I hope you will come with me.”

  He promised he would and we embraced.

  “What do you want to do with the boys?” Kenji said. “Will you keep them here with you?”

  “Yes. Taku seems to be very talented. Would you send him alone on a spying mission? I might have a job for him.”

  “Into Hagi? That would be a bit beyond him.”

  “No, just locally. I want to track down some bandits.”

  “It’s unknown territory to him around here. He’d probably get lost. What do you want to find out?”

  “How many they are, what their stronghold’s like, that sort of thing. He has invisibility, doesn’t he? He wouldn’t have got past my guards without it.”

  Kenji nodded. “Maybe Shizuka can go with him. But is there a local person who can accompany them at least some of the way? It would save a lot of time on the mountain.”

  We asked Shiro’s daughters and the younger one said she would go. She often went out to collect mushrooms and wild plants for food and medicine, and though she avoided the bandits’ area, she knew the countryside all the way to the coast.

  Taku woke up as we were talking. The guards called to me and Kenji and I went in to see him. Zenko still sat where I had left him, unmoving.

  Taku grinned at us and exclaimed, “I saw Hachiman in a dream!”

  “That’s good,” I told him, “because you are going to war!”

  He and Shizuka went out that night and returned with all the information I needed. Makoto came back from the coast just in time to accompany me as we took two hundred men and stormed the rocky hideout, with so few losses I could hardly describe it as a battle. The results were all I’d hoped for: all the bandits dead, save two who were captured alive, and their winter provisions ours. We set free a number of women who had been abducted, among them the mother and sisters of the child I had fed on the beach. Zenko came with us and fought like a man, and Taku proved invaluable: Even his mother gave him a word of praise. Word spread quickly to the fishing villages that I had returned and kept my promise to the fisherman. Everyone came to offer their boats to help transport my men.

  I told myself all this activity was to keep my men from idleness, but in fact it was as much for my own sake. Speaking to Shizuka about Kaede and hearing of her intolerable plight intensified my longing for her a thousandfold. I was busy enough in the day to keep my thoughts at bay, but at night they returned to torment me. All week there were small earth tremors. I had the enduring vision of her trapped in a shaking building as it collapsed and burned. I was riven by anxiety: that she should die, that she should think I had abandoned her, that I would die without telling her how much I loved her and would never love anyone but her. The knowledge that Shizuka could possibly get a message to her kept returning to me with needling intensity.

  Taku and Hiroshi formed a somewhat stormy relationship, being about the same age but total opposites in upbringing and character. Hiroshi disapproved of Taku and was jealous of him. Taku teased him with Tribe tricks that infuriated him. I was too busy to mediate between them, but they followed me around most of the time, squabbling like dogs. The older boy, Zenko, kept aloof from both of them. I knew his Tribe talents were slight, but he was good with horses and already an expert with the sword. He also seemed to have been trained perfectly in obedience. I was not sure what I would do with him in the future, but he was Arai’s heir and I knew I would have to come to a decision about him sooner or later.

  We held a great feast to bid farewell to the people of Shuho, and then, with the food supplied by the bandits, Kahei, Makoto, and my main force set out to march to Hagi. I sent Hiroshi with them, silencing his protests by telling him he could ride Shun, and hoping the horse would take as good care of him as he had of me.

  It was hard to say good-bye to them all, especially to Makoto. My closest friend and I held each other in a long embrace. I wished we were going into battle together, but he had no knowledge of boats and I needed him to command the land army with Kahei.

  “We will meet in Hagi,” we promised each other.

  Once they were gone, I felt I needed to keep informed about their movements, about Arai’s progress, and about the situation in Maruyama and at Lord Fujiwara’s residence. I wanted to know the nobleman’s reaction to my new alliance with Arai. Now I could start using the Muto Tribe network.

  Kondo Kiichi had accompanied Shizuka and Kenji to Shuho, and I realized he could also be useful to me, being now in Arai’s service. Arai and Fujiwara were, after all, allies, which gave Kondo an excuse to approach the nobleman directly. Shizuka told me that Kondo was essentially a pragmatic and obedient man who would serve whomever he was told to by Kenji. He seemed to have no problems with swearing allegiance to me. With Kenji’s agreement, Kondo and Shizuka set out to make contact with their Muto spies in the Southwest. Before they left, I drew Shizuka aside and gave her a message to pass on to Kaede: that I loved her, that I would come for her soon, that she should be patient, that she must not die before I saw her again.

  “It’s dangerous, especially to Kaede herself,” Shizu
ka said. “I’ll do what I can, but I can’t promise anything. But we will send messages back to you before the full moon.”

  I returned to the deserted shrine on the coast and set up camp there. A week passed; the moon entered into the first quarter. We had our first message from Kondo: Arai had encountered the Otori army near Yamagata, and it was in retreat toward Hagi. Ryoma returned from Oshima to say the Terada were ready. The weather held fair, the seas calm, apart from the earthquakes, which caused large swells, increasing my sense of urgency.

  Two days before the full moon, at midday, we saw dark shapes in the distance coming from Oshima: It was the fleet of pirate ships. There were twelve of them, enough with the fishing boats to take all my remaining men. I lined my warriors up on the shore, ready to embark.

  Fumio leaped out of the leading boat and waded through the water toward me. One of his men followed him carrying a long bundle and two smaller baskets. After we embraced he said, “I’ve brought something to show you. Take me inside; I don’t want everyone to see it.”

  We went inside the shrine while his sailors began directing the embarkation. The man put the bundles down and went to sit on the edge of the veranda. I could already guess from the smell what one of the objects was, and I wondered why Fumio should have gone to the bother of bringing someone’s head to me, and whose it was.

  He unwrapped it first. “Look at it and then we’ll bury it. We took a ship a couple of weeks ago with this man on it—one of several.”

  I looked at the head with distaste. The skin was white as pearl and the hair yellow like the yolk of a bird’s egg. The features were large, the nose hooked.

  “Is it a man or a demon?”

  “It’s one of the barbarians that made the seeing tube.”

  “Is that what’s in there?” I indicated the long bundle.

  “No! Something much more interesting!” Fumio unwrapped the object and showed it to me. I took it warily.

  “A weapon?” I wasn’t sure how you wielded it, but it had the unmistakable look of something designed to kill.

  “Yes, and I think we can copy it. I’ve had another one made already. Not quite right—it killed the man who was testing it—but I think I know where we went wrong.” His eyes were gleaming, his face alight.

  “What does it do?”

  “I’ll show you. Do you have someone you can dispense with?”

  I thought of the two bandits we had taken. They had been pegged out on the beach, an example to anyone else who might be considering their calling, and given just enough water to keep them alive. I’d heard their groans while we were waiting for Fumio and thought I must do something about them before we left.

  Fumio called to his man, who brought a pan of coals. We had the bandits, pleading and cursing, tied upright to trees. Fumio walked about fifty or sixty paces down the beach, signaling to me to go with him. He lit a cord from the coals and applied the smoldering end to one end of the tube. It had a kind of hook, like a spring. He held the tube up, squinting along it toward the prisoners. There was a sudden sharp noise, which made me jump, and a puff of smoke. The bandit gave one fierce cry. Blood was pouring from a wound in his throat. He was dead within seconds.

  “Ah,” Fumio said with satisfaction, “I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “How long before you can shoot again?” I asked. The weapon was crude and ugly. It had none of the beauty of the sword, none of the majesty of the bow, but I could see that it would be more effective than either.

  He went through the process again and I counted my breaths: over one hundred, a long time in the middle of a battle. The second shot hit the other bandit in the chest, tearing a sizable hole. I guessed the ball would penetrate most armor. The possibilities of the weapon both intrigued and repelled me.

  “Warriors will call it a coward’s weapon,” I said to Fumio.

  He laughed. “I don’t mind fighting the coward’s way if it means I survive!”

  “You’ll bring it with you?”

  “If you promise to destroy it if we lose.” He grinned. “No one else must learn how to make them.”

  “We are not going to lose. What do you call it?”

  “A firearm,” he replied.

  We went back inside and Fumio rewrapped the firearm. The hideous head stared with blind eyes. Flies were beginning to settle on it, and the smell seemed to permeate the whole room, nauseating me.

  “Take it away,” I ordered the pirate. He looked at his master.

  “I’ll just show you his other things.” Fumio took the third bundle and unwrapped it. “He wore this round his neck.”

  “Prayer beads?” I said, taking the white string. The beads looked like ivory. The string unraveled and the sign the Hidden use, the cross, fell into the air before my eyes. It shocked me to see so openly displayed something that for me had always been the deepest secret. In our priest’s house in Mino the windows were set so that at certain times of day the sun formed a golden cross on the wall, but that fleeting image was the only one I’d seen before.

  Keeping my face impassive, I tossed the beads back to Fumio. “Strange. Some barbarian religion?”

  “You are an innocent, Takeo. This is the sign the Hidden worship.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know all sorts of things,” he said impatiently. “I’m not afraid of knowledge. I’ve been to the mainland. I know the world is much larger than our string of islands. The barbarians share the beliefs of the Hidden. I find that fascinating.”

  “No use in battle, though!” I found it not so much fascinating as alarming, as though it were some sinister message from a god I no longer believed in.

  “But what else do they have, the barbarians? Takeo, when you are established in Hagi, send me to them. Let’s trade with them. Let’s learn from them.”

  It was hard for me to imagine that future. All I could think about was the coming struggle.

  By midafternoon the last of the men were on board. Fumio told me we had to leave to catch the evening tide. I put Taku on my shoulders and Kenji, Zenko, and I waded out to Fumio’s boat and were pulled over the gunwales. The fleet was already under way, the yellow sails catching the breeze. I stared at the land as it became smaller and smaller and then faded into the mist of evening. Shizuka had said she would send messages before we left, but we had heard nothing from her. Her silence added to my anxiety, for her and for Kaede.

  · 10·

  ieko’s disposition was nervous, and she was as alarmed by the typhoon as she had been by the earthquake. It threw her into a state of near collapse. Despite the discomfort of the storm, Kaede was grateful to be free of the woman’s constant attention. However, after two days the wind dropped, clear autumn weather followed, and Rieko recovered her health and strength along with her aggravating attentiveness.

  She seemed to find something to do to Kaede every day, plucking her eyebrows, scrubbing her skin with rice bran, washing and combing her hair, powdering her face to an unnatural whiteness, creaming her hands and feet until they were as smooth and translucent as pearl. She selected Kaede’s clothes for her and dressed her with the help of the maids. Occasionally, as a special privilege, she would read a little to her or play the lute—at which, as she let Kaede know, she was considered to be highly skilled.

  Fujiwara visited once a day. Kaede was instructed by Rieko in the art of making tea and she prepared it for him, going silently through the ritual while he followed every movement, correcting her from time to time. On fine days the women sat in a room that looked out onto a small enclosed garden. Two twisted pine trees and a plum tree of extreme antiquity grew there along with azaleas and peonies.

  “We will enjoy the flowers in the spring,” Rieko said, for the shrubs were a dull autumn green, and Kaede thought of the long winter that stretched ahead and after that another and another, reducing her to a lifeless treasure, seen only by Lord Fujiwara.

  The garden reminded her of the one at Noguchi Castle where she had sat briefly wi
th her father when he had been informed of the marriage arranged with Lord Otori Shigeru. He had been proud then, relieved that she was to make such a good marriage. Neither of them had known that that marriage, too, would be a sham, a trap for Shigeru. Since she had so little with which to occupy her thoughts, she went over and over the past in her mind while she gazed out on the garden, watching every minute change as the days went slowly by.

  The plum tree began to drop its leaves and an old man came into the garden to pick them one by one off the moss. Kaede had to be kept out of his sight, as from all men, but she watched him from behind a screen. With infinite patience he picked up each leaf between finger and thumb so the moss would not be damaged and placed it in a bamboo basket. Then he combed the moss as if it were hair, removing every scrap of twig and grass, worm castings, birds’ feathers, pieces of bark. For the rest of the day the moss looked pristine, and then slowly, imperceptibly, the world, life, began to encroach on it, and the next morning the process began again.

  Green and white lichen grew on the gnarled trunk and branches of the plum tree, and Kaede found herself watching that too every day. Tiny events had the power to startle her. One morning an ivory-marbled pale pink fungus like a flower carved from flesh had erupted in the moss, and when occasionally a bird alighted on the top of one of the pine trees and let out a trill of song, her pulse stammered in response.

  Running a domain had not fully occupied her restless, hungry mind; now she had so little to do, she thought she would die of boredom. She tried to hear the rhythm of the household beyond the walls of her rooms, but few sounds penetrated to the solitary place. Once she heard the cadence of a flute and thought it might be Makoto. She dreaded seeing him, for she was gripped with jealousy at the thought of him free to come and go, free to be with Takeo and fight alongside him; yet she longed to see him, to have some news, any news. But she had no way of knowing if it was the young monk or not.