by Lian Hearn
The lord, Aritomo’s favorite, who visited the Prince Abbot had claimed to be an initiate. Gessho had been laughing inwardly, so much that he had made a rare mistake in his writing. Now the memory made him smile again. Noblemen and warriors dabbled in the mysteries, but the distractions of their lives, in particular their attachment to their women and children, prevented them from achieving true knowledge. No human ties held him down, and he knew his master, whom he admired more than anyone in the world, was the same. The Prince Abbot might seem to have great affection for his acolytes and his monks, but he would sacrifice them without hesitation in his pursuit of authority and knowledge.
Gessho’s orders were clear. All three fugitives were to be killed. Yoshimori’s head was to be brought back to the capital. The other two, the deer’s child and the Autumn Princess, could be left to rot in the forest. Let the animals he loves so much feed on him, Gessho thought.
He did not think it would be hard to track them down. He was armed, with sword, knife, bow and arrows. He had been provided with a fine horse—he was equally at ease on horseback or in prayer; riding put him in a state, both relaxed and alert, that he found to be quite meditative. He knew the Darkwood well, having lived in it for more than ten years as a mountain hermit. The last the Prince Abbot had known of Shikanoko had been on the road to Rinrakuji, when one of the werehawks had apparently died, spending its last heartbeat to reach its master’s mind and say farewell, and then outside a mountain hut, where he had seen the stag manifestation.
Gessho thought he could place the hut, recalling Akuzenji, who had ruled the mountain in the days when he had lived there. He decided to go toward Rinrakuji, taking the coast road to Shimaura and then turning north. However, his route took him directly past Matsutani and on the spur of the moment he decided to call in there. Shikanoko had lived there for several months, the estate had been a Kakizuki stronghold under Kiyoyori, there were probably servants left who would be loyal to their fallen lord and sympathetic to his lost cause. There was a slight chance those he pursued might have taken refuge there.
He arrived at the residence just before dusk. He had heard it had been badly damaged by an earthquake at the beginning of the year. There were signs of new stonework around the lake, and repairs had started on the gate where he had seen Sesshin’s eyes, but the eyes were no longer there, the house still stood half-burned, the former stables a pile of charred wood, while unused lumber lay on the ground, half-buried by rank autumn grass.
He thought the house was deserted, but he could sense the spiritual realm in a way others could not and slowly became convinced that there was something inhabiting the house. He wondered if it had been possessed by supernatural beings. He did not want to risk an encounter with them that would delay his mission, and had decided to ride on, a little disappointed as he had hoped to find shelter for the night, when he saw a man approaching, carrying a flask of wine, sprigs of bush clover, and a pot filled with honeycomb.
He greeted the monk, making an awkward bow and saying, “Welcome! I saw you coming and wanted to prevent you entering. The house has been taken over by spirits. They allow me to go in with gifts for them, but anyone else is attacked. They are quite malicious, there have been several deaths.”
Gessho frowned. “What sort of spirits are they?”
“From what I’ve been told I believe they are guardians, put in place by Master Sesshin when he lived here. Since his unfortunate downfall, they have become spiteful. Only he can control them, I fear, but will he ever return?”
“I am Gessho from Ryusonji,” the monk said. “Sesshin is there now. He has become a lute player. My master with great kindness took him in and had him taught music. But even if he were here he would be no use. His powers are gone.”
“Lady Tama is growing desperate,” the man said, with unpleasant familiarity. “The estate was granted to her, it has been her home all her life, but she cannot repair the house or live in it. Yet if she abandons it, she has nowhere else to go and no other choice but to become a nun.”
Which no doubt would not suit you, Gessho thought.
“I am just a retainer,” the other hastened to say, as though reading his mind. “Hisoku is my name. I am completely at your service and would appreciate your favor.” He paused and then said, “Well, I must make these offerings before the spirits grow impatient. But come with me afterward to the house where we are staying. We would be very grateful for any advice a wise monk like yourself could give us. You must stop for the night before you ride on. Where are you going? Few people ride toward the Darkwood these days.”
“I will tell you later.” Gessho watched Hisoku approach the veranda of the ruined house. He had to step carefully among an array of household objects, brooms, cushions, pots, ladles, scoops, which had all obviously been flung out of the house. They had been crafted with care, they were once precious and useful, but for weeks they had lain neglected under sun and wind and now had something forlorn, almost repulsive about them. Gessho felt a shiver of disgust touch his spine. All that mess should be cleared away for a start, though he himself was reluctant to touch anything.
Hisoku went cautiously forward, stepped onto the veranda, and placed his gifts just inside the open door. He struck a bronze bowl, which rang out in a clear, piercing note, and bowed deeply.
Gessho heard indistinct voices, making another shiver pass through his spine. His horse put its ears back and tried to spin away. While he was controlling it, Hisoku came back looking anxious.
“They asked who you were and, when I told them, they said you should go back to Ryusonji, at once.”
“I will deal with them,” Gessho said. “In the morning, I will get rid of them.”
A shadow passed over their heads and the werehawk settled on the gatepost. It gave a shriek, and from the house came an answering yell. A small writing desk and an inkstone were hurled out, landing with a crash in the garden.
“Oh, don’t make them angry,” Hisoku cried. “It will only make things worse.”
“You have spoiled them and indulged them,” Gessho said, making little effort to hide his contempt. “Spirits have to be treated with a firm hand and shown who is master.”
“At least they let me go into the house from time to time, and so far have not killed me. Many others have died.”
Gessho thought the situation was intolerable, and he told Lady Tama so, after she and Haru, in whose house they were staying, had served dinner. The food was surprisingly good, river fish with grilled yams, quails’ eggs, and bean curd.
“Your estate is obviously rich—you cannot let these errant spirits destroy it.”
“You must have been sent by Heaven,” she replied. “Surely a monk of your learning and holiness can exorcise them. I am afraid it is my fault for treating Master Sesshin so badly, but I am filled with remorse now and ready to make whatever amends I can.”
“I will do my best to remove them, but I cannot stay long. I have my own mission.”
He asked if they had seen or heard of Shikanoko in the past few months.
“Who is that?” Hisoku replied.
“He was the Prince Abbot’s acolyte,” Gessho explained briefly, “but he did not return from a journey he was sent on in the fourth month. We fear he died and His Holiness wishes to retrieve his body, due to his great affection for him.”
“I have not seen him,” Tama said. “Poor young man, I treated him badly, too.”
Gessho wondered how genuine her remorse was. He discerned her character to be deep and possibly duplicitous.
“I will now spend some time in meditation,” he announced. “I will speak to the spirits tomorrow, before I leave.”
* * *
He took fresh flowers and rice gruel from the morning meal. As he approached the house, he heard the spirits talking to each other.
“Oh, here he comes, the fine monk from the capital.”
“He thinks he will make us do what he wants.”
“We don’t do what any
one wants, do we?”
“We only do what we want.”
Gessho laid the offerings down on the veranda and knelt in silence, his eyes closed, summoning up all his spiritual strength, calling on the name of the Enlightened One.
“Oh, he’s a mighty monk!”
“He is mighty! Are you frightened?”
“No, I’m not frightened yet. Are you?”
“Not yet. But I might be soon.”
They both began to cackle with laughter.
“I command you to leave this place,” Gessho said in a booming voice.
“Ha-ha, he’s wonderful, isn’t he?”
“He’s so wonderful, I think we should leave.”
“But we’re not going to.”
“We should do something for him, though.”
“We could tell him what happens to him when he goes into the Darkwood.”
“What, that he loses his head? No, that’s too sad. Tell him something nice. Tell him about the eyes.”
“Oh, yes, the eyes are nice. Gessho!”
“I am listening,” the monk replied.
“We can leave only if our master’s eyes are replaced. Then we will go back to the gateposts where he first established us. There, that’s fair, isn’t it?”
“I don’t really want to go back. I like it here.”
“I like it here, too. It’s much better than the gateposts. But don’t worry, the eyes are lost. No one’s ever going to find them. We can stay here forever.”
“They are not lost,” the second spirit said sulkily. “Kiyoyori’s daughter took them.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she? Kiyoyori’s daughter, isn’t she dead?”
“Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t.”
There was the sound of a smack and a yell of pain.
Gessho said, “So, if your master’s eyes are found, you will leave the house and return to the gateposts?”
“Yes, we will have to.”
“But if you go into the Darkwood, you will not live to see it.” They both shrieked with laughter again.
Gessho next tried flattery, thanking them for their warning and praising them for their insight, but though that seemed to please them insofar as they did not throw anything at his head, he could not persuade them to move.
He returned to Haru’s house, eager to ride on into the Darkwood. The spirits’ warnings had not dissuaded him but rather the opposite. If he risked losing his head it could only mean someone of great skill and power was waiting for him. He relished the idea of the encounter.
“What happened to the daughter?” he asked Haru, finding her alone in the kitchen.
“Lady Hina?” Haru said. “We believe she is dead. My lady has been grieving for her as well as for her son, and her husband. You will have noticed how low her spirits are.”
“Could Hina have perhaps survived?”
“How would we ever know unless she found her way back here?”
“It will be more difficult to remove the spirits than I thought. The house will have to be abandoned. I suppose Shikanoko might be able to control them.”
“But you believe Shikanoko to be dead, don’t you?”
Her eyes were fixed on his face and he regretted saying so much.
“The Prince Abbot must be a warmhearted man to send a great monk like you in search of a pile of bones!” she said.
Gessho made no direct response but remarked after a few moments, seemingly idly, “There are no men around apart from Hisoku. Where are they all? Where is your husband?”
“Most died at Shimaura. Their heads were displayed there all summer. The rest perished in the capital alongside Lord Kiyoyori.”
“Your husband among them?”
She nodded her head, looking away, like a woman not comfortable with lying, then busied herself with preparing food for him to take on the journey.
Gessho watched her all the time and made her eat one of the rice balls before tucking the rest away in his pouch. As he rode away he glanced back over his shoulder and saw her talking to a boy aged about ten, her son presumably. All morning, as he followed the stream to the northeast, he was aware the boy was following him. He wondered if it was just some childish game—he remembered doing the same thing as a boy—or if Haru had sent him with some other purpose in mind. He did not trust her, nor did he believe her husband was dead.
The path forked and Gessho went a little way up the left-hand branch and guided the horse into the bushes. The boy appeared and took the right-hand branch without hesitation. Gessho waited a short while and then dismounted, tied the horse to a tree, and, silent and unseen, followed the boy.
The path looked tangled and overgrown, but he could see that brushwood had been cut and dragged over it. Beneath the branches were signs it was well trodden. He did not want to go too far from his horse, but just as he was about to turn back the undergrowth cleared and he found himself on top of a steep crag. Below was a small wooden fortress. On its roof flew the red banners of the Kakizuki and the three black cedars of Kuromori.
There was no sign of the boy. Either he had moved faster than Gessho thought or there was some secret path he had taken, maybe a tunnel he had slipped through, to get to the fortress.
Smoke rose from cooking fires and men’s voices carried across the ravine. The morning sun glinted on spearheads. It outraged him to see this Kakizuki stronghold in what should have been Miboshi-held land as far as Minatogura. So the last of Kiyoyori’s men were holding out here, that lying woman’s husband, no doubt, among them.
He slipped back into the undergrowth and for a few moments considered what he might do next. He wondered what message the boy had taken to his father and if it had any bearing on him. He did not think the men would leave the safety of their stronghold to pursue a solitary monk. All the same, their defiance would have to be dealt with. The next estate to the east was Kumayama, where he had caught up with Shikanoko before. He decided he would make his way there in a few days, if he had not had any success in his early search. He would replenish his food supplies, and suggest to Sademasa, the uncle who had switched sides, that it would be in his interests to deal with the men at Kuromori.
He returned swiftly to where he had left the horse and continued up the left-hand path, riding for the rest of the day. At nightfall he dismounted and let the horse drink from the stream and graze while he slept for a few hours, drifting in and out of dreams in which he was a boy again. He saw his mother’s form in the distance and ran to catch up with her, but fell down through the earth, waking with a start. He rose shortly after midnight, as had been his custom for years, washed his face in the cold stream water, and sat in meditation, listening to the sounds of the nighttime forest. Once a wolf howled far in the distance, and he heard the feathery sigh of an owl’s wings as it returned to roost. He saw it blink its yellow eyes at the horse, which stood dozing, one hind leg locked in, beneath the owl’s tree. The werehawk slept, perched on the horse’s back. Overhead, the stars shone in a clear sky across which, from time to time, drifted swathes of haze. While it was still dark, the first birds began to pipe up, pigeons, doves, robins, and, as day broke, thrushes. It was not the exuberant chorus of spring but autumn’s more melancholy song, breeding and nesting over, winter’s cold ahead.
He recognized the track he had followed in his earlier pursuit of Shikanoko, but in his meditation he had become aware of a strange presence, some dark magic at work, so instead of turning southward to Kumayama he decided to follow it, to the north at first, and then, when the mountains rose as an impassable barrier, to the east. The horse grew more nervous, laid its ears flat against its head, and shied frequently, once at the skeleton of a stag lying at the foot of a huge cliff. Gessho stopped and dismounted to see if its antlers remained, for they had many uses in medicine and ritual, but the skull and the antlers were gone. However, the shoulder blades remained and he took them with him. After that he noticed more piles of bones, stripped of all flesh, mostly bleached white but some green with
age. The horse trembled and jigged past them. The werehawk flew down and inspected them, its golden eyes glinting. They seemed to be mostly animal, but two or three were human, though no trace of clothing, armor, or weapons could be seen. Foxes and crows might have picked their bones, but a person, or people, must have pilfered everything else, unless it was the tengu who were said to dwell in the Darkwood.
On the fourth day the smell began, at first a faint whiff that from time to time hit his nostrils, then, as he felt he was growing closer to the source of the magic, an odor so strong it blotted out everything else. Gessho urged the horse forward and it obeyed reluctantly; they were both alert to every sound.
Gessho heard the wolves before he saw them, a snarling rush, a pad of feet. The werehawk screamed. The horse spun and bucked in terror, then reared upright, so high Gessho thought it was going to fall backward. He leaped from its back, drawing his sword in the same moment. The horse lashed out with its rear legs and hit one of the wolves in the flank, hurling it a few paces away, where it lay whimpering. Gessho thrust his sword into the chest of the second as it came at him, teeth bared. The horse galloped off, crashing through the undergrowth. The third wolf backed off, snarling, then turned and ran away in the opposite direction.
Gessho pulled the bow from his back and set an arrow to it. The forest grew so thickly it was hard to shoot properly. The first arrow hit the trunk of a tree; the second skimmed over the wolf’s back, making it somersault, but it found its feet rapidly and ran on. Gessho ran after it, branches lashing and clawing at him. The first wolf recovered from the horse’s kick and pursued him, limping but swift, made fiercer by pain.
The smell grew fouler, making him double up and gag. He crossed a stream, jumping from stone to stone. The wolf caught up with him on the farther bank. It tried to attack him, but its injuries hampered it, making it easy enough to dispatch with his knife. He drove it deep into the animal’s throat and let the body fall into the stream.