Soul of the Sword

by Julie Kagawa

  I needed to leave. What was happening between Daisuke and Okame was their business alone. I was the intruder, privy to something that should not be seen, the hidden eyes in the grass. But I couldn’t turn away. My heart pounded, and I found myself unable to move. I crouched motionless in the grass, my tail wrapped around my legs and my ears swiveled forward as far as they would go, loath to miss a word.

  “You’re playing with fire, noble,” Okame husked out. “Are you sure you want this? I don’t…” He hesitated again, then sighed. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning and find you’ve committed seppuku to absolve your shame.”

  “No,” Daisuke said with one of his small, rueful smiles. “Have no fear of that, Okame-san. I’ve already promised Yumeko that I would accompany her up the Dragon Spine, and to protect her from any that would try to stop us. I cannot die yet, not when my greatest battle still lies ahead. And the end of this road is the Steel Feather temple…and Hakaimono.” His eyes shone with anticipation and excitement. “I am ready. It will be a most glorious battle. And if I fall, it will be in service to the empire, fighting to stop the rise of the Master of Demons. I will die on my feet with my sword in hand, facing my enemies, as all samurai should. What is one night, compared to an eternity of glory?”

  “One night, huh?” Okame shook his head, a bright, slightly feral look entering his eyes. “Ah, the hell with it. When you put it that way…”

  He took three long strides, grabbed the collar of the other’s robe in both hands and yanked him close, pressing their lips together.

  My eyes widened, and I would’ve gasped had I been human. Daisuke himself drew in a sharp breath, his body stiffening, but after only a moment he relaxed, his hands coming up to grip Okame’s arms. For several heartbeats, they stood like that beneath the giant cedar, the moonlight blazing down on the two bodies locked together, and for a moment, the world seemed to stop.

  At last, Okame drew back, his eyes still bright and intense, gazing down at the noble. “Is this…what you wanted, Daisuke-san?” I heard him ask, his voice husky and slightly strained. Daisuke gave a faint smile, his own gaze fevered as he stared back.

  “It’s definitely a start.”

  Okame’s lips curled in a smirk, and he lowered his head once more.

  Leave, Yumeko, I thought, as guilt finally overrode curiosity. You need to leave, right now!

  With an effort, I wrenched my gaze from the figures below the cedar tree. Keeping the scroll clamped firmly in my jaws, I turned and slipped into the tall grass, leaving them truly alone.

  I changed back into a human at the gate, then tiptoed inside the house. As I came through the bedroom door, Reika was still asleep in the corner, snoring softly, but Chu raised his head and gave me a disapproving look. Ignoring the dog, I slid under the blankets again and pulled the quilt over my head. The night beyond the door was quiet; no haunting music stirred the breeze, no sounds of a flute on the wind. A strange sense of longing filled me, twisting my stomach and making my heart ache. I remembered the fierceness in Okame’s eyes when he kissed Daisuke, the look on the noble’s face as he returned it.

  And I wondered if Kage Tatsumi would ever look at me that way.

  20

  GUARDIANS OF STONE

  Yumeko

  A tiny shrine, weathered and gray, sat within an alcove in the side of the mountain. It was easy to miss; being the same color as the rocks and the mottled sky, it nearly blended into the background. The shrine itself barely reached the top of my head, and was littered with dead flowers, scattered coins and empty sake bottles; offerings to the mountain kami. At one point, the wood might’ve been brightly painted, perhaps in the vermillion, teal and white of its larger brothers. But weather and time had scoured the wooden planks, and now it seemed just another part of the mountain, as much as the rocks and the few scraggly bushes poking through the stones.

  “Well,” Okame said, gazing at the tiny structure with his arms crossed. He looked cold, hunching his shoulders against the wind, but trying not to show it. It had been a long, chilly hike up the Dragon Spine Mountains, following a narrow, winding path that was barely more than a goat trail. The higher we went, the colder and more unwelcoming the weather became; snow flurries now danced on the air, and the sky overhead was as gray as the rest of the mountain. “We found the shrine to the mountain kami,” the ronin muttered. “Now what?”

  I gazed around, hoping to see a temple, or any hint that could point to a temple. But there was nothing but rock and snow-shrouded peaks as far as the eye could see. “Reika-chan?” I asked, turning to the shrine maiden. “What did Master Jiro say about finding the way to the temple?”

  “Seek the place where the mountain kami gather,” Reika answered, “and look to the crows that will point the way.”

  I looked up at the mottled gray sky. “I don’t see any crows.” Or any birds, for that matter. Not even the hawks and falcons soared this high.

  She sighed. “Well, we’d better find some quickly, before night falls and it gets really cold.”

  We searched the area, looking for statues, signs, drawings scratched into the rock, anything that could resemble a crow or any type of feathered creature. But after a couple hours, we had turned up nothing. The shrine remained the only piece of the mountain that was different from everything around it. And beyond the distant peaks, the sun was beginning to set.

  I shivered in the rapidly dropping temperature, huddled against the alcove wall to escape the wind. Kami, I thought, as a breeze blew a cloud of snow flurries into the space with me, if you would like to give us a hint right now, we would appreciate it.

  “Perhaps,” Daisuke mused, gazing at the shrine with a furrowed brow, “we are looking at this the wrong way. We have been searching for a physical crow, a sign of sorts, to point us to the Steel Feather temple. What if the crow Master Jiro spoke of was metaphorical in nature?”

  Okame frowned. “I’m not sure I follow, Daisuke-san.”

  I saw Reika’s brow arch at Okame’s statement, a reaction to the ronin calling the noble by his first name, which he had never done before. My face heated and my heartbeat sped up. Fortunately, the attention was on Daisuke as he pondered the situation and the shrine.

  “You have heard the expression ‘as the crow flies,’ yes?” the noble asked. “It refers to the straightest line between two points, the fastest route that can be accomplished without swerving or changing direction.” He gestured to the shrine. “We already have one point. What if our ‘crow’ was to fly straight to the Steel Feather temple? Which direction would he take?”

  We looked around. “Well, he wouldn’t be able to go north,” Reika said, gazing at the alcove where the shrine sat. “And he couldn’t fly south, either, not with that ridge in the way.”

  “East?” Okame suggested. “Personally, I hope not, because that’s an awfully long plunge straight down the mountain. I guess it wouldn’t be a problem if you were a crow.”

  “Yes, but look at the peaks,” Daisuke said, nodding to the distant mountaintops. He moved directly in front of the shrine, raising his arm straight out in front of him and closing one eye. “From here, there is no direct path between any of them. You would have to go over or around. So, that leaves…”

  I turned. “West,” I said. “Right up that ridge, straight on between those two peaks where the sun is going down. It’s the only path you can take without running into anything.”

  “If Taiyo-san is correct,” Reika said. “We are going on theory, after all, but at this point, I fear we have little choice.” She sighed, glancing down at Chu, who stared back solemnly. “Very well. Then let us walk the path the crow flies, and see where it takes us.”

  The sun set, and the temperature dropped sharply as we continued up the mountain, following the trail of an invisible crow as it flew overhead. As the light faded, flecks of snow began drifting from the cloudy sky, swirling around us and dancing on the breeze. I huddled into the mino and straw hat Roshi’s wife had prov
ided and found myself longing for a cup of hot tea to wrap my fingers around.

  At last, when we had lost the light completely and were all shivering under our mino, the path ended at the bottom of a massive cliff. It rose straight into the air, the snow-shrouded peak hidden by clouds, the base dark in the shadow of the mountain.

  “Well,” sighed Okame, gazing up at the obstacle before us. His breath writhed into the air before coiling away into nothing, and his teeth chattered slightly as he spoke. “I’d say this path has come to an end. I never thought I’d see the day, but it looks like you were mistaken, Daisuke-san. Unless the crow flew straight into the side of the mountain.”

  Straight into the side of the mountain. I wonder… On impulse, as Reika and Okame began arguing about what to do next, I started walking toward the cliff. The massive wall of rock and stone loomed before me, ancient and unyielding, but I didn’t stop. I heard Okame call after me, wanting to know what I was doing, but I kept walking until I was a mere two paces away from the side of the mountain.

  I blinked in surprise. I’d been bracing myself, expecting to run straight into the wall, but now that I was this close, I could see I stood in the mouth of a fissure, a narrow crack in the side of the mountain. It had been so well hidden that, had I not literally walked into it, I would have never known it was there.

  “Minna,” I called, addressing the group over my shoulder. With a flick of my hand, a ball of kitsune-bi sprang to life, illuminating the walls and floor of a narrow tunnel that snaked away into the darkness. “I think I found something.”

  The rest of them crowded behind me, gazing down the passageway. “That doesn’t look like the entrance to an ancient temple to me,” Okame mused, as a centipede scuttled away from the sudden glow of foxfire, vanishing into a crevice. “But I guess it’s better than standing out here in the cold.” He peered dubiously into the tunnel, then shivered as a sharp gust of wind at our backs tossed his ponytail and nearly blew the hat off his head. “Brrr. Right, into the dark we go.”

  We stepped into the tunnel, following the ball of kitsune-bi as it floated and bobbed ahead of us, throwing back the darkness. The passage was narrow, and sometimes so low we had to crouch down to keep going. I envied Chu, trotting down the tunnel without a care, and though it was tempting to change into my fox form, transforming so blatantly in front of other people made me uneasy. They knew I was kitsune, yes, but there was a difference between knowing someone was yokai and walking down a dark tunnel with said yokai beside you. While I was Yumeko, my kitsune nature could almost be forgotten. Not so if I became a fox.

  After many long, cramped minutes in the dark, the only light coming from the hovering ball of foxfire, the tunnel opened up, and we stepped into an enormous cavern. The walls soared overhead into darkness, so high you couldn’t see the roof of the cave. But the ground below us was of worked stone, not rough cavern floor. I sent my kitsune-bi farther into the room, and in the ghostly blue light, we could see crumbled steps, broken walls and shattered pillars scattered over the ground, indicating at one point, this chamber had been inhabited.

  “What is this place?” I wondered, as we ventured warily into the cavern. My voice echoed into the vastness around me, and I suddenly felt very small. “Is this…the Steel Feather temple?”

  Behind me, I heard Okame sneeze in the dust cloud that wafted from our footsteps. “If it is,” he muttered, “we might have a problem. This place looks like it’s been abandoned for decades.”

  “This cannot be the temple,” Reika said, gazing around in dismay. “There must be a mistake. Master Jiro would not send us to the Steel Feather temple if it had been abandoned.”

  “Unless he didn’t know,” mused Okame, his voice drifting between columns and stirring centuries of dust and cobwebs. “I mean, it’s been a thousand years since the night of the last Wish, right? Perhaps the guardians have all died, or moved to another temple.”

  “No,” Reika said firmly, and a half dozen nos echoed all around us. “That cannot be true,” she insisted, but her voice was quietly desperate. “The guardians are here, they must be. What are we missing?”

  As I rounded a pillar, a figure suddenly appeared, looming above me in the darkness. I let out a squeak and jumped back, as the foxfire washed over the stern visage and fixed gaze of a stone samurai, fully armored and wearing a magnificent horned helmet. He carried a sword in each hand. One of the helmet’s stone antlers had been snapped off, and time had eroded the samurai’s features, but he still stood proud and stern on his pedestal, frozen in a stance of eternal readiness.

  “Magnificent,” Daisuke said at my back, making me jump again. The noble stepped forward, gazing up at the statue in open fascination. “I believe this is Kaze Yoshitsune,” he said in a voice of quiet awe. “A daimyo of the Kaze family, and one of the most famed duelists of the Wind Clan. His swordsmanship was unique in that he fought with two blades, using the katana and the wakizashi at the same time. The Kaze family have always claimed their doublesword techniques are descended from Yoshitsune himself, and refuse to teach their swordsmanship to any other clan.”

  “Why is there a statue of him here?” I asked, and Daisuke shook his head.

  “I do not know. Perhaps the guardians of the Steel Feather temple are part of the Wind Clan. Although…” Daisuke tapped his chin thoughtfully, as Reika, Okame and Chu came around the pillar. “There is a legend of Kaze Yoshitsune, one that is told even today, especially among schools of the blade. Of how, when Yoshitsune was a young man, he disappeared from the empire for a time. And when he returned, it was as a skilled swordsman, unbeatable in duels, who possessed the hidden knowledge of the gods. While no one knows for certain, the legends claim Yoshitsune traveled to the home of the mountain kami and lived with them for several years, that the mountain king himself taught the Kaze prince swordsmanship and the path of the double blades.” A smile crossed the noble’s face. “The legend of Yoshitsune is one every swordsman knows,” he said in a quietly awed voice. “How many of us have hoped that the kami would find us worthy to gift us with their knowledge? Kaze Yoshitsune was one of the rare few that were.”

  “Huh.” Okame stepped forward, arms folded as he gazed up at the statue, then at Daisuke. A sour expression crossed his features, and he curled a lip. “He doesn’t look like anything special to me.”

  Reika gave a barely audible chuckle. “Jealousy is not an admirable virtue, Okame-san,” she told him. “Especially if it is of a stone statue.”

  “Nani?” Okame exclaimed, an indignant look crossing his face. “What are you talking about?” But the miko only smiled and walked past him. “Oi, don’t pretend you didn’t hear me. What did you mean? Hey!”

  The miko and the ronin vanished around a crumbled wall, and the rest of us hurried to catch up.

  As we pressed farther into the chamber, more statues appeared in the flickering light of the kitsune-bi. There were armored samurai with stern, unsmiling faces, whose stony eyes seemed to follow us as we passed. But there were also several women, monks, ronin, peasants, even a few children. Sometimes they were missing limbs, or even heads. Sometimes they carried swords, raised above their heads or standing at the ready. One statue was of an enormous, bare-chested man wearing an amused smirk and a circle of huge prayer beads around his neck. Instead of a sword, he carried a spear with a massive, crescent-shaped blade on his shoulders, both thick arms draped over the shaft.

  “These are all heroes of the empire,” Daisuke remarked quietly, after gazing at the statue of the large man for several heartbeats. “Some of them I don’t recognize, but many of them…I have seen their pictures in the history scrolls. I have heard their legends and read about their deeds. That is Tsuchi Benkei, who held a bridge against an army of three hundred warriors to protect his lord. And over there is Hino Misaka, who held up a wall of fire for seven straight days to protect a village from attacking yokai. Wherever we are,” he continued, gazing around, “this is a sacred place. A hall of remembering. I won
der who is here, who made these statues?”

  “That’s a fascinating thought and all, Daisuke-san,” Okame said. “But, we’re not looking for a hall of heroes. Unless one of them is going to give us directions to the Steel Feather temple, I’d say we’ve got bigger problems to think about.”

  As he was saying this, I rounded the statue of a young man wielding a staff, and stopped.

  Across the cavern floor, seemingly carved out of the stone itself, a wide staircase ascended into the darkness. The path to it was flanked on either side by stone samurai, standing at rigid attention, and more statues stood on pedestals lining the stairs. At the top of the steps, beyond a landing circled by even more statues, I could just make out a small opening in the cave wall, a doorway into the unknown.

  “Minna,” I called excitedly, hearing my voice echo into the vast emptiness around us. “I think I’ve found the way out.”

  Excited that the end of the journey might be near at last, I started across the dusty stone floor. But, as I approached the stairs, a tremor went through the ground, making me stumble and causing the hair on the back of my neck to rise. I froze, gazing up the steps, feeling a gathering in the air around me, a swirl of ancient energy snapping with power, like the air before a lightning storm.

  Magic, I thought, as the invisible storm faded and, for a moment, the chamber seemed to hold its breath. Very old magic. Something is going to happen…

  Another tremor went through the ground. With a rumble and a grinding of stone against stone, two of the statues lining the stairs stepped off their pedestals and landed on the steps with a crash. They walked down the steps, moving far quicker than a few tons of stone had a right to, each footstep crunching and scraping against the rocks, until they reached the bottom.

  I swallowed hard. It was another pair of the statues we’d seen earlier, the young warrior in armor with the double swords, and the large man with the giant spear. What had Daisuke called them? Yoshitsune and Benkei? For a moment, they stood motionless in front of the stairs, blocking the path, their empty, hollow gaze fixed on us. Then, Yoshitsune’s stony lips parted, and a raspy voice emerged, like sand sliding over a gravel pit.