Heretic, Betrayers of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle, Book II

by Scott McGough

  The edges of the symbol began to flake away. A real beginner’s effort, Toshi thought. It isn’t going to wait for a reply or even return to its starting point. Michiko might as well have tied a note to a rock.

  He had offered his services to Michiko-hime only to get them both out of a tight spot. He had thought she would keep him on retainer or just use him for information. In a pinch, she might have him spy on someone. She was too young and held no official offices for her to send him on missions that might endanger him. Now she wanted him to break her out of the most tightly guarded piece of property in Kamigawa.

  Toshi sighted. This was the result of working with the noble classes. He thought about sending her a return messenger, but the only reply he could give her was, “I’m working on it.” Best to let her sit tight until he could figure out how to handle this new challenge. Right now, he had enough to worry about.

  Down below, he saw his old friend Marrow and two more nezumi creeping toward the edge of the kanji circle he’d made. Trust Kiku to send in a sacrifice first. It was a smart move, but Toshi was unconcerned. His plan would work even if the nezumi were the only ones to break the circle of kanji that waited beneath the snow.

  The rats were cautious, though, sniffing around the edges of the broad, flat section of the path. A hundred years ago, before the mountain was cursed, this spot would have been a perfect place to pitch a tent and ride out a storm. Now the nezumi crawled through the snow with only the tips of their noses poking out. They left dull gray furrows in as they spread out in a slow, careful formation. Marrow was taking no chances.

  Toshi watched them explore. They were very close to the circle now. Just a few more moments …

  Something else moved on the distant path, and the nezumi stopped where they were. Toshi peered through the midday glare and saw people coming up the path. Three men trying to be cautious and unseen but failing miserably.

  Kiku’s second wave, obviously. The jushi wasn’t taking any chances, either, in case Toshi’s trap was powerful enough to keep killing after it had been triggered.

  Smart girl, he thought. Of course it is. Then again, I didn’t tell you to follow me, did I? Each choice in life brings rewards and punishments. The choice to bring me back to Uramon just carries more of the latter.

  Marrow-Gnawer had turned and lifted his head out of the snow. Seeing the hatchet men, he hissed a warning and motioned for them to drop lower to the ground. The thugs resisted at first, unwilling to take orders from a rat. Then they remembered Marrow was far sneakier than they were and they’d do well to follow his lead. Clumsily, they crouched and began to creep forward.

  Toshi was so intent on tracking Marrow’s progress that he almost missed the sound. The soft scrape of a boot on frozen rock filtered through his brain. As he was beginning to wonder where Kiku was, he saw a flash of purple spinning gently toward him.

  He barely got his short sword out in time to intercept the camellia. The delicate purple bloom fastened onto his weapon, green stems and brown roots wrapping tightly around the blade. Its subtle fragrance changed from perfume to poison in his nostrils and the flower bore down on him, pressing on the sword as if its weight had increased a thousand times. Toshi was forced back into the sheer rock behind him, all of the strength in his arms and legs now devoted to keeping the flower and its grasping tendrils away from his face.

  Kiku pulled herself onto the shelf. Her cloak was tossed back, revealing one shapely silk-clad shoulder and another purple flower.

  “Hello, Toshi,” she said. Her eyes were hard and bright.

  Toshi struggled to keep the flower from pressing his sword into his own face. “Hello, Kiku. I … wasn’t expecting you. At least—” he grunted and took a step forward, but the flower pressed him back once more—“not this high up.”

  “Yet here I am.” She casually sniffed the camellia on her shoulder and stepped to the edge of the shelf.

  “I have him,” she said. “Marrow-Gnawer and you—” she pointed at the smallest hatchet man—“come help get him down.” She turned back to Toshi.

  “You can call off the yuki-onna,” she said, “or you die here. Personally, I want you to come back and beg Uramon for mercy. I’d like to see that.” She smiled coldly.

  Toshi sneered over his blade. “Can’t … call her off. But maybe …”

  He turned his wrists so the blade’s edge bit into the camellia. The flower pressed on, slicing off a third of itself as it slid over the blade toward Toshi’s face.

  Toshi sidestepped the lunging bloom and drew his jitte from his belt. The long, spiked truncheon was normally a defensive weapon, suited for blocking incoming swords and catching them in the metal tine that rose up from its handle. As the camellia flew by his face, Toshi thrust the sharpened end of his jitte through the bottom of the flower, spiking it against the cliff face. He pivoted around the pinned flower then slung it off the end of his weapon like a stone from a sling.

  The ruined flower smacked against Kiku’s chest, but it did her no harm. Even if it weren’t crushed, impaled, and in pieces, she was the gardener who’d grown it … it could no more harm her than a snake could suffer from its own venom.

  Toshi suddenly winced as an icy, stabbing pain lanced through his forearm. He glanced down past Kiku to the clearing below.

  “We should talk,” Toshi said. He kept his sword and his jitte ready. “I think one of Uramon’s hatchet-heads just stepped inside my circle.”

  The clouds overhead thickened, and a dense shadow fell over them all. Kiku’s eyes narrowed. She spread her fan, took a step back, and looked down.

  It was dark as dusk in the clearing. The nezumi were whining and mewling in terror, their beady red eyes darting around for an escape route. The hatchet men were slightly more composed but at least as frightened. Halfway up the wall to the shelf, Marrow-Gnawer and the third hatchet man had stopped and were staring down in horror. The thug on the wall below Marrow screamed.

  A pale figure materialized from the gloom, small-boned and graceful. Her gleaming white robes dragged along the surface of the snow without disturbing it, and though she came steadily forward her legs did not move. Her head was tilted forward so that her long, lustrous black hair completely concealed her face as it hung almost to the ground.

  The nezumi wailed. The hatchet men on the ground turned to run. Kiku glared at Toshi over the edge of her fan.

  “You’re a bastard, Toshi Umezawa, and you’ve killed us all.”

  Toshi grinned. He sheathed his sword but kept his jitte in his hand.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “but I think I can save one or two of us. Interested?”

  The closest nezumi stood like a statue, rigid with fear as the yuki-onna approached. She extended a pale hand from beneath the cascade of hair and white robes. Shuddering, weeping, helpless, the nezumi could only stand and sputter as that gentle hand touched his face.

  Even from the height of the rock shelf, Toshi heard the crackling as the rat-man’s body froze. A patina of frost spread out from the yuki-onna’s hand, crusting the nezumi’s hair with crystals of ice.

  The two fleeing hatchet men reached the far side of the clearing. Before they hurtled down the path, they both stopped and cried out.

  The snow woman was there, having finished with the first nezumi, as if she were a hostess unwilling to let her guests go without a proper goodbye. She stood before them, her face still hidden beneath the shroud of hair, and reached out with both hands. She placed her palms tenderly, almost lovingly on each man’s shoulder. The vapor from their exhalations fell in fine crystals like snow as their eyes clouded and the blood froze in their veins.

  Kiku did not take her eyes off the dread creature. “I’m interested, Toshi. Tell me more.”

  The yuki-onna shimmered from sight then reappeared and claimed the second nezumi. The rat-man fell back and disappeared into a snowdrift. Below Toshi and Kiku, the last hatchet man yelled as he lost his footing and tumbled down to the ground.

  “Wha
t do you know about kami worship?” Toshi said. “Quickly—she’s running out of thugs to play with.”

  “I know a great deal … probably more than you. What are you getting at?”

  Toshi pulled up his sleeve. “See this mark? It’s a powerful kanji we professionals use to make subtle entrances and exits. I made this one under the blessing of a powerful myojin. It works much better than it ever has before, and it won’t heal. I think it’s permanent.”

  Below, the hatchet man hurled his weapon. The yuki-onna barely paused as the axe sailed through her.

  Kiku shrugged. “So what?”

  “So, I think it means something. You don’t pray to the kami of fire when you want it to rain, right? But if you make the right prayer to the right spirit, you get a thing of beauty. Something you can really use. I asked Night to let me fade away, but she did much more. You think about how much happens in the dark, how much of our business is conducted but never seen. How many people come and go, how many major events occur unnoticed in the shadows? I think I tapped into something larger and deeper than a concealment spell. I think this kanji makes me formless, like a shadow. It doesn’t make me invisible—it makes me not there.”

  Screaming in terror, the last hatchet man bolted up the path, heading for the summit of the Heart of Frost. He made it ten steps before the snow woman appeared in front of him.

  Kiku opened her hand, revealing a fresh camellia. “This is an interesting theory. Even if I believe you’ve been blessed by the Myojin of Night’s Reach, it doesn’t explain why you’re still talking. Do something, if you can.”

  Toshi slid his sleeve back down. “I already did.”

  Kiku nodded toward the rampaging yuki-onna. “Maybe you should tell her, because she hasn’t noticed.”

  Marrow-Gnawer pulled himself up on to the shelf. Below, the final hatchet man fell dead in the snow.

  “Please,” the nezumi said. He fell to his knees and placed his hands on the shelf. “Don’t let her get me.”

  Kiku made as if to kick Marrow’s trembling form off the shelf, but Toshi stopped her with a raised hand.

  “I harnessed … I became part of an essential aspect of the myojin. And she let me.”

  The snow woman looked up at the shelf. A stiff wind blew her black tresses away from her face. Marrow-Gnawer screamed.

  Her eyes were vacant black pools, terrible holes that led to a vast frigid void. She opened her pale lips and let out a ghastly, shrieking cry that stabbed through Toshi’s ears and made him wince.

  She floated towards the wall that Marrow-Gnawer had just climbed.

  Kiku grabbed Toshi’s arm. “Get to the point, ochimusha.”

  “Shadow is an aspect of Night. So is cold … that frigid emptiness that forces people to huddle together during the winter.” He pointed. “She embodies cold. Cold is part of night. With my myojin’s help, I think we can bend the yuki-onna to our will. Because if you think about it, hers is just another aspect of my patron’s power.”

  The snow woman floated up the side of the sheer rock wall. Kiku waved away Toshi’s argument. “The snow woman is not a horse to be broken or a dog to be leashed. She is a force of nature.”

  “That she is. I don’t even think she has a will to be broken. But I’ve proven she can be led. Now all we have to do is prove she can be compelled.”

  “Enough of this. By the stony gray hell, stop making speeches and do something.”

  “All right, but don’t yell at me when you don’t like it. Give me your hand. You too, Marrow.”

  The nezumi leapt to his feet and thrust his hand into Toshi’s. Behind Marrow-Gnawer, the top of the yuki-onna’s head rose, bringing her eyes level with the shelf.

  Toshi quickly scratched a symbol into Marrow’s hand and turned to Kiku. He held out his hand.

  The jushi hesitated, took a last look at the snow woman, and gave Toshi her hand. He made the same mark, sheathed his jitte, and held on to Kiku’s hand as he grabbed Marrow’s.

  “We are free,” Toshi said, “bound only to each other. My life is yours, yours is mine. Harm one, harm all. The survivors must avenge. Whatever is taken from the hyozan, the hyozan recovers tenfold.”

  As he spoke, a cold wave passed through his hands to theirs. Kiku’s spine stiffened, and she inhaled sharply. Marrow-Gnawer screeched in terror.

  “She’s here!”

  Toshi held onto them. “Don’t let go,” he said. He stepped forward as the yuki-onna stretched out her hand. He kept his eyes fixed on her own terrible black wells.

  The snow woman placed her hand on Toshi’s forehead. He convulsed, almost crushing Kiku’s hand and pulling Marrow’s arm out of the socket. Ice formed in his eyebrows, and he felt his body temperature drop.

  In the clearing, below the frozen corpses and a blanket of snow, the ring of symbols Toshi had made flashed to life. He had spent hours positioning the characters for his patron kami, his reckoner gang, and the cold embrace of endless shadow until they formed a ring on the ground. These symbols now glowed with an eerie purple light, the same light that now shone from Kiku’s, Marrow’s, and Toshi’s linked hands.

  The purple light flashed beneath the yuki-onna’s palm where it touched Toshi. He heard a muffled explosion and felt a great concussion that drove him back. Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer came with him, and the snow woman herself was blown back like a leaf in a storm.

  The dread spirit screeched as she plummeted to the ground. She landed within the ring of Toshi’s glowing symbols, drawing the purple light from them to her like a lightning rod. Wailing, thrashing, the yuki-onna screamed so loudly that the stones around them cracked.

  She was gone. The flickering lights vanished, the awful sound died away, and the three were left battered and dazed on the rocky shelf.

  The terrible gloom dissipated, and the mid-morning sun returned. Toshi rose to his feet, peering down on the clearing. All of the snow that had fallen was gone, leaving the kanji and the corpses of Uramon’s party behind.

  Marrow-Gnawer was on all fours, praying and weeping. Kiku was on her haunches, leaning against the cliff face and rubbing the fresh mark on her hand.

  “Welcome to the hyozan reckoners,” he said.

  “I’ll kill you for this, Toshi.”

  “Not without consequences,” he said cheerfully. He showed her his own hyozan tattoo on the back of his hand. “It would be extremely unlucky for any of us to turn on the others now. I’ll give you a quick primer about how things operate in my gang. For now, let’s just say that we’re obliged to look after each other and enjoy the fact that we’re all still alive, eh?”

  Kiku snapped open her fan and sat heavily on the stone shelf. “Don’t celebrate long, ochimusha. This is not over.”

  “In a way, it is.”

  “For now.” Kiku primly adjusted her skirt. “What happens now?”

  Toshi grinned mirthlessly. “We’re already deep in the Sokenzan,” he said. “I think a visit to your fellow reckoner and oath-brother would be in order.”

  Kiku snarled but held her tongue. “And after that?”

  “After that, I think we should go back to Uramon. She’s got something I want, so I’m going to offer her something she wants in exchange.”

  “What does she want?”

  Toshi winked. “Me.”

  Toshi led his new recruits east, toward the hinterlands that stood south of Towabara and west of the great Jukai Forest. Marrow-Gnawer was the first to realize the danger Toshi was steering them toward, as his keen sense of smell could scarcely miss the odor of fire and death growing ever closer. Kiku got wind of it, too, but she used her brain rather than her nose.

  “You’re taking us to the o-bakemono’s home,” she said. “His place of power.” The jushi stopped where she stood. “I will go no farther.”

  “Hidetsugu calls his home Shinka,” Toshi said lightly. “As he is one of the hyozan’s founding members, he might take it as a slight if you didn’t stop in to pay your respects.”

  On
the path ahead, Marrow grumbled and moaned, his dark features twisted into a mask of anxiety.

  Kiku shook her head. “There is bad blood between the ogre and my clan. Not to mention between him and Uramon.”

  “Plus, he’ll eat us,” Marrow added.

  “There isn’t enough meat on you to make a decent mouthful,” Toshi replied. “Besides, he’d have to drain his well just to clean the stench of Takenuma off you.” To Kiku, he said, “Don’t be afraid, jushi. Even if I can’t protect you, the hyozan oath will. I don’t know why you can’t accept that.”

  Kiku’s temper flared. “The only things that frighten me are far beyond your meager comprehension, and as a rule, I refuse to accept anything that comes out of your mouth. An ogre shaman like him traffics with powerful oni, and those demons don’t respect oaths.”

  “This one does,” Toshi said seriously. “I’ve seen it in action, up close. It tore a big, blubbery fish kami to pieces like a pack of wild dogs, but it didn’t even smack a lip in my direction. Hidetsugu will protect us.”

  “Hidetsugu is whom I wish to avoid.”

  Toshi shrugged. “Please yourself, but I learned a long time ago that it’s better to have Hidetsugu on my side rather than elsewhere. I hope you live long enough to realize that.”

  Kiku’s eyes narrowed, and the corner of her lips turned up in a cruel smile. “Is that a threat?” She opened her palm, displaying the hyozan mark. “‘Oath-brother?’”

  “It’s a fact,” Toshi said. “This place is thick with bandits and akki goblins. The akki might just kill you and use your bones as jewelry, but the sanzoku …” Toshi made a show of shivering. “I don’t like to talk about what they might do.”

  Kiku tossed back her cloak, revealing the camellia on her shoulder and the wicked fuetsu throwing axe on her belt. “No one has laid hands on me and lived since I came of age.”

  Toshi snapped his fingers victoriously. “Then you’ve nothing to worry about. Meeting Hidetsugu should be nothing for a master jushi like yourself.”

  Kiku stared at Toshi for a moment, her expression growing ever darker. “Very well. I will accompany you, outlaw. It may be the only way to figure out how to break this hyozan bond you’ve shackled me with.