Monsters and Magicians

by Robert Adams

  mules. But when we cut up the carcasses of those two dead mules to use for dragon-bait, sir, it was apparent to both the driver and me that they were very elderly mules. How old were they? I would say, at least thirty years, maybe more."

  "Impossible!" snorted Kaoru. "Had any such amount of time passed for us, we'd know it . . . I'd know it, realize it. Yes, we have been here for some time, but I last estimated that time at no more than fifteen to eighteen months, Sergeant. And what land of a country would this, could this be to hold such properties, anyway? Tell me that!"

  Kiyomoto sighed. "Of my own knowledge, I cannot, sir. However . . . there are old tales, legends of long ago, coming from many, many lands and races and realms, that tell of the cruel fates of men who found such lands and returned from them to tell the tales and, invariably, suffer most cruelly.

  "It is said that, just before the most honorable Hideyoshi invaded Korea, long ago, a man named Shengin was sailing with his followers to join the army of his daimyo when a strange and sudden tempest blew the ship far, far out to sea. The ship was so badly damaged by lashing winds and crashing seas that it almost sank, but it did not and, with the abatement of the tempest and the calming of the waters, Shengin and his surviving followers set to effecting repairs and bailing out water. But they still had little control over their small ship when they saw that the sea was bearing it and them fast upon what clearly was a line of fearsome, rocky reefs, a beach lying beyond them and tall trees beyond the beach.

  "When certain death of both Shengin and his fol-

  lowers seemed imminent, a fortuitous swell rose up under the ship, lifted it over the reef and deposited it safely within the quiet waters just beyond, and a gentle current bore it toward the sparkling beach until its keel grated on sand. All of them exhausted and some of them injured from their long, harrowing ordeal, Shengin and his followers dropped overside of their beached ship and waded through the warm, shallow water to the waiting shore.

  "After they had rested long enough in the shade of the trees to somewhat restore them, Shengin ordered two of his samurai and their servants to take containers from the ship and proceed inland in search of fresh water and fruit, or whatever else they could find that men might eat, most of their own stores having been either lost or damaged in the tempest.

  "The two samurai, each with his servant, went off in different directions and the youngest presently returned with a cask filled with fresh, cool water and another cask full of strange-looking but tasty and wholesome fruits. It then was long before the return of the elder samurai and his servant, and they did not come back alone or empty-handed.

  '"The folk who dwelt in that land called it Hai-bara-zir. They were not a people who in any way resembled Japanese, Koreans, Chinese or any other people Shengin had seen or heard described by others. Tall were they, taller than any of Shengin's men, and well-formed of body; though tanned by the sun, their skins were white and their hair and beards were none of them darker than a soft brown or dark red, their eyes either blue or grey or hazel or green.

  "Many of these folk bore weapons—strangely formed

  swords, spears, axes, dirks and odd bows—but they were more than merely friendly to the shipwrecked men. They all spoke a Japanese as good as Shengin's— his own, regional dialect, in fact—and they conducted Shengin and all his followers to their city, where much was made of these strangers. They all—from Shengin even to his lowliest go-kenin —were housed in luxury, feasted endlessly on myriads of strange but always delicious viands. Though mostly larger of body than Japanese women, with much larger breasts, the females of that city were nothing less than willing bed-partners to the party of Shengin, more than merely complaisant and fantastically stimulating in their actions. Available for but the asking, too, were both beverages and foods that could soothe body and mind to gentle languor, others that could quickly give energy and renewed strength and vigor to even the most exhausted.

  "Not ever a willingly idle man, Shengin and his samurai did ask for service as warriors, only to be told that warfare did not exist, only hunting, fishing, farming and the gathering of wild-growing foodstuffs. He was told that there were but few folk in all the vast lands—seven cities, the inhabitants of all of them related and always friendly one toward the other. Few strangers ever came to Hai-bara-zir, they averred, and those that did were always treated well and allowed to stay or go, as they wished.

  "Shengin was also told that the folk had once lived in another land, far, far away, but when threatened by a huge and most savage horde of barbarians, all had left their homeland, flown to Hai-bara-zir, settled, built their cities and since lived in peace and

  harmony. He was advised to forget all his arts and skills of war, as had they, and learn to enjoy life for the sake of living.

  "But poor, loyal, dutiful Shengin could not so do. Nothing that he did, nothing that he ate or drank, no delicate pleasure that his body enjoyed could take from his mind the fact of his oaths given to his daimyo, his duty to honor them."

  Kaoru waved a hand preremptorily. "Yes, yes, Sergeant, I recall that hoary old children's tale now; 'The Far Traveller' is what I remember it called. I heard it as a child in a slightly differing version and I'd forgotten it as I've forgotten so many of the fantastic fictions we then were told.

  "When this character finally arrives back in Japan and goes to his home, his grandson rules there and the only one of his generation still alive to recognize him—although feeble with age and almost blind—is she who had been his youngest wife. After suffering many slights and injustices, he finally goes mad and, after somehow—I forget just how, now—acquiring a small boat, he sets sail eastward and is never again seen.

  "But what does this errant nonsense have to do with anything, Sergeant? Or is your mind slipped and just rambling?"

  "I must beg the pardon of the honorable lieutenant," said Kiyomoto, respectfully, "but the tale called 'The Affair of the Far Traveller' is no mere legend, though many today think it such. It is at least part truth. A man who called himself Abe Shengin, the same man of that clan who was thought to have been lost at sea during the time of Toyotomi Hideyoshi,

  did arrive in Japan in the third year of the Shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna; this is fact. Although appearing to be of no more than perhaps thirty years, he claimed to in fact be the grandfather of the then-family head and he bore the swords of that very man, assumed by all to be more than sixty years dead, he and all his war band.

  "No one believed him, of course, and he suffered many, many indignities and vicissitudes first at the hands of the man he claimed to be his grandson and that man's housemen and servants, then at the hands of the head of the Abe clan. And he might well have finally been killed had not his informants in the land gotten word to the Shogun at Edo of these strange happenings, and ever a curious and enquiring man, the Shogun ordered that the man who called himself Abe Shengin be brought to tell his tale to him.

  "When Tokugawa Ietsuna had heard the man out and had also questioned him at length and in great depth, he had the lands searched thoroughly for any still alive who might have known Abe Shengin prior to his supposed death. Two such were at last found, sir. One was an aged, almost sightless woman who had been the youngest wife of Abe Shengin for two years before he went away bound for the marshalling of the armies for the Korean Invasion; the other was an even more venerable priest-smith who had forged swords for Abe Shengin. This man was at the time of his being summoned to Edo by the Shogun Ietsuna more than ninety-three years of age; he also was one of my ancestors.

  "Upon arrival at his court, both of these aged people were received and treated most graciously.

  They were asked to dictate questions that only the real Abe Shengin could have been expected to be able to answer accurately, and this they did. Yet, when the Shogun, himself, put these questions to the far traveller, almost all of his responses matched the list of proper responses dictated by the most venerable man and woman. Then the two were brought before the mighty Ietsuna a
nd asked to pass among those men there assembled, all garbed and accoutered and armed in the fashions of six decades past, and choose he who was most like the Abe Shengin they recalled. They hobbled about for some time, then sadly told the Shogun that the man, Abe Shengin, was not anywhere in the room. All thought that Tokugawa Ietsuna would be angry or, at the least, show some disappointment at these words, but he did not, seeming neither angry or sad. He ordered that certain members of the court not in antique garb be told that they might return to his presence.

  "When these men entered, the mighty Ietsuna waved casually at them, all clothed and equipped in the height of the court fashion of that day, and suggested that perhaps the man, Abe Shengin, might be found in their ranks. Again the two elderly people went from man to man, staring long at feces, studying gestures, but again they had to sadly report that none of the courtiers could be the Abe Shengin they remembered. At this, the assembled all thought to see one of his properly feared rages coming upon the Shogun, but when he finally spoke, he sounded only a litde sad and he ordered that the servants waiting with the gifts of appreciation for the old smith and the widow of Abe Shengin be summoned.

  "When the majordomo came leading the servants and they came to stand before the two aged ones, the smith cried out, while the old woman screamed and would have fallen, save for the quick action of a courtier. When the Shogun demanded to know why their sudden cries, they both told him that one of the humble, plainly garbed servants was none other than Abe Shengin . . . but Abe Shengin almost exactly as he would have looked sixty years agone, having aged hardly at all in all those years.

  "At this, the mighty Ietsuna showed much pleasure, as too did the whole of his court and household. He proclaimed that the Shogun was completely satisfied that, fantastical as it might seem, the far traveller was in truth none other than the original Abe Shengin, in the flesh and almost unaged in over six decades of elapsed time.

  "My ancestor was thanked, most generously rewarded for his service, and carried home by servants and samurai of the mighty Ietsuna. At her request and that of Shengin, the old woman was allowed to stay at court with her long-lost husband until her death, at which time the Shogun had produced a rich and elaborate funeral for her and personally provided a very valuable, antique urn for her ashes.

  "Shengin remained a favored and always honored guest of the Shogun for eleven years, travelling whenever the court travelled and otherwise making his home in Edo. Then, shortly after his aged wife at last had died and upon receipt of word of the death of his grandson by a fever, he asked of the Shogun permission to return to his family home, that he might present to his great-grandson the daichi that he had himself born for so many years.

  "Tokugawa Ietsuna, regretting for all to hear that the press of official affairs would not allow him to himself accompany his long-time guest, friend and confidant on so old-fashionedly honorable and dutiful a journey, sent Abe Shengin off with his best wishes, in a style which would have befitted a powerful daimyo of an earlier time. On the very eve of the cavalcade's departure, Ietsuna summoned Shengin to wait upon him and at that time presented to him a daichi to replace that which he meant to pass on to his great-grandson. That daichi, sir, is one of the finest and most richly ornamented produced by my ancestors in that period; it still exists as an Imperial Treasure, at the Imperial Palace complex in Tokyo.

  "But once the deed of honor was done, Abe Shengin did not go back to Edo. He sent the most of the cavalcade back, bearing a letter of explanation to the Shogun. Retaining only some horses, a handful of servants and two samurai, he travelled on about the countryside, visiting lands and places he had known so very long before, grieving within his own heart about the ugly changes that had come to pass, seeking out the very eldest of folk of every rank and class that they might talk to him of things that once mattered in life and did no longer in a world become crass and unknowing of honor and the proper obligations of duty, or oaths sworn, of the now-unheeded responsibilities of the holders of rank and power and wealth in the land.

  "After a year of this, he sent back the servants, most of the horses and one of the two samurai, this one bearing not only another, final, letter for his sometime-patron and friend, the Shogun Tokugawa

  Ietsuna, but word that the beautiful, precious ddichi would be left for the Shogun in the trust of the family which had forged the blades. Then he and the last of his samurai travelled directly to the home of my ancestors, anxious to begin the final leg of his long, long journey.

  "The eldest priest of my family at that period, sir, was one Kawabe. He of course welcomed his esteemed visitor, whose clan had, from the very earliest days, always been appreciative of the skill of mine, treating us both fairly and generously—not always the case with which the powerful deal with humble craftsmen.

  "Obedient to his guest's request, Kawabe accepted the gi£t-daichi to be held in trust for the Shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna; then showed him available wares, and Shengin purchased of him a fine but less splendid daichi 9 that he might not go upon his planned journey unarmed. Then he asked that Kawabe find him a boat with a sail, but small enough for two men to easily handle, for the last of the Shogun's samurai insisted that the constraints of his honor and his oath-sworn duty compelled him to accompany Shengin on his full journey, wherever it might lead, however long it might take. Touched by the modern warriors antique sense of honor and duty, Shengin had sadly accepted him into his service.

  "However, when Kawabe had seen the boat secured and prepared and provisioned, Abe Shengin had had little gold left with which to repay him and so, after giving him all that he did have, he brought out and presented to my ancestor a singular stone. Black is that glass-smooth stone, looking like jet in

  strong light, but as the light grows dimmer about it, it lightens in hue and thin bands of many different colors can be seen dimly, moving about just under its surface; then, in full darkness, it becomes of a milky translucency, all the colored bands stronger, brighter, moving more swiftly, while the stone itself exudes a soft light, a radiance. I have seen and even handled this stone, sir; it is a treasured possession of our priesthood now, and although our agents have searched for hundreds of years in every nook and out-of-the-way corner of all the world, anything like it never has been found. We have long believed it to be not of the world of men, but of the world of gods. And Abe Shengin told my ancestor, Kawabe, that the peaceful folk of that land whereto the tempest winds and seas had borne his ship used larger examples of such stones, which there were most common, to light their homes of nights. I believe, sir, that this land here is that land or one much like it, a land of the gods."

  "Is that why you are always selecting pebbles from out the stream beds and polishing them, Sergeant?" demanded Kaoru. "You imagine you'll find a stone such as that you describe in some Burmese watercourse? Perhaps, if you are very, very lucky, you might find a garnet or even a ruby—such things have occurred at rare intervals in Burma, they say—but not anything remotely resembling the wonder that you say came down from your distant ancestor."

  At that juncture, Kaoru recalled something had come up in the camp-area that had required the presence of Company Sergeant Kiyomoto, and the two had never gotten around to resuming the discussion.

  Fitz shuddered uncontrollably when he delved into these memories in the Japanese officer's mind, for he had seen a stone very much alike to the one the sergeant had told about. It had been while he and Cool Blue and Sir Gautier were hiking back south from the fringes of the dangerous, wide-spreading swamp which had blocked their northern progress and impelled them to retrace their steps to change direction.

  As the fire had died to embers on the moonless and cloudy night, a dim radiance had been seen coming from a mound of boulders and earth. Curiously, Fitz had cleared away enough of the soil and pebbles to reveal a rock giving forth a misty light, with threads of a dozen or more colors looking to move about within it and just below the surface of it.

  When he had called their attention to the
phenomenon, Gautier had muttered of demons and devils, signed himself and begun to mutter prayers in Latin. But Cool Blue had just yawned widely and remarked, "Man, like he's sure superstitious, ain't he? Them rocks that lights up in the dark, like I seen them before, lotsa times, you know. Ain't too many around here, mostly, but like it's places they's all over the fucking place, man. Believe me, man, 'cause like since I been in the lion getup, thanks to old Saint Germain, the gut-butcher, I'm like hep to wizards and witches and all and ain't no magic in none them rocks, see, man, they all like natcherul, you know."

  Fitz would have like to have taken the "natcherul" lamp along with him, but when uncovered in the morning, the glossy, black boulder that Cool Blue

  confidently assured him was what the light-producing stones looked like in sunlight was almost as big as his pack and far too heavy for either he or Sir Gautier to have packed any distance.

  Was this a land of gods, he wondered? If it truly was and if he hung around long enough, despite the grey panther's endless insistencies that he hurry to pass his tests and meet the Dagda, would he get to see this god who was supposedly coming to take possession of the bronzen axe? If he did see him, perhaps he would also be able to speak to him and, conceivably, get some straight answers out of him, not just go on forever tramping through these endless woods and hills and valleys to no apparent purpose.

  "But I'll be damned if I'm going to spend all that time up in this tree," he muttered to himself. "I wish to hell Cool Blue and Gautier, with or without his stinking pack of Norman cutthroats, would show up, so I could camp on the ground like normal people."

  Kaoru, part of Fitz's mind still without his knowledge exploring his own, wandered idly west along the bank of the larger stream while Kiyomoto and the men butchered the dragon and what it had left of the red deer. Neither the host-mind nor the guest-mind even suspected that deadly peril waited hidden in the brush around the very next bend in that stream.