Lord of the Darkwood

by Lian Hearn

  But on this day, though they brought considerable pleasure to each other’s body, afterward he seemed unusually preoccupied, almost despondent.

  “Something is troubling you?” Yayoi said, and called softly to one of the girls to bring more wine.

  “Forgive me, Lady Yayoi. I thought I would leave my troubles on the shore, or at least on the boat my servant brought me over on. It’s been a strange spring … but I don’t want to burden you with my problems.”

  “You can talk to me about anything,” Yayoi said. “Even if I can’t help, voicing these concerns often clarifies the way you see them.”

  “Maybe you can help, you are the wisest woman I’ve ever met. You know my family has been in this business for as long as anyone can remember. We’ve dealt fairly with people, our house was founded on mutual trust, and that’s the way we’ve always run things. This year more than half of our suppliers have said they can’t carry on in the usual way. It appears someone is muscling in on contracts we’ve had for years, taking them over, blackening our name, and deliberately trying to ruin us. They call themselves the Kikuta—they have been around for some years, though no one seems to know where they came from, but now they have become much more aggressive. The head of the family lets people believe he is Akuzenji’s son, though all Akuzenji’s children were supposedly killed by Kiyoyori’s men years ago.”

  Yayoi said, “I have never heard of them.” She remembered clearly the day Akuzenji died, when she had been so afraid her father would have Shikanoko executed, too.

  “We have competitors, naturally, always have had, but this family is different. They use intimidation, and don’t hesitate to follow through with their threats, to the point of murder. And not only of farmers but of their wives and children, too. No one dares stand up to them. Now they have started on us, demanding we sell our business, our warehouses, our stock, the vats and all our tools, as well as our secrets, to them. If we don’t, they say they will destroy everything and eliminate our family. I didn’t take them seriously at first, but now I don’t know what to do about it. My father isn’t well and I’m afraid the anxiety is going to kill him. I hate to buckle under to bullying, but I have to be realistic.”

  “What can you do?” Yayoi felt a twinge of unease.

  “I am trying to come to some agreement with them. After all, there are precedents—we used to pay Akuzenji to ensure safe transport of our goods overland, and we still employ seamen, who many would describe as pirates, to protect our ships at sea. It’s to be expected and saves us keeping a small army of bodyguards. But the Kikuta will not discuss or negotiate; they want complete control. Our only weapon is that they cannot match us for quality, yet. My father has always had the highest standards and he refuses to compromise on that. But even if our buyers are loyal to us, we are falling behind in supplying them because we cannot get our raw ingredients.”

  Yayoi poured more wine. “Do these people seek to control other merchant houses or only yours?”

  “We are the first, I believe,” Unagi said, draining the bowl. “However, if we go under, they will start to attack the rest. They treat it like a military campaign. They are the Miboshi with their white banners and we are the red-flagged Kakizuki.” He smiled wryly. “And we all know what happened to them! I often wonder if we should not pack up and flee to the west, while we still have the chance.”

  “But do they ally themselves with the Miboshi? Do they have their support or protection?”

  “No, that was just a figure of speech. They ally with no one. But sometimes I feel we are in a kind of war and I must prepare weapons and men. Maybe the Kakizuki should not have fled but fought back, and so should I. That’s what my sons want.” He sighed. “This isn’t what I’d meant to discuss with you tonight. I had another suggestion to put to you.”

  He took her hand and gazed intently at her face. “I wish I could bring you with me to Kitakami. I’ve dreamed of approaching Lady Fuji with an offer. But would you be willing?”

  Yayoi was touched and for a moment deeply tempted. She liked and respected Unagi; she knew he would give her a good life.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up at this time. Let me deal with the Kikuta one way or another and then I will speak to Lady Fuji. At least let me know you will consider it.”

  “I will,” she said. “Thank you. I am very grateful.”

  He stood up. “I will send you a message. Thinking of you is going to give me courage.”

  He refused Yayoi’s offers of food or music, saying he preferred to return to his lodgings before nightfall. She heard the splash of the oar as his servant sculled the boat away.

  * * *

  Yayoi washed and changed her clothes. She took out the Kudzu Vine Treasure Store, intending to study it as she often did at night, but her heart was heavy. The way Unagi had, uncharacteristically, spoken of his problems had unsettled her, and her mind was full of thoughts of the dead. Takaakira must have died years ago, but she had not known of it, and the news had awakened many memories of the past. She had heard snatches of information and gossip on the boats and in the markets, but mostly men came to forget the world of intrigue and strife. If Takaakira had died without her knowing, there was every possibility Shikanoko had, too. She was trapped here in Lady Fuji’s world; she would never escape, never find out. Unagi’s offer to buy her freedom pulled at her. She tried to imagine for a moment what her life would be like, but she could get no further than the love of a good man, maybe a child, and then she heard Asagao’s voice from years ago: Are they going to marry you to a merchant? What a waste of a beautiful girl!

  She thought how useful she might be to him, since she knew how to write and to calculate. But how far removed it was from her dreams as a child, when she was a warrior’s daughter. She wanted to talk it over with Asagao, but it was getting late. We will talk tomorrow, she thought, and turned to the text, trying to calm herself in prayer. Whenever she took out the text, she began by meditating on Sesshin, who had given it to her. She did not know if he was alive or dead; she had heard nothing of him since he had been blinded by her stepmother and turned away from Matsutani. She sat motionless, eyes closed, with one hand on the pages.

  She felt them rustle, as if a strong wind had suddenly blown through the boat. She opened her eyes and saw for a moment a page that showed the mirrorlike stone. Her hands curved instinctively as if they would clasp it, but then the page turned and, search as she might, she could not find it again.

  “Well, I will not read more tonight,” she said, almost addressing it as you wretched book, trying to control her frustration and disappointment. As she sat back, the pages rustled again. She looked down and saw the text had opened at a place it had never showed her before.

  An image leaped out at her. It was a mask, carved from a stag’s skull, with antlers. She had seen such things at festivals. Men wore them to dance in, becoming animals or birds, bridging the spaces between the worlds. There were living eyes behind the mask. They looked at her with silent appeal.

  “Shikanoko!” she whispered.

  But, before she could be sure, the text had closed the page and opened another, showing her a second mask, made from a human skull. Its eyes glittered with gemstones, its lips were painted red, black silky hair had been pasted to the bone. It seemed to turn and look in her direction, as if it were seeking her out. She felt its malevolence and its jealous, restless desire. It was not content with its own power, it could not endure anyone else’s but sought to claim all power for itself. With all her effort, she folded the text closed, feeling its resistance, and sat shaking with fear.

  What did it mean? Was Shikanoko dead? Or trapped in the world of sorcery, where his mother had warned Yayoi not to follow him? She felt tears forming and struggled not to weep aloud. She remembered so clearly the evening when he had come to tell her about Tsumaru’s death. And then she could not keep the tears from falling, recalling her little brother, the last time she had seen him alive, be
fore he had been kidnapped. He had wanted to play with Chika and Kaze, but the other two children had been unwell, and she and Tsumaru had gone out alone into the Darkwood. After that she could only remember the strangers, Tsumaru’s cry, her helplessness, her aching head.

  Someone called softly, “Hina!” A voice and a name from the past, a whisper, almost lost among the lap of the waves against the side of the boat and the intermittent sound of music. Hina, her childhood name, all but forgotten, so long had it been since anyone had used it.

  “Hina! Are you awake? I must speak with you.”

  Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, she hid the Kudzu Vine Treasure Store under a cushion, then lifted the bamboo blind and looked down onto the water. Unagi’s narrow skiff was just below, and gripping the side of the pleasure boat to hold it steady was his servant. She had never looked at him closely before, but now, in the light of the lanterns, she recognised him as her childhood companion, the son of Kongyo, one of her father’s senior retainers, and of Tsumaru’s nurse, Haru.

  “Chika? Can it really be you?”

  “Can you come down? I need to talk to you.”

  She pulled a cloth from the rack and wound it around her head and face, then, just as she was, in her nightclothes, climbed over the side and stepped nimbly into the skiff. It rocked and Chika held her to steady her. It was too familiar a touch for a servant and she wondered briefly if she had been wise, trusting a boy she used to play with, now a man, a stranger.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, reading her mind. “I am not going to hurt you or force myself on you. I can’t deny I’ve dreamed you were my wife. I used to imagine we would be married when we were children, playing at being the emperor and the empress. Perhaps we might have been, back then, when we were almost equals. Now I am obliged to work for a merchant and you have ended up a pleasure woman. We have both fallen, but we are further apart than ever.”

  “The great wheel turns,” Yayoi said. “We all rise and fall with it, as we reap the harvest from seeds sown in former lives.”

  “No,” he said. “The harvest we reap is sown by those who wronged us. If neither Heaven nor Earth gives us justice, then we must seek our own revenge.”

  He helped Yayoi sit in the bow, then took up the single oar at the stern and began to scull. It was a warm evening and the surface of the lake was only slightly ruffled, like twisted silk.

  “Unagi is a good man,” Yayoi said finally.

  “They say he is a good lover,” Chika replied.

  “That is none of your concern.” She heard the bitterness and envy in his voice and pitied him. “How did you come to be in his household, and how did you know me?”

  “He talks to me about you—he’s not a discreet man, he can’t keep his mouth shut—and he mentioned the scroll, the one Master Sesshin gave you that you were always trying to read. I remembered it clearly. Perhaps I was jealous that you should receive such a gift. When I managed to see you for myself, I recognized you.” His voice changed slightly, growing more tender. “I had never forgotten you, Hina.”

  “You should not serve a man you despise,” she said, feeling a need to defend Unagi.

  “All men despise those they serve,” Chika replied, the bitterness returning. “But he is not my true master. I serve him on my master’s orders. I will tell you how it all came about. My father died in the battle of Kuromori, and my mother sent my sister and me into the Darkwood. Masachika was searching for anyone who survived, to put them to death. I knew a place where Shikanoko used to live. I took Kaze there.”

  Yayoi was momentarily deafened by the thump of her own heart. “Was Shikanoko there?”

  “No, he has disappeared. People say he is dead, or that he lives the life of a stag, somewhere in the Darkwood.” He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was full of contempt. “He ran away. He abandoned us, leaving everyone to die. The only people there were the imps, one of whom I now serve.”

  “The imps?”

  “Lady Tora’s children. Do you remember her?”

  Yayoi was suddenly cold and nauseated.

  “She bewitched your father. It was after she and Shikanoko came to Matsutani that everything started to go wrong. She had five children, all at one time, and they had not one father, but five. One of them was Shikanoko, another Lord Kiyoyori.”

  “Does that make them brothers to me?”

  Chika smiled. “I suppose it does.”

  While she was absorbing this, he related in a whisper a long account of the brothers, their fathers’ names, their magic skills, their use of poisons and venomous creatures, how the Princess died, how they grew as fast as insects and had taken wives, how they had quarreled.

  “We returned from Kitakami. Kiku dug up the skull of a man, whom Shikanoko had killed there some time ago, and, with Mu’s fox wife, carried out the rituals that have given him such great power.”

  Yayoi thought, This is what the book was showing me. The image of the skull, its searching eyes, made her tremble again. Yet the book must have shown it to her with a purpose, just as it had shown her the stag mask through which shone Shikanoko’s eyes.

  Chika said, “That is why the brothers are estranged. Mu has many gifts, but now Kiku’s are much greater.”

  “Kiku? Are you talking about the family called Kikuta?”

  “That’s the name he gave himself when he became a merchant.”

  My poor Unagi, you are doomed!

  “So you are also under his power,” she said. “And your sister?”

  “Kaze is his wife,” Chika replied. “And I am his closest friend, more of a brother than his own siblings. I would do anything for him. He decided I could be an informant and asked me to seek work with Unagi. It was not difficult. I had learned many things from Kiku and I knew how to make myself useful to the house of the Eel. He has come to trust me.”

  “You will betray him,” she said flatly, thinking, What can I do to prevent that?

  “If I were a servant, it could be called betrayal. But I am a warrior. I have years of disdain and insults to redress.”

  “Good and evil are not defined by status,” Yayoi said.

  “You have been sheltered from the world for too long. Everything is defined by status now. Do you think Aritomo does not dispense a different justice to his nobles and lords from that which he metes out to commoners?”

  Takaakira’s status did not save him, Yayoi thought, but all she said was, “I know very little of Lord Aritomo.”

  “No doubt he would be very interested to know more about you,” Chika said, with a flash of malice.

  When Yayoi did not respond, he went on, a little awkwardly, “I do not mean to threaten you.”

  “I think you do. You have been well taught by your master.” She had been fortunate to survive for so long among the riverbank people, but now two people in one day had threatened to expose her. I must get away. I must warn Yoshi. But she had no idea how to do either.

  Chika said, as though trying to excuse himself, “I was afraid of what Kiku might do to my sister. I had to obey him.”

  “Why have you come to tell me this?” Yayoi demanded. “What do you want from me?”

  He took a deep breath, as though he had finally reached the point of his visit. “Shikanoko possessed a mask, made powerful by the same rituals Kiku used on the skull. After the confrontation with the Prince Abbot, apparently, it became fused to his face. That is why, after the death of the Princess, he fled to the forest, and shuns the company of men and women. I know you are a wise woman, and you have the Kudzu Vine Treasure Store, which must tell you many secrets. Furthermore, my sister had a dream about you, that you put your arms around a stag in the forest, and it turned into a man. I believe you could bring Shikanoko back.”

  “What are you suggesting? That I go deep into the Darkwood to search for a man who is probably dead, certainly an outlaw?” It was exactly what she longed to do, but surely it was impossible. “You don’t understand the circumstances in whic
h I live. I’m not free to come and go as I please.”

  “You’re clever, Hina. You’ll find a way. And I’ll help you.”

  Yayoi knew it was unlikely she would be allowed to go anywhere, let alone into the Darkwood on such an illusory mission. She did not trust Chika, suspecting that he, or his master, had other motives to find Shikanoko, and that they would lie to her and try to manipulate her. She remembered the skull’s restless searching gaze. But all she could think of was the eyes she had seen behind the mask, their mute appeal, and the dream image of herself, her arms around the stag, her beloved.

  * * *

  She hardly slept. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw the mask. She had short broken dreams in which her hands curved around the stone and she understood everything. During the night she remembered it was the time of year when a few of the acrobats, Yoshi among them, went into the forest to look for young monkeys. The idea came to Yayoi that she might go with them. She knew she was being foolish, that the Darkwood was vast, that she was familiar with only the tiny southwestern corner of it, but she was impelled by a belief that fate would bring her to him, wherever he was and in whatever form. And, in the Darkwood, she would find a way to warn Yoshi not to return.

  For years she had done nothing without Lady Fuji’s permission. She tried to plan how best to approach her, but, as she had feared, Fuji’s instant reaction was a refusal.

  “It is our busiest time of year; the fine weather, the summer festivals, all the extra gifts that will need to be recorded. It is very selfish of you even to think of such a thing. Whatever reason can you have for wanting to traipse through the forest with the monkey boys?”

  “I am a little tired,” Yayoi said, fanning herself. “I feel jaded. I will be better for a short break from entertaining.”

  “Well, we will go on a pilgrimage somewhere in the autumn.” Fuji was looking at her shrewdly. “There is some other reason, I feel. Are you planning to run away with one of our clients? It’s Unagi, isn’t it?”