The Book of Heroes

by Miyuki Miyabe

  The Book of Heroes (EIYU NO SHO)

  by MIYABE Miyuki

  Copyright © 2009 MIYABE Miyuki All rights reserved.

  Originally published in Japan by MAINICHI NEWSPAPERS CO., LTD., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with OSAWA OFFICE, Japan, through THE SAKAI AGENCY.

  Cover Illustration by Dan May

  Design by Courtney Utt

  English translation © VIZ Media, LLC

  No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

  HAIKASORU

  Published by

  VIZ Media, LLC

  295 Bay Street

  San Francisco, CA 94133

  www.haikasoru.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4215-4288-1

  Haikasoru eBook edition

  The Prayer-Song or

  The Lament of the King in Yellow

  PROLOGUE Prison Break

  CHAPTER ONE Something Important, Which Was Broken

  CHAPTER TWO The Hermit's Library

  CHAPTER THREE The Nameless Land

  CHAPTER FOUR The Great Wheels

  CHAPTER FIVE The Hunt Begins

  CHAPTER SIX Digging Deeper

  CHAPTER SEVEN The Knight and the Princess

  CHAPTER EIGHT The Man of Ash

  CHAPTER NINE The Land of Fear and Loathing

  CHAPTER TEN In Search of Clues

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Confessions

  CHAPTER TWELVE The Labyrinth

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Reunion

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Truth

  Epilogue

  TO STUDY THE SELF IS TO DIE.

  The Prayer-Song or

  The Lament of the King in Yellow

  Amidst the mists and clouds of ashen blue that blur the line between Heaven and Earth. They drift along and together, hanging over all, cold and silken as a funeral pall.

  In this land, here since ancient times, here still in distant future.

  A stillness near to nothing its only master. Cast from time’s grace, free too from time’s yoke.

  No country, nor village. We who live here call it simply this land.

  Those whom fate brings here read, in that eloquent silence, a truth:

  This is the nameless land, they say.

  To you, who for reasons unknowable glimpse here these words. Good people, do not mistake the terms of the agreement:

  Do not ask men for the story of the nameless land.

  Do not move lips and tongue in an imitation of the tongue of the nameless land.

  Do not treat as men those who are imprisoned in the nameless land.

  The story that shall be told for all time, henceforth, is the cursed tale of two children, one monk, and one traveler without a soul.

  We weavers have glimpsed these cursed lives time and time again swimming in time’s eternal flow. We record it, we repeat it, we revere it as we revile it, and so does the shaft of dark brilliance that this cursed tale travels from world to world, from age to age, from the old gods to the new.

  We are the inculpated.

  All stories are the sin of their weaver.

  Good people, may you know peace in your dreams. The light in the window of the house where you rest shines in a paradise that does not suffer us to tread.

  Do not wish for this cursed life to visit your light.

  Do not extinguish your light and wait by the window in silence to hear the footfalls of this cursed life as it passes.

  Do not do these things, and your path will not lead you to the nameless land. This story will not echo past the words upon its pages, never barring your swift progress.

  This cursed life is called the Hero.

  At times, the King in Yellow.

  PROLOGUE

  Prison Break

  Halfway up the long slope to the Threshing Hill, the youth heard the sound of a tolling bell.

  He stopped and looked around. The sound came thickly through the chilled ashen-blue mist that rose all around him, yet he heard it as sure as he felt the vibrations in the ground beneath his feet.

  The First Bell was ringing in the bell tower.

  The youth remained standing still, uncertain of his next step. He knew all too well what the tolling of the First Bell meant, though it had never been sounded in his living memory.

  He could continue to the top of the hill, but there he would only find his brothers standing still as he was standing now, their hands stopped from their work of pushing the Great Wheels. He should run to them, join them, become one of their number. That had to be better than standing here, frozen to the spot while this unspeakable unease rose inside him.

  But is there not more here than just unease? he wondered. The youth put the palm of one hand to his black-robed chest.

  As a nameless devout, the youth had no word with which to refer to himself. He had no self. He was a part of this place, the nameless land—a fragment, made to express its will and nothing more.

  He had no soul.

  Yet still, perhaps because of this, in these eternal lands free from the yoke of time there was something that settled in those vessels, an essence that lodged in the hollow voids where their souls belonged. There were people, besides the devout, who had in this past visited this land from other worlds. They came from the stars or other countries, full of life and possessing both color and names. These visitors called this thing that filled the nameless ones by many names. Some called it emotion. Others simply heart. Others called it the very stuff of humanity.

  Regardless of what it was called, the youth knew it resided here, beneath where his palm touched his chest.

  There was no time in this place. No time meant no daily routine. For the nameless devout, there was only the work to be done on top of the hill and the guarding of the Hall of All Books; that was all. They did not rest, but also they did not tire. The only unpredictable elements of this place were the ebb and flow of clouds and mist, and the coming of visitors.

  Once a visitor had asked whether the devout found their lives boring.

  What does that mean?

  It means tiring of something. Becoming weary or jaded, the visitor had explained.

  Anyone who has to perform the same task over and over tires of it eventually.

  But the devout aren’t anyone. They aren’t “one.” How then could they tire?

  But that was not the whole truth.

  The youth felt a shivering well up from inside his sparse frame under his black robes. It was a fact that he did not feel boredom. Yet now, he had to admit, he was feeling the exact opposite emotion.

  Where there are opposites, there is also truth.

  The youth realized that somewhere inside his body, inside this hollow vessel lacking even a soul, something had been waiting for that first bell to ring.

  Something is happening. Events are happening.

  Soon a new visitor would surely arrive.

  This pleases me!

  The youth clenched his hand upon his chest into a fist. Closing his eyes, he let himself feel the trembling inside his body.

  The First Bell continued to toll. The mist brushed against the youth’s shaven head, condensing into tiny droplets of dew before collecting to run in a rivulet down his temple. He exhaled deeply, his breath a plume of white in the air. The soles of his bare feet were caked in mud from the trek up the hill.

  At length, he heard something else through the mist: the faint sounds of the invocation. The youth opened his eyes to look up toward the top of the hill. He still couldn’t see anything. Then the mist shifted, and he heard through it again the chords of the song. My brothers.

  The youth squinted, and eventually he was able to make out the lights of their torches, soul-wisps
darting aimlessly through the mist. Now going to the side, now up or down, drifting through the air, yet definitely coming closer.

  A group of the devout was descending. The youth was one of them, a part of them, as they were a part of him. The black-robed devout.

  Their heads were shaven, like his. Their feet were bare, like his. Their voices were the same. Their faces were the same. There were too many of them to count, and yet there was only one.

  The youth unclenched his fist and began to walk, his voice joining the chorus as he slipped in among them.

  They, his brothers, who were also him. Yet the youth felt that he held within his chest a note absent from the melody of his brothers’ prayer-song.

  As they descended the slope, the tolling of the First Bell grew clearer and more fierce. The mist thickened, swallowing their invocation, even as the peak of the roof over the Hall of All Books cut through the mist’s gray veil. The youth drifted back toward the tail end of the procession, and again he stopped, looking up, a whisper on his lips.

  It is free.

  Soon, there would be war.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Something Important, Which Was Broken

  It was a lazy, warm spring afternoon, the kind that would make anyone sleepy.

  Fifth period. Pencil in hand? Check. Eyes open? Check. Awake? Not really.

  She was full of lunch, and besides, she hated science class.

  “Yuri. Yuuuuri!” Kana whispered at her from the next seat over. Part of an eraser flew through the air and bounced off her desk.

  “Your head’s swaying! He’s gonna see!”

  Yuriko Morisaki sat up with a start. Mr. Katayama was in the middle of writing something on the blackboard, his back turned to the class. Yuriko hurriedly rubbed her eyes.

  Kana held a hand to her mouth, stifling a laugh. Yuriko grinned at her. Their seats were in the middle of the classroom. She looked around behind her. At least half of her twenty-five classmates were either already asleep or soon would be.

  Yuriko glanced at the clock hanging above the blackboard. Twenty minutes till class was over. She had to find some way to stay awake. She glanced down at her notebook. After the third line or so, her writing had become an almost illegible scrawl. That must have been when I dozed off, she thought.

  “Share your notes later,” she whispered to Kana at the very same instant Mr. Katayama turned around. Pushing his glasses up with one finger, his gaze wandered across the room before coming to rest on Yuriko.

  “Morisaki?”

  Kana immediately looked down at her desk and began moving her pencil furiously.

  “No talking during class.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Yuriko sank down in her chair. What about the kids who are sleeping, sir? Don’t I get points just for being awake? She hadn’t actually said anything, only thought it, but the defiance must have shown on her face. Mr. Katayama put down his chalk, wiped his whitened fingers together, and put one hand on his hip. “Are you aware that the average grade in this class on last week’s science test was the lowest of any fifth-grade class in the district? In the district! I know not everyone is fond of science, and I’m not asking you all to get one hundred percent, but still—”

  This latest lecture had the effect of rousing several of the students from their naps. Yuriko hurriedly began tracing the garbled letters in her notebook with her pencil as though she might somehow be able to decipher them.

  There was a light knock on the door at the front of the classroom. Mr. Katayama stepped away from the blackboard, a frown on his face. Yuriko busied herself with tracing letters, so she didn’t see who it was or what was being said. She looked up only when the door closed with a loud slam. Mr. Katayama was looking in her direction.

  No, he’s looking right at me. Or so she guessed. His eyes were hidden behind the light reflecting off his glasses.

  “Ms. Morisaki,” he said, still standing by the door, his voice cracking strangely, “I want you to get your things and go home.”

  All at once, every student (at least, every student who was awake) turned their eyes toward Yuriko. She could almost feel their gazes hitting her. Yuriko was not used to being the center of attention. Not because she was boring or didn’t stand out, but because she had cultivated a certain protective anonymity.

  “Um, what?”

  Yuriko looked around to see if anyone else understood what was going on. What did he just say?

  Mr. Katayama jerked into action like a windup toy that had just been released. He walked down the aisle between the desks toward hers. His motions seemed rigid and unnatural, like a robot’s.

  He stopped by Yuriko’s desk and placed one hand on the desktop and another on her shoulder. “Your mother called. Something’s happened at home. You need to go now.”

  Now the other students started whispering to each other. “Someone bought it, someone bought it,” she heard them say. What does that mean, bought it?

  Someone died, Yuriko realized.

  Kana was staring at her, worried. But then, when the teacher went to the back of the room toward the student lockers, she stood up before Yuriko could say anything and shouted, “Mr. Katayama, I’ll help.”

  Mr. Katayama had been just about to open Yuriko’s locker, but now he turned. A boy named Sato, who sat in front of her, also got up from his desk and went to stand by Yuriko. A few of the other students looked like they were going to get up too, so Mr. Katayama quickly returned to his desk at the head of the class and shouted loudly for everyone to sit down, his voice cracking.

  Yuriko crammed her textbooks and notebook into her bag that Kana brought to her. Her face was flushed, but a cold chill had begun to spread through her chest.

  Schoolbag under her arm, she went out into the hall. Mr. Katayama joined her. She was surprised to see her class’s head teacher Mrs. Kiuchi waiting outside. She looked relieved when she saw Yuriko come out.

  “You’re all packed, great. Let’s go.”

  Yuriko felt her teacher’s hand on her back. Mrs. Kiuchi was as old as Yuriko’s grandmother, fat and short, and sweaty as usual. She could feel the warmth of her hand through the back of her shirt.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Katayama said, bowing as they left. He stood there in the doorway until Yuriko had gone down the hall and around the corner.

  “Mrs. Kiuchi, what’s happened?” she asked as they walked. Her teacher was looking down at her feet. She was walking fast, so fast Yuriko had to trot just to keep up. Though she had her hand on Yuriko’s back the whole way, she hadn’t looked at her once.

  “Don’t worry. Your parents are waiting for you.” Her voice sounded as stilted as Mr. Katayama’s had been. “Let’s just get you home quick.”

  Someone bought it. Someone’s died. The words she had heard in the classroom echoed in her head. Who died? Dad? Mom? But didn’t Mrs. Kiuchi just say they were waiting for me—

  If her escort so far had been a National League surprise, what was waiting for her outside was Olympic. A taxi was idling right outside the school gates, and the principal and head teacher were standing by the door.

  “Miss Morisaki!” the principal called out. Yuriko wondered if he remembered the names of every student in school, even the ones who didn’t stand out. Ones like her. “Now, I don’t want you to worry. Mrs. Kiuchi will see you to your home, all right?”

  Miss Morisaki. He called me Miss Morisaki.

  Yuriko got into the taxi with her teacher. It wasn’t far to her house. She could walk the distance in ten minutes. It was crazy that they would call a taxi for that.

  Yuriko’s home was on the fifth floor of a ten-story apartment building. The building had a name written on a placard out front: Angel Castle Ishijima. It was an unassuming place, built a decade ago of gray concrete and steel. Certainly nothing like where Yuriko would imagine an angel lived, and not much like a castle, either.

  When she got out of the taxi, Mrs. Kiuchi took Yuriko by the hand. Holding hands with my teacher? That
was even more unlikely than riding in a taxi with her.

  “Mrs. Kiuchi?” Yuriko tried again, looking up at her. “What was the principal saying to you when we got into the taxi?” She had heard the principal say something like, “Maybe you can talk with them.”

  Mrs. Kiuchi blanched. “Don’t worry, just school business.” Her smile looked like a jigsaw puzzle left leaning against a wall without a frame, ready to collapse at any moment.

  “There’s nothing for you to worry about, Morisaki.”

  Yuriko was in fifth grade. She might have been a child still, but she wasn’t an infant. Wasn’t she “standing at puberty’s doorstep” or some such? She remembered the principal telling them that in one of his talks to her class recently, so she was pretty sure it was true. So why is everyone telling me there’s nothing to worry about, like I’m some kind of baby? What’s going on?

  When the elevator doors opened, Yuriko shook off her teacher’s hand and ran down the hall to her apartment. The door was unlocked.

  “Mom! I’m home!”

  She ran inside, practically leaping out of her shoes. Her mother was coming out of the living room.

  “Yuriko—”

  Mom’s okay. She’s alive. She wasn’t the one who bought it.

  Her mother ran to her and hugged her tight—Yuriko’s third surprise of the day. This was bigger than the Olympics. What would that be? The Football World Cup?

  “What’s going on, Mom?”

  Her mother was shaking. Her face was pale, her eyes watery and red.

  “I’m Kiuchi, head teacher for Yuriko’s class,” Mrs. Kiuchi introduced herself. Yuriko’s mother let go of her at last and welcomed her teacher.

  “Thank you so much. I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here. I’m so sorry about all of this—”

  Okay, first she thanked her, now she’s apologizing? I wish someone would tell me what’s going on!

  “Have you heard anything more from the school?” Mrs. Kiuchi asked.

  “No, nothing yet…”

  A single tear dropped from her mother’s cheek. “They still haven’t found him.”