by Jon F. Merz
“Then what?”
“Then we will accompany you to the start of your test.”
Jimmy frowned. “Test?"
“Indeed. In order to obtain the scrolls for your family, you must undergo a test to determine if you are truly the one we have waited for."
Jimmy felt a wave of anxiety wash over him. What would the test entail? Would he be able to pass it? But then he took a breath and steeled himself. If he had to prove he was really part of the Matsuda-ryu, then he'd do it. And make them all proud.
Jimmy looked at Siben. “Where will you be when I'm done eating?”
“I will be exactly where you will need to be.”
And then Siben turned and vanished.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“You have eaten?”
Jimmy nodded. “No idea what it was, but it tasted good. And my headache’s gone, just like you said it would be.”
“Excellent.” Siben looked at him again. “And so now you are ready to go and get the scrolls.”
Jimmy chewed his lip as another wave of fear rolled over him. Was he? Did he really care about these things? What was to stop him from just leaving the temple and going off on his own? Maybe he could catch up with Mitch. If he explained the whole Kotogawa thing to Mitch, maybe he could help.
Then again, Kotogawa had already proven himself capable of reaching anywhere around the world to find Jimmy. If he was determined to kill Jimmy, then there probably wasn’t much he could do to protect himself. And the things that Vanessa had shown him had already saved his life.
Besides, he had to admit that he was having more fun in the past two weeks than he had in his entire life.
“Jimmy.”
He snapped back and looked at Siben. “I’m ready.”
“You are conflicted,” said Siben. “But even so, you must enter the path before you. Once inside this tunnel, you will come to a fork. One path will lead you to the thing you seek. The other will lead you back out of the temple to the outside world. From there, you will be able to walk away if you so desire.”
Jimmy frowned. If he chose wrong, then there’d be no shot at getting the scrolls. “How will I know which path to choose?”
“Trust yourself,” said Siben. “And if you do that utterly and without reservation, then you will find your way to the goal you seek." He smiled. "Whichever goal that may be.”
Ahead of Jimmy stood a single unremarkable door. Two torches hung in brackets on either side. Two more of Siben’s monks stood at either side ready to open it.
Jimmy nodded. “All right. I’m ready.”
Siben bowed once. “It is entirely possible that we will never see each other again, Jimmy Dolan. In which case I wish you the very best of luck on whatever path may lay before you.”
“Thank you, Siben. And thank you for caring for me when I fell.”
Siben nodded at the two monks who then opened the door. Jimmy felt a cool blast of air hit him in the face. The torches flickered but then sprang back to life as the air pressure equalized in the room.
Jimmy stepped inside.
Siben handed him a torch, his backpack, and his hanbo. “Just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Legend says that the scrolls will only allow themselves to be possessed by the rightful heir to the Matsuda-ryu lineage.” His eyes wrinkled. “I hope that person is you, Jimmy. Farewell.”
The door slammed shut and Jimmy found himself alone in the corridor. The stonewalls closed in on him and he walked forward for about fifty feet.
What had Siben meant by that? Rightful heir? Was that what Jimmy was? Was that why Kotogawa wanted him dead so badly? Without Jimmy around, the family would die out.
Extinct.
Maybe that was why Vanessa and Merlin and even Hideaki couldn’t do this task. Maybe it was why no one had been able to get the scrolls before. Maybe it was because Jimmy hadn’t been born yet.
He thought back to Khampa in Katmandu. It made sense now. Jimmy had to do this task because no one else could do it and hope to succeed.
But if that was so, then how could Kotogawa hope to get his hands on the scrolls? If they wouldn’t let themselves be possessed except by the Matsuda-ryu, how was it that Siben and his monks had them?
Jimmy sighed. More questions that he wanted answers to. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried reaching out to Goro.
Are you there, Goro-sama?
He got no response. Maybe the rock walls wouldn’t permit any telepathic waves through. He smirked. Telepathy. Whatever.
He continued down the corridor and thought about the path before him. He could go after the scrolls, find them, and return them to the family…what? Did they have a castle or a house somewhere?
Or he could take off and try his fate without anyone knowing he’d gone. Maybe they’d be convinced he’d perished inside the mountain somewhere. Maybe Kotogawa would even stop looking for him.
Maybe.
The torch illuminated the entire hallway and now Jimmy could see that about twenty feet further on, the corridor ended. Two options branched off. One left. One right.
What had Siben told him? That one would take him to the goal he sought and the other would lead him outside.
The choice he made would mean he would take one corridor or the other.
But in order to decide which, he had to look inside and trust himself.
Trust myself.
Jimmy frowned. He’d been so busy trusting everyone else these past few weeks, finding the courage to believe in himself felt weird.
What do I want, he wondered.
Heir to the Matsuda-ryu.
What did that even mean? Was he like some sort of prince or something? Was he royalty? Would he be rich and famous?
He’d never heard of the Matsuda-ryu before, but then that didn’t surprise him. Ninja were supposed to live their lives in secret, weren't they? And besides, Jimmy hadn’t heard of much outside the walls of the orphanage.
He reached the end of the corridor.
Left.
Right.
His torch flickered and went out, plunging Jimmy into darkness.
“Oh great.”
His voice echoed off the walls in front of him and died on either side. He thought of Derek and Jamal and how they would have considered this thing one whole giant video game. They would have loved every moment of this. All the chases, the danger, the fighting, it was like being inside a game that had real world consequences.
But they were dead now.
And Kotogawa had killed them.
Jimmy felt his heart pound in his chest and took a single deep breath.
Turned.
Walked straight ahead-
And nearly fell right into a pit. If he hadn’t felt the breath of air on his face that felt different from the rest of the corridor, he would have stepped off the lip and vanished forever.
As it was, he had to jerk himself back and toppled backward on to his butt. Crawling on his hands and knees, he felt his way ahead until he found the opening. Then he reached across with his hanbo and figured out that the opening was only about three feet across.
He could jump it.
Blind.
Jimmy took a breath, stood up and then jumped across. His feet touched down and he fell forward, unused to the sensation of jumping without a visual reference to help his body know when it was about to land. Instead, he tucked and rolled forward, his body cushioning the blow.
Jimmy came to his feet and then heard a strange whizzing sound.
Wha-?
But then he dropped to the ground again and felt the air shiver as what sounded like metallic bees buzzed past his head. He heard them strike a far wall and clatter to the ground, bounce a few times and then go silent.
Jimmy reached out with his hand and felt along the ground until he felt something slice into his finger. "Ow!"
He plucked the small piece of metal up and found it was shaped much like the curved senban shuriken he'd seen on t
he family crest. He hefted the throwing star and slid it into his pocket, before sucking at the tip of his finger the shuriken had sliced open. What would have happened if he hadn't ducked?
He frowned. The throwing stars would have killed me.
Booby-traps.
Siben hadn't mentioned any of those. Neither had Khampa.
Have I chosen the wrong path?
He glanced back at the way he'd come. He could always go back, couldn't he? Siben hadn't said anything about that.
But as if to answer his question, Jimmy heard a terrible rumbling and felt the corridor shake from side to side. Behind him, the way he'd come, he saw a whole portion of the wall slide out, sealing the tunnel automatically.
"So much for going back," he said spitting out the bits of stone dust that now clogged the air. Jimmy coughed once and then turned back to the only way he could now go: forward.
Ahead of him, Jimmy thought he could see a flickering light, bouncing off a curve in the tunnel. As he came around the corner, a single torch illuminated the area. He saw that the ground before him fell away on either side, leaving a thin walkway that extended toward another part of the tunnel roughly thirty feet away. The space on either side of the walkway seemed to vanish into a black void. One wrong step and Jimmy would fall into that gaping darkness and never be seen again.
"Great."
Crouching down, he saw the walkway was perhaps four inches wide. This is what he would have to walk across in order to reach the next part of the tunnel.
One quick look told him it would be too far to try to jump across. And there didn't seem to be any handholds on the smooth walls that would help him climb over.
He'd have to walk it.
And trust himself.
Keeping the hanbo level in both hands, Jimmy took a deep breath, exhaled and then walked purposefully across the tiny walkway, keeping his hammering heart calm by continuing to breathe and focus on the next part of the tunnel ahead of him.
I can do this.
Just as he reached the halfway point, the walkway behind him started to crumble and fall part. Jimmy glanced back, saw that the walkway beneath his feet would soon fall apart as well, and then turned back, increasing his speed.
He barely reached the other side in time.
Behind him, the tunnel was nothing but an open black void. Even the torchlight could not penetrate its depths. Worse, the torch failed to shed any light on this new tunnel section. Ahead of him, everything was pitch black again.
Jimmy took a deep breath and then turned back into the new section of tunnel. He walked on and twenty paces further on, he ran into a dead end.
“Now what?”
He backed up and ran his hands all over the wall looking for a path that he had somehow missed in the dark. But he found nothing. As far as he could tell in the dark, this tunnel did not have an opening to the scrolls.
Maybe he’d chosen wrong.
Maybe he wasn’t supposed to find the scrolls. Maybe this entire thing was a trap Kotogawa had constructed to capture him. Even now, the evil mastermind might be planning some horrible death for Jimmy.
A brief flutter of panic swelled in his stomach, but then Jimmy shook his head. Why go through all that trouble? If this was a grand plan by Kotogawa, he could have already killed Jimmy in many ways.
No, it was legitimate.
And Jimmy had to figure this out.
He sat down on the tunnel floor and ran his hands over the shaft of the hanbo. Feeling the hard wood reassured him of his training. The hanbo had served him well in fights and its presence made him feel good about himself.
The scrolls could not be taken by anyone but the rightful heir to the Matsuda-ryu. What did that mean? Apart from the obvious?
Jimmy stood and ran his hands over the brick wall in front of him again. His fingers scrabbled over the stone, trying to discern something out of the ordinary.
On his fourth time going over the stones, he thought he found something. A small knob of stone stood out from the relatively smooth surface in front of him.
Could that be something?
He wanted to discount it, but he could find nothing else. And hope made him believe that there had to be something more here.
Jimmy left one hand on the knobby stone and then ran his other hand down to his right.
There.
Another protrusion that was set higher than the rest of the surrounding stone.
Two points.
Were there more?
Jimmy ran his other hand down to the same position on the opposite side and found a third protrusion.
Three points.
And then he found a fourth one at the bottom.
He stepped back and tried to visualize the image in his mind’s eye. Four points that he had found, but how did they open up the tunnel to him again?
Four points.
He tried pressing on one of them but it didn’t budge.
After a few moments, he slumped down next to the wall and sighed. This was going to be harder than he thought.
Four outcroppings of rock didn’t mean much on their own, so what was it that made them special?
Siben words came back to him. “The scrolls will only allow themselves to be possessed by the rightful heir to the Matsuda-ryu…”
But what did that mean?
If it’s me, then whatever is it work here should know that I’m here. The tunnel should open.
What was it waiting for?
He closed his eyes and thought about everything he’d learned in the past few weeks. His life was far different now than when he’d started. He remembered it all, every moment.
But especially when he’d finally met his grandfather Goro.
Goro Matsuda.
Jimmy was the rightful heir to the Matsuda-ryu. That was why he was here. That was why Goro had been talking to him. He’d been trying to prepare him all along for this mission.
And now Jimmy was here.
And failing.
What was it that he was missing?
The four points.
Compass points?
No…
Jimmy leaped to his feet.
“The shuriken!”
He reached out and found the top point and then traced his hand down to the right, then from there down to the bottom and then up to the left and finally he brought his hand back to the topmost point where he’d started.
Open, thought Jimmy.
He heard a crack and then saw a thin sliver of light trace around the rock in the exact form he’d just run his hands.
And in the darkness, Jimmy saw the senban shuriken of the Matsuda-ryu ninja appear before his eyes.
The wall drew in on itself and the portal opened.
Beyond the opening he could see a raised dais in front of him. Torches blazed in braziers casting light and shadow about the chamber.
And on the dais sat the Lost Scrolls of Fudo Shin.
Chapter Thirty-Six
There were three scrolls sitting in a simple pile, bound by a band of red silk. They were small and as he approached, Jimmy saw what looked like an oiled skin pouch obviously meant to carry the scrolls in. Jimmy couldn’t see a single speck of dust anywhere close by. In fact, the entire chamber seemed to be utterly clean, as if there’d been nothing disturbing the air for years. Apart from the simple stone dais, there was nothing else to see.
Jimmy stood over the scrolls and examined them from every angle. What if they were booby-trapped? He smirked. He definitely thought about things in a different way now that he’d been training with Vanessa and exposed to the strategies of the Matsuda-ryu.
He lay one hand on the scrolls and picked them up, surprised at how light they seemed. If there were secrets contained within them, shouldn’t he open them now and read the scrolls?
That wouldn’t work, he thought. They were probably written in some archaic or coded form of Japanese, just like the piece of paper that Hanzo had given them. No, the right place for the scrolls was
back with Goro. He would know what to do with them.
Jimmy tucked the scrolls into the oiled skin pouch, then slid that into his jacket and knelt to grab his hanbo. It was time to get out of here.
But just as he was about to turn, the portal behind him closed. As it did, another portal opened at the opposite wall. Jimmy glanced back and then strode to the new portal and followed it through.
The corridor was bright with flickering torches. The path sloped up gradually and the air grew colder. Jimmy wondered if he was headed to the outside of the mountain.
He used the hanbo to aid him as he walked and then the path jumped up at a sharper angle. Jimmy had to lean forward in order to power up the slope.
And then he saw a crack of daylight.
His breath appeared in front of his face. It was cold all of a sudden and he figured he must have just emerged from warmth of the geothermal updrafts that Siben had spoken about.
He aimed himself for the daylight and saw that it was a fissure running up through a massive boulder. Jimmy edged his body into it, felt the rock close in on him from all sides, but kept squeezing his way through. With a final push, he fell out of the mountain and into the knee-deep snow beyond.
Bright sunshine made him wince and the surrounding area was completely white. He felt blind and blinked his eyes furiously to acclimate himself. But Jimmy smiled. “I made it.”
“Congratulations.”
He turned and saw a Japanese man standing there. He was unlike anyone he’d ever seen before. A mop of jet-black hair topped an otherwise hideous face, disfigured by the lines of several intersecting scars. The skin had been drawn taut over the bones in his face and in the searing sunlight, looked almost translucent. Jimmy could see a network of veins running like roads just underneath the skin. His yellowed teeth gave him the appearance of a monster.
“You must be Jimmy Dolan.”
Jimmy gripped his hanbo tighter, feeling his heart thunder in his chest. “And you must be Kotogawa.”
Kotogawa smiled. “Indeed. I see that our paths have brought us together at long last.”
The scene confronting Jimmy was not a good one. Along with Kotogawa, there were about a dozen men spread out on the side of the mountain, each of them carrying an assortment of swords and metal staves. And he frowned even more when he saw that Merlin, Vanessa, and Hideaki were kneeling in the snow with their hands on their heads.