"I was trying to get you to go into hiding. How was I to know the ogre would send you right out again, straight to the place I wanted you to avoid?"
Toshi paused, unmollified. "Why are the moonfolk after me?" "They hate for anyone to know what they're doing. It pierces the veil of mystery they've spent so long building up. When you stumbled onto them, and then escaped, it became more than an insult. They're looking to get even on behalf of the whole species."
The ochimusha casually inspected his fingernails. "How did Kobo die?"
"You already know. And if that's not the truth, I'll eat your sword with a spoon."
"Who can I trust?" Michiko stepped forward, drawing both Mochi and Toshi's attention. The small blue kami smiled.
"Him," he pointed at Toshi. "So long as you choose your words carefully and get a solemn promise out of him."
"Who can't she trust?"
Mochi turned back to Toshi. "Anyone who tries to take her to the Minamo Academy. There is far more going on this world than I could ever explain or you could ever grasp. There are plots within plots, conspiracies within conspiracies. Many of the wizards are close to panic now that the Kami War has spilled out of the Araba. They know what happened on the night of her birth. They will do anything to study her in the hopes of determining a way to nullify that act."
Michiko became angry. "How do you know this?"
"Because some of them work for me. I admit that."
Toshi crossed his arms. "And your boys had nothing to do with focusing the other kami on me and the princess."
"Not a thing. Recently, there were conflicting opinions among soratami and the academy about what to do with you. The majority opinion was to get you to the school and learn what they could. I feared that they would then come to agree with the forest kami-that Michiko must die to restore what was lost. I reject that option. So I acted." He sighed. "Things rarely go according to plan, even for kami."
"What of Riko-ome? Does she work for you?"
"Riko-ome is your friend, Princess, and always has been."
Toshi folded another straw kanji. "And the boy?"
"Choryu is a better student than he is a friend. If he had listened to my party's counsel and left Michiko at home, perhaps none of this would have happened."
"And what about that thing in the kakuriyo?" Toshi asked. "What owns those eyes that burned up half the spirit world?"
"Don't take everything you saw literally," Mochi said. "The spirit world doesn't actually burn."
"Answer my question. What was that thing?"
Mochi's face grew dark and somber. "Something," he said, "that must never be allowed into your world." The little blue kami locked eyes with Toshi. "Such an event would put both our realms in danger."
Toshi held Mochi's gaze and nodded. "Including you."
"Including me." The feckless grin returned, but briefly. "That's the other reason I'm helping her and trying to undo what Konda has done."
Toshi turned. "Hey, Princess."
Michiko continued to stare for a moment, but then her eyes glanced up. "Yes?"
"If half of what this guy says is true, we're both in for a rough night. And I do think only half of what he says really applies to us."
Mochi raised an eyebrow. "I'm hurt."
"What makes you think I trust you any more than I trust him?" Michiko said to Toshi. "You have caused me and my friends nothing but hardship and grief since I met you."
Toshi pulled back his sleeve and showed Michiko the triangle tattoo. "Let me put it this way," he said. "I'm an ochimusha lowlife. I do dirty jobs for hire. Right now, holding you prisoner is my job. But I'm a freelancer, and I'll drop this in a heartbeat if something better comes along." He held out his hand. "Take me into your service," he said. "Make it worth my while and I'll not only let you go, I'll protect you from everyone that's coming for you. What do you say?"
"Of course not. Half the people coming here are doing so to rescue me. And I would be a fool to bargain for my safety with you. I am no fool, Toshi."
"Hear, hear."
"Quiet, chubby." Toshi looked Michiko up and down, shaking his head. "You're wrong, Princess. Time isn't on anyone's side. The first group to get here will claim you, but there's no guarantee they'll keep you. And when the fighting starts, how will you protect yourself? The snakes had you at their mercy despite your fox friends and your water wizard."
"You were there," Michiko said. "And you fell just as quickly." She drew herself up to her full height. "The only service you could offer that would sway me would be the one to join the Towabara infantry. Serve my people for two years as a soldier if you want to earn my trust. Unless you're read to take that oath, I will wait here with Mochi."
Toshi nodded. "Not exactly what I had in mind, but not too far afield. I wasn't thinking of an oath to your nation, Michiko, but to you. Personally."
"Toshi," Mochi said quietly. "This is a bad idea."
"And when I care what you think, I'll ask. Michiko," he stepped across the cave to the princess. "He's shown us things that you believe. Maybe I believe them, too."
Toshi watched her face. Those big eyes, those stern, set lips. She was so earnest, so innocent. Her entire world kept getting pulled out from under her. Surely all she wanted now was a rock to lean on. Toshi knew she was close to agreeing with him.
He drew his short blade, placed it blade-up between her wrists, and sliced through the vines binding her. He turned, stepped away from the mouth of the cave, sheathed his sword.
"You can go now," he said. "Take your chances on your own. Or, you can stay here with me and listen to what I have planned to keep us both alive."
Toshi drew his good jitte and twirled it around his finger before catching it in his hand. "So," he said. "Are you with me?"
CHAPTER 24
Three full companies of the Daimyo's finest mounted archers thundered south on the main route to the mountains. They moved as a single, massive entity rather than a thousand different individuals, and the merchants and farmers and villagers along the way all stared in awe as the great force of men and beasts rode by.
They were half a day's ride out of the tower, which was still visible behind them as they powered their way through the countryside. None of the men looked back, but many thought of their lord and master Daimyo Konda watching them from the highest levels of his mighty castle. He would watch them until they disappeared from view, and he would wait until they came triumphantly back with Princess Michiko leading them home.
The trees along the road began to shudder and shake. Some of the riders laughed and pointed. Look, they cried, even the soil trembles to see us pass!
The rumbling continued, growing longer and stronger until it had become a full-fledged tremor. The leader of the yabusame column reined in his horse, gradually slowing. Behind him, the rest of the great mounted entity kept pace, easing their horses from a full gallop to a moderate trot. They were still under orders to travel with all due speed, but it was foolish to risk men and horses when the ground kicked back.
But the tremor continued, soon becoming a quake that forced the Daimyo's horsemen to stop completely. Century cedars tore themselves from the ground and hurled themselves across the roadway. A great sinkhole opened a hundred feet east of the road, swallowing a rice paddy and a farmer's hut. The nearby hillside split down the middle, releasing massive rolling clods of soil and rough-hewn chunks of granite.
The horses began to scream and rear, lashing out with their hooves. Dozens fell over on one side and were quickly trampled by their skittish peers. The company captains shouted and cursed at their units, struggling to be heard over the din of shattering earth and dying horses.
Above the remains of the sundered hill, a huge yellow sphere ignited. The heat and the light were so intense that it boiled the closest retainers' eyes in their sockets and burned their hard, lacquered armor to fine ash on their bodies.
Another fireball ignited across the road from the first. Trapped between two suns,
the outermost columns of soldiers and their horses withered into charred, smoking skeletons of black ash and carbonized bone. Those that survived the inferno screamed with one agonized voice.
A stentorian roar split the air, drawing blood from every human ear on the road. The two blazing orbs spun in place, and the outer layer of flames peeled back like the skin from an orange, revealing two sharp, black irises that widened vertically as they gazed down at the soldiers.
The armed men of Towabara fell quiet under the terrible gaze of those two great eyes. Their breath ceased in mid-prayer, mid-curse, or mid-dying moan. Every living thing below those eyes looked up into them in pure, devastating awe.
The titanic spirit beast roared again. A great shadow rose up past the eyes, casting the area below into almost total darkness. Reptilian fangs as big as grain silos materialized as the shadow descended, simultaneously stretching down from above and erupting up from the soil below.
The great jaws slammed shut, consuming the road and the entire valley at once. The soldiers' screams were silenced in the cacophonous blast of sundered earth and mangled stone. The entire kingdom of Towabara felt the shock, as did every kitsune village and akki warren in the wilds.
The monstrous head, never fully formed, began to fade as the last of the bordering pave-stones along the road tumbled into the gaping wound it had torn in the world. In its wake, a huge jagged canyon lay where there had once been a road. The edges of the canyon smoked and collapsed down into the pit, the land itself partially liquefied by intense heat and unimaginable force.
The ground continue to rumble menacingly for a full day and night, waves of force radiating outward from the titanic bite the spirit beast had ripped from the world.
*****
Dust shook from the stone ceiling of Toshi's cave, and he waved his arms to maintain his balance. "What was that?"
Mochi looked pale. "That was the worst news I've had all day. Luckily, it doesn't seem more pressing than what we already have on our plate."
"Fair enough."
Michiko sat cross-legged on the floor, busily folding stalks of hay into the same kanji shape. Toshi nodded, glad she had at least agreed to that much. The pile on the floor of the cave was almost big enough.
"So, we've got the princess squared away."
"You mean you tricked her into thinking she's squared away." He called out to Michiko, "When this ruffian here fails, Princess, I want you to know you can still count on me."
"Yeah, yeah. So, enough about her. Back to me," Toshi said.
Mochi sighed. "I like you, Toshi. But you're just not the most important person in the cave right now."
"I am to me." He bent, picked up a handful of straw, and started forming kanji.
Mochi watched him. "What are those?"
"Razor birds." Toshi held up a straw kanji. "Or rather, the symbol for creating a razor bird. They're mostly mindless, but they know enough to keep from cutting the person who made them." He tossed the straw figure onto the pile. "Good for when you're woefully outnumbered. They'll come in handy quite soon." Toshi started on another piece of straw.
"Hey," Mochi said. "You still don't believe I'm who I say I am, do you?"
"I don't know what you are. You've got some power. But so do I. I prefer to rely on myself."
"Power," Mochi mused. "Where do you think that power comes from?"
"Hmm? Oh, I don't know. Kappa shells? Pixies?"
"When you make a symbol and it turns something invisible or sets it on fire, what do you think causes it?"
Toshi paused. "Never thought about it much. As long as it works, I don't need to know how."
"So you deny the power of the spirit world."
"I know there's power in the spirit world. I use it all the time. I just don't think I owe anyone because of it. I figured out how to make kanji work-me. Not some spirit guide. Anyone can do what I do if they're willing to learn the symbols."
Mochi hopped up on a stone so that he was level with Toshi. "So you don't pray."
"Who would listen?"
"And there's nothing larger than yourself… nothing you value that you can't get on your own."
"You've got a great perspective from up there in the sky," Toshi said. He tossed another kanji onto the pile and stared at Mochi, their faces almost touching. "But I have to live here on the ground. When something larger and more valuable than me comes along, I'll pay it the proper respect. But it'll have to convince me first."
Mochi grinned, displaying his teeth. "Done."
"What?"
At the rear of the cave, a shadow separated from the rest of the gloom. It was darker, more solid, and it rolled forward like a dense, heavy mist.
Toshi stood and drew his blade. "What is that thing?" Michiko dropped her pile of straw and moved behind Toshi, ready to dash out of the cave if she had to.
"That," Mochi said, "is larger and more valuable than you. And it's going to convince you."
The black curtain of shadow crept forward until it was a few yards away from Toshi at the front of the cave. The center of the black sheet rose up, forming a hood around a pale, expressionless face. Her delicate bones and polished skin said "female" to Toshi, but she also looked human, and that couldn't possibly be true. The air had become so cold and alien since she arrived that he was starting to think her very presence was harmful.
Slender red horns grew from her porcelain forehead and curved down past her cheekbones on each side of her face. She continued to rise, filling out the black curtain with a humanoid upper body that trailed off into the darkness beneath the black material. She stood tall, her head brushing the cave ceiling, shrouded in the fabric of shadow. Pale, cadaverous hands appeared in the gloom around her, grasping from the tattered edges of her robes, and something huge but withered squatted behind her, a dried and emaciated giant holding aloft a banner made from the same fabric as her robes. The bearer's head, if it had one, was tucked down behind the central figure, so that only its arms and its wan, sinewy shoulders were visible.
"She has many names, many supplicants. The nezumi call to her for inspiration and for a bountiful year's looting. Boss Uramon keeps a shrine to her in the basement of her manor. The jushi make offerings to her twice a year, including a gold coin, a black ram, and the blood of a friend, freely given.
"You are a mercenary and a thief, Toshi Umezawa, a creature of the dark. So your whole life has been a celebration of her, despite the fact that you have never even acknowledged her existence. Behold, the Myojin of Night's Reach. This spirit is larger than you, Toshi, this kami holds you in her sway. Deny her if you can. But it will be better for all of us if you embrace her.
"Fall to your knees, ochimusha, and solemnly ask her for whatever you desire most. Share in her gifts. Thrive under her protection. There is no other way for you to survive the night."
The dire spirit made no sound, save for a distant, hollow moaning that seemed to come from behind her. Toshi was unable to tear his gaze away from that porcelain face, even as sweat beaded on his brow and ran into his open eyes.
"Ochimusha!" The voice from without was sharp and high-pitched, crackling with anger. "Send Michiko out now. We will not ask again."
"Lady Pearl-Ear?" Michiko turned, but Mochi caught her by the arm before she could step from the cave.
"It's about to become very dangerous out there, Princess, one way or the other. You should stay put for the time being."
Mochi turned to Toshi. "It has begun," he said. He extended one arm outside the cave and the other back in, toward the dark figure. "The foxes are here, and the snakes are coming. Can you defeat them all, or will you openly call on the power you've been assuming was your own?"
Toshi's paralysis finally broke. He jerked his head from Michiko to Mochi to the frightening figure at the rear of the cave.
The crescent moon kami planted his hands on his hips, smiling confidently. He tilted his head and stared hard at Toshi.
CHAPTER 25
"Choose."
They found Michiko's trail just before the ground shuddered, rolling underfoot like a ship on rough water.
They rode out the quake and then stood together, facing a single point at their feet. Michiko's trail started here, clear and strong, as if she had stepped straight from the sky to this patch of hilly, forested ground.
The kitsune said nothing. The brothers whined a bit in anticipation. Pearl-Ear growled, and Sharp-Ear responded. The ochimusha's scent was here, too.
She lifted her head and listened. Riko and Choryu were close behind, but she doubted her ability to keep the pack in check, even if she had the interest.
Pearl-Ear growled again, and the foxes all lit out at once, tearing through the rolling meadows as they followed Michiko's trail. In this, Pearl-Ear matched the speed and stamina of the males, even outdistancing them by a few strides.
She was the first to see the cave, and once more her intellect overrode her instinct. They must not charge in and try to battle Toshi in close quarters. She wanted to punish the ochimusha for what he had put them through, but Michiko was the real reason for their journeys. As always, she came first.
Pearl-Ear waved the others down. Through a soft series of grunts and gestures, she sent Dawn-Tail and Blade-Tail around either side of the cave to search for another access point. If they could get in behind the thug, they could take him down in the blink of an eye. More important, she didn't want to leave him an escape route by committing all their efforts to the front.
The brothers soon signaled her from the far side of the cave. There was no way out save the main entrance. Pearl-Ear waved them back to her and hunkered down with Sharp-Ear and Frost-Tail while she waited.
"We give him one chance," she said. "He's desperate, but he's not stupid. He'll try to bargain his way out."
Frost-Tail growled.
"Of course not. We just want to get him away from Michiko. I will get him talking. I will agree to his demands. And when we see an opening, we split them apart. I'll take Michiko away. You all subdue the ochimusha."
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