by Lian Hearn
One warm, sultry evening he went deep into the forest and came upon a waterfall that fell white in the twilight into an opaque black pool in which was reflected the thin sickle of the new moon. Hot and restless, he took off his clothes, laid them on a rock with the brocade bag that held the mask, and plunged into the water. When he surfaced, shaking drops from his eyes, he saw some creature moving on the bank. He thought it was a deer coming to drink, but then he saw the long black hair and the pale face and realized it was a woman.
Lady Tora stood where he had left his clothes. She bent down and took the mask from the bag. She beckoned to him. He came naked out of the water, his skin wet and cool. She placed the mask on his face and kissed the cinnabar-colored lips. Beyond the rocks was a mossy bank and here they lay down together.
She was without a doubt the same woman who had come to him in the sorcerer’s hut. She was using him for some purpose of her own, just as the sorcerer had used him to create the mask, but, as then, he had no will to resist. Skillfully she led him into the Great Bliss and together they heard the Lion’s Roar. A sudden gust of wind drove spray over them, soaking them.
Then Tora took the mask off and kissed the real lips, the real eyes. “Now you must lie with no one, woman or man, until you wed the one who is meant for you.”
“Will I never lie with you again?”
“No, our work together is finished.”
She stroked his face tenderly as though he were her child.
He was so unused to affection, he felt near tears.
“That was part of my mission, which one day you will understand,” she said. “And it was the final ritual of the mask. Love is bound into its creation but so is lust, the force that drives the world to re-create itself, unconstrained by human rules.”
“I understand nothing,” he said.
“Use the mask carefully—it will bring you wisdom, but it will also lead you into danger. Practice abstinence and all the other disciplines our friend taught you in the forest. Subdue your body and mind so that when you meet her you will recognize her.”
“Who is she?”
She did not answer him but told him to bathe himself again. The water was like ice on his body. When he came out she was gone.
* * *
The next morning just after daybreak Lady Tora rode out with Akuzenji and his men. She gave Shikanoko no sign of recognition, no glance, no smile. It was as if there were some other realm in which their meetings took place far removed from the conventions and relations of the everyday world. He wondered what Akuzenji’s reaction would be if he knew; he was a violent man and Shikanoko had already seen the punishments he handed out for minor disobedience: an eye torn out, a hand amputated, brandings …
He shivered and kicked the brown mare he was riding. She still lagged behind the others. She was the oldest and slowest horse in the group, given to him because he was the newest arrival and the youngest. There was something about him that unsettled her, as horses were often alarmed by deer, and she tried many ways to rid herself of him, rubbing his legs against posts or walls, carrying him under low-hanging branches, taking him by surprise by shying or bucking. Her name was Risu. He had lost count of the number of times he had fallen off, a source of endless entertainment to the other men.
In her contrary way Risu had formed a bond of affection with her previous rider, a lanky man called Gozaemon, and whickered after him as he cantered ahead on the sturdy dark bay horse to which he had been promoted. Now she swung her head back and tried to bite Shika’s foot.
Akuzenji was leading his men down the forest-covered slope toward the trail through the valley where Lord Kiyoyori rode every morning. The rest of the group were some way ahead, out of sight. Risu lifted her head and neighed as Gozaemon came trotting back.
“Hurry up,” he said. “Lord Akuzenji wants you to kill someone.” He grabbed Risu’s rein and led her alongside his horse. She moved faster than she had all morning.
Akuzenji and his men had concealed themselves in a grove of bamboo on a rocky outcrop above the trail that ran between the forest and the cultivated fields. The rice had been cut and was hanging in sheaves to dry. Farmers were already at work, spreading manure and mulch. Akuzenji beckoned to Shika and said, “Get off your horse and take up position. I want you to shoot him in the neck or the chest. Don’t hit his head whatever you do.”
They could hear the sound of horses approaching. At the same time Shika became aware of a woman calling in the distance. She was running across the rice field, shouting and waving both arms. She looked awkward, almost comical, a noblewoman not used to running, her layered robes tangling round her legs. She slipped and fell sprawling into the manure.
Why was she running? He frowned, trying to work out what was going on.
The riders, a small group, not wearing armor, swept into view, the black stallion in the lead.
“Now,” Akuzenji breathed. “Shoot him!”
“Shoot who?”
“The Kuromori lord! On the black!”
“That is not the Kuromori lord,” Shika said, lowering his bow slightly. “It’s his horse, but it’s not him.” It was the man he called Neversmile.
“Shoot!” Akuzenji screamed in his ear.
Shika shrugged and obeyed. The arrow slammed into the unprotected neck. The blood sprayed in an arc of scarlet glistening in the first rays of sunlight. Dust rose in golden motes as the horse reared and the man fell.
The other riders halted and fell back as the bandits surged forward, Akuzenji in the lead. He had slid from his horse, seized the topknot of the fallen man with a yell of triumph, and was in the act of severing the head when there came a pounding of hooves, the shouting of men, and a host of armed warriors appeared. At their head was Lord Kiyoyori.
5
KIYOYORI
Kiyoyori was possessed by both rage and exhilaration as he surveyed the kneeling prisoners. All that day they had been held in the riding ground between the stables and the residence, under a chill wind, for the weather had changed suddenly, bringing the first intimation of winter.
The rage was against the disloyalty of his retainer, Enryo, who had taken his horse and died in his place. The exhilaration was for his survival, for the stallion’s survival, for the painful deaths already suffered by some of those who had wanted his, and for the imminent execution of the rest.
Enryo’s wife had revealed everything before she died: Akuzenji’s scheme to take Kiyoyori’s head, letters between his brother, Masachika, and Enryo, their desire to see Akuzenji’s plan succeed and to seize the opportunity to regain the estate. His rage extended to his own wife, whom he had not yet questioned though she had been waiting for him, pale but dry-eyed, when he returned from the skirmish. She had expressed appropriate amazement at the audacity of the attack and equally suitable relief at her husband’s survival, yet he felt she was lying. Of course it was not her fault that two old men had agreed to trade her between two brothers, but since she obviously had no deep feelings for him it was not unreasonable to suspect she might still harbor some for Masachika. She stood to benefit as much as anyone from Kiyoyori’s death.
He thought for the thousandth time of his dead wife. If only Tsuki had lived!
If I had, you would not own Matsutani—would you really be willing to pay such a price?
He heard her teasing laugh and, looking across the riding ground, saw her standing in the front row among the prisoners. Surely it was her? The long black hair reaching to the ground, the slender form … he would recognize them anywhere even after eight years.
“I am sorry, lord,” one of his men, Hachii Sadaike, said at his side. “She refuses to kneel; she has stood like that all day.”
Oh, my beloved! You must be cold. One day in the frost and eight years in the grave.
“Lord Kiyoyori?” Sadaike said.
He came back to his senses. “Who is she?”
“A woman who rode with the bandits.”
He looked at her and saw she
was not Tsuki, though there was a resemblance. While he wondered at it, their eyes met. Once he had been close to a lightning strike and had felt all his hair stand on end. He experienced the same jolt now.
The woman bowed her head and fell to her knees before him. She would kneel for no one else but she would for him. An almost uncontrollable passion seized him, a desire stronger than he had ever known. He would have the whole band executed at once and then he would have her brought to him.
He had thought to devise some special punishment for Akuzenji, boiling him alive or sawing his head off slowly, to dissuade anyone else from daring to attack the Kuromori lord, but now his impatience would brook no delay. He was about to order Sadaike to take the woman aside and remove the heads of the rest, when the sky darkened and a shadow loomed over the riding ground. It swooped low over Kiyoyori’s head and then rose to sit on the gable of the roof behind him. As he spun around to look at it, it began to call in a voice so ugly that everyone whose hands were not tied behind their backs immediately covered their ears.
Kiyoyori called for archers to shoot it down and his best bowmen came forward, eager to compete and win the lord’s favor, but it was obviously an evil creature with supernatural powers, for their eyes were dazzled by the sun and their arrows clattered uselessly on the tiles. It was hard to perceive clearly: one moment it seemed dense and black, the next Kiyoyori thought he saw golden eyes like a monkey’s above the needle-sharp beak. Its tail was long and sinuous like a snake and its legs were striped with gold, reflecting its eyes. It mocked them in a voice that was close to human, but inhuman, filling their souls with dread.
“Go to Master Sesshin,” Kiyoyori instructed one of his pages. “Ask him what this creature means. Is it a sign that I must spare Akuzenji’s life?”
He had spoken quietly, but the woman heard him.
“Do not send for the master,” she said. “The bird has nothing to do with Akuzenji. Let Shikanoko kill it now at once.”
Her voice thrilled him. He made a sign that she should approach him. “Who is Shikanoko?”
The woman walked toward him, then turned and called, “Shikanoko!”
Oh that she would call me like that! She will! She will!
“It was he who shot your decoy,” she said to Kiyoyori.
“He would have killed me! I should put a bow in his hands now?”
“He spared your horse,” she said gravely. “He is a good marksman.”
“I suppose I cannot argue with that,” Kiyoyori said, elation sweeping through him at her proximity.
The boy came forward, a young man on the cusp of adulthood. Fairly tall, thin, brown-skinned, he moved, despite his cramped limbs, with spare grace, like an animal. Kiyoyori studied him with narrowed eyes. He did not look like a bandit. He was surely a warrior’s son; perhaps he had been kidnapped. If he could kill the bird he would be spared and Kiyoyori would find out who he was and restore him to his family or take him into his service. If he failed he would die along with the rest of them, which would serve him right for keeping such bad company.
“Give him his bow and arrows,” he ordered.
He could tell his men did not like this command, nor did they relish the likelihood of being shown up by a stripling. There was a short delay while the bow and quiver were located among the piles of weapons that had been taken from the bandits and then they waited for Shikanoko to restring the bow. The bird called gratingly all the while, swinging its head from side to side and peering down with golden eyes, seeming to laugh in greater derision as Shikanoko drew the bow back, squinting against the sun. He lowered it as if the mocking intimidated him.
He will die tonight, Kiyoyori vowed.
Shikanoko whispered in the woman’s ear.
“Something else was taken from him,” she said to Kiyoyori. “It must be returned to him before he can shoot. A seven-layered brocade bag containing a mask.”
“Find it,” Kiyoyori commanded, barely able to control his impatience.
One of his men produced the bag a little shamefacedly.
The boy received it without speaking, his demeanor relaxing noticeably as he felt the contents of the bag.
“Tell him to show me what’s inside,” Kiyoyori said to the woman. He liked the idea of speaking through her as though the boy were a barbarian who needed an interpreter, as though he bound both of them closer to him by this means.
She said, “Show the lord.”
Shikanoko drew out the mask and held it in both hands toward Kiyoyori, who gasped without meaning to at the almost living power of the face, the dark lashes over the eye sockets, the reddish lips and tongue. He saw the brainpan from which it had been formed and was conscious suddenly of his own skull, so hard yet so fragile. The mask seemed to float between woman and boy like an infant. He realized they had both taken part in its creation and jealousy flooded through him. The woman’s eyes met his and he knew it was for this that Akuzenji had wanted his head, to turn it into a magic object of power.
He gestured upward with his head and Shika put the mask away, giving the bag to the woman to hold. The bird had fallen silent, peering down at them. Now it launched itself into flight, but it was too late. The arrow sped true from the bow, humming as it went. Its sound merged into the bird’s cry of despair as it pierced the heart. Blood burst from the wound, falling in sizzling drops. Then the creature plunged headfirst to the ground.
“Bring it to Master Sesshin,” Kiyoyori said. “He will know what it is.”
* * *
Even the most hardened warriors were reluctant to touch it, so Shikanoko, after drawing out the arrow and returning it to his quiver, wrapped it in the woman’s shawl and carried it in both hands into the residence. Kiyoyori led the way to Sesshin’s room. It was the first time he had been in it since the move to Matsutani, and the differing scents of old books, ink, lamp oil, and some sort of incense made his senses reel even more.
“It is a werehawk,” Sesshin said, after inspecting it carefully. “How strange that it should come here now.”
“What does it mean?” Kiyoyori demanded.
“I shall have to practice some divination to find out.” The old scholar looked slightly perturbed. “What a mysterious coincidence of events. I knew something was awry, but I thought it affected only you. Now I fear there are wider forces converging, with far-reaching consequences.”
He fell silent, gazing on the dead bird.
Kiyoyori felt suddenly weary. It seemed like days ago that he had returned for his whip. He wanted above all to lie down with this woman and wipe out the reproaches of the dead.
From outside came the sound of heads falling one by one as the bandits were executed. Most of them were resigned to their fate, not unexpected given their calling, and died quietly, some speaking the name of the Enlightened One, but a few struggled and cursed, wept and pleaded. It was a pitiful sound.
Shikanoko quivered at each sword blow, tears in his eyes. The woman remained calm, watching Sesshin carefully.
A great yell of defiance that could only be Akuzenji echoed like a thunderbolt. Shikanoko gasped as if he were about to sob.
“Lord Kiyoyori may leave now,” the old man said. “And the woman had better take this boy away before he faints.” His tone was dismissive and he hardly looked at Shika, continuing to stare at the dead werehawk, a frown creasing his brow.
“We will stay with you,” said the woman.
Kiyoyori and Sesshin spoke together. “That will not be necessary.”
“I think you will find it is,” she replied. “Please leave, lord.” She looked from one to the other, though only Kiyoyori returned her gaze. She said no more, just waited calmly for him to obey her.
He said, “But you will come to me later? We will be together?”
“I promise we will,” she said.
6
SHIKANOKO
After the lord left, Sesshin looked from the dead bird to Lady Tora and then to Shikanoko.
“I don’t under
stand why you are here. I usually conduct my divinations in private. They involve secrets that only the initiated are permitted to see.”
“We have something that will save you some time,” Lady Tora said. “Shikanoko is an initiate. And I have taken part in rituals far more esoteric and dangerous than anything you can imagine, even though you are a great scholar and magician. Shikanoko, give the master the mask.”
He handed it over, suddenly reluctant to expose Shisoku’s creation to the scrutiny of another sorcerer, but Sesshin took it from the bag with reverent hands and studied it intently. “What a wonderful thing! Who made it?”
Lady Tora said, “The mountain sorcerer Shisoku. It was made for Shikanoko because he is the son of the stag.”
Sesshin looked swiftly at Shikanoko as if seeing him for the first time. There was a flash of something—surprise, recognition. The old man shook his head.
“Well, well,” he said quietly. “Let him put it on.”
Shika recalled Shisoku’s instructions and allowed the movements of the deer dance to flow through him. The others watched intently. He could still see them in the room. He was aware of his own figure, wearing the mask, looking through its eyes. The room took on the dappled light and the rich leafy smell of the forest. And then he was the stag stepping lightly between the trees, ears pricked, nostrils flared. Hawks flew overhead, shrieking loudly. The stag bounded after them. Each bound covered miles.