It soon became apparent that Jaku would have bested the Shonto guard. He was faster than all the previous fighters Shuyun had faced, much faster. And he thought as quickly, changing an attack in mid-strike—moving with the perfect balance of a cat. Still, Shuyun turned all blows aside, all kicks. And Jaku kept his distance, dancing away after each onslaught. He had obviously studied Shuyun in the ring and purposely drew the contest out, hoping the monk would make a mistake. No one should test his patience against that of a Botahist monk.
Jaku was the one to err in the end, suddenly finding himself in a corner. But he would not surrender and wildly fought to gain an advantage, desperately using every bit of skill and strategy known to him. In the midst of a complex series of punches and kicks, Shuyun deflected a blow, and even as he did, he knew that something had happened, something unique. There had been no feeling, no touch. It was almost as though he had deflected the punch with chi alone!
And Jaku faltered. Only one with an altered time sense could have perceived it, so quickly did it pass, but Shuyun did not fail to mark it. The Black Tiger had faltered!
Surprise paralyzed Shuyun for a split second, and in that time his opponent recovered. The contest did not last long after that. Jaku’s motivation seemed to have abandoned him.
Shuyun knew he had won a victory for his Order and hoped that it would restore respect for the monks of his faith as it was intended to do. He felt no personal pride in this, as was only proper. But his training could not stop him from feeling terrible doubts. What had happened in the ring with Jaku Katta?
It was not till several days later that Shuyun brought up the subject with Sotura. “Is it possible to deflect a blow with chi alone—without making contact with the body?”
The chi quan instructor had considered for a moment, as though the question was only of theoretical interest. “I do not know if it is possible. No such incident has been recorded, not even by the Perfect Master. This would seem to make it unlikely, Shuyun-sum. It is a good question for meditation, however.”
Shuyun realized his perceptions must have been colored by the intensity of the moment. His teacher would certainly have noticed anything unusual.
Yet after this journey, Shuyun noticed that Sotura’s attitude toward him had changed. He was still a junior Initiate, but he was treated differently somehow, as though he had earned greater respect. Shuyun found this both gratifying and, at the same time, unsettling.
* * *
A flock of water birds skittered away from the ship’s bow, their sleep interrupted by the passing behemoth. Shuyun turned his mind from his memories, which he found endangered his sense of humility, and watched the clouds pass in front of the moon.
He voyaged again toward the Empire, this time to serve the man that Brother Satake had described as “…endlessly complex, as full of possibilities as the third move of the game of gii.” The description would have applied to any number of Shonto lords back into antiquity when the House had first emerged as the Sashei-no Hontto. But by the time the Mibuki Dynasty had united the Seven Kingdoms the Sashei-no Hontto had become the Shonto, and they had begun what would become one of their consistent practices—they had married their first daughter to the heir of the Mibuki Emperor.
Hakata the Wise had been an advisor to the fourth heir of the Shonto House and had dedicated his great work, The Analects, to his Shonto liege-lord. The history of the Shonto continued in the same vein through all the years. Other Houses appeared, flowered and then wilted, often within a single season, but the Shonto endured. Certainly they had times when they seemed to be in disfavor with the gods, but these were short-lived and the House invariably emerged, stronger and richer than before. Of the Great Houses of Wa, very few exhibited such resilience.
The words of the Mori poetess, Nikko, came to him:
The dew becomes frost
On frightened leaves,
And the seasons turn
Like a scroll
In the hands of the Shonto.
Lord Shonto Motoru was presently without a wife, though he did maintain consorts, but by and large, the Lady Nishima had taken over the duties her mother had once so ably fulfilled. The Shonto household continued to run smoothly and their social events were still noted for their elegance and imagination.
A cloud obscured the moon from Shuyun’s view and the wind seemed to ease a little. The island of Konojii was not far off and fear of the pirates that infested the coastline would begin the next morning and would not abate until the ship rounded Cape Ujii and entered the Coastal Sea.
From below, a woman emerged, her steps silent on the wooden deck. She was dressed in the manner of the women of the middle rank, yet she had a dignity and bearing that often comes to those who have suffered great loss or hardship and survived. Given a change of dress and a smile that appeared more easily, she could have been the wife of a minor lord. But her smile had been forgotten and she had been the spouse of Kogami Norimasa for seventeen years.
The match had been made when his future had looked very bright indeed. He, the scholar who had just passed the Imperial Examination, and she, the daughter of a minor general—that gentleman, at least, had seen the rightness of Kogami’s career even if his own father could not. They had all had futures then, when the Hanama ruled, when the Interim Wars and the Great Plague were just muddled riddles that, only later, the soothsayers would claim were clear omens.
“Nori-sum?” she said as she approached her husband in the moonlight.
“How is she, Shikibu-sum? Has the priest eased her pain?”
“He has given her a potion that has made her drowsy.” She reached out and found her husband’s hand in the dark. Her voice quavered. “I wish we had asked the monk to see her. She is very ill. I have seen this before. I don’t believe this is her spirit out of balance with her body. This pain and swelling on the side of her abdomen, it is poison collecting, I’m sure. I’m afraid for our daughter.”
Kogami felt a growing sense of alarm. Ashigaru had assured him it was only a sickness of the sea and Kogami had believed that—he had needed to believe it. But what if the priest was wrong? What if this was poison collecting, as his wife said, and his daughter needed more help than this Tomsoian priest could give?
Ashigaru was the Emperor’s man, as was Kogami Norimasa. And the monk, if not the Emperor’s enemy, was at least perceived as a threat—though in some way that Kogami did not understand. There was no love between the followers of Botahara and the followers of Tomso. Kogami knew that the priest would be more than insulted if he suddenly were to ask him to step aside so that the monk could practice what the followers of Tomso called “heretical medicine.”
“We must give the priest a little time, my faithful one,” Kogami whispered. “If there is no improvement, we will ask the monk to see her.”
“But…” Kogami held up his hand and his wife choked back a sob. “I apologize for this lack of control. I am not worthy of your respect. I will remove myself from your sight and sit with our daughter.”
She turned to go, but he stopped her, his voice soft. “If she grows worse…send the servant to inform me.”
He was alone again in the moonlight. The sea had eased its motion since the wind had abated, but Kogami did not notice—inside of him a storm grew.
The moon emerged from behind an almost perfectly oval cloud and took its place among the stars. The constellation called the Two-Headed Dragon appeared on the horizon, first one eye and then the other, peering out above the waves. A sail began to luff and two crewman hurried to tend it. Men went aloft to set a tri-sail as the wind fell off and a reef was let out of the main. The ship began to make way at renewed speed.
Around the iron tub that contained the charcoal fire, men gathered to brew cha. When they spoke at all, it was in whispers, the formality of cha drinking reduced, of necessity, to mere nods and half-bows aboard ship. In a most deferential manner, a sailor went to offer a steaming cup to the Botahist monk, but the young Initiate shoo
k his head. If he spoke at all, Kogami could not hear him.
Kogami had approached the monk himself, earlier in the voyage, and had met with a similar rebuff. Having known the ways of the Botahist Brothers since his earliest days, Kogami had sought out the monk at a time when they could not be overheard and offered to make a “contribution” of fine cloth to the Brotherhood in return for a blessing. There was nothing uncommon in this and if the offer was made with tact (one did not go with the gift in one’s hands), a refusal was unusual. Yet when he had finished his carefully worded speech, the monk had turned away, leaving Kogami in a most humiliating situation. Then without even looking at him, this boy-monk had said, “Give your fine cloth to someone who has need of it, then you will be blessed.”
Kogami could not believe he had been witness to such a display of bad manners! He had been forced to walk away, his parting bow unreturned. What if that had been observed! He had never known such anger and shame. Even now he felt the humiliation as he recalled the event. The Botahist Brothers were capable of such hypocrisy, Kogami thought.
Botahara had taught that humility was the first step on the path to enlightenment, yet the monks who professed to walk this path displayed an arrogance that would shame a Mori prince. It was clear that this young monk needed some education, away from the confines of Jinjoh Monastery, for he did not yet understand the practices of his own Order.
Kogami tried to calm himself. Anger, he knew, would affect his ability to perform his duty to the Emperor, and he could not let this occur.
Kogami’s anger was soon dissolved and not entirely as a result of his own efforts. His childhood teachings, learned at the feet of the Botahist Brothers, could never be entirely forgotten and a single phrase surfaced from his memory though he had tried to suppress it: “Give to those who have need and you will be blessed.” So Botahara had answered a great prince who had come offering a gift in exchange for a blessing—a gift of cloth spun of gold.
Ashigaru appeared in the hatchway, his breathing loud as he labored up the steps from below. The smell of sanja “spirit flower” preceded him, its sickly-sweet aroma causing a chill of fear to course through Kogami. The dried petals of the sanja were scattered over the dead or those thought to be near death, to drive away evil spirits.
Kogami Norimasa’s mouth went dry and his hands shook.
“Is she…is,” his voice failed him and suddenly he found it hard to breathe. Reaching out for the rail, he steadied himself.
Ashigaru looked solemn but not at all hesitant. “She is in the hands of the gods. Whether they choose to take her now or return her to this plane is their matter. I have scattered the blossom of the sanctified flower around her. No evil spirits can possess her no matter what occurs.”
“But you said it was only a sickness of the sea! You said it was nothing.” Kogami spoke too loudly.
The priest drew himself up. “Don’t tell me what I said or did not say! Do you not know your place? I have protected your daughter from spirits that would torment her for all eternity. Could you save her from this fate?” The priest tugged at his robe and glared off into the darkness. Yet he did not walk away as Kogami expected. Instead, he stepped closer. “Listen, Norimasa-sum,” the priest said in a lowered voice, “we must not argue. We do his work, yeh?” And Kogami knew the priest was referring to the Emperor, not to the Father of Immortals. It was the first time either of them had acknowledged their true reason for being aboard.
“He can be generous…” Footsteps sounded on the stairs and the priest fell silent.
Kogami’s wife stepped into the broken moonlight that fell between the rigging and the sails. Across the distance that divided them, Kogami tried desperately to read his wife’s face but could not. She looked at the two men— and she hung her head. Then a sound, which neither man could hear, came to her from below and she raised her head, meeting their eyes.
Her face was beautiful in the moonlight, Kogami thought, beautiful and strong. She turned on her heel and strode across the deck to where the Botahist monk stood at the rail. Kogami Norimasa made no move to stop her, even though he felt his future slipping away like daylight over the horizon.
She cannot understand what this act will mean, Kogami thought. Even so, I bless her.
“What is she doing?” Ashigaru demanded.
“She is asking the Botahist monk to attend to our daughter.” Kogami was gratified that his voice sounded calm. The Fates have decreed this, he thought, it is karma. One cannot fight the Two-Headed Dragon.
The Initiate monk, Shuyun, heard the woman’s footsteps behind him and turned slightly. He had been expecting her to come—or her husband, the trader in cloth. It depended on how ill the daughter was. He had overheard the crew talking of the young woman’s sickness and knew the Tomsoian priest had been asked to see her. So Shuyun had waited, knowing that if the girl were truly ill the parents would put their religious scruples aside and come to him, the only Botahist monk on board, the only person who understood the secrets of the body.
“Pardon my lack of manners,” the woman said, an obvious forced calm in her voice. “I apologize for interrupting your meditations, honored Brother, but it is not for my sake that I do so.” She bowed, formally. “I am Shikibu Kogami, wife of the merchant Kogami Norimasa-sum.”
Shuyun nodded. “I am honored.” He did not give his name as it was assumed that everyone aboard would know it.
“My daughter is very ill. She suffers from the gathering of poisons. The right side of her abdomen is afire with the signs of this. She is unable to move from her bed. Honored Brother, could you see her?”
“Is she not in the care of the Tomsoian priest, Shikibu-sum?”
“He has scattered the petals of the spirit flower over her and commended her into the care of the Immortals.” She looked down at the deck. “He can do nothing for her. I am a follower of the True Path, Brother Shuyun, and say my devotions daily. She is my only daughter. I…” The woman’s voice broke, but there were no tears.
“I will come,” the monk said, looking into the woman’s careworn face.
Descending into the dull lamplight of the aft cabins, Shuyun was confronted with the overpowering scent of the spirit flower. The Botahists always took this smell as a bad omen.
On deck a mere zephyr touched Kogami’s neck and somehow that reinforced the tranquillity that had come over him when he saw his wife walk across the deck toward the Botahist Brother.
“The currents of Life cannot be refused. They are the only course possible. The most powerful Emperor may choose at what hour of the morning he will rise, but whether his spirit will slip away before the dawn, this he cannot order.” So the teachings of Botahara read. Kogami felt every muscle in his body relax.
The priest grabbed his shoulder roughly, “You must stop her!” he hissed as the monk disappeared below.
“I cannot,” Kogami said quietly, not even struggling to free himself. “You have given my daughter into the hands of the Immortal Ones. She is no longer your charge.”
“Nor is she that monk’s! You damn her for eternity. Do you not understand that? They defile the sanctified human form. Her spirit will be cursed and condemned to darkness!”
“But I can do nothing, Ashigaru-sum. The monk has been asked to attend her. I will not humiliate my wife by ordering him away.”
“You will not humble yourself, you mean. You fear the boy: How could Jaku Katta-sum have chosen a coward for this matter?”
“And what of you, Ashigaru-sum? Will you defy the young Brother? Or has Jaku Katta chosen two cowards?” Kogami snorted, unable to contain his contempt for the priest any longer. He realized that the crew was watching, wondering what would happen, but it no longer mattered.
I cannot sacrifice my daughter to the Emperor’s intrigues, he thought.
Unseen by the priest and the bureaucrat, a sailor slipped below to the captain’s quarters.
The priest pulled himself up to his full height, staring down at the small man dre
ssed like a successful trader. He gathered his robe about him and walked away with exaggerated dignity to the aft companionway.
Kogami Norimasa made no move to follow. The currents swirled about him, he would not struggle.
In the woman’s cabin, the Botahist monk knelt in the lamplight beside the bed of the stricken girl. She lay, obviously drugged, yet still in considerable pain, and though she made no sound her eyes screamed with the effort. The maidservant had opened the girl’s robe, shaking off the petals of the sanja flower. Shuyun could see the swelling—red, and radiating heat. The mother had understood, even if the fool of a priest had not.
“You must be still,” Shuyun said, his voice strong and assured like one much older. “I will not hurt you. You need not worry.”
She managed half a smile that dissolved into a shudder of pain.
The monk took a small crystal from a gold chain around his neck and held the cylinder lengthwise between his thumb and forefinger. A pale, green light seemed to come from within the polished stone, though it may have been only refracted moonlight. Moving the stone above the girl’s skin, Shuyun slowly followed the lines of her life-force radiating out from the afflicted area, the stone amplifying his chi sense like a water-finder’s rod.
The monk did not flinch when the door banged open, revealing the half-lit form of the Tomsoian priest. The women gasped and the girl flinched in fear, causing a new spasm of agony to course through her.
“You damn your daughter to eternal darkness!” the priest accused thickly, ignoring the monk who had risen fluidly from his knees and half-turned toward the door.
Shuyun spoke quietly to the two women so the girl would not hear. “I must have the ebony chest from my room immediately. There is little time.”
The Initiate Brother Duology Page 5