She looked at it for a long moment, the form of a knight’s longsword, a straight double-edged blade tapering to a needle point and guarded by the crescent moon, a double-lobed grip of black staghorn and white silver . . .
. . . and then up at him as her own blade-hand touched the moonstone pommel at her side.
“I’m not going to say how again,” she said, and heard a hint of an absurd indignation in her tone. “You’re as bad as grandmother Juniper about answering questions with questions!”
“Sure, and I came by it honestly by inheritance from her,” her father said.
His face held a delight that was different from hers, a joy in a promise of the future rather than a glimpse into a beloved lost past.
Then that face went serious: “I think that the Sword is now here forever. More, I think that it always was here . . . now, if that makes any sense at all; we drove it not just through rock, but through Time itself. And that this has become a place of awe and sacredness, the pivot about which Montival turns.”
She nodded vigorously. “Nobody comes here except the High King or Queen and their handfasted,” she said. “But you never told me much about . . . this.”
“Because there are things that mean nothing until you live them,” Rudi said. He grinned, and his voice took on a mock-solemn portentousness:
“Let me guess. You’re facing a great challenge, the realm is in peril, and—”
She laughed, but there were tears in it. “Lord and Lady, Dad, but I’ve missed you! Johnnie and Vuissance and Faolán have too, but . . . I . . .”
I was coming to be not just your child, but your partner and your friend and strong support, one you could share your innermost thoughts with. And then you were taken away! We lost that half of you, your deep age, and the wisdom and the peace of it. You can never sit with your grandchildren and tell them your stories, and I can never be there to hear it.
Her father faced her and laid his hands on her shoulders, recalling her to duty.
“Now, this is what I’ve seen and done here—”
She frowned as he told her. “That’s . . . strange. Those were ancestors, weren’t they? Our ancestors.”
“Yes. Some of our ancestors, here in this land of ours. From the very first of our blood, who came here when the Ice had barely left, the very first of human kind to dwell here, the first to leave their ghosts and their memories in the warp and weft of things.
“And I was led to see and do and know what a King must. What you will see . . . will be particularly tailored to yourself, I would say.”
“Will I see Grandmother . . . I mean Grandmother Sandra? Grandmother Juniper’s still . . .”
“And how would I know?” Rudi said. “That’s your story, though I suspect you will. And perhaps your own children, or your heir at least. Come. Draw the Sword.”
She drew the blade at her side, and gasped a little as her father reached and pulled the other Sword from the rock; it came free as easily as if that were the sheath. Light seemed to well about them as he reversed the blade and offered it to her. She took it reverently and he the hilt of hers.
“Quickly!” he said, and she sheathed the Sword he’d handed her.
They knelt on either side of the rock, and each touched a finger to the point, the red drops mingling.
“By the bond of blood,” he said, and laid the point against the rock.
“By the bond of blood,” she answered, and wrapped her hands around his.
Together, they thrust the blade forged beyond the world into the Heart of Montival. Órlaith felt a rushing, a sense of connection stronger than any yet. She was her mother weeping in private, with a picture of her father clutched to her breast; she was her grandmother standing alone beneath a great tree, with her staff held high and light playing across the Triple Moon. She was a farmer in bib overalls in one of the Free Cities of the Yakima League, laughing as he slung sixty-pound bags of threshed wheat into a wagon . . . and then falling silent for a moment, looking towards the distant ocean and thinking of a child gone to war west-over-sea.
And they were her, for that instant. Some knowingly, some in dreams, some only in a glance about themselves and a thought: This is home. Here are my loves.
They and million-fold others, human and nonhuman, spirits of place and things for which there were no words moving deep in the currents of Earth where the massive plates of the world floated on fire and ground against one another in a slow majesty that drove mountains into sky.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LOST LAKE
CROWN FOREST DEMESNE
(FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL OREGON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JUNE 20TH
CHANGE YEAR 47/2045 AD
There were four around the low table in the pavilion of the Tennō Heika of Dai-Nippon. Empress Reiko—though in Nihonjin the word had no gender and another altogether was used for an Imperial consort—her one-handed general Egawa Noboru, her hawk-faced Grand Steward Koyama Akira and Captain Ishikawa Goru, the captain who’d brought her and her father here to Montival. It seemed so long ago, though it was barely a year.
They finished their simple meal of miso, salmon and noodles, and sat silently in seiza—kneeling and resting on their heels—while the ladies-in-waiting rustled in to clear the table and pour warmed sake and light the brazier. One knelt by it, gently fanning the charcoal.
It was cool, and the air was pine-scented in a way slightly, subtly different from a mountain forest back home; even the canvas of the tent was alien, though she had hung a few block prints and calligraphy scrolls from home. One raised panel gave them a view of the sun-tinged snowpeak of Mount Hood, almost as pure a shape as Fuji.
Longing pierced her for the shores of Sado Island, but giri—duty—was master of all things, even nihon, human feeling.
Egawa sighed. “Majesty, I wish this war was over. I am uneasy with foreign troops on our soil, foreign ships in our waters.”
Reiko carefully did not smile, but there was an irony in the way she moved her tessen; it was a steel war-fan, but she was in a woman’s kimono tonight, if a very plain one—an irotomesode of dark blue with a narrow modern obi only six inches wide, and a white-and-yellow pattern of cranes and reeds below the waist. It was saved from informality by a full five of her dynastic kamon.
The motion of the fan said as plainly as words what she was thinking. For forty-odd years the only foreign troops and ships in Japanese waters had been jinnikukaburi raiders. Even their knowledge of the outside world had been very skimpy, and the Montivallans hadn’t known that anyone survived in the Land of the Gods at all, except for ghouls—called Eaters here—haunting the vast endless stretches of scorched, earthquake-tumbled ruins. . . .
“Consider how the prospects were a year ago, General-san,” she said. “When the only prospect we had of an end to the war was the enemy gnawing on the bones of the last Nihonjin.”
Akira did chuckle. “I was entirely wrong to oppose your . . . journey south to find the Grasscutter with the Montivallan’s Crown Princess, Majesty,” he said. “And Egawa-sama was entirely right that it was worth discomfort . . . my discomfort, when I found you had gone without informing me . . . and facing their High Queen’s disapproval.”
“Which disapproval you shared, even though you could not say so,” Egawa said dryly.
“Precisely. And Lord Egawa, you were correct both in terms of policy, and in exemplary vassal obedience.”
They all glanced at where the Grasscutter in its sheath with the disturbing black lacquer that seemed to have points of starlike light drifting in it sat on the sword-stand.
It rested before the kamidana, the portable shrine that accompanied her now that they had a little to spare for the niceties. It held a beautifully worked miniature Torii, a gateway, and the other fixtures like t
he round mirror and the little dishes of rice and salt—save that they couldn’t get any of the sacred sakaki leaves here. The mirror was supposed to hold kami-essence, but the Grasscutter itself was the greatest of all shintai, objects with incarnate spirits.
“But I was also right in my estimate of the importance of the alliance with Montival, General-sama—and now with Hawaiʻi and Capricornia,” Akira said. “Now others will shed their blood for a change. Majesty, you brought both these aims to fruition.”
Reiko nodded. “And while our samurai will fight, our ordinary people will tend their fields, harvest their rice, and bear their children. That is what we need above all. We need time. There are so few of us now! Barely a third of a million, where once we were a hundred million and more. We were millions upon millions even before Meiji, before the West came, before the era of the machines. We need generations of peace, so that we are millions once again. In numbers, as much as in the edge of the sword, is survival of kind.”
Akira looked intensely thoughtful for a moment; he was very good at mental mathematics. “If we are spared more raids and do not need to call up our ashigaru-militia, with our present demographic profile . . . we should have a total of over a million within thirty to thirty-five years, Majesty. May you live ten thousand years, but thirty is by no means too much to expect.”
It was a slightly daring joke, but she smiled very slightly in acknowledgment.
“Will the Montivallans be content with that degree of involvement on our part?” Egawa asked. “Sending only our full-time fighters, instead of mobilizing all our militia?”
Reiko nodded. “Yes. Crown Princess . . . soon to be High Queen . . . Órlaith and I have spoken much of this. They have taken the decision for this transfer of sovereignty for their own reasons, but it aids us.”
They all nodded. A monarch abdicating in favor of an heir—sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not, though it was always portrayed as a voluntary decision—was an old thing in their history. Former emperors had ended up in exile on Sado Island, the heartland of post-Change Japan, after the Jōkyū War eight centuries before, while the Kamakura shoguns put more pliable nephews on the throne. Nihonjin reverence for the Imperial institution hadn’t always extended to the physical person occupying it.
“High Queen Mathilda was in favor of the alliance for reasons of policy, but she has never warmed to us, Majesty,” Akira said.
“Understandably so, when indirectly we were the cause of bringing the jinnikukaburi to these shores, and so for the death of their High King, her husband,” Reiko said. “Órlaith and I have come to a close understanding. She is a person of faultless honor; she understands the sacrifices we of Dai-Nippon have already made in the long war fought with the common enemy. And from policy, she wishes a strong and friendly Japan, to secure the Asian shores of the Pacific. She envisages a long-term cooperation.”
“That is a sustainable policy, because it is in Montival’s interests,” Akira said shrewdly. “The coast of Asia is too far for them to easily intervene directly under modern conditions, and certainly not without a strong ally. There are other threats in the islands to the south of Taiwan, and in the long run they must be dealt with.”
“Yes,” Reiko said. Then to Egawa: “So General-san, the foreign troops and ships will be there only long enough to finally win this war—the war we have fought all our lives, and win us a peace with victory.”
More nods at that; the reign-name she had chosen for herself was Shohei, Victorious Peace, and it was starting to look less of a pious hope and more a realistic goal.
Reiko permitted herself a slight smile and asked a rhetorical question: “And speaking of Taiwan . . . you led the survey expedition there several years ago, did you not, Captain Ishikawa?”
“Hai, Heika,” the sailor said with a respectful bow, his eyes cast down in modesty.
He was in his thirties, a decade older than her, more than that younger than the other two, with a cheerful round face that concealed a very sharp intelligence.
He’d found the great island mostly empty of human life, since it had been heavily populated and highly urbanized when the Change struck forty-eight years ago. In such cases, only great good luck or inspired leadership could preserve any civilized life; Japan had had both, and offshore islands like Sado which could be isolated from the inevitable famine and collapse of the megacities. Apparently, Taiwan hadn’t been lucky that way, and only a few fugitive bands lived on in the eastern mountains, heirs to the ancient indigenes who’d lived there long before the Han colonists came.
“I have a pledge from the Crown Princess that when she comes to the throne Montival will recognize our rights there, and will ask . . . will strongly urge . . . the kings of Hawaiʻi and Capricornia to do likewise. Since there is no population there to speak of, we may over the generations make it not a possession but fully a part of our homeland.”
“Excellent news, Heika!” Ishikawa said. “There is much good rice land, only thinly grown with scrub, and suitable for other crops as well—and less in the way of ruins.”
Too much of the Home Island’s best land was covered in crumbling concrete and rusting steel; and little bands of polluted survivors haunted those wildernesses of stone and metal, making them even more dangerous than fire and decay. In the long run the ruins would be valuable mines, but the fundamental source of all wealth, all power, was fields and the peasants who tilled them.
“And in the very long run, it will improve our strategic position.”
Ishikawa probably expected fiefs on Taiwan, and possibly a viceroy’s appointment to commence the settlement; she was inclined to give it to him, since he was very able and had shown unshakable loyalty when there was much risk of death and little chance of reward for it.
“With strong allies, we have every prospect of fulfilling my father’s dreams,” she said. “Now that the Grasscutter is ours once more. . . .”
They all looked that way again. She had drawn it on the beach at Topanga . . . and they had all seen what followed, too, as the burning wrath of the Sun Goddess had fallen on the enemy, blowing their ships to disaster. It had also blown Prince John’s ship halfway across the Pacific, with the surviving jinnikukaburi in pursuit, but that had turned out for the best as well, bringing Capricornia into the alliance, and returning him home with a glorious accomplishment and a suitable bride. On Hawaiʻi more recently Kusanagi and the Sword of the Lady had struck down the kangshinmu, the enemy sorcerer-lords.
“The Jewel we already possessed . . . though I think that now we must discover more, hmmm, immediate uses for it. As my father said, the Change opened once more doors in the walls of the world, doors that had been slowly closing for thousands of years, moment by moment, never enough at any one time to be noticed until what had been fact faded into myth. As it was in the time of legends, so it is once more in our day. Now a ruler is more than a general or administrator, more even than a symbol of the people and their link to their land. Now the ruler is the vessel of a spirit.”
This time there was genuine fear in the gazes that flicked to the Grasscutter, though it was well-hidden, in the samurai tradition of keeping an iron rule over the self. All of them had reverenced the Grasscutter . . . done homage to the idea of it, as a symbol of ancient sacredness. Now they had seen it unleashed in war, the gift of the Immortal One Shining in Heaven, the ancient protector of the Land of the Gods. And they had seen Her will made manifest through it like a whip of air and fire, falling from infinity to rend the very substance of things.
And they had seen Reiko become the vessel of that One, of her Ancestress. Dancing with the Grasscutter Sword, and becoming the human form of Her power and Her wrath.
No, I do not think there is any risk of these three ever seeking to make a puppet of the Tennō, as happened in the time of the Sei-i Taishōgun, the Barbarian-Subduing Generalissimos. Not when they know in their very bones that my descent from He
r is not a symbol, not a form of words, but a reality that lives and breathes . . . that beats the very sea to madness, that burns men to drifting ash in an instant.
“The Grasscutter is ours once more. Only the Mirror is still lost; and that is a matter for our children. Though I suspect that in their day they will need it as badly as we did Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi in ours. Power is needful to the realm, and prosperity . . . but wisdom has a power of its own.”
Egawa preened very slightly, probably unconsciously, at the mention of offspring. She had publicly told him she would take his youngest son as Imperial Consort—a man she knew well, of course. A bit younger than her, intelligent, healthy, handsome as an additional bonus, and she judged not ambitious, or at least not excessively so. Being father-in-law to the Majesty and grandfather to the next Tennō was a very great reward, but Egawa had earned it . . . and could be trusted with it.
“Let us not count our wars before they’re fought. Korea will be a serious problem for a long time,” she said.
Akira smiled, the peculiar smile a man made at another’s misfortune, before he added:
“But with the favor of the kami, Heika, it will be someone else’s problem.”
One of the ladies-in-waiting entered, sank gracefully to her knees, into seiza, and then bent forward in the full dogeza, hands on the mats and forehead pressed to the braided straw.
“Majesty, my most humble apologies, but she—”
The patter of light feet running came from outside. A girl-child of between three and four burst in, grinning. Then she skidded to a stop and plumped down in a creditable seiza herself and made a deep bow.
“Heika!” she said happily. “Look what I got!”
The girl was in zori sandals, divided-toe tabi and a colorful child’s kimono, but she was obviously of foreign blood, pale and with gingery hair and greenish eyes. By now it was going on for a year since Reiko had rescued her from the encysted horrors of the castle in the desert Valley of Death. The hidden fortress had held the fragments of Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi. The child was the great-granddaughter and last living descendant of the man who had stolen it from Japan after the defeat Dai-Nippon had suffered in the great struggle of the last century, the Pacific War.
The Sky-Blue Wolves Page 21