The Harsh Cry of the Heron

by Lian Hearn

  I had grown complacent about them, he thought. I believed myself immune from their attacks: I had not reckoned on them striking at me through my family.

  A new fear seized him as he remembered his words to Kaede the previous day. He did not think he could survive her death, her loss; nor could the country.

  “Have they told you anything?” he asked Muto Taku. Taku, now in his twenty-sixth year, was the younger son of Muto Shizuka. His father had been the great warlord, Takeo’s ally and rival Arai Daiichi. Taku’s older brother, Zenko, had inherited his father’s lands in the West, and Takeo would have rewarded Taku in a similar fashion; but the younger man declined, saying he had no desire for land and honors. He preferred to work with his mother’s uncle, Kenji, in controlling the network of spies and informants that Takeo had established through the Tribe. He had accepted a political marriage with a Tohan girl, whom he was fond of and who had already given him a son and a daughter. People tended to underestimate him, which suited him. He took after the Muto family in build and looks and the Arai in courage and boldness, and generally seemed to find life an amusing and agreeable experience.

  He smiled now as he replied. “Nothing. They refuse to talk. I’m only surprised they’re still alive—you know how the Kikuta kill themselves by biting off their tongues! Of course, I have not tried all that hard to persuade them.”

  “I don’t have to remind you that torture is forbidden in the Three Countries.”

  “Of course not. But does that apply even to the Kikuta?”

  “It applies to everyone,” Takeo said mildly. “They are guilty of attempted murder and will be executed for that eventually. In the meantime they must not be ill treated. We will see how much their father wants them back.”

  “Where did they come from?” Sonoda Mitsuru inquired. He was married to Kaede’s sister Ai, and though his family, the Akita, had been Arai retainers, he had been persuaded to swear allegiance to the Otori in the general reconciliation after the earthquake. In return, he and Ai had been given the domain of Inuyama. “Where will you find this Gosaburo?”

  “In the mountains beyond the Eastern border, I imagine,” Taku told him, and Takeo saw the girl’s eyes change shape slightly.

  Sonoda said, “Then no negotiations will be possible for a while, for the first snow is expected within the week.”

  “In spring we will write to their father,” Takeo replied. “It will do Gosaburo no harm to agonize over his children’s fate. It might make him more eager to save them. In the meantime, keep their identity secret and do not allow contact with anyone but yourselves.”

  He addressed Taku. “Your uncle is in the city, is he not?”

  “Yes; he would have joined us at the temple for the New Year celebrations, but his health is not good, and the cold night air brings on coughing spasms.”

  “I will call on him tomorrow. He is at the old house?”

  Taku nodded. “He likes the smell of the brewery. He says the air there is easier to breathe.”

  “I imagine the wine helps too,” Takeo replied.

  “IT IS THE only pleasure left to me,” Muto Kenji said, filling Takeo’s cup and then passing the flask to him. “Ishida tells me I should drink less, that alcohol is bad for the lung disease, but…it cheers me up and helps me sleep.”

  Takeo poured the clear, viscous wine into his old teacher’s cup. “Ishida tells me to drink less too,” he admitted as they both drank deeply. “But for me it dulls the joint pain. And Ishida himself hardly follows his own advice, so why should we?”

  “We are two old men,” Kenji said, laughing. “Who would have thought, seeing you trying to kill me seventeen years ago in this house, that we would be sitting here comparing ailments?”

  “Be thankful we have both survived so far!” Takeo replied. He looked around at the finely built house with its high ceilings, cedar pillars, and cypress-wood verandas and shutters. It was full of memories. “This room is a good deal more comfortable than those wretched closets I was confined in!”

  Kenji laughed again. “Only because you kept behaving like some wild animal! The Muto family have always liked luxury. And now the years of peace, the demand for our products have made us very wealthy, thanks to you, my dear Lord Otori.” He raised his cup to Takeo; they both drank again, then refilled each other’s vessels.

  “I suppose I’ll be sorry to leave it all. I doubt I’ll see another New Year,” Kenji admitted. “But you—you know people say you are immortal!”

  Takeo laughed. “No one is immortal. Death waits for me as it does for everyone. It is not yet my time.”

  Kenji was one of the few people who knew everything that Takeo had been told in prophecy, including the part he kept secret: that he was safe from death except at the hands of his own son. All the other predictions had come true, after a fashion: Five Battles had brought peace to the Three Countries, and Takeo ruled from sea to sea. The devastating earthquake that put an end to the last battle and wiped out Arai Daiichi’s army could be described as delivering Heaven’s desire. And no one so far had been able to kill Takeo, making this last one seem ever more probable.

  Takeo shared many secrets with Kenji, who had been his teacher in Hagi, instructing him in the ways of the Tribe. It had been with Kenji’s help that Takeo had penetrated Hagi’s castle and avenged Shigeru’s death. Kenji was a shrewd, cunning man with no sentimentality but more sense of honor than was usual among the Tribe. He had no illusions about human nature and saw the worst in people, discerning behind their noble and high-minded words their self-interest, vanity, folly, and greed. This made him an able envoy and negotiator, and Takeo had come to rely on him. Kenji had no desires of his own beyond his perennial fondness for wine and the women of the pleasure districts. He did not seem to care for possessions, wealth, or status. He had dedicated his life to Takeo and sworn to serve him; he had a particular affection for Lady Otori, whom he admired; great fondness for his own niece, Shizuka; and a certain respect for her son, Taku, the spymaster; but since his daughter’s death he had been estranged from his wife, Seiko, who had died herself a few years earlier, and had no close bonds of either love or hatred with anyone else.

  Since the death of Arai and the Otori lords sixteen years before, Kenji had worked with slow, intelligent patience toward Takeo’s goal: to draw all sources and means of violence into the hands of the government, to curb the power of individual warriors and the lawlessness of bandit groups. It was Kenji who knew of the existence of the old secret societies that Takeo had been unaware of—Loyalty to the Heron, Rage of the White Tiger, Narrow Paths of the Snake—that farmers and villagers had formed among themselves during the years of anarchy. These they now used and built on so the people ruled their own affairs at village level and chose their own leaders to represent them and plead their grievances in provincial tribunals.

  The tribunals were administered by the warrior class; their less-military-minded sons, and sometimes daughters, were sent to the great schools in Hagi, Yamagata, and Inuyama to study the ethics of service, accounting and economics, history, and the classics. When they returned to their provinces to take up their posts, they received status and a reasonable income. They were directly answerable to the elders of each clan, for whom the head of the clan was held responsible; these heads met frequently with Takeo and Kaede to discuss policy, set tax rates, and maintain the training and equipment of soldiers. Each had to supply a number of their best men to the central band, half army, half police force, who dealt with bandits and other criminals.

  Kenji took to all this administration with skill, saying it was not unlike the ancient hierarchy of the Tribe—and indeed many of the Tribe’s networks now came under Takeo’s rule, but there were three essential differences: The use of torture was banned, and the crimes of assassination and taking bribes were made punishable by death. This last proved the hardest to enforce among the Tribe, and with their usual cunning they found ways to circumvent it, but they did not dare deal in large sums of mo
ney or flaunt their wealth, and as Takeo’s determination to eradicate corruption became harder and more clearly understood even this small-scale bribery dwindled. Another practice took its place, since men are only human: that of exchanging gifts of beauty and taste, of hidden value, which in turn led to the encouragement of craftsmen and artists, who flocked to the Three Countries not only from the Eight Islands but from the countries of the mainland, Silla, Shin, and Tenjiku.

  After the earthquake ended the civil war in the Three Countries, the heads of the surviving families and clans met in Inuyama and accepted Otori Takeo as their leader and overlord. All blood feuds against him or against each other were declared over, and there were many moving scenes as warriors were reconciled to each other after decades of enmity. But both Takeo and Kenji knew that warriors were born to fight—the problem was, against whom were they now to fight? And if they were not fighting, how were they to be kept occupied?

  Some maintained the borders on the East, but there was little action and their main enemy was boredom; some accompanied Terada Fumio and Dr. Ishida on their voyages of exploration, protecting the merchants’ ships at sea and their shops and godowns in distant ports; some pursued the challenges Takeo established in swordsmanship and archery, competing in single combat with each other; and some were chosen to follow the supreme path of combat: the mastery of self, the Way of the Houou.

  Based at the temple at Terayama, the spiritual center of the Three Countries, and led by the ancient abbot, Matsuda Shingen, and Kubo Makoto, this was a mountain sect, an esoteric religion whose discipline and teachings could be followed only by men—and women—of great physical and mental strength. The talents of the Tribe were innate—the powerful vision and hearing, invisibility, the use of the second self—but most men had within them untapped abilities, and the discovery and refinement of these were the work of the sect, who called themselves the Way of the Houou after the sacred bird that dwelt deep in the forests around Terayama.

  The first vow these chosen warriors had to make was to kill no living thing, neither mosquito nor moth nor man, even to defend their own life. Kenji thought it madness, recalling all too clearly the many times he had thrust knife into artery or heart, had twisted the garrote, had slipped poison into a cup or bowl or even into an open sleeping mouth. How many? He had lost count. He did not feel remorse for those he had dispatched into the next life—all men had to die sooner or later—but he recognized the courage it took to face the world unarmed, and saw that the decision not to kill might be far harder than the decision to kill. He was not immune to the peace and spiritual strength of Terayama. Lately his greatest pleasure was to accompany Takeo there and spend time with Matsuda and Makoto.

  The end of his own life, he knew, was approaching. He was old; his health and strength were deteriorating—for months now he had been troubled by a weakness in the lungs and frequently spat blood.

  So Takeo had tamed both Tribe and warriors: Only the Kikuta resisted him, not only attempting to assassinate him but also making frequent attacks from across the borders, seeking alliances with dissatisfied warriors, committing random murders in the hope of destabilizing the community, spreading unfounded rumors.

  Takeo spoke again, more seriously. “This latest attack has alarmed me more than any other, because it was against my family, not myself. If my wife or my children were to die, it would destroy me, and the Three Countries.”

  “I imagine that is the Kikuta’s aim,” Kenji said mildly.

  “Will they ever give up?”

  “Akio never will. His hatred of you will end only in his death—or yours. He has devoted his entire adult life to it, after all.” Kenji’s face became still and his lips twisted into a bitter expression. He drank again. “But Gosaburo is a merchant, and pragmatic by nature. He must resent losing the house in Matsue and his trade, and he will dread losing his children—one son dead, the other two in your hands. We may be able to put some pressure on him.”

  “That was what I thought. We will keep the two survivors until spring, and then see if their father is prepared to negotiate.”

  “We’ll probably be able to extract some useful information from them in the meantime,” Kenji grunted.

  Takeo looked up at him over the rim of the cup.

  “All right, all right, forget I said it,” the old man grumbled. “But you’re a fool not to use the same methods your enemies use.” He shook his head. “I’ll wager you’re still saving moths from candles too. That softness has never been eradicated.”

  Takeo smiled slightly but did not otherwise react. It was hard to grow out of what he had once been taught as a child. His upbringing among the Hidden had made him deeply reluctant to take human life. But from the age of sixteen he had been led by fate into the way of the warrior. He had become the heir to a great clan and was now leader of the Three Countries; he had had to learn the way of the sword. Moreover, the Tribe, Kenji himself, had taught him to kill in many different ways and had tried to extinguish his natural compassion. In his struggle to avenge Shigeru’s death and unite the Three Countries in peace he had committed countless acts of violence, many of which he deeply regretted, before he had learned to bring ruthlessness and compassion into balance, before the wealth and stability of the countries and the rule of law gave desirable alternatives to the blind power conflicts of the clans.

  “I’d like to see the boy again,” Kenji said abruptly. “It might be my last chance.” He looked at Takeo closely. “Have you come to any decision about him?”

  Takeo shook his head. “Only to make no decision. What can I do? Presumably the Muto family—you yourself—would like to have him back?”

  “Of course. But Akio told my wife, who was in contact with him before her death, that he would kill the boy himself rather than give him up, either to the Muto or to you.”

  “Poor lad. What kind of an upbringing can he have had!” Takeo exclaimed.

  “Well, the way the Tribe raise their children is harsh at the best of times,” Kenji replied.

  “Does he know I am his father?”

  “That’s one of the things I can find out.”

  “You are not well enough for such a mission,” Takeo said reluctantly, for he could think of no one else to send.

  Kenji grinned. “My ill health is another reason why I should go. If I’m not going to see the year out anyway, you may as well get some use out of me! And besides, I want to see my grandson before I die. I’ll go when the thaw comes.”

  Wine, regrets, and memories had filled Takeo with emotion. He reached out and embraced his old teacher.

  “Now, now!” Kenji said, patting him on the shoulder. “You know how I hate displays of sentiment. Come and see me often through the winter. We will still have a few good drinking bouts together.”

  4

  The boy, Hisao, now sixteen years old, looked like his dead grandmother. He did not resemble the man he believed to be his father, Kikuta Akio, nor his true father, whom he had never seen. He had none of the physical traits of either the Muto family of his mother or the Kikuta—and, it was becoming increasingly obvious, none of their magical talents, either. His hearing was no more acute than that of anyone of his age; he could neither use invisibility nor perceive it. His training since childhood had made him physically strong and agile, but he could not leap and fly like his father, and the only way he put people to sleep was through sheer boredom in his company, for he rarely talked, and when he did it was in a slow, stumbling fashion, with no spark of wit or originality.

  Akio was the Master of the Kikuta, the greatest family of the Tribe, who had retained the skills and talents that once all men had possessed. Now even among the Tribe those skills seemed to be disappearing. Hisao had been aware since early childhood of the disappointment he had caused his father—he had felt all his life the careful scrutiny of his every action, the hopes, the anger, and always, in the end, the punishment.

  For the Tribe raised their children in the harshest possible way,
training them in complete obedience, in endurance of extremes of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and pain, eradicating any signs of human feeling, of sympathy and compassion. Akio was hardest on his own son, Hisao, his only child, never in public showing him any understanding or affection, treating him with a cruelty that surprised even his own relatives. But Akio was the Master of the family, successor to his uncle, Kotaro, who had been murdered in Hagi by Otori Takeo and Muto Kenji at the time when the Muto family had broken all the ancient bonds of the Tribe, had betrayed their own kin and become servants of the Otori. And as Master, Akio could act as he chose; no one could criticize or disobey him.

  Akio had grown into a bitter and unpredictable man, eaten up by the grief and losses of his life, the blame for all of which lay with Otori Takeo, now the ruler of the Three Countries. It was Otori Takeo’s fault that the Tribe had split, that the legendary and beloved Kotaro had died, and the great wrestler Hajime and many others, and that the Kikuta were persecuted to the extent that most of them had left the Three Countries and moved north, leaving behind their lucrative businesses and money-lending activities to be taken over by the Muto, who actually paid tax like any ordinary merchant and contributed to the wealth that made the Three Countries a prosperous and cheerful state where there was little work for spies, apart from those Takeo himself employed, or assassins.

  Kikuta children slept with their feet toward the West, and greeted each other with the words “Is Otori dead yet?” replying, “Not yet, but it will soon be done.”

  It was said that Akio had loved his wife, Muto Yuki, desperately, and that her death, as well as Kotaro’s, was the cause of all his bitterness. It was assumed that she had died of fever after childbirth—fathers often unfairly blamed the child for the loss of a beloved wife, though this was the only weaker human emotion Akio ever displayed. It seemed to Hisao that he had always known the truth: His mother had died because she had been given poison. He could see the scene clearly, as though he had witnessed it with his own unfocused baby eyes. The woman’s despair and anger, her grief at leaving her child; the man’s implacable command as he brought about the death of the only woman he had ever loved; her defiance as she gulped down the pellets of aconite; the uncontrollable wave of regret, shrieking, and sobbing, for she was only twenty years old and leaving her life long before she was ready; the shuddering pains that racked her; the man’s grim satisfaction that revenge was partially completed; his embracing of his own pain, and the dark pleasure it gave him, the beginning of his descent into evil.