Sen couldn’t help but laugh.
“They issued a call to arms,” the boy went on. “Father said. He’s been working with the houses of the barrier, they like the Keishi no more than we do. You’ll see. My father said. You’ll see.”
Tokuon’s heir proved an imaginative, excitable young boy who couldn’t wait to become a warrior. But he was different from his father, a dreamer thrilled to be on an adventure in the world. One evening as they made camp, Sen found him drawing on an old piece of mulberry-paper. He’d been practicing his calligraphy, but soon abandoned it to draw pictures of dragons over an ocean full of little boats. Sen found himself liking the boy; maybe he saw a little of himself. “Here,” he said. “Wanna teach me how to write your name?”
On the fourteenth day, they arrived at the Temple of the Mountain Pass.
Built on a steep cliff-face on the side of the lower Gisan like an eagle’s nest, the temple appeared as something out of myth: misted cliffs of dizzying height, meadows above, a winding path over deep ravines, and the jarring crag-hall, surrounded by mountains, like a hidden jewel.
“This is one of two main temples associated with our clan,” Sen’s uncle Kiie told him from his saddle. Sen liked Kiie, with his thick belly, round shoulders and easy laugh, who’d taken it upon himself to teach Sen about his family.
“The other is in Amayari, your father’s domain. But they both keep the records. They were blessed by Enno, the Ascetic.”
“Enno,” Sen said. “I know that name…”
“You trained under the crow master,” Kiie mused. “Enno was his teacher. Your roots here go deeper than you know.” He gestured. “The ancients built this place using magic and connection with the gods. They threw pieces of wood off the cliffside, which changed shape and became the beams that support this temple’s halls.”
Tokuon had heard them; he nodded to some white flowers by the path. “Lion’s paw.” He then gazed north, to where the road dwindled, and the mountains rose like the gods had lifted them from the plain. “Gisan lies behind those mountains; if we traveled west instead of south, in three days we would reach my fortress in Yamakaji.”
Just then, bells chimed, and a group of monks came out to greet them, waiting in the grove of small winter flowers outside the gate. Behind them, over the edge, a vast nothingness expanded into clouds.
The head priest met them with a bow, led them to the god’s shrine, on the end of a winding path at the cliffside, by an ancient oak.
“When the god-spirit of the sun withdrew from the heavenly face of the world,” he murmured, “and the universe fell to darkness, only the prayers and the gentle words of the god of fate could reach her. Ever since, we place the sacred rope to demarcate the line between the world of the darkness, and the light.”
Sen found himself following Kiie down long back-hallways and rooms full of praying monks. They went to a dusty library, filled with books, with a low roof and the smell of ancient paper in the air. The books were everywhere. On shelves, in stacks, folded leaves hand-copied on paper, and even some that had been printed using the wood-block technique. There were also older scrolls, and bamboo strips with calligraphy even older than that. In a corner, a statue of the god of war, to whom the Gensei ancestors prayed.
“What’s in here?” Sen asked.
Kiie smiled. “Family.”
He found a tome made from sheets of paper bound with glue.
“Our history,” he said. “Names and dates of birth, leading all the way back to when our kin-group was founded, four hundred years ago…” He turned through the great book, showing Sen a page that listed members of the Gensei lineage. Every branch, every house. Sen flipped through several sheets before he found his own.
“This is amazing.” Sen felt tears coming to his eyes. The family history branched out like an unending tree, and he traced his finger along the line: his father, his grandmother, and the line of matrilineal ancestors all the way to the founding of their clan, each name seeming to add powerand legacy in his mind. He read the names back again, ten generations in order, feeling the weight of time with every name.
But then he paused. The place beside Kai’s name, where his own name should have been, was empty. A strange pain welled in his chest, and he was shocked to find tears in his eyes again. Bitter tears. Harder ones. He put the book down, looked away.
“We really were emperors,” he said. “Once.”
Kiie sat. “We were many things once. Our name was given by our ancestor-the-emperor when she split her children from the Ten’in line. Too many people fighting for the right of succession. So we became nobles.”
“I can’t imagine you being a noble,” Sen said. “Studying over books, telling poems over tea…”
“Well. Theyarethe literati court. Frail, weak. Soon enough, we broke away. My ancestors went east, to govern the Iteki countries with the Kitanohara. Elsewise, cadet branches of the Ten’in family were appointed as regional governors…”
“We had power.” A lump rose in Sen’s throat. “We had everything…”
“Back then we did, aye. In just a few generations, no Gensei would call themselves anobleever again.” Kiie laughed. “Though, to be sure, on paper we still served them, the scholar-kings and the pale-skins. Hired us to fill their contracts. So we did. In some ways, it’s that simple.”
“Until the Keishi took control,” Sen said.
“Which was anything but simple. Not simple at all.”
“Were we really allies?”
“Your father and I fought alongside Seikiyo, against the demon-emperor,” Kiie said. “I’ll never forgive him that.”
