In blood-red armor, dead bodies at his feet –
An old man, wearing the Keishi butterfly, writhing, on fire –
A strange, ghostly girl, walking through burned buildings and bodies, humming lightly to herself –
Rui tried to fight the vision, to reach the girl, but the world fluttered, and she hit the dirt again.
At some point she found his hands, lifting her gently, his worried face near her own, whispering that she was safe. But she wasn’t. She pulled away. She’d never be safe.
All she wanted was to go back home. All she wanted was to sleep. All she saw was the woman, the demon.Her face, her hands, like claws; her fury; the screeching of her as she came hacking, slashing at my face, my gut, my heart.
She heard voices, human this time: Tokuon and the others. Myorin, coming to her. It was only when she saw the fear in their eyes that she felt the pain, put a hand to her side; it came away bloody.
“I think,” she said, staggering. “I think I need some help…”
And collapsed.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN
Kai
Kai staggered through the snowstorm like a dying person, fighting wind and cold. The temple gate was closed. She stumbled forward, shivering as the temperature dropped. Perhaps it was the cold that made her shake. Perhaps it was the fear.
They’d tried the monks at the mountain first.
Approaching at sundown, she saw the torches had been lit, but the road lay blocked by a wooden fence, and at least fifty well-armed warrior-monks stood before it. There would be no entrance to the mountain temples now. Yora stood tall before the party of armed monks. His eyes were set, his mouth locked in a frown. He seemed older since they’d lost Hayo to the screams of Keishi arrows. Since he’d been forced to leave her behind. “She’ll make it,” Getoh had told him, trying to hold faith; Yora shoved the other man away.
Now the monks called out and blocked the road. Now their leader emerged from the ranks, squat-faced and scowling. Ajari Ryaku’in, a hulking, square-shaped man with a large nose, which Getoh told her Yora had once broken in a practice match when they were young; Ryaku’in had been a soldier before he took his vows. A horseman in the imperial guard.
“Hail the enlightened path,” Ryaku’in said, coming closer with his wide ambling gait. “For the true way of righteousness awaits.”
“Ryaku’in. What is this?”
“I thought you might come,” said the monk. “Looking for help. Looking for shelter. But there will be none.”
“You like the regents no more than I do,” Yora began, but Ryaku’in shook his head. He shot a glance at Kai.
“You should know better than to put your trust in a woman. But then, your clan was always backward in that way, so perhaps it’s no surprise.”
“And why is that?” Kai spat.
“Women are devils,” Ryaku’in said, simply. “The sutras speak of this. I don’t treat with whore-spiders, Yora. What do you want?”
“How dare you!” Kai glared, but Ryaku’in just clicked his tongue.
“They may look enlightened on the outside, poet, but you know they are demons on the inside. No matter how goodly a woman looks, her true nature will always come to bear.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Yora had been strangely quiet since the monk began, and now Kai realized he was shaking in anger. At the monk’s disdain of women, at this apparent betrayal, at the danger they were in. He was angry about it all. But it was too late to go back. “What do you want?”
“You will find the mountain closed to all who oppose the Keishi,” Ryaku’in said. “Seikiyo has offered gifts in return for loyalty of service – though that may be somethingyoudon’t understand.”
Yora came forward. “Coward. You think they’ll spare you? If you do this? Seichi has said he wants to burn your temples to the ground!”
“Not if we deliver him his prize…”
Yora’s men drew their swords. Yora said: “You’re doing this because Seikiyo pardoned your banishment. What of your vows? What of the enlightened way?”
Ryaku’in dipped his head. “Hail, Kouzeon. Light of mundane voices, the god of compassion, the sound of righteousness. I am a monk of the Middle Path. Your gods, and the Awakened Ones, are simply different manifestations of the truth, that we are their shadows on the earthly realm. I know my duties on this fleeting world, I know what I must do.” He glanced to the masked and muscled warrior-monks behind him, longblades glinting in the torchlight. “And so do they.”
