She found a gate, a lawn, with gardens, and a far pagoda to the east. An artificial lake surrounded the main hall, which was painted deep red and stood with high arches and wooden sliding doors, and a flat veranda overlooked the stony shore like a moat. In the dark she saw a small boy on the stones, bent to one knee, peering down into the water.
It was Prince Nioh’s son, Noyori, six years old.
“Hey,” she whispered. “What’re you doing? We can’t be out here.”
He turned, blinking, and said, “She’s here. I have to help her.”
Then ran away.
Rui went after him. She stumbled, suddenly woozy; she heard a laugh. She heard another voice.
Sighing, the wind pulled shadows of blue and green across the winding hills. She thought she could see the mountain still rising to the east, where the dip and curve of the river brought them closer to the fertile valleys. Here she stopped, and turned her head. There was a voice in the wind, it seemed, sighing at her, just as softly as the sighing of the trees.
Then another sound, a child’s cry.
Someone was hiding behind the pagoda by the wall.
“Hello?” she called out. “Who’s there?”
Nobody answered. The boy had made his way to the east-side fence, and stood ankle-deep in tufts of sedge grass, brownish winterflowers waving in the wind.
“Look,” he said.
Beyond the gate, something was coming. The edge of the field drifted in a brush of cold, the frozen mud and barley hissed, and a low, rising sweep seemed to shimmer like blown grass: in it, shadows, moving, to the east.
Soldiers, she saw. Hundreds of them, crossing the frozen barley-fields in darkness. A cloud passed. Everything grew dim. But she could see the movement of them, silent and numerous, making their way stealthily toward the gate.
It’s them.
“Ame’in,” she said at once. “Go back to your father. Hurry!”
“Who are they?”
“Keishi. Run now! Run!”
At the bridge, they found Jobo and two Onji monks tense as lightning. They’d sensed something was wrong.
“Teacher!” she cried, and the monks scooped the little boy into their arms. But Jobo shouted, “Quiet!”
An arrow pierced the air. Whistling, like a dying bird.
A signal.
To the west, where the highroad led up to the capital, a conch began to moan. And beyond, a deeper rumbling, a violent, angry sound. War drums.
“Teacher,” she gasped, stumbling, gripping at his hands to help her up.
“They’re here.”
CHAPTERFORTY-ONE
Sen
Silence. The world an ocean of gray. Ice crunched under his horse’s hooves. It covered the dead grasses, seemed to materialize in thin air. He moved along the slope, straining, struggling to see through a blanket haze.
Now, he waited for the snow to come. He looked across the field and the icy rock and soil, where the loam lay cut with chips of stone. His courser huffed. A sharp breeze came through the lowland, skittering loose rock, and the valley before him grew silent again. The hill stood lifeless behind him; the pale grass shimmered underfoot. Fog lay heavy over dawn.
The hill bent down in a long, slow arc toward flat fields and a view of the river ahead. Winter barley, oatgrass, and the western edges of the town rested there in lonesome plots. In the other direction, a rugged woodland lay to the north. They were on the east side of the Onji River, where the twin temples sat nestled in a turn, connected only by the bridge. Sen knew Yora and the prince were on the western side, and would retreat across. There, they would be vulnerable. “That’s where we come in,” Tokuon had said. The drums had not yet begun to pound.Not yet, he thought.But soon.Until then, it was a world at pause. Silent. And still.
