The woman, Hassho Tayu, was staring at her.
“Come,” Jobo said.
Rui managed to send a nod of encouragement to Sen, just one, before the newcomers roused their horses and moved off. Tokuon offered a stallion to Sen, saying, “Here, cousin,” and Sen didn’t look back at Rui when they went.
“Rui,” Jobo said. He and the old woman, the Hassho, were waiting.
“I’m coming,” Rui said, and followed him.
They went to a tent in the open field beneath the shadow of the trees, where Tokuon’s bannermen were setting up their camp.
“The Hassho is a diviner,” Jobo said. “She can hear the rumblings of the earth and spirits better than I can.”
When they reached her tent, at the low edge of the meadow, the Hassho ran talismans against their hands and foreheads, cast them to the river, seeing the path they took, and when they were seated, she tossed stones and oracle bones into her fire.
“What’s she doing?”
“Making invocations to the guardians of the four directions: east, for the dragon; south, for the crane; the tiger, to the west; and the bear to the north. By gaining the blessings of the four directions, we can see the truth.”
The Hassho fell still. “The god of four directions is coming,” she said. “The One Who Sees. They come to warn us.”
“I have felt them, too,” Jobo admitted.
The old woman looked at him. “It is the demon’s curse…Three will die, three houses will be emptied. Three branches will break. They will blow away, scattered as dead leaves…”
She bent over her bones, mumbling and shaking, and shivered, as though a deathly chill had passed through her.
“Hassho,” Jobo asked. “What do you hear?”
“Flames,” she said, gripping his hand in hers. “Flames.” She began speaking in tones, as if reciting a song: “A tyrant king will fall, and rise under the moon. The curse of the demon-emperor returns…” Her eyes, wider now, reflected the red embers of the fire. “I hear it… I hear his voice… he speaks of vengeance! He speaks of names. There is a ghost, walking with demons in the four directions of the world… They have crossed the endless gate.Look!” She gasped harshly. “You can see it. You can see.”
At the end, it was Rui she turned to, not the crow monk. Her voice cracked, raw as if she had been screaming. It trembled when she spoke. “Flames,” she said again, and once more, “flames.”
She looked into Rui’s eyes. “The capital is on fire.”
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Yaeko
Shoho Year 4
Autumn
The bells were ringing. Yaeko Eiga, of the sixth rank in the court, last of her house, student of Yora Shijin and guard of the Keishi clan, could hear the distant alarm of people throwing themselves about in the courtyard. Mounting horses in disarray, speeding off. As she crossed the steps, she saw them rushing to their stations, and above them: smoke, rising from the slopes of Mount Eizan. The Temple of the Mountain was burning down.
The monks of the Gate had come at last.
An hour before, her lord Shigeo Keishi, with his smooth hands, gentle features and thin shoulders, saw her in the palace courtyard with the soldiers and invited her to walk. At thirty-eight, he was the kindest, and most soft-spoken, of Seikiyo’s three sons. He was also the eldest and the man most suited to take over Keishi affairs when their great father was gone.
“Tell me, Yaeko,” he asked, gazing out over the smoke that was still rising from the mountain, “what do you seek most in all the world?”
“I don’t know, ame’in.”
He laughed. “Come, when we were at the Hermitage you said youwanted to be the finest short-sword fighter in the sixty provinces and go to the continent to challenge all of Souchou for the best in the world.”
She smirked. “I was a cocky child.”
“You had ambition.”
