The Disfavored Hero (9 page)

Anger was intense within Tomoe, but she knew that this was true: the Mikado was Naipon, the supreme ancestor incarnated. Whatever Tomoe did in her life, she did it for Naipon the Eternal Isles, and thereby for the Mikado. Even if bushido were a lie, still must she serve the living flesh of Naipon. Even if a Shogun stole power from a Mikado, still must that Shogun use the stolen power to serve Naipon's highest personage.

She threw down her swords, waited to see if the executioner would still kill her.

Ugo's sword re-entered its scabbard, and he stood impassively, watching. Tomoe picked up the new sword, judged it by its scabbard, drew it and weighed it in her hand, then sheathed it once again.

“You will not feel your prowess for a while,” Ugo said, “for you have incorporated much of Ho into your fighting style—ki'ung fu instead of jujitsu, two butterfly-longswords instead of one daito. But when you regain all of your samurai spirit, you will reclaim your previous strength, and more. Until then, you may think you have tied your limbs, for the forbidden style has become a part of you and will beckon exercise, will tempt you with its seeming merits. Never trust it! Never weaken. Never use it again! You will discover that skills born of Naipon are the best borne by samurai.”

She did indeed feel unbalanced as she discarded two scabbards and placed one new one at her side. But it was a disorientation she knew would pass with time, once she learned again to find balance at her center rather than at the width of her arms.

“Your honor can be saved by one deed,” Ugo began. “Now that you bear a weapon forged, tempered and blessed in Naipon, the sorcerer of Ho will have no more control over your mind. Huan has served the Mikado unbeknownst, but now will be a threat unless you intervene. No one but you can walk unhindered through the walls of sorcery he has woven about his palace.”

“I am not the only one,” Tomoe amended. “Ushii too has free movement through Lord Huan's palace.” Yet she knew Ushii had sworn fealty and could not strike Huan. Tomoe alone was free to act.

“Ushii has another task,” said the executioner. “There is still the army of monsters, brought through a door Ushii was tricked into carving to save you from hell. The magician-ninja have said only Ushii can stay the ghouls from their march to the Imperial City. Even if they stray from that course at the moment of Huan's death, they would yet bring wrack and terror to Naipon if left to haunt the living earth.”

Tomoe felt responsibility for Ushii's madness, at least in portion, and she hated to see him ill-used now. She asked,

“How can it be that Ushii can accomplish this alone?”

“You will see. You must return to Huan's mansion by route of the battlefield. The battle will be over. Dally if you will, and see the deed Ushii will perform.”

“Will this deed cleanse his burdened soul?” she asked.

“He has sheathed his sword in the blood of madness. He will never be whole. Yet if he succeeds at this last important task, Ushii Yakushiji will be recorded upon the Tablets of the Samurai as a most honored and honorable servant of the Mikado.”

Tomoe bowed, feeling sorrow but also satisfaction, as well as relief that she could feel at all. Quickly, she started back into the valley.

The executioner called out to her once, and she turned to see him beneath the evening's rainbow of the high falls, the colors of which his own gaudy armor rivaled. “When your strength is centered, Tomoe Gozen, it would be interesting to be sent to you again. I am not certain I would like that day.”

The ghouls busied themselves feasting. Beneath the pending, brooding dusk, Ushii fought unaided. He strove without thought or impression, his long shadow darker than all others. His sword worked alone, his body its extension. There was scarcely any balance remaining to his fighting style, the lasting day of battle having left him worn and tired, though maniacal and unrelenting. Yet there remained a kind of grace in the awkward manner by which he stumbled, jerked, and spun around. On every side of him, death was his guard.

When the last fingers of the Shining Goddess played gently over the field, there were but five samurai left of the eight thousand. They surrounded their one mad opponent. The sword of Ushii Yakushiji raced upward in a shower of blood, felling one. It bore left to sever the top half of another samurai's head, that warrior's brain tumbling to the ground with is body left standing. The sword slashed downward at a new attacker, splitting nose and teeth so that the stricken samurai staggered back and fell. It reached behind to stick into ribs, then wrenched loose to swing freely across the front of the last man's stomach, spilling intestines.

There were no more comers, but Ushii could not see this through the red haze of his bloodlust. He fought on, repeating his last maneuvers: the crimson-stained sword slashed upward, bore left, slashed down, reached behind and swung around—all through air, all to naught. He cut and lashed and endeavored to kill the ghost who haunted him, the ghost of Ushii Yakushiji as he once had been.

One magician-ninja appeared from amongst the corpses. Perhaps he had been lying down, pretending to be dead. He stood to bar Ushii's crazed passage, raising his arms so that the grey robes draped down. A brilliant light flashed between his hands, and Ushii threw an arm across his eyes to fend off blindness.

“Ushii Yakushiji,” the Priest said, “I command you to be as you were before madness.”

When Ushii lowered his arms from his face, he looked around at the eight thousand dead and the half-living travesties which fed. He covered his eyes again, and wept.

“My spell will not hold you long, so be heartened that you may soon again hide your sorrows behind a wall of insanity. I have come to tell you that Tomoe Gozen is free, and now you will do what you must do.”

A second magician-ninja stepped out from behind the other, as though the first had multiplied himself, but his duplicate was a woman. She pointed to the ground near her feet and said, “Here, in ancient times, there was a well.” Between the two magician-ninja the soil fell away to reveal a deep, black hole, perfectly round. “The well once gave fresh water, but became accursed so that it had to be hidden until this moment. Its waters had been siphoned into hell.”

The priest said to Ushii, “Only you, Ushii Yakushiji, can deliver the monsters to their own land once more.”

From his armor Ushii withdrew the corked vial, held it to the last moment of visible sun, Amaterasu-on-the-Mountain. “With this?” he half stated, a moving yellow light streaking his face. The holy man and woman nodded as one.

Ushii bit through the brown wax, pulled the cork with his teeth, and spilled the contents in his mouth. He knew the potion meant death, for Lord Huan intended it to be used only as the final resistance, should victory come to doubt. Victory was Huan's; Ushii's mission was fulfilled without this extra magic. And now that Ushii was rational, he knew that with or without fealty to Lord Huan, there could be no honor gained. If Tomoe were safe, he reasoned, then Ushii Yakushiji need concern himself no more with the honor of giri, or duty to his master. He could act instead upon the honor of his personal ninjo, the conscience which told him he must not do what Huan desired, but what the magician-ninja directed.

The two magician-ninja watched him, and they were his ninjo too; like spies, they always spoke truth, the truth that others would have unsaid. A jono priest or priestess sees through lies and illusion, through madness and sorrow. They saw to the heart of Ushii Yakushiji—and he would have been pleased to know they found something good there.

He felt the power of the fluid coursing through his veins almost before it was swallowed. The jono priest took the empty vial and put it in his robe, perhaps intending to study the traces. Ushii experienced a peculiar sensation of strength building, felt it tense and then relax his every bone and muscle. He looked at his hands and his sword, to see how much he had changed.

He turned to walk among the carrion and its eaters, making hoarse commands in a guttural, homely speech. The ghouls bowed to him as though he were a devil-god, and most of them obeyed, for he was bright and golden.

This is all that Tomoe saw:

The same golden warrior who had drawn Tomoe from hell presently walked beneath a sky of pink fading into bronze. He herded the ghouls as if they were strange, clumsy geese and he their holy gooseherd. He waved his shining sword like a gooseherd's flag, and the ghouls were urged toward a hole which looked like the blackest shadow of night without stars, without hope of morning.

One by one, they slunk into this hole, but not without protest. They pleaded and whined in their most awful manner, groveling at the feet of Ushii the Golden. Some of them were violent.

The golden warrior swept them onward, and down. He cut them when he must, and they gathered up their parts to continue on.

There strode the two-headed monster, and one of its heads was that of Shojiro Shigeno as Tomoe had envisioned in the cave—though the other head was not his horse, as Tomoe had embellished. Ushii's sword barely touched the neck of this stolen head, and there was a look of gratitude on the face of Lord Shigeno when his head fell away and was left behind.

It looked to be arduous work, to get them all, but none could escape because Ushii could be anywhere in an instant and move them back toward the hole. Some of them were bitter and angry, for they had fought their best, and deserved a rich reward. They growled and champed and tried to fight the golden warrior. One of them grabbed a section of armor and broke its leather thongs so that the armpiece came away in the monster's twisted hands. Another pulled at Ushii's legs and managed to remove another segment of armor, while Ushii walked unhindered, dragging the ghoul nearer to its doom.

Although they worried him as dogs do bones, shining Ushii looked to be without concern. He could not be taken by the ghouls. Yet each time one of them touched him, or tore away a piece of his armor, the glistening golden color of Ushii Yakushiji dimmed a little bit.

The ghouls took what spoils they could. Their own weapons had turned back to stones, but they carried off steel swords, those who had hands designed to hold them. Some of them took jackets and other clothes, which ill-fitted their homely bodies. One gathered the pony-tails of samurai until Ushii caught the beast and made it throw the prizes down.

Their numbers dwindled, as they screeched and cried and rushed before the sword, down into the hole, seeping like water into the earth. There was one who wailed pitifully, but was a trickster who leapt upon the warrior's front and ripped away the armor and underclothing in its desire to tear Ushii's heart. The strong and muscular chest which had been exposed was somehow impervious to the claws, and Ushii pushed the monster away without effort. It scrabbled toward the hole, kicked in the behind by its golden master.

The strongest were the last to go, and these jumped up and down and whooped and complained, refusing to be herded into the deep earth. Ushii fought them. They could not bear the light of him, and so could not look at him long enough to win a score. They threw rocks at him, rocks which had once been weaponry, and where these struck, small dark bruises erased the gold. Still Ushii did not reveal any weakening. He offered no quarter, this marred but golden man, fading by slow stages but still glimmering in the falling darkness. He was merciless and compelling. His once faithful army struggled to the last, but in the end made every concession.

The magician-ninja had not remained. Tomoe had not seen them go, neither their method nor direction. At the last, no ghoul stood on the darkened field of death. There was only Ushii, all his armor torn away and his garments shredded, the gold gone from his body. A thin moon was rising, dimly cloaking the scene with pale, white death. Ushii was pallid as a wraith, naked but for his sword.

From her distant vantage point, it looked to Tomoe as though Ushii were hunching down into madness, his arms akimbo and his head twisted in a strange way. He looked about with one eye fused shut. He did not see her on the nighted hillside away from the moon's faint light, though he scrutinized the entire valley of dead samurai.

With a final victory-whoop, the deformed and maddened Ushii threw his soul into the well and leapt in after. The well closed behind him, and Tomoe Gozen gaped in horror.

She had lived within these dreary rooms longer than a month and never noticed the pall which hung about.

Musty arras lined the hall. Grim, alien deities made of black jade glowered with ruby eyes, sitting in nooks wherever the arras were broken. The cells to either side were dark like caverns, or poorly lit by squat, round candles. The place felt haunted, especially now with the servants fled and no one left to deflect the lingering odor of sorcery.

Tomoe walked this gloomy hall to its end, hearing nothing alive in the few cells she passed. At the end, she lingered and gazed. There was a large room, with it relief ceiling depicting the invented deeds of Huan, heroic fictions which tickled his delight. There were thick carpets and tapestries which absorbed all sound, within or without. This utterly silent place was at once familiar and not—for Tomoe had been here many times, and yet never seen it with clear eyes.

Against one wall was a seat too large to use in comfort, but ornately beautiful, made of carved jade and craftworked gold. In the throne sat the sorcerer of the Celestial Kingdoms, shriveled in his clothing. A single, serpentine trail of smoke rose from the brazier before him.