Thousand Shrine Warrior Read online

  She was not ready for much today.

  But it was time. And for all that she could see, it was inescapable.

  A gulleyed byway led in and out of an ancient forest and near the dangerous brink. Here and there the route was marshy. Her borrowed wooden geta kept her feet above the ground, except once or twice when they sank into mud, allowing her feet to become wet and cold. She ignored the discomfort. Warped and half-rotten bridges saw her across narrow streams, which were numerous, spilling into the gorge.

  When the path took her near the cliff’s edge, she could see to the monstrous, frothy river far below. From some points along the way, she could see as far as the curve of the gorge, atop which perched the sullen temple between high falls. Funguslike patches of fog clung to the temple. Toward the base of the stony cliffs, numerous wide falls collided into an ultimate, single entity and continued downward. The river was entirely obscured where this entity struck. There might have been no river at all in that spot, for all one could see through the roiling, billowing clouds of mist. It looked as though the waterfalls spilled straight into Emma’s Hell, and smoke was seeping out. The smoky mists swirled up and away, forming grotesque visages, which dissipated, then reformed into shapes more hideous than before.

  At other points along the route, she could see only the ancient cedars all around, a forest virtually untouched by woodcutters, who shunned it. Her mind could not help but compare these trees to those surrounding White Beast Shrine west of the village. There, around Bundori’s refuge, a sad nostalgia weighted moist branches, heavy with old dreams and new tears; whereas here, the trees were bowed beneath terrifying secrets, and their tears were thick as blood.

  Above her head, branches brushed against one another, whispering dour warnings in a language she could not comprehend. The sky’s illumination was, within the cold embrace of these cedars, mostly blotted out. There was little underbrush beyond luridly colored toadstools, spidery moulds, fleshy lumps, and darksome mushrooms whose wrinkled caps resembled devilish faces.

  Nor were there beasts in this portentious wood, possibly due to nothing more untoward than the early hibernation patterns in the highlands. But one could well believe the animals, like the woodcutters, were reluctant to disturb the atmospheric glumness.

  What was more, one could sense that this appalling essence of the unknown exuded outward from the Temple of the Gorge. It became more intense as one drew nearer that cheerless hold. And though another traveler might have turned and fled the very scent of the macabre, the bikuni, she knew not why, was strangely attracted to that temple’s odor.

  She did not know what was more wisely dreaded: the sinister, whispering forest; the roaring visages below the harrowing cliffs; or the waiting temple, at once beckoning by means of malign magnetism and auguring doom for all who were drawn near.

  When the path led out of the forest again, she saw the place loom close. A sudden high wind tore upward from the gorge, heralding her arrival, gusts pressing her from behind. A slight but unpleasant drizzle was driven sideways. A full-scale storm seemed unwilling to touch the vile earth, despite increasingly dark and menacing cloudcover.

  The temple enticed. It dared.

  She passed between two stupendous warriors carved of pine, their faces threatening scowls stained red, their wooden swords held high as to sever the heads of whoever proved foolish enough to enter the temple grounds. Angry—or laughing?—gusts whistled by the lips and swords, but could not stir the wooden gods to life.

  The bikuni approached the entrance of an outer temple. She stopped to listen, thinking something echoed off the face of the monastery: the faint, weepy prayer of a ghost. It might have been the wind, or a hungry crow’s distant complaint. She could not hear the exact sound a second time.

  Standing before the entrance, even damp and wretched, there was an heroic mien to the bikuni, a musing quality to her posture. She lingered on the steps merely to appreciate the fineness of the weathered, derelict structure, the ingenious mood of horror invoked by the surroundings and the architecture. She was not commonly of dark disposition, and ought not to find such a place familiar to her soul; even so, the site held some attraction. If it were other than haunted, she would be surprised. If a great priest exorcised the vicinity, it would almost be a pity.

  She removed her amigasa for vision’s sake, held it in her left hand, and stepped across the threshold. Her charcoal-and-cream colors caused her to blend into shadow. The gale had risen to such pitch, no one was apt to hear her, even though she strode overtly, investigating unlit chambers without regard for whom, or what, she might disturb. The building was deserted, apparently for decades.

  She passed through a back exit and was about to cross a muddy court, thence to the main temple, a frowning structure; but a sparkle of light captured her attention. She turned her face slightly to look back, and saw a lamp’s gleam through the crack of a loose shutter.

  The bikuni retraced her steps to see what room she might have missed. It turned out that one corner of the monastic dwelling was divided into more parts than she had realized. Approaching this previously overlooked cell, she tried to catch any sound, but the wind raged more and more, sounding of celebration, so there was small chance of her hearing every movement.

  When she slid the door aside, there sat a man upon his knees, in the center of the room, hunched over a table, his back to the intruder, ink and brush to hand. As the door slid in its dusty track, the fellow ceased writing and sat bolt upright. He did not turn around to see who entered, but moved his writing brush from right hand to left. His right hand then moved toward the floor, where a longsword rested at his side.

  The bikuni said, “Man of Omi?”

  The youthful fellow leapt upward with alarming speed, sword in hand, but did not turn to face the intruder even then. Rather, he bounded over his table, kicking the lantern so that its own oil doused the flame. He vanished in the darkness.

  The bikuni dropped her bamboo hat, took one step forward, and drew steel. She heard no panel open, no indication of the man having left the room. With the gale’s racket, she might have missed the sound of retreat, especially if he had prepared in advance by oiling the track of some secret door. Yet she suspected there were only two routes of escape: the shuttered windows, or the door she stood before. The man of Omi likely lurked invisibly in some corner of the room, whereas the bikuni stood in diffuse light from the crooked shutter.

  She moved forward, her face tipped downward, listening intently, apparently calm. She approached the small table, beside which were three stacks of thin, worm-eaten books. Upon the table, a long sheet of paper was partially unrolled. The bikuni lowered herself into a squatting position next to the table, her whole posture still conveying readiness. By the negligible illumination, she could see that the books were family genealogies of the sort kept by priests responsible for regional documentation of clans. The books must have been filched from various surrounding temples—temples more recently vacated than the long disused Temple of the Gorge.

  Her left hand raised the long sheet of scroll-paper from the low table into a slant of vague light, which filtered between the shutters. Because she had to remain sword-ready, it was difficult to concentrate on what the man of Omi had been writing. She was able to tell that the scroll included family names, which served as main headings; and beneath these main headings were the given family’s individual members, along with the rank and position of each. The Sato name headed the list, and the bikuni was surprised to see how few members there were in the present generation. Sato’s line seemed near extinction, as were many local families, if the scroll was accurate.

  She had seen the format of the scroll only a couple of times in her life, when powerful warlords had their clerks draw up charts to aid in the extermination of enemy clans. This was done either for purposes of revenge, or to circumvent revenge from one’s foes. Once begun, the process would not stop until every member of the indicated families, from infants to dotards, were era
dicated. There had been such a hunt for members of her husband’s clan, after his failed treachery against the Shogun’s government. It was generally considered an extremist measure and not entertained lightly even by the military authority of Naipon. That Heinosuke should have use for such a compilation was inconceivable.

  Here and there, names were already deleted by means of a simple character, which meant “complete.” This indicated a death, or a death so certain to occur within days or hours that the individual required no further attention.

  As she was ignorant of most local family names, the greater portion of the scroll was meaningless to her. But she did recognize the style of names taken by Buddhist priests and scholars. These had already been systematically marked “complete,” which did not surprise her, given what the Shinto Priest Bundori had said about the fates of local temple men. Most of the names awaiting the cruel mark were followed by ranks or titles that were associated with castles and vassalage—Lord Sato’s men, no doubt. Among these, the bikuni was surprised to see three she recognized: Takeno, Yojiemon, and Chojiro. These were the men she had slain, and for whom she had lately been carving a lantern. It was disconcerting to see that she had slain men whose deaths were already plotted.

  Unrolling the scroll further, a startled breath escaped her, for she saw the major heading “Todawa,” beneath which were placed the members of that family, whose members equaled the fingers of one hand. Two names had already been stricken. One was the family patriarch, whom the listmaker might well have known had been close to death for several days. The other name dealt the grievous stroke was what shocked her. The bikuni had believed Otane had fled safely from the fief, for love’s reason, yet Heinosuke’s list deleted Otane’s name with the word “complete.”

  Despite an outward calm, the bikuni’s breath had quickened. She had just about concluded that Heinosuke was plotting one of the most vicious and extensive schemes of revenge ever undertaken by a single man, for what reasons she could not begin to guess. However, her first conclusion was shattered as she eyed the scroll further and found that it included a heading for the Rooster Clan, beneath which heading had been scribed the family’s last two members. The Rooster Clan was another clan near extinction, though once it had been large and distinguished, before wars brought its numbers, and politics brought its power, steady decline.

  What was most alarming was that of these two names—one being Heinosuke’s, the other being his sister Oshina’s—Heinosuke had already marked his own name “complete,” as though he counted himself as good as dead. His sister’s name was not deleted, for Heinosuke had no way of knowing his sister’s fate; it was, in fact, this very matter that originally had brought the bikuni in search of Heinosuke. If he knew that he and not his sister was the family’s sole remaining member, and he its only chance at future progeny, then he might not treat his own life so hazardously. For surely he had marked his own name “complete” not simply because he knew his life was wanted, but because he intended to give his own life in an effort to foil the villainous plan of Kuro the Darkness.

  It became clear to the bikuni that Heinosuke’s research in stolen genealogies, and the making of this scroll, were endeavors undertaken in order to establish the full extent of the felon’s vengeful targets. The Rooster Clan was only one among many marked for doom. The genealogies were required in order to find a common link, and thereby, perhaps, a common reason, for Kuro’s hatred for so many unknowing objects of revenge.

  Even though many facets of the conspiracy evaded her understanding, the bikuni’s racing thoughts were eager to vindicate Heinosuke. Priest Kuro, not Heinosuke, sought the deaths of Lord Sato’s vassals and sent them on deadly errands. The man of Omi had uncovered at least part of the reason; thus Heinosuke’s moment of “completion” had gained high priority. The bikuni nearly had become the unwitting tool of Kuro’s plot.

  She was about to call out to the man of Omi by his childhood name of Yabushi, so that he would know her for a friend; but at that moment, a shutter was torn away from the window. Wind raged into the room with a hateful shout, drowning her cry to Heinosuke. Her attention was diverted to the window, for she thought it was the man of Omi seeking egress, not the wind tearing loose the shutter. But he was elsewhere, noting her every move, realizing the moment when her readiness focused in a direction contrary to his position. He leapt out of deepest shadow with a bat’s swiftness, his longsword scraping through the bikuni’s alms-bag. Raw rice scattered through the air, sprinkling the floor. The length of paper was snatched from her grasp, leaving her but one small fragment.

  The man of Omi was through the door.

  She pursued him to the muddy courtyard, where she was struck by cold blasts of wind. The man of Omi was already across the court, too far to hear her shouting that she was his friend. She saw him enter the maw of the main temple. Though she was at the same door in an instant, already he had vanished, knowing the buildings and the grounds too well.

  Something intangible stroked her neck as she entered; and the wind outside, raging the moment before, became a silent zephyr, as though to inform her that some portion of the performance was over. Now she stood in a vast hall where sound was absorbed and rendered mute. She knew she had stumbled into the vortex of whatever malignance ruled the forest and the falls; yet she could give no great thought to the matter, not in the wake of more personal revelations, and on the heels of a friend nearly treated as a foe.

  She spied his footmarks, left by muddy, unshod feet. The track ended less than halfway through the building, having gotten cleaner and dryer with each step of his flight. If he hadn’t changed direction, she calculated his arrival at the lap of the blasted Buddha seated at the far end of the hall.

  The Buddha looked to be the survivor of conflagration, his once-holy visage reduced by the ravages of decay. Now he frowned malevolently upon she who approached.

  Nearing the altar, she saw that there was a separate room behind the large wooden Buddha. Ready for a new attack—for Heinosuke might well regard her as an emissary of his worst enemy, as indeed she had almost been, through clever and depraved machinations—she stepped into the small back room. It was relatively well-lit, for a side door had been left open onto a graveyard.

  She stood in the doorway and looked at gulleys, rivulets, and paths leading in several directions, none betraying Heinosuke’s quick route. Far to the left was a wide, rushing river which, beyond her view, leapt into the void of the gorge at the temple’s rear. Before her was a heavily overgrown cemetery. Many cedars had been left throughout the grounds to provide shelter of sorts from the mountain winds, so that graveyard and forest were poorly delineated.

  Because of seepage from higher ground, many of the cedars’ roots were weirdly exposed by runoff. Purulent, mildewed soil gave rise to disagreeable odors, despite the present drizzle’s efforts to cleanse the air. Nearly every Buddhist temple was associated with a graveyard, which were by their nature on the darkled edge; but the sight before her now was much more evocatively evil, though less so, she thought, than the main temple hall overseen by the blasted Buddha.

  A distant voice weakly intoned a sutra addressed not to Priest Kuro’s favored Wonderful Law, but to the wargod Hachiman. It was a prayer of vengeance, though the voice was thin and reedy. It was the voice of an old woman.

  The bikuni descended a steep, wide, slate stairway, the sides of which were impinged upon by worn figures of buddhas and bodhisattvas, their eyes shut, their visages complacent. Water cascaded over the steps, splashing beneath her geta. Springs, which ages anon had woven their way through the graveyard in a managed, controlled manner, after decades of neglect had made their own wild courses. Numerous graves were washed away, ashes carried into the muted gorge. The bikuni passed a stone bodhisattva that had had the soil washed from underneath. It had tipped sideways, revealing bones.

  Both wind and drizzle subsided, though the sky rumbled distantly, still promising ferocious weather. The sound of prayer was somewhat l
ouder. The bikuni took a side path over slippery clay. She wove between additional monuments, many of them leaning. At last she came to an area devoid of monuments, but recently cultivated with graves, few of them marked, proof that the old cemetery was still used.

  She pushed through brittle, dead weeds higher than her shoulder, finding grave after unmarked grave, and hoofmarks which she took to be the tracks of Ittosai Kumasaku’s cherished horses. This would be the very place into which Kuro the Darkness instructed Ittosai, his only true retainer, to place the uncremated victims of monstrous and curious schemes.

  She found a certain grave, one of the few with any kind of marker, albeit a marker of little merit, its inscription apparently made by an unsteady hand with a worn-out brush; the bikuni could not read the sloppy characters. Before this grave knelt a woman whose bent posture and ragged brown clothing conveyed old age. Her face was mostly swaddled, the slits of her closed eyes the only portion revealed. She seemed a very mountain spirit, a ghostly hag, hunkered in front of the recent grave, calling out to the wargod in her weak voice, muffled by wrappings; pleading for revenge. Omnipotent revenge. Purifying revenge. Glorified and holy to gods, devils, and humankind: revenge!

  “Grandmother,” said the bikuni, shattering some spell. The old woman grew still and opened her eyes. “It’s too cold to stay out here. Can you pray before your houseshrine for a while?”

  The old woman’s wrappings hid her hair and ears and nose and jowls and chin … everything but those pinched, narrow eyes. A knife was sheathed at the front of her obi. Her muffled voice replied,

  “Here lies the last of my kin. I’ve made this marker with his name upon it, in my own broken calligraphy. I couldn’t find a priest to do it properly. I couldn’t have his corpse taken for interment at our traditional grave sites near a temple distant from here.” She pointed vaguely south with a bent finger, then continued. “I am cast from my home, in which I could live only while my nephew had the rights of a castle retainer. What is there for me to do but die in this place, begging Hachiman for revenge against Lord Sato’s hellish cleric?”