Thousand Shrine Warrior Read online

  “What good is dying here alone?” the bikuni asked, pitying the old woman. “If you have no home, why not live secretly in one of the abandoned temples? You can pray for your nephew’s spirit anywhere.”

  The oldster turned her swaddled face away and said vehemently, “I will die right here! Don’t try to make me fail! You shouldn’t bother me like this. Even that villain Ittosai, who buried nine more men this morning, does not interrupt me, does not try to sway me, does not show me such disrespect. You know it’s impolite to meddle! Go away quickly!” Now she glowered at the bikuni and insisted that she “Go! Go! I pray for only one to come to me before I die!” She gripped the handle of her sheathed knife and added, “The one I wish to see is the slayer of my poor Chojiro!”

  Only when the woman said her nephew’s name was the bikuni able to decipher the barely intelligible calligraphy on the wooden slat marking the grave.

  “Grandmother,” she said, head hung low. “Hachiman has answered your prayer just now.”

  The old woman’s vein-mapped hands clutched at the knife’s handle, ready to unsheath it. She stared up at the bikuni, demanding, “You are Kuro’s handmaiden of death? You killed my poor Chojiro?”

  “I have never seen this Priest Kuro. I fancy myself his foe; although I wonder how deeply his intrigues are rooted. I begin to wonder if anyone can die within this fief who does not do so by the design of Kuro the Darkness. Whoever slays anyone may serve Kuro, though not knowing how or why.”

  The old woman tried to stand quickly, but was too feeble, and found her unsteady legs by awkward stages. Her hunched spine kept her from standing tall. Her fingers were knotted and deformed; she could not draw the knife very well. Her eyes conveyed a fierceness all the same. The knife was raised to the side of her head and she appeared willing to dash forward at any cost.

  But she did not move. Momentarily, her expressive eyes broke from ferocity into shame and sorrow. She confessed, “I knew Chojiro was too much influenced by Priest Kuro. I knew it would undo him in the end. He was a good boy all the same, if you can believe that. He did what others told him, but never thought up anything evil on his own. I can bear the truth, if it comes from a nun with so guileless a face. Tell me: Did my Chojiro die bravely?”

  The bikuni had to turn her face away in order to reply. “He was not such a brave man, if I must tell the truth.”

  A cry caught in the old woman’s throat. She took one step forward and managed to ask, “Did he commit some misdeed in Kuro’s name that required your cutting off his head?”

  The bikuni was bitterly ashamed, and barely able to respond. “I don’t know that he did,” she said. “I gave in to the irony of the moment. He begged mercy, but I had none.”

  The old woman’s knife raised again, aiming shakily at the bikuni. She demanded, “Then how can I let you off for killing him?”

  The bikuni squared her shoulders, looked the woman in the eyes, and replied, “I don’t believe you can.”

  The old woman hobbled forth, striving for swiftness, knife stabbing the space the bikuni had already vacated.

  “Grandmother, your vengeance is a just one. If I give my blood to any, I promise it will be yours. Yet I am not ready to give it to you now.”

  The old woman struck again, but the bikuni stepped aside, evading her easily.

  “Take care of your health,” said the bikuni, “in case it takes a while for you to have your wish.”

  Then the bikuni wheeled about and hurried back toward the Temple of the Gorge, quickly outpacing, and losing, her elderly foe.

  As she backtracked, intending to reclaim her hat, she found, in the muddy courtyard between buildings, the same scrap of paper that had torn in her hand when Heinosuke snatched his scroll, and which she had dropped in pursuit of him. It was wet and dirty, but after she straightened it out a bit, it was easy to read. It contained part of another list of names, a peasant clan, and one of them was Shinji’s. As was the case with Otane’s name, Shinji’s had already been given the mark that implied completion of revenge.

  The bikuni stood in the courtyard, pondering the variety of families on Heinosuke’s scroll: a lord and his relatives; vassals of various posts, with their kin; local holy men; and here, she found, even a farm family. All their fates were intertwined for some reason that the bikuni could not penetrate. A strange mystery! She wished she had been able to speak with Heinosuke, for it was possible his research had already resolved Priest Kuro’s purpose and the connection between such divergent and unsuspecting families.

  As her mind struggled with the fragments of information she had acquired, the dark sky became extremely pale and unleashed not a deluge, but snow. The day’s long promise of tempest would not be met after all. Snow clung to her shoulders and hair; but that which touched the ground melted at once. It was a light snow and had the beneficence of making the temple less overtly grim.

  That which she had felt in the main temple hall—a hand placed lightly at her nape—she felt a second time in that courtyard. It was eerily unnatural; she might have dismissed it as a snowflake or breeze had she not felt it once before. Yet the touch was not entirely threatening. She looked about, seeing no one. She crumpled the paper, then opened her palm; and a slight gust stole the scrap, losing it among flakes of snow. How odd I feel, she thought, gazing at her palm, on which snowflakes danced as within a miniscule tornado.

  The peaked, tiled roofs around the court were swiftly becoming white-on-rust. Menace was certainly not erased, but snow’s deathliness was more comprehensible, muffling the temple’s native strangeness. The bikuni felt once more a fascination with or attraction for the macabre, a thing usually contrary to her disposition, or so she felt. Sometimes she was moody or withdrawn, but rarely grim or haunted. All the same, the monastery made her think about the tragic beauty of things grotesque, not about their frightfulness.

  Perhaps this was in her nature, she reflected, only she refused to embrace it with full honesty. Her past was rife with gory deeds, dark battlefields, calm strokes of steel. She had been less reflective in those days. Even now, despite a discrete sense of criticism regarding herself and others, her dreams remained peaceful ones, more than not, never filled with severed limbs groping for the life her own sword had denied them. Because she had fallen from high station and become humble, some might think she suffered, battling a corrupting ego or a pitiful sense of inconsequentiality. Really she reveled in such feelings in a self-indulgent manner, and was quite happy to evade peace of mind. This being so, both her occasional sense of inadequacy and her questioning of the necessity of violence in no way caused her sensations of guilt for things past, or things that yet might happen.

  In all, it would seem her life was a kind of supernormal force that meant no evil, destruction and slaughter notwithstanding. The malignance of the Temple of the Gorge was like this also. What really separates a hero from a villain where death is concerned? Is a righteous slaying less irrevocable?

  She entered the long, narrow building, treading the corridor in search of the room where she had first spied Heinosuke and where she had dropped her bamboo amigasa. Her thoughts still rushed about her like the flurry of snow outside the monastery. She knew that of late her own cruel blade had swung less easily, not for loss of valor or vitality, but out of some sense that life was precious. Thinking about life was too interesting. The snuffing of such thoughts was too sad. Did the thing that was hellish about this Buddhist compound ever have such doubts? Probably it did not. Maturity had made her more conscious of herself, but the haunted temple was something frozen in time, mindless of itself and therefore, like a young warrior, able to destroy without shame. It was, then, her own violent youth she felt amidst the haunting: a loving recollection of the terrors she had witnessed, wrought, or survived.

  And wasn’t that the same thing that caused her to slay those three roguish samurai? She hadn’t thought they merited death for pursuing a harmless girl through the night; so far as she had been able to tell, they had
not even consummated their infamous intent. But she had been caught in the mystery of steel’s strength, eager to recapture the innocence of the naive warrior who ceases to be a thinking entity but is only a part of a sword. It was easy to apologize afterward; to play her instrument for the dead, or buy a priest’s prayers, or carve a lantern of stone.

  Yet she would not give up what she had learned in order to be innocent again; and innocence is as ongoing a process as gathering knowledge. It was unlikely anyone ever knew herself completely. Still, some aspect of herself, out of her past or hidden within herself at all times, grazed off the walls of the Temple of the Gorge and echoed though its corridors. Though others would regard this place as horrific, the bikuni found in it something that was comfortably familiar and singularly splendid.

  From a long way off, she heard the whinny of an aged horse. The bikuni thought it might mean Ittosai Kumasaku was bringing another corpse for Priest Kuro’s cemetery. It might even be the corpse of the Todawa patriarch, for Priest Kuro, through Lord Sato, would doubtless cause the beleaguered family to give up any notion of interment elsewhere.

  She found the room and reclaimed her hat. It was less dark, for the shutter was gone from the window. Snow reflected into the chamber like myriad small white flames. She noted that Heinosuke had also returned, at least momentarily. The books containing genealogies were gone from beside the table. The bikuni knelt before the table, removed a piece of rice paper from her sleeve, and lifted the inkbrush Heinosuke had left behind. She wrote:

  Yabushi: We’ve much in common, I think.

  We both take comfort in this haunted place.

  Please think well of me until next we meet.

  Then, from within her kimono, against her belly, she extracted her silk wallet. From this she withdrew a woman’s hair, held fast by a tube of paper on which was written the name “Oshina,” Heinosuke’s sister. She placed the hair upon the short missive and said to Oshina’s spirit,

  “I was nearly fooled into fighting your brother.” She bowed to the hair and asked Oshina’s forgiveness, adding, “He considers himself to be dead to the world, so I must try to save him, fearing he will not save himself. As it stands, I don’t understand the whole mystery yet. But I feel some resolution is pending. In the meantime, please look over Heinosuke for both of us.”

  When she stood, taking up her hat again and leaving Oshina’s hair for Heinosuke to discover, she turned and saw a shadow hulk in the door, a wide straw hat upon his head. Ittosai Kumasaku came into the room and looked about, as though the nun were not his primary concern. Finding nothing of greater interest, he acknowledged her by saying,

  “My master told me to come and bury the corpse of a troublesome fellow named Heinosuke of Omi. For once, Priest Kuro seems to have guessed wrong. Have you noticed such a body?”

  “One of the men you buried this morning,” she replied softly, “requested, on his dying breath, that I slay the man of Omi. But Heinosuke was shockingly quick and evaded me. Your master’s ploy went awry, for I no longer think Heinosuke killed those nine men. If I find out who really slew them so obscenely, I will yet consider myself bound to avenge them. Could it be that you were sent to commit the inhuman act? Certainly you weren’t shocked by their conditions.”

  “I am shocked by nothing,” said Ittosai deeply, walking about the room, his manner apparently intended as a threat, though the bikuni was uncowed. “If my master had asked me to slay in that grim manner, I would have tried, as I am his one faithful retainer.”

  “A devoted vassal might prefer to take his own life as a form of criticism,” said the bikuni, speaking of kanshi or remonstration suicide, practiced by retainers bound to tyrannical masters and otherwise unable to disobey. Ittosai grunted at the very implication, and replied,

  “I will rise in the world instead. In any case, he has not asked me to commit cruel acts, only to perform degrading chores. It might be that cruelty in his behalf would be more appealing to me, rather than continuing at the lowly tasks assigned me.”

  The bikuni was bold enough to say, “I think better of you than that.” Ittosai responded with bitter, momentary laughter, his deep voice failing to convey true mirth, but only anguish. He ceased striding about the chamber and stopped in sword’s reach of the bikuni, glaring at her from under the shadow of his wide hat. His eyes were as white as the snowflakes clinging to his hat. He warned,

  “Don’t imagine sensitivity where there is none. The years have driven me mad, I promise you.” The high-cheeked, hardened prettiness of his face became, for a moment, sallow and almost like a skull. His lips formed a line of anger not so much aimed at the bikuni but at the whole of Naipon, the universe, or himself. She backed away from him and bowed slightly, an act of obeisance that made Ittosai turn from her with a nervous look, his anger, or his madness, abating like a tide, and as surely liable to return.

  The bikuni spoke again, softly, as to a wild animal that was known occasionally to allow itself to be stroked. “I have recently found out that three men I killed in a cemetery along a pass leading to White Beast Shrine were men your master Kuro did not wish alive. The nine men sent to fight me this morning were also, I believe, meant to die by my hand, though some supernatural agent intervened to do the work instead, for reasons that elude me. I begin to fret that some fate of mine is bound to Kanno province and that I was drawn here for other reasons than to inform Heinosuke of his sister’s death. Am I somehow your master’s pawn but cannot see it? Is there some connection between myself and his malevolence? If he seeks to use me in some way, it will be his undoing, I am sure. I would like to meet your master and find out his intent!”

  Ittosai said, “You cannot ask his vassal’s aid.”

  “Do you refuse to comprehend your master’s villainy?”

  “That is not for me to judge.”

  “Even if it can be proven that he is a monster escaped from Emma’s Hell, born of this strange temple?”

  “I wouldn’t know about such things,” he said flatly.

  It was years since she had personally counted on the regulations of vassalage for the definition of her own conduct, and the bikuni was irritated that Ittosai was not similarly able to think for himself. She was free and a wanderer; he had wandered too. His stubbornness made her tell him hotly, “It annoys me that you feel the way you do!”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” said Ittosai, his voice gone throaty and strange, his white eyes turning on her again. His expression was at once calm and maniacal. He did not seem the same fellow she had met that morning, or who had entered the chamber moments before. In this unexpected persona, Ittosai spoke with greater self-assurance. He said, “What I know is this.” When the nun was attentive, he continued, “You, woman of Heida, are the nearest living relative of Kuro the Darkness.”

  The bikuni was plainly shocked. Her throat was instantly dry. Ittosai continued to speak.

  “Through you, Kuro will have vengeance, for reasons that are not my business to ask about. You say you are annoyed with me, but consider my position; I have greater reason for annoyance. You unwittingly perform services I would do with open eyes. You do against your will that which I would count proof of my worth as a vassal. I admired you before, but look how far you’ve fallen! And still I am a shadow in your wake. I wish Kuro would order me to kill you! But he values my strong arm for the way it holds a shovel. When at last your eyes are opened, you will know that you, more than Kuro the Darkness, were the monster of the play.”

  “What you say is senseless!” the bikuni challenged, backing to the wall as though attacked. “You’re vicious to invent such a story! How could I be Priest Kuro’s servant and not know it? How could he be my relative, when my clan lives far in the east of Naipon? I am a slayer of monsters! I am no beast!”

  She staggered backward through the door, feeling again that nearly loving stroke at her nape, slapping at it with her hand, finding nothing. Ittosai’s words could not be revelations, but only mistruths meant to confound
her! He stood against the window of the chamber in which she might have slain Heinosuke. Snow fell behind the outline of Ittosai. He began to walk forward, following her down the corridor. He had become a dark shape inside a golden outline, glowing, a frightful vision though making no physical threat.

  It was true she had felt something of madness in the haunted, derelict temple, and had nurtured some affection for the echoes of cruelty that made its presence known for miles around. Now the temple’s malignance rang in her ears. Her hand covered her mouth and nose, for some spell descended upon her, along with sickness. She strode backward, keeping the glowing shape of Ittosai in her sight. She came out of the monastery onto the path, which had frozen, the snow beginning to stick. She continued as far as the wooden guardians, on whose heads sat small coronets of snow. The sound of the river and the falls could not drown the throbbing, knelling sound, which originated with Ittosai or the temple or from within her very skull.

  She stopped between the tall wooden gods, took a stand, hand to hilt of sword, menacing Ittosai while shouting hoarsely,

  “What have you brought me!”

  “Truth.”

  “Or Kuro’s magic! I have done you no harm. How can you make me think I am a monster? The trouble in Kanno province never began with me!”

  “It will end with you. It will end badly.”

  “Because of truth or beguilement?” she demanded hotly. “You cannot charm me!” She began to calm her spirit, straighten her posture, but kept her hand to hilt as she said with a forced quiet, “I won’t let it happen.”

  Ittosai was himself in the grip of some spell, standing as an automaton without emotion, betraying none of his anger, none of his pride, none of the goodness she had felt could not be long suppressed. He raised his hand, in which he held a small wooden plaque, which she had not seen him holding before. He recited the sutra inscribed thereon, his white eyes glaring at her from under the edge of his hat.