Guardian Saviors of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle Book III Read online

  Relief swept through Toshi and he almost smiled. Calmly, he said, “Why shouldn’t I? I am an acolyte of Night’s Reach. In her name I took on the blessing of lethal cold, of frigid darkness.”

  The ogre nodded. “And the longer you contain that cold, the more it consumes you. Like your newfound religion. I wonder if you realize how much they are taking from you, old friend.”

  “I’m getting the best of the bargain so far.” Toshi grinned wickedly, hoping to disarm Hidetsugu’s suspicion with an open display of greed and ego. The ogre would expect that of Toshi.

  But Hidetsugu’s expression grew sharp. The bulging muscles in his arms and legs twitched, launching the ogre high into the air over the throne of bones. Toshi held very still as Hidetsugu landed heavily beside him, sending a web of cracks across the thick stone floor.

  Toshi waited as the ogre inspected him. When Hidetsugu had stalked a complete circle around him, Toshi said, “If you’re done appraising me, oath-brother, I’d like to discuss business. This reckoning,” he gestured at the academy around them, “seems complete. Our next step should be—”

  “Our work here,” Hidetsugu interrupted, “is far from complete. The wizards and the soratami crossed us, the hyozan reckoners. Their suffering has only begun.” The ogre’s great nostrils flared as he snorted angrily. “We are sworn to it.”

  Hidetsugu was wearing a mantle of black silk across his shoulders, so Toshi could clearly see the hyozan mark branded into the ogre’s chest. In the shadows behind the mound of bone, Toshi also saw more yamabushi lurking in the darkness, edging closer to their master and his guest.

  “Well, I hate to argue,” Toshi said. “But there’s no one left to reckon with, is there?” He pointed to the white mound. “I mean, their suffering is over, right? What’s left to accomplish?”

  Hidetsugu smiled, his tongue lolling grotesquely across his lips. Toshi swallowed hard.

  “No, my friend,” the ogre said. “Their lives have ended and their bones have been picked clean, but their souls are still being savored and digested. According to the terms of our oath, which you created, the reckoning is not complete until tenfold vengeance has been taken.”

  He crouched, bringing his wild eyes and carrion breath directly into Toshi’s face. “The ones who ordered our brother Kobo’s death are here. My apprentice’s reckoning is already upon the wizards and the moonfolk, but it will not end until it reaches their patron kami. I swore I would feed every one of them, everything they owned, and everything they loved to the All-Consuming Oni of Chaos. For him, this,” he pointed to the mound, “is barely a mouthful.”

  Toshi felt his eyes go glassy. “I see.” He smiled weakly and, fearing the answer, asked, “And where is your oni now?”

  Hidetsugu rose. Laughing, he spread his arms. “Here. Everywhere. He gorges himself on all Minamo has to offer. The wizards had amassed a remarkable collection of powerful artifacts and spells. When I last saw my god, he was devouring the central library one scroll at a time.”

  Toshi swore inwardly. If the oni was consuming inanimate objects of great power, it was unlikely to overlook Daimyo Konda’s prize, which Toshi had left in the depths of the academy’s maze of offices and passageways, hundreds of feet below where he now stood.

  Hidetsugu’s manic mirth subsided. He strode past Toshi toward his makeshift throne. “And you, ochimusha?” he called over his shoulder. “If you have not come to honor our oath to Kobo, why have you come?”

  Toshi abandoned the truth—it had never served him that well anyway. He had hoped that Hidetsugu and his demonic spirit would be too caught up in the ongoing carnage to care about the disk. If they didn’t know what it was, or how powerful, they might have let him have it for the asking … after all, he was the one who brought it here.

  He swore again. Now he would have to find a way to convince the o-bakemono to relinquish the prize instead of feeding it to his oni. Toshi didn’t relish the task. He was a newcomer to the idea of spirit worship, but Hidetsugu had been a true believer for a long time. If his oni had any interest in the disk, the ogre would never let it leave here.

  “I have come,” Toshi said, “On behalf of the Myojin of Night’s Reach. I am her acolyte and her interests are mine. Currently, she wishes to protect the Takenuma Swamp. Now that Konda’s tower has fallen and the daimyo himself has gone missing, she sees a chance to confront her enemies and expand her influence.”

  Hidetsugu cocked his head again. “And this affects me how?”

  “Look,” Toshi said, exasperation overwhelming fear, “you’ve managed to combine our oath with spirit worship. Why can’t I?”

  The ogre chuckled. “Oni and myojin are both spirits in the same way butterflies and hornets are both insects. You should never confuse the two while picnicking.”

  “Point taken. But you’re not listening to me. What if I say I’ll help you finish here then you come with me to the swamp. You can even bring your team of mind-raped yamabushi killers. Slaughtering things in the bog will seem like a vacation from slaughtering things on the water or in the air.

  “Look around, oath-brother. The wizards are all dead or gone, and your oni is eating whatever they left behind. Kobo’s reckoning will continue. The next step was always going to be the soratami, correct? Well, the soratami are in the swamp, and if we kill them there, we’ll be honoring the oath and my myojin.”

  Hidetsugu’s smile evaporated. His eyes flared. His voice was low and husky. “The soratami are next. And we don’t need to travel to kill them, my friend. They are close by.” The ogre glanced upward and his yamabushi let out a hollow, mournful moan.

  Toshi smelled an opening. “I’ve heard that the soratami only left a small force to defend their city. Most of them are in the swamps, trying to muscle in.”

  “Most are in the forest of Jukai,” Hidetsugu corrected. “But the hyozan will find them and deal with them all, in time.”

  “So why haven’t you?” Toshi said. “Oboro is protected by a token force, and surely the taste of moonfolk flesh is more exotic to an oni than old books or human meat. Don’t tell me a great and powerful o-bakemono and a half-dozen yamabushi are stymied by some skinny aristos with swords.”

  The ogre grinned again, raising a cold sweat on Toshi’s neck. He had seen Hidetsugu rampant in battle, swinging a spiked club in one hand and a dead foe in the other as he roared with laughter and spat sparks. Compared to his current expression, that wild mask of malevolence and bloodlust seemed like the warmth in a doting mother’s eyes.

  “I won’t tell you that, Toshi,” Hidetsugu said. “But I will tell you that I have visited Oboro. Recently, in fact. Things there are currently quite to my liking. Care to see?”

  “No,” Toshi said quickly. “I was just—”

  But Hidetsugu scooped him up and tucked Toshi under his arm like a log for the fire. The ogre raised his other hand and snapped his fingers.

  “Take us to Oboro,” he boomed. “I want Toshi to see how fares the city in the clouds.”

  Toshi was unable to protest with his lungs compressed in Hidetsugu’s grip. Five yamabushi emerged from the darkness, including the two that had greeted Toshi at the gate. They linked hands and formed a circle around their master and his burden, and then the warrior-priests began to chant.

  A series of circular platforms made of dull amber light formed between the floor and the highest exterior window. Toshi craned his eyes to follow the series of steps as it extended out the window and up into the evening sky.

  The female yamabushi from the front gate bounded onto the first platform. She hopped like nimble spider from step to step, pausing after each landing to cushion the impact and gather her strength for the next jump. As soon as she cleared the window, another yamabushi started from the bottom.

  When he went outside, Hidetsugu leaped. Toshi tried to yelp as the world twisted around him, but his lungs were still too shallow. The ogre’s grip tightened as he hit the first platform. Toshi gritted his teeth and concentrate
d on not being crushed.

  Outside, the sky had cleared and the soratami city Oboro glowed gold in the setting sun. Through tear-clouded eyes, Toshi could see the amber platforms of light reaching up to the edge of the city itself. The first yamabushi was almost there; Toshi and Hidetsugu would soon catch up.

  Toshi closed his eyes and said a quick prayer to his myojin. O Night, he thought. I am still your faithful servant, and true. But it may be awhile before I can complete the task you’ve set for me.

  After a moment, he mentally added, You too, Michiko.

  Helpless in the grip of his former oath-brother, Toshi wondered what he would find at the top of this peculiar staircase.

  High over the gemstone streets of Oboro, Hidetsugu and his yamabushi ended their journey. The ogre still held Toshi tucked under his arm while his warriors formed and occupied platforms of light arranged in a wide semicircle. The streets below them converged into a wide public quadrangle, half of which lay draped in shadows from the towering spires and gleaming domes of the soratami capital.

  “Oath-brother,” Toshi spat through clenched teeth, “if we have arrived, I prefer to stand on my own.”

  Hidetsugu did not reply, but turned to inspect the arc of yamabushi curling around to his left. With a shrug, he loosened his grip so that Toshi fell to the platform.

  Toshi paused while down on all fours to inspect his perch. The amber light felt as solid as stone, rough and cool to the touch, but it also pushed back against his hands as if surrounded by a layer of invisible springs. It was clearly sturdy, though he couldn’t actually touch it.

  Toshi glanced down at the quadrangle as he rose. They were far too high for him to simply jump and hope for the best unless he landed among the shadows. One of the blessings he had taken from Night’s Reach was the ability to travel from shadow to shadow, so all he had to do was make contact with the silhouettes of the soratami buildings and he’d be free to go where he pleased.

  Eyeing the distance he’d have to cover, Toshi decided to wait. Things would have to grow far more desperate before he pursued that particular option.

  “So.” Toshi straightened his sword belt. “You’ve dragged me all the way up here to show me … this? I’ll say it again, oath-brother. It looks to me like the show’s long over and the crowd’s gone home.”

  Indeed, there were no signs of people at all in Oboro. The streets were silent and still, and the buildings seemed empty, forgotten, and almost lonely in the gathering dusk.

  “Wait for it.” Hidetsugu’s voice was low and calm. He did not take his eyes off the quadrangle. “You know how to wait, don’t you? It’s a skill worth practicing.”

  The ochimusha crossed his arms and huffed. The longer this took, the more likely something horrible would happen. There was no way he could compel Hidetsugu to hurry, however, so he forced himself to relax and let the o-bakemono have his demonstration. One of the first lessons Toshi had learned about dealing with ogres was not to rush into things.

  Toshi’s first glimpse of Hidetsugu had come almost a decade earlier, when the ochimusha was still an indentured reckoner working for Boss Uramon. The sallow-faced crime lord was one of Takenuma Swamp’s most powerful figures, and she had been trying to clear a new route for her black-market caravans. Along a crucial part of the route was Shinka, Hidetsugu’s home. The boss had sent messengers, gifts, and offers of friendship to Shinka, but none of her envoys ever returned. When she sent one of her toughest negotiators and a team of hatchet-men to force the issue, Hidetsugu sent their mangled bodies back in one large sack. He also sent a mocking note telling Uramon the missing heads were now decorating his pathway, and that she could come view them any time she liked.

  Uramon was an even-tempered boss, but such insults are bad for business in Takenuma. Following time-honored criminal tradition, Uramon had organized her most dangerous thugs into revenge gangs called reckoners, whose job it was to make very public, very painful examples of anyone who crossed the boss. She assigned to her most reliable reckoners the task of chastising Hidetsugu.

  The boss was no fool, and she was determined not to underestimate the ogre’s power, especially in his own stronghold. Toshi was part of the largest team of reckoners ever assembled for Uramon, almost thirty of the most experienced mages, strong-arm experts, and killers-for-hire Takenuma had to offer.

  They were led by a heavyset assassin called One-Eye who wore a thick wooden eye patch. One-Eye was a notoriously indiscriminate killer, even in Takenuma. They said he had traded his eye for a cursed gem that would kill anyone who looked upon it, and he was quick to lift his eye patch and show the gem over the most minor disagreements.

  One-Eye was the only man who could have led such a large group against such a target. He was part drill instructor, part brutal taskmaster who insisted the entire gang follow his lead and act like seasoned professionals. He even killed two of them before the job started to hammer his point home: he would not die because of someone else’s mistake.

  They made the long trek to the Sokenzan Mountains quickly and quietly. When they reached Shinka, One-Eye positioned them all around the ogre’s hut where they could ambush him as he emerged.

  It was Toshi’s bad luck that One-Eye simultaneously respected his skill with kanji magic and hated his smart mouth. Since One-Eye’s plan required someone to anger the ogre and lure him into the ambush, he sent Toshi. There was no one more suited to stand openly in front of Shinka and provoke the ogre until he attacked. And if the jaws of the trap didn’t slam shut fast enough, well, the bait could defend itself.

  “So I’m bait?” Toshi complained.

  One-Eye was trying to signal two of the more monstrous reckoners that they were out of position. Preoccupied with keeping the poisonous acuba and nightmarish, grasping gaki in check until the attack began, the assassin hardly noticed Toshi.

  “You’re a kanji mage, right? You’ve got paper and ink. If he comes too close, make one of those characters that freezes people solid and throw it in his face.”

  “That’s no good. All-purpose stuff like that won’t work on something as powerful as—”

  The burly assassin’s hand twitched toward his eye patch, but he stopped halfway and made a fist instead. “Get down there and bait the ogre.” One-Eye crossed his arms. “Why else do you think I brought you?”

  So Toshi marched up to the hut’s door and stood, just out of view for anyone inside. As One-Eye quickly made the rounds and prepared everyone for the all-out attack, Toshi did take out a thin roll of parchment and a small ink bottle with a built-in brush. These were the basic tools of kanji magic, used in the art of infusing symbols with magic and willpower. Toshi had been beyond ink-and-paper casting for months, but he kept his true abilities hidden while he worked for Uramon. If the boss knew all that he could do, she’d just make him do it on command with no benefit to him.

  Toshi pretended to fumble with the scroll, but instead of the paralysis kanji that One-Eye had suggested, Toshi carefully eased his sword an inch out of its scabbard and ran his index finger along the blade. Dripping crimson, he quickly traced quite a different symbol across his own face. When it was complete, the mark crackled like water on a hot pan and let out a puff of red smoke.

  Feeling slightly more confident, Toshi then used the ink to draw One-Eye’s paralysis kanji on the roll of parchment and tore it off. He didn’t expect it would work—didn’t even expect to get a chance to use it—but it couldn’t actually hurt. One-Eye was competent and he had some of Uramon’s toughest muscle ready to go. The ambush might succeed, and if it did, Toshi wanted to be able to say he’d done his part.

  His own blood drying on his face, Toshi stood and listened to his heart pound as he waited for the signal and the wild melee that would surely follow.

  “There,” Hidetsugu said. The sun had almost set behind Oboro’s highest tower. The ogre pointed down, into the corner of the field of sapphire paving stones.

  Toshi looked. “I don’t see …” His voice trailed o
ff as a small, whirling cloud of black smoke formed on the edge of the lengthening shadows. The tiny cyclone expanded, then dispersed into a drab cloud dotted with orange sparks. Even from a distance Toshi could see monstrous, humanoid forms shambling inside the cloud.

  The first oni stepped out onto the quadrangle, hissing like a furious cat. It was roughly the same size and shape as a man, but its frame was larger, broader, and heavier. Its hide was thick and leathery, angry red in color, and its muscles bulged grotesquely whenever it moved.

  Its face was a skull-like mask of naked bones, blistered calluses, and jutting teeth. Two savage, red eyes gleamed in the dim light, with a third blinking its vertical lids higher up in the center of its forehead. Two long, jagged horns swept up from its forehead and curved back over its crown, and bony spikes erupted from its knees and elbows. Something dark and oily dripped from its sharp claws, searing through the matted fur that covered its waist, hips, and legs. As it emerged completely into the light its barbed tail swished menacingly through the air.

  Most disturbingly, the oni wore skillfully carved rings on some of its fingers and sported ceremonial bindings that ran up both forearms. It also wore a handcrafted necklace that was strung alternately with unidentifiable red orbs and human finger bones, which Toshi recognized all too well.

  The oni emerged from the cloud of smoke into the last bright rays of sun. There was something awful and alien about the way it moved, and as more humanoid demons formed and shambled into the quadrangle, Toshi realized what it was.

  Their bodies looked human, but their outlines stretched and bulged like a thick, boiling liquid. Their arms stretched farther than their bones should have allowed, and their legs expanded and collapsed like a partially blocked hose. Though they moved quickly and smoothly across the quad, it was as if each bone, each finger, forearm, vertebrae, and thigh were not attached to its neighbors. Instead, each steel-hard bone floated free inside a sinewy cushion of muscle, bound tight by the oni’s tough crimson hide.