Guardian Saviors of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle Book III Page 4
“If he survives. I would prefer not to be disturbed by any more of Uramon’s lackeys while I test him. It only draws the process out.
“Convince Uramon to leave me be until next spring. I will know by then if I have a new apprentice or another failure. In return, I will join your gang of freelance reckoners.” The ogre’s eyes flared bright red. “I may even help you craft the spell that binds us.”
“Deal,” Toshi said instantly. “Though I would be stunned if you simply let me walk away with only my word to bring me back.”
“That is because you are a quick thinker. No, Toshi Umezawa, I am not willing to trust your good nature. But I do trust blood magic.”
Hidetsugu lashed out and lifted Toshi into the air. Before he could scream, Toshi felt his arm disappear into the ogre’s mouth up past the elbow. Hidetsugu simultaneously bit down and squeezed with his hand, crushing the air from Toshi’s lungs as the ochimusha’s blood dripped from the ogre’s jaw.
Hidetsugu dropped Toshi and licked his chops. Toshi quickly touch-inspected his wound, which was shallow but bleeding freely.
“Blood,” Hidetsugu said through crimson-stained lips. “Blood is the key to all ogre rituals. Now I have tasted yours, ochimusha. I can find you anywhere. And if more of Uramon’s reckoners come here before spring to interrupt my student’s training, I will blame you. After I mount their heads on stakes I will come and find you in your bed. I will drag you back here and take sublime joy in your suffering for as long as I care to before feeding you to the All-Consuming Oni of Chaos.”
Toshi tore off the bottom of his sleeve and wrapped it tightly around his wounded arm. The pain felt far away, and he almost swooned as his stomach knotted and unknotted.
“Done,” Toshi said again, though he could barely hear his own voice.
“Good,” Hidetsugu replied. He stood and turned his back on his guest.
“I am becoming hungry again. Go now, ochimusha, before I change my mind.”
Still dazed, Toshi turned and woodenly began to run. The last thing he saw was Hidetsugu bending over the pile of corpses, sinking his arms into the mound to gather as many as possible in his broad, powerful arms.
“Put me down, oath-brother,” Toshi said. “We have been bound for too long to squabble.”
Hidetsugu shook Toshi in his fist like a child’s rattle. “The bond between us is stretched too thin at present, Toshi. Find a more compelling argument.”
Toshi was ready. “There is a stone disk hidden in a chamber deep within the academy. The same creature that almost leveled the daimyo’s tower will follow wherever that disk goes and will crush anything that stands in its way. Let me take the disk to where the soratami are. Let them die in battle with the great spirit beast, and we will have engineered a fine reckoning for your lost apprentice.”
Hidetsugu seemed impressed, but he shook his head. “An intriguing idea,” he said. “But if the daimyo’s prize is here, my oni has already laid claim to it. Only a fool would try to take something off the All-Consuming’s plate.
“But more to the point, Toshi, I’ve had my fill of your bargains and plans. What I need now is a straight declaration of your loyalties. Are you working for the hyozan? The Myojin of Night’s Reach? Or are you merely doing what you’ve always done, playing both ends against each other so you can capitalize in the confusion?”
“My loyalties are unchanged,” Toshi said sharply.
“And that is what concerns me.” Hidetsugu placed two fingers in his wide mouth and blew a piercing whistle. “I cannot harm you, Toshi, because of the oath we share. But I can have you monitored. I can keep you in check.” He glanced down into the quadrangle. “Behold, ochimusha. Your newest companion has arrived.”
The massive, four-legged brute was unlike the other bipedal oni, but it had the same three eyes and the same curved horns. It was covered in tough leathery skin and thick plates of bony armor. It walked on all fours, and its head was as broad as a man’s chest.
Toshi’s throat almost closed when he recognized the demon dog—it was the same oni that Kobo had summoned in the forest weeks ago, the same one Toshi himself had released to run rampant on the streets of Oboro. Earlier, Hidetsugu had insisted he carry the dog’s summoning token, promising it would fade after a few hours of blood frenzy. Yet here the same dog was, almost a week after Toshi had released it.
“Wherever you go,” Hidetsugu said, leering, “the dog of bloodlust and slaughter will accompany you. If you run, it will chase you down. If you hide, it will sniff you out. If you fight, it will cripple you and drag your broken body to me. Our oath prevents us from harming each other directly, or causing each other harm, but you summoned this demon. Whatever it does to you now is your burden, not mine.”
Toshi was surprised to find himself growing angry. Hidetsugu had tricked him, had connived to get Toshi to place himself in danger so that the ogre could threaten him without risking the hyozan oath’s retribution. If Toshi hadn’t already planned something similar for Hidetsugu, he would have been truly offended by the ogre’s lack of trust.
Toshi decided to take his leave. The trip to Minamo had been a complete failure: he hadn’t secured the Taken One, he was once more on bad terms with Hidetsugu, and he had not determined if the ogre knew his secret—that Toshi had already found a way out of the hyozan oath. The tattoo on Toshi’s arm was a decoy, one that looked and felt like a real reckoner’s mark but had absolutely no connection to the oath they had sworn almost ten years ago.
Toshi turned his thoughts inward, focusing on the power of his myojin. Night’s Reach had bestowed many blessings upon him, but one that he had manufactured for himself was the killing power of intense cold. He had bested an elemental spirit and bound her power to his own, and he called upon that power now as he hung from the ogre’s fist.
Ice formed across Hidetsugu’s fist, and Toshi felt the pressure on his torso ease. His breath blew out in great white clouds of fog and he felt a cold, tingling shape emerge on his forehead. The glowing, purple-white kanji was the symbol for the yuki-onna, the snow woman of legend who lured the unwary to a frozen doom in the darkest hours of winter.
The yamabushi sensed their master was under attack and converged on Toshi. Below, the oni dog howled and sprang into the air, bounding from wall to wall on his own path to the platform.
Toshi summoned another of Night’s blessings and began to fade from sight. With the myojin’s help, he could become formless, weightless, and intangible. So far nothing had been able to interfere with him in this state, not the most powerful spirit or the keenest animal instinct.
As he disappeared from Hidetsugu’s frozen fist, Toshi locked eyes with his former oath-brother. There was anger in the ogre’s face, and grim determination. But most of all, Toshi saw sadness, disappointment, even if it were only because they had come so far without turning on each other. But now they had, as they had always known they would.
Toshi recognized the complicated emotions on Hidetsugu’s face because he shared them. For many reasons, he had sincerely hoped either he or the ogre would die before they had to face each other. But now that hope was dead and Toshi had to find a way to overcome the single most terrifying creature he had ever known.
Toshi nodded as he faded away. To his lasting joy and eternal regret, Hidetsugu nodded back. For one final time, they were partners, peers, warriors with a common bond.
And then Toshi was gone, leaving Hidetsugu to stoke his anger for the inevitable day when one of them would destroy the other.
Toshi drifted down from Oboro until he fell under the shadow of the cloud city itself. Like a sinking ship, Toshi slid into the great patch of black until he was completely engulfed by it. After a moment’s disorientation he turned toward the palpable presence of the Taken One and urged himself toward Minamo Academy.
It was still here. Toshi could feel it. Between the giant serpent in the sky and the mad, immortal daimyo, there was no shortage of very powerful entities who were willing to kill to recover the prize.
Then, Toshi had hoped they would destroy each other, the academy, and the soratami city overhead in the process. Now, he had to find some way of removing it before they arrived and then keep it from their continued pursuit.
Toshi’s phantom body emerged in the deepest recesses of the academy. He had been to this space before, though he did not know what the room was for. It was some administrator’s office or private library with walls covered by scroll racks. Scattered around the room were a series of glass display cases featuring strange, arcane objects that Toshi couldn’t recognize and didn’t care about. He glanced around to verify he was in the right place and nodded, satisfied.
The Taken One was lying faceup where he left it. The disk was roughly six feet across and about a foot thick. It gave off a constant pale white glow and a steady flow of wispy steam as if it had just been taken from a boiling pot. He knew from experience that it was cool to the touch, but it somehow delivered a jolt of strange, unnerving force to anyone who made bare-skin contact.
Toshi peered at the Taken One’s face. It was as he remembered it, with the etched serpent facing right and its tail circled under it. Somehow it also looked different, more detailed and substantial.
He shook his head and blinked. The stone was hypnotic, he reminded himself. He had seen how crazy it had made Konda. Toshi forced himself to look away from the Taken One so that it could not enthrall him as it had the daimyo, and that’s when he noticed the people.
They crouched behind tables and across chairs, they slumped against naked walls, and they slept fitfully in clusters on the cold stone floor. Shaking his head in disbelief, Toshi counted almost thirty live bodies in the room, breathing softly and barely moving. There were students in blue ro
bes, Konda’s soldiers in full uniform, and even a handful of kitsune fox-warriors. Most appeared to be asleep or at least resting while four alert guardians watched over them from the far corners of the room.
Toshi wanted to shout, “What in the cold gray hell are you people doing here?” but he could imagine the answer. When Hidetsugu and his yamabushi came to the academy, they came for slaughter. It was hard to believe that the ogre or his patron oni hadn’t sniffed them out in their hiding place, even this far down.
Hard to believe but not impossible. Somehow, they had managed to stay alive and remain undiscovered for almost a week. From the looks of things, they wouldn’t last much longer.
A sentry hissed at the far end of the room, raising an urgent but understated warning. To Toshi’s growing horror, a pair of black, razor-toothed jaws materialized near the opposite wall. The disembodied teeth snapped lightly, testing the air like a snake’s tongue. A second pair of jaws appeared and the sentry backed away with his sword drawn.
Toshi fought back a wave of dread and panic. This was Hidetsugu’s oni manifest, the All-Consuming Oni of Chaos. Toshi recognized the voracious mouths as part of the great demonic spirit’s body, like the scales of a fish or the hairs on a spider’s leg. From what he had seen, the All-Consuming was nothing but a thick cloud of hungry mouths and snapping teeth crowned by gigantic oni horns and three malevolent eyes.
The other guardians quietly crossed the room, nudging and shaking people awake as they went. Weary and resigned, the survivors quickly withdrew from the now growing number of jaws floating and snapping at the other end of the room.
Safely hidden and immaterial, Toshi watched as he pondered his next move.
The warriors all waited with their hands on their weapons, watching the jaws. The flying teeth drifted deeper into the room, but they never strayed far from the interior wall where they appeared. After a long, agonizing minute, the jaws turned and began to fade. If they were searching for something good to eat, they hadn’t found it here. Toshi wondered if the oni had missed the Taken One, or if it just didn’t recognize the disk as a gourmet meal.
Moments later, the library was completely still and silent once more, though now everyone in it was wide awake. Toshi watched the group until he sorted out who was in charge, then silently approached a sturdy-looking officer wearing the daimyo’s standard. One step away from the soldier, Toshi faded in and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Captain?” Toshi read the man’s rank from his shoulder insignia. “How much longer can we last?”
The officer looked Toshi over suspiciously. “As long as it takes.”
“Oh, good. Very good, thanks for that. But you know what? That’s not really an answer, is it?”
The captain scowled. “Who are you? I don’t recognize you.”
Toshi leaned in and hissed, “I’m the guy who can get you out of here if you keep your wits about you.” He faded from sight, maneuvered around the captain, and reappeared behind the soldier. “Interested?”
The officer slowly turned and faced Toshi. “Keep talking,” he said, his own voice pitched low. “I’m Nagao.” He gestured over Toshi’s shoulder. “That’s Silver-Foot.”
Toshi croaked as a huge gray kitsune samurai startled him. The fox-warrior nodded his short muzzle to acknowledge Toshi then stood by with his hand on his sword.
Nagao, the human captain, leaned closer to Toshi. “I’ll ask you again, friend. Who are you?”
“Call me Toshi.” Thinking quickly, Toshi said, “I’m a thief. I’m here to loot the place. But I’m good at getting in and out of places, so I might be able to help you. How often does that thing come sniffing around?” He pointed to the wall where the oni mouths had appeared.
Nagao still looked suspicious, but Silver-Foot said, “Tell him, Captain. I don’t believe him either, but he wasn’t here an hour ago and he is here now. He might know something that we can use.”
Nagao nodded. “It comes about once a day. Its visits are growing more frequent.”
“Has it gotten anyone?”
“Not yet. Tonight was typical … it shows up, then suddenly seems to lose interest. But it’ll be back.”
“Good,” Toshi said. “That’s good.”
Nagao glowered. “I don’t see how that’s good, friend.”
Toshi smiled. “That’s because you’re not me. Listen, if that thing were going to eat you, it would have by now. I think you’re safe in here for the time being.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Nagao said dryly. “But if you can’t offer us anything more than that, I think you’ve wasted enough of my time.”
Toshi cocked his head. “Just stay here. And don’t let anyone touch that big stone disk. It’s dangerous.”
“I needed you to tell me that,” Nagao muttered. Then, slightly louder, he said, “And where will you be? If you can leave, you’re taking at least one of us with you.”
Toshi smiled and winked. “Sorry, Captain. I refuse. But do as I say and I’ll be back in a day or two.”
Silver-Foot’s sword slid out of its sheath like a whisper. The blade gleamed in the dim light and the kitsune said, “Don’t move, Toshi. Nagao is quite right—you must take someone with you if you can.”
Still smiling, Toshi faded from sight. Both officers grabbed for him as he went, but their hands passed through him.
“Trust me,” he said, his voice hollow and distant. “I just need to call in a few favors. Two days, three at the most—I’ll be back with help.”
The good captains continued to search their immediate surroundings for any sign of the stranger. Toshi maneuvered himself into the nearby shadows, already planning a series of jaunts through the shadow realm that would eventually allow him to return to Minamo and collect his prize.
Though the hyozan reckoners were broken and in turmoil, there was one last job they needed to do together.
Home again for the first time in weeks, Toshi stood in the Numai district of Takenuma Swamp. No matter what the old ones said, he would never believe the fen had ever been anything but a greasy, bubbling cauldron of muck and rotten bamboo. If you wanted to build a house or a business in the swamp, you had to do it on twenty-foot stilts, high above the surface of the bog. Everything rested on sturdy bamboo legs: every building, every walkway, every structure that might conceivably be used by nontoxic, non-amphibious life forms.
Toshi hated the swamp. If the quicksand-like filth didn’t drag you down and the swamp insects didn’t infect you with bleeding fever, there were larger, crueler dangers waiting for the unwary who braved the bog. Numai’s entire human population, for one. Here, the only things more malevolent than the cursed ground were the people who thrived on it. For as long as Toshi could remember his district had been the crossroads where the criminal-minded and the bloodthirsty met and mingled. Those with shady work could sit down with those who didn’t mind doing it for cash.
There was precious little foot traffic now, which Toshi suspected was due to more than the swamp’s bad reputation. There was a heaviness in the air, the kind of damp, oppressive stillness that usually precedes a major storm. It was similar to the dread he had felt hovering over Kamitaki Falls, but the swamp’s mood was even darker, wetter, and more oppressive. After two decades of the Kami War, Toshi was all too familiar with the signs of a spirit crossing into the physical world, but that sensation was usually limited to a small area. Now, the pressure and sense of impending attack was everywhere.
He hadn’t actually seen any spirits yet, but he had seen their wake. Mangled and partially consumed corpses left hanging in trees, temples smashed and painted over in blood, and charred, smoking ruins where great manors once stood.
Toshi heard a distant scream that echoed across the surface of the swamp. He waited for a moment to listen for the sequel, but no further sound came. He resumed walking. Just as well, he thought. He had no time for new adventures. He had already mortgaged too much of his future to powerful beings and made enemies of still more, so there was simply no chance for anyone else to make demands on him. The screamer would have to save himself.
Ahead, the end of the walkway materialized through the haze. From there he had a short climb and a long wade through the swamp until he reached his goal.