A Mortal Song (27 page)

“Nukekubi,” Keiji muttered, edging closer to me. Now that he was actually faced with the monsters from his books, he looked as though he’d preferred keeping them in his imagination. I swiveled on my feet, trying to track all of our enemies at once.

The oak and monkey kami sprang to our defense. They caught one of the demon dogs between them, the oak man stabbing it awkwardly. Takeo leapt to meet the monstrous cat. I held out my blade and shoved Keiji behind me as the second dog snapped at my arm. Its breath smelled like burnt meat. As I thrust the beast away, Keiji slapped an ofuda against the nose of one of the nukekubi that had dived at us. The wan face cringed and circled away, but it didn’t disappear.

“Damn,” Keiji said, his voice shaking. “I figured it was worth a try. The salt might repel them.”

“Even if it doesn’t, throw it in their eyes,” I suggested. I stuffed my remaining ofuda into my satchel and palmed a handful of my salt.

Chiyo sliced her sword through the air, cutting two of the flying heads in half. The pieces fell to the ground with a sickening patter. Takeo shoved aside the dead body of the two-tailed cat.

“Push on,” he said.

We ran down the path, Rin taking the lead with a speed I wouldn’t have expected from her aged body. She might not have trained in the martial arts as intensely as Takeo, but she still had skill. When another ogre lurched out in front of us, she dashed up its gangly body in a blur of motion, kicked out at its collarbone, and twisted its neck at the same time. It collapsed, its spine cracking.

The sage stumbled as she hit the ground. She pressed her palm to the path before pushing herself upright, and I remembered her comment about her power being connected to her valley. And who knew what the ogres had done to her to keep her imprisoned until now? How much longer could she keep fighting?

Two demon dogs charged at Chiyo with a snarl. She spun around, ki arching from her sword and shattering through their bodies. But even as they crumpled, four more ogres stormed out of the forest on either side of us.

“Don’t let them halt us,” Rin said. “Clear the way and make for the shrine!”

Easier said than done. Takeo and Chiyo slammed through the two ogres in front of us with their blades, but the ones behind us charged at us three humans. Haru whacked one in the face with his sword. The oak kami managed to ram that ogre in the chest before the second tackled him to the ground. He groaned as he waved at us to leave him behind. My gut twisted, but I spun around and gestured to the others to race after Chiyo.

We burst into a yard ringed with shrine buildings that were shuttered for the night. More screeching heads dove at us. Keiji and I threw salt at the ones near us, and their features contorted. They dipped, sputtering and blinking furiously, low enough that Haru and I could stab them with our swords. Chiyo chopped through another one as the last sank its teeth into her hair. She yelped, and Takeo slammed it to the side, his fist lit with ki. The horrific face sizzled and plummeted to the ground.

More monsters were flooding onto the path both behind and ahead of us. There was nothing to do but run on. Sweat streaked down my back and into my eyes. My shoulder throbbed where the bullet had caught it this morning. I gritted my teeth against the pain.

The gravel skittered under my feet as I smacked away a demon dog with the flat of my blade. Keiji whipped another handful of salt into a swarm of nukekubi and nearly tripped. I caught him by his elbow, tugging him onward.

The monsters had gathered for a final stand on a series of wide stone steps at a bend in the path. At least half a dozen ogres waited for us, demon dogs and two-tailed cats stalking between them, a cluster of nukekubi circling against the darkening sky. At the top of the steps loomed a wooden gate and a roof marked with two boards forming an X at its peak.

“The sanctuary!” I said.

Chiyo darted up the steps, smashing through four ogres without a pause for breath. Before the other monsters could try to stop her, the rest of us hurtled in to cover her. The sanctuary gate’s hinges creaked as Chiyo pushed into the compound.

Two flying heads screamed down at me, and I flung salt at them as I held up my sword to block them. They hissed and veered away. Rin leapt into the air and mashed their skulls together. One demon dog clamped its jaws around Takeo’s sword arm, but he flung his blade to his other hand and plunged the weapon into the creature’s side.

A tall, spindly ogre with claws as long as its fingers threw itself up the stairs after me. I scrambled higher. My sword clinked against the ogre’s claws, which sounded hard as metal. I ducked and jabbed at its belly, and felt one of those claws graze the top of my head.

I jerked back, swallowing a cry, just as Keiji slammed into the ogre’s side. They both toppled. The ogre slashed out at Keiji the second before they hit the ground. I chopped at its arm, an instant too late. Keiji rolled away, gasping and clutching his stomach.

My heart stopped. Another demon dog chomped at Keiji’s leg, and I kicked it in the muzzle as I grabbed his shoulders. “Come on!” I said. He stumbled with me over the last few steps and through the gate Chiyo had left hanging open. The sanctuary compound’s additional protections appeared to be too strong for any of the monsters to follow us inside.

“Chiyo!” I yelled, but she didn’t answer. Within the high fence, there was not just one sanctuary building but a row of them, spread out across a yard of white stones. Any one of those buildings could have held the mirror. She might be searching too far away to hear me.

Keiji was straightening up. “Lie down!” I said, gripping his arm. I knelt beside him. His shirt was mottled with dirt and blood, but I couldn’t tell how much of the latter was fresh or even his. Bracing myself, I tugged up the hem.

His pale skin was smudged scarlet. The blood had seeped from a thin line that curved across his abdomen just above his belly button. The cut was so shallow the bleeding had already slowed. My shoulders sagged in relief. Not fatal. Not even all that concerning.

“Should I start coming up with my brilliant last words?” Keiji asked, staring up at the sky.

“It’s just a scratch,” I said. “I think you’ll live.”

“Oh,” he said, and sat up despite my wordless protest. “It didn’t feel
that
bad, but then you hauled me in here, so I figured the pain just hadn’t sunk in yet.”

I flushed, remembering my panic. I hadn’t even stopped to see what was happening to anyone else. They were still fighting. I should get back to the battle.

“It was very valorous of me, though, wasn’t it—leaping in like that?” Keiji went on. “I’m practicing the bravery thing.”

“I already told you,” I said. “You’re brave enough.”

“But that was bonus points level brave,” he said as I shifted my weight to stand. “Can I at least get a kiss of gratitude out of it?”

He said it in that joking way of his, but his eyes were serious. They flickered nervously when I met them. Something twinged in my chest, and all at once I felt like crying. So much time I’d spent being angry and uncertain when my heart had never wavered in what it wanted.

“You idiot,” I said, “you don’t have to try to get yourself killed for that.”

His face tilted up to catch my lips as I quickly dipped my head. His fingers slipped into my hair, and a happy shiver ran down my spine. I kissed him hard, reveling in just how warm and there and real he was for that brief moment before I had to pull away.

I didn’t want to. Right now, for this one moment, we were safe—who knew what might happen after? But the others needed me too.

“Sora,” Keiji said, “I’m sor—”

“Don’t,” I said before he could finish the apology. I pushed myself to my feet and offered my hand to help him up. “You don’t have to say it again. It’s not as if I haven’t made mistakes too. Now let’s make those monsters see what a mistake it was to challenge us.”

A grin flashed across his face. He sprang up. We were just turning to the gate when a low, wrenching cry carried through it.

We hurried forward. “Haru!” Chiyo yelled, charging across the yard behind us. She held an eight-sided mirror of brilliant silver under one arm. Together, we burst through the gate onto the top of the stairs.

There, we all jerked to a halt, staring at the scene before us. Takeo and Rin had been forced to the sides of the stairs, Takeo eyeing the two ogres who loomed over him. A monstrous cat and a demon dog circled Rin on the ground, a nukekubi above. And at the base of the stairs, the largest ogre I’d ever seen had its sinewy arm squeezed tight across Haru’s chest and one of its claws pressed against his throat, deep enough that blood was already dribbling onto his shirt collar.

The ogre’s gaze fixed on Chiyo. It bared jagged teeth. “Our red-haired friend requested I take this human if you escaped us,” it said in its rough voice. “I bring him back to the ghosts now. Tomoya says if you want to fight for his life, you will leave your special toys behind before you reach the bridge. Otherwise, he dies.”

It turned and loped away, Haru still clutched in its grasp.

“No!” Chiyo cried. She raced down the steps, blasting through the creatures that sprang at her. As she passed the katana Haru had dropped, she snatched it up. “I’ll kick you all into the afterworld, just you wait!”

“Chiyo!” I called after her, my heart in my throat. We couldn’t let her go alone.

But as I moved to the steps, even more monsters swarmed from the woods. Our stand here had given those spread across the shrine grounds time to reach us. I swung my sword so swiftly I barely saw where it struck, trusting my body to follow the rhythm of the fight, tossing salt in every direction. Around me, grunts and thumps told me the others fought on just as hard.

It wasn’t enough. With every moment, Chiyo was farther away.

Then, with a gruff mutter, ki blazed across the steps. The light was so harsh it blinded me. I stumbled, gasping.

When my vision cleared, the smoking bodies of our enemies littered the stone stairs, filling the air with a caustic oily stench. Amid them, Rin slumped on her side. Her breath rattled over her lips, and her skin was gray.

“Go!” she rasped. “Stop her before all is lost!”

Takeo dashed down the path on ki-sped feet. I ran after him as quickly as I could, hearing Keiji’s erratic breath behind me. We passed the limping monkey and the oak-man, sprawled and weak but alive, not stopping until we reached the bridge. I pounded across the boards. Takeo had already halted beneath the first torii at the edge of safety.

Ghostlights clogged the courtyard. They surged toward the bridge, and I could imagine all those hostile eyes studying us, anticipating our next move. But I couldn’t spot a single solid body among them—not the ogre, not Haru, not Tomoya. Not Chiyo.

She was gone.

“
W
here’s your leader
?” Takeo demanded of the ghostlights. “The one with the red in his hair.”

At an answer I couldn’t hear, his jaw set. “Enough. I can bring the sacred sword to deal with you if that’s all you’re willing to offer.”

Whatever the ghosts said next, it wasn’t good news. Takeo’s broad shoulders sagged so slightly no one but me might have noticed. “Is there—” he started, and then leapt back as a figure turned corporeal in front of us.

The burly man who’d shifted his state grinned and waggled a net matted with crimson stains. “Next time we’ll get
you
,” he said. The rest of the ghostlights surged even closer behind him.

All three of us withdrew farther up the bridge. “What did they say?” I asked.

Takeo was frowning. “After some mockery, they seemed happy to inform me that we have no hope of finding Tomoya. He told none of them where he intended to take Chiyo, so that there would be no one we could force to help us. And he specifically told them to tell us that.”

He lowered his head, rubbing the side of his face. I’d never seen him look so wretched.

“Tomoya can’t have killed her,” I said, the most reassurance I could offer. “Not so quickly. She’s too strong for that.” So he’d have brought her to a place where he could... take his time. Another room smeared with gore? A continuous string of torture, the way Omori had been whittling down Mother and Father’s lives? Nausea trickled through me.

Dragging steps rasped over the wooden boards with the tap of a stick-turned-cane as Rin limped toward us.

“Chiyo took Haru’s sword,” Keiji said. “Even without the other one, couldn’t she still manage to defeat a bunch of ghosts? Maybe they just took the fight farther off.”

“The spirits fear the sacred sword far more than the girl,” Rin said, reaching us. “It can do what charms cannot.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Charms banish. The spirit remains, elsewhere. The sacred blade is like running water. It purifies. The ki returns to its source.”

I remembered Tomoya in the keep, complaining that the sword had taken too many of the ghosts “for good.”

“So when she cuts them with the sword, they’re completely destroyed?” I said. “Their ki is absorbed back into the world—they can’t return?”

Rin inclined her head.

If the sacred sword didn’t just send the ghosts back to the afterworld but dissipated their ki in a way more final than death itself, it was no wonder Tomoya had wanted Chiyo to leave it behind. Haru’s katana wouldn’t even banish the spirits.

“Perhaps she just needs more time,” Takeo said, but even he didn’t sound as if he believed that. I swallowed thickly. Obon began tomorrow night.

I turned back toward the courtyard. “We have to go after her,” I said, but the sea of ghostlights before us made my gut knot.
Next time we’ll get you
, the ghost had said. They had no intention of letting us pass easily. And without Chiyo or the sacred sword—

“Where
is
the sword?” I said as the thought stuck me. “And the other treasures? If she left them behind as Tomoya asked...”

“That with the power of water was returned to water,” Rin murmured in what I’d come to recognize as her prophesying voice. I glared at her, wishing she could find it in herself to speak plainly, and then realized I knew exactly what she meant.

I hurried back across the bridge and up the gravel path to the huge stone basin of the purifying fountain. Blurred shapes glinted beneath the flowing water. I leaned over, my hands braced on the slick rock.

The sacred sword lay at the bottom of the fountain, the necklace and the mirror beside it.

Chiyo might have been desperate to save Haru, but she’d still known we couldn’t afford to lose the treasures. She’d left them behind in the purest place she could think of, where no malicious thing could touch them.

As the others came up beside me, my hands clenched. We couldn’t afford to lose
her
either. How could she have taken such a risk—

But even before I’d finished that thought, I knew. I remembered all too clearly how the idea of Keiji being hurt had burned every other thought from my mind. Beneath her cheer and confidence, Chiyo must have felt even worse seeing that claw digging into Haru’s throat.

I drew myself up as straight as I could, ignoring the protests of my beaten body. “All right. We have the treasures. We’ll get through those ghosts out there... somehow, and then we’ll track Chiyo down. We could ask the kami in the lands around Ise. Maybe one of them saw something.”

I’d just finished speaking when the ground lurched. I tripped, and would have fallen if Keiji hadn’t grabbed my arm. Rin turned toward Mt. Fuji, invisible in the distance. How badly had the ground shaken there if we could feel it even here, hundreds of miles away?

“The mountain’s fire is close to bursting,” Rin said. “When time is of the essence, it cannot be wasted on maybes.”

I stared at her. “Well, do you
know
where Chiyo is?”

“I cannot always see what I wish to,” she said, her dry voice still thready from the ki she’d expended earlier.

“It sounds like you’re saying that we shouldn’t look for her at all,” Keiji said.

Rin gave him a crooked smile.

“What?” I said. “Of course we’ve got to find her! We should already be searching, not standing around talking in riddles.”

“There is no ‘got to,’” Rin replied calmly. “We have the treasures we sought. We make do with what we have.”

“You’re not making any sense,” I said. “You told us before that if the conditions of your vision aren’t met, we’ll fail to save the mountain. What does it matter that we have the three sacred treasures if we have no one to carry them?”

Rin inspected me from head to feet as if I were a painting she was considering where to hang. Then she met my eyes, a little light dancing in hers. “Are you sure?” she said. “I believe we do.”

For an instant, I couldn’t breathe.

“You can’t mean—”

“I also told you before that a prophecy is far from fact. The specificities are often blurred. I saw a young woman with power, carrying the treasures. We have a young woman. We have the treasures. We have kami who would go beside you to lend you ki. And there is strength in you. I can see it. You have only to accept the role.”

“But—you saw a girl ‘born of all the elements,’” I said. “That has to be Chiyo.”

Rin shrugged. “Truth be told, the image I saw could have signified one
raised by
Kasumi and Hotaka as well as
born of
. It was a vision, not a treatise. We must take the best chance we have.”

I looked to Takeo, who had been standing there silently. “You can’t think she’s right. You know we need Chiyo.”

“There is reason in Sage Rin’s words, Sora,” Takeo said slowly. “You have the training—far more than we were able to provide Chiyo with in our limited time. You love the mountain. If we go now, we can attack Omori when he least expects it, defeat him and his ghosts before the first night of Obon falls. The longer we wait, the stronger they become, and the weaker the mountain. We can seek out Chiyo after. She... should be able to withstand their torment that long.”

The strain in his voice told me he wasn’t sure of that, though. And what if we couldn’t make it up the mountain without Chiyo’s power on our side? It would be difficult enough
with
her now that Rin was exhausted and Takeo weary. If the vision had meant only her, and the demon slaughtered us, what would become of the world then?

“But—” I started, and Rin plucked the sword out of the fountain. She spun it in her deft hand with an arc of droplets and held it out to me, hilt first.

Instinctively, I reached to take it. The water-cooled grip immediately warmed against my palm. My fingers curled around it, my heart racing.

“Accept that which you have so wanted,” Rin said, almost kindly.

I
had
wanted this. Oh, how I’d wanted it. For Rin to be wrong, for me to be the kami I’d always believed I was. To feel ki moving through me the way it used to, as easily as it had come to Chiyo. I imagined myself soaring up the mountain, power humming through me, slicing through every ghost that had caused my loved ones harm. Watching them fall back before me in awe.

I hefted the sword, testing its weight. It moved like a beam of sunlight. Mt. Fuji’s weapons were fine, but I’d never trained with a blade like this. Whichever kami had forged it had been not just a great craftsman and artist, but a genius as well.

And yet, it didn’t look quite right. In Chiyo’s hands, the sword had gleamed like fire. Blazed with ki. But not the faintest tingle passed through my palm. It lay dormant, waiting.

For her. Because the fire had been hers.

My fingers tightened, but all I felt was that hard surface against my skin. To push energy through the blade, I’d need to take ki from our allies. Leach off their lives the way I had with Midori. How would that be so different from what the ghosts intended to do to their human captives?

A certainty settled over me with that thought, easing the tension in my chest. Even if I charged up Mt. Fuji with the aid of a thousand kami, I would never be the slightest bit kami myself. This wasn’t my sword. It wasn’t my role. The mountain needed the
right
girl to save it, and that girl was Chiyo.

As I lowered the sword, I realized I could accept
that
. As Haru had said, there was nothing wrong with being someone who supported the true hero. Chiyo was counting on me, on all of us, to back her up.

I handed the sword to Rin. “No,” I said. “We have to find Chiyo. The mountain needs
her
.”

“And they call me obtuse,” Rin muttered.

“We must begin the search at once,” Takeo said, a little of his usual vigor returning at the prospect of taking action.

Of course, we still had a more immediate problem. “How are we going to get past all those ghosts?” I said. “We barely made it through them when we had Chiyo’s help and a distraction.”

After a moment of silence, Keiji dipped his hand into the fountain. “If the sword is like running water,” he said slowly, “then water destroys the ghosts too? Do you think there are any boats around here? We could take the river and sail past them.”

Takeo’s face brightened. “An excellent suggestion,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ll need to search for a boat.”

He led us along the path to where it veered down to the edge of the shrunken river. There, Takeo knelt and reached toward the water. The ghostlights on the opposite bank bobbed and drifted in the darkness. I could feel them watching us even if I couldn’t see their eyes.

I paced the cracked earth as we waited. Once we got away from the shrine, we couldn’t just wander aimlessly if we were going to find Chiyo in time. Tomoya would have a plan. He always did. He’d tried and failed and kept trying, changing his strategy as he learned more about us. Because he was as human as I was, and he didn’t have to act in just one way.

As blood sings to blood, I should be able to understand him and his strategies. How had he beaten us? He’d observed Chiyo’s confidence, recognized her devotion to Haru, and turned those things into a weakness. But he could be over-confident too, couldn’t he? There were people he was devoted to. When I’d accused him of not caring about anyone other than himself, he’d said,
That’s exactly why I’m doing this. For my family.

For the little brother he’d expected to join him; the one he thought would eventually come around.

I glanced at Keiji. “You know Tomoya. Where would he hide, if he didn’t want to get caught?”

“He’s mentioned places he used to work sometimes,” Keiji said, looking startled. “But he wouldn’t go somewhere he’d told me about, would he?”

“I don’t think he sees you as a threat,” I said. “He thinks he’s going to win you over to his side in the end, that you’re still loyal to him underneath. He might even
want
to be somewhere you could find him.”

Keiji nodded. “I could see that. And ghosts
are
supposed to be most comfortable in places they knew when they were alive. There were a couple districts south of Tokyo where he did a lot of business. I don’t know the exact spots, but that would give us a direction, right?”

“It’s a starting point,” Takeo said. “And once we’re close enough to her, I may be able to sense her ki.”

Of course, then we’d have another ghostly army to face. Tomoya wouldn’t have spirited Chiyo and Haru away on his own. And he’d have his followers ready with nets and blood to weaken Takeo and Rin and any kami allies we gathered.

I turned toward the main path, where the forms of the monsters we’d slain earlier were sprawled. Even those felled with swords had started to melt into stinking, oily masses. The smell prickled in my nose.

Maybe we could learn something else from the demon and his ghosts. Omori had been open to using
every
creature willing to join his cause so that he could attack us where his main army could not. Tomoya hadn’t orchestrated his kidnapping alone.

“We haven’t been able to find many kami able to fight,” I said, “and those who are, the ghosts can use their old tricks on. But if they can ask ogres and demon dogs and nukekubi to help them, why can’t we ask for help outside the kami? There are other friendly creatures who’d join us if we asked, aren’t there?”

“I suppose there are some who might be willing to take up our fight,” Takeo said. “But kami don’t make a habit of asking for favors outside our kind.”

“I think it’s time they did,” I said.

He hesitated, and then bowed his head. “We should not turn away any help we can gain.”

A gleaming body broke the surface of the night-darkened water in front of him. Takeo leaned over to speak with the fish—a kami who’d responded to his summons, I assumed. After a moment, it swished away. In a matter of seconds, it had gathered a mass of neighbors. Tight rows of finned bodies lined up in the water before us, forming a makeshift raft.

Rin hopped on without hesitation. I followed cautiously. The scaly bodies formed a ridged but firm surface under my feet. I sat down on them as gently as I could. Keiji clambered on beside me, the oak-man and the monkey kami scrambling after him. I wasn’t sure what had become of Sumire and the others who’d gone with her, but I hoped they were only wounded and recovering.