Lord of the Darkwood (6 page)

“The stag mask he uses,” Kiku said. “It stuck to his face. It cannot be taken off. Now he is half man and half deer.”

“Is that so bad?” Mu asked, wishing he could be half fox.

“It would not matter if he had stayed with us.” Kiku gestured toward the fake animals that the old mountain sorcerer Shisoku had created from skins and skeletons. “He would have fitted in perfectly here. Or he could still have been a warlord like he intended. He would have been all the more terrifying. He did not need to send us away. He could have achieved anything he wanted with our help. Look what we have done for him so far! He would never have got the better of that monk, Gessho, or taken his old home back from his uncle.”

“It was my bee that killed the uncle,” Kuro added proudly.

“And then getting into Ryusonji,” Kiku continued. “It's a shame about the Princess—my eyes are doing that strange thing again. Why is your fire so smoky, Ima?—but the Prince Abbot was destroyed. Shika could have done none of those things without us.”

At that moment one of the fake wolves gave a long, muffled howl and fell over with a thump. Ku pushed away the pile of dogs that surrounded him and ran to it. The puppies yelped and snarled at it in playful attacks, but it did not move. The other boys stared at it.

“It's dead,” Ku said.

“It was never really alive.” Kuro moved toward it and knelt beside it, pushing the puppies away. He looked up at Kiku. “Whatever power was holding it together has left it.”

Kiku looked wildly around at the other fake animals, making no effort now to control his tears. Mu followed his gaze. He realized what he had not noticed before: Shisoku's creations were winding down, fading in some way. Regret stabbed him. He also felt his eyes water. Why hadn't he looked after them better?

A crow plummeted from the branch it had been perched on and lay broken and silent on the ground, its borrowed feathers scattered by the breeze.

“No!” Kiku sobbed.

“You never liked them much, anyway,” Mu said, surprised at his apparent sorrow.

“I hate them,” Kiku replied, controlling himself with an effort. “But they are breaking down before I've had a chance to learn how they work, how to make them. How did Shisoku get them to move, to live to the extent they did? How did he and Shika make the mask? What would he have done with the monk's skull that we buried? And the horse's? I need to learn all these things, and now there is no one to teach me.”

“What's going to happen to us?” Ima said, suddenly anxious.

Kuro said, “The old man Sesshin…”

Mu started at the name. “He is one of our fathers. The only one still alive, apart from Shika.”

“Well, he told Shika to kill us. He called us imps. My snake was meant to bite him!”

“He must know some sorcery,” Kiku said.

“He gave all his power away to Shika,” Kuro said. “I heard the torturers tell the Abbot Prince.”

“Prince Abbot,” Kiku corrected him.

“Whatever, he is gone.” Kuro stood up. “But wasn't the dragon superb? If only I could learn to summon one up like that.”

“Well, you won't now,” Kiku retorted. “Because Shika is never going to want to see you again.”

They looked wildly at one another. They were all crying now, even Kuro.

What will become of us?
Mu thought.
There is no one in the world who cares about us.

*   *   *

Over the next few weeks the boys sulked and squabbled as more of Shisoku's animals ran out of living force and fell to the ground. Mu wanted to burn them; they did not exactly decay like real animals, but they gave out a strange smell; insects began to dwell in the hides and maggots hatched. The corpses heaved with a new movement that nauseated him. But Kiku would not allow it. He studied each one's unique makeup, committing to memory how they were put together, out of which materials.

He went through the hut, looking at, smelling, tasting the contents of all the flasks of potions and jars of incense and ointments that Shisoku had concocted or collected. The sorcerer had kept records in an arcane script, which none of them could read, but Kiku searched out every object of power, every amulet and statue and figurine. He knew their weight and what they were made from, but he did not know how to use them for his own ends. That did not stop him trying everything out, experimenting fearlessly.

Sometimes he raved uncontrollably about visions and deep insights, sometimes he seemed to work magic by accident. Once he threw up so violently and for so long the others thought he was dying.

He gathered the remains of the werehawk, from where they still lay on the roof, and made a necklace from the beak and talons. He dug up the horse's skull. Worms and insects had done their work and the flesh was stripped from the bone. The last remnants fell away when Kiku boiled the skull in an iron pot on the fire.

“You can't make a horse,” Mu said. “Even Shisoku never made anything so large.”

“I want to make a mask like Shika's,” Kiku replied.

Mu had never seen the mask, only knew the seven-layered brocade bag in which it used to be kept, but Kiku had watched Shika wear it and had held it in his hands.

“I carried it,” he said, with a note of pride in his voice. “He said he wanted to leave it behind, but I knew he didn't really, so I took it to him.”

He described it to Mu: the stag's skull, the antlers, one broken, the half-human, half-animal face with its carved features, smoothly lacquered, and its cinnabar-reddened lips. But he did not know the ritual in which it had been created, months before the boys were born, the blending of the red and white essences of male and female.

When the horse head was reduced to gleaming bone, Kiku tried to shape it, but his chisel often slipped and the resulting skull pan was lopsided and jagged. He made a face mask from wood, carving out eye sockets and a mouth hole, and he and Kuro lacquered it without really knowing the method. The lacquer bubbled and cracked, as if it were diseased, and the result was monstrous, both laughable and sinister. When Kiku put it on, the dogs howled and ran to Ku, and two more fake animals lay down and did not get up again.

“It's useless,” Kiku said, taking the mask off and throwing it to the ground. “It's ugly and it has no power.”

“It's only your first attempt,” Mu said. “Imagine how many times Shisoku had to experiment and practice before he got it right. And he was still making mistakes up to the time he died.”

“But he mostly knew what he was doing. He must have had so much knowledge,” Kiku said. “Why do I have no one to teach me? Don't you ever feel it? That there is a huge part of our lives missing? Why is there no one like us? Where did they all go?” He sighed, and glanced around the clearing, his eyes falling on the dogs, cowering around his youngest brother. “Maybe the skull has to come from something I kill myself.”

“No!” Ku said defiantly.

“A dog is too easy,” Mu added. “It is not enough of a challenge for you.” He picked up the horse mask and set it on a pole near the hut. “It'll make a good guard.”

The mask was not what Kiku had intended, yet it was not a complete failure, and some strange force had attached itself to it. At night they heard hoofbeats and whinnying, and several times, the post seemed to have moved by morning. Ima was fascinated by it. He patted the post and clicked his tongue at it when he went past, and brought offerings of fresh grass and water.

Weeks went by. Shikanoko did not return. Kiku continued his experiments. Kuro set about replacing his collection of poisonous creatures, and managed to capture another sparrow bee.

One morning Mu had gone with Ima to the stream to gather grass and check the fish traps. The boys were always hungry, and although they preferred meat to fish, fish were easier to get and more plentiful. The stream did not flood that spring and, in the deep pools, sweetfish hid in the shadows, while crabs could be found under every rock. Sometimes the traps would catch an eel, which was as rich and tasty as meat. They were both knee-deep in the water when they heard someone approaching. Neither of them had Kiku's acute hearing, but the sounds were unmistakable: a snapped twig, a dislodged stone, and then a quickly muffled gasp as a foot slipped. The two boys were out of the water and into the undergrowth in one movement, as quick as lizards.

A boy and a girl came warily down to the stream. The boy looked familiar, and Mu realized it was the messenger who had been sent by Shikanoko in the winter, the boy called Chika. He was still not very clear about human ages—his own growth, like all his brothers', had been so rapid he had nothing to go by—but he knew Chika was a boy, definitely not yet a man. The girl seemed younger, but maybe not by much. They were both thin, legs scratched and bleeding in several places, barefoot, burned brown by the sun. Yet the boy carried a sword, and the girl a knife, and, Mu thought, they both looked as if they knew how to use them.

The boy knew his way, leading the girl across the stream, helping her jump from boulder to boulder. When they reached the bank, they walked downstream toward the hut. Mu picked up the fish they had already caught, still flapping on the grass stem threaded through their gills, and gestured to Ima to bring the bucket of crabs. They followed the pair, silent and unseen.

The boy halted near the horse skull, hand on sword, and called, “Is anyone there? I am Chikamaru, son of Kongyo, from Kuromori. I am looking for the man known as Shikanoko.”

Kiku emerged from the hut, blinking in the sunlight. “We know who you are, Chika. Shikanoko is not here.”

Slowly the other boys appeared and surrounded the pair. The girl held her knife out threateningly, but Kiku brushed it aside and stepped close to her, touching her face and her hair, in a gentle way that both astonished and alarmed Mu.

“Kongyo?” Kiku said finally. “He was the man who came with the horse.” His eyes flickered to the horse mask on the pole.

Chika said, “That's Ban? My father said he died. He was our last horse. But what have you done to his skull?”

Kiku made a dismissive gesture. “It doesn't matter.”

The girl began to cry silently, as if the sight of the horse, once no doubt magnificent and prized, now a hideous replica, had unleashed all her grief.

“I've done that,” Kiku told her. “Water has come from my eyes. It will dry up, don't worry.”

His face had taken on an intense fixed expression, like a male animal about to mate or kill.

“Cook the fish,” Mu said to Ima, to break the uncomfortable silence, and then addressed the boy, Chika. “Sit down, we'll eat something. Are you hungry?”

They both nodded. The girl slumped down, still weeping. Chika said, “Our mother told us to flee. After our father died she was afraid his murderers might seek to kill us, too. I don't know what will happen to her. My sister is still in shock, I think. She hardly speaks and the slightest thing sets off her tears.”

“Our mother is dead,” Kiku said, sitting down next to the girl. “She died just after we were born.”

“Lady Tora?” Chika said.

The boys stared at him. “You knew our mother?” Mu said.

“She came to Matsutani with Akuzenji, the King of the Mountain. Shikanoko was with them, too.”

Mu remembered the name, Akuzenji. Shika had told them he was one of their five fathers.

“What does that mean, King of the Mountain?” said Kiku.

“That's what he called himself. He wasn't really a king, he was a bandit. Merchants paid him so they could travel safely along the northern highway. If they didn't pay, he robbed them and usually killed them. He set an ambush for Lord Kiyoyori, whom my father served, but he was captured and the lord beheaded him and all his men, except Shikanoko. Then Lord Kiyoyori fell madly in love with Lady Tora and made her his mistress, even though she was said to be a sorceress.”

“One of our fathers took the head of another of them,” Kiku murmured. “That would be a skull worth having.”

“The bodies were burned and the heads displayed at the borders of the estate,” Chika said. “You should have seen it—thirty men separated from their heads in as many minutes. It was brutal. I've been in sieges and battles, but nothing was as horrifying as that day.”

“You say you have been in battles,” Mu said, “but you are not yet a grown man.”

“I still know how to fight with this.” Chika tapped the sword that lay beside him on the grass. “I have just escaped from the battle in which my father died.”

“Why have you come here?” Ima said from the fire. The sweet smell of grilling fish rose in the air.

“I could think of nowhere else to go. Our father is dead, along with all Lord Kiyoyori's men and their families. We held out for months in the fortress at Kuromori, but after Shikanoko left for the capital, and never came back, Lord Masachika attacked for the second time, took the fortress, and put all the defenders to death. Then he did the same at Kumayama. He holds a huge domain now for the Miboshi. No one is left to oppose him in all the east.”

“It sounds very complicated,” Kiku said. “You'll have to explain it to us. We need to understand all these things, if we are to live in the world.”

“No one understood why Shikanoko disappeared,” Chika said. “They felt betrayed and abandoned. At first we thought he must have died, but then we heard that he destroyed the Prince Abbot at Ryusonji. He could have dominated the capital himself, but he rode away, no one knows where.”

“Someone died,” Kiku said, glancing at Kuro, who sat a little way off, letting a snake slither up his arms and around his neck. “A girl Shika liked.”

“Loved,” Mu said.

Kiku frowned. “Loved,” he repeated, and bent forward to look in the girl's face. She squirmed away and said to her brother, “I don't want to stay here.”

“You spoke,” he said in delight. “You see, we will be safe here. We can stay, can't we?”