Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
Within the blink of an eye, the outline contracted and Ronin thought he heard Nikumu cry out. Yet it was not a sound that could have been made by a human larynx. Nikumu’s body shuddered and swayed, his lips pulled back in a grimace of pain, his white fists flailing the air.
Yet the litany continued.
Then from the depths of his chest came a burgeoning sound like a distant roll of thunder and the outline of his form expanded. The thunder came again, traveling over a summer field, arid and dry, rolling again, coming closer and closer, bringing its fertile promise, until it washed over the chamber and its occupants like an unstoppable tidal wave, lifting them up upon great spread wings, all gravity nullified, and they were as free as two soaring eagles.
Then he was staggering across the floor of the chamber, staring as the face of Nikumu shattered like a Noh mask.
Before Ronin stood a version of the other. Younger. A strong, vibrant figure. His face, now scarless, had the nose of a hawk. The rest was Bujun flat. His fierce obsidian eyes blazed with power. His long, unbound hair trailed behind him like a tail.
Swept his long arms above him, stretching his body as if to embrace the entire vast spangled night.
His lips opened.
‘At last!’
His voice was the rumble of a summer storm.
‘Through all the centuries, I have returned. For the Kai-feng is come. I am here, therefore The Dolman is nigh.’
His gaze turned to Ronin.
‘And here is the champion of all man. Welcome, Ronin, to the forge of Ama-no-mori, to the anvil of Haneda. Welcome to the end of your journey.’
His arms whirled about him and blue sparks lit the air, crackling into the night. The stars went out.
‘The time is upon us. Even now the summoning of The Dolman has begun, but fear not, a chance for man still remains, for you are here. Nikumu has taken his final step, fought his last battle, and won. Thus shall history remember him for all time. Once again the Bujun triumph.
‘But now you must prepare yourself for your ultimate step. For I am come; I am ready. Do you trust yourself?’
Ronin opened his arms wide, said:
‘Yes.’
‘Then now comes death—!’
There was a clap of thunder that blotted out all sound.
‘Thus sayeth dor-Sefrith!’
Everything turned white.
T
WO ELEMENTS EXISTED WITHIN
the whiteness: his essence and the voice.
He knew that he was Outside even before the voice told him.
Time was a multicolored pinwheel whirring far below him.
This is the end.
For Ronin, yes.
And for me?
The death of a myth.
The concept shone on the theater of his unconsciousness like a castle cleared of mist.
And—
Life beyond life.
He laughed, placid bubbles, white on white.
Perhaps in time past I would have thought that a riddle.
And now?
Tell me something. You knew Nikumu. Why did he send Moeru to the continent of man?
Because I asked him to.
For what purpose?
His or mine?
Both.
Backup for his brother, who, under the influence, he sent into Sha’angh’sei to spy for the sasori. For myself,
s
he was there to seek out someone, just as Bonneduce the Last and Hynd were sent to find you.
Who?
Setsoru.
The Hart of Darkness.
As men would call him.
I have met him.
Yes. It seemed inconceivable to me that that confrontation should ever take place on the continent of man. Hynd did not fail his master.
He could not. His love for Bonneduce the Last exceeds all else in his world.
Yes. That is quite correct.
You wished to locate the Hart—
Just as I wished to locate you.
Where is my body?
Shed. It is yours no longer. You belong to life; it to death.
And what am I to become?
Through sorcery and ancient surgery, through the last surviving knowledge of the Bujun warrior-mages, through methods that were old even in my time you shall become the last myth of mankind: the Sunset Warrior.
The eye of Time grew faint, then disappeared altogether. All color ceased.
He tumbled forward into nothingness. Not fields or mountains, rivers or marshlands. Not valleys or forests, deserts or seas. Neither mist nor cloud barred his way and his speed increased. He neither walked nor ran. Neither did he fly. Once he thought he felt the gargantuan undulations of Kukulkan, but then he thought that he must be mistaken.
Then, in the absence of color, he felt the darkness stealing over him, a relentless, restive sea, cold and deep and mysterious. And now a shrill wind took up around him, whining and moaning.
Before him a slowly turning vortex.
Light and shadow, blurred and distorted, an intense sense of vertigo and he was within a forest. Below him, boles and limbs and foliage, all in black and white. Perspective inverted as he plunged into the darkness of the wood, through leafy bowers and ridged escarpments, above verdant underbrush, below swaying branches.
Something at the core of his being constricted as an intimation of what rushed at him dawned. He remembered another day in another lifetime within a house deep in the bowels of the world. Climbing the stairs, hearing the deep, sonorous ticking and the bright clicking from the second-floor room where Bonneduce the Last crouched on a carpet of intricate design, rolling the Bones, foretelling his future. There had been terror then and, as the chord at the center of his being was plucked again by chill fingers, he felt anew that strange unknown emotion.
You are not afraid to die,
Bonneduce the Last had said.
What then?
It was coming now or he to it.
The trees parted.
Then faded away to nothing.
He faced Setsoru.
Once again those terrible human eyes in the black-furred stag’s head stared into his own. The great treed antlers quivered.
‘Where am I?’ cried the Hart. Then: ‘I sent the ships for you. Ah, no!’ He screamed. ‘Stop this!’ His head shook. His eyes darted, rolling in their sockets. ‘You can stop this. You must!’
Silence.
And if there was anyone else in their black and white world, he gave no tangible sign of his presence.
Foam flecked Setsoru’s black animal lips and he gave a high whinnying whine. His horned hands reached for his black onyx sword but he was naked.
‘Where are you?’ called the Hart. His horned fingers went to his head, beating at it as if it were a mask he wished to smash.
‘Enough!’ His voice edged in hysteria, rising. ‘I have had enough of this jest!’ Backing away from the being in front of him. ‘I have served you faithfully. I have destroyed so much life in your name. What have you done to me now?’ His horned fingers grasped his antlers. His black lips trembled and he began a terrible laughter. ‘Power. Oh, power, where is it now? Deliver me from this hell—!’
There are no gods here, Setsoru, came his voice, filled with a peculiar vibration. The Hart jerked as if stung.
For the first time, Setsoru peered at the shape in front of him.
‘Who are you, that you should fill me with such fear?’
I cannot answer that, for I do not know yet. I know only what I once was, a long time ago. Yet your fear is my fear.
‘Truly?’ The Hart held his ground, his great head craning forward. ‘The light is dim. I cannot see you clearly.’
He moved closer.
‘Ah!’ Setsoru exclaimed. ‘I know now, I can feel it. From the forest. You stalked me like an animal—’
Not you. Another.
‘He told me you were dead.’
I am here.
‘I said you searched for me in the forest. That while you lived, I would have no peace. You would hound me—’
He also said that I was dead.
‘He would not lie to me.’
He already has.
‘What do you want of me?’
They were closer together now, though neither appeared to have moved on his own.
What do we want of each other?
The head jerked and the wide nostrils dilated, snorting. ‘I want nothing more than to be returned to the forest at Kamado.’
In time, perhaps.
‘He was right. You wish me dead!’ The eyes were berserk.
I will not harm you. And thinks, Why not?
Setsoru laughed.
‘You cannot!’
They came together and the battle was joined, an endless, deathless struggle. He realized this instantly, knew it was a puzzle he had to solve else they would be locked in combat, beyond the reach of Time itself.
He was terrified and as the panic rose within him, he blocked it, forcing it down, away from him. Tried to think. Mind a blank. The enormous furred face flailing back and forth before him.
‘I fear nothing. I destroy!’ The hysteria returning to the Hart, seizing him, squeezing. Never letting go. Never.
A kind of night was falling, deep and dense. Starless and endless. A blanket. To sleep. A shroud—
Into the shrouds. Upward. Sea birds calling. Toward the warm sun. Gone, now. Gone.
Think!
No sky. No horizon. No land.
Engulfed in the blackness.
Tumbling over and over, they fought. The panic deleted his strength. He had to overcome it.
Concentrate. Existence narrowing until—
He felt another touch of fear. A different kind now and he knew that something was coming. And he knew what it was.
Something beyond death.
The end.
No!
Unbound, the panic welled up, a vast, tidal wave of emotion and he relaxed now, feeling its thunderous, deafening approach. In the shallows now, holding his ground.
Into the deep.
And suddenly he knew and the knowledge, flowing through him like a dancing bolt of light, dazzled him with its energy.
You cannot harm me, he said.
Watching Setsoru’s eyes.
Coming.
Airless.
You understand, he said. Tell me who you are.
‘What do you mean?’
You know.
A constriction of the blackness.
‘You are mad!’
A rushing of foul wings.
It will all be over unless you tell me.
Setsoru felt it too, now.
I know therefore you must know.
‘I am afraid—’
That is all he has left.
It was there.
Tell me.
‘I am,’ said Setsoru, ‘you.’
The hiss of wind and it was gone from them.
Beneath them, as they spun, slithered the being at the center of the world, perhaps acephalous, indeed an endless landscape, turning and glistening and undulating, never the same, eternally constant.
Borne upward to them, a salt tide on the air. Color seeping.
The Hart’s body was racked with sobs as they held each other, drenched in salt sweat, and then they were together, inside each other, bound, and he felt at last for Setsoru another emotion which he could not identify.
They merged.
Energy raced through them and he/they/he saw the infinite fanfare of living thunder, heard the colored sky glowing from pink to white to blue to periwinkle to gray and brown to gold and orange and flame and rust, felt the push and pull of muscle as the working wings of vast flocks of geese and plovers hurtled eastward, living streamers, the parade’s own celebrative bunting.
One.
An instant’s flash of cold, pure gray.
Green semiconsciousness.
Warmth.
As something swam through the caverns of the sea, at the foundations of the world. And it seemed familiar, as if at some great time past, this something had been here. Or dreamed of it being here.
Amongst the towering basalt and granite at the base of the world he swam. And grew, developing a head and torso; arms and legs; hands and feet. And the features began to define themselves as he reached out and touched the immense, sloping side of the Aegir, rolling, undulating, endless.
Architecture built itself around him and he grew as he spun slowly on his axis, stroking the rough hide of the immeasurable being. He was sliced open, slit lengthwise down his arms, the blood pouring forth in black billowing clouds, the dust of another life. Swiftly the skin drew itself together in different configurations, colored and wealed, tattooed, a living hieroglyph upon which perhaps was written the history of all mankind.
Bones broke, as the skin pulled apart once again, shattering their calcium and phosphorous into drifting powder. But the shifting sea was rich in these minerals and others and it poured them back into the broken body. New bones constructed themselves in seeming odd lengths, joined and knitted with supreme cunning and skill.
Thus he passed from consciousness, knowing only that he was changing, forming, shifting like the sea itself which held him in its dark and pressured embrace. And while he slept greater changes occurred. Merciful unconsciousness.
His face broke into ten thousand fragments, shards dissolving on the tides, re-forming, soft as putty, molded in unseen hands, shaped most delicately and carefully into a singular visage in all the world.
The body broadened and elongated and now the muscles hardened, stretching themselves upon the framework of the new limbs and torso, growing, layer upon layer, defining themselves in ridged plateaus.
And all the while he dreamed.
A panoply of images raced through his mind, people and places and events cascading in a roaring torrent. Of some other person’s past or pasts. Ribboning like wind-swept clouds racing in pursuit of a westering sun.
Drifting downward to the earth.
On the bank of an ancient pond, kneeling. Across the green water, another form.
The stillness of the pond was so absolute that he was moved to tears. A frog leapt into the water and ripples rolled out in an everwidening ellipse.
He watched the water, patiently awaiting his reflection.
Now not even a furrow disturbed the hard dazzle of the pond. Perhaps a hint of a breeze floated above the surface, silent and vigilant.
He did not know what to expect.
But even so—