The Miko - 02 (15 page)

“Legend?” Tomkin laughed uneasily. “What is this, the start of a vampire movie?” He cocked an ear. “Jesus, I hear the wolves howling, Nick. It must be a full moon tonight. We’d better stay indoors and hang up all the garlic.”

“Stop it,” Nicholas said shortly. “This is precisely why I’d hoped not to tell you.”

Tomkin proffered an upraised palm. “All right.” He crossed back to the bed, sat down. “I promise to be a good boy and listen.”

Nicholas stared at him for a moment before beginning. “At the Tenshin Shoden Katori
ryu
where I received my
ninjutsu
training, where the
Wu-Shing
was taught, this legend was told…and believed.

“In the old days when only the Ainu inhabited the Nippon Islands and true civilization had not yet spread southeast from China,
ninjutsu
was in its infancy on the Asian continent. It was still too early in the discipline’s life for there to have been
sensei
—true masters—or even, as there are now,
jonin
—
ryu
patriarchs—simply because the differentiated schools of
ninjutsu
were barely formed.

“There was much more ritual then, more superstition. The thinking among what
sennin
—adepts—existed was rigid and unyielding, principally because the forces they were working with were still so newly strange and deadly potent. Thus any deviation was summarily condemned wholesale.”

Nicholas paused here to pour himself a glass of water. He drank half of it and continued. “As the legend goes, there was one
sennin
more powerful than the rest. His name was Hsing, which has many meanings in
kanji.
His meant ‘shape.’

“It is said that Hsing walked only in the darkness, that it was his only lover. His devotion to his craft caused him to be celibate. And, also unlike his compatriots, he took only one pupil, a strange wild-haired boy from the steppes far to the north where the Mongols dominated.

“This student of Hsing’s, it was whispered, could not speak any civilized dialect, nor could he read Mandarin. Yet he conversed fluently with Hsing. No one knew how.

“Yet the other
sennin
began to suspect that Hsing was slowly expanding his scope of
ninjutsu
knowledge, experimenting in the darker unknown aspects which the others shunned. His power grew even greater and at last in fear—or perhaps simple envy—the other
sennin
massed against him and destroyed him.”

Nicholas’ eyes were alight and although it was now deepest night outside and though the lamps in the suite were turned low still Tomkin saw him clearly, every detail etched against the light glow. For a moment the bustling modern world had faded and the mist-shrouded Asian past was being recreated before him, plunging him into a world of arcane laws.

“The murderous
sennin
,” Nicholas continued, “were content with driving off the wild-haired student, shouting derisively to him that he should return to the northern steppes from whence he had come.

“But they had not reckoned with Hsing’s power. Apparently his death had come too late, for he had already created from his pupil
akuma,
what the Japanese call an evil spirit, a demon with
jit suryoku
—superhuman powers.”

“Oh, please, Nick, This’s—”

“You asked to hear this, Tomkin. Kindly have the courtesy to hear the legend through.”

“But this is the stuff of fairy tales.”

“Hsing had taught the pupil all he knew about
jaho
,” Nicholas said, ignoring him. “A kind of magic. Oh, there’s nothing supernatural about this. I’m not speaking now of spells and incantations, demons out of some fictitious hell dreamed up by the mind of man.

“Saigō had studied the
Kōbudera
—that is,
jahō.
He practiced
saiminjutsu
on your daughter; that, too, is a form of
jahō.
”

Tomkin nodded. “Okay, I can accept that. But what’s all this got to do with the murder?”

Nicholas took a deep breath. “The only recorded instance of death in conjunction with the first four
Wu-Shing
—the fifth ritual punishment
is
death—concerns Hsing’s pupil, who began a series of just such murders in Kaifeng. Bloody, horrific, terrifying, they enacted a perverse poetic justice on those who had destroyed his
sennin.

“He had become
mahō-zukai.
A sorceror.”

Akiko Ofuda wore a snow-white kimono, heavy with hand-stitched brocade. Over it she wore a light silk dress the precise shade of the last of the cherry blossoms bobbing in the breeze above her head.

Her hair was hidden beneath the ornate tresses of a gleaming wig. These swirls and complex loops were surmounted by a
Tsu-nokakushi
—the hornhider—a ceremonial white hat with wide brim said to be worn to hide whatever bad parts of a woman existed.

Her eyes were large and clear through the delicate makeup. Her face was very white, her lips a startling splash of crimson. She wore no earrings or other jewelry. In her right hand was clutched a closed fan.

Saturday had dawned bright and clear with just a hint of the crispness of March, the preceding month.

The enormous crimson camphorwood
torii,
symbol of the Shinto shrine, rose over the heads of the still assembling guests who, according to the final count of RSVPs, were going to number over five hundred.

Morning mist still clung to the steep hillsides, feathering the boles of the cedars and fir, obscuring the sapphire glint of the lake far below. At the guests’ backs huddled the dense and hazy superstructure of the northwestern edge of Tokyo.

The four buildings of the temple spread out in a rough horseshoe, their cedar-beamed, canted roofs with the raised ribs striping the sunlight into shadow and gloss.

The guests milled about, chattering among themselves, commenting on the fine weather, gossiping about late arrivals or even, in one or two instances, forging the underpinnings of an important deal. A great majority of the country’s foremost business and bureaucratic leaders were in attendance.

Seiichi Sato looked from the beautiful face of his bride to the milling throng of guests. As he recognized a face from business he recited to himself the man’s name and position, then filled in the appropriate slot on an imaginary pyramid in his mind. The structure he was forming was important to him. The face he gained at this marriage would go a long way toward furthering the prestige of the
keiretsu.
While Akiko’s parents were dead, the name Ofuda still ranked as most prestigious, tracing its origins all the way back to the time of Ieyasu Tokugawa.

That first Ofuda—Tatsunosuke was his name—was a great
daimyō,
an ingenious tactical commander whose genius for victory on the field of battle was called on many times by Ieyasu.

It pained him to know that Akiko had never known her parents, that she had no relatives, in fact, save the gravely ill aunt whom she visited so frequently in Kyushu. Sato had a brief somber flash of Gōtarō’s broad, smiling face. Sato knew well the grief at a family cut off at the waist.

How Gōtarō would have loved this day! How his smile would have driven the morning mist into the lake. How his great barking laugh, so like a triumphant shout, would have echoed and reechoed through these woods so that even the small creatures in their burrows might know the extraordinary joy of this day.

Sato passed a hand quickly across his eyes, using the pads of his fingers to wipe away the specks of wetness there. Why do this to yourself? he asked silently. Gōtarō is gone.

Kare wa gaikoku ni itte i masu
, Sato’s mother had said when he brought her the news.
He has gone abroad.
And never said another word. She had already lost her husband. Now the death of her oldest son was too much for her to bear. She did not survive the war, though she was not burned by the bombs. The war had devoured her from within.

No, Sato said to himself now. Do not be like your mother.
Kare wa shinde shimai mashita.
Banish Gōtarō’s
kami. He is dead and gone.
And he turned to Masuto Ishii, speaking to him of business matters of import to both of them in order to banish his sorrow or, at the very least, to keep it at bay on this happiest of days.

Not far away, Tanzan Nangi stood with his back ramrod straight, his bony knuckles enwrapping the white jade dragon capping his hardwood cane. Pain girdled him from standing so long but he would not move. It had been his duty to be among the first to arrive here; no one else was sitting so he could not either.

Further, he would not lose face to these priests. Nangi would have preferred, of course, for Sato to have had this ceremony in a Christian church. The vestments, the sacraments, the soft Latin litany that he could understand fully and respond to were comforts to him that arcane Shintoism could not be. Ghosts and spirits were not Nangi’s way. And spending one’s life placating a bewildering variety of
kami
seemed farcical to him. He believed fervently in Christ, the Resurrection, and Holy Salvation.

He was with a younger man, in the eye of one of the main eddies. They enjoyed almost constant attention from both newly arriving guests and those who had been there for some time who, having observed a proper interval, now were returning to seek advice from Nangi or tidbits of news of MITI from Riuichi Yano, the new minister. He was Nangi’s protégé, and Nangi’s last official act before he left that organization six years ago had been to assure that Yano would succeed him.

As he smiled and spoke, thoughtfully answering all questions as best he could, Nangi kept a sharp eye out for the
gaijin.
He wished to monitor their movements from the time they arrived. One could divine much from observing the enemy at play.

Akiko, too, had one eye out for the
gaijin.
But only for one: Nicholas. This was the moment, and her eyes were like cameras, ready to record the event, to drink in expressions and emotions.

She felt her pulse racing, her heartbeat seemed to flutter her kimono. She used her training to calm herself, to gather her resources for the beginning of her revenge. She forced herself to concentrate on Sato’s presence beside her. She looked his way, saw instead Ishii staring at her with hooded eyes. He smiled and nodded, turned back to his murmured conversation with Sato.

There was a rustling through the assembled guests, just the tiniest of ripples but Akiko, her senses finely attuned, shifted her gaze. The mask of a smile was frozen on her intensely crimson lips, her white face perfect as she saw the throng begin to part at its farthest reaches.

“Ah,” Sato said, turning, “Tomkin and Linnear are here at last.”

Slowly, as if in a dream she had composed innumerable times, Akiko raised one hand, her fingers spreading open her fan of gilt, red, and jet so that only the edge of one eye could be seen. The rest of her face was hidden.

Softly, she thought, softly. Don’t give away too much. Not yet. Give him time to approach. Come closer, Nicholas. She willed him drawn to her. Come closer and begin the destruction of your life.

She could distinguish the two
gaijin
now, one broader than the other but both tall, towering above the other guests.

She could pick out Nicholas’ features as the
gaijin
continued to make their way through the throng. Tomkin wore a dark pinstripe with white shirt and rep tie. Nicholas had chosen a less conservative suit of sea green linen, a gray shirt, and a tie as blue as an ocean trough.

His wide-cheeked face was still in shadow as the two passed through the long stand of tall bamboo but Akiko could already discern the odd tilted eyes, neither truly Caucasian nor Oriental. They gave him a quality she could not understand. Once again she felt the same kind of magnetic wave she had experienced in Jan Jan and she had to will herself to remain where she was at Sato’s side.

Now they were very close indeed. Nicholas’ face sprang into the sunlight as if abruptly brought into focus in the center of a lens. The gusting wind took a lock of his dark hair, sent it curling down across his forehead. Automatically, his hand came up to push it away, a bar of shadow racing across those strong, confident features.

Not for long, Akiko whispered to herself. The moment was almost at hand, and she knew that she had orchestrated it to perfection. A sense of intense excitement—of ecstasy, almost—gyred within her, fueling her for what was about to happen.

The tiny pink tip of her tongue flicked out to moisten her lip as she watched the litheness with which he moved, the low center of gravity which propelled him with such controlled power—the training of dance or
sumō.
In her mind’s eye he became the great tiger, lord of the earth, padding with great stealth and coordination through the dense forest, prepared at any instant to make his prodigious killing leap onto the back of a lesser animal turning to flee his presence.

Now. The moment was here at last. Akiko waited until his gaze slid up, turning from Sato to her. He was understandably curious; he had never seen her before and he must want to know what kind of woman Sato was about to marry.

She felt the intensity of his gaze. He held on her fan, then her eye. Their eyes locked, and for an unfathomable instant Akiko felt suspended in time and space. All the preparations, the arduous years flew by her again in the brilliant flash of a film montage to culminate here. Now.

With a firm hand she lowered her fan, exposing her face.

When Nicholas emerged from the limousine that had brought them out of Tokyo, he was first struck by the natural beauty of the setting. On the way, they had skirted the large lake, moving away from its placid mist-covered surface as they began to wind their way up toward the cliff upon which the Shinto shrine was situated.

It was not surprising to him that the priests had chosen this spot to build their temple. Shintoism was an attuning of the soul toward nature, life’s currents.
Karma.
One’s life was a part of a much vaster skein in which every living thing, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral, played its role.