Title: The Wizards of Ceres, chapter 13 - Second Partings
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: PG-13 in this chapter
Summary: In which Fai is an emotional coward, Kurogane is a jealous asshole, and Ashura is Darth Vader.
Author's Notes: This chapter was originally going to have a fourth scene, fleshing out the confrontation between Kurogane and Eriol; it would have given some of the other Ceres Wizards a chance to make the picture, and heightened the hostility Kurogane faces as captive among enemies. However, I had a lot of trouble writing that scene and I found I was already over the chapter's word count without it, so I deleted the scene and just substituted a reference in at the beginning of the following scene.
Kurogane stalked down the hall in a foul humor. The servants of Ruval palace tended to avoid him at the best of times, but now they actively fled from sight when they saw him coming, and the guards all took a careful hold on their weapons as he passed.
He'd very nearly lost his temper in an ugly confrontation with one of the apprentice wizards -- Errol, the brat's name was, or maybe Eriol -- not that he cared. For all that he was an undergrown squirt of a kid, he was told the boy had enough magic for two men, and he certainly had enough arrogance for four. Worse, he didn't bother to muffle his disdain and hatred for Nihon in a cloak of civility as the others did; he'd actually taunted Kurogane, goaded him with insults about his family and breeding that would have cost a fellow countryman blood, let alone a four-eyed twerp of a teenager with more magic than good sense.
Only the knowledge that the wizard wanted him to lose his temper and attack, and so draw retribution from the king, had enabled Kurogane to keep his hands off the skinny brat's neck until Yukito had stepped in to break up the impending brawl.
He'd been in a bad enough mood after that, and it hadn't helped matters to come storming out of the informal mess hall where the confrontation had taken place and to see King Ashura walking the other way down the hallway -- with Fai at his heels. Fai had glanced his way only once, and hadn't spoken or moved to acknowledge him at all.
He hadn't seen the wizard again since that one bedside encounter, although Princess Sakura had come to visit him several more times and conversations with her were a rare bright spot in an otherwise gloomy week. Without Yukito along to vouch for him the guards continued to turn him back, and he had yet to catch Fai out in the libraries, the training salles where the wizards worked together in bafflingly arcane drills, or the mess hall.
Kurogane wondered if Fai was eating enough, with him there to sit on him, and kicked himself for wondering. Obviously, it wasn't his problem any more.
Just when it seemed like the day couldn't go any worse, the King had requested his attendance. Now. In some ways, you could come halfway across the world and kings and emperors wouldn't change at all.
The guard which had delivered the message brought him to a small receiving chamber; not the throne room, but more of a room of state or business. There were charts and maps pasted to the walls, some with writing on them, in the strange curling script of Ceres which Kurogane couldn't decipher. Ashura was there, as well as Yukito and several other men he didn't recognize.
"Well?" Kurogane said. He supposed he ought to be more diplomatic, but after the way his morning had gone he was just not in the mood. "What do you want?"
The king glanced up at him, and said something in a murmur to the advisors, who nodded in acknowledgment, gathered up an armload of papers from the desk, and departed through the chamber's other door. "Lord Suwa. You make a terrible diplomat, you know."
"I'm not here to be diplomatic," Kurogane said. "You called me here. Is this about the idiot brat from this morning?"
Ashura smiled dryly. "Hardly. Young Eriol is at a difficult stage in his training; he has learned much about power, but nothing about control. Actually, there is a different matter that I wished to speak with you about."
"Well, what is it then?" Kurogane said.
Ashura's smile faded, and he placed his hands on the table and leaned forward, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "Lord Suwa, I understand that you have been having several conversations with my daughter."
"Your daughter? Sakura?" Kurogane was somewhat startled; this was not a problem he'd seen coming. "Well, what of it? She's a very sweet girl, just a shame that she got stuck with you for a father."
Ashura frowned fiercely. "She is not to have any contact with outsiders! Your even knowing her name, let alone speaking with her, is already a violation of several Ceres laws. I order you to cease all contact with her at once. I will have no more of you polluting my daughter with inappropriate notions."
"What?" Kurogane stared in disbelief, stung with the unfairness of having the last bright spots in this hellish palace pulled out of reach. "I have neither said nor done anything to the princess which could be considered inappropriate! She's only fourteen years old, by the Gods --" and this brought him right onto his buried disgust and fury to the king over this whole matter. "What could I possibly say or do that's more inappropriate than forcing her to marry a man who's three times her age?"
"That is precisely the attitude that I will not have you take around her!" Ashura snapped. "This is none of your concern, outsider. My daughter will marry lord Flowright, and their children will bring a new power to Ceres."
There was another moment when things seemed to click over for Kurogane, and he understood exactly what the king had in mind. "So that's what this is about?" he demanded. "Some kind of twisted -- breeding program for future wizards?"
"As a king, I must think of the future needs of my country as well as the present," Ashura said icily. His eyes fell to one of the paper lists on the table in front of it, and he gave it a brooding frown. "Sakura has power in her that came to her from her mother; she in turn will be mother to the future wizards of Ceres. It is my ongoing frustration that I have yet been unable to find suitable mates for my other wizards; I have too few women among them, and neither of them are suited for childbearing."
He glanced up at Kurogane, still fuming in the doorway, and a malicious light touched his eye. "Perhaps I will find wives for them when I conquer Nihon; after all, most of the magic-users in your country are female, are they not?"
Without thinking, Kurogane took two steps forward towards, his hand going to his hip where Souhi would normally be sheathed. It took a great effort to halt himself, to wait for the boil of fury to subside from his vision and unclench his jaw. "I'm getting really damn sick of the way you treat people you claim to care about," he snarled. "If I had my swords in my hand right now and could challenge you to a duel, I'd teach you a lesson about manipulating people that you'd never forget --"
Ashura was staring at him intently, and Kurogane broke off, afraid for a moment that he really had gone too far. But he was so angry he just didn't care. "Very well," Ashura said abruptly. "Shall we duel, then?"
"Your Majesty!" one of the bodyguards protested, but with a faint tone that suggested he already knew it was hopeless.
"If you think -- " Kurogane stopped, staring at Ashura. "Wait, you're serious?"
"Perfectly. I did say that I would take you up on your offer once we were safely back at the palace, did I not? I never go back on my word."
Half an hour later found the two of them in an indoors training salle, the space wide and echoing and free of the decorations that marked the rest of the palace. It felt both alien and familiar to Kurogane at once; alien for being an enclosed space with a roof overhead, not open to the sky as it would have been in his own country, but comfortable and familiar nonetheless.
He had his swords back, although not his armor; Ashura hadn't offered it, and considering that the king wasn't wearing armor either, Kurogane decided not to ask.
"Your Majesty, please reconsider this foolishness," his bodyguard kept pleading with him, although Ashura seemed more amused than moved by his fussing. "This man is an enemy, and deliberately exposing yourself to him like this -- it's completely pointless to put yourself in danger!"
"In danger?" Ashura asked absently, although his eyes were on Kurogane as he checked over the condition of his swords, scowling at the faint patina that he hadn't had the opportunity to clean off them since escaping the cave-in, and didn't have time for now. "Do you have so little confidence in my skills in battle, then?"
"Of course not," the guard argued, "but any unnecessary risk --"
"Am I not a warrior then, and a leader of warriors?" Ashura demanded. "How can I lead my people in war, if I ask them to take risks I will not take myself? Soon I will ride out into battle, not against one single warrior but against a legion, and how am I to do that if I am too cowardly to face an armed opponent?"
"No, Your Majesty, I didn't suggest --" the guard said in a horrified tone. Kurogane almost felt sorry for him -- it was his job to keep the King safe, after all, and that was hard to do when your own sovereign refused to behave.
Ashura interrupted him. "I have never been a coward before," he said, "and I do not intend to start now. Besides, as you said, this man is a warrior of Nihon. If I cannot face him in single combat, then what right have I to make war on his country?"
"I can agree with that," Kurogane said. Personally, he was fine with any pretty rhetoric that Ashura spouted as long as it brought the other man within reach of his blade. He had no idea what kind of training in swordsmanship Ashura had, but he doubted he could have much experience sitting in a palace all day up in the mountains; and he was intensely aware of his own experience, battle-prowess honed against hundreds of demons stronger than any single man could be.
On the other hand, he couldn't exactly ignore the consequences of killing the monarch of a country, even in fair single combat, in the middle of his palace and surrounded on all sides by his warriors and wizards. Regardless of Ashura's ideals, he couldn't see that ending well for himself. But did it really matter if he survived, if he could strike such a blow in service to his country?
And what will it do to Fai, if you kill the king he so adores, if they blame him for bringing you here? a tiny voice whispered in his mind, but he pushed it aside, blocked it out as he did all painful thoughts of the man these days. There was no way he could foresee or plan for all the consequences. He could only control his own choices, and he couldn't hesitate.
"I don't plan to hold back," he told Ashura as they took up their stances in the center of the salle. The king's weapon was a fine one, from what he could see of it from here, good rich Ceres steel with an intricately worked crossguard, and blue jewels glinting from the handle. It was a pretty weapon, but there was no way to tell how strong it was until he felt the shock of it against his own blade.
The king smiled. "I should hope not. I would hate to be bored if you did."
Kurogane hesitated, studying the king narrowly; where was Ashura was getting his confidence? Was he not enough of a warrior to know when he was outmatched, or was this just the hopeless arrogance of kings?
No. No hesitation. Kurogane inclined his head and body forward in a short, formalized bow, the ritual of honor from one warrior to another, and then attacked.
He came at the king fast and low, in a stance that was guard as well as attack. The king stood his ground, a small smile on his face as he took Kurogane's charge standing. Just as he reached sword range, Kurogane turned his arm and swept his sword upwards in a fast, brutal slash that would have opened his opponent's torso from hip to shoulder.
It never connected; Ashura's sword swept down to block the blade, and their hilts locked with a thunderous clang. Kurogane was jolted by the force of the block; he looked up, startled, into Ashura's face. The king hadn't given a single step, he'd simply absorbed Kurogane's charge without a change of expression on his face.
There was no time to stand and gawk in a swordfight. Kurogane shifted his weight and turned his body, throwing their locked swords to the side and leaving the king wide open. As fast as he got his blade back around, though, Ashura was barely a hair's breadth behind him, and he caught the razor-sharp edge of Kurogane's blade on the flat of his sword as it swept down from overhead. This time, Kurogane caught the faintest flicker of a smile over Ashura's face, and steel scraped with teeth-aching noise as Ashura drew back and returned the blow, sword flickering snake-quick towards Kurogane's face.
Kurogane batted the cut aside, but he was forced to move back, relinquish his position. As the duel continued, the ringing clash of steel filling to the rafters again, Kurogane found himself hastily revising his estimate of the older man's prowess. Ashura was fast -- and strong. Kurogane was more used to fighting oni than humans, and he knew that the force of his blows were powerful enough to cut through the armor and bone of those huge, monstrous beasts -- but meeting Ashura's strength head-on felt like swinging into a stone wall.
The momentum of the fight was going against him. He felt sweat breaking out on his brow, and growled low under his breath as he saw that faint, mocking smile on Ashura's face again. He feinted, then switched sides, sword whistling in and around in a cut that should have hamstrung the other man.
But Ashura moved faster than he would have thought, sword flashing down like lightning to parry him. The force behind the blow was so great that Kurogane felt the shock of hit travel up his arms to make his teeth rattle, and he actually skidded backwards across the floor for several inches before he regained his footing, and dropped into a low, defensive stance.
Gods, the man was strong. Unnaturally strong -- it was more like facing a demon than a human opponent. Kurogane narrowed his eyes at the king, and shifted his grip slightly. If Ashura was more like a demon than a man, then perhaps he was going about this all wrong -- perhaps he should be fighting him like a demon.
He drew a breath and gathered his ki, felt it flowing like molten fury down his arms and down along the length of the steel -- "Senryuu hikogen!"
The sudden roar of flame almost took him by surprise. Perhaps it was just the change of scenery, an enclosed salle rather than an open wilderness, that had made him forget how strong the fire really was. Or perhaps it was the frustration of too many days locked in this place, the accumulation of stinging slights and humiliations on top of the bitter helplessness in the face of the horrors going on in the outside world, which he was unable to stop -- whatever it was, the resulting wave of flames roared across the room like a hurricane.
The enclosed stone walls channeled and magnified the shock of heated air, and the backwash nearly knocked him off his feet, but he kept his stance anyway. No enemy should still be standing after that attack, but he stayed in his wary crouch anyway, keeping his eyes on the place where Ashura had been before the blast hit him.
And his eyes widened in shock and disbelief when the flames cleared to see Ashura still standing, his clothes and hair barely singed, holding one glowing-white hand in the air before him.
"Impressive," Ashura said dryly. "Lord Kurogane, you should have said that this was to be a duel of sorcery as well as swords. Now that I know that, the rules change."
"I didn't -- " Kurogane said, but Ashura raised his hand, the glow puling brighter, and clenched it into a fist. All of a sudden a wave of invisible force, as strong as the back-blow from Kurogane's hikogen attack, washed over him. He tried to raise his guard, dodge aside, but it was like his feet were mired in quicksand, his arms weighed down with lead.
With every second the pressure increased, until he was gasping for air against the feeling of steel bands wrapped around his chest. An immense weight was crushing him down, and he had to brace his hands and lock his arms to prevent it from driving him to the floor. This was no natural force; there could only be one explanation. "You! You're a damn wizard!" he gasped out accusingly.
"I? A wizard?" Ashura tossed his head back and laughed. "Oh, no! I've never had the time, or indeed the patience, to devote myself to study. Too many books, too many words and runes and languages that must be learned first. I spent my time pursuing other things, and found others with a greater knack for wizardry than mine. But magic... yes, I've always had some of that, a talent that has become stronger over the years. Much like you do."
"I'm not a wizard," Kurogane growled, still struggling to keep his head up against the invisible pressure. His neck strained painfully and sweat ran down under his collar, but he would not, would not bow his head to Ashura.
Ashura only smiled. "You are, no matter how much you choose to deny it. The scorch-marks on my salle wall are all the proof that's required. But you have so long bound and constrained it that you don't even know how to use the power you have. A pity. If you'd like, I can offer you a position among my men as well. Swear fealty to me, and I'll number you among my wizards and train you in the power you've always denied."
This galvanized Kurogane to raise his head to meet Ashura's eyes, if only so that he could glare murder at him. "No," he said, a deep rasping snarl in his voice. "Never."
"Very well." Ashura closed his hand and lowered his arm, and the invisible pressure pinning Kurogane to the sword finally lifted. He gasped, and scrambled quickly back to his feet. His swords were lying on the salle floor, just out of reach; he eyed them with longing, but he had no illusions that a second round would end any differently than the first.
It occurred to him, a bit belatedly, that he'd gone about it all wrong when Ashura had made his offer; he ought to have played along, pretended to swear to Ashura. At least long enough to find an opportunity to strike, or possibly to escape. But that would have required a degree of deception that Kurogane had never really had the talent for; and the thought of swearing a false oath, even to one such as Ashura, left a foul taste in his mouth.
Ashura was watching him, black eyes penetrating, with a small smile hovering around his mouth. He looked like he could see into Kurogane's mind and read his every thought, and he had the uneasy thought that for all he knew, Ashura could.
The king spoke. "You are dismissed, Lord Suwa. You may take your weapons with you as you go, if you wish. I understand that to the warrior caste of Nihon, they are quite important symbols of status."
Kurogane picked up his swords, then stared at the king in disbelief. "You plan to let me run around the castle armed?" he said. "Are you out of your mind?"
The king shrugged. "And why not? You cannot escape into the teeth of winter unaided. You have too much honor -- and far too much sense -- to strike out at my servants, when you know what retribution that would bring on yourself... and others. And you've already learned the futility of facing me in combat. What have I to fear from you?"
What indeed. Kurogane set his teeth, secured his swords on his belt anyway, and stalked out.
When he'd gone far enough that some of the rage had boiled off, he found himself alone in one of the quiet, brightly-lit outer hallways. There was no one around; the servant who'd been coming down this passageway had taken one look at his expression and fled.
What am I doing here?
He stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring at one of the windows; like all the others, reinforced by an elegant metal lattice. He pushed aside the velvet curtains, found the metal latch of the casement window, and shoved the heavy window outwards.
He was met by a wall of raging whiteness, and he stared out into it, not able to see more than a few feet into the teeth of the storm. It had been days since he'd seen the outside world, and the palace halls were so quiet and warm -- relatively speaking -- that he'd naively assumed that the storm had died down. If anything, it had gained in strength; the wind shrieked past the palace walls, lashing snow and ice particles hard enough to sting his hands and face even muted by the thickness of the windowpane.
Only a little blue-gray daylight was able to pierce that storm, seeming wan and flimsy compared to the bright lantern light of the hallway. The palace was its own little world, protected by thick stone walls and magics, and there was no stepping outside of it. Not without winter gear which he didn't have and didn't even know how to use, and probably not without the aid of magic. No wonder they didn't bother to lock him up, to guard him; the very winter of Ceres was his jailer.
The blizzard winds howled past the open casement, and Kurogane felt like howling too. Gods, he wanted to go home. He should never have come here; he'd been a fool, a childish fool, to think that he could somehow solve two country's problems all by himself, just by wishing it. He wanted to be home, and not just in Shirasagi Castle or familiar Edo, but back to his old life -- patrolling, hunting and slaying demons. At least he'd been serving a purpose there, fighting to make the world a better place and protect those he loved. Here -- here he was nothing but a pawn, serving no one's ends except King Ashura.
"Kurogane," a voice said from behind him; a familiar voice, laced with exhaustion and now surprise. Kurogane let go of the window with his numbed fingers, letting the force of the wind push the window shut, and turned.
Fai was standing in the corridor behind him, and Kurogane looked him up and down, sizing up his condition. He was walking, but only with the aid of a dark wooden crutch, the crossbar of it gripped in his good hand. His other arm was bound across his chest in a sling, and Kurogane noted the white of plaster peeking out of the edge of it. No doubt there was a similar cast on his broken leg, hidden from view by the white fur-trimmed robe of the court wizards.
His silver insignia, Kurogane noted, was far more intricate and extensive than any of the other wizards. He was getting some practice at deciphering the meanings of the various ranks, but he had no trouble parsing this one: First Senior Wizard to the king. Another thing you lied to me about, he thought furiously.
Fai's hair had been cleaned and combed, and tied neatly at the nape of his neck, the white ribbon echoing the narrow bandage encircling his temples. His face was bruised, but clean, and his eyes as he faced Kurogane were calm and sane once more.
Fai smiled at him, friendly and warm. "I'm sorry, that was rude of me," Fai said. "I meant -- Lord Suwa. King Ashura is in a council just now, and I thought I saw you heading this way..."
The formal use of title, the same form of address that Ashura and the other wizards used, hurt even worse than using his full name had; it only emphasized the distance between them. For a moment Kurogane's vision darkened as the gulf between them yawned impassable.
Fai was not what Kurogane had thought, had never been what he'd thought. Fai was a prince, royal both by blood and by station; betrothed to a princess, heir to two kingdoms. Fai was the de facto commander of a legion of wizards and who knew how many soldiers, with powers that Kurogane could scarcely guess at after a month of traveling with him. He had nothing in common, nothing at all, with the indigent son of a minor provincial noble with no land behind his empty title, who sold his sword into the service of others for a living. There could be no common ground between them.
He'd thought that Fai had come to return his regard, care about him in turn -- but how could he know? How could he know anything about what the wizard really felt or thought, when Fai had never been honest with him, not for a moment?
"Call me what you like," Kurogane said shortly, as if it was all the same to him. "If you're going to bother calling on me at all. I'd assumed you'd forgotten I existed, Lord Flowright -- although the guards outside your corridor certainly know who I am."
Fai's smile faltered. "You -- tried to come to see me?" he asked, a guilty look crossing his face.
"Why not? You certainly never came to see me," Kurogane replied bitterly. He felt almost driven to say the words, although he knew it was a bad idea; he couldn't stop himself. "I suppose you don't need me any more, do you? You've got plenty of other people here to look after you. Plenty of adults to protect you and pick up your messes. You're free to drop me like a hot rock."
Fai was staring at him, an odd mixture of disbelief and hurt on his face. It made Kurogane bitterly happy to see it, to share that hurt, although he knew he should feel ashamed. But he wanted to hurt Fai back, make him feel as small and lost and humiliated as he'd made Kurogane feel.
"Is that what all this has been about?" Fai said incredulously. "You think of me as some kind of... of child who needs to be protected and controlled? I'm old enough to be your father."
"It's hard to remember sometimes, when you act like you're young enough to be my son," Kurogane snarled back. "Is this the price of magical immortality? Perpetual childhood? I'll pass, thanks."
"Kurogane, what --"
"Forget it. All I want to know from you is why," Kurogane cut him off. "Why did you disobey your orders and refuse to kill me? Why did you beg Ashura to spare my life? What possible motivation could you have?"
"Because, I, I..." Fai raised his head and searched Kurogane's face beseechingly; whatever he found there, or didn't find, the light in his eyes died a little.
He licked his lips before he spoke, and Kurogane tensed, sensing another lie coming. "Because I owed you," Fai said in a small voice. "You saved my life, you are a good man. It wasn't right to betray you, who'd never done any harm to me. I just wanted to repay you, that's all."
"Well now you've done that," Kurogane said in a biting tone. "Is that it, then? Scales are even, debt repaid? Neither of us owes the other one anything?"
"I didn't mean that," Fai said.
"Then what did you mean?!" Kurogane shouted. "As soon we get back to Ruval palace, it's like I don't exist to you any more!"
Fai's eyes dropped. "I'm sorry," he said. "I -- it's not that I didn't want to see you... but King Ashura forbade me."
"And you just leap into action to obey King Ashura's commands, don't you?" Kurogane said sarcastically. The image of the two of them walking down the white hallways swirled up before his vision again; Fai's eyes on Ashura's face, his expression alight and eager. "As soon as you're in the same room as him you act like you don't have a brain in your head. You let him walk all over you like you're completely spineless. It's disgusting."
Shock warred with disbelief -- and hurt -- in Fai's face, finally settling into anger. "What would you have me do? He's my King," Fai began. "He commands my absolute loyalty -- my absolute obedience, I --"
"I serve a king too, have you forgotten?" Kurogane interrupted him impatiently. "Fealty is one thing, loyalty is another, but that doesn't mean you have to worship the very ground that he walks on."
"You have no idea what is between Ashura and I," Fai said in a low voice. "What I owe to him. What he did for me when I was a child --"
"Is no more than any decent human being would have done!" Kurogane shouted. "That doesn't mean that you have to be his slave thirty years later! That doesn't obligate you to crawl to him! Especially not to an arrogant snake of a man, a twisted predator who --"
"Stop," Fai shouted, and Kurogane broke off, staring at Fai; he'd never heard him speak so forcefully.
"Never speak of Ashura that way again," Fai said, in a voice that was a thin skin of calm over boiling fury underneath. "You have no right to talk about him, or tell me what I owe to anyone. You will never speak of him in that manner again in my presence!"
"Or what? You'll kill me?" he sneered. "Are you that afraid to hear what I have to say? That afraid that it might be the truth?"
"I wouldn't do that," Fai said flatly. "But I can arrange it so that you never speak another word in your life. It's too much for you to understand, isn't it? That I follow Lord Ashura not because of any sense of obligation, but because I love him."
"Fine," Kurogane said. He felt that coldness wash over him at that word, felt it settle into the pit of his stomach with an odd sense of finality. That's it, then, he thought. He's made his choice; and he chose Ashura.
As he walked past him, leaning heavily on his cane, Fai turned his head and shot Kurogane a piercing blue glare, like the blast of arctic winds. "I guess that's not a word you'd understand, love."
Kurogane stood in the cold corridor, watching Fai walk away.
***
Inside the palace, it was easy to forget about the world outside. The walls were thick, but the silence and bright warmth that enveloped the castle corridors and rooms were even more than that should account for. Even Shirasagi Castle could be cold and miserable in the wintertime, despite the straw rushes and wood-and-paper partitions that made up the interior, and Ruval had no such protection against raw stone. Kurogane wondered if magic was responsible for that odd insulation, as it was for the lamps that never went out.
He'd forced the small window in his chambers partway open and propped it with an iron bar. It made the little room colder than the fire in the hearth could combat, and the icy whistling of the wind kept him from being able to sleep, but he still preferred that to the unnerving sense of isolation from the real world. It felt like it was his only connection to reality.
Finally, after days of unrelenting gale, the force of the wind had dropped. Icy frost embroidered the windowsill and glass pane, and snow still fell in a dizzying shower past his window, but at least it wasn't falling sideways any more. Staring out the window at the silent, icy mountains, Kurogane wondered how many soldiers of Nihon had died in the blizzard.
"Lord Suwa, please come with me."
Kurogane looked up to see Yukito standing in the door to his chambers. With a grimace, he tossed aside what he'd been doing -- just filling time, not like there was anything useful for him to do in this castle -- and stood up, settling his swords more comfortably on his belt. Even if it had been politely worded, it wasn't really a summons he could ignore.
"All right, I'm coming," he grumbled, and followed the pale-haired mage out.
For a change, no guards trailed them; the ones stationed outside of Kurogane's room and down the hallway politely ignored them. But Kurogane knew better to think that the lack of a guard indicated trust. Even assuming he could take out Yukito -- and he made no such assumption -- there was nowhere for him to run, now was there?
"So what does Ashura want with me now?" he asked, pacing behind Yukito.
"King Ashura has left the castle," Yukito replied, glancing over his shoulder at Kurogane. "The storm has ended, but the war goes on. There were things that required his attention."
Kurogane's face darkened with a frown. He hated this, being shut up in the castle while the king and his wizards went about wreaking havoc on his country. Then his mind made the connection. "If Ashura isn't here, then who's summoning me? Is it the w - Fai?" His heart beat faster at the thought, although whether in pleasure or anticipation of another fight, he wasn't sure.
"Lord Flowright was accompanying the King. He is going to assist him in his tasks."
They were leaving the bright, broad upper hallways of the palace now, entering the back corridors more often employed by servants. The floors were sloping steadily downwards, and Kurogane looked around him in confusion. "Wait a moment. If Ashura's not here and the wizard's not here, then who the hell asked to see me?"
Yukito glanced back at him, and a faint amusement lit his eyes. "I never said anyone had asked to see you."
"Then where are we going?" When Yukito did not respond -- except to pick up the pace -- Kurogane halted in the middle of the corridor, forcing Yukito to turn and face him. "What's going on here? If you're hoping to lead me into some kind of ambush from your fellow wizards, now that your boss isn't around, I've got no intention of walking into it blindly."
Yukito sighed, and brushed his hair out of his eyes. "Men of war are always so paranoid," he muttered to himself.
Kurogane folded his arms and set his jaw. Yukito looked back up at him, a serious expression on his face. "All right," he said. "Hold still. This won't hurt."
"What --" Kurogane broke off as Yukito moved, faster than he would have expected, and framed Kurogane's face with his hands, fingers just touching Kurogane's temple. He just barely managed to restrain his first impulse, to draw his sword and lash out at the attacker, but that left him frozen in place for a moment too long.
It felt like something bright and warm flashed from Yukito's fingers, receding and disappearing into the back of his mind. Kurogane stared as Yukito withdrew. "What the hell did you just do to me?" he managed to say.
"Just a little blockage on your long-term memory," Yukito said. "Don't worry. It's not permanent. But in a few hours you won't remember any of this conversation." He started to turn away, stopping when Kurogane lunged forward and grabbed the fur-trimmed collar of his robe.
"Wait a minute! Who said you had permission to go messing with my memory?" Kurogane flared, feeling a little panicked at the thought of someone playing with his mind, no matter how many pretty reassurances he gave. "What's going on?"
Yukito tried to pull away, found that he couldn't -- Kurogane couldn't defend himself physically, maybe, but that didn't mean he was any kind of pushover -- and looked back into his face with a cool expression. "I'm sorry, but it was necessary," he said. "What going on is that I'm helping you escape, and there will be a lot of people who will be very excited to know how it was done. So it's best all around that you don't remember."
"You're going to help me escape?" Shock loosened Kurogane's grip, enough that Yukito was able to get free. A spark of hope flared deep inside him, along with wild suspicion. "Why?"
"Because you're causing a disruption to the entire palace just by being here," Yukito answered. "Because you're causing a lot of pain to someone I have great respect and admiration for. Mostly, because you're a disaster waiting to happen."
"What do you mean?" Kurogane said, not sure which of those three he wanted clarification to.
Yukito sighed, pressing one hand against his eyes. "Ashura believes that you're an honorable man, and that your sense of honor will keep you bound to your parole. But very soon things are going to happen in this war which you won't, as an honorable man, be able to let pass."
A chill stole down Kurogane's back, and he tried to figure out what terrible thing Yukito could be referring to. "What about Fai?" Kurogane asked finally. "Does he know that you're helping me?"
Yukito shook his head. "What Fai knows, Ashura soon knows," he said quietly. "Fai cannot shield his thoughts from him, not even if he tries. But Ashura doesn't keep the rest of us on such a short leash as him. I have the trust of the King and total freedom of the palace; no one will suspect me. And since Fai was with Ashura all the time, Ashura will have no reason to punish him for your escape."
At some faint echo, Yukito turned his head to look down the corridor, and then he put a hand on Kurogane's elbow and pulled him along. "Come on. I made sure none of the guards could see you, but I still don't want to risk anyone coming along and catching us down here."
Kurogane allowed himself to be pulled along. A part of him perversely wanted to stay, to find Ashura and stop him from doing -- whatever he was going to do -- but the greater part of his logical mind knew that was impossible. Ashura was already well beyond his reach, and if there was some chance he could take advantage of his absence to escape...
"Where are we going?" he asked, as they passed through more dark stone corridors, the bright lamps that had been so common upstairs becoming fewer and fewer. They kept on sloping downwards, and Kurogane had a feeling they were to the sub-basement level at least.
"There's something beneath the mountain that's been sleeping for a long, long time, since before the palace was built, since long before Ashura's line became kings. No one knows about it but me."
Something in his palace that even the king didn't know about? How was that possible? "If it's so secret, how'd you find out about it?" Kurogane asked.
"Because it's my job to see everything in this kingdom," Yukito answered. "I set the border wards that hold against hostile magic, the veils that block out unfriendly sight and scrying charms, and the alarms that sound if any tries to cross into our kingdom. I maintain the connections to the gramerhains in each village, so that in case of disaster or invasion they can alert us instantly. I read the future in the stars, and try to determine what must be from what may not be. I scry over every inch of this mountain domain, on the ground, above it, and under it. No magic as strong and powerful as this one could stay hidden from me for long."
Kurogane nearly tripped over the rough stone floor as Yukito's words registered. I read the future in the stars. "You're a yumemi," he said disbelievingly. "One gifted with the ability to see the future in dreams..."
Yukito stopped and put a hand on the dark corridor walls, staring intently at the cracks in the stone. "My sight is not limited to dreams," he said quietly. "Although sometimes the things I can see are so faint and fragmented, and so disconnected from reality, that they may as well be dreams. But yes, I was born with such a power."
He pulled Kurogane abruptly to the side, and what had appeared to be just another section of stone walls suddenly melted away before their eyes. Inside was a stone ramp, curving steeply away downwards. It was completely dark; Yukito said a soft word in an unknown language, and the end of his staff lit with an eerie blue-white glow.
"This way," he said.
They went down, and down, until Kurogane was dizzy with the turns and completely disoriented. He had no idea how far they had come, but this certainly felt like the 'heart of the mountain.' A faint glow was beginning to show from somewhere up ahead, although it was hard to make it out against the witchlight from Yukito's staff. Then they turned another corner on the ramp, and came abruptly to flat ground; a chamber, carved out of solid stone, hundreds of feet below the palace above.
It wasn't a large chamber, and mostly empty; the only distinguishing feature was a raised dais in the center of the room; it was from there that the faint light emanated. Mounted on it was an upright stone ring about three yards in diameter, paler gray than the rock of the surrounding chambers and smooth without seam or angle. The light from Yukito's staff played over the surface of the stone, illuminating a field of intricately carved runes and stone channels.
"This is the Heart of the Mountain," Yukito said; his voice was hushed with something very like awe. "There is nothing else like it in the world; the arts for the creation of these are long since lost to us. Ever since I found it I have searched for the knowledge to understand how it was made, but we have only fragments of the old tomes remaining."
Kurogane studied the stone ring in puzzlement, walking slowly around it. Even if he hadn't spent the last month hanging around a wizard it would have been obvious that it was intensely magical; but what its purpose could be he had no idea. "Yes, but what does it do?" he asked.
"It is the rarest and most difficult of all magical artifacts -- a stable portal," Yukito said. "Once it's activated, you can step through this ring and immediately find yourself in another part of the world."
Kurogane, who had begun to reach out to touch the engraved stone, jerked his hand back. "A portal?" he demanded in astonishment. "But I thought those were incredibly dangerous!"
"To those without sufficient knowledge and control, they are," Yukito answered. "But this one is permanent and securely built, right in the very foundations of the mountain. The knowledge and control were invested in it long ago -- it is perfectly safe."
Kurogane stared at the unassuming stone ring. "Where does it lead?" he said finally.
Yukito sighed. "Once upon a time, with sufficient knowledge of how to use it -- anywhere," he said. "But the spells to guide it are lost along with the arts of creation. Now it will lead to just one place -- to its sister stone ring down in the plains, in the foundations of the ancient castle of Shirasaki."
Kurogane whirled around and gawked at Yukito as the meaning sunk in. "Are you telling me that there's a portal that leads directly from Ruval to Shirasagi?" he said in a shaking voice. "And -- the other way around as well?"
Yukito nodded. His face was hard to read. "Returning, of course, would require having a willing and capable wizard on the other end," he added offhandedly.
"But this could end the war!" Kurogane exclaimed, torn between horror and excitement. Whose favor it would end in, of course, would depend on who made a move through it first. "Does King Ashura know about this?"
"Of course not," Yukito said as he stepped forward, and began running his hands over the intricately carved stone. A glow began to collect where his hands touched, matching the white-blue glow of his staff. "Nor will he know. This is a secret far too powerful and dangerous for someone as ambitious for Ashura to ever find out about. With it, he would seek to conquer the world -- or worse."
The glow seeped outwards from Yukito's hands as he carefully touched each rune in turn, until the entire stone ring was sparkling like a field of fireflies. The air in the center of the stone ring was beginning to darken and waver, as though a fire beneath the stone were casting smoke and heated air up through the portal.
"Why are you doing this?" Kurogane had to ask. He didn't know why Yukito was answering so many of his questions, but he had to understand this. "If you told Ashura this was here, he could be sitting in the ruins of Edo in less than a week! Why would you betray your king and your country?"
Yukito turned to face him, and now the color of the light coming from his staff was exactly the same as what reflected from his glasses. "Because I do not believe that what Ashura is doing is right," he said. "I believe in the future, Lord Kurogane; a future for both of our countries, where all of our peoples can live in peace. I've seen it; I know it's possible. The empress and the king may not believe in that future, or care -- but I will do everything in my power to see that that it comes to pass."
The space inside the stone ring was completely dark, now, a cloud which spread to the limits of the stone ring and rippled like stone dropped on a water. A second glow, this one a strange yellow mixed with green, was beginning to fight for ascendancy over the darkness in the center of the portal. A breeze was beginning to pass rapidly through the chamber, air rushing from the stone stairs behind them and being sucked into the portal.
"Why do you care what happens to Nihon?" Kurogane said. He had to shout to make himself heard over the growing wind; it whipped his hair into his eyes and tugged at his clothing, as though trying to pull him in.
"Because someone very important to me lives there," Yukito answered. His hair and robes were being whipped around him by the breeze, lending a peculiarly wild look to the usually mild-tempered man. "Good-bye, Lord Suwa. You'll be met on the other side by someone who will help you, someone I trust from the bottom of my heart. And you will have others waiting to welcome you home, ones as dear to you as he is to me."
It was strange, how Yukito didn't seem to raise his voice at all, but it still carried perfectly through the noise. The wind was rising to gale force, and despite all his doubts Kurogane felt himself stumbling inexorably towards the portal.
"After that," Yukito's voice echoed in his ears, "It will be all up to you."
He stepped into the darkness, but all he saw was light.
~to be continued...