Title: The Wizards of Ceres, chapter 14 - Dreams and Nightmares
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: PG-13 in this chapter
Summary: In which the war between Ceres and Nihon escalates, and Kurogane departs on another journey.
Between one step and the next the level of the ground changed, and Kurogane stumbled and nearly fell. His vision was swimming with cloudy black and green highlights, and for a long moment he could not determine if the room was too bright or too dark for him to see. He bent over slightly and planted his hands on his knees, taking a deep breath and swallowing hard against a violent surge of nausea.
At last he was able to take a deep breath and look up, blinking repeatedly as his vision finally began to clear. He was in a dusty, empty room he didn't recognize -- packed-earth walls all around him, except for the wall behind him, which was stone. A little bit of sunlight streamed in from the doorway opposite, enough to illuminate the silhouette of a man standing there.
Kurogane straightened up, breath catching in alarm, before Yukito's last words caught up with him -- Someone will be waiting for you on the other side. Why would there be an agent of Ceres in Shirasagi Castle? "Who's there?" he called out suspiciously.
The shadowed figure moved, arms unfolding as it pushed away from the doorframe, and the dim filtered light fell on the features of Crown Prince Touya. "Welcome back, Demon-Queller," he said in a calm voice.
"Highness!" Kurogane was startled, and his mind reeled. He took another step forward, and stumbled -- apparently he wasn't quite as over the vertigo as he'd thought.
Touya came forward and grabbed Kurogane's arm as he wobbled. "Easy," he said. "Come on, let's get you somewhere out of sight. And out of those clothes. Ceres court garb isn't exactly inconspicuous around here, you know."
He pulled Kurogane to the door, and after a quick glance around outside it, outside. The glare of even weak winter sun was hard to adjust to after being shut indoors so long, and Kurogane could not at first get his bearings. "I didn't exactly have much of a choice," he said, although he kept his voice down. "Prince Touya -- what's going on? How did you come to be here?"
Touya stopped abruptly, and turned to look Kurogane full in the face. He wasn't as tall as Kurogane -- of course, very few men of Nihon were -- but he had a serious, penetrating look on his face that made Kurogane feel at least a foot shorter. "How much do you remember?" he demanded.
"How much do I remember? I..." Kurogane paused, at a loss. "I was in my room, and someone came to see me... and then I... don't know. I was underground, and there was this incredible ring made of stone... but I'm not quite sure how I got there --"
"He did it, then. Good," Touya nodded satisfaction, and exerted pressure on Kurogane's arm until he started moving again. "Yukito hates altering people's memories against their will, but in this case it was necessary. My sisters will bevery curious to know how you came to escape, and I have no intention of exposing him for your sake."
"Memories? What are you talking about?" Kurogane asked, angrily shrugging Touya's hand off his arm; but the Prince just scowled at him and beckoned him along, and he had no choice but to follow.
At last they came to a small room with a sliding-paper door. Touya went outside to speak quietly with a servant in the hall, and then came back in. "We'll find you a change of clothes," the Prince told him in a brisk tone, "and then sneak you off the castle grounds. There should be a place in the castle city where you can stay the night, and then 'return' to the castle in the morning."
"Whatever," Kurogane said. "Now what's going on here? How do you know Yukito, and what did you mean when you talked about my memories?"
"As for the second question, it's very simple," Touya said, folding his arms as he leaned back against the wooden doorframe to wait, almost the same posture he'd had when Kurogane had emerged from the portal. "I had Yukito put a block on your memories of today. By tomorrow morning you'll be back to normal, but you won't remember anything from today."
"Why?" Kurogane demanded.
"Why do you think? So that you couldn't tell anyone about the portal between Shirasagi and Ruval -- or about me and Yukito," Touya said. "You're a very loyal retainer, Kurogane of Suwa, but I don't think you quite have the mentality to grasp what Yukito and I are trying to do here --"
Kurogane found that rather insulting, but since this was his crown prince, he let it pass.
" -- and even if you swore to silence, the first time my sister touched your mind, she would know. You couldn't hide your thoughts from her, even if you tried." He shrugged casually, as thought that were the end of it.
A chill crossed Kurogane, and a half-remembered voice: What Fai knows, Ashura soon knows. He can't hide his thoughts from him, even if he tries. He shrugged it away uneasily -- his relationship with Tomoyo wasn't like that at all. Was it?
"Fine," Kurogane said aloud. "You don't want the Empress to know about that thing, and the other guy didn't want Ashura to know about it either. That makes sense, I guess. But that doesn't explainyou. How do you know the second senior wizard of Ceres, and why are you working with him?"
Touya shrugged again and turned to stare out the crack of the door, his expression bored and uninterested. For the first time, Kurogane had to wonder how much of the prince's careless, indolent manner was genuine.
"Well, why not?" he said softly, and then turned back to regard Kurogane. "It's a long story. You might as well make yourself comfortable, since we're waiting for the cover of darkness anyway."
Kurogane nodded shortly, and settled on the rush floor. Touya began.
"I was always a Prince, as you know," he said, "but I wasn't always the heir. Before Amaterasu ascended the throne I lived in an estate out in the country. I was only a bastard son of the Imperial line, so no one ever expected me to amount to much; and although they spoiled me well enough, they weren't as strict about keeping me isolated from the outside world as they might have been had I been a full heir."
Kurogane nodded again; he was familiar with the somewhat convoluted blood politics of the imperial family. Kendappa's unexpected rise to the throne had overturned a lot of comfortable assumptions.
Touya continued. "When I was a little boy, I was sometimes able to get away from my nurses and slip out to explore. One day in the ditch behind the manor walls, I met another boy -- the strangest little boy I'd ever seen. His skin and hair were completely white, and his eyes were the most curious yellow color."
Kurogane drew in his breath in startled recognition, and Touya gave him a sardonic half-smile. "Oh, yes. Yukito was born a peasant in Nihon, didn't you know? Of course, the town we were in was rustic and ignorant, and they didn't think much of someone so abnormal. I, on the other hand, was fascinated; I'd never met anyone like him before.
"After that I made a point of slipping away more often, and the pale boy and I became the best of friends. He didn't have anywhere to live... or anyone to take care of him. I'd sneak food out of the castle to him, and we'd play. We were very close, especially after I discovered that he and I could play a game that nobody else could -- a game of talking without moving our mouths."
"But that's impossible," Kurogane exclaimed. "That's -- you'd have to be..."
"The word you're looking for is 'mage,' I believe." That sardonic smile curled up further. "Why are you so shocked, Kurogane? These powers run strong in my family. My mother had them. My sister has them. Is it so hard to believe that I have them, as well? If the prejudice against male magic-users weren't so strong in this country, people would have figured it out years ago."
Kurogane shook his head in disbelief. Touya shrugged like Kurogane's acceptance or not did not matter to him; and went on.
"One day, I slipped away to meet Yukito... but he wasn't there," Touya said, with a trace of an old sadness in his voice. "I didn't know what had happened. There was no one that I could ask. When I mentioned him to my nurse, she nearly had a fit; she'd only say that he was an evil witch-boy, and I wasn't to speak of such things.
"Years went by, and my quiet country life was thrown into total chaos when my sister gained the throne. I came to Edo and I put Yukito out of my mind, though I never truly forgot him -- not until the day when I heard his voice in my mind again, like the games we used to play when we were children. Except now, he was speaking to me from far-off Ceres. He told me about how King Ashura had come to save him, and taken him away to the palace in Ceres -- and about the other wizards who were gathered there."
A sudden terrible doubt shook Kurogane -- all of the wizards of Ceres that he'd met were male, but there were no male wizards in Nihon. Did this mean that Touya was allied with them because of his powers, thinking them a brotherhood who would accept him more readily than his home country?
He didn't voice his sudden suspicions, although by the flicker of anger and hurt that passed over Touya's face, hidden almost too soon to identify, he wondered if he had to. "It doesn't matter," the prince said. "I'm not going to let you go running off to report this conversation to my sister -- if you could even remember what you wanted to tell her by the time you got there. Always the loyal retainer, Kurogane of Suwa."
"My loyalty is sworn to Tomoyo," Kurogane reminded him angrily, "and through her to the country of Nihon -- not to Amaterasu. But what about you, Prince Touya? What country do you serve?"
When Touya spoke again, his voice was low, but determined. "I serve the future," he said. "My sister is ambitious, and bloodthirsty, and cunning -- but that doesn't make her right. Are the whims of the emperor always for the best for the country? I am the heir to the throne; if I were to become emperor tomorrow, then suddenly my word would become law, and all that had come before would be a mistake. But would right and wrong be any different than they are today?
"I have never betrayed my country, Kurogane," Touya said, "and I never will. But I believe in the future. A future where my country's greatness isn't built on the slaughter and suffering of others. I believe that Amaterasu will lead our country to ruin, and I oppose everything she stands for -- but I have no taste for fratricide, to put myself on the throne in her place. So I wait, and I watch, and I do what I can behind the scenes to set the stage for the day when peace comes to our people."
Kurogane nodded slowly, digesting this. It sounded familiar somehow, but he had no intention of getting in between the power squabbles of the royal siblings. "All right," he said finally. "I accept what you say."
"So glad you approve," Touya said, sounding in an instant so much like King Ashura that it made Kurogane's blood run cold. But then there was a light rap on the wooden frame of the doorway, and Touya turned away from him; he opened it a crack, enough to exchange an item and a few terse words with a servant, and then closed it again.
He turned back with a pile of black fabric in his arms, and shook it out onto the floor. "All right," he said, "get changed, and I'll get rid of the Ceres clothes. After that we'll get you off the palace grounds, and you can sleep off the effects of the spell. I'll have a servant bring food to you as well."
"Thank you, Your Highness," Kurogane said and reached for the clothes, suddenly eager to be back in normal garments and not in these too-short ridiculous garments any more. Food sounded good, almost as good as sleep; and as for the rest of what Touya had said, it could wait until after those two things had been taken care of.
He had no idea what spell Touya was talking about, anyway.
Kurogane nearly groaned in relief as he stepped over the threshhold to his home, and sat to remove his boots. If there was one good thing about his involuntary stay in Ceres, it had taught him to truly appreciate the comforts of civilization -- edible food, clean floors, and most of all regular baths. Bathing in Ceres, as far as he could tell, consisted of washing one's body as best as possible in a shallow basin before pouring the -- already dirty! -- water over yourself to rinse. Added to the time he'd spent on patrol, and he hadn't had a real bath in nearly two months -- and bathing in the cold mountain pond, against his own will, did not count.
He'd spent the entire day closeted with Tomoyo over one thing or another. First in reuinion, the emotional tone of which had warmed him almost as much as it embarrassed him (and why the hell had they thought he was dead, anyway? He'd been missing for much longer periods of time than that before.) Second in reporting, as he'd done his best to summarize the sequence of events that had led him first to Ceres, and then out again -- and finally with Tomoyo exerting all her powers to try and lift the strange block on his memory, that he could recall how he'd escaped in the first place.
Ultimately she'd failed, and while he was profoundly unnerved to have such an important piece of his reality missing, he was at least comforted by her reassurances that there were no other spells or compulsions of any kind on him; whoever had sent him back here, hadn't done so with the intent of making him some sort of spy or deep-cover mole.
Lost in his thoughts, he did not at first notice the diffident knock on the wooden frame of the door; back in his home base and with his defenses down, he didn't even register the shadow of the person at the doorway until it turned and moved away. Growling under his breath, Kurogane jerked the door open again, wondering who had such a death wish as to disturb him now, when he'd just gotten home.
The knocker had already left his doorway; he saw their retreating back down the street, dressed in the clothes of one of the palace servants. What could they have wanted, and why would they not stay to talk to him directly? Then he noticed the folded parchment note that had appeared on the doorstep, and picked it up with a frown, bringing it back inside to read by the light of the lanterns.
The note was unsigned, and he did not recognize the handwriting; it was written all in kana, which made it difficult to identify the hand of origin. Although it looked vaguely familiar, he could not place it; the only thing of which he was certain was that it had been written neither by Kyle Rondart, the court scribe, nor by Tomoyo, whose elegant script he knew by heart.
The message it contained was short and obscure. My friend wishes you to know that your mutual friend is in disgrace. He still retains his marking and is much reduced by it. The august personage cannot find evidence to link him to your disappearance but blames him for it nonetheless.
Kurogane stared at the note.
No names were named, but the only way this message could make sense was if the 'mutual friend' referred to Fai. Who had written it? How could they possibly be in contact with someone from the palace at Ceres? He was seized with an urge to chase down the anonymous servant and demand to know who'd left the note, but he knew it was fruitless.
He sat down rather heavily, and read it again. No matter who had written the note or sent the message, there was only one part of this that mattered.
He still retains his marking. Fai was still under the effects of the geas that restricted his magic. And that meant that he could not possibly participate in whatever terrible thing the wizards of Ceres were planning to unleash upon Nihon. He must know of it, might help with it, but it would not actually be done by his hand.
Kurogane drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, pressing the note briefly against his lips. Then he opened his eyes again, tossed the scrap of parchment into the kitchen cook-fire, and went to bed.
Kurogane was dreaming, and as he often did, he dreamed that he was riding -- that he was on patrol. He was pushing through a thicket in search of an elusive trail, and twigs and leaves kept catching on his limbs. He worried about them tearing holes in his clothes, but then he realized he wasn't wearing his armor; in fact, he wasn't wearing anything at all.
The branches opened up suddenly into a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing was a broad shining pool. Fai was standing thigh-deep in the middle of the pool, completely naked, his white skin glowing. When he turned around and looked at Kurogane, his eyes seemed to be glowing too; the blue color seemed to have spread all through his eyes, even the whites and pupils.
The black markings that Kurogane remembered so vividly still covered Fai's skin, twining over his back and his arms and neck, but this time they were different. Instead of an abstract design, they shifted and changed even as he watched to form words, kanji he was sure he ought to be able to read, but couldn't quite grasp the meaning of them. "They're magical," Fai said, smiling at him invitingly. "Just like me."
He was off his horse, somehow, and standing at the edge of the water. Fai opened his arms wide, and drew him forward into the pool; the water lapped at his thighs, strangely warm against his skin. "Touch them," Fai urged him, as the patterns of ink shifted and danced over his skin, forming new words and meanings every second. "Don't you want to know what they feel like?"
Kurogane did. He reached out one hand and Fai was in his arms, and the shockingly electric tingle of his skin was like nothing Kurogane had ever felt before. He clutched the other man to him, at once cold and searingly hot against Kurogane's body, and a taste like wildfire filled Kurogane's mouth.
He woke in his own bed, in his own room, with the sheets tangled around his body and his light cotton robe soaked with sweat. He stared at his plain, familiar ceiling and cursed his traitorous dreams; there was no avoiding the fact that he was hard now, and was going to have a miserable time of it this morning unless he could take care of this.
His memories of the past few days were a confused jumble; the day before yesterday was a complete blank, a distressing hole in his world, but the tumultuous events of yesterday morning -- when he'd stumbled in a daze back into the castle to the excited shouts of a court that had pronounced him dead -- were hardly much better. Things were disturbed enough in his life right now without his dreams betraying him too.
He swore aloud, his voice more weary than angry, and managed to push himself out of his futon to stumble towards the outdoor bath. Thank all the Gods for small mercies, that his student wasn't around to see him like this.
The next day he was summoned before the council of generals, to debrief him of his time spent in Ceres and what he had learned from observing there. He'd already told most of it to Tomoyo the day before -- at least, the parts of it he could remember -- but the questions of the Empress and her generals had different priorities.
"To put it bluntly, they have no men," he replied to the latest of a barrage of questions. "The force that escorted the king back from the pass to the palace was no more than a token force, a kingsguard -- a few hundred men at most. I don't know if there were reserve troops stationed elsewhere, but I didn't see them, nor any place that they could be hidden. I can't report numbers on something that wasn't there."
One of the generals leaned forward intently. "What about the wizards?" he said. "We heard he had a whole army of them up there. Can you tell us more about them?"
"I wouldn't call it an army by any stretch," Kurogane said drily. "Again, I can only report what I saw -- there might have been others stationed outside of the palace, or who were kept hidden from me. But I only saw thirteen or fourteen fully adult and capable wizards working for him. He's got a few more that are still underage and in training -- I don't know how much they add to his calculations. Aside from that, I know for a fact that one of the wizards can't leave the palace -- he's tied to it the way a miko is to her shrine -- and another one of them is incapacitated. So he's really only got about ten or twelve."
"Incapacitated? How so?" Touya looked up from his throne with some interest at this. Kurogane shot him a sideways look. His first reaction to the question was surprise that Touya should ask; it seemed somehow like he should already know the answer. But he couldn't think why that might be.
He had to choose his words carefully here. "One of the King's wizards -- the first senior wizard, in fact -- did something that pissed off the King not long ago. As a punishment, the King put some kind of mark on him that hobbles his power. He still had it the last time I saw him a few days ago." He hadn't actually seen the marking during his last disastrous argument with Fai; but if the note was accurate then the geas was still in effect, so technically it wasn't a lie. "He's one of their strongest, so if he's out of the game, then they're missing some of their firepower."
"What did he do that angered his king?" one of the councillors wanted to know.
"Failed a task the king had set him," Kurogane said briefly.
"What task was that?" another one asked intently.
"Trying to kill me," Kurogane replied dryly. "He attacked me in my sleep when I was out in the wilderness, and shattered the wards that Princess Tomoyo had set for me before I fought him off and overpowered him." He sent Tomoyo an apologetic look as he said that, although it hadn't really been his fault; it had been the destruction of those spells that had led her to believe Kurogane was dead, and caused her much grief thereby.
A derisive chuckle went through the assembled councillors. "So this is the pride of Ceres?" one of them said with a sneer. "Their most powerful agent can't even overcome a single sleeping warrior? It is no surprise to find the wizards of the north to be so impotent or incompetent."
Unlike King Ashura, the Nihon generals obviously had no trouble believing that Kurogane had bested Fai by sheer strength at arms, and not that Fai had been restraining his power. It was hot on Kurogane's tongue to reply that this man wouldn't come off so well in a contest of arms against the wizard, and to make jokes about his power and abilities when he was a charred smear on the floor.
Kurogane set his jaw and did not say anything; explaining why Fai had been restraining his power, why he had not wanted to carry out his mission would be too long and difficult a process. Besides, why should he feel the urge to defend Fai's good name and honor among these men? He was an enemy, after all. There was no reason to feel a sting of anger at the man's slighting words as though they'd been directed against himself.
Thinking too long on Fai brought back uneasy echoes of last night's dream, and Kurogane had to fight the urge to squirm in his spot, fought against a faint flush of hot blood that wanted to rise to his face. This was most emphaticallynot the time or the place to be thinking of this, and yet as hard as he tried, he couldn't seem to stop it; thoughts of the blond mage kept coming to mind at the most inopportune of times.
Why, why could he not get the man out of his head? The argument they'd had before he left Ruval had ensured that whatever had once been between them was finished. Most likely, they'd never see each other again. In fact, he sincerely hoped not; since if they ever did, it would most likely be as enemies on opposite sides of the battlefield.
That was another thought Kurogane tried hard not to spend much time on.
"Were you able to get any ideas about the deployment of their forces?" Kendappa wanted to know, and Kurogane seized gratefully on the distraction.
"No," he said. "They knew who I was, after all, and they were careful to keep me away from areas where preparations were being made."
"But surely you must have at least gotten a glimpse of battle plans," the sneering general chimed in; this one had a whining voice and nagging manner that set Kurogane's nerves on edge. "You were there for weeks, after all! Didn't you get a chance to see any documents or anything?"
"Right, because they would have just left them lying around for me to see," Kurogane snapped back, "and conveniently translated into Nihongo, I suppose? I can't read their damn chicken-scratch language. I'm not a spy, and I wasn't sent there as one." He took a deep breath and got his irritated reactions under control.
"The one thing that I do know was that the day before yesterday, the King of Ceres left the palace at Ruval, and took his most powerful wizards and advisors with him," he said. He paused, struggling to remember the details of that conversation; bits of it kept slipping in and out of consciousness. "I think... I'm almost sure that he was getting ready for something big. A renewal of hostilities at the least, maybe something more."
"There are plenty of reasons why the king might have left the castle, most of them entirely harmless," the nagging General said again. "What makes you so sure that this was something else?"
"Would he have needed to take his most powerful wizard with him on a minor administrative errand?" Kurogane was quick to retort. He had to reach up to rub at a flaring pain in his forehead; struggling to think around the hole in his memory. "Look, you brought me in here to tell you what I know about what's happening in Ceres," he said. "And I'm telling you, they're planning something major -- probably within the next few days. You need to be ready."
"And what would this 'something' be?" Kendappa pressed him. "Can you provide any kind of clue what we're supposed to be preparing for?"
Helplessly, Kurogane shook his head.
Kendappa shrugged, sitting back in her throne with a languid pose. "The army is already encamped in defensive fortifications; they are prepared for any attack. All we need is for them to venture out beyond the safety of their hidey-hole, and we'll have them. Whatever they have to throw at us, we'll throw it back in their teeth and be done with this war once and for all. You are dismissed, Kurogane."
Somehow, Kurogane doubted that, but he could hardly say so aloud. He bowed his head in respect, and withdrew.
This time, Kurogane was waiting for the quiet rap at the door, and he jumped up and yanked it open almost as soon as it came. Once again, however, the figure of the messenger disappeared from sight just as the door opened, and once again Kurogane forbore to chase him down.
The note was the important thing. A quick glance confirmed that his student was not in the common room, so Kurogane took it and unfolded it.
Once again it was short and obscure, and once again Kurogane felt the nagging sense of familiarity about the handwriting.
My friend wishes you to know that your mutual friend has been sent away on an errand. He still retains his marking and is much reduced by it. The august personage has sent him as envoy to seek alliance with a certain party who may be OUR mutual enemy.
Kurogane read the note with a sinking heart. Although cryptically phrased, the message it contained was ominous. Fai sent as an envoy? King Ashura was seeking an alliance? Nihon had many enemies, but most of them were too distant from Ceres to be considered as an ally, and had little interest in that cold and tiny country. The emphasis on 'our enemy' was a little confusing, but it hinted that both the author of the note and his Ceres accomplice were likely to regard this 'certain party' as dangerous... or evil.
Surely... Surely Ashura would not be mad enough to seek an alliance with the 'dark power' that controlled the demons from the west? The demons were the enemy of 'all' human life, not just one country. They were monsters; they weren't humans to be bargained or reasoned with. Any mind controlling them would be just as dangerous, unpredictable, and gleefully cruel. Even Ashura would not...
Kurogane thought about Ceres' cold and dangerous king; his quick, flexible mind, always looking for a way to wring every advantage out of a new situation. He thought about his ruthless, immovable determination, his towering ambition and arrogance, and his cold indifference to the lives of even the people he claimed to love. Yes, Ashura would. Only Ashura would.
And he'd sent Fai as his emissary.
Kurogane crumpled the note in one hand, tossed it in the fire, and turned towards bed. He tossed and turned for hours, this time, before sleep overtook him.
Night.
Dreams.
Tomoyo dreamed, and knew it to be a true dream, as she drifted through the monochrome avenues of a sleeping town. Fires burned low through narrow windows and doorways, warding against a chill that Tomoyo could not feel. No citizens were abroad on so bitter a night, but armed and armored groups of men patrolled regularly through the streets, and atop the towers and parapets that lined the great wall. The stones of the wall glowed faintly to Tomoyo's sight, faint trails of light leading towards the great jinja near the center of town.
This was Esui, a garrisoned town against the northern border, reinforced by tons of stone and wooden bracing, filled with guards and soldiers waiting for the call that would come; either to come out from behind the wards to join the attack or, if need be, to fall back and defend the walls from an assault. Tomoyo drifted among them, silent as a ghost.
A shadow passed over the streets as a cloud blocked out the moon; and yet, no breezes stirred the bare twigs of the trees. Tomoyo looked up, and beheld a cloud that drifted silently above the walls. There was something odd about this cloud, a faint luminescence that did not come either from the moonlight above or the firelight below; an odd shimmer that alternated between a sickly green and purple, like the terrible light that came before a great storm.
And then it began to rain.
It was a gentle rain at first, barely a drizzle of water, but the raindrops spattered oddly as they hit the pavement, not quite like real water. Where the rain fell a strange mist began to rise, out of the gutters and the drains, creeping into the alleyways and streets, a sickly blue-green mist that crept low around the ground and billowed upwards like a fog. The small creatures that lived in the streets were the first to be enveloped by the mist, and as it overcame them, they began to gasp and choke.
The mist billowed through the streets, creeping through alleyways and into shops, seeking doorways and windows into the houses where people slept. Before Tomoyo's horrified eyes babies in their cradles fell still and silent; sleeping children coughed fitfully in their beds, not even waking as sleep turned to death. Tools and dishes fell from suddenly nerveless hands as those men and women still awake breathed the strange blue mist and were overcome by it; in more than one house an unattended candle or lantern clattered from its place and spilled fire onto the rushes of the floor.
The rain fell harder, and Tomoyo could see it now, the shimmering matrix of magic that had formed this unnatural, unholy cloud, that directed and controlled it. Their joined wills searched through the dying town, pushing the cloud and its deadly rain this way and that, until it finally found the target it sought. The shrine was mostly empty this time of night, with the attendants and servants asleep in their beds; the only ones still awake were the night shift guards, whose weapons slipped from nerveless hands as they tumbled over, choking and clawing at their own throats for air. There was no chance to raise any alarm, for to take a breath to shout a warning was to die.
And the shrine's priestess, who had sat up in a late vigil that night in the innermost sanctuary, meditating on the spells entwined with the stones of the walls. Tohru! Tomoyo cried out, extending her mind's voice towards the doomed priestess. Shiro Tohru, beware! Defend thyself!
But it was too late. Even as the dark-haired woman gasped and started up, whirling around to face the innermost door of the chamber, the blue smoke began to writhe its way around the cracks, seeping in to fill the room. "Warn the others!" Tohru cried out, beginning to cough and gag already as the subtle poison invaded the room, robbing the air of its virtue. "Tsukuyomi -- please --"
Then the steady presence of her mind was gone.
The stars faltered in their dance.
The light of the wards faltered, dimmed and flickered, confusion overtaking them with the loss of the steadying mind of their priestess.
And a violent explosion rocked the north wall of the city, unheard and unheeded by the still, silent guardians of Esui. The earth trembled under its force, and the walls of the city swayed as their foundations were rocked. All unmonitored, lamps and cook-fires tumbled from their cradles to land on rushes, fires already starting to spread in the wooden buildings of the city.
The wards shattered, and the walls broke and fell inwards, fragments of burning stone hurled through the air to pepper roofs and streets half a mile away.
Tomoyo came out of her trance crying aloud, her throat aching even as her eyes were blinded with visions of destruction, her mouth and nose filled with the acrid scent of burning stone and that insidious, deadly rain.
"Tsukuyomi! What is it?" Souma was near, her presence familiar and steadying, and Tomoyo frantically reached out and seized her hand.
"Call my sister. Call the army!" she said, her 'voice' shaking with shock and grief. "The northern wards have fallen. Esui is lost!"
"Monstrous!" Kendappa fumed, pacing back and forth before her throne in agitation. "They aren't human! What kind of evil creature could do such a vile thing? I will have them destroyed, root and branch! We will wipe their infection clean from the face of the earth!"
At least she'd stopped hacking at the walls with her sword, but Kurogane really wished she'd sit down. She'd been raving in this vein for hours now without a break, and she was starting to repeat herself.
They were gathered for this conference in one of the smaller receiving rooms; Kendappa, Prince Touya, Princess Tomoyo, Kurogane, and two of her top generals. The supposed purpose of the gathering was to devise a response to the disaster on the north front, but so far no one had been able to get a word in edgewise over the Empress' fury.
"That's enough, Your Majesty," Kurogane said loudly, cutting across Kendappa's rant. "Stop shouting and sit down."
"How can I rest when such an abomination has been loosed on us?" Kendappa raged. "Thousands of men -- women, children -- dead in a night! I will have this coward King of Ceres' head on a pike! I will have his miserable people decorating trees from here to the northernmost border! They will not be allowed to get away with such an atrocity!"
"Oh, get off your high horse," Kurogane said wearily. Shocked eyes from all over the room turned to stare at him for his presumption, but he kept his glare on Kendappa. "Are we going to talk of murder? How many women and children of Ceres did your army butcher as they climbed the long valley and razed the towns behind them? For that matter, how many people died when you annexed Koryo, eight years ago? Or when you put down the rebellion in the Hanshin province four years before that? Killing is your trade, Empress, so you don't have much room to be outraged when somebody turns out to be better at it than you."
"How dare you?" Kendappa turned her fury on him. "What kind of spineless coward would not avenge such a slight on our people? Or are you after all nothing but a puppet for Ceres -- is that the real reason they sent you back to this court, to poison and corrupt this Court?"
"You've got a lot of nerve calling me a traitor," Kurogane growled. "I warned you three days ago that Ceres was planning something -- you didn't listen. I'm not to be blamed for your incompetence."
"You dare speak so to your divine king?" Kendappa was red-faced from exertion and shouting. "I should put our your tongue for the filth you've spouted!"
"So you want to fight me?" It was a stupid idea, and Kurogane knew it, but all the frustration and fury and exasperation goaded him onwards. In defiance of all custom, Kurogane climbed to his feet and set his stance, meeting the Empress' fury head-on. "Whether you like me or not, you know I'm the best swordsman you have. I went up against King Ashura and was overwhelmingly defeated. Would you care to duel me now, Your Majesty? If you beat me, then perhaps you'll have a chance against him in single combat. I wouldn't put money on it, though."
Prince Touya covered his mouth for a cough that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Kendappa stared at him, white-lipped with fury. "I will not be spoken to so by cowards and traitors!" she spat, and raised her chin. "Guards, attend me!"
"Enough!"
The sudden word rolled through the room like a clap of thunder, cutting through the sudden melee of shouting; it was impossible to block out, because it came not through the ears but through the mind. Tomoyo had stood from her throne; Kurogane saw those closest to her clutching their heads, and would have felt sorry for them if the ringing in his ears would only stop long enough for him to focus. Prince Touya, oddly enough, alone in the room looked unflustered by the mental explosion.
He'd only heard Tomoyo raise her 'voice' once before, and never to so many people. Her anger cracked through their midst like a whip. "This is no time to bicker and seek scapegoats amongst ourselves!"
The thunder died away, and Tomoyo seated herself again, ashen and trembling but with a grim expression. She held out her hand commandingly, and the ninja Souma obediently took it, although her expression was still dazed and bewildered.
After a moment she cleared her throat, and raised her voice to the assembled chamber on Tomoyo's behalf.
"The wards have fallen," she said, "and that is our charge, to guard and maintain the boundaries between this world and the next. This failure therefore falls upon our head, and we must take steps to rectify it.
"Our brave soldiers of Nihon are even now struggling to hold back the tide of invasion; but they cannot hold for long against an assault of wizardry. Only magic can be used to counter magic; we must shield our soldiers and find a way to counter their spells. At the same time, we cannot be sure that another such deadly assault will not occur in a different location along the northern border.
The vision of two such breaches in their defenses danced before all of their eyes; one of the councillors let out a groan at the thought.
Souma continued, her voice slightly stumbling and uncertain. "We have been called to arms, and we will answer. I will summon all of the miko from the internal provinces to join hands with those remaining on the north border, to reinforce their wards and defend against the assault of wizardry. All those that can be spared from maintaining the other borders will also --"
"What?" Kurogane was on his feet again before he knew it, the full-throated roar that had escaped him echoing from the wooden rafters. "Tsukuyomi, no! You can't!"
Other voices were shouting at him, and hands grabbed at him roughly to try to force him to kneel, but he shrugged them off stepped towards Tomoyo, ignoring the others to address her directly. "Have you lost your senses?" he demanded of her. "You know why we can't do that! The moment the demons sense weakness, they'll be all over us, and there will be no soldiers left inside the borders to defend against them?"
Tomoyo met his eyes calmly, and her expression was resolute. Her hand tightened minutely on Souma's, who lifted her chin and replied to him, "It is as it must be, Kurogane. All your shouting will avail you nothing. The demons are shadowed to my sight, and I cannot tell what they may do; but I know that our kingdom will fall if we cannot stop the advance of the king of Ceres and his wizards. There is no other way."
For a moment Kurogane stood there, torn between two impossible demands, filled with frustration and helpless anger. This was a mistake, he knew it was; but there was nothing he could say or do to change things.
This time he didn't wait to be dismissed; he wheeled around and stormed out of the conference chamber.
There was another plain folded note on his doorstep when he returned to the house, days later. Kurogane approached it with a mix of anticipation and wariness.
This one contained only a few short lines. My friend wishes you to know that your mutual friend has not been heard from in over a week.
Kurogane went to bed dreading his dreams.
That night, Kurogane dreamed of Suwa, on the night that Suwa had been destroyed. Clouds of smoke boiled up, so black and choking that they turned day into night, and huge shadows that drifted against the soot-blackened sky, black against red. He stood in the doorway of his burning home, sword in hand, and the street was ankle-deep in blood.
It was a nightmare he'd had before, many times. Less so since his skill at hunting demons had grown into adulthood. More so since meeting Fai. But this time, there was a new element.
Fai was walking down the street of doomed Suwa, dressed in the formal regalia of the wizards of Ceres. Although the rest of the world was shadowed and dark, sooty and dull, Fai was as clear and brightly lit as a beacon. His fair skin and hair glowed like a spotlight was on him, and the white-and-silver decorations on his clothes glittered madly.
As Fai walked, the flames roared out to either side of him, fanning outwards from the center of the maelstrom. Everywhere he stepped, shadows gathered in his footprints; further back along the path they were struggling to rise, growing into the monstrous form of the oni who flocked in his path.
Fai turned to look at him, and his eyes were a solid black, reflecting the glittering fires like a mirror. "I can do more," he whispered, and his voice was seductive, malicious. "Would you like to see?"
Kurogane raised his sword, feeling slow and clumsy, and held it between them; but far from avoiding it, Fai simply spread his arms and walked straight onto the blade. As it emerged from his back, the steel was coated with a black viscous fluid that hissed and steamed, but Fai only smiled and walked forward, impaling himself further on the sword. A breathtaking thrill gripped Kurogane's body, watching the gleaming length of steel disappear into Fai's torso. Fai raised his lips to Kurogane's, and filled his mouth with the iron tang of blood.
Fai's arms went around Kurogane, and the flames roared in to engulf them.
Kurogane sat bolt upright with a gasp, still half-seeing the orange light of the flames surrounding him, still half-choking on remembered smoke.
He was hard again.
Kurogane whispered a curse, shut his eyes, and let his head fall back against the wooden beams of the wall with a painful thud. He was going mad.
He hadn't been called to the council today; hadn't been called by them in over a week, in fact. But he went to the castle anyway, striding forward with such purpose and determination that he was almost to the receiving chambers before anyone worked up the nerve to stop him. This morning, he'd chosen to don the formal court uniform of the demon-hunting corps, along with the silver sash that proclaimed his rank among them. He didn't usually like to do that; he found the uniform rather silly, since his black plate armor and his twin swords proclaimed exactly what he was anyway and had the advantage of being useful, but today he had a particular reason.
"I want to see the Tsukuyomi," he brusquely told the clerk who stood in his way, who was shooting nervous looks between him and the guards flanking the chamber doorway.
"She is in council with the Divine Empress," the clerk told him stiffly.
"Good. I want to see her too," Kurogane said.
The clerk sniffed and eyed him up and down, eyes lingering on his badge of rank. "Forgive me, Lord Demon-Queller, but you were not summoned to the conference today, and certainly not in this capacity."
"No. But I think she'll see me anyway," Kurogane said, and just to make his point, he pulled Souhi from his belt and set her to his side, and settled down into a seiza position in front of the doors. As the clerk sputtered, obviously unsure how to respond, he added, "I'll wait."
Sure enough, barely half an hour later the door opened and Kurogane was called in. He handed over his swords to the guards outside with barely a twinge today; he had too much else on his mind.
With the crown prince and the generals already gone to the front, the council chamber was mostly bare; only Tomoyo and Kendappa and their bodyguards, along with a few ministers and Rondart the court scribe, were there. The Empress greeted his arrival with an icy frown.
"Your Imperial Majesty," Kurogane said formally, and bowed deeply, pressing his forehead to the ground in the ritual gesture before he sat up and sat back on his heels. "Your Highness. Thank you for receiving me."
"It wasn't exactly my idea," Kendappa said coldly, and glared at Tomoyo, who looked impassively back. "I had absolutely no desire to see your face again so soon. Why have you imposed on our time and attention?"
"Your Majesty, I'm not doing any good to anyone rusting here in the capital," Kurogane began, dropping the formal style of speech in favor of directness. "I want you to send me to war."
Kendappa stared at him in astonishment, which quickly gave in to anger. "Have you gone insane, Demon-Queller? Or is this some pathetic attempt to curry my favor now by pretending you've recanted all your protestations? Now, after all you've said, you wish to be trusted with a position in the front lines against Ceres?"
"I haven't changed my mind or lost it," Kurogane said, although he privately wondered about that, given the madness that tormented his dreams lately. "I'm not talking about the war with Ceres."
"What are you talking about, then?" Kendappa demanded with exasperation.
Kurogane took a deep breath. "You've made it clear that you don't want to send me north to fight Ceres," he said. "That's fine, since I've got absolutely no desire to go, as I've told you a thousand times since long before this whole mess began. But we've got another war on, Amaterasu, one that doesn't slow down or stop just because you aren't paying attention to it any more."
Tomoyo glanced over at Souma, who was attending her, and placed her hand in the other women's. Souma cleared her throat and spoke diffidently. "You are speaking of the demons, Kurogane?"
"Yes," Kurogane said.
The look on Kendappa's face was an odd kind of amused fury. "Demons!" she exclaimed. "At a time like this? Truly you are obsessed, Kurogane, as well as mad. The enemy is breaking down our door on the north front, and you want to go patrol the woods and hunt demons?"
"No," Kurogane said coldly, anger slipping into his voice despite his private resolve that he was going to behave during this audience. "Not a patrol this time. I want leave to go through the passes in the range to the west. I want to seek out our true enemy, the unknown force who controls the demons and sets him against us."
There was a collective stunned silence. Even the court scribe paused in his industrious writing to stare at Kurogane in astonishment; the light glinted sharply off his glasses as he bent hastily back to his parchment.
Tomoyo nodded slightly, and Souma spoke. "He is right, my sister," she said, as Tomoyo glanced over towards Kendappa. "We cannot afford to face both Ceres and the dark power. If they unite against us, we will surely fall. If there is anything he can do to stave off that dark day, we can not afford to refuse it."
Kendappa glared at Kurogane then shifted on her seat to glance over at Tomoyo. She vented a huff of exasperation. "Very well," she said in an aggrieved voice. "As unfaithful as you may be when it comes to Ceres, in the matter of demons you have always been quite reliable. I suppose you'll want an escort as well. Every soldier is needed at the battlefield now, but if you insist on stripping our defenses further..."
"No!" Kurogane said; he had to force his hands to unclench, to speak normally. "I work alone," he said in an almost normal tone.
"What do you hope to accomplish alone?" Kendappa said scornfully. "I don't trust you not to go haring off as soon as you're out of our sight."
"Do you remember the last time we had this conversation?" Kurogane said in a soft voice. "How many soldiers came back from that trip? And you yourself said we have none to spare."
A dangerous silence stretched between them, this one broken by Tomoyo standing from her chair and making a beckoning gesture towards Kurogane. "The Tsukuyomi wishes to speak with Kurogane alone," Souma said obediently, and gave Kurogane a highly dubious look. What are you up to? her eyes asked him, and Kurogane could only give a little shrug.
Kurogane was able to relax a little once he was no longer in the Empress' presence, but an element of tension remained. Tomoyo could be just as dangerous to his quest as Kendappa could, albeit for different reasons.
He looked up as she stepped forward, raising one hand to place it gently on Kurogane's cheek. her voice whispered in his mind. "You know that no one, not even a great force of men who have ventured beyond the eastern passes has ever returned. I would not have you throw your life away on a fruitless errand. What do you hope to accomplish there? Why must you go alone?"
"I don't know," Kurogane said. "Maybe I can stop the envoy from Ceres on his way to the west, or on his way back. Maybe I can cut off the lines of communications between them or find some other way to sabotage the alliance. Maybe I'll get one shot to end this threat forever. Maybe not. I won't know until I get there. But I have to try, don't you see? And if I go alone, I'm only risking myself."
"We cannot spare you either, dear Kurogane," Tomoyo said, her voice full of a gentle reproach born of an aching pain. "Losing you once was painful enough."
"I'm sorry," Kurogane said, and looked up to meet her eyes, huge and dark in her solemn face. "But I think you're strong enough for it."
Her face grew clouded, uncertain; there were no words, but Kurogane heard a faint rushing undertone of conflicting thoughts and emotions. "Trust me," he urged her.
She sighed; her expression smoothed into resolve. "Very well," she said, straightening up. "Then you will take my blessing with you, as you go, my champion."
She raised her small white hands above his crown, and Kurogane bent his head as a white light began to glow between her fingers. He'd seen it before, but he never failed to be touched by awe as the breathless, whispered words of the blessing cascaded through his mind, the warm buzzing sensation that filled his very bones as the light brightened with the force of Tomoyo's power.
But he had no illusions; no matter how bright Tomoyo's light, the shadow into which he was going to carry it was darker still.
"Let me come with you."
Kurogane paused in the middle of packing his saddlebags, and turned to face the unexpected demand. Syaoran was standing in the doorway of his room, his face set and determined, his chin raised stubbornly. "Say what?" he said.
"You know this is incredibly dangerous," Syaoran said with a pleading tone. "You shouldn't go off and face it by yourself. You should at least have one person there to watch your back."
"Kid, if I didn't think you were ready to go on normal demon patrol with me yet, why in hell would I think you're ready to go fight a nest of them?"
"Ready or not, you need to have someone," Syaoran argued stubbornly, and Kurogane sighed.
"Look," he said quietly. "It may well be that there's no coming back from this trip. If it's going to be like that, then I could take half the army with me and it wouldn't help. Or maybe it won't be that bad, and I won't even need the help. Either way I'll be easier in my mind knowing I just have myself to worry about, and not bringing risk to everyone else."
"But -- " Syaoran tried to argue.
"Besides," Kurogane cut him off with a certain callousness, "you'd only slow me down and get in my way. That's trouble I don't need."
Syaoran flinched and bowed his head, but he stopped arguing, as Kurogane knew he would. Briefly, since this might be the last time he saw the boy, he considered telling him what he'd learned from Fai about the boy's father, but at the last moment he decided against it. He really had no idea how Syaoran would react, and the last thing he needed now was to get so inflamed that he went off and did something rash.
So instead he closed the leather covering on the pack saddle, and set it aside. "Just stay here and watch the house," he ordered the boy gruffly. "You'll do me more good that way by easing my mind."
"I can't do that," Syaoran said quietly. "I'm sorry."
Kurogane turned to stare at him. "What do you mean, you can't do that?"
"I mean that as soon as you leave, I'm going to be going down to the city and joining the army that's marching for the northern border," Syaoran said.
Kurogane opened his mouth, but managed to force back the first angry retort that wanted to come out of it. After several long moments he managed to say instead, "Don't recall that I gave you leave to do that."
"You didn't need to," Syaoran said, and he raised his head to look Kurogane in the eye with a steady determination. "They're so desperate for recruits now that they'll take anything that's upright and breathing. You need a master's permission to stay, not to leave with them. And no matter what you say, come tomorrow morning, I'm going to be going north with them. Sorry, Sensei, but you can't stop me."
"No," Kurogane said finally, struggling to keep his tone even. Part of him cried out in protest at the thought of Syaoran walking open-eyed into the holocaust that was going on in the north right now, demanded that he stop the boy and protect him; but it was an irrational part, and he knew it. "No, I can't. I'm not your father, and I'm not your owner. You're a free person, as you always have been, and if going north is what you want to do then I can't exactly knock you over the head and tie you up to keep you from going. There's just one thing I need to know. Is this still about revenge for you? Fueling your grievance for what happened to your father two years ago?"
"Actually, no," Syaoran said, and Kurogane could hear the iron resolve in his voice. "It's not about that, or at least not just that, not any more. I may not have been born here but I love this country, Sensei; it's my home. I can't just stand idly by while someone tries to destroy it, not any more than you could. If I have to lay down my life to protect the people who live here, then that's what I'm ready to do."
Kurogane turned away wordlessly, and picked up another pack saddle, looking around for something to fill it with. Behind him, he heard Syaoran shifting nervously from foot to foot in the doorway. "Sensei?" he ventured after a while.
"Just try to remember what I taught you," Kurogane said abruptly. "And I don't just mean swordsmanship. I want you to remember the other things I told you as well, about not letting your feelings control you."
Syaoran let out a long, relieved breath. "I will, Sensei," he promised, his voice unsteady with conflicting emotions. "I'll try to make you proud."
The answer to that was so obvious that Kurogane didn't bother to say it, but continued methodically with his journey preparations. He'd be up later than he thought tonight, if he was going to get the kid's belongings travel ready in time as well.
He left the city of Edo on a borrowed horse the next day, heading west. To his right, black columns of smoke were endlessly rising, spreading across the winter sky.
~to be continued.