LXXIX
Arcana Imperii
A boiling fume of miasma entombs the mountain and the valley below, invisible to human eyes but consuming the landscape, filling the air, changing the texture of the water in rain and river and well. The villagers call the mountain Gumoyama now, Spider Mountain, even without knowing that only the shape of its master still wanders the castle's cold and silent halls. For a year, death has dwelt here, slowly curling his hands around the reins of power, testing the pull with fingers no longer accustomed to the weight. Now Naraku wonders: was it too soon to crack the whip? Of the two incarnations that he sent out into the world, only Kagura has returned, and she in pieces.
There are powers, and there are powers, which he did not yet think himself ready to confront. To have extinguished so much, with so little effort? "My own flesh and blood." Yes, if this was the result, perhaps it had been too soon. It would always have been a risk, sending Kanna to spy on Edo, but he hadn't expected this result. Even with two mikos in that village; even with the hanyō, newly awoken and already stalking the shadows of his forest through the winter night. For an instant, something ugly distorted Naraku's stolen features. Inuyasha. Thief of virtues I would have otherwise stolen myself.
Step by step down the hall, he forces himself to relax. Kanna is a total loss, but the Saimyōshō have brought him back the shards of her mirror, still holding the reflection of a blistering golden eye. A wisp of terrible power ebbed and flowed from that frozen stare, and the lines of the stranger's face, his coloring and aura, were both familiar. It is an eye that could belong to Inuyasha, but Naraku knows it does not. How long has the Inu's bastard haunted him? Fifty years? More? He will never confuse Inuyasha for someone else, never confuse even a partial profile with another face. But the similarity of color and complexion is so close, so nearly certain, that Naraku knows there must be some connection there, and wonders at it.
Is he an uncle? Some unknown brother of your father? A brother of your own, or some more distant relation? How is it I never came to know of your family before, Inuyasha? There had never been a hint, or wouldn't he have found it, dug into it, gnawed whatever buried secret separates Inuyasha from his kin? Is it love or hate? Faith or fury? Has the hanyō been unwillingly lost or unwittingly found? But there are no answers in this place, and Kanna will no longer have any to bring. But her mission, at least, has been accomplished. She is there, his Kikyo, neither woman nor ghost but her own self regardless. The Saimyōshō transmitted at least that much; no one could imitate the arrogant humility with which she had approached the world. Kikyo lives, and as she lives, one day he will claim her.
The other woman, though… To know more of her, he must bring Kagura back to herself.
Smoothly, Naraku pushes himself to his feet, straightens the fall of his kimono and pads out through the open door. Through three shoji, down wooden stairs into a dirt-walled cellar, he moves leisurely, a lord at rest, not quite smiling. There are few servants now, and none in this most private wing, but he knows that his smiles will wear thin soon, and the men and women here will have to die to protect his reputation. It doesn't help, either, that Kagura's screams have been louder than usual since she returned with her soul missing, but he has no pity for her suffering. If it hurts so to put it back, perhaps she will learn to protect it better. Or could it be a better torture for the future than the way he already knows?
A broken husk stained with mud and blood, Kagura lies behind another door like a discarded doll, barely conscious, but alive. "What do you think, Kagura? Heart or soul? Flesh or bone? Is there a tool that will teach you to keep your skin in one piece? Not to waste my time, or test my intentions?" With her neck still broken, her vocal cords twisted out of alignment with her trachea, there's no answer, but she glares at him and the light of the single lamp turns the pulped-cherry sheen of her red eyes to black. "Do you hate me more for denying you death and its false freedom? Would it heal you to escape that way, or rebirth you as another kind of demon, another kind of taint? A clot of vengeance refusing to be shaken free?"
For many days now, since Kagura had returned to him as a collection of broken pieces, Naraku has been putting her back together. The unsubtle tether that connected them, the bondage of flesh-that-had-been-his-flesh (would once more be his flesh) had brought her back, but the knowledge trapped in her petty, vulgar mind would take a voice to share it, and the right questions to strip it from her. Details, he knew, she would keep if he let her. He did not intend to. What he had seen through Kanna's mirror, the images refracted a hundred times through the eyes of the Saimyōshō… It was not enough. It was too much. It was the face of the woman he had wanted for fifty years, the sound of her voice, the steel of her eyes just molten enough to be moved. And yet….
And yet.
He couldn't argue Kanna's declaration. The Kikyo who breathed in Inuyasha's village was no longer a woman, no longer human – how could she be, when he knew that for fifty years she had been dead? But what he had seen of Kagura's failure, the shape of the woman beneath her as she fled, the aura of control and power hidden in Echigo, hidden behind the Wolf's fury and concern… That was very human, and she, too, had Kikyo's face. But the Wolf had gained power from the shikon no tama, that much was clear, and knowing nothing of him, there was no easy lever, no wedge to strike, nothing to apply force to… No. He corrected himself easily, as he began to feed yōki into Kagura, undoing what the Wolf had wrought. Nothing yet.
In the land of no sun, a black pearl glares down from a cloudless sky. How many days has it been, or nights, or is there time here at all? In the first rush of panic, doing all she could to save his life, Kikyo had bound the stump of Inuyasha' s arm with her own haori, then wrapped a spare band of the shredded fabric over his hollow eye socket. Now, she sits beside him, listening to the pulse of his sword that is louder than his heartbeat, waiting for him to die. Yet the time that is not continues to pass, even unmeasured, and the blood flowing from his torn limb slows, and slows, and stops… And their way out stares down at her through the gap in the broken bones, unblinking, but out of reach.
It takes all Kikyo's strength to carry Inuyasha out of the tomb of his father's bones, the wary prickling of adrenaline tightening dry breath in her throat with every step. Is Sesshomaru waiting for her around this corner? In that shadow? Behind the looming shadow of the great Inu, holding his breath? She cannot carry her bow and Inuyasha both, cannot aim and fire with him draped across her back, weighing down her arms. The sword in his hand refuses to be left behind, and the thought that the artifact might cost them more than it has already burns at the corners of her mind. But no matter how she pushes her senses, how she reaches for the slightest sign of overwhelming yōki, the desert and its bones have no response. If Sesshomaru is here, he is so far away that perhaps it is safe not to worry about him – and maybe he is not here at all. Maybe he, too, knows when to retreat, when to cut his losses. Maybe he is grieving that the power left behind by his father only gifts him with wounds.
She drives herself across the sand and up the barren hillside toward their entry point with will, not muscle. This is not flesh; she does not need to rely on the strength of bone and sinew. Whatever hardened the hollow clay that stole her sleeping spirit, that will be enough to carry Inuyasha. It must. It must. It doesn't help that he can't hold on. With every step his unconscious weight shifts across her shoulders; he's just tall enough that she can't quite keep his legs from dragging uncomfortably at her sides, though she tries to carry him as he once carried her. Her eyes close; she catches herself panting for breath she shouldn't need, swaying halfway up the hill. If she puts him down, she will never manage to pick him up again. They will both die here, and their bodies will roll down the hill, rot away and leave more bones to join those piled about the tomb.
One step at a time, she forces her way to the top, but once she's there, that goal accomplished, flat ground under her feet, Kikyo staggers to one side and stares up at the pearl, still out of reach. How to open it? Sesshomaru had used a staff, but then he'd tossed it aside before he passed through the portal. If Inuyasha had to do it, they were doomed. Without medical attention, or at least the reversion of his transformation, Inuyasha was unlikely to ever gain consciousness again. She could put him down, go back for her bow, try to shoot it with an arrow… Would that work, or would that destroy their only way out of here? Somewhere, there has to be another gate, a way in which allows for the building of such a tomb as the one that was behind them. Was it far? Could she find it alone, then come back for him, or would she lose track of time and direction in this empty waste?
Something tells her that if she leaves Inuyasha behind, if she once loses sight of him in this place, he will slip away down the long and deadly road, and leave her alone on the path to nowhere. A hum presses at the back of her thoughts, a buzz like the sound of a mosquito, or the electricity she remembered from Kagome's future. Kagome. What would she do, the girl who bears my future? She would know nothing of magic or spiritual powers, but Kikyo can't find it in herself to believe that that girl, full of more stubbornness than the weather, would allow herself to be trapped here, lay down and die here. What would she do? What is there to try? A black pearl. A gateway back to the world of living things. It had been an eye, a thing meant to open and shut, a thing that sees. It had become a portal, a passageway. It too could open and close. Could it, too, see?
She feels a fool, but there's no one to witness her foolishness if that's so. Carefully, balancing Inuyasha against her shoulders, leaning to one side, she reaches up an arm and waves at the hovering gemstone. "Hello? Hello! Can you open up please? We have to get out of here!" But she can't wave and balance, and Inuyasha slips from her grasp. Trying to catch him, Kikyo falls herself, bruises her hip and rolls over with a gasp to check Inuyasha's pulse and wounds. No worse; no better; no way out. Frustrated, furious, more like Kagome in this moment than she knows, she picks up a rock or a bone and hurls it with a cry. "Open, damn you!" There's a tink as the stone hits the pearl, and for a moment of absolute terror she thinks she's broken it, but then there's a hush, and a whisper, and the bubbling of water in this dry place, and the portal rushes open in a great blue spiraling that crashes down like a wave, and sucks them back to familiar shores.
The vortex drops them where it first formed, in the center of the village outside her old home, and Kikyo feels the ground under her knees and is shouting in the next instant, even before she can see anything but the retreating portal. "Kaede! Kaede, help me!"
Old or not, her sister comes running, tying back grey flyaway hair with nimble fingers, bringing men with a stretcher ready behind her. She was prepared, as if she had been expecting them. Kaede's faith brings her up short. Kikyo hadn't even had that much hope herself when she leapt after Inuyasha, just an abiding sense that she could not let him go alone, not on his human night, not after his brother, not into that place. As the blue wash of power recedes, the night sky comes into view above and around them, the waxing moon a crescent sliver that shows more than a single day's worth of growth. The portal resolves into a pearl once more, then drops like a stone, hovering over Inuyasha's empty eye socket until she tears the bandage away.
The black pearl sinks through the lid, and Inuyasha moans, mutters, suddenly restless in his unconsciousness. Silver highlights have begun to creep into his hair, and shivering, suddenly aware of her bare shoulders, Kikyo accepts the haori her sister tosses across her back, tucks herself into it quickly and rushes up beside the stretcher bearers. Carefully, they hustle Inuyasha between the bamboo poles and bring him into Kaede's house. He is already shifting, transforming into his hanyō self, but it is not the smooth, quick change of earlier years. There's no luster to the fine, white hair, and when she opens his eyelids to check the responses of his pupils to the light, the amber irises are dull and muddy and faded. His claws are slow to sharpen; his ears come last, crawling reluctant from the sides of his head to the top, and from the way Inuyasha pants and sweats, she wonders for the first time if it is painful, or just uncomfortable. But the change is done, and Kikyo goes to work.
The wound at the end of his stump is a ragged mess of flesh. The fangs of his brother were huge and blunt, not razor sharp, and the acid of his breath and saliva has burned the tissues that were not torn away by the bite. This first, close look at the wound staggers her. That the shock alone didn't kill him – that he didn't bleed out in the first five minutes – that infection has not already set in, and spread. "Boiling water, Kaede, and lots of it."
"Already heating –"
"How long were we gone?"
"This is the third night since you left, sister."
"Three –" But there is no time to contemplate that. "What do you have to staunch blood?"
"My pharmacopeia is complete. I've kept it just as you showed me." They share a smile, the first honest connection between them since the moment of Kikyo's resurrection. Kaede brings the herbs; Kikyo pounds them into a paste. Kaede rolls up her sleeves, dips a pad of clean linen in hot water and begins to wash the blood from the terrible wound. Kikyo holds Inuyasha's hand, then his shoulder when he jerks upright, presses him back with love and power when the pain is too much. He is hanyō, and it helps; when they cut dead and hanging flesh away, the new wounds heal almost immediately. When they wash the acid from beneath his skin, rinse away the poison, the burns become smooth, shiny blisters, burst in moments then seal over with new flesh.
But the arm is gone, and the fingers of Inuyasha's remaining hand dig into the hilt of the sword he still has not let go of, and she can see in his face that he knows it, that he knows that now he is wounded, broken, crippled –
"He fled from you, Inuyasha. He fled from us. We will find the secret of your sword, and perhaps some way to heal you. And then-" She hesitates, because it is not right for a miko to say it. But it is no more right for her to want it, and anyway… Is she a miko anymore? There's an ache somewhere inside her that feels like a fist clenched too long has finally been released. "And then we will hunt him down, and we will have revenge."
He stares at her, and stares at her, until she wonders if he just isn't capable of speaking. Then the word comes, carrying all the questions which she had said there was no time for. "We?"
"We. You and I. Together, Inuyasha." And for a long moment she considers: him, and the war between hope and hopeless on his face, and the shadows of the firelight flickering in her sister's eyes, and the men behind her going in and out with bandages and clean water, and the breathless weight of the waiting village outside. Then she leans forward, and ignores the blood on his mouth, and kisses him. There is a kind of collective gasp, but at least, she thinks, it did not come from her sister. "You and I together, Inuyasha."
"Together. But I don't ever want you to suffer like that again. I'll do better. I'll be better. So that next time I can keep you safe – I will protect you, Kikyo. No matter what it takes."
She smiles, touches the back of his hand, but whatever she intends to say is lost in a brilliant eruption of light. The sword in Inuyasha's hand is hidden by it, then resolves within the glow. Like its master, the blunted blade is changed. A great fang, crackling with yellow lightning. Now, she understands Sesshomaru's lust, and his thwarted rage. This is an inheritance indeed; an heirloom of power that still remembers its master's hand.
A/N: Who's not dead? I'm not dead! Neither is Kagura, or Inuyasha... Wow, look at us being a collection of not dead folks over here. This chapter's title, Arcana Imperii, means "the secrets of power". One of which is, apparently, chuck a rock at it. Who knew? Onwards, ever onwards, to not-dead Kagura and maybe someone new!
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