Yamada Monogatari: The War God's Son Read online

  YAMADA MONOGATARI:

  THE WAR GOD’S SON

  RICHARD PARKS

  For Carol

  Copyright © 2015 by Richard Parks.

  Cover art by Alegion.

  Cover design by Sherin Nicole.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-465-2 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-457-7 (print)

  PRIME BOOKS

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  CHAPTER ONE

  There were three of them standing near the foot of the bridge that joined what had been Kuon Temple to the shore of a mountain lake. They looked almost human, but there was a slight shimmer in their outlines that spoke of their tenuous connection to this world. The temple itself had been abandoned for nearly a hundred years, but the bridge was of stone, and so had not quite fallen to ruin. Kenji and I had spent four days tracking our quarry, and I was feeling a bit impressed with myself for finally running him to ground, but that was before I saw the creatures waiting for us.

  Shikigami. Of course.

  Now I not only knew who the culprit was but how he had made his attempts on Lord Mikoto’s life, twice entering locked gates and guarded rooms. We were dealing with an onmyoji, a magician of some skill. Dolt that I was, if the assassin had managed a third attempt, chances were that my client would already be dead.

  “Shikigami,” Kenji said, and he sighed. “I really do detest those things, Lord Yamada.”

  The priest, like myself, was badly in need of a shave and a bath, though he had the added disadvantage of a stubbly head that by rights should be clean-shaven. Still, four days of rough pursuit in the mountains north of Kyoto hadn’t allowed for even the bare minimum of hygiene.

  “It does explain a lot, though the fact our quarry has studied Chinese yin-yang magic surprises me.”

  “Any more such surprises and we may turn out to be the quarry,” Kenji said dryly. “What do you think? A strategic withdrawal?”

  “I think turning our backs to these creatures would be a serious mistake. Besides, it would have been easy enough for their master to arrange a potentially far more effective ambush farther along the path, and yet they meet us openly at the bridge.”

  “So you believe their purpose is primarily to delay us, assuming they cannot kill us outright?”

  “Their master knows, if he did not before, that he is being tracked. Right now there are three of the creatures. Give their master enough leisure and there will be dozens.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Kenji took a firmer grip upon his staff as I drew my tachi. “If there’s no help for it, let’s go,” he said.

  We crossed the bridge at a quick trot. We had one advantage—the shikigami were armed only with clubs rather than swords, but I had dealt with enough of their kind to know better than to underestimate them. Yet as we got closer, the creatures’ human appearance grew even more tenuous. They might fool anyone at sufficient distance, but closer than a bowshot no one would mistake them for people. Frankly, I had seen far better work.

  Almost carelessly done. Or perhaps hastily?

  I didn’t have time to ponder meanings, for in a moment we were on them. Or it might be fairer to say they were on us. The bridge was too narrow for all three to meet us at once, but two took the lead with the third close behind as they charged out to meet us. With no room to maneuver, Kenji and I were stopped well short of the end of the bridge while the creatures seemed perfectly content to keep us there. I had no room to swing my tachi properly, and pressing forward would bring us into the range of their cudgels.

  Kenji deflected a club blow with his staff. “It seems your assessment was correct, Lord Yamada,” he said.

  This wasn’t working. I retreated a half-step and glanced over the side of the bridge. “Kenji-san, are there reeds on your side as well?”

  “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth as he dodged another swing of the club.

  “Jump in the water on my signal. Don’t worry—they can’t follow us.”

  “And this will accomplish what?”

  “Just do what I say . . . now!”

  Kenji held his nose and jumped. I merely stepped off the bridge, aiming for the closest patch of reeds. I heard Kenji’s splash from the other side just as I made my own and found myself chest-deep in the freezing lake. Spring had arrived, but winter was not yet completely done with us. I almost lost my breath in the cold water and knew I could not remain there for long before my fingers would be too numb to grip my sword. I held my tachi above my head and waded toward shore as quickly as I dared. I glanced through the supports of the bridge and glimpsed Kenji doing the same on the far side.

  After a moment’s apparent confusion, two of the shikigami left the bridge and guarded the shore against me while the last one went after Kenji. My two crowded the shore, waiting.

  Perfect.

  I continued toward shore with my tachi raised to strike, but while I was still out of reach of their clubs, I raked my palm against the water’s surface and raised the biggest splash I could. One jumped back out of reach but the other was caught flat-footed by the water. For a moment it merely stood there, looking confused. Then it began to shimmer and dissolve like mist in the sun. Another moment and there was nothing left of it but a slip of paper lying in the grass. I smiled and made another splash, driving the second creature back even farther. It was just far enough to let me reach shore unimpeded. I almost slipped but recovered in time to dodge the club. I heard another splash from the other side of the bridge but didn’t have time to see what was happening. I had removed one attacker, but the other was quite capable of killing me without any assistance, and it seemed intent on proving this fact without further delay.

  Kenji, for both our sakes you better not have lost . . .

  I got my answer when Kenji’s priestly staff smacked down hard on the creature’s head from behind. The staff passed through the more insubstantial portions of the shikigami’s anatomy and I heard a ripping sound. In an instant the last attacker was reduced to a torn piece of paper.

  “Thank you. I gather your opponent was no problem?”

  Kenji picked up the paper. “Not once I realized why you were splashing so much. I’m guessing it made the writing bleed off the paper?”

  “Just so. The ink was still fresh, which helped.” I found the other strip of paper that had embodied the first shikigami. The ink had completely run, turning it illegible.

  “I managed to catch mine on the end of my staff and threw it into the water,” he said, and showed me the final piece of paper. “This is the only one left?”

  It was as I’d feared. While I was grateful to Kenji for dealing with our last opponent, the blow of his staff had ripped the paper into shreds, rendering it as illegible as the first two. “I was hoping there would be more left.”

  “Don’t you already know who we are hunting?”

  I did. The problem was that, considering who our quarry was, my word would not be enough. I needed proof, and I said as much.

  “We’re on an island,” Kenji pointed out. “Unless there’s a way off other than this bridge, our proof is here.”

  I hoped he was right. We followed the path to the abandoned temple as quickly as we dared, using movement instead of dry clothes to try to stay warm, knowing all the while there could be an ambush waiting for us along the way, but we reached our goal without further incident.

  Kuo
n Temple had lost its patron almost a hundred years earlier when a wealthy cadet branch of the Hata Clan had made enemies of the powerful Fujiwara and been all but annihilated. Now all that was left of their power and influence was what had been a very fine stone bridge and a temple complex slowly returning to the earth. It was easy to see what it had once been—what roof tiles remained were of baked clay rather than split wood, and the remaining woodwork and carvings were very fine. There were even some traces of the old garden remaining, but it was clear the abandoned shell of the once magnificent temple would not last much longer.

  “If he’s gone to ground on the island, our proof is here,” I said softly. “Be on your guard.”

  Kenji smiled, though his teeth were chattering. “A-a-always, Lord Yamada.”

  We both needed to get out of our wet clothes and make a fire before we took ill, but there simply wasn’t time. I drew my sword again and stepped through the doorway. Even so, I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom before pressing forward. This turned out to be a wise choice, though even then I didn’t quite believe what I saw.

  Sitting in what had been the main hall of the temple was Lord Otomo no Tenshin, brother to Otomo no Mikoto, head of the Otomo Clan, and the man Kenji and I had spent the last four days in the mountains hunting. Yet if our pursuit had been of consequence to him before this point, the man did not show it. He was just a little younger than Lord Mikoto, who was about forty, and the family resemblance was clear—he had the same slightly flattened nose and piercing eyes as his brother. He kneeled in the center of the large hall wearing immaculate formal robes of green and gold and a high-peaked cap. His dress and demeanor might have been appropriate for the Imperial Palace itself, except that he held a tachi, sheathed in an ornate scabbard, in his left hand. When Kenji and I stepped into the room, he calmly drew the blade and rose to his feet.

  “Yamada no Goji,” he said, “you really are the most inconvenient person.”

  I wasn’t inclined to dispute the point. The Crown Prince’s own uncle, Prince Kanemore, had said the same thing of me on more than one occasion, and he was my friend. I could not say the same of Lord Tenshin. From the expression on the man’s face it was plain he intended to insure I would no longer be an inconvenience to anyone.

  “You plotted the assassination of your own brother, your rightful lord,” I said. “You almost succeeded.” I wondered if he would attempt to deny it, but that question was quickly answered.

  “A minor set-back,” he said airily. “Soon to be corrected. After all, so far as Mikoto is concerned, I remain his loyal and obedient brother. You followed me on your suspicions—well founded, I do admit—but you have no proof. Kill me, and your patron, my dear brother, will personally demand your head from the Emperor himself. Is that not so?”

  “It is,” I admitted. “But then, it was never my intention to kill you.”

  “Honestly, Lord Yamada . . . Perhaps your reputation is somewhat overstated. Did you think I would hand my confession to my brother like a love-knot letter?”

  I thought nothing of the sort, but I was finally starting to think of something else. “If you intend to kill us—and you know you will have to do so—what are you waiting for?”

  He smiled. “Baka. Rather I should ask you—why are you in such a hurry to die?”

  I understood the point of the shikigami. They were trying to delay us. But why was Tenshin doing the same thing? Were there really more shikigami crossing the bridge even now?

  “Kenji-san, do you have a spirit ward close to hand?”

  “Always,” he said. “But . . . oh.”

  Kenji took a slip of paper from within his robe and slipped it through the rings on the head of his staff. This he held out toward Tenshin, who had been watching him with a puzzled expression on his face all that time. When the head of Kenji’s staff was at full extension though still out of the range of the man’s sword, Tenshin’s outline shimmered like a heat-vapor in summer.

  Baka is right—

  “Shikigami!” I shouted, but Kenji was a step ahead of me. His staff shot forward just as the image of Lord Tenshin attacked with unnatural speed. Kenji’s ward didn’t stop the attack, but it slowed it just enough for me to counter and return the stroke. I sliced through the creature’s robes just at the neck, and it was only by sheer luck my blade found the slip of paper that bound its master’s will to the creature’s insubstantial form. In a moment the creature who had appeared to us as Lord Tenshin dissolved and disappeared, leaving its empty robes, sword, and high formal cap to fall to the dusty floor.

  “Follow me!”

  I ran to the opposite end of the hall and through the empty doorway. The back garden had long returned to the wild, but there was still the fishermen’s path, and I followed it, Kenji close behind me. We reached the crumbling wall surrounding the temple. The gate doors hung askew on their hinges, and we slipped past them and kept running.

  When we reached the opposite shore of the island, we found a fairly new fishing dock and the rope that would have tied up a boat, or rather the sliced end of that rope. Someone hadn’t bothered to untie it. There was nothing else. We looked out over the water, saw nothing, not even a speck on the water, in the distance.

  “Chances are he’s been gone for hours,” Kenji said. “He could have put to shore at any one of a thousand places. It’ll take us days to pick up the trail again.”

  “If our luck has changed, we won’t have to. We’ll search the compound, but I don’t think he’s here.”

  We first checked the path to the temple, but there were no more of the creatures to be seen. Kenji and I did a thorough search of the remaining temple outbuildings and grounds. When we had satisfied ourselves that Lord Tenshin was not still hiding somewhere on the island, we returned to the main hall, where everything was as we’d left it. Kenji picked up the sword and returned it to its scabbard while I inspected the robes.

  “This bears the Otomo family mon,” Kenji said, indicating the scabbard. “And the blade is very high quality. I think this is Lord Tenshin’s sword.”

  “I’d be amazed if it wasn’t, just as these robes are his as well. He sacrificed both to buy himself more time to escape. Now we know why the first three shikigami he created were done so hastily—he focused most of his efforts here. The building’s gloom aided the illusion, but you have to admit this last shikigami was a work of art. It was only after I realized it, too, was trying to delay us that I suspected we were not dealing with Lord Tenshin directly.”

  Kenji sighed. “But now we have proof he was here!”

  I smiled. “Yes, and so? A nobleman makes a pilgrimage to a remote, obscure temple for some pious reason or other, which he would gladly fabricate. It’s not a crime, Kenji-san. Before this is done and over, I’ll have to give Lord Mikoto sufficient reason to execute his half-brother. I’ll need something more than a pile of clothes and a sword. I’ll need . . . ah!”

  I held up the slip of paper I’d found in the now-empty robes. Looking at it now, I realized I’d been even luckier than I’d first believed—the tip of my sword had snagged the paper just enough to tear it clean through. A shikigami was a creature as much of will as magic, with the words written on a slip of paper no more than an anchor to tether the creature to its master’s bidding. By damaging the paper sufficiently, I had broken that tether and rendered the creature back to the nothing from whence it came. I unfolded the paper, careful not to tear it further.

  “We were never able to recover one of these pieces of paper before. In the first two attempts, they were completely destroyed. My water trick and your rather enthusiastic staff blows did for the three at the bridge. But this one—” I held it up “—still has its writing on it. I cannot read this script. I fancy you might.”

  Kenji sighed. “I am a priest of the Eightfold Path, Lord Yamada. Whatever my faults, I do not dabble in Chinese magic.”

  “Fair enough. But it’s plain Lord Tenshin did. This script is clearly done in his own h
and, which I have no doubt Lord Mikoto will recognize. This, together with Lord Tenshin’s personal items and our own accounting, will be more than enough proof.”

  “Then we’ve won, and Lord Tenshin can drown in a fisherman’s net or get eaten by a mountain ogre for all I care. I am ready to return to the capital.”

  “Bluntly stated, but correct,” I said. “Chasing Lord Tenshin any further would be pointless. My charge was to identify Lord Mikoto’s secret enemy, and I have done so. What Lord Mikoto will choose to do about it is a clan matter and not my concern.”

  Kenji frowned. “True. And yet you sound like someone trying to convince themselves of something they do not believe. What is bothering you, Lord Yamada?”

  “The same thing which has been bothering me ever since we left the capital—why did Lord Tenshin run in the first place?”

  “Why . . . ? He knew you suspected him, and he also knew you intended to question him. He panicked.”

  “Possible, but unlikely. When he left Kyoto, I merely assumed he must have believed I had proof. My assumption was reinforced by the fact he chose to travel unescorted—any clan bushi he could enlist would owe first loyalty to the clan chief, and that is Lord Mikoto, whose proxy in this matter I am privileged to hold. A word from me and they would have arrested him themselves.”

  “Then what has changed your mind?”

  “The shikigami itself. Remember when it said we had no proof? A shikigami knows nothing its master does not know. It is, in essence, a projection of the magician’s will. So if the shikigami knew we had nothing but my suspicions, then Lord Tenshin knew it, too. There was no reason for him to panic—and even less to run.”

  “Unless the shikigami was lying.”

  “As much as I would like to do so, I do not believe it was.”

  Kenji shook his head. “But then nothing makes sense! If Lord Tenshin wasn’t running from us, who was he running from?”

  I considered, but not for very long. “Perhaps he wasn’t running from anything at all. Perhaps he was running toward something else.”