Shike, p.40
Shike, page 40
Jebu set his torch in a holder beside the entrance and reached inside his robe for the Jewel. He walked slowly to Taitaro, holding it out before him.
"What is that?" whispered Yukio.
"A shintai," said Jebu.
"Have you been carrying it with you as long as I've known you? Why haven't we had better fortune?"
Taitaro took the stone from Jebu. "It is the belief of our Order that fortune is neither good nor bad, Lord Yukio, and that in any case neither prayers nor spells nor deeds can affect it." He held the Jewel up between his thumbs and forefingers and gazed into it.
After a moment he said, "Put out the torch." Jebu stamped out the torch in the tunnel outside the room.
The chamber was not totally dark. Jebu noticed a shaft of soft, white light falling from the ceiling, striking the mosaic floor near Taitaro. It was moonlight, entering through a small circular opening in the centre of the dome. The moments when the moon was in precisely the right position to send its light through the opening must be rare, Jebu thought.
The three sat in silence until Jebu lost track of time. Erom long habit, he kept his eyes fixed on the Jewel in Taitaro's lap, feeling that he could see its intricate pattern even though it was across the room. He seemed to be floating in a sea which had no surface, no bottom and no shore in any direction.
Gradually the shaft of light changed position as the moon moved across the sky. It struck Taitaro's knee, then his forearm. At last the light fell upon the Jewel, which seemed to blaze up instantly like a newly kindled fire. A cool, green radiance filled the room. The eye painted on the wall was fixed on the back of Taitaro's head. Taitaro's eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the Jewel.
Jebu expected the Tree of Life to spring up before him in all its glory. But he saw only the burning seed in Taitaro's palm. At last, as the light moved on with the passage of the moon from east to west, the Jewel ceased to glow.
Taitaro spoke, and his voice was calm and pleasant, but Jebu felt that he was hearing the voice, not of his father, but of the Self.
"You will go into the north, where the Wise One contends with the Keeper of the Hearth. You will join the Wise One, who has gathered men from many lands to serve him. You will fight for the Wise One, then you will return to the Sacred Islands. One of you will be betrayed by his own blood. The other will seem to die but live. The jewels created by Izanami and Izanagi shall be protected by the Hurricane of the Kami. Each of you will be worthy of his father."
Taitaro's voice died away. The three sat in silent meditation again for a long time.
"Take the Jewel again, Jebu," Taitaro said. Jebu stood and took the Jewel from Taitaro's hand. Taitaro rose fluidly to his feet and stretched himself casually, as if he had only been napping.
"Come," he said, "let's camp outside for the night."
Their horses tethered to a pine tree, they sat on the ground a short distance above the entrance to the temple. Eog was beginning to fill the valley below their hill, so that they seemed to be on an island rising out of a pearly sea.
"What happened to you in there?" asked Jebu.
"It was as if I were dreaming," said Taitaro. "The words I spoke were not mine. They came to me."
"Who are the Wise One and the Keeper of the Hearth?" Jebu asked.
"Two members of the Mongol ruling family are preparing to claim the title of Great Khan-Kublai Khan and his brother, Arik Buka. Kublai Khan's grandfather, Genghis Khan, called him Sechen, which means the Wise One. Arik Buka is ruler of the Mongol homeland. His title is Keeper of the Hearth. The first part of the prophecy means that you will serve Kublai Khan. He gives high place to foreigners and has adopted many foreign ways. You will be welcome among his Banners. One wing of his army is moving westwards, south of the Great Wall. You can meet them at Lanchow, directly north of here."
"How kind of the gods-or whoever it is who prophesies with your tongue, sensei-to arrange things for me," said Yukio bitterly. "I need only get to Lanchow and there join the army of this Kublai Khan. How simple."
"What is it, Yukio?" asked Jebu softly.
Yukio shook his head. "Only twice in my life have I felt in control of my own destiny. Once when I escaped from the Rokuhara. The other, when I decided to lead this expedition to China. Whatever mistakes my father made, they were his mistakes. He was no one's plaything. I did not know what a glorious feeling that could be until the night I went over Sogamori's wall."
"And now?" said Taitaro.
"Since we left Kweilin, sensei, I've been following your son blindly. And now I am following you. Jebu decided that we must wander through Szechwan. Now you tell me I must go and fight for this Kublai Khan."
"Not must, Yukio. The path has been suggested to you, nothing more. You will find Kublai Khan a wiser and more generous lord than the Emperor of China."
"To serve Kublai Khan now is simply the best choice open to me, as you see it?"
"I thought so before," said Taitaro. "But I could not be entirely sure of it until tonight, when I had the opportunity to read the Jewel of Life and Death in this temple. Now I know. If you choose this path, Lord Yukio, it will ultimately lead you back to the Sacred Islands and to glory."
Yukio's large brown eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight. "That is the road I want to travel, sensei. I left the Sunrise Land only with the thought that I might return one day to avenge my family and overthrow our enemies. I may die on that path, but as long as I know I am on the path, I don't mind. These past months I felt I had lost my way."
"My vision tonight tells me you are on that path."
Yukio shook his head. "And yet my father told me that a military commander who pays attention to the flights of birds or the cracks in a tortoiseshell is sure to lose. He used to tap his forehead and say, 'The only auguries worth listening to are in here.' "
Taitaro nodded. "But you came to China not only to escape the Takashi and make your fortune, but to learn more about the art of warfare. In today's world the Mongols are the masters of war. Of Kublai Khan, the Mongols say he has the military genius of his grandfather, Genghis Khan. How could you learn more than in the service of Kublai Khan?"
Yukio smiled wryly. "How foolish you make my notion seem, of getting involved in the wars between Nan Chao and Annam."
Taitaro patted Yukio's arm. "You are no man's plaything, Muratomo no Yukio. You're only twenty-five years old. You'll be a great general."
"Eorgive me, sensei, for not being more grateful to you for your efforts in my behalf." Yukio went over to the horse he had tethered near by and said, "I think I want to be alone for a while." He took his ivory flute out of his saddle case.
They watched him climb to the top of the boulder where he could see the moon sink towards the western horizon. It was the yellow moon of midsummer, not the great lantern moon of autumn. But it was beautiful enough in its way. To Jebu, the sight of Yukio seated on his boulder was reminiscent of a stone on top of a stone. Yukio raised the flute to his lips.
The tune he played was a simple country air, such as one might hear greeting the fishing boats as they sailed into Hakata Bay late in the afternoon. Yukio had not played his flute in a long time. Jebu felt his eyes grow moist. The melody made him think of home. And that reminded him of Nyosan.
"Sensei. Eather. There is something I have to ask you."
Taitaro said, "I hear the note of an impending quarrel in your voice. Couldn't you at least wait until he's finished playing?"
They were silent as Yukio's melody soared over the pines, then dipped its wings like a crane and glided to a landing. Jebu waited a moment more out of respect for the music and Taitaro's appreciation of it. Then he plunged in.
"Sensei. Many years ago you sent Mother away while you remained at the Waterfowl Temple to pursue your studies in solitude. Later you saw her at the Teak Blossom Temple, then left her again to travel to China. You have abandoned your wife, my mother. I know you to be a good man, if there is any such thing. I don't see how you could leave her alone and lonely."
Taitaro was silent for so long that Jebu began to think he was not going to answer. Einally he said, "I have had word from the Sacred Islands. Erom the Order. Your mother is dead, Jebu."
"What?" He must have mistaken Taitaro's words.
"Whatever I should or should not have done for your mother, it is too late. She is gone, my son. The best woman I ever knew."
"Did she know you thought that?" Jebu asked bitterly. He felt the tears starting to come. There had been a moment when he couldn't believe what Taitaro was saying, a moment when it seemed the old man must be posing one of his philosophical problems. But he heard the sadness in Taitaro's voice and he knew it was real. He felt as if the bottom had dropped out of his heart.
"Yes, she knew it," said Taitaro. "There wasn't much we didn't talk about."
"Except during these last years," said Jebu. "What did you have against her, that you could leave her like that?" His voice broke as he said the last few words. He put his hands to his face and sobbed.
"She and I were very close after our parting. We believed-I believe-that each of us is a manifestation of the Self. We felt that we could never be separated. I saw her in everything around me, and she, I believe, saw me in the same way."
"Monk's talk. She would have called that monk's talk. She knew the difference between a flesh-and-blood man and a manifestation of the Self."
Taitaro sighed. "She lives in you, Jebu, as she does in me."
"Yes, but that's not her, don't you see? What did she die of?"
"It is going to hurt you a great deal to hear this." Taitaro moved closer to him and spoke in a lower voice. Even though Jebu knew Nyosan was dead and nothing could hurt her any more, he felt frightened. Taitaro rested his forehead on his hand.
"Jebu, when Yukio and his army sailed from Hakata Bay it was a terrible defeat for Sogamori. His son, Kiyosi, was killed."
"I know. Kiyosi was in the bow of the lead ship, aiming an arrow at Yukio. I didn't know who it was until after I had shot him in the chest and he had fallen overboard. Moko told me."
"I had no idea it was you who had killed him."
"I suppose no one except Yukio and Moko and I know."
"Had Sogamori known it was a Zinja who killed his son, he would have felt even more justified in what he did."
Jebu's body went cold. "What did he do?"
"All that summer of the Year of the Horse he was secretly sending infiltrators disguised as monks, merchants, and landless peasants into Kyushu. Then in the Ninth Month he sent a huge armed force across Shimonoseki Strait. Before word could reach the Teak Blossom Temple, his agents had cut off all communications and all escape routes. Ten thousand samurai surrounded the monastery buildings. Those who tried to escape were pushed back into the flames. Of course, the monks fought back, and over two thousand Takashi died, I am told. Weicho, the abbot, went down fighting. A master of the naginata, that one. The women and children took refuge in the temple building itself. They all died in the flames. It's said their screams could be heard all over Kyushu. When the fire was cold there was no one left. Every person in the temple perished."
Jebu was unable to speak for a long time after Taitaro finished. He sat there gasping, his thoughts incoherent. He felt as if someone had thrown him to the ground and beaten him with a club.
At last, he said, "My mother was burned to death?" It was both impossible to put the half-formed picture out of his mind and impossible to see it clearly. The packed bodies. The screams of women and children. The towering golden flames.
Taitaro gripped his arm. "Listen, Jebu. This world kills people in all manner of horrible ways. You are not the only person who has lost a parent by violence. You must bear this. You are a Zinja."
Jebu tried to see into Taitaro's eyes, but the moon was behind the old man's head, and his voice was in shadow. "Two parents, sensei. Two." He started to sob brokenly. He had not cried like this since Moko had told him of the death of his and Taniko's baby.
"I hate this world," he said suddenly.
"There is only this world."
"Then better to be out of it. The samurai are right to pursue death." "Neither your father nor your mother sought death. If you turn to death because they died, you'll be betraying them."
He remembered Nyosan at the Waterfowl Temple so many years ago saying, "Live, Jebu." He burst into sobs again.
"Some day I'll go back there. I'll leave a flower in the ashes of the temple. And then I'll go and kill Sogamori."
"You've already killed his son. Perhaps you can feel, a little, how Sogamori must have felt about that."
Jebu stood up, towering over Taitaro. "Oh, you're so wise, sensei. Why can't your wisdom show you how to weep for my mother?" "I have wept for her, Jebu."
Jebu wanted to kneel beside the old man and put his arms around him. But he was still angry.
"Can your wisdom tell me why you were on the other side of the world when my mother was killed? And why she had to pine for you for so many years before that?"
Taitaro spoke in a sad, yielding voice. "When you scold me for giving a higher place to monkish wisdom than to human feelings, I can almost hear your mother's voice. You are so very much like her. One day, Jebu, you will come to understand the separateness of beings. We Zinja teach the openness of all beings. Because we understand that oneness, perhaps we are able to grasp separateness better than most."
"You did love her. I know you did."
"I do love her."
"Then how could you leave her?"
"I feel I have a mission. I have had an insight, if you will. There are certain things I am called to do. The world is entering a new age. The years of solitary meditation were my preparation. My being here in China is part of my task. I know you can understand this, my son, because you have followed the same path yourself."
Jebu slowly sat down again beside Taitaro. "What do you mean?"
"My son, when last we met at the Waterfowl Temple, I didn't know everything you had been doing, nor did you have time to tell me. I always wondered if there was a woman who meant as much to you as your mother meant to me. On my brief visit to the Teak Blossom Temple before I left for China, I learned about you and the Lady Shima Taniko."
"What did you learn?" Jebu's face felt hot.
"That the very first task I sent you on, so many years ago, is a task you have never completed. That your life and the life of Lady Taniko have been linked together ever since. And yet, my son, both you and she decided long ago to go your separate ways. I suspect she means more to you than any other woman in the world does, and that you mean more to her than any other man. Yet each of you feels a destiny drawing you that makes it impossible for you to be together."
"That may be true," said Jebu.
"But she is closer to you than you realize, my son."
"More of your Zinja wisdom about seeing everybody everywhere, sensei?"
"Not at all, Jebu-san. I mean that the Lady Taniko is here in China. She is in the household of Kublai Khan."
Chapter Twenty
The hot south wind that blew over the steppes of Mongolia all through the night wailed mournfully. The long grasses barely stirred. Eternal Heaven, worshipped by the Mongols, was utterly black, adorned with innumerable stars. Men who had wandered these wastes all their lives, as the Mongols and their ancestors had for generations beyond memory, read the stars easily.
The portents were good. "When the Northern Fish comes near the Great Dog," said Kublai's astrologers, "the khan will be mighty and his enemies overwhelmed." Tonight those two wandering stars were the closest they would be this year.
The wind's keening was barely audible above the drumming of tens of thousands of horses' hooves. Birds sleeping in the grass, alarmed by the approaching thunder, took flight. Their cries were the only voices raised over the rumbling of the oncoming horde.
The faces of the riders were bound with cloths against the wind and dust. Officers shuttled back and forth before the long lines of horse men, checking the order of the formations and passing whispered commands.
Behind the riders, ox-drawn wagon trains groaned along in the darkness, the solid wooden wheels creaking, each wagon bearing its mushroom-shaped yurt. In the centre of the rolling city of yurts lumbered black, enormous shapes. The war elephants padded over the grass, crushing it underfoot, moving more silently, despite all their bulk, than the horses or the oxen.
The host of Kublai Khan was marching northwards towards the Gobi. It was the Tenth Month of the Year of the Rat, four years since the war between Kublai and his brother Arik Buka had begun.
Countless times over thousands of years, armies had clashed on these grassy plains. Hsiung-nu, Yueh-cheh, Turks, Tartars, Mongols, as well as races and tribes whose names were for ever lost, had battled here with one another and with the chariots and legions of China. The steppe grasses had been watered with warriors' blood and fed with their flesh. The earth was enriched with their bones.
The first pink of sunrise shone in the east. Scouts rode back to the advancing front ranks to report campfires beyond the hills to the north. Coloured lanterns, shielded so they could only be seen from one direction, signalled the Banners to halt.
Arik Buka was caught. His back was to the desert.
The yurts stopped rolling, holy men stepped forth. Shamans sacrificed sheep, Buddhist lamas spun their prayer wheels, Nestorian Christian priests chanted half-forgotten Latin over portable altars, and muezzins called their faithful to prayer. Men of every faith and of no faith at all, men of every nation from the rising to the setting of the sun, prepared their minds and bodies for battle.
In the left wing, so far across the steppes from the centre of the arm that they could not see it, rode the samurai under the command of Muratomo no Yukio, beneath the standard of the orkhon Uriangkatai. As the first sliver of crimson broke the flat line of the horizon, the samurai dismounted and bowed deeply from the waist towards the sun, towards the Sacred Islands, towards the Emperor. Glancing at Yukio, Jebu saw that his friend's eyes were glistening with tears.
Some groups of samurai performed Shinto rites of purification while others listened to the chanting of Tibetan lamas, whose words meant nothing to them but whose ceremonies gave comfort.
