War Priest: The Complete Series, page 100
Arik paused for a moment. He hadn’t really worked out any of the details as to what would happen once they reached Tenrikyo.
“It’s just something to consider,” Istvan said. “That may be a choice that arises. There are a lot of surprises in what has happened thus far, surprises that none of us could see coming.”
Arik knew he was referring to Nyoko and her betrayal.
“If it comes down to it, and I am there, disciple, I will do whatever you don’t do. I mean that. If you need me to rescue your sister while you deal with your master, then so be it.”
“We will have to figure out a way to get close to him in the first place. That is the situation we are up against now.”
“Are you good with a crossbow?”
“No.”
“Neither am I.” Istvan nodded his head forward, toward Tayaura. “But if it is impossible to get close to your former master, at least in a confrontational sense due to his power, maybe there’s another way. Maybe you send her.”
“Or maybe it will have something to do with the Demon Charm of Katano. There are so many unknowns.”
“There are.”
“I can’t believe no one has mentioned me yet,” said Meosa, the water spirit flaring up on Arik’s right. “I can handle your former master. His power won’t affect me, remember? Once we finally deal with Enenra, there won’t be anyone that can stop me. I don’t mean this as a threat to the innocent. I’m just saying not to worry as much about your former master when we get there. Worry about getting your sister, and dealing with whomever is protecting him.”
****
They found a place to rest on a plateau that overlooked a small watering hole. The water came from deep beneath the ground, evident in how cold it was, and its taste. At one point, Meosa used this cold water to spray the three down, which hadn’t been done by request, yet was nice in the end.
The temperature seemed to increase by the minute. It soon became the kind of day that Arik knew the Crimson Realm was accustomed to, the reason behind their strange clothing and perhaps even their aggressive behavior. Arik knew if he was subject to this sort of environment day after day, with no real end in sight, his natural disposition would likely change.
The Crimson Realm was nothing like the north, where cold breezes would be taking leaves from trees by now and whirling them into the air. All the signs of winter would be made available, from the harvest celebrations to the early snow that generally happened in the fall. It always worked this way. A snow, followed by another two to four weeks of cold yet mild weather. Then the sky would open up, and it wouldn’t stop until there was several feet of snow on every surface.
People got buried in their houses, mostly the elderly, who had to be rescued by men and women paid by the government to make sure everyone was accounted for. Firewood was abundant up north, so that was never an issue in warming homes. But there could be food issues, which was why the crown had begun stockpiling in the summer to release supplies in the winter, essentially holding them for merchants so they could continue their profits during the less active months.
As they prepared to set out again that night, Arik wondered what it was like this far south.
Did they ever get a break from the heat?
He’d never spoken to Master Nankai about it, and it was already summer the last time Arik had come this far south. He had no idea how bad it got or if it got bad at all. Perhaps winter in the Crimson Realm was a good time of year, one in which people didn’t have to worry about the extreme heat or cover themselves as much.
While Arik and his companions had come across signs of animals and yokai alike, they hadn’t actually encountered anything big. Meosa had spotted a herd of wooly kayno in the distance at one point, and there had been desert goats scaling cliff walks alongside one of the canyons they had passed through. But other than that, the animals kept their distance.
This was why the sudden appearance of gaki actually took Arik off guard.
He’d encountered these particular yokai before, the emaciated gaki humanesque with sharp claws and aggressive behaviors. Meosa had dealt with them last time, but there seemed to be more now, the approaching horde at least twenty deep.
“I’ll let you three handle this,” Meosa said. “I’m sure you’d like the practice.”
Istvan removed his hammer, the tip igniting in flames. Arik drew both his swords. He had continued to train with two weapons in the way that Master Nankai had shown him—Hojo’s sword for blocking and gathering energy, the Whispering Sword as his main attacking blade. Arik planned to do the same now, only he didn’t want to rely on the Mask of the Fallen this time.
He had to be able to fight without the crutch, without the ability to instantly target his enemies.
The gaki approached and the three quickly met them.
As Arik had predicted, the Whispering Sword by itself was quite the instrument of death. Able to scissor through the ranks of the seething and snarling gaki, the sword cut through skin and arteries, even bone, butchering their ranks.
While Tayaura had a few chase her away from the main space, Arik and Istvan put their full force into the fight, the disciple occasionally blocking clawed attacks with Hojo’s blackened blade, and Istvan bringing the enemy yokai down with the power of his incredible hammer, smashing skulls and lighting fires.
They finished their batch and turned to find Tayaura standing over the few that had pursued her as well, blood dripping from her weapon. Rather than say anything, she flicked the blood from her blade to the sand, wiped the rest on a carcass, sheathed her sword, adjusted her haori cape, and moved on.
“I’ll never understand the illusionist,” Istvan said once she was far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to hear them. “Any illusionist, for that matter.”
“What’s not to understand?”
Istvan sheathed his hammer across his back. “Her motivation. How she works in such a precise way; how she shows such little remorse. Have you ever seen her show any emotion? True emotion.”
Arik had seen quite a bit from Tayaura and had spent more time with her than Istvan.
“Answer smartly, disciple,” Meosa said privately.
“I haven’t,” he finally told Istvan. “But that is how her father was. Illusionists operate in a strange way, but it makes sense the more time you spend with them.”
“Do you like them?”
“Illusionists?” Arik asked as they started up again.
“Yes. Their company. I can’t tell how I feel about it. With you, I feel like I generally know what you’re thinking, how you feel. Not everything, but I get an idea. With them, it’s a blank slate. Even in combat. The times I’ve seen you spar with her. Even if you aren’t trying, your face tells me what you are doing. Whereas illusionists seem to be focused in this different way. We’d both do well to learn from their type. I’d wager that I’m the same way with combat, making facial expressions that tell what I’m thinking or where I’m going next.”
Arik nodded. “You seem to enjoy combat. You do a lot of smiling, aggressive smiling.”
A grin lifted one side of Istvan’s face. “I do enjoy it. The adrenaline, the show of power. I feel as if I’m in my element, but I’d like to do better. I’d like to completely take our future opponents off guard.”
Arik and Istvan fell into a long stretch of silence after that statement.
He understood why the northern man found Tayaura baffling. Arik did as well, but he’d started to better understand her, and she clearly had shown him emotions more times than he could count now. Even Hojo had showed some emotions, yet those signs had been few and far between.
It was both something to aspire to, and something to be wary of.
.Chapter Five.
“Tame your monkey mind before it tames you.”
–Madame Noll Arimask in her Scroll on Life’s Reflections, later published in the Jadean Book of Proverbs, Year 1475.
They reached the outer rim of Mogra that morning, where Arik had stayed before with a herder family. He tried not to think about Domen or his mother as they passed a pair of porters carrying water down from the mountains outside of Mogra. The landscape beyond was cream-colored, the buildings in the valley below the same color, almost as if they had sprung up organically. Someone was tanning leather not far from them, the strong smell dissipating once Arik and the others moved closer to the edge of the cliff.
“Where do we go from here?” Istvan asked as he placed his hands on his waist. “And tell me that we’re going to transition to a normal schedule. Being awake at night and sleeping during the day is not really my thing.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Arik said.
“Hopefully I won’t have to.”
Tayaura smoothed her hands over her sandy robes. “It would be best if we don’t go into the city looking like this. We’ve already drawn some attention to ourselves, but I wanted to see it. I wanted to remember what the city looked like before we figured out the next step. Let’s head to the mountains.” She turned back in the direction that they had just come from.
Arik and Istvan let her walk for a moment before both men exchanged glances and decided to catch up with her.
“I don’t want to say that I miss the master illusionist,” Meosa told Arik, “but we would have a better chance being guided by an inbred yamachichi than the scramble-brained shinobi-ess. To the mountains? Why would we head there?”
“I have no idea,” Arik told him. “But I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.”
“You let your heart speak too much for you, my boy.”
As they started around a large boulder, Arik noticed something he hadn’t seen before. There were thick ropes suspended in the air above them. Following the ropes, he saw that they eventually connected to a small hut near the base of one of the mountains. He was just about to ask what it was when he spotted someone coming toward them.
Using the rope, a man glided down from the mountain with a jug of water clutched tightly between his legs. The man used his upper body strength to twist to the right a bit, which slowed his inevitable landing. He didn’t quite hit the boulder that the rope was attached to, but he came close. From there, a veiled young fellow who had been crouching on the other side of the boulder came forward, grabbed the jug of water, and filled a nearby barrel. Once they were done, the man tugged the rope and was pulled backward toward his starting point.
So that’s how they do it, Arik thought as they continued toward the mountain. They traversed an outcrop of rocks, then circled around pinnacle-like stones that reminded Arik of some of the statues in Omoto. It was behind these rock formations that they reached a Hidden Warrior retreat, one tucked away as they always were.
Meosa started to laugh, loud enough that it annoyed Arik. “Of course they have one here. These illusionists never surprise me.”
“Hojo never told me—”
“What did he tell you about these places?” Tayaura asked the disciple.
“Just that they are around. I don’t know, I think he said that they were around the Jade Realm.”
“Why would he tell you they were in other realms? I’m assuming he told you this at the beginning of your relationship.” Tayaura squinted up at the tree, at a knot near the place where the trunk split in two. “Kami, do you mind floating me up to that knot?”
“I suppose it is something I can do.”
Tayaura set her bag on the ground. Soon, she was hovering in the air before the tree knot. She reached out for it and removed the piece, revealing a key inside. Once she was back on solid ground, she approached the semi-hidden shack. She opened the door, and stepped aside for a moment to let the place air out.
“There may be snakes or scorpions. Careful,” she told Arik and Istvan. At about the moment she said this, a spider dropped from the roof and landed on Tayaura’s shoulder. She tried to slap it; the spider scurried closer to her neck. Within moments, Tayaura had killed the spider, but it had also bitten her.
She started to gasp almost immediately, her throat constricting.
“Disciple!” Meosa shouted.
Down on her knees, Tayaura placed her hand on the wound, her breaths short, foam appearing at the side of her mouth.
By this point Arik had reached her, his hand replacing hers. Arik went to work absorbing the spider’s poison, which had the same effect he’d seen play out with Tayaura. His throat began to tighten up, foam appearing at the corners of his lips. He pressed away from Tayaura and spotted a patch of cacti. Dropping before it, Arik placed his hand on the cacti, ignoring the spines as he transferred the injury.
By the time he was done, the disciple was lying on his back and breathing heavily, the sky above pulsing. His vision dimmed as Meosa fretted over him, Istvan doing the same. It was when Tayaura appeared that the tension settled some, the illusionist with her hands on his now, failing in her attempt to heal him.
Arik would be fine in the end, but he would need to rest for a few hours.
****
It was a troubled rest, one of harrowing images, the disciple constantly pursued by some unknown force. A world of violence, one with walls of ichor, streams of pain—Arik was on the verge of breaking free only to be sucked back into madness. The demons bit into his arms and his legs, ripping him apart limb-by-limb.
Arik awoke in a cold sweat, his heart running in his chest, fingers digging into the mat he rested on.
“You’re back,” Istvan said as he moved over to Arik. The big man crouched before the disciple and gently removed the wet towel that had been over Arik’s eyes. “What a wretched spider. We checked the place for more but didn’t find any.”
“S-spider?” Arik asked, only remembering now what had bit him.
“A Mogra Red. That’s what they’re called according to Tayaura. Highly poisonous.”
Arik licked his parched lips.
The after effects of the Mogra Red’s poison, even if he had transferred some of it, had caused the hallucinatory dream. Yet finally being awake, and knowing that he was in a safe place, had the disciple back to his normal self a few minutes later, healed.
“If you’re wondering, she went to investigate,” Istvan told him.
“Into Mogra?”
“Uh-huh. I expect she’ll be back pretty soon. It’s been hours. She said she’ll bring food as well.” Istvan poured a cup of tea, which he brought over to Arik. “In the meantime, have some of this. I made it from some of the herbs I found out back. Nyoko taught me about that. It’ll give you strength.”
Arik took the tea from Istvan and took a sip, the liquid warm with peppery taste to it. “I’ll still never understand why Nyoko did what she did.”
“Easy,” said Meosa, the water spirit coming alive. “Nyoko did what she did for monetary gain and to help her family. That’s a normal reason for betrayal, not even a bad one depending on who you ask. I only wish that I had seen the signs. What signs were there? She seemed so… Simple. Maybe even dimwitted. I guess that shows my class in saying it like that, but you know what I mean.”
“It’s over, that’s all that matters. I’m just sad she didn’t come to me or, I don’t know, use whatever agreement she made with Saiyo against him. We could have exploited that.”
“We could have,” Arik said.
“But that is just the way it went. Heh. She actually stabbed me in the back, the most literal form of betrayal. I guess all we can do now is finish what we started.” Istvan took a seat across from Arik, the muscled man now on his knees, wearing an apron and holding a tiny stone cup of tea. This image brought a smile to Arik’s face. Istvan looked incredibly out of place.
“Some of these herbs can be quite pungent, but they’re good when boiled. This place, this Hidden Warrior retreat”—Istvan motioned around them—“they have everything around here, don’t they? Tayaura even found money. They truly look out for one another, which is weird considering the nature of illusionists. I always thought of them as extreme loners. Solo assassin types.”
Arik took another sip from his tea. “The retreats are generally designed with accessible food in the vicinity, or in this case, herbs; places for multiple people to sleep; a kitchen; freshwater somewhere in the vicinity. Haven’t heard of there being money, but that makes sense.”
“Freshwater. That’s the one that took me by surprise. There is a well out back and it actually has water.”
“I figured. I’ve seen Tayaura set everything back up once we’ve left similar places. It is a good practice, and obviously, it is a useful one. I suppose that means we need to leave some money too.”
The door of the Hidden Warrior retreat shifted open. Tayaura glided in wearing a square hat with short yellow fringes. She had two other square hats strung over her shoulder, and a satchel full of vegetables and meat. It was only after she put those down that Arik saw she had another bag, one with folded Crimsonian robes.
She turned to the pair, the square hat remaining on her head, the illusionist as mysterious as ever as she took them in. Tayaura focused on Arik. “What would you like to eat tonight, disciple?”
Even though Arik was joined by Istvan and Meosa, it felt like it was just Tayaura and him in the room now.
“Eat?”
