War Priest: The Complete Series, page 79
“I suppose it is best to bury it.”
Arik didn’t know who would find the razed garrison in the future, but he assumed it was best not to leave an arm that was unspoken for if someone did indeed count the bodies. Yet again Arik recognized this thought as one of an illusionist, not something he would have normally considered.
“Are you sure you are going to be all right?” Meosa asked him, concern still in the kami’s voice.
“I am.”
.Chapter Two.
“I am more concerned about not knowing others than I am about others not knowing me.”
–A quote chiseled onto an opponent’s gravestone by Hidden Warrior Hirata Masuhiro de Iga of the School of Illusion and later published in a collection of his carvings, Hirata in Stone, First Edition, Yoshimura Books, Year 1019.
Just to avoid any unwanted attention, they kept a mile off the Runesung Passage for the rest of the night. Arik felt increasingly cold as the temperature plummeted, the disciple continuing to heal his arm even if he was nearing the point of delirium. He knew that he needed to rest. An injury like this was no laughing matter, and mixed with exhaustion it was downright dangerous. It required his full concentration to heal swiftly, yet Arik walked as if he had something to prove. Why? Neither Tayaura nor Meosa would have cared if he asked to take a break. It simply felt like the right thing to do.
The early morning brought with it the howl of winged wolves known as hainu, the same that had once attacked Arik in the Onyx Realm. While their banshee-like howls were certainly jarring, he wasn’t too worried about being attacked considering they had Meosa with them.
As the night wore on, Arik thought back to what happened at the garrison. He knew that he should have relied more on Meosa. As soon as he had encountered the armed Crimsonian blade, he should have asked the kami to help him in some way. Yet he had been stubborn, confident that he would be able to take the trained warrior, and now, at least for the next several days, he would suffer the consequences.
Arik only hoped that they didn’t have any similar encounters in the near future.
They reached a river, one fifty feet wide in its narrowest parts. There was a stone bridge along the Runesung Passage that Arik could see from his current position. If they hurried, they would likely be able to reach the bridge before the sun rose, the three able to return to their location off the main road without being spotted. He had even started walking toward the bridge when Tayaura reached out and gently placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
“The bridge.”
“You look like you’re about to pass out, disciple.”
“I can make it.”
“We will rest here. There’s a hollow not too far away. I’ve stayed there before with my father. The stones around it are large enough that people won’t be able to see us, even if they are walking along the shoreline.”
“We can keep going.”
“We don’t need to take the bridge,” Meosa said, the kami’s form slowly materializing into existence. “You already know that. But I would prefer not taking us across the water during the daytime, just in case there are false shinobi out there watching. They would do something like that, would they not?” he asked Tayaura.
“They would.”
“Yes, yes. In my time, that was certainly the case. It makes sense, as well. The bridges that cross this river have been in existence for ages, and there are several of them. A human could wade across, sure, and there are likely some areas where that would be possible, but keeping an eye on the bridge would be a much better usage of spies. And you need to heal. Why am I telling you that?”
“I am healing,” Arik said as he showed Meosa the stub of his arm. The end was now pink, the flesh tender. The process worked best when he was resting, Arik knew this, but it wasn’t something that he wanted to admit to his companions at that moment. He was tired, and the comedown from the fight that he had had and his injury were certainly affecting him, yet he wanted to appear otherwise.
“This way,” Tayaura said, indicating that this was no longer up for discussion.
It took him about ten more minutes to reach the location where she had once stayed with Hojo. As expected, it was a location hidden in plain sight, like the retreats that he had stayed at with the master illusionist in the past. Arik watched as Tayaura removed large straw mats covered in twigs and branches, revealing a space carved out of the rock. She smoothed her hand along the stone until she found a notch. “Found it,” she announced as she pulled the notch down.
In doing so, Tayaura opened a door cut directly into the stone, one just about three feet high.
“In there?” Arik asked as she motioned him in.
“It was designed long ago. It’s much more spacious than you would think. Trust me.” Tayaura peeked into the space and looked back at Arik. “It’s a little dusty, but I can handle that while you rest. It will be comfortable, disciple. There is even bedding. Come on.”
Arik entered the cave to find two twin beds opposite from one another. There wasn’t any light. Arik was just about to say something about this when Tayaura brushed past him. She pulled a stone lever; something shifted in the rock ceiling above, and light and air entered into the space, the breeze carrying a sweet scent with it.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said as he squinted up at the roof.
“Most people haven’t.” Tayaura found a short broom in the corner. After placing her things on one of the beds, the illusionist began dusting the stone floor.
“Can I help?” Arik asked.
“No,” both Tayaura and Meosa said at the same time.
Tayaura continued: “You need to rest, disciple. There’s sheets in the basket and there should be straw pillows. Get comfortable. I will take care of everything else. And, kami.”
“Yes?” asked Meosa.
“Some fish would be nice, something that won’t require any cooking. Not this close to the bridge, anyway. There is a stove, but we shouldn’t make any smoke right now. Can you get us a few from the river?”
“I suppose that can be arranged.” By the tone of Meosa’s voice, Arik could tell that he wanted to say something snarky, yet Tayaura’s reasoning was sound and she was clearly looking to make this as comfortable as possible.
Soon, Arik felt the sensation that he had grown used to, the one indicating that Meosa had left. After asking Tayaura once again if he could help and being denied, Arik removed his swords and placed them in an old weapon rack made of weathered bamboo. From there, he dealt with the bedding, the disciple on his back just a few minutes later, the Mask of the Fallen near his pillow, his severed arm resting at his side.
Sleep came, and it came rapidly.
****
It was night by the time that Arik awoke, his mouth dry, what was left of his arm throbbing. He sat up to find Tayaura on the bed across from him, her legs crossed beneath her body as she looked through some of the scrolls that she had taken from the garrison. “He’s in Minami,” she said without glancing over to the disciple. “Confirmed.”
“Kogu?”
“I believe so, yes. We will have to handle him there. It may be quite difficult.”
“How convenient,” Meosa said. “We happen to already be heading that way.”
Arik ran his good hand through his hair, sweeping it behind his ears. “I’m ready.”
Tayaura smirked at the disciple. “You are, are you? Infiltrating Kogu’s estate will be unlike anything we have done before. Especially with what happened to Nobunaga. He will have enough guards to form a small army.”
“She has a point, disciple,” said Meosa, who was currently invisible.
“We can do it. All of us, together. I’m sure of it,” Arik said.
“And I’m sure that a bakeneko is nothing more than a glorified cat, my boy, but whenever I say this aloud people ignore me.”
“I don’t know if including you in this part is the way forward, disciple,” Tayaura said carefully. “You know that I don’t do things in the same way as my father. I tell you this because there are times ahead, when perhaps I should.”
“What do you mean exactly? Is this about my injury? I’m healing it—”
“You were with him, you know how my father thought. Would your arm be missing had my father come across that garrison? No, it would not. If he were here, he would use our botched strategy to teach you and me some lesson, or he would tell us to stay back and show us how it was done in a more proper, illusionistic way. He was always cautious and cunning. If we truly are going up, I mean, if I am truly going up against a small battalion of Kogu’s best guards, I’ll need to go in with a similar mindset. And I don’t need distractions, no offense. But don’t worry about any of this now. Worry about recovering. We can discuss details later, after we have reached Minami.” Tayaura rolled up several of the scrolls and hopped off the bed. She returned with a flat stone with slivers of fish laid out on it.
Arik begrudgingly ate the first piece of raw fish, which had been covered with a light mixture of local herbs. Her seasoning was a good counterpoint to the cold protein that was the fish, Arik soon eating another piece. He wanted to tell Tayaura that he could help, but he recognized that this would be less than convincing considering his current state. He also knew that she had a point. Of the two of them, she was the expert when it came to infiltration.
After making sure the place they had stayed in over the course of the day was well hidden, the three set out, Tayaura leading the way, Meosa floating between the pair. They headed north, where they crossed over the river by way of a bridge made of stone. Arik thought it was well-maintained until they came to a point where some of the pathway had crumbled off into the water, revealing the cracked support pillar below.
They moved on.
While he felt better than he had during their walk the previous night, it was still strenuous. At some point, Meosa mentioned something about how much smarter it would have been to take a carriage or for him to float them, yet Tayaura maintained that going on foot was the best way to keep their cover. So that was how they traveled, a full night of walking, and then a day of rest, this time in the shade of large pine trees that ringed some of the hills outside of the Runesung Passage.
Yet again, Arik fell asleep with relative ease, only to awake at night and find that Tayaura had prepared actual meat during the day.
“We make a pretty good team,” Meosa said as Arik later bit into his rabbit leg. “Well, I’m good at finding them, and she’s good at watching me drown the poor creatures and then later preparing them. But still, a good team, if I do say so myself. Also, I’ll have you know that I took a look around, and have yet to find any indication that Basha has come through here. You would think the giant bag of bones would leave a trace of his presence, but no, not even a stray rib. Maybe he’s a closet shinobi? How miraculous would that be? I joke. Really though, poor fellow. Sukitoma won’t like it if he disappears. Who will guard the lake?”
“Which is the ‘poor fellow,’ as you put it? Sukitoma or Basha?”
“Sukitoma,” Meosa told the illusionist. “Clearly. Basha can take care of himself; Sukitoma is getting up there in years and could always use a helping hand.”
“How many more days?” Arik recalled Tayaura mentioning it at some point along the way, but didn’t remember if it was last night, the night before, or perhaps even the night before that.
“It depends on what we do next. It would be easier just to go straight to Minami, but we did promise that itako that we would deliver the tea set and the pen knife to her counterpart near Mount Osore. I would like to get that task out of the way, it’s weighing on me.”
“Why?” Arik asked as he finished the rabbit leg. He went for another.
“It’s easier to focus, for me anyway, when there are fewer tasks that need to be completed.” Tayaura, who had been crouching, stood and approached the disciple. “How is your arm?”
“Getting better.” Arik looked down at his appendage and noticed that it had healed by nearly three inches while he slept. He was almost at the wrist. Regrowing a hand would follow, and then it would be another day or so for him to get used to his fingers once again. He’d studied the concept of a ghost limb, and knew that the hand that he could currently feel, the one that wasn’t there, was actually tied to his chi.
This reminded him that he needed to continue his practice, especially while he was in an intense healing process. Arik had tried to walk as mindfully as possible, focusing on the chi around him as he did so, yet he knew that he would be better served to sit quietly for a bit in meditation with the goal being to speed along the healing process. He hadn’t been able to when they stayed in the cave, mostly because he had been so exhausted. Now was his chance.
“I need to do something before we leave,” he told Tayaura, “and it may be something that you are interested in.”
“I was wondering when we would train again.”
“Train?” Meosa laughed. “You would fight a one-armed disciple?”
Tayaura ignored the kami as she joined Arik on the hill beyond where they had slept during the day, one that was not too far from their camping spot. Arik knew that people left chi-imprints, and that it was best to practice in a different location than from where you rested.
“Do you know how to meditate?” he asked Tayaura as she sat before him. She was just about a foot away from the disciple, much closer than he thought she would be.
“If you mean sit quietly and monitor my thoughts, yes, this is something that first-year illusionists are taught to do. I’ve already told you this. The better ones, like my father, continue this practice later on in their careers, but many don’t. I haven’t,” she said, almost begrudgingly. “It doesn’t suit me.”
“This is yet again something that is similar to our school, I mean, the Academy of Healing Arts. We start with meditation as children, but it isn’t something that is practiced once we reach a certain plateau. Part of me assumed that the meditation was a way for the master priests to calm the children, yet I do notice its benefit whenever I actually am able to focus and practice. Let’s begin.”
Arik closed his eyes, and in doing so he saw the illusionist’s chi aura, which, as he’d seen before, resembled a subtle smoke. “Are your eyes closed?”
“They are.”
“Can you see my aura?”
“Not yet. Yes, now, just the outline.”
“Focus your breath and try harder,” Arik told her, recalling something that Master Guri Yarna had repeated to him numerous times. Focus your breath, and try harder. It was a mantra of sorts, one that Arik had relied on over the years yet had nearly forgotten since everything that happened at his Academy. The words didn’t feel the same now that he knew what his former instructor had done, how he had seemingly teamed up with Nobunaga and betrayed the north. There were a number of things Arik needed to address, and that was one of them, Master Guri Yarna’s motives.
For now, he cast these thoughts away as he waited for Tayaura to loosen up. From past experience, he knew that seeing someone’s chi aura was something that could only be accomplished with deep focus. It had taken him some time to learn to do so relatively quickly, and even now, Arik attributed his instant success to recently waking up from a long rest.
But eventually, Tayaura came around. “I see it now, like water.”
“And yours is like smoke.”
“Similar but different. It is concentrated around your arm.”
“It is. Watch.” Arik inhaled deeply. He focused his power down his arm, and as he did he noticed his Revivaura flourish around the injury.
“You are speeding up the process,” Tayaura said.
“I am. Do you…?” An idea came to Arik. “Do you want to try to help?”
“How?”
How to change the nature of one’s chi? Arik thought deeply of this for a spell, the disciple ignoring everything around him as he continued to suck in deep, calculated breaths through his nostrils.
“Try placing your hands near my arm. Focus your power forward, and as you do I will try to convert the base nature of your chi myself. I don’t yet know how I would tell someone to change it, but it is possible. We have both dabbled in other aspects of chi. Maybe I can augment yours for now. Let’s try.”
Tayaura hovered her hand over Arik’s wounded arm, and as she did, he focused even harder, imagining her smoky chi becoming part of the water-like substance that radiated around the wound. It worked, but in doing so he felt a sudden coldness, one that cut much deeper than he expected. Arik moved his arm away from her.
“Did you feel that?” she asked, Tayaura’s eyes open now as she examined her hand. “It was almost like you were absorbing my energy, my life force.”
“I felt it. We should be careful,” Arik said, which elicited a laugh from Meosa.
“You think, disciple?”
“This is something that we should continue to work with. Carefully, of course,” said Tayaura, “but certainly something worth exploring. We should leave, and maybe before you go to sleep, we will work more with Chimaura, and on changing your features.”
“I’d like that, yes.”
“Just a few more overnight trips,” she said, answering the question that Arik had asked earlier regarding how long it would take them. “And I think that going to Minami first will serve us better than trying to find the itako. We can then head south toward Mount Osore, on our way to the Crimson border. Or we can separate and one of us can take that journey alone. What do you think?”
