Chapter 22
Late Spring, 1237 – The Ivory Palace
The ruins were eerie now that Arahime was alone. From the steps, she could see the outline of the great city through the trees below her. She imagined it bustling with thousands of people. Warriors. Priests. Elders. Children. Thousands sacrificed for power, to summon the Goddess Kali-Ma. It was all silent and still now. Is that what it would be like in the Empire if Kanpeki had won? Is this what Yuhmi wants? She could not imagine.
The gates to the Palace had fallen down. Most of the gold that had leafed them had been scraped off by greedy looters…heimen or samurai, Arahime could not say. She could see places where jewels or sculptures had been broken away. A thick layer of undisturbed dust blanketed the remaining pieces of shattered furniture. The palace itself was dimly lit by shafts of sunlight piercing through holes in the roof. The ever-pervasive vines draped themselves near such pools of sunlight. Occasionally, she could hear the sound of a snake slithering away, or a rodent skitter out of her path, but otherwise, the palace was completely still.
“Hello?” Arahime called as she moved forward through the gloom.
There was no response.
The green gloom did not frighten her. There was an odd familiarity about the place. As a small child, she’d often been within the confines of the Imperial Palace in Otosan Uchi, though never in the forbidden areas reserved for the Imperial Household alone. Moving through these silent halls felt like she had passed the gate guards and was just venturing into new rooms in a place she had often thought of as home.
An unfamiliar broken polearm with three points lay on the floor before her, atop a large spot of smeared dark brown. A trishula, the voice in her head offered. It was quiet, hard to distinguish from her own thoughts, but Arahime could sense the sadness. This was Big Sister’s Home. No wonder it feels familiar. She took a drink of water from the gourd Yu’genta had given her and pushed on.
Led by instinct and half-forgotten memory, Arahime found herself approaching the columns of a vast audience chamber. A window made of diamonds of stained glass cast rainbows of light throughout the room. The walls were painted with many pictures of strange, alien gods and goddesses with many arms, holding flowers and weapons and musical instruments. But the paint was flaking off, and many of the tiny panes of glass were broken. Vines and flowers curled around some of the broken pillars and statues at the edges of the room, these blooming with tiny white flowers that looked like stars. The duelist walked forward slowly, gray eyes wide with wonder.
At one end of the chamber, below the stained glass, seven steps of scarlet tile led up to a similarly-tiled dais. Rotted pillars, still flaked here and there with gold, no longer held the broken lattice-work canopy that stood over the place. Jewels clearly had pocked the whole canopy over, but they had all been stripped now. One or two, glistening, remained, but Arahime refused to touch them. She drew her hand away. “This would have been amazing, once,” she said aloud.
“So pass Emperors and Maharajas and Gods and Men.” The voice was old, ancient even, hoarse from disuse.
Arahime whirled, trying to find its source. “Who are you?” she said, her eyes making patterns out of shadows. “Are you a Samurai of Rokugan?”
One of the piles of vines she had dismissed as an overgrown statue moved slowly, pulling away the vines that had concealed it with a wizened hand. “Yes.” The voice was like the sound of the wind rattling the dry leaves of autumn: peaceful, ancient. Arahime hurried closer to help.
Once the vines had been pulled away, the light of the stained glass window revealed a very old woman who had been almost completely hidden by the plants growing over her. A hood was pulled far down over her face; Arahime could barely see her wrinkled lips, pursed with thought. Her hands were webbed with veins. The cloak she wore covered her completely. It was ragged with the passage of time and the jungle’s humidity. A naked katana lay in her lap, her hand resting lightly on the black-wrapped tsuka decorated with a red tassel.
Arahime took a step back, remembering her courtesy. No matter who this person was, to have reached such an age, to have been here so long, surely demanded her respect. The Vānara spoke of a powerful and trustworthy samurai. The Crane gave the woman a very deep bow.
“Honored Elder,” Arahime said, presenting herself as is right for an inferior samurai. “My name is Kakita Arahime of the line of Kashiwa. I am honored to be in your presence.”
The old woman slowly reseathed her blade in a black saya encrusted with pearls. “So polite, Crane. It has been many years. What brings you to the Dead Kingdom?”
Arahime hesitated. She was not wearing her mons or kimono; she had nothing to explain herself but her daisho and her white Crane hair. If the old woman could see at all with her hood pulled that low. What can I say really? She settled on a simple version of the truth. “I am only just past my gempukku from the Kakita Academy, Honored Elder. I was sent to be Yojimbo to the Crane Ambassador to Zogeku, Doji Mushari. I…fell…overboard, and was lost in the jungle.”
The old woman smiled gently. “I can tell you are alone, Kakita Arahime-san. I can tell you are young. I can hear in your voice that you have not been in the Ruined Kingdom for long. You have the chi of a bushi trained. I can tell there is Shiba in your blood. These old eyes, if blind, see more than perhaps you might think. My name is Shiba Tsukimi. Have you heard of it?”
The Crane’s eyes widened with surprise and she threw herself down in the full bow appropriate to a Clan Champion. “Of course!” she offered. “The missing Champion of the Phoenix! I didn’t realize!”
Tsukimi made a gesture with her hand indicating that she should rise. As Arahime did so, the Phoenix Clan Champion then pulled back her hood. She wore a red blindfold over her eyes, and her long hair was thin and gray. She must be a hundred years old! Arahime realized with wonder.
“Come. Sit with me. Tell me of your journeys,” Shiba Tsukimi gestured to a place opposite her on the step. “There is wood there for a fire. You are hungry.” She pointed over at the shattered remnants of a cabinet across the room. “The mysteries of the Path of Man transcend the desire for base comforts like food or companionship. But such comforts are…nice…at my age.”
Arahime did as she was bid, forced to admit to herself that she was getting very tired and hungry anyway. Yu’genta had shown her how to start a fire, so she cleared a space around the ancient Champion and laid out a meal for them to share: manioc cakes and roasted poon tree seeds, lotus root baked in the coals and strips of dried bael fruit. She felt a little rush of nervousness as she presented the meal on a banana leaf to the Champion. She had walked in the halls of power of Otsan Uchi. Her mother served the Chosen. She had served as assistant instructor for the Emperor’s oldest son, and her younger brother was Kiseki’s classmate and best friend. But those relationships were all strictly bound by tradition and the laws of courtesy. Here, the Phoenix Champion was just a person, a strange old woman in a jungle temple. There were no rules for this.
For her part, Tsukimi seemed happy to let propriety fall, complimenting her fire-making skills and the food that had been prepared and telling a story of a time soon after her own gempukku as a bushi fighting the Yobanjin. With gentle encouragement, she drew Arahime’s story from her. Arahime told her of her family and being sent to the Colonies, of Doji Mushari and the arranged marriage, and being thrown overboard by Arashi Parushi. Of surviving, wounded, and of the Vānara who cared for her and brought her to the palace. Tsukimi listened attentively through it all.
“And how goes the war?” Tsukimi asked when it she was done. “I was in Second City with Isawa Shunryu when the Emperor’s edict was declared, ordering the surrender of the Elemental Masters. We decided that he should deliver himself to the Emperor’s mercy and join the Brotherhood, and he has told me of the affairs of the Phoenix Clan. But he is closely watched and rarely comes with news from the rest of the Empire.”
Like most of her classmates, Arahime had eagerly followed every rumor of the war that she could glean from her sensei at the Academy, and what little news letters from her parents or Uncle Karasu might reveal. But she was still considered a child until her gempukku, and then she had been sent far away. “I don’t know what you already know Shiba-sama. There is so much, and for most, I only know what I have been taught…”
The Shiba’s lips curled upward as she warmed her hands by the small fire although it was not cold. “Then tell me everything. For, by your years, I think you were not even born when the Emperor’s Judgement upon the Phoenix was announced, and it would be interesting to hear the perspective History will make of it.
Kakita Arahime drew her knees up. Where to begin? “I will try, Shiba-sama.” She took a deep breath, focused on the firelight, and began the tale.
“I suppose I can start at the Winter Court where the Edict that deposed the Council of Elemental Masters was passed. The Lord of the Dragon had called the clans together to Winter Court before the Emperor to unite. That is where my father, Ide Kousuda, met my mother, Kakita Kyoumi, and married into the Crane. I was born the following year.
“There had been a peace, but I know fighting began that spring. Daigotsu Kanpeki, the Onyx Lord, struck with great fury the summer after the Winter Court. Thousands died. But the greatest target of his wrath was the Scorpion who had betrayed him. He was thwarted by the Scorpion Daimyo, Bayushi Nitoshi, who struck at him with some terrible poison. It did not kill Kanpeki, but made him insane, shattering his mind but leaving his body living. Nitoshi was killed for it, most of the Scorpion that had followed Kanpeki were slaughtered by the Onyx forces. After that, the Onyx armies became erratic, misguided. They began fighting among themselves, or moving in strange directions for no reason, as if the forces of Jigoku did not know how to fight together without one will to guide them. They were still terribly strong though, and the lands suffered greatly.
“At that winter court, thanks to the forgiveness and grace of the Fire Dragon, it was learned that the seals that bound Jigoku could be resealed. I know they first tried the ritual at the location of the seal in Crane Lands the following spring. There was a terrible battle as the Onyx tried to stop them. It took two more years for the shugenja to figure out how to reseal the site of the seal in Mantis lands. I am told the Phoenix Shugenja who still served were able to raise it from the ocean floor while the fleets kept the shadow-tainted sea monsters away. As each seal closed, the power of Jigoku grew less, and that, combined with the Onyx Lord’s mad behavior, greatly weakened the forces of the Onyx.
“The third seal was deep in Shinomen forest. The Crab were able to create a huge siege as a bluff, Sensei Kenshin said, while a small scouting party was able to locate the site itself and seal it. But when they did so, they realized that there were two other seals...that there had once been a seal for each element, but the remaining two seals had not been previously known.
“The year I started at the Academy, the Dragon determined that the site of one of the remaining seals was the Second Festering Pit in Scorpion Lands. It was Kanpeki’s study of this seal, broken by the fall of the Destroyer, that led to his learning of the Seals and their power in the first place. But the Second Festering Pit was deep in Onyx Lands. The Shogun, Akodo Kano, raised a mighty army from the Imperial Legions and the Lion to capture and seal the Pit, but they were defeated. Kanpeki was killed, during the battle I suppose.
“Many people thought, even after this defeat, with Kanpeki dead things would get better. But it got much, much worse. Famine struck again; I know our sensei went hungry. The Unicorn Lands, Scorpion Lands, and much of Crane lands were still tainted. The armies of the Onyx were able to rally in a way they had not in the previous years. They were weaker; three seals after all had been closed, and the forces of the Empire were united against them. But the Empire lost much of the ground that had been retaken. As children, we were sheltered from it, but even the Academy had to be evacuated twice. I remember my mother speaking of terrible fighting amongst the clans and between the Shogun and my Uncle Karasu, the Emerald Champion, as people tried to determine who to blame. Much later, we were told that a new being, as much oni as man, by the name of Yuhmi, had taken Kanpeki’s place. He had risen as the new Lord Onyx.
“Even so, the forces of the Empire were able to push back and capture the Second Festering Pit and seal it four years later. The Shogun died heroically in battle the following spring, and a new Shogun, Utaku Chikara, was picked by the Emperor. That ended the infighting also. It took another year to locate the site of the last seal: a secret temple in Moto lands. I don’t know how it was found. But the Unicorn took the site and sealed it four years ago this spring.”
Arahime took a sip of water from her drinking gourd. “The fighting did not stop, but hope survives. Yuhmi still controls the Onyx, though they draw their forces in towards the Shinomen and Toshi Ranbo. Harun...” she paused, trying to hide a blush she was somewhat certain that Tsukimi could see despite her blindfold. “...I mean, I have friends who were going to be deployed in the Imperial Legions. So the battle goes on. I do not know what will happen next. There were hopes to kill this oni that leads them, and to, somehow, purify the lands and reconcile the heavens with the earth again. The shugenja still preach of the failure of the samurai, but we do not know what to do.” She shakes her head. “I’m not a shugenja. Maybe not even a bushi any more. I don’t pretend to understand the Heavens, so I just try to serve with honor and follow in the path of my ancestors as best I can. That is everything I know.”
Shiba Tsukimi was silent throughout. When the young woman had finished, she gave a small, sad smile. “Appeasing the heavens. Even the Fire Dragon can forgive us, but how do we forgive ourselves for our failures?”
The pain in the old woman’s voice stirred Arahime to try to offer comfort. “All the clans failed, Tsukimi-sama. It was not just the Phoenix. All the clans are trying, now. If the heavens are still angry with us, they should tell us what to do. Otherwise, we can only do the best we can.”
The Phoenix Clan Champion closed her eyes. “Maybe they have told us, and we are too frightened to listen.”
Arahime did not know what to say. The sun had set and she gazed at the fire and the outlines of the old woman engulfed in shadow in silence.
After a time, the Champion caressed the katana she held one last time. “Thank you for sharing your meal and the news with me. It would have been nice to see Shunryu again, but I am certain for a Master of the Void, nothing is ever far from his gaze. I think...I would like to sleep now. Do you sing, young Crane?” The question was strange, and Tsukimi’s voice had grown weary. It seemed, for that moment, that the Champion of the Phoenix really was just an old, tired woman who wanted to rest.
“I know many songs,” Arahime confessed. “My mother loved to sing. But I am not very good at it.”
The old woman lay down on the ground near the fire, wrapping herself in her cloak. “Please sing to me, Arahime-chan. We have been away for so very long.” She rested her head on her hand, speaking in sleepy whisper.
Arahime blushed. Her voice was certainly nothing worthy of merit by the standards of the Kakita. But how can I deny such a request? She tried to think back to the songs her mother had sung her as a little child. One, she remembered, had come from her mother’s years at Kuyden Shiba among the Shiba Artisans.
I am a child of the sea.
In the pine-covered seashore which white waves wash upon,
there is a humble home, and smoke comes out from its window.
That is my dearest old home.
Right after I was born, I took my first bath in sea water,
heard the sound of the waves as lullabies,
breathed the sea air which was carried over a long distance,
and grew up as a child.
The strong smell of the sea is
like the fragrance of flowers
that never fades throughout the year.
The wind that sways the pine branches upon the shore
sounds like wonderful music to my ears.
She fell silent. The old woman had fallen asleep, curled up peacefully with the sword she bore. Arahime curled up on the other side of the fire, holding her own daisho protectively. Maybe she will be able to tell me how to get back to Second City in the morning.
Late Spring, 1237 – The Ivory Palace
The ruins were eerie now that Arahime was alone. From the steps, she could see the outline of the great city through the trees below her. She imagined it bustling with thousands of people. Warriors. Priests. Elders. Children. Thousands sacrificed for power, to summon the Goddess Kali-Ma. It was all silent and still now. Is that what it would be like in the Empire if Kanpeki had won? Is this what Yuhmi wants? She could not imagine.
The gates to the Palace had fallen down. Most of the gold that had leafed them had been scraped off by greedy looters…heimen or samurai, Arahime could not say. She could see places where jewels or sculptures had been broken away. A thick layer of undisturbed dust blanketed the remaining pieces of shattered furniture. The palace itself was dimly lit by shafts of sunlight piercing through holes in the roof. The ever-pervasive vines draped themselves near such pools of sunlight. Occasionally, she could hear the sound of a snake slithering away, or a rodent skitter out of her path, but otherwise, the palace was completely still.
“Hello?” Arahime called as she moved forward through the gloom.
There was no response.
The green gloom did not frighten her. There was an odd familiarity about the place. As a small child, she’d often been within the confines of the Imperial Palace in Otosan Uchi, though never in the forbidden areas reserved for the Imperial Household alone. Moving through these silent halls felt like she had passed the gate guards and was just venturing into new rooms in a place she had often thought of as home.
An unfamiliar broken polearm with three points lay on the floor before her, atop a large spot of smeared dark brown. A trishula, the voice in her head offered. It was quiet, hard to distinguish from her own thoughts, but Arahime could sense the sadness. This was Big Sister’s Home. No wonder it feels familiar. She took a drink of water from the gourd Yu’genta had given her and pushed on.
Led by instinct and half-forgotten memory, Arahime found herself approaching the columns of a vast audience chamber. A window made of diamonds of stained glass cast rainbows of light throughout the room. The walls were painted with many pictures of strange, alien gods and goddesses with many arms, holding flowers and weapons and musical instruments. But the paint was flaking off, and many of the tiny panes of glass were broken. Vines and flowers curled around some of the broken pillars and statues at the edges of the room, these blooming with tiny white flowers that looked like stars. The duelist walked forward slowly, gray eyes wide with wonder.
At one end of the chamber, below the stained glass, seven steps of scarlet tile led up to a similarly-tiled dais. Rotted pillars, still flaked here and there with gold, no longer held the broken lattice-work canopy that stood over the place. Jewels clearly had pocked the whole canopy over, but they had all been stripped now. One or two, glistening, remained, but Arahime refused to touch them. She drew her hand away. “This would have been amazing, once,” she said aloud.
“So pass Emperors and Maharajas and Gods and Men.” The voice was old, ancient even, hoarse from disuse.
Arahime whirled, trying to find its source. “Who are you?” she said, her eyes making patterns out of shadows. “Are you a Samurai of Rokugan?”
One of the piles of vines she had dismissed as an overgrown statue moved slowly, pulling away the vines that had concealed it with a wizened hand. “Yes.” The voice was like the sound of the wind rattling the dry leaves of autumn: peaceful, ancient. Arahime hurried closer to help.
Once the vines had been pulled away, the light of the stained glass window revealed a very old woman who had been almost completely hidden by the plants growing over her. A hood was pulled far down over her face; Arahime could barely see her wrinkled lips, pursed with thought. Her hands were webbed with veins. The cloak she wore covered her completely. It was ragged with the passage of time and the jungle’s humidity. A naked katana lay in her lap, her hand resting lightly on the black-wrapped tsuka decorated with a red tassel.
Arahime took a step back, remembering her courtesy. No matter who this person was, to have reached such an age, to have been here so long, surely demanded her respect. The Vānara spoke of a powerful and trustworthy samurai. The Crane gave the woman a very deep bow.
“Honored Elder,” Arahime said, presenting herself as is right for an inferior samurai. “My name is Kakita Arahime of the line of Kashiwa. I am honored to be in your presence.”
The old woman slowly reseathed her blade in a black saya encrusted with pearls. “So polite, Crane. It has been many years. What brings you to the Dead Kingdom?”
Arahime hesitated. She was not wearing her mons or kimono; she had nothing to explain herself but her daisho and her white Crane hair. If the old woman could see at all with her hood pulled that low. What can I say really? She settled on a simple version of the truth. “I am only just past my gempukku from the Kakita Academy, Honored Elder. I was sent to be Yojimbo to the Crane Ambassador to Zogeku, Doji Mushari. I…fell…overboard, and was lost in the jungle.”
The old woman smiled gently. “I can tell you are alone, Kakita Arahime-san. I can tell you are young. I can hear in your voice that you have not been in the Ruined Kingdom for long. You have the chi of a bushi trained. I can tell there is Shiba in your blood. These old eyes, if blind, see more than perhaps you might think. My name is Shiba Tsukimi. Have you heard of it?”
The Crane’s eyes widened with surprise and she threw herself down in the full bow appropriate to a Clan Champion. “Of course!” she offered. “The missing Champion of the Phoenix! I didn’t realize!”
Tsukimi made a gesture with her hand indicating that she should rise. As Arahime did so, the Phoenix Clan Champion then pulled back her hood. She wore a red blindfold over her eyes, and her long hair was thin and gray. She must be a hundred years old! Arahime realized with wonder.
“Come. Sit with me. Tell me of your journeys,” Shiba Tsukimi gestured to a place opposite her on the step. “There is wood there for a fire. You are hungry.” She pointed over at the shattered remnants of a cabinet across the room. “The mysteries of the Path of Man transcend the desire for base comforts like food or companionship. But such comforts are…nice…at my age.”
Arahime did as she was bid, forced to admit to herself that she was getting very tired and hungry anyway. Yu’genta had shown her how to start a fire, so she cleared a space around the ancient Champion and laid out a meal for them to share: manioc cakes and roasted poon tree seeds, lotus root baked in the coals and strips of dried bael fruit. She felt a little rush of nervousness as she presented the meal on a banana leaf to the Champion. She had walked in the halls of power of Otsan Uchi. Her mother served the Chosen. She had served as assistant instructor for the Emperor’s oldest son, and her younger brother was Kiseki’s classmate and best friend. But those relationships were all strictly bound by tradition and the laws of courtesy. Here, the Phoenix Champion was just a person, a strange old woman in a jungle temple. There were no rules for this.
For her part, Tsukimi seemed happy to let propriety fall, complimenting her fire-making skills and the food that had been prepared and telling a story of a time soon after her own gempukku as a bushi fighting the Yobanjin. With gentle encouragement, she drew Arahime’s story from her. Arahime told her of her family and being sent to the Colonies, of Doji Mushari and the arranged marriage, and being thrown overboard by Arashi Parushi. Of surviving, wounded, and of the Vānara who cared for her and brought her to the palace. Tsukimi listened attentively through it all.
“And how goes the war?” Tsukimi asked when it she was done. “I was in Second City with Isawa Shunryu when the Emperor’s edict was declared, ordering the surrender of the Elemental Masters. We decided that he should deliver himself to the Emperor’s mercy and join the Brotherhood, and he has told me of the affairs of the Phoenix Clan. But he is closely watched and rarely comes with news from the rest of the Empire.”
Like most of her classmates, Arahime had eagerly followed every rumor of the war that she could glean from her sensei at the Academy, and what little news letters from her parents or Uncle Karasu might reveal. But she was still considered a child until her gempukku, and then she had been sent far away. “I don’t know what you already know Shiba-sama. There is so much, and for most, I only know what I have been taught…”
The Shiba’s lips curled upward as she warmed her hands by the small fire although it was not cold. “Then tell me everything. For, by your years, I think you were not even born when the Emperor’s Judgement upon the Phoenix was announced, and it would be interesting to hear the perspective History will make of it.
Kakita Arahime drew her knees up. Where to begin? “I will try, Shiba-sama.” She took a deep breath, focused on the firelight, and began the tale.
“I suppose I can start at the Winter Court where the Edict that deposed the Council of Elemental Masters was passed. The Lord of the Dragon had called the clans together to Winter Court before the Emperor to unite. That is where my father, Ide Kousuda, met my mother, Kakita Kyoumi, and married into the Crane. I was born the following year.
“There had been a peace, but I know fighting began that spring. Daigotsu Kanpeki, the Onyx Lord, struck with great fury the summer after the Winter Court. Thousands died. But the greatest target of his wrath was the Scorpion who had betrayed him. He was thwarted by the Scorpion Daimyo, Bayushi Nitoshi, who struck at him with some terrible poison. It did not kill Kanpeki, but made him insane, shattering his mind but leaving his body living. Nitoshi was killed for it, most of the Scorpion that had followed Kanpeki were slaughtered by the Onyx forces. After that, the Onyx armies became erratic, misguided. They began fighting among themselves, or moving in strange directions for no reason, as if the forces of Jigoku did not know how to fight together without one will to guide them. They were still terribly strong though, and the lands suffered greatly.
“At that winter court, thanks to the forgiveness and grace of the Fire Dragon, it was learned that the seals that bound Jigoku could be resealed. I know they first tried the ritual at the location of the seal in Crane Lands the following spring. There was a terrible battle as the Onyx tried to stop them. It took two more years for the shugenja to figure out how to reseal the site of the seal in Mantis lands. I am told the Phoenix Shugenja who still served were able to raise it from the ocean floor while the fleets kept the shadow-tainted sea monsters away. As each seal closed, the power of Jigoku grew less, and that, combined with the Onyx Lord’s mad behavior, greatly weakened the forces of the Onyx.
“The third seal was deep in Shinomen forest. The Crab were able to create a huge siege as a bluff, Sensei Kenshin said, while a small scouting party was able to locate the site itself and seal it. But when they did so, they realized that there were two other seals...that there had once been a seal for each element, but the remaining two seals had not been previously known.
“The year I started at the Academy, the Dragon determined that the site of one of the remaining seals was the Second Festering Pit in Scorpion Lands. It was Kanpeki’s study of this seal, broken by the fall of the Destroyer, that led to his learning of the Seals and their power in the first place. But the Second Festering Pit was deep in Onyx Lands. The Shogun, Akodo Kano, raised a mighty army from the Imperial Legions and the Lion to capture and seal the Pit, but they were defeated. Kanpeki was killed, during the battle I suppose.
“Many people thought, even after this defeat, with Kanpeki dead things would get better. But it got much, much worse. Famine struck again; I know our sensei went hungry. The Unicorn Lands, Scorpion Lands, and much of Crane lands were still tainted. The armies of the Onyx were able to rally in a way they had not in the previous years. They were weaker; three seals after all had been closed, and the forces of the Empire were united against them. But the Empire lost much of the ground that had been retaken. As children, we were sheltered from it, but even the Academy had to be evacuated twice. I remember my mother speaking of terrible fighting amongst the clans and between the Shogun and my Uncle Karasu, the Emerald Champion, as people tried to determine who to blame. Much later, we were told that a new being, as much oni as man, by the name of Yuhmi, had taken Kanpeki’s place. He had risen as the new Lord Onyx.
“Even so, the forces of the Empire were able to push back and capture the Second Festering Pit and seal it four years later. The Shogun died heroically in battle the following spring, and a new Shogun, Utaku Chikara, was picked by the Emperor. That ended the infighting also. It took another year to locate the site of the last seal: a secret temple in Moto lands. I don’t know how it was found. But the Unicorn took the site and sealed it four years ago this spring.”
Arahime took a sip of water from her drinking gourd. “The fighting did not stop, but hope survives. Yuhmi still controls the Onyx, though they draw their forces in towards the Shinomen and Toshi Ranbo. Harun...” she paused, trying to hide a blush she was somewhat certain that Tsukimi could see despite her blindfold. “...I mean, I have friends who were going to be deployed in the Imperial Legions. So the battle goes on. I do not know what will happen next. There were hopes to kill this oni that leads them, and to, somehow, purify the lands and reconcile the heavens with the earth again. The shugenja still preach of the failure of the samurai, but we do not know what to do.” She shakes her head. “I’m not a shugenja. Maybe not even a bushi any more. I don’t pretend to understand the Heavens, so I just try to serve with honor and follow in the path of my ancestors as best I can. That is everything I know.”
Shiba Tsukimi was silent throughout. When the young woman had finished, she gave a small, sad smile. “Appeasing the heavens. Even the Fire Dragon can forgive us, but how do we forgive ourselves for our failures?”
The pain in the old woman’s voice stirred Arahime to try to offer comfort. “All the clans failed, Tsukimi-sama. It was not just the Phoenix. All the clans are trying, now. If the heavens are still angry with us, they should tell us what to do. Otherwise, we can only do the best we can.”
The Phoenix Clan Champion closed her eyes. “Maybe they have told us, and we are too frightened to listen.”
Arahime did not know what to say. The sun had set and she gazed at the fire and the outlines of the old woman engulfed in shadow in silence.
After a time, the Champion caressed the katana she held one last time. “Thank you for sharing your meal and the news with me. It would have been nice to see Shunryu again, but I am certain for a Master of the Void, nothing is ever far from his gaze. I think...I would like to sleep now. Do you sing, young Crane?” The question was strange, and Tsukimi’s voice had grown weary. It seemed, for that moment, that the Champion of the Phoenix really was just an old, tired woman who wanted to rest.
“I know many songs,” Arahime confessed. “My mother loved to sing. But I am not very good at it.”
The old woman lay down on the ground near the fire, wrapping herself in her cloak. “Please sing to me, Arahime-chan. We have been away for so very long.” She rested her head on her hand, speaking in sleepy whisper.
Arahime blushed. Her voice was certainly nothing worthy of merit by the standards of the Kakita. But how can I deny such a request? She tried to think back to the songs her mother had sung her as a little child. One, she remembered, had come from her mother’s years at Kuyden Shiba among the Shiba Artisans.
I am a child of the sea.
In the pine-covered seashore which white waves wash upon,
there is a humble home, and smoke comes out from its window.
That is my dearest old home.
Right after I was born, I took my first bath in sea water,
heard the sound of the waves as lullabies,
breathed the sea air which was carried over a long distance,
and grew up as a child.
The strong smell of the sea is
like the fragrance of flowers
that never fades throughout the year.
The wind that sways the pine branches upon the shore
sounds like wonderful music to my ears.
She fell silent. The old woman had fallen asleep, curled up peacefully with the sword she bore. Arahime curled up on the other side of the fire, holding her own daisho protectively. Maybe she will be able to tell me how to get back to Second City in the morning.