InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Lord of the West ❯ Paradox ( Chapter 3 )

Author's Note: I would like to remind readers at this point that this story takes place somewhere around the middle of the last season in the anime. At this point in time the near-completed Shikon No Tama is in Naraku's possession. The secret of Naraku's seeming immortality is now known: he has hidden his mortal heart in an infant incarnation of his self. The baby is being protected by the demoness Kanna, who has her hands full because now everyone is out to destroy Naraku's heart---including Kouga, Sesshoumaru, Kikyou and Kagura, as well as Inuyasha's group. Kagome bears the last Shikon shard needed to complete the jewel.

 

{+} {+} {+} LORD OF THE WEST {+} {+} {+}

 

{+} {+} Chapter 3: Paradox {+} {+}

 

“The first Seer,” Jakken began, “was with the Tatesei race even before they moved to the valley where they live now. I don't know who she was; only that she was a woman, and that she gave her people that prophecy you've heard of.”

 

The imp paused, because Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed at the mention of the prophecy. But then the demon lord turned his face out toward the garden and replied, “I am willing to listen now. Tell me what came after.”

 

Jakken swiped at his brow with his sleeve, very relieved that his master's temper was not about to ignite.

 

“Eh . . . right,” he responded, bowing. “As I was saying, the first Seer left the Tatesei with a prophecy. The Tatesei consider their Seers to be very sacred. They were said to `speak with the Breath of God.' The next Seer was not born for another century. He lived during your father's time. He gave no prophecy that anyone knows of, but he did see the future. A blind man could've seen the future he saw . . .”

 

Sesshoumaru lowered his head, frowning. He took another sip of tea and then said, “He saw that the Wise were going to rise to power and betray the Inu Youkai, my kin.”

 

Jakken squatted down on his stumpy little knees.

 

“Yes and no,” he answered, holding up a finger and looking rather professorial. “The Wise had already risen to power by that time. The Seer was the only one warning the Tatesei king that one day there would be retribution for the betrayal.” Jakken paused, smirking. “And he was right, wasn't he? Now the Wise are dead, and you're Lord of the West.”

 

“Don't waste time flattering me, Jakken,” Sesshoumaru cut in, watching the moonlight shift across the ice. “This is not a matter that I can allow to slide. The Tatesei warriors . . . They did not want me to find out that this Seer existed.”

 

“I'm getting there, I'm getting there,” Jakken stammered, breaking a sweat. Even as a pup, patience had never been Sesshoumaru's strong point. Jakken still had scars from the bite marks to prove it. “What I'm trying to say is the second Seer warned the Tatesei over and over again that betraying your father was sheer folly. He predicted many years of great prosperity for the city of Reiyama, and then he warned that the son of the Youkai lord would return and destroy their way of life.” The imp's voice trailed off.

 

“And the third Seer?” Sesshoumaru prompted, disliking Jakken's halting narrative.

 

Jakken looked slightly crestfallen.

 

“Well, you see, there isn't that much to tell,” he said apologetically. “There was no third Seer. This mortal you've found is the first in many years.”

 

Sesshoumaru sighed faintly.

“If that is all, you may go,” he told Jakken.

 

The little imp bowed low and trundled off into the warmer palace rooms. He pulled his robes tightly around his small, shivering frame, muttering as he went.

 

Sesshoumaru stretched his arm out in front of him, catching in his hand the snow that now fell beyond the shelter of the roof. The small flurries gathered in his palm, white on ivory.

 

`Do I interfere?' he mused. `After two years of watching from afar while the boy king Asano rules in my stead . . . it seems that I may have missed much. Perhaps too much. Yet to whom do I go? To the king?'

 

The shadows interspersed among the bamboo stalks in the garden offered him no counsel.

 

“My Lord.”

 

Sesshoumaru neither moved nor spoke; a tall statue with its marble arm outstretched to catch the snow. Jakken had returned, and the white demon's silence indicated that he was listening.

 

“My lord . . .” The imp approached somewhat hesitantly. “I've just remembered . . . What I said before . . . was not entirely true . . . It may be that there was another prophecy.”

 

Sesshoumaru lowered his head ever so slightly.

 

“It `may' be?” he murmured.

 

“The second Seer,” Jakken told him, rubbing his nonexistent chin with his thumb and forefinger, “mysteriously fell ill---at a time when he was warning the king not to betray the Inu Youkai. He died young.”

 

Sesshoumaru stared at the snow gathering in his hand.

 

“Of course,” he murmured. “He had to die. The king valued the `Breath of God' more than any counsel the Wise could give.”

 

“They were afraid,” Jakken agreed. “They were afraid the second Seer would sway their king's course of action. They hated the Inu Youkai and wanted them dead, but they could not act without the consent of their ruler, whom the kirin had ordained. I believe they poisoned the Seer to keep him from stopping the king's betrayal of your father's people. And they succeeded: the Seer fell very ill indeed. In the throes of his fever, he became delirious. But his wide-eyed ravings were not as incoherent as the Wise would've liked. They made sure that the king never heard them. His words were jumbled, but they were pieced together to mean essentially this:

 

“A great tree of two boughs stands in the valley. Strong is the branch of the Tatesei. But take care what power you bring to this place; do not expose the roots, which have long lain dark beneath the earth. Do not wake the sleeping blood; for then you wake your doom . . .”

 

Sesshoumaru closed his hand into a fist. Clenched tight against the warmth of his flesh, the snow melted and ran in rivulets down his arm, soaking the edges of his sleeve.

 

“This means nothing to me,” he responded. “I see only that the Tatesei are obsessed with the number two. In the first prophecy they saw two rivers and predicted doom as well.” He paused as a thought occurred to him. “If the king never heard the Seer's words, then how do you know them?”

 

Jakken nodded sagely.

 

“An excellent question, milord. You see, the king didn't go near the Seer because he was told the man had a contagious disease---by the Wise of course. But the king's daughter did.”

 

Sesshoumaru's lip curled with disdain.

 

“Inuyasha's mother,” he said, wiping the melted snow off on the folds of his robes. “So she gave the Seer's words to my father, no doubt. Why else would he keep a human pet unless she was useful?”

 

“Yes, well . . .” Jakken prudently chose to skirt around that particular issue. “When the princess went to live with your father in his palace, the Seer fled with her. It was in your father's house that she cared for the Seer and nursed him back to health. Your father kept the second prophecy among the family documents, along with the first one.”

 

Sesshoumaru turned away from the garden, frowning down at his servant.

 

“The poison did not kill this man?” he asked. “You told me that he died young.”

 

“Ah . . .” Jakken tapped his fingertips against each other nervously. “He didn't die of the poison. But by the time he had recovered, the war between the Tatesei and the Inu Youkai was almost over. By this time, the Wise had taken the princess and her little half-breed son back to Reiyama, and they had recaptured the Seer as well. It was too late for him to stop the war from happening, so they decided to make use of him. They brought him out onto the battlefield with them. Seers have strange powers, you see. They can see more than visions. If one touches you, they can see your memories and thoughts as well. The Wise had just defeated your father, but before he died they wanted to use the Seer to learn something from him. What it was, I have no idea . . . and at any rate they didn't succeed. The Lord of the West died . . . and then you came . . .” Here Jakken's narrative faltered yet again.

 

But Sesshoumaru had heard enough.

 

“I came and killed them all,” the white demon finished. “I left none alive there, so the Seer was killed with them.” He went silent for a moment, frowning, and then arrived at a decision.

 

“Where are you going?” Jakken asked as his master swept past him. “You're going to find the Seer you encountered?”

 

Sesshoumaru was across the terrace and into the palace chambers.

 

“I am going to see what it is the Tatesei are hiding from me,” he answered without looking back. “I will go alone. See to Rin.”

 

Jakken was left standing on the wooden deck, looking forlorn and put-upon.

 

{+} {+} {+}

 

The Present Era

 

“Two rivers I see: one flowing alongside the other. They are two great Lines; theirs is a flow to span the Ages. One is a line of Youkai, strong and terrible. The other is a long line of sorcerers and kings---a race guarded by a shield of spirits. Where these rivers meet, I foresee the end of this Age, for a battle which began long ago shall at last be lost.

And that which was broken shall at last be destroyed.”

 

Kagome stared at the words embossed on the plaque in front of her, feeling as if she'd slipped into another dimension. Behind her, the last of her classmates were filing off the bus, chatting and laughing as if alternate futures were too commonplace to be worthy of notice.

 

“Gather around, everyone,” her teacher was saying. As the throng of uniformed students gravitated toward him, he began taking roll. “Asagi, Atonashi, Ayako . . .”

 

The buses had unloaded on the street right outside the capitol building, which was surrounded by a very ornately-carved stone wall. The building itself was very high and made entirely of some kind of shiny black stone. It was a good twenty stories tall, with transparent elevators rising and descending at each of its four corners. To Kagome it looked sort of like an obelisk, which fit in pretty well with her impressions of the rest of the city.

 

She'd spent the entire bus ride through Reiyama with her nose pressed up against the glass windows, taking it all in. She wasn't sure what she'd expected to find, but this wasn't it. She'd expected to see distorted influences of the Feudal Era everywhere---perhaps pagodas with tiers that floated on magnetic fields instead of resting on pillars. She'd half-expected to see cars being towed by enslaved Youkai souls, or gray-clad Wise milling around everywhere like agents in the Matrix.

 

Instead, everything seemed quite modern and normal. The people walking the streets were ordinary people. They drove cars; they wore skirts and suits; they certainly didn't have any ghostly servants trailing after them. The architecture of the buildings was simple and professional, like any modern Japanese city. However, this appearance of normalcy unnerved Kagome even more than anything abnormal might have. Three years of experience with ordinary-looking peasants who transformed into enormous bug-like carnivores tended to make a girl a little paranoid.

 

And then she'd gotten off the bus and seen the plaque, and she knew with a sinking feeling in her gut that this was where the weirdness was going to begin. The plaque seemed to be displaying some kind of prophecy about Reiyama, because it mentioned a “line of sorcerers and kings---a race guarded by a shield of spirits.” That was the Tatesei race, all right. And it spoke of another “great Line” . . . a line of Youkai. That had to be the Inu Youkai---Inuyasha's family . . .

 

“Higurashi . . . Higurashi?”

 

“She's over there, Sensei.”

 

Kagome startled out of her reverie to see one of her classmates pointing at her.

 

“Oh, sorry,” she told them. “I was just a little distracted, reading this.”

 

Her teacher beamed at her over the sea of teenagers' heads.

 

“I'm glad to see you taking such an interest in our nation's history,” he praised her.

 

Pasting a fake look of curiosity on her face, Kagome joined her classmates in following their teacher to the capitol's main gate. There they were met by a group of security people wearing black suits and rather dour expressions, who---after a few moments of intercommunication via their tiny phones and earpieces---caused the mechanized gate to slide open.

 

`This is nothing new,' Kagome reminded herself. `Every capitol building has secret service bodyguards and a whole lot of security.'

 

The students were half-way up the long walkway leading to the building's entrance when they were met by their tour guide, whose expression was a whole lot less dour than the guards'.

 

“Welcome,” she told them all, beaming, “to our nation's capitol. Please stay with me and don't fall behind, because people who lag tend to get---”

 

“---shot,” one of the boys near Kagome muttered. The tour guide's smile never wavered as she waited patiently for the tittering that followed to subside.

 

“They tend to get lost,” she finished. “Now, if you'll walk this way and look to your right . . .”

 

In the next hour, the students received a tour of what appeared to be a completely normal government building, full of offices and long halls with pictures of various officials lining them. Everyone was busy pushing papers or had their phones glued to their ears, and no one seemed the least bit concerned with anything remotely relevant to magic. All of this normalcy was making Kagome tenser by the minute.

 

Then there was a question and answer session with the local governor, in which Kagome didn't participate because any of the questions she really wanted to ask were far too weird. What she really wanted to know was the history of how Reiyama had come to be the capitol of Japan---so that she could go back and fix whatever it was she'd done.

 

It wasn't until the class was ushered into the gardens in the courtyard to take lunch that the real weirdness became apparent. The courtyard was indoors, with a very high-domed ceiling of gold-tinted glass over it. It was filled with statues---one of the strangest assortments of statues that Kagome had ever seen. While the other students sat and ate on benches along the walkways, she wandered from pedestal to pedestal, reading the plaques there and trying to make some sense of them.

 

The first one Kagome studied was the statue of a samurai warrior. His helm and attire were excellent replicas of what she had seen two years ago on the warriors of Reiyama---whom Sesshoumaru had slaughtered without mercy. The statue was carved from some kind of shiny black stone, and when Kagome peered up into the figure's face it gave the effect that his eyes were luminous as any living man's. Frowning, she lowered her gaze to the plaque on the pedestal:

 

“Raiiru-o-sama: The White King; He Who Shook the Earth”

 

The date below this rather cryptic description was, according to Kagome's quick mental calculations, a good forty years after the last time she'd been to Reiyama---years in the Feudal Era, at any rate. By modern terms, there were several centuries between the present and when she'd last set foot in the Tatesei city. Pondering this was very confusing, and the warm sun glinting down through the semitransparent ceiling was giving her a headache. Time to move to the next statue.

 

The statues had evidently been placed in the garden for purely aesthetic reasons and not for historical instruction, because they seemed to be in no particular chronological order. The next one was also the life-sized figure of a man, but he wore a modern business suit and a sharp military crew-cut. He was tall, by Kagome's estimate, and very dignified-looking, but his sculpted eyes seemed cold and calculating.

 

“I'd say it's a good likeness, except for the eyes.”

 

Kagome jumped a little, startled. She had just been bending to take a closer look at the fine engravings on the statue's pedestal, and when she turned to see who had spoken, she found herself confronted with the man the statue represented. He was gazing up at the statue's face, wearing a very similar expression.

 

“I'm sorry Sir, you startled me,” she told him, bowing. “I was just starting to read---”

 

“The description?” the man finished for her. “Allow me. I'm Tatesei Sano, president of Tatesei Systems.”

 

It took every ounce of Kagome's willpower not to start backing away from him. Even though common sense told her that to him she was just an ordinary schoolgirl, instinct made her want to run. Two years ago, Kagome, Inuyasha, Miroku and Shippou had come face to face with the Tatesei sorcerers who called themselves the Council of the Wise, and experienced firsthand what it was to fight against necromancers. It was not an experience that she cared to repeat.

 

This man's resemblance to Reikotsu, the leader of the Wise, was almost perfect.

 

There were minor differences, of course---his navy blue business suit was a far cry from the gray robes of the Wise, and he wore no hood over his close-cropped dark brown hair. His gray eyes, which Kagome had thought piercing and cold when she saw him in the Feudal Era, smiled at her through his blue-rimmed spectacles. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.

 

Reikotsu-of-the-Feudal-Era had died when Miroku deflected his own spell back at him. Then Naraku had assumed the dead sorcerer's shape in a plot to trick the Wise into stealing jewel shards for him. That, of course, was a whole different story. The point was that apparently the necromancer had been reincarnated and now ran what was apparently a very successful company called “Tatesei systems.” Kagome was vaguely surprised that Reikotsu had been allowed to come back in human form---with all the bad karma he'd racked up a cockroach would've been more appropriate.

 

Blissfully unaware of Kagome's reproachful thoughts, Tatesei Sano was giving her some history of his company's foundation. She forced herself to pay attention. From listening, she could see that Tatesei Systems was a perfectly normal modern enterprise---completely ordinary save for the fact of its immense success. Apparently the company had great influence over the government, and practically controlled Reiyama---which made perfect sense. The governor himself was one of Sano's distant cousins. When the president paused, Kagome used it as a polite way of changing the subject.

 

“Your family is very successful,” she remarked. “But the Tatesei family was successful long before they founded the company, right? How far back can you trace your lineage?”

 

Sano did not seem the least bit suspicious; instead her flattery seemed to be working.

 

“You must like studying history,” he replied, nodding toward the statues. “Come with me, and I'll give you a little tour of the garden. The statues tell our story, you see---the story of the Tatesei Line.”

 

Kagome followed the businessman down the path, ignoring the curious glances of her fellow students. If they wanted to think she was brown-nosing some congressman, let them. There were greater things at stake here than her reputation.

 

The path wound around a cluster of bamboo and over a small arched bridge. With a jolt of deja-vu, Kagome realized that this bridge could easily have been one of the very bridges she and Inuyasha had walked over in the Reiyama of the Feudal Era. They skirted around the enormous bronze carving of a dragon breathing fire, and then Sano stopped in front of a sculpted woman wearing a miko's robes. She had very long, straight hair and a proud, high-boned face. Over her robes she wore a man's armor.

 

“This woman was a priestess in the time before the Feudal Era,” Sano explained, gesturing toward the statue. “In the Tatesei bloodline---her bloodline---there were people who foretold the future, whom we called `Seers.' She was the first.”

 

Kagome stared, dumbfounded. She knew this woman. She had seen this priestess in a cave once, petrified by time and magic to remain eternally locked in the coils of a mighty demon. This was Midoriko, from whom the Shikon No Tama was born. Of course, Sano had no idea Kagome knew this, so she forced her expression to remain neutral as she asked her next question.

 

“So she's one of your ancestors?”

 

Sano nodded.

 

“She gave us the prophecy you may have seen on the wall near the main gate. Did you see it?” he asked.

 

“I . . . saw it,” Kagome answered. “What does it mean?”

 

Sano leaned back against a pillar, folding his arms across his blue-clad chest.

 

“I'm not sure whether it's true or not, but it was said that there were once such things as Youkai, and they were the scourge of Japan,” he answered. “The Inu Youkai in particular were the enemies of the Tatesei. Their lord laid claim to our lands even though we arrived in this valley first. He assumed control over our borders and demanded tribute from us. Eventually we rose up against them and defeated them.” Sano paused, shrugging slightly. “Purportedly the Tatesei had sorcerers among them who controlled the dead, and that was how the Inu Youkai were defeated. I myself don't believe it, but it was recorded in the Feudal Era that the prophecy was fulfilled. I don't believe in Youkai, either, but I do believe that a warlike tribe calling themselves `Inu Youkai' did exist and did indeed oppose my people. The `two great Lines'---the Tatesei and the Inu Youkai, met and eventually came to war. The prophecy warned us beforehand that when `the two rivers'---the two Lines---met, the Age would come to an end.

 

“Legend tells of a Youkai-human half-breed, born to the so-called `Lord of the West' and a princess of our people. Well, you can imagine how this fueled those Dark Age superstitions, and the Tatesei decided that the young hanyou's birth foreshadowed their own doom. They thought that somehow his destiny would be tied to the destruction of Reiyama---and to the breaking of the Tatesei Line.” Here Sano shrugged again. “It was probably some poor child born deformed, and so they blamed their troubles on him. All of this sounded more like a witch hunt to me than some epic battle between mortals and demons.”

 

Again Kagome prudently kept her mouth shut. At least the part about Inuyasha being innocent of the destruction was true. But she wanted to keep the businessman warmed to the subject of the prophecy, so she pointed to the next statue and asked, “And what about this one?”

 

It was a statue of a short youth with a very gentle expression and a regal bearing. He wore the raiment of a king of the Feudal Era. Kagome could tell that he was Tatesei by the traditional long plait that hung down his back with pearls in it.

 

“That is Asano-o-sama, the fifth king of Reiyama,” Sano replied. “He was young when he rose to the throne . . . and young when he died.”

 

Kagome blanched. Gentle, noble Asano---the boy king whom even Sesshoumaru had deemed worthy to rule the Tatesei---dead? If the boy had died young . . . then whatever had happened to change the future so drastically must have occurred because of events surrounding his death. This was too much of a shock---Kagome plunked down on a nearby bench.

 

“How did he die?” she managed to ask.

 

“Are you quite all right, young lady?” Sano asked solicitously, peering down at her over the lower rims of his glasses. “Does that upset you?”

 

`More than you know,' Kagome thought, but all she said was: “No, it's okay. Please go on.”

 

“Very well,” Sano said, redirecting his piercing gaze toward the statue. “At that time there was a great eruption of Reiyama---the highest of the mountains surrounding the valley, after which this city was named. Lava and ash rained for miles all around, and for a long time all of western Japan was covered in it. But for some strange reason the city of Reiyama was spared and untouched. It was written by a Tatesei scribe that the boy king threw himself into the volcano as a sacrifice to save his people.” Sano paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Now, I'm a bit of a skeptic, but I can't really say it didn't work. By all physical laws the city should have been buried by the eruption.”

 

`So that's it,' Kagome thought. `That's the event I need to change to make things normal again. Somehow I have to go back and convince Asano not to do such a thing.'

 

“It's a pity history had to lose so fine a king, though,” Sano mused. “He was the one who put an end to the reign of the priest-caste who called themselves the `Wise'. He was the one who freed his people from ignorance and religious oppression.”

 

For a moment Kagome's head reeled from the absurdity of it all. Here she sat in an alternate future in the capitol of Japan listening to a reincarnated necromancer telling her that he didn't believe in sorcery.

 

“When he died, another young lord became the sixth king,” Sano went on. “And it was then that the Tatesei Line was set on the road to progress that it's still traveling today. The eruption of the mountain exposed an extraordinary new kind of liquid metal that we call `ryunochi.' With it we were eventually able to design thin films and conductive plasmas like none the world had ever seen.”

 

“And this sixth king . . . was this man?” Kagome asked nodding toward the next statue. It was the statue of the samurai warrior, Raiiru. In its hand, the figure gripped a katana by the blade. The lines running down his hand and onto the blade indicating blood seemed eerily realistic with the reddish glow of the noonday sun through the stained glass above.

 

“That is Raiiru, the White King,” Sano agreed. “He led his people to a new way of life, forsaking all practice of spirituality for the way of the warrior and of metal-shaping.”

 

The businessman stepped closer to the statue and ran one long-fingered hand down the length of the blade.

 

“His statue is carved from ryunochi. It would not shatter, not even if a nuclear bomb were to hit it. Now, this next statue---”

 

“What about the prophecy?” Kagome interrupted, no longer caring about seeming nonchalant. “You said it was fulfilled. But `that which was broken' didn't shatter. The Tatesei Line, which your Seer predicted would be broken and finally shattered because of the birth of the half-breed, was never broken and never destroyed. So the prophecy never really came true, did it?”

 

Sano frowned.

 

“That's another place where history is diluted by myth. The prophecy, it seemed, wasn't referring to our Line, but the Inu Youkai Line. After the Tatesei defeated the Inu Youkai, that Line was broken. And then . . . there's a mythos that says only two remained. You've never heard the legend of the White Brothers?”

 

Kagome swallowed against the sudden tightening in her throat.

 

“I've forgotten,” she managed, folding her hands in her lap to conceal a sudden onset of nerves.

 

Sano removed his hand from the statue and turned to face her, folding his arms again.

 

“Some old records say that after the Inu Youkai Line was broken, only two brothers of that blood remained. They were said to be white of hair and pale of skin, like all the moon spirits in the old tales. One attacked the city of Reiyama in a desperate attempt to avenge his fallen kin. The other . . . the other stopped him. And then both disappeared for a long time, and the Tatesei lived in peace. Then they reappeared, returning to the valley not to slaughter the Tatesei but to wage war on each other. It was said that one of them stole from the Tatesei something very valuable. One pursued the other into the caverns of the mountain. Then it erupted, and neither brother was ever seen again. The sixth king, Raiiru, was said to have seen them at the last, fighting each other even as the fire rained down from the sky. Maybe they were so full of hatred for each other that they didn't care if they lived or died.”

 

Kagome's eyes had gone wide with shock.

 

“So . . . because the half-breed was born, he fought his brother, and they died,” she said softly. “And then the broken Inu Youkai Line was finally destroyed.”

 

Sano nodded.

 

“That's it, I guess,” he answered. “The White Brothers died, and with them the Inu Youkai. Somehow their deaths seemed to mark the end of all appearances of Youkai in historical records. No demons were seen afterward, anywhere in Japan. And Raiiru became king, and ushered in a new age of metal and progress.”

 

“Higurashi? Higurashi?”

 

Kagome's head snapped up like a dreamer waking as she heard her teacher call her name. But this dream was a nightmare, and it didn't end with waking. Mechanically, she rose to her feet, and hurried back to join her classmates after stammering a rushed thank-you to the businessman for his time. In a way, she was relieved that Tatesei Sano hadn't had time to show her any more. She didn't think she could bear it.

 

There was no doubt in her mind as to who the White Brothers were. If nothing else, the manner of their death told it all. Kagome had always been afraid that the hatred between Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru might bring them to this. Then Sesshoumaru found Rin, and he began to change. Then he found Tokijin, and no longer coveted Inuyasha's inheritance of Tetsusaiga.

 

But now it seemed there was something over which the two brothers would fight.

 

Something for which they would die.

 

And somehow, Kagome had done something in the past to cause this.

 

{+} {+} {+}

 

The Feudal Era

 

The inner sanctum of the Temple was dark and cold, and smelled of ash and stone. The Seer sat upon a divan in the shadows with her cloak drawn about her shoulders for warmth. The room was dank and windowless save for a single shaft of light beaming down from a square opening in the roof. The light fell upon a stone pedestal in the center of the room. On it was a round, shallow bowl full of water.

 

The Seer's gray eyes avoided the water. She knew that if she looked, she would See.

 

But she did not want to See.

 

Outside, she knew, the snow was falling quietly. The Tatesei people sat around blazing fires, bedecked with jewels and well at ease in the company of loved ones. And she cursed the gift that condemned her to remain in this place.

 

A soft tread fell in the hallway. She heard its muted echo, but did not move.

 

A tall figure slid through the shadows. She did not move as he approached, because he was not human and there was nowhere she could run from him. The priests of the newer, gentler Temple Order had allowed the demon in without protest, because he was Lord of the West and he held the lives of the Tatesei in the palm of his one hand. She didn't look at the water in the bowl, because she didn't want to see how the demon would kill her.

 

The Lord of the West halted his slow, measured approach to stand before the bowl and the shaft of light.

 

“You are the Seer of Reiyama,” he said softly.

 

She shuddered, revolted that so soft and cultured a voice could come from a creature of such violence and greed. There was no need to answer; he had not meant it as a question. But then he posed another question that she could not ignore.

 

“Will you serve me?” he asked simply.

 

Then she turned to look at him, her gaze piercing even from beneath the blue veil that she wore to hide her face.

 

`Here it is,' she thought bitterly. `The animal bears some semblance to a man. He desires not my death, but the enslavement of the gift that is my curse.'

 

Aloud, she answered, “I know you, demon. You think yourself above humanity, yet what you desire is no different from what men desire of me. You want to know what I See. You want me to unveil the past and so unveil your future.”

 

He moved forward into the light---cold and pale and cruel, with the grace of a lion stalking its prey.

 

“Yes,” he said, in that deadly soft whisper. “I know that the priests imprison you here to hide your truths from the people, because truth is a deadly weapon indeed. Yet I offer you freedom, if you will serve only me.”

 

The Seer eyed him coldly.

 

“You offer me another cage,” she told him, “and in return you demand I belong to you.”

 

The white demon's face remained calm and impassive.

 

“Yes,” he said again.

 

Then he held out a hand. It passed through the light above the scrying-bowl; a knife-slash of white against the stark gray stone.

 

“Come, then,” he told her, “if one cage is not so different from another.”

 

She made no move to rise.

 

“When they brought me back to the city,” she said, “they broke both my knees.”

 

The demon stared at her for a moment.

 

Then, with a hiss of steel, he drew the sword at his side.

 

“Did you really think,” he asked slowly, “that I would give you a choice?”

 

{END OF CHAPTER 3}