InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Lord of the West ❯ A Thorn In His Side ( Chapter 13 )

Author's Note: “Jyaki” refers to the aura given off by a demon's power---not to be confused with “kehai,” which is a more general term referring to the “residue” left behind by any source of spiritual power. Uh . . . and if you don't know what a chibi plushie is, well . . . it's high time you visited an anime convention somewhere . . .

 

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

 

{+} Chapter 12: A Thorn In His Side {+}

 

He swam back toward consciousness through a sea of darkness. He heard voices speaking around him, and more than anything else his perception of the sound gradually returned awareness to his body.

 

“I tire of this, Nee-chan.”

 

“This is madness, and you know it.”

 

The first speaker was a man; the second a woman whose voice trembled.

 

Slowly, Inuyasha's eyelids lifted. The travois that he lay upon had been set down upon a long, flat boulder still dripping with the snow melted by his captors' hands. They had bound him into the sling, which under ordinary circumstances would have been easy enough to remedy, but his body felt leaden and weak. Strangely enough, there was no pain, though he felt as if he could sleep for ages.

 

“Why do you fight this?” The man's voice was low with anger. “You shouldn't deny what you are.”

 

Inuyasha rolled his head to the side. The world spun crazily as he did so, but after a moment his eyes regained their focus and he saw the woman wringing her hands. There was something inherently pathetic and wretched about the gesture. Even if she was opposing the man's agenda, she probably wasn't going to be of much help. Escape, of course, was Inuyasha's first priority.

 

“I am human,” the woman insisted in a low voice. “You are the one who has forgotten what you are.”

 

She caught sight of Inuyasha staring at her and quickly looked away. Inuyasha recalled hazily that this was the Seer, whom Irusei and his men had stolen back from Sesshoumaru. Seeing her conscious for the first time, he noticed that her eyes were the same fathomless black as the rest of the hanryu. She was definitely not going to be of any help . . .

 

He felt his clothing shift and turned his head to gaze upward. Above him the sky was so thickly blanketed with clouds that it was starless. Then he saw a familiar face illuminated in the light from a nearby fire; Sango, bending over him.

 

“Sango . . .” he rasped. A thousand questions flooded Inuyasha's mouth, but for some reason his tongue felt thick and leaden and he couldn't form the words.

 

Without replying, she unfastened the ties of his haori and shifted it aside. Beneath it he could feel her shifting aside the bandages that someone had wrapped around his ribs where Sesshoumaru had stabbed him. When she probed the site of the wound he grimaced, expecting pain, but to his surprise there was none. Sango peered down at his chest, pursing her lips and frowning.

 

“Already closed,” she murmured, and then she replaced the bandages and re-fastened his haori.

 

Inuyasha recalled the excruciating sensation of Tokijin impaling him in the gut and shook his head. He had never healed so swiftly after such a serious wound before; this made no sense.

 

“How?” he whispered.

 

For the first time, Sango looked him full in the face. There was no pity and no remorse for what she'd done to be seen. More than the harsh winter air, this chilled Inuyasha to the bone.

 

“The Dragon,” Sango said, answering his question. “It's in your blood, also. The Dragon's awakening has made us all stronger than we were.”

 

Inuyasha---who had considered himself to be pretty damned strong before all of this---begged to differ. Yet he was also somewhat unnerved, because it had scarcely occurred to him that he was a hanryu as well. Sango busied herself for a minute with some task that he couldn't see, and he blinked repeatedly, trying to get the world to stand still when he moved his head.

 

After a while, he noticed the demon-slayer regarding him intently. She no longer wore her Hiraikoutsu, and over her regular clothes she wore a green cloak whose edges were embroidered with the Tatesei crest. With her strange eyes and the hood pulled over her hair to keep her head warm, Inuyasha barely recognized her.

 

“You don't feel the Dragon's calling at all, do you?” she asked him quietly.

 

Inuyasha merely scowled at her.

 

Correctly interpreting this as a “no,” Sango answered her own question.

 

“I didn't think so. It must be your Youkai blood that holds the Dragon's at bay. But the fact that you've healed so quickly is a sure sign that both are present in you.” Sango paused, gazing off into the darkness of the surrounding trees without really seeing them. “I wasn't wrong,” she said, more to herself than to him.

 

Inuyasha shifted his left hand experimentally, and found to his dismay that his sword was no longer fastened at his waist.

 

“Tetsusaiga,” he said in a low voice. “Let me go and give me Tetsusaiga, and I'll put a stop to this.”

 

Sango glanced down at him sharply; the hanyou was beginning to test the strength of the rope securing him to the travois.

 

“The herb is wearing off,” she observed.

 

Then she held up her handiwork: a stone bowl full of purple-veined leaves, which she had been grinding into pulp with a blunt rock. Inuyasha flashed her some fang.

 

“Hell no!” he protested vehemently. “So that's it, eh? Well, no more of that shit . . .”

 

Sango, of course, paid this little heed. She even went so far as to roll her eyes, which made her look a bit more like her old self. But she pinched a dollop of the stuff between her thumb and forefinger and leaned over him again, clearly intending to force the drug on him.

 

“I'll bite,” Inuyasha warned, baring his fangs (which made him look rather like a deranged puppy).

 

Sango eyed him narrowly for a moment, and then produced a stick with thorns on it. She broke off one of the longer ones and dipped it in the gook between her fingers. Inuyasha stared at it hostilely, but he was still too weak from its previous effects to free himself. Sango took a firm hold of his hand with one of hers, and then proceeded to draw the thorn down the inside of his wrist. Inuyasha reacted violently, and the claws of that hand raked across the demon-slayer's arm almost out of reflex.

 

Sango withdrew hastily, clutching at her wrist, but Inuyasha could tell he'd reacted too late. Apparently the herb acted extremely quickly because he hadn't even felt the sting of the thorn-scratch. A queer, liquid numbness was already creeping along his arm. It spread to his shoulder, and then branched off spider-like in all directions down his body.

 

While Sango scooped the rest of the herbs into a small pouch, Inuyasha struggled desperately to stay alert by talking.

 

“Why are you really doing this, Sango?” he asked, managing to turn his head sideways to watch her. “If the Seer can fight it, why can't you?”

 

The demon-slayer fastened the pouch into a larger one at her side, and then lifted her elbow for him to see. She peeled back the sleeve, and together they watched a thin line of blood trickle down her pale forearm to drip onto the snow.

 

“We're all born with a destiny, Inuyasha,” Sango told him. “Some people say it's written in the stars, or in the human heart. The Tatesei know it to be ingrained in the blood. Irusei knew this---that was why the Dragon chose him to lead us. He embraced what he truly was when the rest of us were too afraid of losing what we thought we were.” She broke off this peculiar speech with a shrug of her slender shoulders. “Humans are weak and selfish creatures. The hanryu are merely humans striving to be something more.”

 

Inuyasha's lip curled in disgust.

 

“You sound like Sesshoumaru,” he grumbled.

 

Sango rose to her feet, a vague half-smile on her lips. But as she turned away, Inuyasha thought he saw the smile fade into an expression of worry.

 

`Something about my mentioning Sesshoumaru's name upset her,' the hanyou thought. He tried to think more about why this could possibly be, but the blood to his brain had slowed and thinking was hard.

 

Sango moved off somewhere beyond his field of vision, and after a moment he heard her conferring with Irusei in low, serious tones.

 

`Since when did those two get so chummy?' Inuyasha wondered groggily.

 

Then gray fog rolled in through his brain, and for a while he drifted in an uneasy drugged sleep.

 

When he awoke, it was to the sound of footsteps approaching where he lay.

 

{+} {+} {+}

 

The arrow cut a brilliant path through the cold air between the archer and the white demon. Her aim was too straight for it to arc and descend; instead it shot straight forward. There was such power behind the blow that the air surrounding it sizzled.

 

The arrow struck the ground, where Sesshoumaru's left arm would have been had he still possessed a left arm. It pierced the empty white sleeve instead, sinking into the earth beside his body. A brief pulse of light burst outward from the shaft, scorching the side of Sesshoumaru's haori and melting all the snow within a one-foot radius of it. The Inu Youkai actually flinched as he felt the heat from it on the flesh over his ribs.

 

Kagome froze with her left arm still crooked in the position from which she released the shaft. The other hand clenched the bow and held it aloft, and her face had taken on very hard, unyielding expression that caused her to bear an eerie resemblance to Kikyou.

 

Sesshoumaru's face registered surprise, and then hardened into anger like water into ice. He wanted to kill her; Kagome could see it in his eyes. Yet Miroku hovered behind her protectively, and she sensed that the Inu Youkai wasn't going to try anything when she had the Wind Tunnel on her side. She stepped forward boldly, her foot crunching in the snow. She was through being afraid of him, and through being afraid of the Dragon and its children. There was only one thing now that she had room in her heart to fear, and all else she shoved aside.

 

“I don't care if you hate him,” Kagome said in a low voice, finally lowering the bow. “Hate me instead, if you want. But right now only you can get to him fast enough to stop whatever they're planning to do with him.”

 

Slowly, Sesshoumaru pushed himself up on one elbow and sat up. Rin clung so tightly to his shoulder that he couldn't shake her off easily. The little girl's eyes were wide and frightened, but it seemed she refused to run away and leave her . . . whatever he was to her . . . alone. Kagome knew that Sesshoumaru was too proud to use Rin as a shield. Shaken as she was by all that had happened, she couldn't help being touched by the girl's devotion. If it were her, and he were Inuyasha, she would've done the same.

 

The white demon rose to his feet without taking his yellow eyes off Kagome. His hair and white haori were soaked with melted snow, and his right sleeve was soaked with blood.

 

“I will go,” he said quietly. “You may be sure of that.”

 

Rin's gaze was trained on him as she clung to the leg of his pants.

 

“Don't go, Sesshoumaru-sama,” she pleaded. “Suiton-sama warned you!”

 

Sesshoumaru spared the child a brief glance.

 

“Go to the castle, Rin,” he ordered. “Stay there with Jakken. If the Tatesei intrude there, go to the caves below the garden's western wall.”

 

Kagome's eyes narrowed.

 

`Caves?' she thought in confusion. `Inuyasha never mentioned any caves . . . He must not have known about them, or he would have taken THAT route when he went to take the shard back from Sesshoumaru . . .'

 

Kagome opened her mouth to speak, but fell silent when Miroku squeezed her left hand in warning. In the meantime, Sesshoumaru seemed to feel he had said all that was necessary. He turned away from Rin and tilted back his head, breathing in the air of the surrounding night.

 

Then his eyes narrowed; he had caught the scent. Without another word to Kagome, Sesshoumaru began to walk softly across the trampled snow, in the direction that the hanryu had taken Inuyasha. Kagome watched him heading toward the trees with great misgivings.

 

The snow was beginning to fall heavier between them, and the air seemed to have grown even colder in the short span of an hour.

 

It was nothing to the chill that suddenly gripped Kagome's heart.

 

Her pack lay in the snow a few yards away; now she hurried over to it and pulled the zipper open. She had to fumble a bit; her hands were numb, and the metal teeth on the zipper were part-way frozen. Miroku put a steady hand on her shoulder.

 

“Kagome-sama, what are you---?”

 

“The map,” she mumbled, unrolling it and squinting in the faint light. “I have to see . . .”

 

And she saw.

 

“No . . .” Kagome breathed.

 

On the map, nothing had changed. The mountain Reiyama was gone, and the city of Reiyama was marked as the capitol. She had changed nothing.

 

“Sesshoumaru!” she cried, standing up and shaking Miroku's hand off her shoulder.

 

The white demon stood on the edge of the clearing, but a few footsteps short of vanishing into the shadow-laden wood beyond. He paused, angling one baleful eye over his shoulder. Kagome stumbled forward a few steps, and sinking up to her knees into a drift of snow that had somehow escaped being trampled in the previous melee. Then she stopped dead in her tracks. The rational part of her mind told her that increasing her physical proximity to the white demon wasn't exactly going to improve things.

 

“Sesshoumaru!” Kagome called from where she stood. “You are going after the Tatesei to kill the Dragon . . . aren't you? You'll stop them . . . ?”

 

Sesshoumaru didn't answer.

 

He turned away from her completely, and a sudden wind arose, stirring his hair. In a split second's passage, his body was bathed in light. The light engulfed him, obscuring his form until he no longer resembled a man at all. Then he moved swiftly into the forest. Kagome hurried to the edge of the clearing, peering into the wooded darkness until the white demon's light had darted too deep into the shadows for the eye to follow.

 

“Lady Kagome?”

 

Miroku had followed her and now stood by her side. Kagome felt herself start to sink toward the ground.

 

`My legs . . . they won't support me!' she thought numbly. `Why didn't he answer?'

 

Fortunately, Miroku caught her gently by the elbow and held her upright.

 

“You did the right thing,” he assured her, but his gaze was also drawn toward the direction in which Sesshoumaru had vanished.

 

“No . . . I didn't,” Kagome murmured, distractedly brushing the snow out of her eyes. “I've just sent Sesshoumaru to the place where the Dragon is. The mountain Reiyama is where he and Inuyasha are supposed to die.” She clapped a hand to her mouth, fighting to keep the tears from spilling because they would only freeze on her cheeks. “How could I not have realized? I should have shot him when I had the chance . . .”

 

Miroku shook his head.

 

“You aren't a killer, Kagome,” he said reasonably. “Even though it took courage to place your faith in someone like him . . .”

 

“But . . . it hasn't changed anything,” Kagome said faintly. “Look at the map.”

 

Gently, the monk took the map from her near-nerveless fingers and squinted at it. Then he sighed.

 

“I know it doesn't seem like things have improved, but consider this: the map looks the same as it did before you spared Sesshoumaru and sent him after Inuyasha.”

 

Kagome heard Shippou moan and begin to stir. As she turned and walked toward him, she asked Miroku, “What exactly do you mean?” The Kitsune was half-buried in the snow and looked rather pale, but when Kagome bent and picked him up he opened his eyes. Miroku, in the meantime, moved over to examine Kirara, who lay utterly motionless.

 

“What I mean is that what you did just now hasn't changed things for the worse,” the monk said, kneeling and pressing his palms gently against Kirara's massive chest. “And who knows? Maybe you have changed things for the better, regardless of whether the mountain will be destroyed.” He looked up, peering at Kagome over the top of Kirara's side. “She's breathing.”

 

“Thank goodness,” Kagome murmured, clutching Shippou tightly against her.

 

“Ow---not so tight,” the Kitsune mumbled as she hugged him. “I'm not a chibi plushie.”

 

“You're sort of drawn like one, though,” Miroku remarked from behind Kirara. He was probing the side of his head gently with one hand.

 

“Sorry, Shippou,” Kagome apologized, managing a weak smile. “Hey, Miroku, Sa---the hanryu drugged Kirara, right? Can you use your power to reverse the drug's effects?”

 

Miroku stopped rubbing at the sore spot on his head and bent nearer to the cat-demon. Reaching a hand under the bandages on Kirara's side, he produced a torn bit of one of the herbs Sango had used to subdue her. This he crushed between his thumb and forefinger, and then sniffed at it tentatively.

 

“It's not really a poison,” he told Kagome. “I've seen healers use this herb before to induce sleep. It's used in extreme cases, where a person is in great pain.” He frowned down at the purple stain on his fingers. “In fact, it can wear off in as little as an hour.”

 

Kagome lowered her head, smiling a little.

 

`Maybe there's hope for Sango after all . . . She wouldn't kill Kirara; maybe she'll protect Inuyasha's life as well . . .'

 

“Hey, houshi-sama, can you do anything to speed up the process?” Shippou asked. Now that Kagome was no longer squeezing him so tightly, the fact that she held him close in her arms seemed to be a comfort to him.

 

Slowly, Miroku nodded. He placed both palms on the flesh over Kirara's heart with the fingers turned inward toward each other. For a moment, he went utterly still and nothing happened. Then, abruptly, his face tightened with extreme concentration. Kagome could literally see the ki he was focusing through his arms into Kirara's flesh. Regardless of what flesh barred her view of the physical, with her inherent miko's abilities she could see the blue lines running through his body, through which light coursed like blood. Bathed in the light of his spiritual power, Miroku looked rather beautiful. It was the only time, Kagome supposed, that he had anything to do with purity.

 

The glow spread from his palms through Kirara's body, the majority of it pooling around her heart. Her heartbeat began to gain speed, pushing the purer blood through her arteries to overwhelm the poison. Then she began to stir. She lifted her head, and her orange eyes rolled sideways to the monk kneeling at her side. With a sigh, he removed his hands, giving her a wan smile.

 

“We must wait for her to regain her strength before we move out,” Miroku called to Kagome over the Youkai's prone body. “Her speed will more than make up for the wait.”

 

Kagome nodded somberly. Her heart was urging her to go Right Now, but she had already noticed the snowfall increasing, and didn't want to end up stuck waist-deep in it an hour later.

 

Miroku seemed to be thinking along the same lines. He stood up slowly, brushing the snow off his head and turning his face skyward.

 

“I think we'll have to move out soon, though,” he remarked. “This may turn into a storm.”

 

Kagome set Shippou down and followed the monk's gaze, shielding her eyes with the flat of her hand. Thick clouds roiled overhead—the sort of clouds they had seen filling the sky in response to an epicenter of jyaki.

 

`Can it be that the Dragon's jyaki is drawing the storm toward Reiyama Mountain?' she wondered. `But that doesn't sound right. The Dragon isn't a Youkai; if that dream I had was correct the dragon gives off a very different kind of aura. And also . . . the hanryu don't give off jyaki, either. So then what---?'

 

“Kirara!”

 

Kagome turned at the sound of Shippou's joyful cry to see that the demon-cat had risen to her feet and was shaking the snow off her pelt.

 

“I'm glad you're all right,” Kagome told Kirara, walking over and hugging her neck. “Now let's go find Inuyasha.”

 

The demon-cat growled a fierce and unmistakable agreement, and her three companions moved toward her to climb onto her back. Kagome was the last to mount, with the aid of Miroku's extended hand. She hesitated a moment, glancing at the sky over the mountain in the distance. Those clouds were being drawn by some spiritual force---that fact was undeniable.

 

“Shippou, I'm sorry but I'll need you to transform into a coat,” Kagome said.

 

Solemnly, the Kitsune nodded and began the spell to alter his shape.

 

“We're going be hard-pressed to stay warm,” Miroku observed, also still eyeing the clouds. “They may be drawn to the mountain by supernatural forces, but they're still full of snow. I have the horrible feeling we're about to head into some very harsh weather.”

 

{+} {+} {+}

 

Inuyasha awoke to the sound of soft footsteps approaching, and then to a cool hand on his brow. He opened his eyes and found himself staring up into a woman's face, partially concealed in shadow by the hood she wore low over her forehead.

 

“Sango?” he muttered. “No . . . more . . . fucking . . . thorns . . .” His tongue felt thick and spongy---no doubt an aftereffect of the herbs.

 

The woman made no reply. Instead she pressed her palm more firmly against his face, and her mouth compressed into a grim line.

 

“What is it, Suiton?” a man's voice asked sharply. “What do you See?”

 

Amid his blurred peripheral vision Inuyasha could see the shapes of two other figures looming behind her bent head. The man was Irusei and the one beside him was Sango---his hanyou nose told him this much, though his other senses were dulled.

 

`But who's this woman?' he wondered hazily. `And what do they want her to see?'

 

And then, even through the drug, he felt her touching his mind. It was a subtle thing, not an active invasion. She was not delving into his brain; it was as if the mere touch of her hand on his flesh was drawing his secrets out of him through her skin.

 

`Or through her blood . . .' Inuyasha realized. The herb seemed to be wearing off again; the fog was lifting and his thoughts were coming quicker. `This is the woman the Tatesei call the Seer, and she's a hanryu. Somehow the Dragon's blood works differently in her, so she can see the future . . .'

 

“The pearl on the left,” she answered, in a low voice.

 

Irusei knelt beside her, peering at her through narrow black eyes.

 

`He looks pale,' Inuyasha noticed as his eyes focused on the man's face. Sweat was beaded there, though the temperature of the air was near to freezing. `His wound, maybe?' As if in confirmation of Inuyasha's guess, the Tatesei warrior held one hand pressed against his middle.

 

“What does it mean, `the pearl on the left'?” Irusei asked his sister.

 

The Seer removed her hand from Inuyasha's brow, frowning.

 

“It's a riddle,” she told the hanryu warrior. “But he knows the answer already. The `pearl' is really a mote of demon-crafted magic, hidden in his left eye.”

 

`I'd forgotten that,' Inuyasha thought. `How on earth did she remember it for me?'

 

“The first Lord of the West ordered it made and inserted into his son's eye to allow him passage into the land of the dead. But that event is past; the hanyou has already used it once to retrieve the heirloom sword Tetsusaiga. It cannot be used again for such a purpose.”

 

Irusei sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

 

“Then what is the use of the pearl now?” he demanded wearily. “We could spend a month scouring the mountainside in search of the Dragon---time in which Asano-o-sama may rally a force to oppose us. Time in which the monk with the void-magic in his hand may gather support of his own from elsewhere . . . If the hanyou is `the key,' I have yet to see proof of it.”

 

Squatting on her heels a little ways behind Irusei, Sango was unusually quiet.

 

Inuyasha saw the Seer's face grow tense as she bent over him again. One dark lock of hair fell forward across her throat. Again she laid her small hand upon his brow, and Inuyasha understood that she was doing this against her will.

 

`Pathetic woman,' he thought sourly. `She doesn't want to, but she's too afraid to stand up to her brother.'

 

“The pearl was like an imprinted map,” the Seer murmured, “connecting his soul to the site of his father's remains in the otherworld. Namely, it drew him to the sword he inherited---Tetsusaiga, which was forged combining a sword-smith's magic . . . and also the blood of his father, the Inu no Taishou. That is the pearl's purpose---to draw him toward places or things possessing his father's imprint. The sword Tetsusaiga was imprinted because it was forged from the Inu no Taishou's own fang . . . and the seal placed on the Dragon is imprinted, because it was sealed with the Inu no Taishou's own blood.”

 

Irusei's black eyes widened.

 

“Ahhh,” he breathed, peering shrewdly at Inuyasha's face. “Then it is here . . .”

 

He reached one calloused finger toward Inuyasha's left eye. Inuyasha growled low in his throat, and screwed the eye shut to keep the hanryu from touching it.

 

“Sango, the drug is wearing off,” Irusei said without turning around.

 

“You can't activate the imprinted magic by removing the eye,” Sango informed him. “He told me once how it was done, but I seriously doubt that would work for us. Lord Sesshoumaru did it.”

 

Irusei withdrew his hand. Glaring up at his captors, Inuyasha thanked his lucky stars individually and by name that he had told Sango about the pearl on the left. The heads of both hanryu warriors turned toward the Seer in unison.

 

“Sister,” Irusei said softly. Inuyasha detected an underlying warning in the young man's soft tone.

 

The Seer flinched as if she were afraid her brother would strike her, even though he merely regarded her steadily with his hands resting in his lap. Slowly and mechanically, the woman's cowled head turned toward the hanyou on the travois.

 

“There is a way,” she whispered. “I can draw the magic out.”

 

{+} {+} {+}

 

Sesshoumaru stood silently among the trees beyond the Tatesei encampment; a white birch amid the dark pines. His legs were still formless and ghostlike from the knees down, so that when he moved he glided silently over the rough forest turf and when he stood still his feet did not sink into the deepening snow. He stood on the barest outskirts of the camp perimeter, mindful of the guards that Irusei had set patrolling the area. It seemed they expected Inuyasha's friends to come rescue him immediately. Sesshoumaru snorted faintly in derision---the hanryu gave the half-breed's companions far too much credit.

 

He could smell them now---the scent of pine and metallic blood, and also Inuyasha's scent, which with his mixed blood was something akin to a human putting on Sesshoumaru perfume. Sesshoumaru could hear them from this location as well---when he focused his concentration, his ears were supernaturally sharp. It was tiresome, sorting through the chorus of voices saying stupid and meaningless things to each other, but eventually the Inu Youkai heard something that made his perpetual frown smooth into a look of surprise.

 

“. . . use the pearl on the left to focus the Sight . . .”

 

`So that's it,' the demon lord thought in amazement. `Inuyasha is `the key' because of the talisman Chichi-ue merged with his left eye.' As he listened further to what the hanryu intended to do, he couldn't help resenting the fact that he hadn't stolen the eye himself. It would have saved him the trouble of trailing after the Tatesei as they made their pathetically slow journey into the mountains . . .

 

Then the voices fell silent, and Sesshoumaru heard the sound of footsteps approaching. In a flash, he was airborne, ascending rapidly until he came to rest over the treetops. There he stood utterly still, with each foot balanced on the uppermost branches of a pine tree, as the small group of Tatesei moved along the forest floor beneath him. The screen of snow-capped needles barred him from their view, but he did not need to see them to know where they were going. As the group headed southeast, ascending the wooded slope, he could track their progress by scent alone. There were no more than five humans, he judged, counting Inuyasha, whom they were bearing on some kind of litter atop their shoulders.

 

After following them from above for a quarter of an hour, Sesshoumaru was finally relieved of his impatience when the Tatesei crested the mountain, emerging from the trees onto the bare rock at the top of the ridge. They appeared to be seeking someplace at a high elevation that also provided a panoramic view of the mountains ahead. Standing with both feet balanced on a single thin branch, Sesshoumaru watched as they carried Inuyasha's litter to the top of the highest outcropping. The snow melted beneath their feet, running down the rock only to freeze minutes later as it hit the snow on the ground. The air was growing decisively colder. While the Tatesei completed their laborious climb, the demon lord tilted his head back to gaze at the sky. Dark clouds were swirling directly overhead---the sort of clouds he might expect to see in the presence of a demon with extraordinarily strong jyaki.

 

`Why is jyaki gathering around Inuyasha?' he wondered. `He isn't wielding Tetsusaiga. Can it be that his hanryu blood has begun to war with his demon blood?'

 

It seemed the most likely explanation. But Sesshoumaru predicted that this would soon give rise to another problem: it was drawing every snow-laden cloud in the realm into one converging coriolis overhead, which meant that wherever Inuyasha went a blizzard was sure to follow. In this sense, his brother's very existence was a dire nuisance.

 

The Tatesei had set Inuyasha's litter down on the rock, and two of the warriors were now hoisting him onto his feet, each with one of his arms hooked around their shoulders. The hanyou didn't appear to be putting up much of a fight---he seemed to be exerting a great deal of effort just to keep his head from lolling forward onto his chest.

 

`Drugged,' Sesshoumaru estimated, knowing that Inuyasha wasn't generally the sort to keep quiet about anything that displeased him.

 

Irusei made a sharp, beckoning gesture, and Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed as he noticed for the first time that the Seer was among them. She approached the hanyou somewhat hesitantly, but then she took his face between her hands and her hesitation seemed to vanish. Even through her voluminous robes Sesshoumaru could see that her body had gone rigid as her gift claimed her. She whispered something, but at that moment an icy wind swept across the ridge and Sesshoumaru could not hear it.

 

The Seer's touch upon Inuyasha's face became the catalyst for something strange.

 

A dragon emerged from his left eye.

 

It was translucent as a ghost, yet its scales gleamed silver and its black eyes shone with an unearthly light. It was precisely like the Dragon Sesshoumaru had seen in the scrying bowl, yet from the scent he knew that this was an illusion.

 

`Yet if this illusion is any indication, the Dragon is a great and terrible behemoth,' Sesshoumaru thought, watching the apparition soar into the cold night air with something akin to awe. `Larger than my father's demon form . . .'

 

As the spiked tip of its tail slid free of Inuyasha's eye, he gasped, and his eye gleamed pure white. It seemed they had seen no need to remove the pearl; something in the Seer's gift had called forth whatever magic remained hidden. Serpentine and fluid, the Dragon's apparition coiled through the sky. Its long body undulated gracefully while the tail corkscrewed behind it. The Tatesei gazed up at it in reverent silence as it flew.

 

Then a shuddering convulsion seemed to pass through Inuyasha's body, and he went rigid as the Seer, flinging his head back and straining against his captors. The Seer stumbled forward a little in order to keep her hands in contact with his face.

 

`So this is the secret, Chichi-ue,' Sesshoumaru thought darkly. `The Dragon's seal is connected to the pearl . . .' A sudden, irrational streak of jealousy surged through him, and his hand started to reach for his sword of its own volition.

 

A sudden icy wind howled across the ridge, so strong that it blew his hair completely sideways. Overhead, the converging clouds were now so thickly layered that not even an echo of moonlight reached the earth below. The only light now came from the torches the Tatesei carried, and from the bright form of the Dragon arcing through the air.

 

Not long after Inuyasha flung back his head, the apparition changed course mid-flight and shot toward the mountain Reiyama, cutting a path through the air straight and swift as an arrow. Sesshoumaru turned sharply, dead-set on seeing where it was headed. The illusion streaked toward the mountain, and as it did so its body grew thinner and thinner, until at last it vanished altogether, and there was only a long, silver beam of light stretching from Inuyasha's eye to a point at the base of the mountain. Sesshoumaru stared at it intently, willing the image of the location to be burned into his memory.

 

On the rock below, Irusei stepped forward and aligned his arm with the brilliant path of the beam, gauging the exact direction they would need to take. Then he nodded to one of the warriors nearest him and the man pulled the Seer away from Inuyasha. She stumbled backward, no longer held in thrall by her gift, and Inuyasha's head fell forward onto his chest. Irusei gestured excitedly and gave an order to one of his men, sending the warrior back the way they had come. It was quite apparent that the Tatesei planned to move immediately, heading for the place at the mountain's base, and from the appearance of things they intended to take Inuyasha with them.

 

Sesshoumaru had seen enough. He turned and veered eastward along the treetops, flowing swiftly on ghostly feet. When he felt he had gone far enough that the Tatesei would not notice him, he dissolved into light and sailed southward on the wind. Beyond the ridge where the way had been shown, the land sloped downward dramatically, bowing downward into a steep valley that, given the sheer amount of snow that blanketed it, would be nigh impassible for the hanryu on foot. However, as he swooped lower to avoid the strongest of the driving winds, Sesshoumaru noticed to his consternation that there was a passage there. It was a long, narrow canyon that twisted down the landscape, nearly invisible to the naked eye because the rock on either side of it was bowed into a kind of natural tunnel-shape. The passage, he recalled in chagrin, contained a river during the spring, summer and autumn months, but ran low and froze solid during the winter because the high mountain snows that fed it were no longer melting.

 

`The hanryu will take that route,' he thought darkly as he moved. `I should cut it off---block it somehow . . .'

 

However, it also occurred to him that this might not be to his advantage. He hated to admit it, but there was always the possibility that he would reach the place on the mountain and find that somehow he could not access it without Inuyasha.

 

`The `key',' he thought to himself in disgust. Had he been in a form wholly solid at that point he would have shaken his head and grimaced. Again irrational jealousy surged through him. `Always Inuyasha is the one chosen . . . Chosen for Tetsusaiga; chosen for the talisman that would also lead to the Dragon . . .' Dimly, he was aware that that was where all of this had begun---all had commenced with him stealing the fragment of the Shikon no Tama so that the Seer could answer a question about his past . . . Odd, that he should still remember such a trivial thing. What mattered now . . . was the Dragon. If the Dragon's power was in his possession, he would be the one to . . .

 

The Lord of the West slipped downward into the canyon and slowed to a halt. His form solidified into man-shape, and he stood atop the ice in the dark, trying to clear his mind of sudden confusion. A small, faint voice inside him persistently asked if he were really doing this of his own volition . . . or if something was driving him to it. It sounded suspiciously like the Seer.

 

“I am driven,” Sesshoumaru snapped, to silence her. “This is obsession. But I am the Lord of the West, and I do as I please. And I choose not to shy away from this. I choose to take what I want.”

 

His voice, dark and chill as the ice beneath his feet, reverberated through the long passage. There was no one near to hear him but himself.

 

{+} {+} {+}

 

Sango walked at the head of the hanryu company alongside Irusei, as he had bidden her. He claimed that he wished her to lead with him because of her skills as a demon-slayer, but she knew that the real reason he had asked her to do so was that his strength was beginning to fail him. She had insisted upon taking a look at his wound from Sesshoumaru's sword when they stopped in the forest because it seemed to her that he looked unnaturally pale for someone who claimed the Dragon would heal him. Because she had already demonstrated some medicinal skill in her treatment of Inuyasha, Irusei had readily complied. What she found when she unfastened his armor and pulled aside his haori did not reassure her. The wound was closed and no longer bled, but this was where the resemblance to healing ended. Over what should have been newly-grown flesh there grew a patch of gray scales, like a metallic bruise, nearly a hand's-span in diameter upon the hard muscle of his belly.

 

This in itself was strange enough. Looking at it made Sango violently nauseous, wondering if the same inhuman blood inside her would give rise to scales across her own flesh. Yet stranger still was the angry red color the flesh around the scaled patch's perimeter had turned. It was unmistakably an infection---the type that men died from in a pool of their own sweat. As she walked side-by-side with the Tatesei warrior, Sango could see the sweat beaded on his brow and in the hollow of his throat. The short locks of hair that straggled out from beneath his helm were soaked with it.

 

Sango had only one theory as to why he was so feverish: it was a conflict of the blood. Dragons, she knew, were in many ways polar opposites of Youkai, and so it seemed natural that the magic inherent in each of the races would conflict with each other. Irusei was filled with the blood of the newly-awakened Dragon, and he had been stabbed by a blade forged from pure, concentrated Youkai power---from the fang of the evil Goshinki, Naraku's incarnation. The residue of the blade's jyaki was at war with the Dragon's blood, and so Irusei suffered for it. Only Inuyasha seemed to be immune to these mal-effects, in all likelihood because of his inherent demon blood.

 

Irusei had asked her to walk beside him because he knew that she alone guessed what was truly wrong with him. He understood well the precariousness of his situation---he had taken it upon himself to lead the hanryu into the mountains in defiance of both their king and the Lord of the West; he could not afford to show such extreme weakness at this crucial point, when they drew so near to their destination. He desired Sango to walk beside him because he trusted her with the secret of his illness, and so that if he stumbled she might catch him. Sango walked beside him because she understood his warrior's heart and his fierce love for his people, and because it made her sad to see how his shouldering of this grave burden had already made his eyes old. He hadn't betrayed his king lightly, nor risked Sesshoumaru's wrath without fearing deeply for what might befall the Tatesei because he had dared to do so.

 

His sister walked several ranks behind them, amid a cluster of soldiers. Irusei did not trust her.

 

They had chosen to take this long, dark passage through the canyon because it was the swiftest route. Yet Irusei was also well aware of the risk they were taking in making the journey through such a confined space. He was just as aware as Sango of the fact that Inuyasha's companions would eventually rally their strength and come to the hanyou's rescue. The tunnel restricted his warriors' ability to fan out and also their visibility level, which would serve them ill if it came to a battle.

 

Archery was not an art best practiced in the dark.

 

Irusei walked at the front of the company because he expected the attack to come from either fore or aft.

 

In the end, it came from above.

 

There was no warning---at least, not for the hanryu, but by some stroke of fortune Sango happened to glance back at the Seer the instant before it happened, and saw the woman's head snap upward in alarm. Sango quickly looked up as well, and her hand automatically flew to her Hiraikoutsu. A wave of red light washed over the top of the canyon, completely blotting out the sky beyond. It only took her a split second to realize what this was, but instinct drove her to act. While the Tatesei warriors were still looking up in surprise, she gave Irusei a shove that caught him off guard and sent him staggering sideways toward the canyon wall. Then she plowed back through the ranks, using Hiraikoutsu to throw added weight against the men bearing Inuyasha on the litter. Though caught off-guard because they were staring up at the light, they were men made strong by the Dragon's blood and she couldn't move them an inch.

 

“Everyone, stand against the walls!” Sango shouted, fervently praying that they would listen to her order.

 

Some of them looked to Irusei, who regarded Sango with wide dark eyes and nodded sharply.

 

“Do it!” the warrior shouted, bracing himself against the wall.

 

Above them all, the topmost walls of the canyon bowed inward and crumbled. Then the rock groaned and gave way, and a heavy deluge of snow poured down into the passage. Though she was pressed against the wall, Sango's view of the tunnel was suddenly obscured in a heavy fall of white. She flattened herself against the wall as best she could, knowing that those who lingered too close to the center would be crushed by the falling debris. A stinging barrage of ice assailed her face; pounded against her body. Then the passage filled with snow, and she found herself buried in snow with her back crushed against the stone behind her. For a moment, she went blind and deaf, stunned by the impact and blinded by the fall of ice.

 

Then, slowly, full awareness of the situation returned to her. By some miracle she was able to keep hold of her Hiraikoutsu, though she severely doubted that it would do any good against the one who had brought this all upon them.

 

`But first things first,' she told herself fiercely. `Remain calm. Free yourself from the snow, and find the others.'

 

Thinking clearly in a situation like this was what made demon-slayers strong.

 

She could hear the muffled cries of the Tatesei as they struggled beneath the snow. It sounded as if most of them had survived.

 

“Lord Irusei!”

 

“The litter! The hanyou was caught beneath it!”

 

Nearby, she heard Irusei's voice, sounding as if he were only three feet away from her.

 

“Burn the snow!” he cried hoarsely. “Use the blood!”

 

Somewhat belatedly, Sango realized what he was calling upon his warriors to do. She hadn't used her hanryu blood yet, and was unsure as to how it worked.

 

“Irusei-sama!” she called urgently. If Inuyasha was trapped beneath the full brunt of the avalanche . . .

“Sango-sama?” There was a brief pause, and then he replied, “Imagine the fire running through your veins. Let it heat your flesh, and the snow will part before you.”

 

Sango tried to take a deep breath, but the air was stifling beneath the snow and she ended up with a nose full of water. Choking a little but determined to do as he advised, she thrust both hands out in front of her. In her mind, she pictured the Dragon, whose black, lidless gaze watched over its children from within themselves.

 

As she did so, warmth began to travel along the length of her arms.

 

{+} {+} {+}

 

Sesshoumaru stood atop the canyon wall, staring down into it as the last of the snow trickled over the edge to join the greater mass in the tunnel. His sharp eyes scanned the darkness for any sign of counterattack, but though he waited for a fair bit of time none came.

 

`Now, then,' he thought to himself. `To find my quarry . . .'

 

Lightly, the white demon sprang from his eyrie and descended into the darkness. He landed without a sound upon the snow, white hair trailing after him like a banner. A little ways to his left, he noticed a sinkhole opening amid the avalanche's remains. At first it was little more than a dark depression in the snow, but as he approached it with narrowed eyes it grew wider. Sesshoumaru could hear the hiss of steam as the snow melted.

 

As he had anticipated, the hanryu intended to burn their way free of it. Yet he was counting upon the snow to delay them, to buy him time to find Inuyasha beneath it. He inhaled deeply, searching for the hanyou's scent amid those of the Tatesei trapped therein. To his immediate surprise and growing consternation, Inuyasha's scent rose from the sinkhole.

 

`The hanryu gift of fire---has he . . . ?'

 

The white demon aimed Tokijin toward the hole, and the sword's vibrant red glow filtered down into the darkness. By this time the hole had widened to nearly five feet in diameter, and with the borrowed illumination he now had a clear view of its occupants. Twenty feet down, Inuyasha lay on his side, partially buried beneath the snow. Crouched over him, as if she had been shielding his body with her own, was the Seer.

 

The woman glanced up sharply as the light filled the hole, and for a moment they merely stared at one another, gauging the possibilities of what would come next. Then she laid an arm across Inuyasha's chest, as if she intended to protect him from the Lord of the West himself. Sesshoumaru's blood churned at the sight of her.

 

She had called him a coward.

 

Then he realized that he was still gripping Tokijin fiercely, and that its deadly point was aimed downward at the two below him. She thought he intended to kill them both with the sword. Calmly, he reinserted the sword into its sheath, and the red glow died.

 

“I will raise you out of this,” he told the woman coolly, and then his body dissolved into light.

 

It did not take long to travel the depth of the sinkhole, and after just a few seconds Sesshoumaru stood at the bottom. The space was cramped, for he had just reverted to man-shape again, but of course he had no intention of lingering here. The Tatesei would soon burn their way free of this, and then things would become troublesome. The Seer still eyed him with great apprehension; she knew that Sesshoumaru hated his brother.

 

Sesshoumaru had little patience for the woman's newly-acquired concern for Inuyasha.

 

“Move, woman,” he ordered, bending nearer to the hanyou lying quietly in the snow.

 

Inuyasha's eyes were closed, and his skin was very pale, but Sesshoumaru knew from his scent that he wasn't going to die anytime soon. His unconsciousness and his pallor were merely the effects of the drug the demon-slayer woman had given him. Sesshoumaru hooked an arm around his brother's waist and hefted him onto his shoulder. Inuyasha was quite heavy, and Sesshoumaru deeply resented having to carry him, but with god-like power at stake it was a sacrifice he was willing to accept. He rose to his feet.

 

“Take me with you.”

 

Sesshoumaru glanced down sharply over Inuyasha's back.

 

“You wish to follow me?” he asked, allowing a bit more sarcasm to creep into his tone than he'd intended. “Follow the hanryu, if one cage is not so different from another.”

 

The woman kneeling at his feet bowed her head.

 

“The Tatesei walk willingly toward their doom,” she murmured, “and I don't want to walk with them.” Her brow knitted in shame. “But I'm like them,” she went on. “I don't have the courage to resist. They don't have the strength to fight the force that drives them.” She looked up, and her black eyes were intense. “But I want to believe that you do. So . . . freely, this time . . . I offer you my gift, such as it is.”

 

Sesshoumaru turned away from her in disgust. She was asking him to save her from herself; from the blood inside her. He had no desire to save anyone.

 

“I can't see your future, Lord of the West,” the Seer said softly. “But I can see his.”

 

She was referring to Inuyasha.

 

Sesshoumaru sighed, tilting back his head to stare up at the surface of the snow. Above the canyon, he could see dark clouds roiling overhead. `This woman,' he thought, `is a thorn in my side.'

 

“Take hold of my tail,” he ordered.

 

{+} {+} {+}

 

Seated astride a revitalized Kirara, Kagome, Miroku and Shippou flew southeast at breakneck speed. They passed over the walls of Sesshoumaru's garden, skimming the forest beyond for traces of the hanryu. They ascended the wooded slope and crested the ridge where the pearl on the left had shown the way. Beyond that the land sloped downward, blanketed in a thick carpet of snow, and then flattened onto a long, level plain before the foothills of the great mountain. Beyond the plain all was swallowed in the inky blackness of the winter night. All that they could see from where they sat astride Kirara could be seen because the demon-cat's fiery aura reflected off the snow beneath them. . .and because off in the distance, the massive form of an Inu Youkai could be seen making its way toward the mountain.

 

Kagome's grip tightened around the wooden frame of her bow.

 

“Sesshoumaru,” she murmured. Even from this distance, they could see the faint gleam that his demon form cast on the snow around him, and the twin red eyes that cut like lasers through the thick veil of snow blowing across the valley. She could see that the demon lord's eyes were fixed upon a point somewhere near the base of the mountain ahead. `Is he going to the mountain to stop the Tatesei?' she wondered.

 

“Kagome-sama, look there.” Miroku grasped her shoulder with one hand and pointed downward with the other.

 

“Uh . . .” Reluctantly, Kagome tore her gaze away from the Inu Youkai to see what he was looking at.

 

Below them, cutting through the white purity of the plains, a jagged line of darkness stretched from the northern slope to Reiyama's foothills. Kirara swooped closer to it, and Kagome saw that it was not a solid line of rock but a canyon---a narrow passageway, coincidentally leading in the same direction that Sesshoumaru was headed . . .

 

The storm had reached the mountain ahead . . . and the weather seemed to be growing steadily worse. Toward the bottom of the northern slope, Kirara's attempt to regain altitude was foiled abruptly as a sudden strong gust of wind shrieked across the plain. The force of it nearly unseated her riders; Miroku pulled Kagome against him and tried his best to shield her and Shippou from the sting of blowing ice. He scarcely kept his own balance; it was then that Kagome realized how very tired he was. The pair of saucer-like eyes in the shoulder of Kagome's “coat” squeezed shut against the wind, and Shippou's voice could be heard whimpering in discomfort.

 

“C-c-c-cold . . .”

 

The wind subsided for a few seconds, and then swept across the plain again.

 

“We should take the route through that tunnel below us!” Miroku cried, shouting in Kagome's ear to be heard above the din. “The storm will only get worse as we draw nearer to the mountain!”

 

Without waiting for Kagome's response, Kirara swooped lower, heading for the dark mouth of the canyon. Kagome stared fixedly at some point further down the tunnel's line.

 

“Ah---Miroku!” she cried suddenly. “There is kehai there! The hanryu are there! They're moving toward the mountain, too!”

 

Another barrage of wind and ice nearly unseated them again, and this time Kirara dipped down completely into the shelter of the passage.

 

“We should follow them, then,” Miroku replied grimly. “We can't follow Sesshoumaru through this weather---it would be more advantageous to take the path that is safer for humans.”

 

Kirara alighted on the rocky canyon floor, and her riders slid off on either side of her back.

 

“Foxfire,” Kagome's coat declared, and suddenly there was a little ball of green flame directly in front of them. The path that it illuminated a long, dank passage of rock and ice, and no sign of the Tatesei. There were no footprints here because the ground was frozen solid.

 

“Besides,” the monk added, “the hanryu have Inuyasha with them. We should stay closer to them to ensure his safety . . .”

 

Kagome glanced sidelong at him, shifting her bow to the other hand and flexing her near-numb fingers. She smiled at him encouragingly, but it was a very sad and worried smile. She could hear his unspoken words like an echo: `And Sango is also with them . . .'

 

She wasn't sure any more if that was really something to be thankful for.

 

{END OF CHAPTER 12}