Celestial bodies appeared-a gigantic ball of red, swirling gas; an orange-and-black-striped orb encircled by a sparkling ring. Stars magnified into white suns with molten, turbulent centers. Hirata’s acceleration suddenly reversed. Now he was falling. Planets and stars streaked by him in columns of light. The chanting rose to an inaudible pitch. Below, the earth soared up to meet him. Mountains raised jagged peaks. Wind shrieked in his ears. Friction burned him as the round gap in the trees around the clearing in the forest swallowed him. He landed with a crash that shattered perception, extinguished thought in silent, empty blackness.
Excruciating pain burned down Hirata’s left arm. A tiger with teeth made of fire was gnawing on it. He moaned and writhed. Hands restrained him. Voices called his name. He awakened to find himself lying on the cold, hard altar stone. The circle of sky above the treetops was pale blue with morning. Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano pinned him down, their anxious faces bent over him. Hirata raised his head. He was back in his body, alive. When he tried to wiggle his feet and fingers, they obeyed. He gasped with relief.
“What happened?” he said, wondering if his experience had been a hallucination.
“Nothing.” Tahara sounded disappointed. “You just screamed all night.”
“Didn’t you see the warrior?” Hirata demanded as he sat up. His arm still hurt terribly.
“No. You mean you did? This is the first time we’ve managed to evoke him in months, and he appeared only to you.” Vexation tinged Kitano’s voice.
“What happened? Did he tell you anything?” Tahara asked eagerly.
Hirata described how he’d been transported out of his body, into the cosmos. “Something’s wrong with my arm.” The rest of his body was stiff with cold, but the pain burned and throbbed from the tiger’s fiery fangs. He pushed up his sleeve.
The skin on his arm glowed as if from flames underneath. The other men exclaimed. Tiny bright lines appeared within the glow. The pain went from excruciating to unbearable. Hirata rolled off the altar stone onto the ground. He frantically scraped snow against his arm. The snow melted and steamed. As the cold penetrated his skin, the glow faded; the pain eased.
Deguchi crouched, pointing at Hirata’s arm. Tahara said, “Look!”
A line of precisely written characters adorned his skin from bicep to wrist. Hirata stared in amazement. They were bloodred, but when he touched them, they were smooth, dry, and painless, like a tattoo. “Did you do this to me while I was in the trance?” he demanded.
“No. It’s a message from the spirit,” Kitano said.
Hirata saw that Kitano was speaking the truth. All three men beheld the message with genuine awe. Repulsed and horrified, Hirata tried to rub the characters off. Tahara restrained him and read the message: “‘Bring Lord Tokugawa Ienobu to the shogun’s garden at the hour of the cock, the day after tomorrow.’”
In the moment of stunned silence that ensued, a breeze disturbed the forest.
“This is the first time the spirit has sent a written message,” Tahara said.
“How did he communicate with you other times?” Hirata was so distraught that he could barely get the words out.
“He spoke to us,” Kitano said.
Hirata remembered the voice he’d heard. The characters wavered before his eyes. He felt nauseated.
“Ienobu is the first person he’s mentioned by name,” Kitano said, “except for-”
Tahara silenced him with a glance.
“Except for me? The spirit mentioned me?” Nobody answered Hirata, but he knew he was right. Fresh shock hit him. “What did it say? When was this?”
“Three years ago,” Tahara admitted. “He asked us who our fellow disciples were. He told us to invite you to join our society.”
Now Hirata knew why they’d invited him even though they were reluctant to share their secrets. The message branded on his arm gave him a clue to what the spirit wanted with him. “He needs someone who moves in the inner circle of power. The three of you don’t. You can’t do things for him there. But I can.”
“More or less.” Tahara’s casual tone sounded forced. Hirata could tell that he and the others resented the fact that although they’d learned how to work the magic spells, Hirata was the one for whom the spirit had special plans.
“Well, I won’t meddle with Lord Ienobu,” Hirata said. “We can’t know what will happen as a result. I won’t be responsible for bringing harm to the shogun’s nephew.”
He rolled down his sleeve, covering the message, and started to walk away. Deguchi stepped in front of him. The men’s aura began to pulse threateningly.
“You have to do it,” Tahara said. “The spirit commands us.”
“Why can’t he do things for himself?”
“He’s disembodied energy,” Kitano said. “He knows everything because he can go everywhere and spy on everyone, but he has no physical form, and he can’t act on humans or communicate with them except during rituals.”
“Who is he, anyway?”
Tahara parted with more information as stingily as if he were squeezing blood from a vein. “He’s the ghost of a soldier who died on the battlefield at Sekigahara.”
That was the battle at which Tokugawa Ieyasu had defeated his rival warlords; later, he’d become the first Tokugawa shogun. Hirata remembered that the spirit’s armor had looked bulky and old-fashioned. “How does that qualify him to decide what destiny is and how it should be fulfilled?”
“He’s not the one who decides,” Kitano said. “He’s only a conduit between us and the gods of the cosmos.”
“And they said I should trot Ienobu into the shogun’s garden as if he were a puppet? Oh, well, then. Of course everybody has to do what the ‘gods of the cosmos’ say.” Hirata pushed past Deguchi.
The men blocked his exit from the clearing. “You took an oath when you joined our society,” Tahara reminded Hirata. “You swore to abide by all its decisions.”
“I have a say in our decision about whether to follow the ghost’s orders,” Hirata retorted, “and I’ve decided I won’t.”
Tahara smiled with all his charm. “All you have to do is arrange for Ienobu to walk through the garden. What could it hurt?”
“Are you serious?” Hirata stared. “Have you forgotten about Yoritomo? No, I won’t do it. I’m quitting the society.”
“Sorry, but we can’t allow that.” Tahara’s eyes were steely above his smile. Deguchi’s blazed with anger.
“How are you going to stop me? Kill me?” Hirata laughed. “Who’ll be the ghost’s errand boy then?”
“No, we’ll kill Chamberlain Sano,” Kitano said.
Horror sent a chill through Hirata’s blood. Rage enflamed him. “I won’t let you near Sano!”
“The only way you can protect Sano is by doing the spirit’s bidding. But how can we convince you?” Tahara felt under his coat and pulled out a small object, which he held up for Hirata to examine.
It was a flat, rectangular wooden tag with a white string looped through a hole at one end, the kind sold at Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. Worshippers wrote prayers on them and tied them on fences or posts outside the buildings. This tag had a sword artistically drawn on it in red ink.
“Memorize this,” Tahara said, and tucked the tag back under his coat. He smiled as he and his friends stepped aside and let Hirata go.
21
The rising sun lightened the sky over Edo Castle from black to muddy gray. Outside the women’s quarters, vapor filled the air, as if the earth had exhaled a clammy, disease-laden breath. Inside, Priest Ryuko stood at the threshold of the shogun’s mother’s chamber.
“You sent for me, my lady?”
“Yes! You certainly took your time getting here.” Lady Keisho-in made shooing gestures at the attendants who knelt around the pillow-covered bed on which she lounged. “Go, go! My dearest priest and I have private business to discuss!”
The attendants hastily left. Priest Ryuko knelt by Lady Keisho-in and took her hand. She wore a rich red brocade robe that snarled with gilded dragons, and so many ornaments spangled her puff of dyed-black hair that it looked like a pincushion. Thick white makeup, and scarlet rouge on her cheeks and lips, hid some of the ravages of age. But Priest Ryuko noticed the food stains on the robe, the veined, loose skin on the hand he held, and her stale, old-womanish smell. He felt repugnance mixed with affection.