The Book of Heroes by Miyuki Miyabe
Then Ash turned to U-ri, took a half step back, and bowed. With a nod, he indicated that she should speak.
“We went to my brother’s school,” she began, looking up at the Sage.
“Yes, I have heard what happened. It must have been most difficult for you.” The Sage spoke gently, twinkling a soft, deep green as he spoke. “And you will next go to the Haetlands, whence comes the Man of Ash,” he continued. “You have found a strong ally.”
“You knew that Ash would find us, didn’t you?”
“We have known each other for quite some time,” Ash interjected. He pointed at the magic circle beneath their feet. “Yet it seems I am not the only one who has come. Observe—someone has touched up your glyph here.”
Indeed, the unskilled, erratic lines of the first circle that U-ri had drawn were bolder now, thicker, and more distinct upon the floor.
“Another wolf?”
“Indubitably, yes.”
“Wolves can draw magic circles too?”
“With ease. Who was it?” He looked up at the Sage. “Voont?”
“Carnacki, actually,” the Sage said, a happy ring to his voice. “Him I had not seen for an even longer time than you. He went right back after I told him you had already arrived, however. Said he’d leave things to you. He left a message saying that if we should require his services, he could be found hunting beastmen in the Barren Mountains of Dukaschy.”
“The old man’s still doing well, it sounds like.”
“He’s hardly older than yourself,” the Sage chuckled. Once again, U-ri and her companions were left out of the conversation. “Incidentally, while he was here, he put up a void-hedge around the cottage.”
“That’ll be a help. For you as well as us.”
“Okay, what’s all this then?” Aju interjected, unable to contain himself any longer. “Do you think you guys could talk in a way that we can understand? What the heck is this void-hedgey thing?”
“Sage in Green,” Ash said, ignoring the mouse. “Why did you choose such an unseasoned dictionary? Was this intentional?”
“Perhaps it is better to say that it was not I but the Yellow Sign that chose him. You of all people should understand this.”
“Indeed. But the mark on him is already quite faded. Perhaps because of his proximity to U-ri’s glyph?” Ash turned around to face U-ri. “Will you not choose another dictionary to bring with you?”
U-ri shook her head so vigorously she could hear her hair swish through the air. “Aju’s coming with us.”
“Thanks, U-ri,” Aju squeaked in a tiny voice.
Ash rolled his eyes and nodded. “That’s decided then. Incidentally, the void-hedge is a device that works to conceal this cottage from the eyes of people in the world outside. In addition, it will make it difficult for those who already know about the cottage—U-ri’s relatives specifically—to recollect the cottage and its location.”
“And what’s this about hunting beastmen?” U-ri asked. The unfamiliar word had piqued her interest.
“There is a book,” Ash said, moving his hands as though he were flipping pages, “that turns all who read it into beastmen. It’s one of the copies. Carnacki has been chasing it now for over five years.”
“Oh,” was all U-ri could say to that.
“Do not worry. This copy is not in your region.”
“Can the beastmen ever be returned to their original form?” Sky asked.
Ash fixed the devout with an icy stare. “No. Nor will they ever regain their former intellect. Leave them to roam, and they attack other men and eat them. They are simple beasts—twisted creatures. The most charitable thing one can do is kill them.”
Sky’s gaze dropped to the floor.
“That’s horrible,” U-ri said. The dark side of the Hero’s power worked in frightening ways.
Then a thought crossed U-ri’s mind, like a cold draft through the door. What if something like that has happened to Hiroki? Maybe he hasn’t only been possessed; maybe he’s been altered in some irreversible way.
Ash stepped into the center of the magic circle, his tattered cape billowing around him. “If stories like that are enough to scare you, we are in trouble. The Haetlands is a far more terrifying place than that.”
U-ri looked up at his face, then over at the green light of the Sage. “But that’s where the Book of Elem came from, isn’t it?”
“Indeed it is.”
“Then I’ll go. I’ll go anywhere I have to.”
Sky nodded and moved over to stand by U-ri’s side. “Let us be off.”
The magic circle on the floor began to glow with a pale light.
“Waachoo!”
The instant U-ri arrived, before her feet even touched firm ground, she sneezed loudly.
It was cold. The kind of cold that went straight to your bones. What is this place? Am I on a mountaintop? In the middle of a glacier? No—this is inside.
The floor beneath U-ri’s feet was wooden. The walls were made out of some kind of hardened clay. Rafters hung low above her head. There was a window. Strips of ragged cloth hung from the warped frame—a haphazard attempt at a curtain, she surmised. The cloth was fluttering. That was where the cold wind was coming from.
Something in the room was creaking rhythmically.
U-ri looked down at her feet. There was a magic circle—a glyph—here too. This one was slightly smaller than the one in the reading room. It hadn’t been drawn on the floor, but physically carved into the wood with a knife of some sort. The wood floor was damaged in other areas as well.
They seemed to be in a shack of some sort. There were signs of habitation. A bed stood against one wall, and next to it a crude wooden hanger for clothes. There was a table, a chair, and a desk. Here and there stood bookshelves, each stuffed with books—overflowing in fact. Books sat on the floor, on the chair, and in stacks by the bed.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Ash said as he stepped outside the magic circle with the ease of someone returning home. He took off his black cloak and threw it over the nearby chair. Then he removed his boots and tossed them onto the floor. Walking across the small room, he went to the window with the ragged cloth curtains and began tugging on something like a handle, trying to close it.
U-ri gaped. She had never been in a home so cluttered, so rough, and so bone-chillingly cold.
The desk was covered in books and bound scrolls. A pen holder lay on its side at one edge, and several pens were scattered across the top. The front side of the desk was plastered with documents and scraps of paper, attached with pins, so dense that the papers looked like strips of bark growing on the side of a stubby tree.
U-ri spotted some bottles atop the table.
There was also something like a chemistry set, complete with test tubes, and some items that were unmistakably weapons: swords, knives, and something like a bow. All of them seemed sturdy, their edges sharp. She stared at a larger roll of paper—maybe a map. Next to that stood a sphere in a holder.
“Is that a globe?”
U-ri stepped hesitantly toward the desk. On the other side of the room, Ash had finally managed to shut the window. The chill wind ceased, though it was still cold.
“Have to get that fixed one of these days,” he grumbled, walking back to the table and throwing himself down in a chair. Before he sat, he kicked aside a pile of stuff, clearing a spot on the floor. “Sit where you like.”
It seemed safest to sit directly on the floor, so that was what U-ri did.
“What’s the deal with the cold here?” Aju screeched angrily from U-ri’s collar. “Don’t you have a heater? Or a fireplace or a stove, or anything?”
“I’ve got a fireplace, sure. I just don’t know whether it’s usable.”
He pointed over to where a brick mantelpiece poked out from behind a mountain of books. Sky offered to take a look and gingerly walked over to examine it.
“That’s a globe, right?” U-ri asked again, pointing at the sphere on top of the table
Ash raised his hand and gave it a spin. “Of this region, yes.”
That explained why none of the continents looked right from where she was sitting. “Are the directions the same? I mean, is up still north?”
“It is.”
“Where are the Haetlands?”
Ash extended a long finger and stopped the slowly rotating globe. He spun it a bit to the right. Then he pointed at a spot near the top of the sphere. “Here. We’re as far north as you can go.”
“Is it a big country? How large is it?”
Ash did not answer. He stared meaningfully at the spot where his finger touched the globe.
“You mean, it’s so small you can cover it with one finger?”
“That’s right.”
Creak, creak. U-ri heard the sound again. It seemed to be coming from somewhere above them, but she could feel vibrations in the floor beneath her at the same time.
“What’s that sound?”
Ash pointed up. “There is a windmill up there. This village uses windmills for power.”
There was no electricity here, in other words. U-ri noted a few lamps sitting here and there, and a few candle sconces hanging from the ceiling.
“It is a cold, poor, and small country—and this village lies at its farthest northern reaches.”
The village’s name was Kanal. The locals supported themselves by hunting and farming.
“Take a look out the window if you like.”
U-ri walked over to the window, startled to see her breath white before her face. She noticed tiny icicles hanging down around the edge of the window.
Even though it was incredibly cold inside, the window was fogged with condensation. She wiped at it with one hand and discovered that it wasn’t just condensation—the window was incredibly filthy. Ash wasn’t a fan of housecleaning, apparently.
“It’s snowing…” Large flakes drifted down outside the window.
“It’s still early winter, actually.”
Aju hopped up to the top of her head and stuck his nose to the glass. No sooner had he done so than he began to sneeze uncontrollably.
U-ri noticed something else about the glass. Underneath the fog and the dirt, it wasn’t all that transparent to begin with. Like a very old window—maybe they don’t have the technology to make good ones yet, she thought, the realization dawning on her. The Haetlands weren’t like Japan and America and Europe in the twenty-first century. This wasn’t that kind of world. She was in the world of “a long time ago.”
U-ri boosted herself up as high as she could and peered outside. Beyond the drifting flakes, she saw a world encased in glittering white ice. She spotted rooftops, angled sharply at the top, and several of them had small windmill towers extending even higher. The houses were made of wood and bricks, with wooden planks running between larger rafters. Everything man-made was drab. Apparently there was no paint in this world. A few trees stood between the houses, but they were all bare—ice sculptures with pointy branches. There was no grass, not even the strange colorless grass she had seen in the nameless land, nor any flowers.
A small path wound between the houses, muddy and half frozen.
She heard a dog howling somewhere. At least they have dogs here. She had been beginning to wonder if anything lived here at all.
“There is much land around here that is too hard for hoeing, even in summer.” At some point Ash had walked up to stand beside her at the window. “Still, there is a wheat field to the south of the village. Harvest time has long since come and gone. From now until winter’s end, we hunt.”
The men would venture out into the frozen woods and mountains, hunting animals for meat and hides. Back in the village, the women would work the hides and flesh, first making what clothing and food the village needed to survive, then selling the rest. There would be no green vegetables or fruit until spring, but roots and tubers could be stored in cellars. That would be their main sustenance through the winter.
“Most of the wheat is taken to pay taxes, in any case. Bread’s a luxury item here. For the most part, we eat potatoes. Is your stomach strong, U-ri?”
“I think so,” she said. But I think I’ll use magic to keep me full for the time being.
The cold air leaking in through the window made her eyes water. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone outside.”
“The women and children are all in their homes. It’s too early in the day yet for the men to come down from the mountains.”
She would’ve expected to see lights in the windows then. Even though it seemed like noontime outside, the weather was so gloomy, U-ri would have wanted light. Lamp oil’s probably a luxury item too.
“We’re pretty high up here, aren’t we?”
U-ri couldn’t look down very well, standing on her toes, but the clouds seemed close above them. Ash stepped behind her and lifted her up so she could see better. Her toes found a beam sticking out of the wall to take some of her weight.
“My house stands on top of the hill. The Hill of the Dead.”
U-ri trembled. “Why’s it called that?”
“The land around us is a graveyard. You’ll see it immediately if you care to walk outside.”
“And why do you live here again?”
“Because I am close to the dead.”
“There, that’s flint—I think,” she heard Aju say from behind her. He must have jumped off her when Ash approached. U-ri looked around and saw that Sky had finished excavating the fireplace, stacked some logs inside, and was now attempting to start a fire. Aju was perched atop his head.
A small tongue of flame licked up the side of the logs. Sky grinned. “There we go.”
The firewood began to burn. U-ri saw the dancing flames reflected on Sky’s bald scalp.
“There is an oven down those stairs,” Ash said to Sky, indicating a corner of the room where wooden steps led down from a hole in the floor. “Make a fire and boil some water. I’m sure U-ri would like something warm to eat.”
Sky nodded and quickly headed down the stairs. His hard footfalls echoed as he left.
“I’ll help,” U-ri said, standing.
“Leave it to him. You sit.”
“But Sky isn’t some errand boy,” U-ri protested.
“He’s your servant, no?” Ash asked without a trace of humor in his face. “And besides, now is a good time for your precious whys. You’ll regret it after if you don’t take this opportunity to ask, and I won’t answer them later anyway.”
“You don’t seem to like Sky very much, do you, Ash? It’s like you don’t trust him.”
“I merely understand that the nameless devout have a role to fulfill, and that is all.”
U-ri was silent. Ash began picking up the bottles sitting on the table one at a time, giving them a little shake to ascertain their contents.
“I think I’m going to go see if we’re really surrounded by a graveyard.”
Without waiting for the wolf’s approval, U-ri ran down the stairs, Aju clinging to the back of her collar.
The ground floor was as cold and as derelict as the floor above. The ceiling was lower here and covered with wattled mud, making it feel like the burrow of some subterranean creature.
Sky was busily preparing the oven. She assumed this was the kitchen, since the oven was here, but there was no sign of any food stores or spices.
When Sky saw her, he smiled. “There is tea, Lady U-ri. And the water in the kettle is fresh. I believe Master Ash has someone to look after his place while he’s absent.”
Too bad he doesn’t have them clean the place up while they’re at it.
U-ri announced she was going to take a look outside, and she headed for what appeared to be the exit. It was a rough door, made of logs bound together with iron. She found it surprisingly heavy.
She pushed, managing to open it several inches, and the snow came swirling in. Her face froze in the cold wind. U-ri squinted against the blast, pulled up the hood of her vestments of protection,
Ash had been telling the truth. The shack stood at the very top of a gently sloping hill, covered in every direction by evenly spaced gravestones.
The graves were simple—rectangular stones jutting up from the ground with no adornments—and too numerous for her to count. There were slight differences in coloration between the stones, which she attributed to differences in age and exposure to the elements.
U-ri exhaled a long white stream of breath. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Aju said from beneath her collar.
“I’ve never seen this many graves in one place.”
It was like the graves had wandered here from some other place to gather around Ash’s hut.
“That’s got to be the whole village under those stones,” Aju said. He meant it as a joke, but somehow it didn’t come out sounding like one. “I mean this town ain’t that big. There's got to be more graves than residents.”
U-ri walked between the stones, careful not to step too close to any. Her feet trod the frozen ground, occasionally crushing frozen chunks of snow. The gravestones really did look like they had gathered there—she wasn’t imagining things. All of the stones, carved with letters she couldn’t read, were facing toward the shack at the top of the hill, looking up at the second-story window where Ash made his home.
U-ri looked down toward the bottom of the hill where a large fence of stone and iron circled the entire graveyard, enclosing the hill and the two-story shack with its creaking windmill at the summit. There was only one gap in the fence with a gate of solid-looking iron. The gate was leaning off its hinges, as though they were not strong enough to support its weight. The side that opened had been wrapped with a chain, from which hung a sturdy padlock. To U-ri it seemed less like Ash was taking care to lock the door and more like someone on the outside wanted to keep him and whatever was under those gravestones from getting out.
U-ri went back up the steps to the shack, brushing off the snow before she entered. The fire was burning in the oven. Sky turned as she walked in.