The Book of Heroes by Miyuki Miyabe
“If time and circumstances allow,” Ash replied.
“Very well,” Dr. Latore said, standing. “We should go quickly, then. If warding magic’s been used, there might be some…difficulties.”
“We are ready,” Ash said.
Dr. Latore bid them farewell and quickly left. U-ri followed him with her eyes. She had wanted to speak with the doctor longer. Actually, she didn’t need to talk. She would be happy just staring at him. “What are you talking about, and what’s the big rush?” she asked, turning to Ash.
“I’ll explain when the time is right.”
“Why not now?”
“This is why I don’t like working with girls,” Ash growled, not bothering to mask his displeasure at all now that they were alone. “Try thinking about my position for a change, instead of pining over that physician.”
“But he was so nice…” U-ri said with a sigh. She liked seeing Ash so visibly annoyed. Maybe he’s more human than I thought. U-ri grinned inwardly. She decided to change the subject. “With a doctor and all, this is really a proper town, isn’t it? How many live here? One hundred? More?”
“I’m not sure exactly. They’re not eager for anyone to know. I do know that the monks alone number eighty in all—” Ash frowned at U-ri. “You seem unreasonably taken with this cave, so let me be frank. This is not a happy place or even a pleasant one. The people here—”
“Are poor, or sick, or homeless,” U-ri said, cutting him off. “Saulo told us on the way in. I saw children too.”
“Orphans, for the most part.”
“You seem to know a lot about this place, Ash. And Dr. Latore…”
Ash furrowed his brow, his mood still as dark as the low ceiling above them. “There are people here like Udsu, the springfoot you met in Kanal. No other place will take them in. They are driven out, chased, hunted, until they find this place. And here they die. Down in this cave far below the ground.” Ash shook his head. “And when they die, they need to be buried. That’s where I come in.”
U-ri nodded, understanding entirely. Udsu was going to die. The flush left her cheeks.
“There is a graveyard on the very bottom level of this cavern. I am the undertaker there as well.”
“I see—” U-ri began, when she heard a voice calling quietly, “Lady Allcaste.”
She looked around and saw two bookshelves standing in a corner of the room. She seemed to be in a sort of living room. There were paintings on the walls and flowers—probably dried, given that they were far from any sunlight—in a vase on the table.
“I’ll go say hi,” Aju offered. He hopped from U-ri’s shoulder and quickly scampered up the bookshelf. The books with their old, cracked bindings tittered as the mouse’s tail brushed their spines. U-ri smiled in their direction and bowed curtly in greeting.
“That reminds me,” she said, turning to the wolf. “Where’s Sky? He was with you, wasn’t he?” U-ri felt a sudden chill run down her spine. What if Sky had fallen someplace else, apart from all of them?
“He’s been down in the infirmary, playing nurse,” Ash told her, his tone as cold as it always was whenever he spoke of the nameless devout.
Why does he have to be so mean to him all the time?
“He said he couldn’t sit still, he was so worried about you. At first he was determined to go searching for you himself. Saulo had to stop him. Your servant gave the man no end of trouble.”
“I’m sure Sky was very concerned! He’s supposed to be, you know.” U-ri stood. “I’m going to look for him. Where is this infirmary?”
“Leave him be. We don’t have time for—”
“I’ll be right back, promise!” U-ri shouted, dashing out the door. What’s his problem? She wanted to see Sky as soon as she could. She couldn’t imagine how distraught the poor fellow must’ve been this whole time, separated from the person he was supposed to protect. She ran down the spiral path, her vestments billowing out behind her.
The further down she went, the more people she saw. With their sunken eyes and thin faces, the residents of the subterranean abbey couldn’t have been more different from the people U-ri had encountered on the streets of Tato. The only ones walking with any pep at all were the black-robed monks. They were the only ones who weren’t startled to see her. Everyone else froze, eyes wide, sometimes even backing away from her, fear plain in their eyes.
There were two infirmaries in the complex, one on either side of the large passage in which she now stood. She looked in one room, but Sky was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she found a boy sitting in a bed, crying. A monk with a vial of medicine was stroking the child’s hair, muttering something in a low, soothing voice. The child’s mother was there too, crying along with her boy. There were some others in the room—all women and children, lying on wooden pallets jammed in so close together that the monks had to walk sideways like crabs to get between them.
The scent of blood and something worse hung in the air. She started to walk out when someone grabbed her wrist. U-ri shook herself free and whirled around to see an old woman lying on a bed by the door. The woman drew her hand back as though U-ri had bit it, and shrank from her.
“I-I’m sorry,” U-ri stammered. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” U-ri knelt down by the woman, her nostrils filling with the smell of medicine and the old woman’s own stench. She was terribly frail, and going bald. What little hair she had left was of the purest white. One of her eyelids was closed, and a membrane the color of curdled milk obscured her other eye.
“Please help me,” the old woman said, her tongue thick in her mouth. She had lost most of her teeth, and her lips were cracked and blistered.
Swallowing the fear she felt, U-ri took the old woman’s hand in her own. “Please, don’t get excited, you need to stay calm. You’ll be all right. A doctor will be with you soon.” U-ri fled.
Outside, she leaned up against the corridor wall, putting a hand over her racing heart to keep it from beating out of her chest. U-ri gasped. The glyph on her forehead was warm—hot, even. She hurriedly touched it and felt its heat slowly fade beneath her palm.
Something has awakened it.
U-ri lowered her palm in front of her face and stared at it. She wondered if it could heal disease like it had healed the man possessed by the unattached back in Tato.
Can you?
She pressed her hand to her forehead again. There was no reaction from the glyph this time.
Guess not. Or maybe I can, but I shouldn’t. Is that why you’re being quiet, glyph?
“Lady U-ri!” The voice was Sky’s. U-ri whirled around so fast she almost lost her balance. Sky was standing in the entrance of the small dwelling just behind her. His eyes and mouth were open wide. Sky spread his arms in greeting, and U-ri ran into them, shouting his name over and over. Sky received her standing stiff as a board, completely unprepared for her enthusiasm.
U-ri barreled into him, and they both toppled over with a loud crash on the floor. The sleeves of their black robes tangled. When she realized what she had done, U-ri shrieked and extricated herself. She scrambled to her feet, mortified. “Sky! What are you doing?”
Sky sat on the ground, dazed.
“Are you all right?”
“Lady U-ri—” The devout’s eyes regained their focus and he picked himself up, but he did not stand. Instead he crouched down on his knees and began to bow. “I beg your forgiveness. I could not be with you. I have endangered the allcaste.”
The devout’s bald head rubbed against the floor. U-ri stood there, flustered. People further down the corridor had stopped to stare at them. Behind her one of the black-robed monks had come out of the infirmary to see what was the matter.
“Never mind that, just get up. You don’t have to bow to me like that, especially not here.” She grabbed Sky’s arm and managed to drag him to his knees. He seemed unwilling to stand, so she crouched down to his level and stared him in the eye. “As you can see, I’m fine. Aju was with me the whole time. We had a bit of
U-ri snapped her mouth shut. The devout’s eyes were filled with tears.
“You were worried, weren’t you? I’m sorry.”
“No, it is I who should apologize. I have failed you,” Sky said. He touched a finger to his wet cheek and hurriedly turned away.
He’s crying. This empty “nothing” is crying. It’s because he’s not empty. He’s not a nameless devout anymore. He has a name, and that’s Sky. I’m not just imagining this.
U-ri took Sky’s hand. Then she realized something. Something so big, she nearly yelped when it hit her. “Sky! When I was down in Tato, you were here looking after these people, right? They told me you wanted to go look for me, but they stopped you.”
Sky nodded, his head hanging in shame.
U-ri pointed at herself. “That means that you had a form, Sky, even though I wasn’t nearby. You had a body. You could walk around and do things just like normal people, couldn’t you? And everyone around you could see you! I’m right, aren’t I?”
Sky’s purple eyes went wide, and his mouth gaped open again. U-ri’s mouth was open too, and the two stared at each other like that for some time.
“Right?”
“You…are right.” In a daze, the devout touched his own body as though to make sure he was really there.
“See? You are not hollow anymore! You’re a person again!” U-ri declared loudly. Sky’s experiences while separated from U-ri had to be proof of that.
“B-but, Lady U-ri. You might not have been here, but the vestments were. Perhaps their power lent me form.”
“What? No way! The vestments of protection are just tattered old rags if you take me out of them. Don’t even think that!” U-ri slapped Sky on his thin shoulder. The noise of the blow echoed down the hall. The devout winced.
Maybe I hit him a little too hard. That bit about the vestments being tattered old rags might have been overdoing it too.
“Ack, sorry! Sorry, Sky.”
More than all that, though, U-ri was glad to be back with her friend again. And she was glad that Sky was still Sky. Her face was warm with excitement and embarrassment all mingled together. She thought she might cry.
“I think we’re going to see the person Ash was telling us about, the one who might have information on how to find my brother.” U-ri took Sky by the hand. “Let’s get back to the others!”
For the first time, she noticed a pleasant scent hovering around him. It smelled like incense. She looked up and noticed that it wasn’t just Sky who smelled good. Thin blue smoke was drifting from the dwelling behind him—the one he had just stepped out of.
“Wait. Weren’t you helping in the infirmary, Sky?”
“No, actually, I—”
U-ri stepped past him and into the entranceway. The place was dimly lit, with only a few candles burning low in sconces on the walls. “This isn’t an infirmary.”
U-ri walked all the way in. It was a small room, carved out of the cavern wall. The walls and ceiling were all bare rock, hung with several paintings. Some of the larger ones had been too big to hang, so they sat leaning up against the walls. U-ri saw the smoke rising from a tall, round table in the center of the room. That’s where the incense is burning. But what is this place? An art gallery?
“What were you doing in here, Sky?” U-ri asked as she slowly walked over to the table. The devout hesitated a moment at the entrance, then followed her inside.
“I was going to go back up to the others, when I lost my way—”
Lost your way? But this is right next door. U-ri was about to bring that up when another discovery pushed such thoughts out of her mind. She had gotten close enough to see the paintings in the dim light, and she realized that they were all portraits. U-ri walked up to the largest of them, the one sitting directly across from the entrance. It showed a man in silver armor with a long crimson cape flowing from his shoulders.
He’s another handsome one. He was a little younger than Dr. Latore; a young warrior in his prime. And not quite the same type. Dr. Latore was what you thought of when you thought of a man—a paragon of handsomeness, maybe—but this warrior was beauty itself. Abstract, genderless, perfect beauty in human form.
U-ri guessed his age at about twenty. He had a prominent forehead and angled nose. His eyes glittered ebon black. Thick black hair fell in gentle curls down to his neck. The man’s cheeks were as fresh as a baby’s, adding to his youthful demeanor—marred only by a streak of silver in the hair over his right temple, like the painter had accidentally marked the portrait there with his brush.
His right hand rested on the hilt of a sword at his belt. His left hand was half-concealed beneath his cloak, but she could see a large ring on one of his fingers. The crest engraved into the ring was the same as the ones that adorned his shoulders where the cloak attached. U-ri carefully removed a candle from one of the wall sconces and brought it closer to his face.
“It is the same crest.”
Behind her, Sky spoke. “It is the sigil of House Dijkstra.”
“Who are they?”
Sky stepped up to stand next to her in front of the oversized portrait. “Kirrick’s birth family.”
U-ri’s eyes opened wider, and the candle in her hand tilted. A drip of melted wax fell on the ground by her feet. “You mean—”
“This is a portrait of Kirrick Roth, twelfth count of the House Dijkstra, painted on the occasion of his first battle at the age of nineteen.”
U-ri blinked. So this was he. Leader of the rebellion, commander of an army of the dead, and Ash’s half brother. The cursed hero.
“It is said that the rightful heir of House Dijkstra is always born with a streak of silver hair over his right temple. This is the proof of their legitimacy.”
U-ri stared unblinking at the portrait. After a short while, she took a few slow steps backward to glance at the others. There was one of a newborn baby, wrapped in white swaddling clothes. And another of a young boy standing with a dog beneath a tree. A strong boy, with ruddy cheeks—
“All of the paintings here are of Kirrick. This gallery is a record of his growth from infant to man.”
“But why keep them? Didn’t Kirrick’s rebellion end in tragedy?”
Sky replaced the candle in the sconce. “On account of his undead army, Kirrick lost favor in the capital as quickly as he had won it. Those who blamed him most loudly were the nobles and members of parliament loyal to the old royal line, those who had clung to their riches and authority before Kirrick brought them down. Under pressure from them to act, Kirrick led a small force down to deal with the creatures spawned from his army—and they never returned.”
Though he had no choice in the matter, when he left the palace, Kirrick had gone from being the new king to being a traitor of the state. His enemies in the capital made it so. And those who dragged him from his throne in the end had plenty of justifications for what they did, what with Kirrick so newly arrived to a power he had gained by means dark and questionable. A few whispered words in the right ears, and Kirrick went from being a hero to being the source of all the kingdom’s woes in the space of a fortnight.
Kirrick was forced to flee before he could bring the creatures under control, and eventually his enemies killed him.
“But his change of fate in the eleventh hour was the doing of highly placed supporters of the royal family in the capital. The populace still loved and supported Kirrick throughout. He had begun his rebellion to free them from oppression, after all, and though the king who replaced him branded him a traitor and hunted him down throughout the land, there were those who aided and harbored him before he met his end.”
U-ri walked quietly in front of the five portraits, looking carefully at each. “So the Katarhar Abbey was on his side, then.”
“That is correct. Even today, they revere him as a hero of the people, as a king who would have brought peace wer
U-ri imagined the monks carrying the portraits here during the wave of religious suppression thirty years ago. Why would they have bothered, if they didn’t still revere Kirrick’s memory?
“It seems like they could have put his portraits up in a more appropriate place. Why here, across from the infirmary?”
Sky smiled. “I believe it is because Kirrick always stood on the side of the weak, and who is weaker than the very old and the very ill?”
U-ri smiled back at him. She felt sorrow for Kirrick, an almost physical pain in her chest, though seeing the portraits hung here did much to ease that. “Let’s go.” U-ri turned to the portrait one last time and curtsied before leaving the room. She returned with Sky to the living room above where she had first met the doctor. Ash was standing in the back, facing the bookshelves. When they came in, he turned, a sour look on his face. “Where were you?”
“I’m sorry. I got lost.”
Aju was up on top of one of the shelves. “The books here say they want to talk to you, U-ri. We have a little time, don’t we? Please, Ash?”
That’s not like Aju to ask permission. I wonder what’s up?
U-ri walked over to the shelves, and the tightly packed books began to wink and glimmer at her.
“Protector of the Circle, great Tuner of the Chords. Young Bearer of the Glyph, Apostle of the Good Light. You who bear the Providence of the Seal. Lady Allcaste—” a chorus of voices called out in greeting. All of them were glimmering more brightly now, the light illuminating U-ri’s face. “Welcome to the Haetlands. Welcome to Katarhar.”
“Thank you,” U-ri curtsied, a little taken aback. What was all that they just said? Something about bearing providence? She wasn’t sure she had caught the meaning of everything—she only knew she had never heard anyone greet her quite so formally before.
“Lady Allcaste.” The chorus had now become a single voice, that of an old woman. “We of the Katarhar Abbey are linked to the Hero’s escape through ties that go back many centuries. Ties as thick as living blood and as deep as the abyss at the Circle’s end. Lady Allcaste, we would lend you our wisdom, through your sage, Aju, if you would have it. Please use it as you see fit.”