Brave Story

  In the center of the room was a large, round mirror—as wide across as Wataru was tall. He recognized it at a glance. A—or maybe even the—Mirror of Truth. Next to it a white-robed man sat slumped in a single chair, like a night watchman dozing off on the job. It was the man who had talked to them through the mirror. The hammer he had been holding lay on the ground by his feet.

  Wataru ran down the staircase leading from the terrace to the floor below. Not knowing what to say, he ran up to the man and grabbed him by the arm. Wataru shook him, and the silver crown slipped from the man’s forehead. His hair was as white as it had looked in the mirror. Yet he seemed much younger than Wataru had thought. He’s not even thirty years old. Is he dead?

  The man’s head listed to one side, and his eyes opened. They peered into Wataru’s face, filling with a look of relief. “Ah, it is you! You heard my call!” The man blinked his sleepy eyes and attempted to sit up in his chair. A barely audible moan escaped from his lips.

  “You are the Traveler.”

  In person, his voice, too, sounded quite young. His eyes were clear, his skin smooth and free of wrinkles. So why the white hair?

  Wataru nodded. “My name’s Wataru.”

  Behind him, Kee Keema and Meena finally reached the bottom of the stairs from the terrace. The man watched them as they approached.

  “These are my traveling companions. They came here with me. I’m sorry it took us so long.”

  “How…did you reach this place?”

  “We rode here on a dragon.”

  The man’s eyes opened, and he smiled. “Magnificent. So, you have met a dragon? I…never did. They are rare creatures, even in Vision.”

  Everything about the man, from the words he chose to the way his face lit up when he spoke made him seem so much younger than he had before. It was uncanny.

  “We need to get you out of here. Your face is pale. This cold will give you pneumonia if you stay here too long,” Wataru said, putting his hand on the man’s forehead. Where he thought to feel the warmth of a fever, it was cold to the touch. The man’s skin was the color of lead.

  “Are there any others here? We should get them too. We need to go someplace warm.”

  The man slowly shook his head. “No one is left. All have died. Only I remain.” More than sad, the man sounded deeply ashamed to have lived. “You may call me the Precept-King. That is what everyone called me. I was their leader—in name at least.”

  The Precept-King. Precepts were religious teachings or laws. If the Special Administrative State of Dela Rubesi was indeed a bastion of belief in the Old God, it seemed a fitting title for their leader.

  Still, there was so much that made no sense.

  “What happened here?” Meena said, kneeling by the man. “Was it a plague? Did everyone die of illness? Was it always this cold here?”

  “Time enough to talk later. Let’s get out of here,” Kee Keema growled. “Meena, would you mind giving my back a quick rub. That should get me moving again. And I need to carry this guy.”

  The white-robed man reached out and placed his hand over Wataru’s. “No. I may not leave this place. This city will die soon, and I plan to die with it. I cannot escape. The Goddess would not allow it.”

  The Goddess? Wataru’s eyes opened wide. He pointed at the room around them. “What do you mean? I thought this was—aren’t you believers in the Old God?”

  “No, it is not so.” The man gave a weak smile, the expressionless mask falling from his face like a shard of ice. “This too was part of the agreement with the Goddess. It was the best way to ensure that we did not trouble the lowlands. That is why we kept our promise—for so long, we kept it. Yet promises were made to be broken, and our time finally came. Surely, the Goddess knew it would. Men are crafty, and their hearts are weak. Someday, one among us would go against our promise held for eternity—and all of us would be punished for his trespass.” The man muttered softly to himself, half singing. Wataru had trouble following the meaning of his words.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Then the white-haired, youthful Precept-King looked Wataru straight in the eyes. “I was once a Traveler, like yourself.”

  He’s from the real world too?

  “Including myself, there were eleven of us from the real world in this place, all of them Travelers. All thought to change their own destiny, and so passed through the Porta Nectere to Vision.” His eyes looked back in time as he spoke. “But we were never able to realize our dreams. We failed on the difficult journey through Vision and chose to abandon our path. Yet, at the same time, none of us wished to trudge back to the real world in defeat, having been unable to change our destinies.”

  Wataru silently watched the man’s sharply cut jaw move. Oddly, the look in his eyes was less one of fatigue and more of boredom. There was something else too. He looked familiar—like someone Wataru had met before.

  “So you stayed in Vision?” Meena asked quietly, her breath a wisp in the air.

  “Yes,” the Precept-King nodded. “The Goddess made this city for us, the failed Travelers. Here, we were commanded to live our lives apart from the rest of the world. That was the condition of our stay in Vision.”

  Meena looked up at the high ceiling. “You were all trapped in here? Unable to even step out into the world outside?” It was clear from her expression that Meena couldn’t imagine ever being so confined to one place.

  “Didn’t you ever get tired of it, or bored?” Wataru asked. “Did you have some sort of work you were meant to perform here?”

  The Precept-King lifted his eyes and looked at the large Mirror of Truth to his side. “Our task was to protect this.”

  “The mirror?”

  Kee Keema took a step toward the mirror, reaching out his hand as if to touch it. Then, thinking better of it, he stepped away.

  The Precept-King nodded. “All Travelers find the Mirror of Truth at some point during their journey through Vision. Each of them, in their own way, will find it. Yet, when their journey is done, they must return it to the Goddess. They’re not allowed to return it to the world of Vision. It is too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Yes. The Mirror of Truth may be used to go between this place and the real world, you see.”

  Wataru looked at Meena. A spark of understanding lit in her eyes. “I was always told I should never let my mirror leave my possession—though I had no idea what it could do. I don’t think my parents knew either.”

  “That knowledge is forbidden,” the Precept-King said, smiling gently at Meena. “But now, you know its secret, don’t you?”

  Meena nodded hesitantly. “Not that I would ever dream of doing anything with it myself.”

  “Ah, if only everyone in Vision was as honest as you.”

  The Precept-King cast his eyes downward, spotting the hammer lying at his feet. He slowly reached down to pick it up, and placed it on his lap. It was as though he hadn’t even realized it had dropped out of his limp hands until now.

  “This Mirror of Truth is actually a collection of twelve mirrors once held by the Travelers who lived here. Each mirror has a soul, you see. Those souls have fused, and here they have a form. That is what we were protecting. We sought to keep anyone with schemes to travel between this world and the real world away.”

  Wataru felt his heart beat faster in his chest. “Twelve? You’ve added one more to your number.”

  The Precept-King looked at Wataru and smiled. “Indeed. You see, one of us escaped quite recently. Even now, he is still at large. He is the fugitive, the breaker of the oath with the Goddess, the traitor. He is the rebel that appeared from among us. That is why we must be punished.”

  “And that punishment…” the words caught in Wataru’s throat. “This frozen city? Did the Goddess do this?”

  The Precept-King nodded. He lowered his chin to his chest and closed his eyes.

  “Isn’t that a bit harsh?” Kee Keema spoke. His speech was still slurred, nu
mbed by the cold. “The Goddess we know is benevolent. I can’t believe she would punish everyone for just one broken promise. There must be some mistake?”

  “Gods are ever strict,” the Precept-King said, his eyes still closed. “And men ever weak. Their eyes filled with greed, they scheme foolishly against the heavens. The Goddess knows this all too well. After all, it has happened many times before.”

  One of the twelve, escaped. Still at large. And the Goddess is furious. Wataru’s heart beat even faster. “An emergency call went out to the Highlanders in the lowlands. They’re looking for a fugitive!”

  Meena’s eyes opened wide. “That’s right! They said he he stole vital national secrets and was heading to the north. Maybe he’s the one…”

  The Precept-King’s jaw tightened. “Is this so? Then, yes, it probably is him. So the Goddess has acted on her own, has she?”

  That solves the mystery of the fugitive’s origins.

  “As it turns out, we happen to be Highlanders,” Kee Keema said proudly, his eyes brightening with interest for the first time since arriving in the cold city. “If this fugitive was one of yours, maybe you have some clue as to his whereabouts, where he might’ve gone? It’s our duty to find him.”

  Gripping the back of his chair, the Precept-King tried to stand, but his legs were unresponsive. Giving up, he sat back down. “Then you understand our predicament better than I thought. The reason I summoned you—the reason I asked you to come all this way—was to capture that fugitive. I do have a clue as to his whereabouts. I can tell you exactly where he is now.”

  “How?”

  “The mirror will show us. Please, give me your hand.”

  Wataru and Meena grabbed the Precept-King’s arms, and managed to help him stand. Slowly, he hobbled over to the Mirror of Truth, and standing before it, he raised his hands along its curved edge. His reflected image in the mirror blurred and faded. Wataru blinked, and the next instant, he could see a city pictured in the mirror’s depths.

  A port city. He caught glimpses of a blue sea between buildings that looked like stacked warehouses. The warehouse walls, made of simple boards and pilings, had been painted with a design in yellow: a clenched fist. It must be a marker of some sort.

  “That…that’s Sono,” Kee Keema said, warily squinting his eyes. “No mistaking it. Look at how old those buildings are, how they’re practically falling down. Sono used to be the busiest fishing port in Arikita, but when industry took off there, the sea became too polluted for fishing, and the town went to rust. They tried changing it to an industrial port, but the harbor had always been small, and they never were as successful as places like Hataya and Dakla.”

  “Do any of the sailships go north from there?”

  “No large ships use the port. But there are several medium-size vessels that might be able to make the passage.”

  “So the fugitive is hiding here?” Wataru asked.

  The Precept-King clutched the Mirror of Truth, his shoulders heaving with every breath. “He is waiting for a favorable wind. As you have probably heard, the sailships passing to the north must wait for the starseers’ word that the winds will move with them before they set out.”

  “How often do these winds blow? “

  Kee Keema scratched his thick neck and shrugged. “I don’t know for certain, of course—I’m no starseer. But this is certainly the season when most sailships make the journey. There are only about three or four times a year when that happens.”

  “Then we have to hurry!” Meena said, her tail bobbing in the air. “We have to let everyone know: we’re looking for a shipping company with this mark of the fist.”

  “So the mirror tells us. The fugitive seeks passage by boat. Perhaps it is the captain who hides him until the time is right?”

  Kee Keema and Meena looked ready to run off instantly, but Wataru stood still. He was staring directly at the Precept-King’s black eyes, half hidden beneath his bushy white eyebrows. “What are these national secrets the fugitive is carrying? You must know.”

  “We’ll just ask once we’ve caught him,” Kee Keema said impatiently.

  The Precept-King slouched, falling over the arm of his chair. The motion revealed a horribly emaciated body under his white robes.

  “The fugitive—that man used the Mirror of Truth to return to the real world, and brought back with him plans for a powered ship and a motor. He was going to take them to the north.”

  Meena looked understandably confused. It was clear that not a word the man had said made any sense to her. Kee Keema too stood scratching his head.

  Only Wataru seemed to get it. “He was going to sell that to the Northern Empire?” With a fleet of powered vessels at their command, the North would no longer have to brave the Stinging Mist or wait for the winds to turn in their favor. They could invade the South whenever they wanted.

  “What does it mean, Wataru? Sell what? Why do you look so frightened?”

  Wataru turned to Meena, and as simply as he could, told her briefly about engines and what a powered ship would mean in Vision. The impact of his words was clear. Rage burned deep in Meena’s eyes. “That’s insane! Why would a Traveler want to help the North like that? Why? Does he hate the South? Why would he want to destroy the peace in Vision?”

  When the Precept-King answered, he spoke to Wataru, not Meena.

  “He said it would bring about Vision’s industrial revolution.”

  Meena stared blankly at the white-haired man.

  “It’s something that happened in the real world,” Wataru explained, gritting his teeth.

  Power. Mechanical power that didn’t rely on the strength of men. Wataru had thought of it many times since arriving here. More than half of the things that were done by physical strength here were done with motors in the real world. Wataru had been astonished by the difference it made on many occasions.

  “I spoke with him many times on these matters,” said the Precept-King, half to himself. “I wasn’t shy about giving him my opinion. Most assuredly, Vision will have its own industrial revolution…but in its own time. That it has not already arrived is a sign that Vision is not ready for it. Yet he thought that would take too long,”

  The Precept-King continued, “What was wrong, he asked me, with bringing things that already existed in the real world here, to Vision? He thought he could make Vision richer, add to its prosperity overnight.”

  “Would these motors give us prosperity?” Meena asked innocently. Wataru didn’t have a good answer. It depended on what one meant by prosperity. And it was unclear that the kind of prosperity that mechanical power promised would really bring happiness to Vision.

  “Of course, he had other motives.”

  “Like what?”

  The Precept-King turned to Meena. “With that information he carried, the Northern Empire would welcome him with open arms. He would be a most valued citizen there. My dear kitkin, it is as you fear. With powered ships, the North would defeat the South in the blink of an eye. Vision would be unified under one leadership, whether it wished it or not. That would make our fugitive a grand contributor to the new order. He would stand at the top of Vision along with the Imperial Family of the North.”

  The light in Meena’s eyes dimmed. “That’s it? That’s what he wants?”

  “Indeed. That is why he brought knowledge from the real world here to Vision—to satisfy his own greed. That is why the Goddess is angry.”

  Wataru glanced at the Mirror of Truth. Its smooth surface once again reflected the three of them, standing around the robed man.

  “Do you really think the fugitive can secure passage to the Northern Empire so easily? I wonder if anyone would really believe him when he told them about the boat.”

  “Oh, they would believe,” the Precept-King said, his eyes filling with sorrow. “As I have heard, the empire in the north has been trying for some time now to obtain a Mirror of Truth for themselves. It appears that someone in the Imperial Family knows of its workin
gs. If they could open passage to the real world, they know what power it would place in their hands. There was a time when they tried any number of despicable ways to create a mirror such as the one we have here.”

  Wataru looked at Meena. All expression had drained from her little face. Her thoughts were racing backward through time.

  When Sigdora—the special unit of the Northern Imperial Army—attacked Meena’s home, they had been after her family’s Mirror of Truth. Her parents were merely casualties. That was why they were after fugitives to the south as well. It was all for the mirrors.

  The Precept-King furrowed his brow as he gazed at the mirror beside them. “Do you know what the Mirror of Truth is?” he suddenly asked Wataru.

  “I’m not sure what you mean. It opens a corridor between this world and the real world, right?”

  “Yes, this is one of its vital functions. But that is not why the mirror exists in the first place.”

  The mirror presides, as its name might suggest, over truth in Vision, the Precept-King explained. “It is composed of the very elements that make Vision what it is—the seeds of the world. A gathering of parts that create the world—perhaps this is the best way to describe it,” he said, running his finger along the edge of the mirror.

  The seeds of the world? Wataru shook his head.

  “It is not surprising that you do not understand. You are still a child, after all,” The Precept-King said with an ironic smile. “Vision is but a void, yet it has form. It is here, yet it is not. It exists, yet it may not exist.”

  Oh, that clears it up. Wataru began to feel like he was listening to a lecture at school.

  “You do not know the story of Vision’s creation, do you?”

  Wataru frowned. “Actually, I do. Vision is created by the imaginations of people living in the real world.”