“My wife,” the old man told him. “That we both made it this far is thanks to you.”
Kutz’s face was paler than the moon. Wataru walked softly over, taking her hand in his own.
“You okay?” she asked, her voice the same as always—perhaps a little weaker.
“Yeah. I managed to make it without getting hurt too bad.” He tried to smile. “You too. That’s a nasty bite you got, but you’re looking good.”
Kutz chuckled deep in her throat. “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about that. I’ve been hurt before, but never like this.” She spoke calmly, quietly. Kutz was never quiet. Even when she was sitting in her chair back at the branch in Gasara, the blood always seemed to be boiling just under her skin. That’s who she was. Not this quiet person lying here in the grass.
“Don’t give up so easy,” Wataru said, trying to sound tough. “Rest tonight and you’ll be fine. We’ll go back to the Isle of Dragon and get you some proper medicine. Okay? Just got to hold on a little longer.”
Kutz released her grip on Wataru’s fingers and lifted her hand to his cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispered softly. “I asked the impossible of you, brought you all this way, and it was all for nothing.”
“It’s not your fault, Kutz.” Wataru said, but his voice quivered, and his eyes burned.
“And look at me. Here I am leaving before you…I can hardly ask for forgiveness, can I…”
“Don’t say that!”
Kutz smiled and looked at Wataru. She gently brushed his cheek.
Wataru heard footsteps coming across the grass. He looked over his shoulder, thinking it was Meena, and saw instead the girl in the white dress. She was standing, clutching herself with both arms.
“The emperor died, didn’t he?” Kutz asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Yes.”
“Can’t really call it a success, though. Lost my whip too.”
Wataru felt Kutz’s hand on his cheek, her fingers—so soft. He had never realized how gentle, how delicate her hands were.
“I’m afraid I may have made a terrible mistake. Not just this time, but so many times before.”
Wataru wanted to tell her, “No, that’s not right,” but his mouth remained closed. She wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to someone else only she could see. Her good eye wasn’t focused on him. She was already back home, in the south, the familiar sound of the busy Gasara streets ringing in her ears.
“You’re the chief, Kutz. You’re my chief,” Wataru said, putting his hand over hers. “You’re a great Highlander. You were always faithful to your duty, and you did what was best to protect Vision.”
She smiled up at him. “Thanks.”
Wataru saw his own face reflected in her eyes. “Wataru. You…you have to make it. Don’t die.”
Wataru nodded. A tear ran down his cheek.
“Your journey…it’s not over. It’s nowhere close to being over. Don’t even think about giving up.”
Her last words were barely more than a breath. Wataru had to lean close to hear. The old man knelt down next to his wife and looked down at the fallen Highlander. “We are Solebrians. You saved us. Can you hear me?”
Kutz moved her head almost imperceptibly, looking in his direction.
“You will go meet with the Goddess now. Until the day you are reborn, you will become a light shining over Vision.”
Kutz closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then whispered in a hoarse voice. “Yes. I’m ready.”
“Before you leave this land, would you like to give a prayer of atonement? We can help you.”
Kutz nodded. Her lips moved, forming the word “please,” but no voice could be heard.
The old man held one of Kutz’s hands. His other hand he put upon his own chest. Beside him, his wife put her hand to her chest as well. She gently stroked Kutz’s forehead with the other.
“We are the children of the Goddess. We leave the dust of the earth, and rise to you.” The gentle words of a prayer flowed from the old man’s mouth. “Light most pure, source and mother of all, lead us now. Light the darkness at the feet of this traveler who now comes to join you. Wash away her sins, and ready a place for her soul in the heavens.”
The old woman brushed Kutz’s waving hair.
“Little child, child of the land. Do you repent your trespasses in the Goddess’s eyes?”
Kutz, eyes closed, nodded ever so slightly.
“Do you repent your sins as a child of man, the conflict, the anger, the empty struggle, the foolish ignorance?”
Kutz nodded again.
“Do you repent the lies, your own greed, your failure to accept the glory that the Goddess has given unto the children of man?”
Kutz nodded yes a third time. The old man replied with a silent nod of his own. “Here then your penance is done, your sins upon the land wiped clean as you were at birth. Be at peace, child of man, for you will surely be called into that eternal light’s embrace. Vesna esta holicia. Though a child of man knows time, life itself is eternal.”
A single tear welled in the corner of Kutz’s eye. Then it trickled up her forehead, falling into her black hair.
At once, the strength went out of her hand that Wataru still held to his cheek.
Wearing a faint smile and looking at peace, despite her many wounds, Kutz died.
The old couple were crying too. The woman stroked Kutz’s forehead again and again. Wataru joined their whispered prayer.
Sleep, child of man. Sleep.
Chapter 51
The Traveler’s Path
Wataru didn’t want to see anybody else crying, and he didn’t want anyone else to see his own tears. He walked to the edge of the woods, hiding behind a tree from the thin light of the crescent moon. Alone, he wept.
Where had all the sadness come from?
He had been sad when he met his father that time in the park. He had been even more sad when he had run from his mother as she fought with Rikako on the balcony. He had never thought he would be sadder than when Uncle Lou came to drag him out from under the bed afterward.
That’s right. I didn’t want to be sad anymore. That’s why I came to Vision to change my destiny. Yet here I am feeling like my heart will break, crying like a baby.
If this is the way it’s going to be, I never should’ve done anything in the first place. I should’ve grit my teeth back in the real world if the end result was going to be the same. No matter where I go, sadness follows. No matter how much time passes it won’t go away. You get only one heart when you’re born, and you can’t turn it in or get it repaired. The only thing that fills it is more sadness. I’m surprised there’s any room left in there at all.
Wataru cried and cried until it hurt to breathe. He wrapped his arms around the tree and hugged it tight, pressing his cheek to the rough bark, and waited until his breathing slowed.
My destiny…
I tried to change it, and only ran into a new sadness. What will happen if I try to change it again?
What has to change, what needs to change, is my, is my…
My what?
What can I possibly do, here in this corner of a Vision just waiting to be destroyed by a horde of demonkin?
Wataru heard soft footsteps coming across the grass. He looked up, quickly wiping his eyes with the palm of his hand.
It was Meena. She had been crying too. “There you are.”
“Yeah.”
“I…I said goodbye to Kutz.”
Her eyes were the color of the night forest. Wataru wondered if his eyes looked the same. Maybe the forest was covering the pain of their loss, and the failure of all their plans, so they wouldn’t have to see it in each other’s eyes.
“How is everyone else?”
“They’re resting.”
“Good.” Wataru wanted nothing more than to leave this place, and then he remembered he had a good reason. “I’m going to go take a look around before we bring the survivors to the cave. There might be some more who lived
out there. I’d hate to leave them behind.”
Meena shook her head. “There’s no one.”
“How can you be sure?”
“How far would you go? It’s too dangerous to go back to the city.”
“I’ll be careful…”
Before he had finished speaking, a large shadow loomed from behind Meena. It was Kee Keema. His face was frozen. He was damp, cold, and exhausted. The lizard-like skin around his eyes was drawn tight with grief.
That’s right. It had always been Kutz’s passion that kept us going. There were so few like her, with that indomitable energy. There would never be anyone to take her place.
And yet…
“Going on patrol? I’ll come too,” Kee Keema offered.
Good ears. Wataru sighed. “I was thinking of going back by the city gates. There might be some people there who couldn’t walk with the others this far.”
“You’re right,” Kee Keema said, reaching for the axe on his back and pulling it out of its harness. He looked at Meena. “We are Highlanders. Even if we’re in the north now, we still have a duty to Vision.”
Meena looked down at the ground.
“Kutz would have it no other way,” he continued. “She would want us to look for stragglers. That’s why I…”
Tears were welling in the corners of Meena’s eyes. Kee Keema put a large hand on her shoulder. “What will you do? You can stay here and keep watch, if you like.”
“No. I’m coming with you,” Meena replied, lifting her chin. The movement sent tears trickling down her cheeks. They sparkled in the moonlight.
“Good, then let’s keep sharp. Things seem quiet for now, but those demonkin fly, after all. Never know where they might be spying from. We’ll keep to the shadows wherever we can. Keep your heads low.”
“You stand out the most of all of us, Kee Keema.”
“I know, I know.”
At least the crescent moon was on their side. When they wanted to look around, it lit their surroundings, and when they hid in the shrubs and thickets, it wrapped itself in clouds and the night grew dark. I’m your ally, it seemed to say, and though I be too far away to help much, I will do what I can.
The broken wall of the city looked like a giant tsunami frozen in stone. The line of its shattered ramparts curved like a wave, a strange by-product of the destruction. As they crawled closer, straining to see in the dark, it almost looked as though it had been designed that way—some mad artistic project of the late emperor.
“I can’t see the mirror,” Meena muttered, narrowing her eyes. “It should be up in the sky where the Crystal Palace stood.”
She was correct. They should’ve been able to see it in the moonlight—unless the moon itself declined to light such an evil thing.
“It’s probably just too dark to see.”
The stench of death drifted from the burnt shell of the city. The fires had died completely down and the night air was cool. But the area still reeked. How many corpses lay buried under that mountain of brick and stone?
All by himself, and all at once, Mitsuru had taken an uncountable number of lives. He had known it would happen too, yet he never once wavered from his course. He never even tried to think of a different way.
Wataru’s feet brushed through the dry grass. “I was knocked out so I never saw it,” he said suddenly. Kee Keema’s and Meena’s feet stopped.
“Saw what?”
“What the people from the city were talking about. They said that just before the Mirror of Eternal Shadow appeared, a single column of light rose into the sky from the central spire of the Crystal Palace. They said it was like a pillar. And they could see a figure in it, rising upward.”
Meena turned her back on him, looking toward the forest. They had come quite far. Tufts of grass and low-lying shrubs swayed in the night wind.
“Did you—did you two see it?” Wataru began walking forward again, his eyes scanning the darkness around them.
“We saw it,” Kee Keema answered at last.
“Yeah?”
“It looked like he was going up to heaven all right.” Kee Keema swung his axe as though striking at something. “But that doesn’t mean he made it to the Tower of Destiny. If I were the Goddess, I’d kick him straight out. How could she grant him anything after the mess he’s left Vision in?”
His words reminded Wataru of something the Elder had said way back in Sakawa. The one who runs the fastest wouldn’t necessarily get to the tower first.
But those words could merely have been wishful thinking—a pep talk to keep him from descending into total despair.
Wataru looked up at the night sky. A thin, translucent cloud passed like a net across the crescent moon.
And there was the Blood Star, still shining red. It hadn’t disappeared. That meant Halnera wasn’t yet finished. The sacrifice hadn’t been chosen.
What is she waiting for? Why prolong the cruelty?
“Who’s there?” Meena suddenly said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
Wataru and Kee Keema both whirled around, their weapons at the ready. A thin, twisted tree grew not ten paces behind them. The edge of a white dress peeked out from behind its trunk, fluttering in the cold night air.
“It’s her,” Wataru said, lowering Kee Keema’s axe with one hand, and calling out. “What are you doing here?”
The girl fearfully looked out from behind her hiding place, her hands pressed to her mouth. Wataru ran over to her. “Why did you leave the forest?”
“You go to the capital, no?”
The girl was shivering terribly. Her dress was too thin to protect her from the cold. Her teeth were chattering. “Please, take me with you. There might be someone left—someone from the palace.”
Wataru hesitated a moment, then took off his jacket and gave it to her. He would have put it on her himself, but she was taller by a head.
“We were just going as far as the city walls. If it doesn’t look like we can go inside, we’ll have to stop there.”
“That is good enough.” Still trembling, the girl drew Wataru’s jacket over her shoulders.
Though it had been the gentlemanly thing to do, Wataru was now feeling cold wearing just a shirt in the chilly air. “Didn’t you hear what everyone was saying back in the forest? The Crystal Palace is gone. They say it was sucked into the Mirror of Eternal Shadow. I don’t imagine anyone in the castle survived.”
The girl’s cheeks were pale with cold and fear. But when Wataru turned to rejoin Kee Keema and Meena, she followed him.
Now they were four. Meena walked in the rear, staring at the girl in the white dress. “Are you from the castle?” she asked as they walked.
The girl hunched her shoulders and didn’t answer.
“That’s a nice dress you’re wearing. Nobility, are you?”
The girl still said nothing. Perhaps she could hear the barely concealed thorns in Meena’s question.
“Well, you must be of high birth, at least. Tell me: when the capital was being torn to pieces, where was the emperor’s army? Where are they now? Aren’t they even going to try to help their own people?”
Before Wataru could say anything, Kee Keema cut in. “When those golem monsters were tearing the city apart, I saw several groups of Knights come down from the castle. They didn’t stand a chance against those things. They were crushed. If any of the troops were left behind in the castle, well, I suppose when the mirror came out…”
Meena was bristling. “Then what about the rest of the army? And what about Sigdora—those special forces? Where were they? What are they doing? You know, don’t you?”
From what he had seen in the mirror hall, Wataru could guess who the girl in the white dress truly was. She was none other than the daughter of Emperor Gama Agrilius VII. She was a princess.
And she looked exactly like Mitsuru’s aunt back in the real world.
As Wataru had met people that were the spitting image of his father and Rikako, so had Mitsuru met ghosts from the r
eal world too. Wataru still didn’t understand the meaning of what Mitsuru had said to her just before he left for the tower. What did he mean, the tilted scales of fortune? And that cheating man and woman he had met in the Swamp of Grief were doing the same thing as his father and Rikako were, and justifying it with the same twisted logic. Yet he had never thought of any of them as being particularly fortunate or unfortunate. Who had Mitsuru met in his Vision, Wataru wondered. What did they remind him of? What did they make him think about?
“Sigdora isn’t an army,” the princess said in a voice barely more than a whisper. “There’s nothing they could do at a time like…”
“They’re useless, then?” Meena said quickly, cutting her off. She turned up her nose in disdain.
The emperor’s daughter stayed as much in Kee Keema’s shadow as she could. Her lips trembled and her body seemed to shrink. “I fear that the palace guards are all gone, if what you say is true. The Imperial Army’s elites, led by General Adja, were sadly missing from Solebria at the time the seal was broken. They may be rushing toward the city even now. If they have encountered the demonkin along the way, I expect they are already in battle somewhere out there on the road.”
“So you mean to tell me they’re out there fighting for the people?” Meena said, pursing her lips with distaste. “Even though Solebria is destroyed? Even though the emperor is gone? Who will take charge of the North? Who will lead the armies now?”
If blood lineage had anything to do with it, the responsibility for the army would fall to Lady Zophie herself. Perhaps that was why she was so desperate to locate Crystal Palace survivors.
“Give it a rest, Meena,” Kee Keema gently scolded. “I know how you feel, but now’s not the time.”
“Give what a rest? I’m just asking her some questions.”
“So give the questions a rest, all right? Talk too loud and you’ll bring the demonkin down on us.”
The remains of the city walls stood before them. The location of the gates were further to the east of where they were now, but they would be easy to find if they decided to follow the main road. Still, none of them savored the idea of walking out on a road or any other open place.