At last do I understand what you were talking about that day I visited you before going to be married.
Her brother’s response, when it came, was the longest he had ever written.
Because you are my sister, you know well that the great Sun God, Sol Raveh, to whom we pray in our temples, gives birth to all, mends all, and governs all with love’s power.
It seemed to her that her brother’s voice on the page sounded different than it had before. Even the letters were written in a careful, elegant style.
Yet even the God of Light had to walk a path beset by hardship before bringing peace to our land. He waged wars and fought many battles. Toksa was the site of one, particularly fierce.
He went on to tell her that Sol Raveh had fought a powerful adversary near Toksa. The enemy had been defeated and successfully imprisoned, yet victory had not come without a sacrifice: Toksa’s unusual custom, and the first child born with horns upon its head.
The Sacrifice is born a captive, even as he is a warrior of the Light and a keystone in the wall that imprisons the enemy. Though the horned child may appear human, that is not his true nature. The child is a pawn of a greater power. You who must raise him must never forget that the child carries a part of that divinity within him.
Oneh quickly wrote a response. She asked whether the enemy that Toksa Village had feared for many long years was the master of the Castle in the Mist. She asked how it was that the Sacrifice eased the master’s anger. He replied:
In Toksa, this is known only to the Sacrifice. Only a horned one, or the highest of priests, may seek to learn this.
Parts of her brother’s letter made sense, while others did not. Though each ended as it began, with words in praise of God, as she read reply after reply Oneh started to wonder whether he truly believed the words he wrote.
Once, she asked him straight if there was a connection between why her brother had given up on becoming a priest and the custom of Toksa. She was, in effect, asking whether he had questioned his faith in his youth. Oneh knew that if she showed the letter to anyone else, they would have taken it from her and thrown it away. The God of Light is great. Through his benevolence is our land blessed with peace. To cast doubt on the divine was to sin deeply.
No reply came. Instead, she received word that her brother had passed away.
The Sacrifice is born a captive, even as he is a warrior of the Light—
Oneh closed her eyes and talked to the familiar ghost of her brother that lived on in her mind.
Brother, she said, to me, Ico is nothing but a child, a dear child. How can I send him to the castle with a still heart?
“Mistress Oneh?”
She heard a small voice from the window. Oneh looked up. “Is that you, Toto?” He must be standing on tiptoe to see in like that, she imagined. “Have they sent you to summon me?”
The sun had set some time ago, and the weaving room was already completely dark. Oneh fumbled with her hands to retrieve the copied pages from an old book she had propped up next to the loom and rolled them together like a scroll. Without a light, she couldn’t even see her own feet between the times when the sun set and when it rose again in the morning. This was one of the reasons they gave her an escort to and from the weaving room.
“No,” the boy whispered quickly. “I came on my own. It’s secret.” He looked from side to side, belatedly checking that no one had seen him.
“Why are you here then?”
“I figured you’d know where that priest from the capital is by now.”
The capital was distant. A rider had come ten days before to announce the priest’s departure. It had been two days since they received word that the entourage had finally arrived at the lodgings nearest to Toksa on the high road, but that was still two mountain passes and a river ford away.
“Whatever do you want to know that for?”
Toto’s eyes glimmered in the dusk. “The priest from the capital is real important, right?” The boy’s voice was filled with hope. “If the priest says I could do something, then even the elder couldn’t tell me not to do it—right?”
Oneh smiled cautiously and took a step toward the window. “Toto, are you planning to do something the elder doesn’t want you to do?”
“No, ’course not!” He shook his head vigorously. “I just wanted to know how close the priest is.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know,” Oneh lied.
“But I was just talking to Ico, and he seemed to know a lot about the priest, so I thought—”
Oneh walked up to the window. “Toto! You were talking to Ico?”
“Huh?” Toto blinked. “Er, I guess, yeah,” he stammered.
“You went to the cave? How did you talk to him without the guard seeing you?”
“I climbed a tree and went from branch to branch. Then I jumped down onto that little rocky hill and crawled across the rock until I reached the window on top.”
Oneh shook her head. This was not the first time she had heard of Toto’s acrobatics. He and Ico were the talk of the other children in the village for their daring antics.
“Was he well?”
“I guess. Pretty bored, though, locked up there all by himself.”
Oneh nodded, turning her head from the window to hide the tears welling in her eyes.
“You angry, Mistress Oneh?” Toto asked timidly.
“How could I be mad at Ico’s best friend going to pay him a visit? I’m sure he needed the company. Thank you.”
Toto’s smile returned to his face. “You know, I was trying to get him to run away,” he admitted. “But Ico said he wouldn’t. He said the whole village would be in trouble if he did. That’s why I’m going to the castle with him.”
“What?” Oneh said. “Toto, you can’t go to the Castle in the Mist!”
“Yeah, that’s what Ico said. He says if the priest found out there’d be ‘trouble,’ whatever that means.” Toto frowned. “Since when did Ico become such a field mouse? And how am I supposed to wait until my age ceremony before I get to know what any of this is all about? What kind of friend keeps secrets like that?”
Oneh understood how the boy felt all too well. She too had felt abandoned when her husband had taken Ico over the Forbidden Mountains and returned with a secret that only the two of them shared. The elder had never been a talkative man, but now it was as if he had sealed his lips with wax. And Ico is in the cave…lost to me.
“I would tell you,” she said, “but the truth is, I don’t know much myself. The elder says all we need to know is that protecting our village’s custom is a sacred and very, very important task. We mustn’t go against the elder’s word. That includes you, Toto.”
Toto snorted, puffing out his cheeks. “Yeah, but the priest outranks the elder, doesn’t he? So what he says goes. That’s why I was thinking I could ask him to take me to the castle.”
It took a moment for Oneh to find her voice. “So that’s why you wanted to know where he was,” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Did Ico not mention the trouble there would be if the priest knew what you intended?”
Toto shrugged. “Well, sure, if I tried to sneak after him. But if I got his permission…”
Oneh shook her head. How could she expect a mere child to understand when it was so hard for her?
“I really don’t think the priest will let you go, Toto.”
“Never know unless you ask.”
Oneh tried a different tack. “Perhaps—but it shouldn’t be you who goes.”
“Huh?”
“I will go with Ico to the Castle in the Mist. I’ll ask the priest to let me join him.”
“You don’t wanna go all that way, Mistress Oneh. You’d probably break somethin’ just getting to that old castle.”
“Even so,” Oneh insisted, “it’s no place for a child. I’m sure the priest would agree.”
“Then I’m sneaking after you,” Toto said.
“You must not!” Oneh reache
d out through the window and placed a hand on Toto’s head. “You cannot.”
“I can too.”
“I’ll tell your father.”
“No fair — ” Toto began. Then he shrank away. “Someone’s coming!”
Oneh stuck her head out the window and saw a torch approaching through the darkness. Someone from the village was coming for her.
“Run, Toto. Quick!”
“I’ll do better than that!” Toto grabbed the window frame and scampered up the side of the hut onto the thatched roof. “They won’t find me up here.”
Toto’s words were just trailing off when Oneh saw the torch swing in a small half circle, and a voice called out, “Mistress Oneh, that you there?”
“Yes,” she replied, shutting the window and turning to open the door.
“Sorry I was so late in getting out here,” the man from the village said once she had made her way outside. He was a muscular man dressed in hunter’s garb, with a short sword at his waist and a bow and quiver slung across his broad back. Oneh recognized him as the head of the hunters in the village. His skill with a bow was such that he could pierce an apple hanging from a tree on the far side of the river with his first arrow.
The weaving room had been hastily constructed in a patch of cleared forest outside of the village. There may be animals around when night falls, so I’ll be sending a hunter, her husband had told her. But Oneh knew the truth. The armed men were sent to make sure she didn’t try to escape.
The sole purpose of the weaving room was for her to make the Mark that would be worn by the Sacrifice.
The Mark was little more than a simple tunic that went on over Ico’s clothes, but it was woven with a special pattern detailed in the pages of that old book Oneh had received from her husband. It was not difficult to make if she followed the instructions.
“Will you be returning directly home?”
“At once, yes.” Oneh held the roll of paper to her chest and closed the door to the small hut behind her. The torch sputtered and a bright spark drifted through the air, crossing her path.
The man walked ahead of her slowly. “I was late in coming because one of the hunters was hurt in the mountains today.”
“My! I hope he was not hurt too badly?”
“He fell from a ledge, broke both his legs,” the hunter replied, his voice even. “Even if he mends, he will not hunt again. It’s not certain he’ll even walk.”
The hunter’s name was familiar. He was a boy who had just undergone the age ceremony this past spring. Oneh shook her head. “Such misfortune…”
“He was inexperienced,” the hunter said. “When you’re climbing, you must never look toward the mountains in the north—even if the view is clear. I told him this myself many times, but he did not listen.”
Oneh tensed. “The Forbidden Mountains?”
“Indeed,” the hunter said.
“What does one see…up there?”
“Nothing, most times. But every child knows you’re not supposed to look. There’s always the chance that you might see something.”
“So what did he see?”
The man replied that he did not know.
“But how—”
He shrugged. “The boy’s been muttering all kinds of nonsense. I’m afraid he hit his head too.”
For a moment, Oneh closed her eyes.
“Besides, even if he did see something and managed to keep his wits, he’s not supposed to talk about what he saw. That’s how I was raised, and that’s what I would do in his place. Did you know that my father was lead huntsman in his day? He told me about a man who went up into the mountains looking for a bird to shoot for his supper. Said he looked too long toward the mountains in the north.” The man paused. “His body made the trip back, but his mind never returned.”
“A frightening tale.”
“It’s just a story,” the hunter went on, “but they say it happened right around the Time of the Sacrifice.” The hunter stopped and turned. Sparks from his torch drifted toward her. In the torchlight, the hunter’s face looked hard and pale. “Mistress Oneh…” he began. “The castle knows when it’s time. If the Sacrifice isn’t quick about his business, the castle gets impatient. And it’s not like when you or I get impatient, Mistress Oneh. The castle’s black mood rides on the wind—that’s what the boy saw today.”
Oneh looked the hunter in the eyes. He stared back at her, unblinking.
“The castle may be far beyond those mountains, but its anger reaches as far as the sky over their peaks.”
“What are you trying to say?” Oneh managed to ask at last.
“I know you don’t like the weaving,” the hunter said, his voice iron, “and I know it’s hard for you to let go of your boy. I’m a father too. But Ico is the boy of no man or woman. He’s the Sacrifice. And there’s no good that’ll come from staying his time.”
It occurred to Oneh that the hunter had probably been late in coming to summon her because he’d been conferring with her husband, deciding what he should say.
“I do not stall for time.”
“Then that’s fine,” the hunter said curtly, turning and beginning to walk away, his pace quicker than before. “I’ll come for you tomorrow before dawn. If we don’t get that Mark made soon, the priest will arrive before you’re finished.”
Oneh followed behind him, her head hanging low.
Toto crouched on top of the roof, his ears pricked, and he heard everything.
Someone was hurt. That was the kind of trouble even Toto understood. But he was far more interested in the other thing the hunter had to say—now he knew where the castle was.
Then it struck him, an idea so great he wanted to jump up and dance for joy on the spot. Oneh told him he couldn’t ask the priest’s permission to follow Ico, but she hadn’t said anything about going ahead of them, before the entourage even left the village. He could wait for them on the way to the mountains, and once they passed, he’d trail them the rest of the way. That would get him to the Castle in the Mist for sure.
Once the priest leaves them, Toto thought, I’ll jump out and announce I’m joining Ico on his adventure! Toto was sure that Oneh would rest easier knowing that he would accompany Ico. Together, there was nothing Ico and Toto couldn’t do.
Then Toto had an even better thought, and this time he actually did jump up, standing atop the roof. I bet the two of us could find that master in the castle and take him on! We might even win!
“Yaaaahoo!”
Toto’s exhilarated shout echoed through the trees as he jumped down off the roof to land softly by the edge of the forest.
[4]
DEPENDING ON WHICH way it blew, the wind would sometimes carry the sound of the loom to Ico’s cave. Because no one else in the village was allowed to use a loom in the days after he entered the cave and the moment he left for the castle, whenever he heard the noise, he knew it was his foster mother weaving the Mark for him. It was hard to judge the passage of time, sitting alone in the dimly lit cave. Thick, leafy branches shadowed the narrow window through which Toto had spoken with him the other day, letting in barely enough light to tell whether it was the sun or the moon that shone. But Ico knew that when he heard the loom start up it was the beginning of another day, and when it ended, it was evening. Thus Ico had counted three days, and on the morning of the fourth day, the guard who brought him his morning meal said something entirely unexpected.
“Toto’s gone missing.”
Toto’s father was a hunter. He awoke very early at this time of year to prepare for the hunt, yet when he had risen from bed this morning, Toto’s cot had lain empty. When one of Toto’s sisters admitted seeing him sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, it caused a stir in the village.
“Toto told his sister he was leaving and that she’d better keep it a secret.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“Not a word. Not that his little sister would have remembered. She was too
sleep-addled to even think to raise a fuss.”
Worse, one of the two village messenger horses had been taken from the stables in the night. The horses were kept ready at all times in case there was a need to carry an urgent message from Toksa to another town. They—a white horse named Silverstar and a chestnut called Arrow Wind—were smart and swift.
“It must have been Toto…”
Ico’s friend had been a caretaker at the stables, and the horses knew him well.
“Most likely,” the guard agreed, his face dark. “He took a change of clothes and a little dry food with him too. Who knows where that troublemaker’s gotten to? We have people out looking for him, but if he left on horseback in the middle of the night, without knowing which way he’s headed, they’ll never find him. That is, unless you have any idea?”
His conversation from a few days before came back to him, and Ico swallowed. Could Toto be headed toward the castle? But Toto doesn’t know where the castle lies—only the elder and Ico knew that. He couldn’t have gone by himself.
Still…
Even if it seemed to others that Ico couldn’t compose himself, it was only because his mind never stopped moving. He made himself replay the conversation in his head and remembered specifically telling Toto he couldn’t go to the castle—but Toto had never agreed. Maybe he had guessed that the castle lay in the same direction as the Forbidden Mountains and gone ahead to lie in wait for Ico and the entourage from the capital.
Of course, in order to actually reach the Castle in the Mist, you had to do more than just cross the Forbidden Mountains. From there, the elder had told him, you would take a trail west through a deep forest and over rocky highlands, along a steep and treacherous path that went on for days. Only the priest from the capital knew the way. It would take more than a miracle for Toto to reach the castle himself.
But he would be able to reach the mountains.
“Which horse did he take?” Ico asked.
“Arrow Wind.”
Arrow Wind was good on rocks and steep trails. Like his name suggested, he flew like an arrow through the narrowest ravines and across the highest cliff tops without fear or falter.
“He’s gone to the Forbidden Moutains,” Ico whispered.