The Gate of Sorrows

  “I must face my enemy. At all costs, I must prevail. That is why I fortify my blade.”

  Shigenori kept the pressure on. “What enemy? Are you at war?”

  “My enemy is the Sentinel. He guards the Nameless Land.”

  Shigenori had said blowing smoke wouldn’t work, but now he was lost in it. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s where stories are born and return,” Kotaro said.

  “Who told you that?” Shigenori swung on him.

  “Hey, I’m just the messenger. I heard it from a ‘wolf.’ Cute, too. She showed up at school and told me all kinds of interesting stuff.”

  Shigenori stared blankly. “Are you on something?”

  “Of course not. What he says is true,” a new voice said.

  A girl’s voice! Kotaro recognized it instantly. “Yuriko-chan!”

  Her arrival was even stranger this time. It was as though she’d walked through an imaginary door and out of the shadows at the edge of the roof opposite Galla—not as a hologram or a vision, but by folding time and space.

  Galla looked at her impassively. Shigenori staggered backward and fell on his buttocks.

  “Is that a ghost? People say this place is haunted by a young woman. No, it can’t be …”

  Though it was early summer, Yuriko was dressed just as when Kotaro first met her, in a heavy leather jacket and retro boots. Her glossy black hair was tied in a ponytail. The peculiar pendant gleamed around her neck. She flashed a pretty smile at Shigenori.

  “I’m no ghost. I’m a living human being.”

  “But no ordinary human,” Galla said slowly. She rose to her feet and took a long step forward. Her eyes rested on Yuriko, measuring her, searching her. “You are a wolf.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yet no more than a child.”

  Yuriko nodded awkwardly. “Yes. This is my fate.”

  Shigenori was having a rough time. His eyes bulged. Kotaro squatted next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Do you really have to show up like that? It’s hard on people’s hearts. How did you get here, anyway?” Kotaro said to the girl.

  Yuriko answered breezily. “With the power of that book in your pack. You showed it to me last time. You’re still carrying it around.”

  The book was in the bottom of his pack—Mika’s book, Land of the Sun, with its anonymous note on a tiny Post-it that Yuriko had warned him not to throw away.

  “I called to it and it told me where you were. It made a hole in space-time so I could get here quickly.”

  This was too much for Shigenori. Eyes still bulging, he shook his head slowly from side to side.

  “Steady there, old man,” Kotaro said.

  “Ah … Huh? ‘Old man?’ Who’re you calling an old man?” Kotaro’s shock treatment seemed to work.

  “Hey, you keep calling me a punk.”

  Yuriko chuckled, then assumed a serious expression. She walked slowly up to Galla, straightened her spine and bowed.

  “My name is U-ri. My master is the Man of Ash. Galla the Warrior, Guardian of the Third Pillar of the Tower of Inception, I greet you!”

  Galla gazed down at her and said nothing.

  “I know my place. We wolves must never interfere with a guardian of the Tower. My master has always made this very clear to me.”

  “Then why are you here?” Kotaro was astonished at Galla’s regal, imperious tone.

  “I came to warn Kotaro.” Yuriko held her ground. Her voice was firm. “Mistress Galla! I care nothing for why you are here, but I beg you, don’t involve a young man who knows nothing of your world. Surely such conduct is unbefitting a guardian of the sacred Tower?”

  “Yuriko-chan—I mean, U-ri—it’s not what you think,” Kotaro said. “I’m here by choice. I asked Galla for help and she agreed. We have a covenant.”

  U-ri seemed suddenly disheartened. “I know that. But your request has trapped you within her mission. It’s put you under the control of something real that doesn’t exist. Now that you know her destination is the Nameless Land, you should be even more wary.

  “Kotaro, listen to me. An ordinary person like you can’t have anything to do with that place. If you do, something bad will definitely happen. Some kind of tragedy.”

  Kotaro remembered that the first time they met, U-ri had talked about going to the Nameless Land to rescue her brother.

  He went there too.

  “Something bad—you mean like what happened to your brother?”

  U-ri shuddered and winced sidelong at Galla. The warrior leaned down until their faces were close. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Your brother is a nameless devout?”

  U-ri flinched and looked away.

  “Speak, wolf.”

  The girl bowed her head and nodded. “Yes. My brother is one of the nameless devout now.” Then, in a softer voice: “That means he’s not my brother anymore.” She looked up at Galla. “His soul has found peace in the great cycling of stories. All I have left are my memories. So my brother and I … we no longer suffer.”

  Galla drew herself up to her full height and gazed at U-ri, weighing her words. “You have had your say,” she said finally. “Now go, wolf. You have no part to play here.”

  “But—”

  “Go.”

  U-ri flipped her ponytail resolutely and strode quickly over to Kotaro and Shigenori. She dropped to her knees, took Kotaro’s hand and looked into his eyes.

  “I’m begging you. Please go with me. Stay away from Galla and forget everything you’ve seen.”

  Kotaro’s eyes sought Galla. The warrior had turned away and was gazing out over the city. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself.

  “You still have time, Kotaro. Please?”

  “Yuriko-chan, what is a nameless devout?”

  The shadow of pain fell across her face. “The nameless devout turn the Great Wheels of Inculpation. There are many of them, far too many to count. They were human beings, once. But not anymore.”

  Suddenly the words came tumbling out. “They lose their individual personalities and forms and become black-robed monks. There are ten thousand, but there is only one. There is only one, but there are ten thousand. They never stop pushing the wheels and will push them for eternity, as long as the Circle exists. And that means as long as the world exists.

  “What are stories?” U-ri asked suddenly. She answered before Kotaro could. “Stories are lies. To lie is a sin, and where there are lies there must be penance. The nameless devout do penance for the sin of stories. Each was once a person who tried to live a story that obsessed him, instead of weaving a story for himself. Desire and craving and lust, anger and jealousy and revenge drove them. They found a story that fed those emotions, and they prized it more than their lives in the real world. They tried to bring a story into reality.

  “And so they were condemned. They became the nameless devout, banished to the Nameless Land to bear the original sin of stories on behalf of humanity, forever. But there’s one saving grace. The Nameless Land is also a timeless land. There is only the present. Eternity is a single moment.”

  Kotaro was completely lost, though he’d heard some of this before. For Shigenori it was gibberish. He sat motionless, as though turned to stone.

  “Galla.” Kotaro still held U-ri’s hand. “Why do you have to go to such a place? Why do you have to vanquish the Sentinel?”

  There was no answer.

  U-ri grasped Kotaro’s cheeks in both hands and turned his face toward her. “You mustn’t ask that. It’s something you don’t want to know. You’ve got to stay out of it.”

  “I’m sorry.” He gently grasped her wrists and pushed her hands away. “Galla stood by her end of the deal. Now it’s my turn. I have to keep my word.”

  “Please!” U-ri’s voice trembl
ed and tears welled up in her eyes. Kotaro stroked her cheek gently.

  “Thanks for worrying about me.”

  Though she’d seemed not to hear them, Galla spoke suddenly, her back still turned.

  “I go to rescue my child.”

  U-ri, Kotaro and Shigenori stared at her openmouthed.

  “Ouzo is my child, a guardian of the Tower. Someday, when my strength begins to ebb, he was to succeed me at the Third Pillar. But he violated the Law.”

  Galla has a son?

  “For this he was banished to the Nameless Land. He too is a nameless devout.”

  Kotaro watched the blood drain from U-ri’s face. “Is that why you’re going?” she said in a tone of desperation. “You think you can rescue a nameless devout?”

  “Yuriko-chan …”

  “It can’t be done! No one can do that! No one!”

  “Perhaps you could not.” Galla’s averted gaze spoke volumes. Her voice was cold. “You failed, mere human that you were. And you would fail as the wolf you are now.”

  “I know that, Galla. So will you.”

  “We are different.”

  “Galla is right.”

  Another new voice, this time a male. A moment later, a dark shadow touched down lightly on the edge of the roof, facing Galla.

  The figure was clothed in black and shod in the same tough boots as U-ri, though his boots were half-concealed by the cloak that reached his ankles. A hood concealed his face; only his chin was visible. Long white hair streaked with black fell to either side of his jaw.

  “Ash,” U-ri murmured. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

  “I told you it was no use, U-ri. Give it up.”

  She stood in one smooth motion, as though pulled by a wire attached to the top of her head. From his perch atop the wall, the black-clad figure put a hand over his heart and bowed to Galla.

  “I too am a wolf. My name is Dmitri, but I am known as the Man of Ash, Friend of the Dead. Mistress Galla, Guardian of the Third Pillar of the Tower of Inception, I am honored to meet you. I ask you to pardon my apprentice’s foolishness.”

  His voice was deep and textured, with an aristocratic crispness and a slightly sinister edge. With his black cloak he looked, even more than Galla, like a harbinger of death. But this wolf named Ash was not armed with a scythe. When he placed his hand on his chest, his cloak fell open slightly, exposing the hilts of a pair of long swords.

  “Somebody wake me up. This has to be a dream.” Shigenori put his head in his hands. “Have I lost my mind?”

  “I know what you mean, but this is no dream,” Kotaro said.

  Ash would’ve stood a head taller than the average man, but he had to stand on the wall to look into Galla’s eyes.

  “I know the limits of our discretion. I’ve tried to inculcate them into my apprentice. But as you can see, she’s something of a handful.” Ash’s face was still half-concealed. He had a crooked smile. “I won’t let her display more of her bad manners.” He chuckled. “We shall not disturb you further, Guardian of the Third Pillar. However—”

  Ash cocked his head slightly and shifted his gaze to Kotaro, who felt his eyes boring in. “Human beings are brethren to my apprentice, and it was humans who imagined me. The boy and the old man seem confused. I wish to leave them with a bit of counsel. May I?”

  “As you will,” Galla said.

  Ash stepped down from the wall. From the sound they made on the concrete, his boots were hobnailed.

  “What does he mean, ‘humans imagined me’?” Kotaro asked.

  U-ri leaned over and said in a low voice, “Ash is a character in a story that was woven by a person.”

  Kotaro looked at her blankly. “He’s what?”

  “An imaginary character. The hero of an imaginary world. But his world is still a region, though it’s fiction.”

  “So he’s real, but he doesn’t exist …”

  Ash came and stood beside U-ri. His shadow fell across Shigenori, who was still holding his head in his hands. At the touch of Ash’s shadow, he looked up apprehensively.

  Kotaro felt a chill of fear. Why? he wondered. The presence of death seemed to cling to this man in black who called himself the Friend of the Dead.

  For the first time, Kotaro truly understood the meaning of revulsion. Though he cast a shadow, there was something about this man that felt like a ghost. That must be the source of the revulsion. An embodied wraith …

  “This may be more of a lecture than a warning. I’ll only say it once, so I ask you to listen closely,” Ash said in a low rasp.

  “The Nameless Land is a forbidden region. No one may enter it, other than those who go there for eternity as the inculpated. Most are taken there against their will, and they cannot escape.”

  Kotaro could feel the man’s eyes, though they were hidden under his hood. He’s reading my story.

  “When I went there, I wasn’t as I am now,” U-ri said. “I was given special permission to go, and could only stay a short time. I don’t have permission anymore, and I don’t think I’ll get it again.”

  The hooded man nodded. “That is best. The Nameless Land is a solitary place, far more isolated than an island in an empty sea. But there is another region, one only, that shares the loneliness of the Nameless Land: the region where the souls of words are born. The Nameless Land and the Tower of Inception, the wellspring of all words, are a dyad. They are inseparable; no one can say which came first and which after, which is the head and which the tail. They are as two facing mirrors, each existing to reflect the other.

  “Now, one may travel from the Tower of Inception to the Nameless Land. There is a stairway that passes between them. That stairway ends at the gate to the Nameless Land.”

  “Is that where the Sentinel is?” Kotaro asked.

  Ash nodded. “He guards the only gate in the Nameless Land that opens outward. That is Galla’s destination.”

  U-ri began to say something, but Ash motioned for silence.

  “What I have told you is, in fact, nearly all I know,” Ash said to Kotaro. “We humble wolves are forbidden to enter the Nameless Land and the Tower of Inception. I know only one more thing: the name of that gate. It is called the Gate of Sorrows.

  “Only a select few know what waits there, but to those who would confront it, the wise quote a line from a book published long ago: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

  U-ri hung her head. A final tear fell from a corner of her eye. “Don’t go with Galla, Kotaro. There are things right here, more important things, that you need to do,” she said.

  “You mean Mika?”

  “Yes, but not only her. I’m talking about taking care of yourself. Kotaro, I’m worried about you. You’re just like my brother. Don’t lose sight of yourself. Don’t forget the people who care about you, people who are by your side every day.”

  Kotaro was about to nod, but hesitated. Instead he said, “I made my deal with Galla because of someone I cared about.”

  “To avenge her?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then you’ve achieved your goal. Mistress Galla isn’t demanding that you do more than that. You don’t have to help her find that serial killer.”

  “It’s not just that I gave my word. I want this for myself, too. I want to catch him.”

  Shigenori looked relieved. He was finally hearing something that made sense.

  “With Galla’s help, I’m sure we can catch him,” Kotaro said, nodding to Shigenori. “If I give up now, I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting it. I’ll mourn the victims, feel shame toward their families, and curse myself as a coward for turning my back instead of doing something when I had the chance.

  “Anyway, it’s your mission to go after dangerous books, right? What I’m doing is kind of like that. I just happen to be an ordinary guy who was given
an opportunity.”

  “Wolves hunt books.” Ash’s answer came immediately. “We don’t hunt the living. You should not confuse the two.”

  “I’m hunting someone very dangerous. If I don’t find him, a lot more people could lose their lives. I don’t know what I’m confusing with what, but I don’t think I’m wrong.”

  U-ri shook her head once, twice. “Kotaro, you don’t understand. My brother made the same mistake—”

  Uoooon …

  An eerie call resounded in the distance. Kotaro doubted his ears.

  “What was that, a siren?” Shigenori said. Ash looked quickly around. U-ri’s eyes were wide with surprise.

  Uoooooon. It came again, closer now. But from which direction?

  His face still hidden beneath his hood, Ash turned to U-ri. His hands had disappeared inside his cloak.

  “You won’t escape a lecture if you intend to just stand there with that silly look on your face.”

  “Forgive me, Ash. This is my fault,” U-ri answered in a voice filled with tension. “I used a wounded book to open a path here.”

  “It was wounded, yet you used it?”

  “I didn’t know it was hurt so deeply. Kotaro!”

  “What did I do?” Kotaro said, thoroughly anxious.

  “Is that note still in Mika’s book?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to leave it lying around.”

  Uoooooooon. The cry was very close. It was a chorus of like-sounding voices, savage howls from the pit of bestial stomachs.

  “Why didn’t you take it out?” U-ri shouted in irritation. “It’s been eating away at the book all this time—”

  The howling was almost on top of them. They could hear ceaseless panting.

  “The Hounds of Tindalos are on the scent of your book,” Ash said grimly. He strode to the center of the roof, threw off his cloak in a single motion and tossed it high in the air. “Get under there and keep your heads down!”

  He swept his swords from their scabbards. Slowly, almost languidly, Galla grasped the handle of her scythe, drew it from her belt and assumed a battle stance. She stared intently at a point in space.

  “They come.”

  Beneath his cloak, Ash was still clad in black. His swords were strangely shaped, with large hooks curving forward from the cross guards. Long, black hair streaked with silver fell below his shoulders.