IGMS Issue 9 by IGMS Read Free Book Online

step, cautiously feeling his way between splashes of moonlight.
    Masanori Morioka's quarters were located a floor above his own -- closer to the
daimyo
's, which was something else to brood about, and tend to later. He started up the stair, anxious neither to alert nor alarm anyone, and beginning to wonder -- all was still
so
quiet -- whether he had misread Sayuri's absence. What if she had merely gone scurrying in mouse-shape, as she had once been fond of doing, skittering in the castle rafters as a bat, or even roving outside as any sort of small night thing? How would it look if he were surprised wandering himself where he had no reason to be at such an hour? He paused, very nearly of a mind to turn back . . . and yet the serpent-smell had grown stronger with each step, and so near now that he felt as though he were the creature exuding it: as though the coldly burning bones were, in some way, his own.
    Another step, and another after, moving sideways now without realizing that he was doing so, the serpent-smell pressing on him like a smothering blanket, making his breath come shorter and shallower. Once he lurched to one knee, twice into the wall, unsure now of whether he was stumbling upstairs or down . . . then he did hear the scream.
    It was a woman's scream, not a man's. And it came, not from Minister Morioka's quarters, but from those of the Lord Kuroda and the Lady Hara.
    For an instant, Junko was too stupefied to be afraid; it was as though the strings of his mind had been cut, as well as those of his petrified body. Then he uttered a wordless cry that he himself never heard, and sprang toward the
daimyo
's rooms, kicking off his slippers when they skidded on the polished floors.
    Lady Hara screamed again, as Junko burst through the rice-paper door, stumbling over the wreckage of shattered
tansu
chests and
shoji
screens. He could not see her or Lord Kuroda at first: the vast figure in his path seemed to draw all light and shape and color into itself, so that nothing was real except the towering horns, the cloven hooves, the sullen gleam of the reptilian scales from the waist down, the unbearable stench of simmering bone . . .
    "
Ushi-oni!"
He heard it in his mind as an insect whisper. Lord Kuroda was standing between his wife and the demon, legs braced in a fighting stance,
wakizashi
sword trembling in his old hand. The
ushi-oni
roared like a landslide and knocked the sword across the room. Lord Kuroda drew his one remaining weapon, the
tanto
he carried always in his belt. The
ushi-oni
made a different sound that might have been laughter. The dagger fell to the floor.
    Junko said, "Sayuri."
    The great thing turned at his voice, as the black bear had done, and he saw the nightmare cow-face, and the rows of filthy fangs crowding the slack, drooling lips. And -- as he had seen it in the red eyes of the bear -- the unmistakable recognition.
    "My wife," Junko said. "Come away."
    The
ushi-oni
roared again, but did not move, neither toward him, nor toward Lord Kuroda and Lady Hara. Junko said, "Come. I never meant this. I never meant this."
    Out of the corner of his eye, Junko saw the
daimyo
moving to recover his fallen dagger. But the
ushi-oni
's attention was all on Junko, the mad yellow-white eyes had darkened to a dirty amber, and the claws on its many-fingered hands had all withdrawn slightly. Junko faced it boldly, all unarmed as he was, saying again, "Come away, Sayuri. We do not belong here, you and I."
    He knew that if he turned his head he would see a blinking, quaking Minister Morioka behind him in the ruined doorway, but for that he cared nothing now. He took a few steps toward the
ushi-oni,
halting when it growled stinking fire and backed away. Junko did not speak further, but only reached out with his eyes.
We know each other.
    He was never to learn whether the monster that had been -- that
was
-- his wife would have come to him, nor what would have been the result if it had. Lady Hara, suddenly