Shike
by Robert J. Shea
Originally published in 1981
Chapter One
They stripped Jebu naked. They threw his yellow aspirant's tunic into the fire bowl on the right side of the altar.
"You will not need that again. Tomorrow morning you will put on the grey robe of an initiate. Or you will be dead, and we will burn your body." Sitting on an unpainted wooden stool before the altar, Taitaro, abbot of the Waterfowl Temple, looked steadily at Jebu. Around his neck Taitaro wore the plain white rope that symbolized his office. He was Jebu's stepfather, but tonight his eyes said, I know you not. He would burn Jebu's body and throw the ashes in the rubbish pit if his son failed, and he would never look back.
The flimsy tunic flared up with a hiss, throwing sparks into the air. As it crisped and blackened, a rope of smoke coiled up to the dark cypress beams of the ceiling.
"As that tunic is reduced to ashes, so will your entire life be consumed this night. Know this, aspirant Jebu: whatever comes to pass, whether you live or die, tomorrow morning you will be nothing." Taitaro's mouth was set in a straight line behind his short black beard, and his weary, deep-set eyes burned into Jebu's.
A monk on the left side of the altar struck a wooden club against a hollow log that hung suspended from the temple ceiling. A deep, musical boom resounded through the hall.
"Take the aspirant to the crypt," said Taitaro in his quiet voice.
Two grey-robed monks carrying blazing pine-knot torches stepped to either side of Jebu. The tops of their heads did not reach his shoulders. He stood straight, fighting the urge to stoop over and try to make himself shorter. It was so painful to be different from the others. Had Taitaro deliberately picked the two shortest men in the monastery to stand beside Jebu, just to humiliate him?
The two monks took a step forward in unison, their wooden sandal soles clacking on the stone floor. Jebu stepped forward with them, starting off on the left foot as he had been instructed, his bare sole shrinking from the cold floor. He had better get used to pain. There would be much more of it before morning came. He walked with the monks around the black stone block that served the Zinja temple as an altar. In the dark wall behind the altar was the simple outline of a waterfowl, incised by a sculptor when the temple was built.
The monks said the Waterfowl Temple was so old it had been here when the sun goddess Amaterasu appointed her great-great-grandson, Jimmu, the first Emperor of these islands. It was a wooden framework with paper walls, standing on a platform of stone. The platform had been carved out of the rock of the mountainside. The Zinja kept no records, and no one knew exactly when the temple had been built. Pits, chambers and tunnels had been dug into the mountain beneath the temple, and with the passing centuries had grown deeper and more tangled, like the roots of an ancient tree.
Directly behind the altar was a square opening on the floor. Stone steps led down into darkness. Jebu had only been in the crypt three times before, when monks of the Order had died and their ashes had been carried there in procession.
One of Jebu's escorts gestured, and Jebu started down the steps of the crypt, feeling a strange, tremulous sensation near his heart. The torchlight did not reach to the bottom of the steps, and he seemed to be descending into total blackness. It frightened him, frightened him all the more because he didn't know what was going to happen to him. He had never been permitted to see an initiation, and there had been very few such ceremonies during the whole time he had lived at the temple.
The two monks followed him down the stairs. In the light of their torches Jebu could see the ninety-nine black stone jars standing on nine steps carved in the wall of the crypt. Every crypt in every Zinja temple contained nine times eleven urns. Each time a monk died, the leftmost urn on the bottom step was carried up out of the crypt, and the ashes in it were scattered on the ocean wind that beat against the temple all the year round. Then the jar, refilled with the ashes of the monk who had just died, was put on the right side of the top step, while all the other urns were moved one space to the left. Over the years, death by death, the urn would travel along the steps until it reached the bottom of the crypt, and the ashes of a monk whose name by then had been forgotten would be thrown away.
"These are the relics of the brothers of our Order," said one of the monks with Jebu. "You have seen them before. You may not know that almost half of these jars are empty. The bodies of these brothers were lost. We put the empty urns here in their memory."
The other monk said, "Almost all the monks whose funeral urns are
here were killed by men. They died in combat, or they were murdered, or they were executed. This is what a Zinja can expect-you are asking to be killed. And yet you want to be a Zinja. You are a fool."
Jebu guessed that the words were part of the ritual. He saw no need to reply.
The first monk said, "Now take that ring there in the floor, and lift it."
The ring, made of black iron, gleamed in the torchlight, having been polished by the grip of many hands. Jebu tugged at it. The Zinja were trained for strength, and Jebu, being bigger than most of the monks, was the strongest young man in the Waterfowl Temple. Even so, he could only slightly raise the great stone slab to which the ring was attached; then he had to let it fall back. One of the monks handed his torch to the other and helped Jebu. Together they slid away the stone. The monks gestured silently to him, indicating that he was to climb down into the chamber below the slab. It was a stone box with just enough room for him to lie down. The cold of the stone shocked his naked body; the little chamber was damp and smelled of mould.
"You will lie in this chamber and we will put the slab back into place. No matter what happens, you must not try to get out. If you do, you will die. It may seem that you are going to die if you do not escape, but you will die if you try to escape. Believe that, and believe nothing else that you hear from this moment on, until the Father Abbot himself comes to release you, at his pleasure."
Jebu lay in the stone box, staring up at the two monks. He had thought them short before; now they towered above him, their faces strange masks in the flickering torchlight. Together the monks pushed the slab into place. The darkness was total. He brought his hand up over his face and moved it from side to side, but he could see nothing. He was buried alive in a stone chamber the size of a coffin. It was made for people smaller than himself; the top of his head and the soles of his feet pressed hard against the ends when he lay at full length. There was barely room to move his hands away from his sides. And when he lifted his head he struck his forehead against the top of the chamber.
He was afraid, but not panic-stricken. He had begun his Zinja training at the age of four, learning to balance on wooden railings, to hang by his hands for hours, to run, to dive, to swim and to climb; but the first thing he had learned was mastery of fear in any threatening situation. "The purpose of fear is to drive us to preserve our lives," said Taitaro, "just as the purpose of hunger is to drive us to eat. But a Zinja is not interested in preserving his life. His aim is to lose the craving for life. Only those who have lost this craving are truly free." So, little children not yet able to read or write were subjected to sword thrusts, mock hangings, the bites of supposedly poisonous insects and snakes, and dozens of other frightening experiences. As the children dedicated to the Order grew older and harder and became proficient in the use of weapons, these encounters with terror, at first only simulated, became more realistic. The year before, one of Jebu's friends had died at the age of sixteen when he panicked and fell from a plank no wider than a man's foot which bridged a mountain gorge.
Jebu lay on his back in the dark in the stone coffin and wondered, not for the first time, whether the Order consisted of madmen and fools and whether he himself was the biggest fool of all. Why was he doing this? Because they got him when he was young. Because his father was killed and Taitaro married his mother and adopted him and put him through the training as a matter of course.
Though no light penetrated the stone above him, sound did, and Jebu heard approaching footsteps, and then a voice saying, "My son." "Is that you, Taitaro-sensei?"
"Yes," said the abbot, his voice muffled but unmistakable. "We come now to the centre of your initiation, to the truth which is to be revealed to you as a Zinja. This truth will sustain you through this trial and through all the ordeals of life to come. We call it the Saying of Supreme Power. Swear now before all the kami of this place, all the kami of the Order and all the great kami of these Sacred Islands that you will reveal to no one what I tell you now."
"I swear."
"Even if other brothers of the Order tell you they already know the Saying of Supreme Power and are only testing you to learn whether you know it, you must not repeat it to them. You must not even admit that you know it. On pain of expulsion from the Order, and even death, Jebu."
"I understand," said Jebu quickly, eager to learn what final truth lay locked at the heart of the Zinja mysteries.
"Then hear the Saying of Supreme Power." There was a silence in the absolute blackness. Then: "The Zinja are devils."
"What?"
"The Zinja are devils."
"Taitaro-sensei, I don't understand."
"Say it back to me. I want to be sure you heard me correctly." Jebu hesitated. "I may not."
"Good. You have understood that much."
Jebu shook his head. He wanted to climb out of this stone box and seize his stepfather by the shoulders and shake him. "But, sensei, that is contrary to everything I've ever been taught. Is it a true saying, or is it just the kind of spell conjurers use to call up spirits? I don't see how it can be true. The Zinja are not-we are not-that."
"You do not know. You are not yet a Zinja. Farewell now, Jebu. I hope I shall see you in the morning."
Jebu was acutely conscious of the enormous weight of the stone suspended over him. It seemed suddenly as if there were no air to breathe. What could it mean: the Zinja are devils? He had been taught to believe that the highest calling a man might hope for-unless he were born to the robes of the Emperor-was to be a Zinja. Anyone, no matter how lowborn, could be a Zinja, if he could endure the training. Even an untouchable, a slave, a hairy Ainu from the north, even a barbarian foreigner. Yes, that was why he was a Zinja, because they would take anyone, even the strange-looking red-haired son of a man from across the western sea. But perhaps the Zinja would take anyone because they were devils. Devils would take anyone.
Something icy touched his shoulder blades. He wriggled to try to escape it, and his heart started pounding harder than ever. Was it the touch of a devil? The cold feeling spread to the small of his back, to his buttocks. He put his hand flat on the floor of the stone coffin in which he lay. Water. Water was trickling into the chamber from outside. The temple was at the edge of the sea; perhaps when the tide rose the water entered this box. No, unlikely. This chamber was high above the level of the sea. It was more probable that this was part of the ordeal. The water continued to rise. His back was submerged, the cold trickling into his armpits and freezing his groin, and his teeth began to chatter. He lifted his head as the water soaked into his hair and bumped his forehead painfully against the stone slab that imprisoned him. The water rose around the sides of his head and he grimaced and shook his head from side to side as it crept into his ears. He put his fingers into his ears to keep it out.
The water seemed cold enough to freeze his blood. He began automatically to twitch the muscles all over his body, in a regular rhythm he had been taught, to raise his body heat. The Zinja training enabled a man to endure freezing cold for hours. But how high would the water go? Another inch and it would drown him. Or else he would have to try to push that stone slab out of the way, even though he probably could not manage it and even though, if he succeeded in climbing out of the crypt, he would be killed. This was what they had warned him about: it may seem that you are going to die if you do not escape, but you will die if you try to escape. The water stopped rising when only the front of his face was still clear of it. He lay immersed, buried in the total blackness, shivering. How long would he have to stay like this? How long before he died of the cold?
There was a grinding noise above his head. The stone slab was moving.
"Jebu. It's Weicho and Fudo. Come out before you drown." A torch was waved over his head, its light blinding him after the hours-or was it only moments?-he had spent in the darkness. Gradually he made out the shadowed faces of the monks Weicho and Fudo looking down at him. They were a few years older than he, an inseparable pair, known for the slackness of their discipline, which had led Taitaro on one occasion to threaten to cast them out of the Order. Fudo was lazy and Weicho was cruel. It was rumoured among the aspirants that they were lovers. Jebu had always disliked them.
"No."
"It's all right. The Father Abbot has given permission." "I'll come out when he himself tells me to."
There was silence, then Fudo, the taller and thinner of the two, laughed.
"You're a fool, Jebu. You'll drown in there. The purpose of the initiation is to test whether you think for yourself or follow orders blindly. If you follow orders blindly, you die."
Jebu said nothing. He was not following orders blindly. He was choosing to follow a particular order. He was making a judgment about which orders to follow and which not to.
Short, stout Weicho whispered to Fudo, giggled and said, "Jebu, you are the stepson of the Father Abbot and his favourite."
"I am the stepson of the abbot, but he has no favourite."
"You lie, Jebu. Listen. We know that the Father Abbot has shown you special favour. He has given you the Saying of Supreme Power."
Jebu did not answer. So this was what Taitaro meant when he warned against revealing the Saying to anyone.
"We want the power the Father Abbot has through the Saying. All of us were promised the magic Saying. Otherwise, do you think any of us would submit to this hell on earth of being a Zinja? We know now that only a favoured few actually get it. The rest of us grub out our lives in poverty and misery, living on false hope until we are killed serving the Order. We are not among the favoured, Fudo and I, because we have been caught disobeying some silly little rules of the Order."
Fudo said, "We intend to be miserable no longer. We know you must have been given the Saying of Supreme Power, Jebu. You must give it to us."
"I don't know any magic Saying. The Abbot has been as a father to me only on the days when everyone spends time with his family. Otherwise, he is as distant from me as he is from anyone. He has given me no secret. What you are doing is wrong. You sow dissension in the Order."
Fudo laughed. "You think there is harmony in the Order, Jebu? The Order is riddled with hatred and treachery, just as you are lying to us now."
The Zinja are devils. Was this what it meant?
Weicho said, "Enough of this." He stepped away from the edge of the crypt and reappeared holding a naginata by its long pole, the polished steel blade glowing red in the torchlight. He thrust the weapon down into the pit. "Feel this, Jebu." The sharp point pressed against Jebu's breastbone. He shrank away from it, and it scratched him. Weicho probed at him, pricking his chest in different places till the point of the naginata came to rest on the upper part of his belly, just below the rib cage.
"Tell us the Saying, Jebu, or I'll slice your belly open."
" 'A Zinja who kills a brother of the Order will die a thousand deaths.' "Jebu quoted The Zinja Manual, the Order's book of wisdom.
Fudo snorted. "That book is a collection of old women's tales. You are wrong, Jebu. The Father Abbot foolishly appointed us to guard you. We have only to say we killed you because you were trying to escape from the crypt."
"I don't know any Saying."
"Kill the dog and be done with it, Weicho."
The instant Jebu felt the point of the naginata press harder against his skin, he swung his hand over and struck the weapon aside. With a quick chop of his other hand he broke the long staff into which the blade was set. The curved steel blade splashed into the water, and Jebu felt around for it. He grabbed the broken wooden end and held the naginata blade like a sword. But he still dared not climb out of the crypt.
"Come and get me," he said.
"Come and get us," said Weicho.
"He won't," said Fudo. "He still thinks he'll die if he comes out of that grave."
"Jebu," said Weicho softly, "we can make the water rise all the way to the top of your chamber. Tell us the Saying, or we'll drown you like a kitten."
"Fare you well then, Jebu. May you be wiser in your next life." Jebu heard the grinding of the stone, then a heavy thud as it fell into place. Was the water higher? It might be.
He had learned, as had all aspiring Zinja, to slow his breathing so that he would need hardly any air. He could do that now, but he could not breathe under water. The water was now tickling the edges of his nostrils. He lifted his head and wriggled backward in the tiny space so that the back of his head was wedged in an upper rear corner of the stone box. It was an uncomfortable position, but no more so than hanging by his hands for hours in the course of Zinja training, and it was a position he could hold without conscious effort. He began counting his exhalations-one, two, three, four . . . He went into a light trance.
He was riding on the back of a white dragon whose wings beat only once a minute, so powerful was each stroke. Far below he could see the four great islands of the Sunrise Land, Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu and the four thousand lesser ones. Then they were over the blue western sea. They sailed through a sky that was clear overhead, though he could see masses of grey-green thunderclouds to the south as if a terrible storm were rising there.
They passed over land. Below were enormous walled cities and palaces with red-tiled roofs along the banks of gigantic, winding rivers. He saw a stone wall fortified by guard towers that stretched on and on, like an endless, twisted bamboo pole, over grasslands and mountains and valleys.
A mighty army of men on horseback swept down towards the wall. All moved as one man, flowing in wavelike patterns over the land below. They breasted the wall like a flood cresting over a dam.
He saw a great battle being fought. The men on horseback met another army of men in horse-drawn chariots and scattered it, leaving the land littered with the dead.
Then the white dragon was drifting over a desert painted gold by the late afternoon sun. He saw the hide tents of savage people and the herds of cattle. The herders, dressed in furs, sat around smoky fires. The animals munched grey-green vegetation. He sensed that the dragon was carrying him backwards through time as well as through space, and that the herders below would later become the terrible army on horseback he had seen in the land of huge cities.
Then he was flying towards a giant.
The giant was taller than the mountains around him, and he stood with one fur-booted foot planted on each side of a broad lake. His head was covered with a fur-trimmed steel helmet. He was dressed in furs, and there was a necklace of jewels around his neck. One great white jewel, larger than all the others, blazed on his chest. His face was hard and seemed like wind-worn rock. His green eyes glittered, and he laughed and stretched out his arms, sweeping clouds aside as the white dragon, with slow, stately wingbeat, flew towards him.
In a voice that shook the earth, he said, "Welcome, little cousin, to your homeland."
Chapter Two
Jebu felt himself being lifted by many hands. They stood him on his feet and rubbed him with warm blankets. Shivering still, he tried to fight off those who helped him. He must get back into the water-filled stone coffin until the Father Abbot called him.
"Jebu, awake." It was the voice of Taitaro. Jebu was standing in the crypt, facing Taitaro. Behind Taitaro were the ninety-nine stone urns, and on either side of him stood Weicho and Fudo and the two monks who had brought Jebu into the crypt. Would he ever stop shivering?
"Come upstairs, Jebu," said Taitaro. "You can stand beside a brazier until you are warm again."
Wrapped in a heavy robe, Jebu stumbled up the stone steps on legs that almost refused to move, a monk supporting him on either side. Taitaro led the way. They bundled Jebu back into the main hall of the temple and led him to a pile of cushions beside a charcoal brazier. He sat facing Taitaro in front of the altar. All the monks of the chapter sat cross-legged on the floor, in rows, their grey hoods pulled over their heads. The temple was still lit by candles set in bronze lamps suspended from the ceiling. The sun had not yet risen.
"Tell me everything that happened during the night," said Taitaro.
Jebu began his account, not with his visit from Taitaro, but what happened between himself and Weicho and Fudo. The two sat grinning at him with infuriating audacity when he looked accusingly at them. Jebu went on to tell of his journey on the back of the white dragon and his encounter with the giant.
Taitaro said, "If you see an animal or bird in your initiation vision, it means that animal or bird has adopted you as its own. There is no kami more wise and powerful and fortunate than the kami of dragons. That you rode a white dragon suggests that your future may be bound up with that of the Muramoto clan, whose crest is the White Dragon."
"But what of the giant?" said Jebu.
"As you describe him, he could be either your father or your father's slayer, but there is nothing in the vision to suggest that he is either one. He is most certainly one of your father's countrymen. He must be a powerful spirit. That is why you saw him as a giant." Taitaro smiled. "It may require the rest of your life for you to unravel fully the meanings of what you have heard and seen this night. You have experienced an authentic vision and, I believe, achieved authentic insight.
I welcome you into the ranks of the Zinja. Bring him the robe of a brother of the Order."
Joy flooded through Jebu like the golden sunlight that had bathed the desert in his vision. The wings of the dragon he had seen in that vision suddenly seemed to be his. Still seated on the cushions, his eyes fixed on Taitaro, he soared inwardly. He had passed the testing, and he had at last the prize he had worked for since early childhood.
A monk stepped forward with a grey robe draped over his outstretched arms. Jebu looked beyond him and saw the sapphire light of morning through the open doorway of the temple. The monk helped Jebu pull the grey robe on over his head. The Zinja robe was really more of a tunic, stopping just below the knees. The sleeves came halfway down the forearms. On the left side of the robe was sewn a circular patch of white silk on which a willow tree was embroidered in blue thread. It seemed a simple garment, but it was lined with hidden pockets to accommodate a variety of Zinja weapons and tools. A strip of grey cloth belted the robe. Jebu tied the ends of the belt in the intricate world-serpent knot that the Zinja always used for this purpose. He pulled the hood of the robe over his head.
"Beyond this robe, you need possess nothing," said Taitaro.
In unison the monks chanted, "The grey is all colours. The cloth is all matter. The Willow Tree is all time."
Taitaro said, "Bring him the bow and arrow of the Zinja." Another monk stepped forward with the short, powerful, double-curved compound bow which the Order had been using for centuries, and a cloth quiver containing twenty-three arrows with various heads-willow leaf, turnip head, frog crotch, armour piercer and bowel raker. The monk slung the bow and quiver over Jebu's left shoulder. Glancing at the temple door, Jebu saw that the light in the sky was almost white.
"You are warrior as well as monk, monk as well as warrior," said Taitaro. "Take the bow and arrow with reluctance. Use the bow with dread. Grieve for those who fall to your arrows. But make every arrow count."
The monks chanted, "The arrows kill desire and point the way to insight."
Taitaro said, "Bring him the sword of the Zinja."
A third monk stepped forward with a sword in a plain wooden scabbard and belted it around Jebu's waist. Unbidden, Jebu drew the sword and held it out to look at it. The Zinja sword was broader and about half the length of the swords most samurai used, but it was heavy and sharp and hard enough to cut through solid rock. The handle was longer and wider at the end than most samurai swords. Zinja swords were forged by the Order, using a secret process centuries old. As Jebu gazed at the sword, its polished steel surface suddenly reflected a blazing light that dazzled him. He looked at the temple doorway. The sun was rising. Its crimson edge appeared over the mountainside, silhouetting the pines that grew outside the temple.
Taitaro said, "Take the sword with reluctance. Draw it with dread. Grieve for those who fall to it. But make every blow count."
The monks chanted, "The sword is the Self, cutting through matter and time and penetrating to true insight."
Taitaro stood and raised his arms. "Welcome the new brother into the Order of Zinja!"
Suddenly the temple, always so solemn and quiet, was pandemonium. The grey-robed monks threw back their hoods, baring their heads, and shouted for Jebu. They broke ranks and crowded around him, touching him, squeezing his hand, slapping his shoulder, hugging him. Many were openly weeping. Pride and joy buoyed him up like winds lifting a kite. He was a Zinja. Over the tops of the monks' heads he could see the full red disk of the sun framed in the temple doorway.
Then he remembered. Weicho and Fudo were on the edge of the crowd around him, smiling at him like the others.
Jebu broke free from the crowd of well-wishers and held up his hand. "Wait. Father Abbot, I have denounced these two before you. I demand that you pass judgment."
Taitaro laughed. "I judge them to be consummate actors. The testing by brothers of the Order is the climax of the ordeal an aspirant must undergo to become a Zinja."
"Ours is a hard task," said Fudo. "Our obedience to the Order lies in seeming to be disobedient."
"And our success is failure," said Weicho with pain in his eyes. "If we are clever enough to deceive the aspirant, it is we who must kill him."
Jebu wanted to ask if they had ever killed. He tried to remember whether any of the initiations that had taken place in his time had been followed by the mysterious disappearance of the aspirant. He could remember only five initiations and in all five cases he had not seen the aspirant afterwards.
Taitaro said, as if guessing his question, "After an initiation the newly ordained monk is immediately sent from the temple. The aspirants do not know what has become of him. That way they cannot be sure whether any initiation ended in the creation of a new brother or the death of an aspirant."
"I will be sent away now?"
"Yes. We'll go to my cell now, and I'll tell you where you will be sent." Taitaro smiled. "Then you will have time to say goodbye."
The house of the monks was built of cypress beams, roofed over with bark shingles and screened with paper and bamboo. It was somewhat sheltered from the seaside cliff on which the temple itself perched. Beyond the house was the stable.
Jebu climbed the steps and entered the one-storey building. It was empty, the futons on which the monks slept rolled up against the walls. The shoji screens around the abbot's cell at the north-east corner of the hall were closed. Taitaro was waiting for him there, drawing a screen aside and beckoning him to enter.
Taitaro's cell was empty except for a simple dark brown vase of irregular shape that stood on a low unpainted table in one corner. In the vase was a deep red peony blossom flanked by two willow branches. The screen on the east side of the room was open, giving a view of the pine forest that grew on the mountainside.
Taitaro was still wearing the white rope of office around his neck. Slowly he took it off and placed it carefully on the table before the vase. His dark, tired eyes burned into Jebu's and Jebu realized that Taitaro must not have slept the night before. Taitaro opened his arms to Jebu, and they embraced and stood silently together. It was Jebu who drew away first, his mind full of the unspoken question. What does my father think of me now?
It was Taitaro, though, who asked the first question. "Tell me, Jebu, do you think I should have done anything to make the ordeal easier for you?"
Jebu was shocked. "I would be ashamed for ever if I thought you had done anything like that."
Taitaro smiled. It seemed to Jebu that he looked relieved. "Your ordeal was as painful as it has ever been for any Zinja. But we can't make the initiation as severe as life itself will be. For you, as for all of us, the worst is still to come."
Jebu remembered the words his stepfather had spoken to him as he lay in the stone coffin: the Zinja are devils. "May we speak of the Saying of Supreme Power?" he asked.
"Nothing can be gained by talking about it, and much could be lost that way. You must think it through-live it through-for yourself, in silence."
"Then tell me, Father. What has the Order in mind for me? Is there a task for me to perform?"
Taitaro chuckled. "There are more tasks than there are Zinja to perform them. You will go to Kamakura, a small city on the north-east coast of Honshu. You will serve the Shima, a very wealthy family which holds first rank in Kamakura. They are a branch of the Takashi clan."
"The Takashi," Jebu said. "The house of the Red Dragon."
"Yes. Even though your vision was of the White Dragon of Muramoto, your first task will be in the service of the arch-rivals of the Muramoto, the Takashi."
During his training Jebu had learned about the wars of the two great samurai clans, but now that he had passed through the death and rebirth of initiation, all that seemed rather remote to him. "Tell me again, sensei, why the Takashi and the Muramoto are such great enemies."
Taitaro recounted the story. The Emperors of long ago had had many wives and many sons. The Imperial family had grown so large that its support became an intolerable burden on the national treasury. It was decided to lop off some of the branches, give them new names and some land, and let them fend for themselves. The descendants of Emperor Kammu-he who built the capital at Heian Kyo-were called the Takashi. They took as their symbol the Red Dragon. The descendants of Emperor Seiwa were known as the Muramoto, and their crest was the White Dragon.
No longer dependent on the throne, the newly created families lost the gentle, refined ways of the Imperial Court and became tough and self-reliant. They took up arms to defend their lands against frontier barbarians and against other landowners who coveted their holdings. They armed their servants, who became known as samurai.
Meanwhile the Imperial army had dwindled to a few troops of exquisitely caparisoned courtiers who had neither the will nor the ability to wage war. And so, when there was hard fighting to be done, when great landowners rebelled against the throne, when the hairy Ainu attacked in the north, when pirates made the Inland Sea impassable, the Son of Heaven would call for help from his cousins, the Takashi and the Muramoto. The armed clans became known as the teeth and
claws of the crown, and their samurai armies grew larger. Inevitably the two families became rivals, trying to outdo each other in feats of glory and conquest.
Inevitably, too, they became involved in the intrigues around the Emperor. There had always been factions jockeying for power around the throne, and those who failed at political manoeuvring sometimes sought to win through force, with the help of the samurai. As a matter of course, whichever side the Muramoto took, the Takashi would support the opposing faction.
The competition between the Takashi and the Muramoto had turned into a blood feud four years earlier, when the Emperor's brother had raised a rebellion, claiming the throne for himself. The chieftain of the Muramoto clan came out in support of the pretender, setting up a stronghold in a palace in Heian Kyo and sending out a call for reinforcements.
One prominent member of the Muramoto family remained loyal to the incumbent Son of Heaven. This was Domei, captain of the palace guard. He had taken an oath to protect the Emperor, and he believed the rebel brother's claim to be false. Domei was the son of the Muramoto clan chieftain, so his decision put him in the agonizing position of fighting against his own father.
The Takashi also sided with the Emperor. The chieftain of the Takashi was Sogamori, a wily, bloodthirsty and ambitious warrior. Seeing that most of the Muramoto were backing the pretender, Sogamori saw his chance to ruin the rival clan by making war on them. Thus, the unhappy Captain Domei found himself fighting alongside the enemies of his clan.
Domei was a renowned and audacious fighter. In spite of his difficult situation he led the palace guard and his temporary Takashi allies in a night attack on the rebel stronghold. He burned it to the ground and captured his father.
The victorious Emperor now had to decide what to do with the leaders of the uprising. Since the coming of the Buddha's gentle way to the Sacred Islands, centuries ago, there had been very few executions. Those rebels who had survived the perils of battle might expect, in the normal course of events, no worse punishment than exile. The death penalty was meted out only to commoners, and then only when they were found guilty of murder or major theft. Sogamori now shocked the capital by calling for the execution of all the captured rebel leaders.
Sogamori had an ally close to the throne, Prince Sasaki no Horigawa, an Imperial adviser. Prince Horigawa pressed the demand for the death penalty in the Emperor's council. Finally the Son of Heaven decreed over seventy executions. Going beyond that, he commanded Domei to behead his own father, the Muramoto clan chieftain.
Ultimately, another Muramoto relative volunteered to perform the execution, then killed himself by cutting his stomach open.
"What a painful death that must have been," Jebu said. "Why would anyone deliberately do that to himself?"
"It is a new practice among the samurai," said Taitaro. "They kill themselves to expunge stains on their honour. But they don't want it to be said that they committed suicide from want of courage, so they inflict on themselves the most excruciating death imaginable."
Instead of rewarding Domei for his loyalty to him, the Son of Heaven had ignored him ever since, resenting Domei's failure to execute his father. The Takashi, on the other hand, enjoyed the Emperor's favour and were raised to new heights. Sogamori, the Takashi leader, became Minister of the Left, one of the Emperor's chief councillors.
Domei, still captain of the palace guard, was now chieftain of the Muramoto clan. He seethed with hatred for those who had engineered his father's death and his own disappointment. And all over the country smal...
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