Just off the artificial clearing sat two kitsune and a human. They did not seem frightened of Konda’s strange and otherworldly escorts, so the daimyo directed them to set him down near the trio. As the moths rose back into the sky, they seemed to fade away into the strange-colored sky. Is it finally over? Konda wondered. Have I finally achieved my goal? For he knew that his army would never abandon him unless the day was already won.
One of the seated kitsune rose to greet him, but the other and the human remained seated with their backs to Konda. It was difficult to expect everyone to recognize him on sight, especially this far from Eiganjo, but the daimyo was still annoyed. He prepared to introduce himself. They would fall over themselves to bow at his feet once they knew who he was.
“Greetings, Daimyo Konda. We have been expecting you.”
Konda squinted in the late-afternoon sun. “Lady Pearl-Ear?” he said.
Pearl-Ear bowed. “At your service. Or rather, formerly at your service. I was more recently your prisoner than a member of your court.”
“You endangered my daughter,” Konda snapped. “What is going on here, Lady? Where is the Taken One?”
“Were it up to you, Daimyo, I would not even know what you were talking about. But I do. And you will not like the answer.”
“Already I do not like your tone,” Konda observed. “And I suggest you demonstrate an appropriate level of respect before I restore your status as prisoner.”
“She is showing you appropriate respect, old man.” The human rose to his feet with his back still to Konda. “How you feel about it is your problem.”
“Turn, sir,” Konda said angrily. “I would see the face of folly before I chop it off at the neck.”
The man turned. Konda immediately recognized the thief Toshi Umezawa and drew his sword. “Finally. You will tell me what you have done with my property or I will have you cut to death by inches.”
Now the other kitsune rose. His face was unknown to Konda, but he spoke with breathtaking familiarity.
“Get in line,” the little foxman said. “And for the record, she’s nobody’s property any more.”
Konda looked at Pearl-Ear. “Are you and this fellow in league with the ochimusha?”
“Not precisely, Daimyo. But we are his allies for the moment.”
“Actually,” the little fox said, “we hate him almost as much as you do.”
The thief shrugged and smiled … actually smiled in the face of the daimyo’s sword. “I don’t make a very good first impression,” he admitted. “But ask around. I’ll grow on you.”
Konda continued to glare. Magic was at work here. A woodland spell or a cursed spring: something had obviously deranged their senses. “You will surrender to my soldiers and come quietly with me to the tower,” Konda said. “Or I will crush you all where you stand.”
The ochimusha cocked his head. “All of us? Are you sure?”
“Father.”
Konda spun at the sound of Michiko-hime’s voice. What was she doing here? Why was she dressed in warrior’s armor? What were those twinkling lights surrounding her?
“Michiko,” he said. “Where have you been? Why are you here?” He turned to Pearl-Ear and the others and shouted, “Where is my prize?”
“Your prize is here, Father.” Michiko spoke softly, almost sadly. “Though for the twenty years you clung to it, you never once understood its true value. Was it worth the price you paid? Was it worth two decades of war? Was it worth offending the entire spirit world and endangering the physical one? Was it worth the life of my mother and thousands more?”
Konda glowered. “You may not speak to me this way, Michiko.”
“I may do however I like, Father. I am no longer your princess. Your prize is here. You may claim it any time. I believe she is as eager to see you as you are to reclaim her. Perhaps more so.
“I never understood the magnitude of your crime, Father, and when I did I despaired. You were never worthy of the prize you stole, Daimyo Konda. But I see now that in the end, you do deserve it.” Michiko turned and began to walk away.
“Come back here, child. How dare you!”
“Daimyo Konda.” The strange triple voice brought a chill to Konda’s chest. Slowly, he turned and faced the speaker.
She was so like his daughter that he was momentarily confused. The hair, the eyes, the lips, and the clothes were all too strange and wanton for Michiko, but the new arrival could have been the princess’s sister. She was unsettling however, with her serpent’s eyes and a shroud of stars.
“Who are you?” There was something else familiar about her as well. Not just the resemblance to Michiko, but the sensation he got from looking at her. It felt comfortable, as if he’d seen her a thousand times.
“I have chosen the name Kyodai. But you knew me by the name you gave me.”
The chill in Konda’s chest expanded. “Then you are … are you ….”
“I am she who you took from the kakuriyo twenty years ago. You brought me to this world to make you immortal, to make you invincible. To make sure the name ‘Konda’ would never fade from the memory of Kamigawa. Rejoice, Daimyo. Your goals are all about to be realized.”
Kyodai opened her mouth and bared her sharp serpent’s fangs. Konda had time to utter one final word, one last plea before the Taken One struck.
“Please,” he said.
Kyodai’s tongue lashed out, stretching across the distance separating her from Konda. The daimyo barely saw the sharpened tips as they shot toward his face and punctured both eyes.
Konda screamed and staggered back. He clapped his hands over his face and stumbled to one knee. He tried to speak, but his tongue had become like a block of ice. His throat closed and he felt his joints stiffening. His hands grew rough and hard against the skin of his face, and it took all of his strength to pull them down to his sides. He lost all feeling in his legs, though he could still twist and jerk from the waist up. Slowly, he lost this last iota of mobility, and his body became frozen and inert.
Strangely, Konda found he could still see. He was completely immobile, paralyzed and speechless, but he could see and hear perfectly well. Apart from a strange, fish bowl distortion across his field of vision, his view of the clearing had not changed.
Kyodai strolled toward him, her face filling his view. “Behold,” she said, “the enduring legacy of Daimyo Konda. His name and his face will never be forgotten, for they shall be preserved here for all time.”
The fierce woman’s face turned away. Konda heard her say, “Of course, they’ll have to be very, very patient to see all of him.” When she turned back around, Kyodai’s black, vertical pupils almost eclipsed her yellow eyes. Her lips were drawn back in a feral snarl, and she was hissing in pure hatred.
Kyodai lunged forward and drove her fist through Konda’s petrified face, shattering his head and the upper half of his chest. There was a momentary pause, and then she struck again, crushing the rest of his body to gravel and dust.
Konda did not die. Instead, the countless pieces of his eyes continued to relay visual images to his shattered brain. He saw not a single picture of the forest and the woman who destroyed him, but a million bits of color and texture, all overlapping and disjointed so that there was no way to clarify the image.
“I know you can hear me,” Kyodai said. She was correct, though now her unsettling triple voice was a nightmarish chorus of disorganized and painful noise. “Your daughter has asked me to return in twenty years to see if I feel the scales have been balanced. For her sake, I have agreed.”
The kaleidoscope images of Kyodai all leaned down over the debris that had been Konda. The mass of echoing voices whispered savagely, almost spitting the words. “They will never be balanced. I will return, Daimyo Konda. But I will never forgive you.”