The kanji carved into his arm months ago throbbed, invisible under his sleeve. Uramon was still talking, and he sensed Kiku shouting and waving her arms. The flower on his shoulder squirmed again, and the first painful points of its lethal roots pressed into his flesh.
Toshi disappeared under the probing tips of the plant, fading from sight like a wisp of steam. Invisible and intangible, he watched as the loathsome, wriggling bloom fell through the space he occupied and landed on the floor with a soft thud. He could still see and hear everything in the room as normal, but he could not be seen, or heard, or touched until the myojin’s blessing wore off.
“Take that one back to his cell,” snapped Uramon, gesturing at Marrow-Gnawer. She turned to Kiku and snarled softly, “I did not know Toshi was capable of such things.”
“Nor I, Boss.” Kiku scooped up the flower and closed her fist around it. When she opened her hand, the bloom was gone. “He kept saying he’d gotten religion, but he lies so often I barely listen to him anymore.”
Uramon nodded, her slack face unchanged, her eyes hard and furious. “Gather your fellows and a dozen of my hatchet men. Search the grounds. He may have vanished, but he can’t have gotten far. When you find him, bring him back here.”
Still in the precise spot he had been, Toshi watched Kiku exit. Uramon was right-he was completely safe in this shroud of shadow, but he could not move quickly and could not stay concealed forever. As a phantom, he was too insubstantial to cast spells or cover great distances.
Fortunately, he didn’t need to go far. With a colossal effort of will, Toshi floated after Uramon as the boss skirted the edge of her sand pit and exited the chamber.
She still wore the ring, which was half of what he wanted from her. If she didn’t lead him to the other half soon, he would strike out on his own and search the manor himself. So long as the guards and Kiku were searching outside, it wouldn’t even matter when the myojin’s blessing faded. By then, he meant to be well on his way, safe with the information he came for.
CHAPTER 3
Solid and visible once more, Toshi trudged through the muck at the south end of the great Takenuma Swamp. He had learned all he needed to in Uramon’s manor before slipping out and following the slow, tortuous route of a phantom to safety.
When Night’s blessing finally left him, he was just outside Uramon’s property. He knew someone in Uramon’s employ would be able to track him-either the nezumi by scent or the jushi by spell. He moved on as quickly as he could, taking no special measures to hide his trail. Toshi had a gift for self-preservation and improvisation that had kept him alive and out of extreme poverty among the fen’s cutthroat community. Uramon’s interest in him changed the order of his long-term goals but not the goals themselves. Let them follow. He could actually use a gang of expendable thugs, provided he stayed one step ahead of them.
The ground slowly began to firm under his feet as he left the outskirts of the swamp and headed into the cold, rocky realm of the Sokenzan Mountains. Toshi saw the thin, needle-like spires that littered the horizon and tightened his cloak against the dry, chill air. He had traveled from the fen to the mountains and back a dozen times or more, but normally he was much farther east. His present heading took him along the western edge of the range, where the cold was more constant and the snow never melted but was driven into drifts by the bitter wind.
He had done far more than pray since his last trip to the mountains. There was a surprising amount of commerce between the fen and the Sokenzan, and his ability to go unnoticed permitted him unprecedented access to private conversations between bandits and black marketeers.
He collected quite a bit of useful information about the western quadrant of the range. Here was where the greatest concentration of akki goblins lived, tribes of a thousand or more dug into the frozen hills like bees in a hive. Here the great sanzoku bandit chieftain Godo had escaped the daimyo’s troops time and again, raiding the great lord’s riches then melting away into the rocky wastes. Here the spirits of stone and bloodlust roamed, as sharp and unforgiving as the landscape itself. Here were peaks blighted and accursed, haunted by wild spirits more terrible than anything society had encountered-even the twisted and corrupt society of the swamp.
Toshi wasn’t sure how much of this was truth and how much was sanzoku bragging, but he was sure that the next step in his spiritual evolution waited for him at the top of one of these frozen spits of rock.
He plowed on through the dusty, ankle-deep snow for the better part of a day. The farther south he went, the colder it got. At last, he reached the foothills of the western Sokenzan and saw his path rising up before him, a long, treacherous way that disappeared into the mist and low-lying clouds above.
He had memorized the only maps of this region, so he was able to identify the mountain he wanted. The akki and bandits called it the Heart of Frost and they avoided it at all costs. Toshi grinned, hoping that whoever was following him on Uramon’s behalf did not share the superstition.
He glanced back through the swirling snow. He could not see anyone in the distance, but he knew they were there. He had backtracked just before he left the swamp, careful not to be seen but ready to invoke his myojin if necessary. Sure enough, there were a half-dozen nezumi and several humans struggling to keep up with him. They kept Marrow-Gnawer on a leash, forcing him to keep his nose buried in the muck so as not to lose Toshi’s trail.
They were only a few hours behind, which suited him perfectly. Once up on the mountainside, he could stand aside, let them take the lead, and see if the stories about the Heart of Frost were true.
The wind changed direction, and for a moment Toshi was at the calm center of a whirling vortex of wind and snow. He felt a tingling on his skin that had nothing to do with the cold and a dull pressure on his eardrums.
“Muck and mire,” he swore. He didn’t have time for this.
The air continued to swirl around him as a huge, amorphous shape formed overhead. These were all the signs of a kami manifestation, of a spirit completing the journey from the kakuriyo to the utsushiyo. Once a random occurrence like a flood or a lightning strike, these intrusions had become more frequent and more violent over the past two decades until the conclusion was inescapable: the kami had declared war on the material world.
Once the spirits were draped in flesh, they were vulnerable to physical attacks, but they were savage, focused, and powerful enough to pose a real danger to anyone they encountered. Toshi had battled several kami during his life, but his experience did not shore up his confidence. He preferred to keep clear of such encounters altogether, especially when he was being pursued.
The form in the air reminded him of some great misshapen bird, half-obscured by the driving snow so that he could barely determine its outline. It had broad wings that didn’t move, four clawed feet, and a long stinging tail. He could see no head, but its eyes glowed yellow in the space where a head might be. A flock of hovering blue fish as thin as needles hovered in the cold, whirling wind around the creature. It let out a grating shriek, turned, and sliced toward Toshi like a thrown blade.
The ochimusha dived aside and rolled through the snow. Whatever it was, it was fast. He glanced at the ground where he had been standing and saw a clean, precise furrow that the kami had cut into the ground. If he had been a little slower, he would have been in pieces.
Toshi cursed his luck. He had made his reputation as a kanji mage, but his recent conversion to kami worship required him to relearn some of his most basic maneuvers. A year ago, he could have dispatched the snow kami in minutes with his swords and the right character. A year from today, the blessings of Night would stop the spirit bird in mid-flight. Right now, however, he had to figure out a way to blend both together before the hostile kami split him down the middle.