The Tengu's Game of Go by Lian Hearn Page B

your help—I’d have dealt with them both alone.”
    Mu allowed himself the slightest smile of mockery but did not speak.
    â€œNow that you’ve seen for yourself what we can do, you can tell Shikanoko,” Kiku said. “No one is safe from us, no matter how cautious or how heavily guarded. Give him this.” He placed a small piece of carved jade in front of Mu: a fawn in a bed of grass.
    â€œWhere did you get that?” Mu said, taking it up and caressing it with his fingers.
    â€œIt was among Akuzenji’s treasures. I kept it because it reminded me of Shika. Whoever he wants to get rid of, we will do it. Tell him that, tell him we are his to command.”
    But beneath the words, in spite of the gift, Mu sensed his brother’s lust for power.

 
    9
    BARA
    Shikanoko had spent years in the north, living with men who chased narwhal through stormy seas and hunted seals on rocky shores. Sometimes they treated him as a god, for he had many powers that he made useful to them, and sometimes as an idiot, for he knew nothing of boats and fishing, and could not understand their speech, so they had to repeat everything three times or more. Then, like the migratory birds that came and went, summer and winter—the local people believed they were crabs that transformed into birds and then back into crabs when it turned cold—instinct told him it was time to take flight.
    The Burnt Twins and Ibara followed him, as they had done for years. After a journey of several weeks they found themselves back in the old hut on the borders of the Snow Country.
    One morning, Ibara thought she saw a stranger on the edge of the clearing, but it must have been a trick of the light, for when she looked again there was no one. Still, she told Nagatomo and they began to notice signs: Gen, the fake wolf, howled at night; the deer were more nervous; there were footprints, smaller than any of theirs, around the pools. She felt she was being watched and began to take her sword with her when she went away from the hut.
    When the figure finally came through the forest one evening while they sat around the fire, Nagatomo said, “It is Takauji,” and Ibara recognized the young man, who had been no more than a boy the last time they had seen him.
    â€œI realized you had come back,” Takauji said, kneeling before Shikanoko and holding out his sword. “I came to offer you this. The Lord of the Snow Country will serve you loyally with all his men.” Then he added less formally, “And if you are going to the capital take me with you, for I want to kill Aritomo.”
    â€œWhat makes you think I am going to the capital?” Shika said. “Maybe I will just stay here in the Darkwood.”
    Takauji scowled, saying forcefully, “My right to my land is still being disputed on the grounds my father was a traitor. Every year some new claimant tries to take the domain from me. I am tired of these challenges, of fighting skirmish after skirmish. They are provoked from Minatogura. I will never have any peace unless I control that city or Aritomo is dead—preferably both! I hoped you would support me.”
    â€œWhat does your mother advise?” Shika asked.
    â€œShe died last winter.” Takauji suddenly looked much older than his years. “But before she died she revealed to me my father’s final words. No one dared repeat them, but one of his men had told her in secret: Yoshimori is the true emperor is what he said before he ripped his belly open. People say the true emperor will return, but he will never reign unless Aritomo is dead.”
    â€œOnce, a long time ago, I made a vow,” Shika said. “That I would find Yoshimori and restore him to the throne. But then the mask became fused to my face and I felt I was condemned to live out my life outside human society, like an animal in the forest.”
    â€œBut even masked you can achieve great things,” Takauji