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his soul.
His body was taken, the tentacles, if such they
were, lacerating his flesh, seeping into his bones,
melting them.
Yet he held onto the last shreds of his existence
knowing that he held the key.
What is it?
I have no name.
Stillness entering his soul as death crept higher.
And he let in the bright spark, the rain at the
core of his being, because he had nothing left to
lose and it was all now that was left for him.
Whatever it held.
Salvation.
He called, understanding at last that he was the
sorcerer now, accepting it. Karma. And more. He
accepted who he was, opening the floodgates. At
first he had thought to call the blacksmith, for he
recognized that he had no anchor, thus no solidity.
He was being destroyed, drowned in The Dolman
because of this. The blacksmith was the anchor and
he needed her and he had set his thoughts to the
snowbound slopes of Fujiwara. But he had seen in
his mind the cold forges, the empty house, and
knew that she was not the answer. What then?
He called, the crying of gulls off a limitless shore,
an end
242 E'ic V. Lustbader
to drowning, an end to hiding himself from
himself. He felt her close now, his final third, the
last piece of dor-Sefrith's handiwork, balked by
The Dolman's fierce attack at Haneda.
They would not come together.
Why?
He turned inward, ignoring annihilation.
And found the blacksmith within himself.
Then she entered him and he felt the bright
sparks gyring about him, red, green. blue, and he
touched them, one by one, in wonderment and
delight, laughing, crying, his entire being alight
with the knowledge that at last he was whole; that
this is what The Dolman feared. There were no
more masters no more protectors thus the
Aegir's death no more sages. An end to
childhood.
Ronin, Setsoru, and now the Sunset Warrior
caressed the facets of his final third. Red, green,
blue. K'reen, Moeru, Matsu. Love, strength, trust.
The merging of all his traits, all his power: the
Dai-San.
Energy ran through him like a rushing river,
endless depthless, ageless. He thought of
dor-Sefrith's last trick. The mage, knowing his
defeat was imminent, had cast one final card: he
created the blacksmith, using Matsu's essence
pulled from the sleeping mind of the forming
Sunset Warrior. As a signpost. And the Sunset
Warrior had used it. Now his universe was
infinite, the source of his power illuminated. Him-
self.
His great mailed fingers curled about the thick
heft of Aka-i-tsuchi Red Tidings and he
plunged its glowing tip into the heart of The
Dolman. His intense kineticism lashed the being
surrounding him like a cruel whip. Bolts of green
and blue fire, hotter than the core of the sun,
rippled like molten ribbon along the lavender
edges of his slashing blade, rolling all along its
length from hilt-guard to its double-edged tip,
eating, eating ravenously. He heard a delicious
humming which grew with a great heat until it
filled all his world matching the fierce beating of
his heart. Exhilaration turned to ecstasy.
Perhaps then The Dolman screamed, realizing
the proximity of its death.
Swirling, its life force gushed over him, spilling
like a gurgling sewer from the enormous rents
made by Aka-i-tsuchi as he struck downward at it
again and again with unbridled fury. And now he
inhaled its entire hideous history. Scene after
scene of torment and destruction swept over him,
each
DAI-SAN 243
one more ghastly than the next. The taste of
incalculable despair.
The atmosphere wavered as he labored. Then it
bubbled as if blistering, boiling. The horizon
buckled and heaved and he heard dimly the hoarse
hissing of steam under immense pressure. There
came an unbearable whining and then
A soundless scar upon the fabric of the universe.
When Moichi saw the figure cross the river, he
did not know what to make of it.
Day was done. A last pale streak of sunlight was
being bludgeoned into the wet crimson snow.
Even with the aid of his folk, the army of man
had been sorely pressed, forced to retreat into the
shadows of Kamado's high walls. Defeat had been
at hand for a sedge now within the citadel would
surely mean starvation and death.
And then, not long ago, so swiftly that none
could say truly when it began, the tide of battle
turned. The black, insecteyed rikkagin who so
cleverly directed the enemy began to lose control.
Perhaps they went mad, for they sent their warriors
careening insanely into each other. Entire platoons
of the pike men were easily decoyed and
slaughtered.
The Bujun came to the fore, having destroyed
the remaining deathshead warriors, and now they
sought out the insecteyed rikkagin, killing them
wholesale. Other soldiers who had for most of the
long day feared the intervention of the Makkon
and The Dolman saw now that these sorcerous
creatures were not forthcoming and their
superstitious fear fell away and they launched
themselves upon their foes with enormous ferocity.
The Bujun and Moichi's folk led the
counterattack and now only the last few pockets of
enemy warriors remained, isolated and fast
crumbling. All the sorcerous creatures were so
much carrion.
The field was a mounded sea of corpses, a vast
humped marsh of spilled blood and seeping
entrails, shattered skulls and broken bones.
Moichi was sick with battle, weary beyond
exhaustion. It went beyond his muscles into his
soul. His clothes, under his armor, were sopping,
so heavy with soaked up blood that he felt
disfigured with the added weight. Where the blood
had already dried, the cloth was so stiff that it
might have been metal plate.
His gaze swept over the vast plain of death to the
swirling
244 1 IiC 17. I~ustbader
river, pearled and frothy, and at once he had seen
the splashing, like a fount of liquid light.
And now he watched the tall figure stride up
the near bank, swollen with bodies, bristling with
fallen swords, water streaming from him, and he
knew even before he saw that strange transfigured
face that he beheld the last living legend of the
sorcerous age of mankind. The only one to cross
the barrier into the last dying days of this year,
with the winter's chill still staining lovely, faraway
Sha'angh'sei, jeweled snow hanging in the
columnated gardens and on the flat roofs of the
harttins of the city, the promise of spring already
a thought held close in the minds of the kubaru
who jammed the long wharves and slept their
short dreamless sleeps upon the rocking tasstans.
The numinous figure stopped now and raised
his great blue-green sword so that its long tip
caught the last ray of sunlight breaking through
the rents in the flying clouds at the rim of the
horizon in the west. It fired all along the gleaming
length until the light seemed to stretch upward
into the very heart of heaven.
And Moichi, sheathing his blade, caked with
blood and brains, ran out into the mounded field
of the dead, out from the high blank walls of
Kamado behind which fires had already begun,
memorials for the dead, a razing against the
Kai-feng, a celebration of the day of man, out
from the dark loomings of the citadel's shadows,
out into the light of a new age.
Out to meet the Dai-San.
About the Author
ERIC V. LUSTBADER is the author of Zero,
Shan Jian, Black Heart, and The Ninja, all
bestsellers. He lives in New York City and in
Southampton, Long Island, with his wife, editor
Victoria Schochet Lustbader.
You met him in
THE ~I~cJA.
He survived
TtIE 81~0e
Look for the return of
Nicholas Linnear in
WHITE ZINNIA
by Eric ~ Lustbader.
Coming in February '90 in hardcover
from Faweett Books.
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