Chapter 39 The Precept-King
When the pattern-elevator had gone down as far as it was going to go, it stopped, forming the floor of another patternshaped chamber.
It was just as cold down here as it had been outside. A fine dusting of ice particles blew through the air. But the walls here were the first ones they had seen in the city that weren’t frozen. A single corridor cut from stone opened in the wall before them.
“Down we go.”
With Kee Keema sandwiched in the middle, the three began to walk. There were no torches or candles in the corridor, yet all was suffused with a dim light. The light came from the slick stones making up the floor, ceiling, and walls, Wataru realized. They gave off a wan radiance like moonlight.
The corridor turned to the right, then to the left, continuing on for some time. In places, heavy-looking doors had been set into the walls on the right and left sides. Without exception, all of the doors were frozen shut, and no matter how hard they pushed and pulled, none would budge.
Here, too, there was no sign of life.
Wataru walked in silence, half from nerves and half from the cold. The corridor seemed to stretch on forever until an arch shaped like a candle flame came into view ahead of them.
The three passed through the arch onto a broad terrace that overlooked a larger, circular room. The ceiling here was very high, at least a hundred feet above them. Stairs curved up along the walls. Wataru stepped out on the terrace, moving over to the railing that ran along the terrace’s edge. The railing was elegant, exquisitely carved in the shape of a flowing vine. He looked over the edge and gasped.
In the center of the room was a large, round mirror—as wide across as Wataru was tall. He recognized it at a glance. A—or maybe even the—Mirror of Truth. Next to it a white-robed man sat slumped in a single chair, like a night watchman dozing off on the job. It was the man who had talked to them through the mirror. The hammer he had been holding lay on the ground by his feet.
Wataru ran down the staircase leading from the terrace to the floor below. Not knowing what to say, he ran up to the man and grabbed him by the arm. Wataru shook him, and the silver crown slipped from the man’s forehead. His hair was as white as it had looked in the mirror. Yet he seemed much younger than Wataru had thought. He’s not even thirty years old. Is he dead?
The man’s head listed to one side, and his eyes opened. They peered into Wataru’s face, filling with a look of relief. “Ah, it is you! You heard my call!” The man blinked his sleepy eyes and attempted to sit up in his chair. A barely audible moan escaped from his lips.
“You are the Traveler.”
In person, his voice, too, sounded quite young. His eyes were clear, his skin smooth and free of wrinkles. So why the white hair?
Wataru nodded. “My name’s Wataru.”
Behind him, Kee Keema and Meena finally reached the bottom of the stairs from the terrace. The man watched them as they approached.
“These are my traveling companions. They came here with me. I’m sorry it took us so long.”
“How…did you reach this place?”
“We rode here on a dragon.”
The man’s eyes opened, and he smiled. “Magnificent. So, you have met a dragon? I…never did. They are rare creatures, even in Vision.”
Everything about the man, from the words he chose to the way his face lit up when he spoke made him seem so much younger than he had before. It was uncanny.
“We need to get you out of here. Your face is pale. This cold will give you pneumonia if you stay here too long,” Wataru said, putting his hand on the man’s forehead. Where he thought to feel the warmth of a fever, it was cold to the touch. The man’s skin was the color of lead.
“Are there any others here? We should get them too. We need to go someplace warm.”
The man slowly shook his head. “No one is left. All have died. Only I remain.” More than sad, the man sounded deeply ashamed to have lived. “You may call me the Precept-King. That is what everyone called me. I was their leader—in name at least.”
The Precept-King. Precepts were religious teachings or laws. If the Special Administrative State of Dela Rubesi was indeed a bastion of belief in the Old God, it seemed a fitting title for their leader.
Still, there was so much that made no sense.
“What happened here?” Meena said, kneeling by the man. “Was it a plague? Did everyone die of illness? Was it always this cold here?”
“Time enough to talk later. Let’s get out of here,” Kee Keema growled. “Meena, would you mind giving my back a quick rub. That should get me moving again. And I need to carry this guy.”
The white-robed man reached out and placed his hand over Wataru’s. “No. I may not leave this place. This city will die soon, and I plan to die with it. I cannot escape. The Goddess would not allow it.”
The Goddess? Wataru’s eyes opened wide. He pointed at the room around them. “What do you mean? I thought this was—aren’t you believers in the Old God?”
“No, it is not so.” The man gave a weak smile, the expressionless mask falling from his face like a shard of ice. “This too was part of the agreement with the Goddess. It was the best way to ensure that we did not trouble the lowlands. That is why we kept our promise—for so long, we kept it. Yet promises were made to be broken, and our time finally came. Surely, the Goddess knew it would. Men are crafty, and their hearts are weak. Someday, one among us would go against our promise held for eternity—and all of us would be punished for his trespass.” The man muttered softly to himself, half singing. Wataru had trouble following the meaning of his words.
“What are you talking about?”
Then the white-haired, youthful Precept-King looked Wataru straight in the eyes. “I was once a Traveler, like yourself.”
He’s from the real world too?
“Including myself, there were eleven of us from the real world in this place, all of them Travelers. All thought to change their own destiny, and so passed through the Porta Nectere to Vision.” His eyes looked back in time as he spoke. “But we were never able to realize our dreams. We failed on the difficult journey through Vision and chose to abandon our path. Yet, at the same time, none of us wished to trudge back to the real world in defeat, having been unable to change our destinies.”
Wataru silently watched the man’s sharply cut jaw move. Oddly, the look in his eyes was less one of fatigue and more of boredom. There was something else too. He looked familiar—like someone Wataru had met before.
“So you stayed in Vision?” Meena asked quietly, her breath a wisp in the air.
“Yes,” the Precept-King nodded. “The Goddess made this city for us, the failed Travelers. Here, we were commanded to live our lives apart from the rest of the world. That was the condition of our stay in Vision.”
Meena looked up at the high ceiling. “You were all trapped in here? Unable to even step out into the world outside?” It was clear from her expression that Meena couldn’t imagine ever being so confined to one place.
“Didn’t you ever get tired of it, or bored?” Wataru asked. “Did you have some sort of work you were meant to perform here?”
The Precept-King lifted his eyes and looked at the large Mirror of Truth to his side. “Our task was to protect this.”
“The mirror?”
Kee Keema took a step toward the mirror, reaching out his hand as if to touch it. Then, thinking better of it, he stepped away.
The Precept-King nodded. “All Travelers find the Mirror of Truth at some point during their journey through Vision. Each of them, in their own way, will find it. Yet, when their journey is done, they must return it to the Goddess. They’re not allowed to return it to the world of Vision. It is too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yes. The Mirror of Truth may be used to go between this place and the real world, you see.”
Wataru looked at Meena. A spark of understanding lit in her eyes. “I was always told I should never let my mirror leave my possession—though I had no idea what it could do. I don’t think my parents knew either.”
“That knowledge is forbidden,” the Precept-King said, smiling gently at Meena. “But now, you know its secret, don’t you?”
Meena nodded hesitantly. “Not that I would ever dream of doing anything with it myself.”
“Ah, if only everyone in Vision was as honest as you.”
The Precept-King cast his eyes downward, spotting the hammer lying at his feet. He slowly reached down to pick it up, and placed it on his lap. It was as though he hadn’t even realized it had dropped out of his limp hands until now.
“This Mirror of Truth is actually a collection of twelve mirrors once held by the Travelers who lived here. Each mirror has a soul, you see. Those souls have fused, and here they have a form. That is what we were protecting. We sought to keep anyone with schemes to travel between this world and the real world away.”
Wataru felt his heart beat faster in his chest. “Twelve? You’ve added one more to your number.”
The Precept-King looked at Wataru and smiled. “Indeed. You see, one of us escaped quite recently. Even now, he is still at large. He is the fugitive, the breaker of the oath with the Goddess, the traitor. He is the rebel that appeared from among us. That is why we must be punished.”
“And that punishment…” the words caught in Wataru’s throat. “This frozen city? Did the Goddess do this?”
The Precept-King nodded. He lowered his chin to his chest and closed his eyes.
“Isn’t that a bit harsh?” Kee Keema spoke. His speech was still slurred, numbed by the cold. “The Goddess we know is benevolent. I can’t believe she would punish everyone for just one broken promise. There must be some mistake?”
“Gods are ever strict,” the Precept-King said, his eyes still closed. “And men ever weak. Their eyes filled with greed, they scheme foolishly against the heavens. The Goddess knows this all too well. After all, it has happened many times before.”
One of the twelve, escaped. Still at large. And the Goddess is furious. Wataru’s heart beat even faster. “An emergency call went out to the Highlanders in the lowlands. They’re looking for a fugitive!”
Meena’s eyes opened wide. “That’s right! They said he he stole vital national secrets and was heading to the north. Maybe he’s the one…”
The Precept-King’s jaw tightened. “Is this so? Then, yes, it probably is him. So the Goddess has acted on her own, has she?”
That solves the mystery of the fugitive’s origins.
“As it turns out, we happen to be Highlanders,” Kee Keema said proudly, his eyes brightening with interest for the first time since arriving in the cold city. “If this fugitive was one of yours, maybe you have some clue as to his whereabouts, where he might’ve gone? It’s our duty to find him.”
Gripping the back of his chair, the Precept-King tried to stand, but his legs were unresponsive. Giving up, he sat back down. “Then you understand our predicament better than I thought. The reason I summoned you—the reason I asked you to come all this way—was to capture that fugitive. I do have a clue as to his whereabouts. I can tell you exactly where he is now.”
“How?”
“The mirror will show us. Please, give me your hand.”
Wataru and Meena grabbed the Precept-King’s arms, and managed to help him stand. Slowly, he hobbled over to the Mirror of Truth, and standing before it, he raised his hands along its curved edge. His reflected image in the mirror blurred and faded. Wataru blinked, and the next instant, he could see a city pictured in the mirror’s depths.
A port city. He caught glimpses of a blue sea between buildings that looked like stacked warehouses. The warehouse walls, made of simple boards and pilings, had been painted with a design in yellow: a clenched fist. It must be a marker of some sort.
“That…that’s Sono,” Kee Keema said, warily squinting his eyes. “No mistaking it. Look at how old those buildings are, how they’re practically falling down. Sono used to be the busiest fishing port in Arikita, but when industry took off there, the sea became too polluted for fishing, and the town went to rust. They tried changing it to an industrial port, but the harbor had always been small, and they never were as successful as places like Hataya and Dakla.”
“Do any of the sailships go north from there?”
“No large ships use the port. But there are several medium-size vessels that might be able to make the passage.”
“So the fugitive is hiding here?” Wataru asked.
The Precept-King clutched the Mirror of Truth, his shoulders heaving with every breath. “He is waiting for a favorable wind. As you have probably heard, the sailships passing to the north must wait for the starseers’ word that the winds will move with them before they set out.”
“How often do these winds blow? “
Kee Keema scratched his thick neck and shrugged. “I don’t know for certain, of course—I’m no starseer. But this is certainly the season when most sailships make the journey. There are only about three or four times a year when that happens.”
“Then we have to hurry!” Meena said, her tail bobbing in the air. “We have to let everyone know: we’re looking for a shipping company with this mark of the fist.”
“So the mirror tells us. The fugitive seeks passage by boat. Perhaps it is the captain who hides him until the time is right?”
Kee Keema and Meena looked ready to run off instantly, but Wataru stood still. He was staring directly at the Precept-King’s black eyes, half hidden beneath his bushy white eyebrows. “What are these national secrets the fugitive is carrying? You must know.”
“We’ll just ask once we’ve caught him,” Kee Keema said impatiently.
The Precept-King slouched, falling over the arm of his chair. The motion revealed a horribly emaciated body under his white robes.
“The fugitive—that man used the Mirror of Truth to return to the real world, and brought back with him plans for a powered ship and a motor. He was going to take them to the north.”
Meena looked understandably confused. It was clear that not a word the man had said made any sense to her. Kee Keema too stood scratching his head.
Only Wataru seemed to get it. “He was going to sell that to the Northern Empire?” With a fleet of powered vessels at their command, the North would no longer have to brave the Stinging Mist or wait for the winds to turn in their favor. They could invade the South whenever they wanted.
“What does it mean, Wataru? Sell what? Why do you look so frightened?”
Wataru turned to Meena, and as simply as he could, told her briefly about engines and what a powered ship would mean in Vision. The impact of his words was clear. Rage burned deep in Meena’s eyes. “That’s insane! Why would a Traveler want to help the North like that? Why? Does he hate the South? Why would he want to destroy the peace in Vision?”
When the Precept-King answered, he spoke to Wataru, not Meena.
“He said it would bring about Vision’s industrial revolution.”
Meena stared blankly at the white-haired man.
“It’s something that happened in the real world,” Wataru explained, gritting his teeth.
Power. Mechanical power that didn’t rely on the strength of men. Wataru had thought of it many times since arriving here. More than half of the things that were done by physical strength here were done with motors in the real world. Wataru had been astonished by the difference it made on many occasions.
“I spoke with him many times on these matters,” said the Precept-King, half to himself. “I wasn’t shy about giving him my opinion. Most assuredly, Vision will have its own industrial revolution…but in its own time. That it has not already arrived is a sign that Vision is not ready for it. Yet he thought that would take too long,”
The Precept-King continued, “What was wrong, he asked me, with bringing things that already existed in the real world here, to Vision? He thought he could make Vision richer, add to its prosperity overnight.”
“Would these motors give us prosperity?” Meena asked innocently. Wataru didn’t have a good answer. It depended on what one meant by prosperity. And it was unclear that the kind of prosperity that mechanical power promised would really bring happiness to Vision.
“Of course, he had other motives.”
“Like what?”
The Precept-King turned to Meena. “With that information he carried, the Northern Empire would welcome him with open arms. He would be a most valued citizen there. My dear kitkin, it is as you fear. With powered ships, the North would defeat the South in the blink of an eye. Vision would be unified under one leadership, whether it wished it or not. That would make our fugitive a grand contributor to the new order. He would stand at the top of Vision along with the Imperial Family of the North.”
The light in Meena’s eyes dimmed. “That’s it? That’s what he wants?”
“Indeed. That is why he brought knowledge from the real world here to Vision—to satisfy his own greed. That is why the Goddess is angry.”
Wataru glanced at the Mirror of Truth. Its smooth surface once again reflected the three of them, standing around the robed man.
“Do you really think the fugitive can secure passage to the Northern Empire so easily? I wonder if anyone would really believe him when he told them about the boat.”
“Oh, they would believe,” the Precept-King said, his eyes filling with sorrow. “As I have heard, the empire in the north has been trying for some time now to obtain a Mirror of Truth for themselves. It appears that someone in the Imperial Family knows of its workings. If they could open passage to the real world, they know what power it would place in their hands. There was a time when they tried any number of despicable ways to create a mirror such as the one we have here.”
Wataru looked at Meena. All expression had drained from her little face. Her thoughts were racing backward through time.
When Sigdora—the special unit of the Northern Imperial Army—attacked Meena’s home, they had been after her family’s Mirror of Truth. Her parents were merely casualties. That was why they were after fugitives to the south as well. It was all for the mirrors.
The Precept-King furrowed his brow as he gazed at the mirror beside them. “Do you know what the Mirror of Truth is?” he suddenly asked Wataru.
“I’m not sure what you mean. It opens a corridor between this world and the real world, right?”
“Yes, this is one of its vital functions. But that is not why the mirror exists in the first place.”
The mirror presides, as its name might suggest, over truth in Vision, the Precept-King explained. “It is composed of the very elements that make Vision what it is—the seeds of the world. A gathering of parts that create the world—perhaps this is the best way to describe it,” he said, running his finger along the edge of the mirror.
The seeds of the world? Wataru shook his head.
“It is not surprising that you do not understand. You are still a child, after all,” The Precept-King said with an ironic smile. “Vision is but a void, yet it has form. It is here, yet it is not. It exists, yet it may not exist.”
Oh, that clears it up. Wataru began to feel like he was listening to a lecture at school.
“You do not know the story of Vision’s creation, do you?”
Wataru frowned. “Actually, I do. Vision is created by the imaginations of people living in the real world.”
“Yes…I suppose one might say that.”
“Isn’t that right?”
“Vision exists in the space between two mirrors. These two mirrors are the seeds of our world.”
Meena, finally recovered from her shock, blinked slowly and looked up.
“One of these mirrors, of course, is the Mirror of Truth. The other is called the Mirror of Eternal Shadow.”
“The Mirror of Eternal Shadow?”
“If the Mirror of Truth is the accumulation of all that is good, then the opposing mirror, is, perhaps, the accumulation of all that is evil. I say perhaps, because I have not seen it for myself. But, the Mirror of Eternal Shadow does exist. Of this you can be certain.”
Kee Keema glanced at Wataru and then back at the Precept-King. He was having a hard time following their conversation.
“The Mirror of Truth—the accumulation of truth that determines the very form of Vision—was broken into countless fragments and spread throughout our world. Every time a Traveler comes, these mirrors guide their path. So then, where is the Mirror of Eternal Shadow?” the Precept-King asked before answering his own question. “Certainly, without a doubt, it is in the north. Thus are North and South opposed.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Meena said, raising her voice. “My mirror came from my parents, and they’re from the north, originally. That would mean there are fragments of the Mirror of Truth on both continents. It would make more sense if the Mirror of Eternal Shadow were also broken up into many fragments and scattered everywhere too.”
Wataru’s eyes widened. He had never heard Meena talk in this way. She seemed older, somehow.
The Precept-King smiled at her like a pastor about to deliver knowledge to an ignorant believer. “Yes, truth has been broken into many fragments, too numerous to count, and spread among many people, but Eternal Shadow—which is evil—this exists in one place. Can you not see that this is Vision as she stands today?”
Kee Keema shook his head, not following the train of discussion. His face looked even more pale than before.
“That is why Vision knows happiness still,” the Precept-King said mysteriously. “Yet the question is, is this a good thing? Is it good for evil to be so bound in one place? I do not know the answer.”
Kee Keema’s head jerked up. His voice was loud, despite the fact that his lips didn’t want to move in the cold. “You don’t mean that everything that’s going on in the North—all the prejudice and the killing—is because that other mirror is up there?”
The Precept-King slowly turned his back to Wataru. “I do not know. Yet it is certain that the Mirror of Eternal Shadow is in the north. And I would think that the Northern Empire considers it quite a burden. That is why the emperor will stoop to any means to obtain our mirror here, for only a whole mirror can hope to contain the threat that is Eternal Shadow. Or perhaps he merely wishes to use our mirror to obtain knowledge from the real world. It is hard to say…”
Wataru stood, his mouth closed. He hadn’t said anything in a while, and now it felt like his lips were sealed together. The cold seemed to seep into every fiber of his being.
“Didn’t the Goddess tell you anything about it?”
The Precept-King shook his head. “It is not knowledge I would be privileged to know in the first place. Not I, a weak Traveler who ended his journey halfway toward completion.
“In any case, you see the situation at hand. Should the fugitive cross to the north, things would progress rapidly. This fugitive came to Vision when the Porta Nectere opened ten years before. He is a Traveler. His knowledge of affairs in the real world was much more current than mine. It is possible that he had begun to plan all of this—his betrayal—from the very moment he abandoned his journey.”
Meena put her hands to her mouth and knelt on the floor. Kee Keema, looking concerned, patted her on the back. It was a noble gesture—by all accounts, he was the one out of all of them who was suffering the most.
“Please,” the Precept-King said, his hands brushing Wataru’s arm. It was almost as if he wanted to grab on tight and plead but lacked the strength to do so. The freezing cold and hunger had mixed with despair, robbing him of his strength and willpower. “Please, you must stop the fugitive before he crosses to the north. Save our souls.”
It was the first time anyone older than Wataru had pleaded with him like this, and he found the experience oddly frightening.
“Since the fugitive left, I have called out to Travelers through this mirror. I know that the Porta Nectere is open now, and new Travelers have come to Vision. How many times I wished my cries would reach them.”
“When you called me, I remember you saying something about me being a boy too…” Wataru began. “Does that mean that another Traveler answered your call, before I did? A boy?”
The Precept-King nodded quietly.
“Was his name Mitsuru? He’s not a warrior in training like I am—he’s a great sorcerer.”
“Ah,” the Precept-King said, his eyes opening wide. “You know him?”
“Yes. He’s my friend.”
“Your…friend? This is a surprise.”
Mitsuru had answered the call, the Precept-King explained, and only a few hours after had used a great wind magic to come to Dela Rubesi.
“Yes…he’s much more powerful than I am,” Wataru admitted.
“Perhaps, but he did not listen to my request. He said he had come to Vision to meet with the Goddess, and as such had no interest in the affairs of Vision, or the enmity between the North and the South. It did not concern him.”
Wataru had to admit that sounded a lot like the Mitsuru he knew. It made sense when he thought of his objective as a Traveler. For some reason, Wataru felt embarrassed on Mitsuru’s behalf. Half of him wanted to defend Mitsuru’s actions, and the other half was irritated with his selfishness.
“He told me then that there was another Traveler come to Vision. He said this other Traveler was too kind for his own good. From the way he spoke, I did not imagine that you two might be friends.”
Wataru’s face grew red with embarrassment.
“Sounds like Mitsuru wanted to sidetrack you so he could get to the Tower of Destiny before you, doesn’t it,” Kee Keema said, snorting. His anger and his tongue, numb with cold, made him sound like a belligerent drunk.
“I don’t think he’d do that.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure!”
“Anyway, now we know what’s going on. Let’s get out of here quickly and go to the port in Sono.”
“Right. If we leave him waiting much longer, even Jozo will freeze,” Meena said, springing to her feet. She’s a real fighter, Wataru thought, impressed.
“We’re leaving now. Here, take my hand. Can you walk?” Wataru stretched out his hand, but the Precept-King pushed it away. “What’s wrong?”
“I cannot leave. Did I not tell you?”
“But you asked me to come here and help you!”
“I asked you to save our souls. I do not hope to escape death.”
Holding onto the chair for support, the frail man leaned over and picked up the hammer from his seat. He was unable to lift it, and so it hung down by his knees. “We allowed the fugitive to escape, and, through the breaking of our oath, won the Goddess’s wrath. That is why we must be punished. My companions have already died. As their leader, it would not do for me to live any longer. The Goddess would never allow it.”
“That’s no fair!”
The Precept-King shook his head. “Capture the fugitive, undo his plans, and our sin may yet be forgiven. Only then will our souls be purified, and ourselves reborn into the next world. Fail, and not only my soul, but those of all my companions, will be laden with sin, fated to wander the Eternal Vale for all time. That is why you must go. Now.”
This wasn’t the deal! “Don’t you want to live? You’re still young. How can you just give up on yourself like this?” Wataru asked, the words coming out of his mouth in a flood. The Precept-King whirled around with far more speed than Wataru would have thought possible. His face was twisted. “Give up on myself? Me?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
The Precept-King chuckled. “I’m not giving up on anything. No, I want to protect myself. As, I’m sure, did my fallen companions. I do not wish to go to the underworld. Nor would I go to Vision or the real world. Our paradise was here and here alone.”
The Precept-King spread his arms, pointing around them, spinning as he looked up at the ceiling in a strange dance. “If I am to lose this, what need have I of life? It is far more desirable that I be reborn, a purer soul, to search for paradise again in the next life.”
Shivering, Meena stepped over to Wataru.
“In the real world…” the Precept-King took his hand holding the hammer and pressed it to his chest. “In the real world, nothing ever happened as I wished it. All my efforts came to nothing, all my dreams were crushed. No one understood me, and no place accepted me. My life did not love me, there can be no doubt of that. It gave me nothing. That is why I left it and came to Vision.”
The Precept-King’s feet stomped on the stone floor. “Yet even here, in Vision, my dreams were not fulfilled. Reach the Tower of Destiny?—I could not even make it from one town to the next! Here, as in the real world, nothing went as I hoped. That is why I abandoned my journey. I chose instead to align myself with the Goddess. From that moment on, I lived here.”
He chose to live here? This barren city of the gods? This beautiful, empty temple?
“The Goddess knew us for who we were. This city is concealed beneath the hem of her robes. We were the chosen ones, living above the clouds, given the high calling of defending her mirror. At last, we’d found the world in which we wished to live. We had no dealings with the lowlands, with their filth and corruption. Dela Rubesi was our paradise.”
Yet one among them didn’t understand that—he couldn’t give up the mean greed that ruled in the lowlands, and so he betrayed the oath.
The Precept-King put a bony fist to his forehead. “We lived like gods here. From this place, we looked down on the lands of Vision. We lived our days in solitude and grace. This is what I truly desired, you see. That is why they called me the Precept-King—I held in my heart a purer essence, a belief that separated me from the ignorant world’s inability to understand. Do you see?”
Wataru didn’t see. What precepts did he teach exactly? And to whom? And if he was a king, where was his kingdom?
“If you had all these great precepts,” Kee Keema said, slowly forming the words with numb lips, “and you were king of these people here, how come one of them betrayed you and ran away?”
The Precept-King made no reply, and instead stared off into space as though he had not heard the question. It was as if the question had never been asked at all. Then he sighed quietly. “Those who could not understand us were not our companions. The traitor, he did not qualify to be among us in the first place.”
“Had you noticed this before? Before he ran away?” Meena asked. “Did you see he was somehow not qualified? If so, why didn’t you do something about it earlier?”
The Precept-King frowned slightly. “I do not believe you have the right to accuse me of wrongdoing here. All of this is his fault, you see. You do not know what it is like to be betrayed and wounded like I have been.”
“Still…”
“No! That is no way to speak to a chosen one of the Goddess.”
Meena looked at Wataru. She didn’t know what to say, and she was rapidly running out of the desire to say anything. Suddenly, it occurred to Wataru that he knew why this man had abandoned his journey through Vision. He had always been like this. The only thing he held dear was his own excuses. The only things he saw were what he wanted to see. The only things he desired were those things he wanted for himself. The only one ever hurt was him. He had abandoned everything that didn’t go the way he wanted it to go, cut away everything that didn’t please him, ignoring things that didn’t make sense.
Of course he had never found a place where he belonged. No kindness could ever reach him. He would be the last to see the signs of a coming betrayal. And here, in this land of peace that he had finally found, he clung to his oath with the Goddess.
The Precept-King called himself chosen. What did that mean? Chosen for what, and for what reason? Had this place been his reward for failure?
He’s no Precept-King. He’s a Void-King. The high King of nothing. And the Goddess knew it. That’s why she made him this fake city of the gods.
Wataru’s body felt like ice, yet the thought still sent chills down his spine. Suddenly, he realized who the Precept-King’s face had reminded him of. It was that man—the young man that stepped on his hand without so much as a word of apology, back when he’d gone out shopping with Uncle Lou.
His uncle had been furious, Wataru remembered, and the man had been mad too. Yet the man’s anger was simply indignant rage at being yelled at, with no understanding of why.
To him, Wataru hadn’t even existed. In his world, there was no boy lying there on the ground. Wataru was just an obstacle in his path. That’s why, when he stepped on Wataru’s hand, he kept going. It was like he had tripped on an empty can, or stomped on a plastic shopping bag in the street. If he had ever visited Vision, Wataru thought, he would make a great Precept-King. And he would be satisfied, down to the very bottom of his heart.
Wataru shook his head. I’m thinking too much.
“Your hair…” Wataru said quietly. “What made it white? Was it fear at the Goddess’s punishment of your city?”
The Precept-King’s face had returned to the expression it held when Wataru first saw him: he looked bored to death. His mouth opened slowly. “I wished it to be this way. I did not need youth. Youth, and the immaturity that comes with it, were not fitting for one chosen.”
Wataru had nothing else left to ask.
Kee Keema and Meena looked frozen solid. Wataru stood, his eyes still on the Precept-King’s face. “Let’s go.”
“But, Wataru…”
“No, he wants to stay here. We don’t have the right to tell him otherwise.”
“Yes, go,” the Precept-King said, smiling slowly. Then, with great gravitas, he lifted his hammer over his shoulder and turned toward the Mirror of Truth. “My last task lies before me. I must break this mirror. All of the fragments we brought here will return again to fragments. And they will spread throughout Vision. There, they will wait until they can find new Travelers. This is as the Goddess desires it to be.”
The Precept-King closed his eyes as if in prayer. “When this is done, the Goddess will mete out her final punishment. You had best hurry, lest it find you too.” Then his eyes turned toward Wataru one last time. “Go. Finish your journey. Do what we could not.”
For that one brief moment, Wataru thought he could see the mask drop, revealing the man’s true face. It was a lonely face—the face of a man who had resolved to change his fate, who had come all this way…for this. A lonely Traveler.
Wataru felt tears rise in his eyes. I can’t leave you here, after all. Don’t make me do it.
But the Precept-King saw what he was thinking. “Go,” he commanded before Wataru could protest again. “And be wary of evil.” Then he fell silent and turned to the task at hand, mustering all the strength he had left in his thin arms to lift his hammer.
Wataru slowly shuffled backward. Unconciously, Meena tugged on his arm. Then it was like a thread snapped. Wataru began to run. Together, the three of them dashed up the stairs and out of the hall, turning only once at the arched entrance to catch a final glimpse of the Precept-King. It was an image which would be forever burned in Wataru’s memory. The face of the Precept-King blended for moment with that of the young man in Tokyo. Maybe they don’t look so alike after all. Maybe it’s just me throwing them together in my head.
Their pace quickened the farther away they got from the mirror room. Even if the destruction of the city hadn’t been imminent, they would have run just as fast. They felt like if they didn’t run, if they didn’t get away, then the weight of what they had left behind would draw them in, like a sinking ship, and they would drown in this place.
“There you are!” Jozo was jumping up and down. “I was getting worried. You do what you came to do?”
“Y-yeah,” said Wataru. While they had been under the surface, it seemed that the city had grown even colder. His lips were frozen shut.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it in time! We’re flying now—hang on!”
“Make it in time? What’s wrong, Jozo?”
With his crimson wingtip, Jozo pointed toward a corner of the sky. “Look up there. It’s coming straight for us.”
There, among the clouds that shrouded Dela Rubesi, a single star shone in the sunlit sky with a hard, diamond-like radiance. On closer inspection, it was moving.
Either my eyes are playing tricks on me, or whatever that is has wings.
“That’s a servant of the Goddess, that is. Bringing a wind of punishment down on this place, I should imagine,” Jozo said with a shiver. “And where that wind blows, I don’t want to be! Let’s fly!”
The three clung tight to his scales, and Jozo lifted into the air. As soon as they were in a cloud bank, he began beating his powerful wings, taking them as far away from Dela Rubesi as he could go.
Through the swirling clouds, Wataru watched the approaching star. It did have wings, after all, wings of frost—as though countless shards of ice had come together to form a giant bird. It was even larger than Jozo. Each beat of its wings sent a frigid gale down to the earth below. The great ice-bird was headed straight for Dela Rubesi.
“Jozo?”
“What?”
“Do you think you could circle around here, just a moment? I kind of want to see what happens.”
“It’ll just give you nightmares. I don’t recommend it.”
“Please. I…I have to see this through.”
Jozo snorted, then, reluctantly, turned his nose back toward Dela Rubesi. He began tracing a wide circle around the frozen city.
The ice-bird alighted on the innermost of the two walls surrounding Dela Rubesi, and rested a moment before it extended its wings to the side and began to thrash them furiously.
With the first beat of its wings, a blizzard rose. With the second beat of its wings, the very air stiffened around it. With a third beat, every spire, street, and wall in the city froze and began to crumble into scattered shards of ice.
The sculptures holding up the domed roof of the amphitheater froze and shattered. Corridors cracked, sending plumes of ice-dust into the air. Like a sand castle swept away by the waves, the temples and shrines began to lose their form, crumbling at the edges. The city walls collapsed, first the outer wall, then the inner. Then the ice-bird took flight, blasting the city from the air with waves of frigid cold.
“Look!” Meena said, pointing. “The pattern is crumbling!”
The pattern on the elevator rose for moment, becoming more distinct, then let off an icy sigh before sinking. At first, its descent was level, but soon it tilted to one side. One of the edges crumbled away, and then the lines of the pattern began to shatter. Soon it was nothing but a countless pile of ice shards, thundering down into the earth like an avalanche.
“The Goddess is angry,” Jozo said. Even though he had no idea what had happened beneath the surface, his eyes held a knowing glint. “I can taste the sadness in the air. She laments. What horrible sin did these people of Dela Rubesi commit to earn this?”
Clinging to Jozo’s neck, Wataru watched the final moments of Dela Rubesi.
What is empty returns to emptiness, what is nothing returns to nothing.
Moments later there was nothing on Undoor Highland but a thick layer of snow and ice.
As it had come, the great ice-bird flew up without a sound and disappeared into the clouds. Wataru did not watch it go, and Jozo, for his part, flew as fast as he could in the opposite direction. The sky was silent. Little by little, their view widened. The time of punishment was over.
“Let’s get someplace warm,” Kee Keema said in a raspy voice. “I’ve had just about all I can take.” Wataru was about to agree when Kee Keema’s fingers clumsily grabbed his sleeve.
“What?”
“Wh-what’s that? I see something shining!”
Kee Keema was pointing back toward Dela Rubesi. There, on the snowy field where the city had stood, something was shining with a brilliant red light.
“Jozo, you didn’t drop a scale back there?”
“Absolutely not. What a waste that would be.”
“Then what is that?”
Wataru felt his heart stir in his chest. For the first time in hours, he felt hope.
“Kee Keema, you think you can hang in there for another five minutes?”
“S-sure.”
“Jozo, would you take us back?”
Jozo rolled his big round eyes at Wataru. “You serious?”
“I am. Sorry.”
Sighing and snorting, Jozo did a U-turn and began to descend. The frozen snow that covered Undoor Highland was fine, like flour, and the wind blew it up in great drifts. On Jozo’s back they were safe, but Wataru feared that, down on the ground, he would be lost in the snow an instant.
“Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
Wataru grew increasingly sure that he was right. Brushing aside the snow that made his face and arms numb, he forged his way across the snowy plain, heading for the red glimmer. Meena was right behind him.
“Wataru, you think that’s…?”
“Yeah.”
The pedestal was gone without a trace. The planters, too, had frozen and shattered, returning to the snow. But the sculpture was still there. It had shrunk to only a quarter of its former size, yet it was still shaped like a sphere. It sat upon a cushion of snow, the red light winking from its very center.
Wataru approached and stuck out his hand, and the glimmering red sphere floated up into the air. There was no mistaking it now.
The third gemstone. Wataru drew his Brave’s Sword and held it up in his right hand.
The gemstone winked. The light it gave off was like an aurora, a tiny version of the northern lights, floating above the snow. There, wrapped in a crimson shroud of light, the image of a girl appeared, wearing a breastplate of platinum. A single strand of her braided hair was loose, falling down her forehead.
—I was waiting, Traveler.
Wataru knelt.
—I am she who protects the hope of this world and the future of men. Too long I was held in the hands of those who belittled me, who feared me, who did not need me. I thank you.
An image of the Precept-King rose in Wataru’s mind. He had abandoned hope, forgotten the future, and now his peace was shattered and gone without a trace.
—Turn around, Brave.
Wataru looked behind him and saw his footprints and Meena’s stretching across the snow.
—I exist only for those whose past does not waver or halt. For those who have stopped walking, their path is ended, and there I cannot dwell. Go forward, Brave, with hope held to your breast, looking toward the future, head held high. Do this, and I will always be at your side. And remember that the path you have left behind can be a marker, showing you the way you must go.
Then the Spirit of Future Hope smiled and disappeared. The third gemstone glimmered brilliantly, and then was sucked into the hilt of his sword. Wataru felt its energy joining the other gems. It was exhilarating.
He closed his eyes and stood on the snowy plain with his head held high. He raised his sword to the heavens. And, as though it had been waiting just for him, a golden ray cut through the thick layer of clouds. Wataru was bathed with joyous light.
Only two gemstones to go.