Autumn Bridge Read Free Page B

setting was for two. Another cup, filled, sat untouched across from Kiyori. Shigeru completed his survey of the room. There was no one else there. Had the person left through a secret passage unknown to Shigeru? That seemed unlikely. But he remembered that Kiyori had designed the tower himself, and no one else had seen the plans. Whoever had met with him certainly had not gone out the window. The only other way down was past Shigeru.
    “What is it?” Kiyori said.
    Thinking he had been seen, Shigeru went to his knees and bowed. He hesitated for a moment, not knowing what to say, and during his hesitation Kiyori spoke again.
    “Then I consent.”
    Shigeru rose quickly. So someone was still there. Again, he looked into the room. Kiyori looked straight ahead and spoke again as if addressing someone directly in front of him.
    “This is a most unfair request,” Kiyori said. “You have tricked me into agreeing to do what I have pledged my life and honor not to do.”
    Shigeru shrank back, suddenly cold.
    “Very well,” he heard his father say. “Just this one night.”
    Shigeru retreated, moving with care at first, then he fled from the castle as swiftly as he could. His father could not help him, for he, too, was insane. Kiyori had been speaking to a woman. It might have been Lady Sadako, Kiyori’s wife and Shigeru’s mother. That was bad enough. Lady Sadako had died shortly after Shigeru’s birth. But he didn’t think the lady in question had been his late mother. Kiyori had spoken of a broken pledge in a peculiar, conspiratorial manner. He would not use such a tone with his own wife, not even the ghost of his wife.
    The high tower of Cloud of Sparrows Castle, where Kiyori always spent so much time alone, had long had the reputation of being haunted. It was said the uncertain shadows of twilight there often resembled ancient bloodstains. Such stories always arose around places of ancient tragedy, and what castle in Japan had not seen its share? In this case, the tragedy had been treason, assassination, and gruesome murders that had nearly extinguished the Okumichi clan in its earliest days. That had been in the fall of the tenth year of the Emperor Go-Nijo.
    The witch and princess, Lady Shizuka, had spent her last hours in that very room of the tower.
    His father was consorting with a ghoul dead for more than five hundred years.
     
1311, CLOUD OF SPARROWS CASTLE
     
    Shizuka and Ayamé looked out the windows of the high tower and watched the three streams of warriors moving toward Cloud of Sparrows.
    “How many do you think they are?” Shizuka said.
    “Six hundred from the east, three hundred from the north, another hundred from the west,” Ayamé said.
    “And how many are we?”
    “Your sixteen ladies-in-waiting are within the tower. Thirty men, all personal retainers of Lord Chiaki, await the traitors at the gates of the castle. They came as soon as they were summoned. Messengers have been sent to find him. Perhaps he will arrive before the assault begins.”
    “Perhaps,” Shizuka said, knowing he would not.
    Ayamé said, “I find it difficult to accept that Go has betrayed Lord Hironobu and yourself. Is there no other possibility?”
    “Go has arranged for Chiaki to be away from here at the critical moment,” Shizuka said, “because he knows his son’s loyalty is unshakable. Chiaki’s absence is the proof. Go does not wish to kill him when he kills me.”
    “How cruel life is,” Ayamé said. “Lord Hironobu would have died in childhood if not for Go. He would not have lived to become a Great Lord without Go’s steadfastness and courage. And now this. Why?”
    “Jealousy, greed, and fear,” Shizuka said. “They can destroy heaven itself if the gods are lax for even a moment. How much more vulnerable are we here below.”
    They watched the enemy multitude merge and form a huge pool of warriors. Well before the sun fell behind the mountains, campfires sprang to life among them.
    “Why do they