Soul of the Sword (Shadow of the Fox #2) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,132

up the steps.

Wind tore at me, tugging at my clothes and making my eyes water. My sleeves billowed out like sails, seeking to catch the breeze and toss me right off the mountainside. Briefly, I wondered, if I were to fall, would either of the tengu catch me before I hit the bottom? Would Tsume swoop in and rescue me on his great black wings? Somehow, that didn’t seem likely. Hugging the stones, I crept up the staircase on all fours, until I finally reached the top.

Carefully, I rose, bracing myself against the wind, and walked along the ridge to the man sitting cross-legged at the very edge. His back was to me, and great feathered wings jutted out from his shoulders, black as night and fluttering in the wind. Feeling like it was the right thing to do, I sat, mimicking his pose on the ground, and waited.

“Scroll bearer.” His voice was a raspy whisper, yet I could easily hear him over the howl of the wind in my ears. “You have finally arrived.”

I swallowed. “How did you know I was coming?”

“I commune with the wind kami every morning and every night, little fox. They bring me tidings of the world below. We had heard whispers of the destruction of the Silent Winds temple, and knew that the piece of the scroll was on its way here.”

“If you knew, why didn’t you help?”

“Because that is not our way.”

He turned so that he was facing me across the stones, the moon at his back. His ancient black eyes seemed to bore into mine. I blinked. An old man with wild white hair and a long beard gazed back at me, withered claws cupped in his lap. His skin was a bright, vivid crimson, the color of blood on the snow. He wore billowing gray robes and wooden geta clogs, and a tiny black cap was perched atop his head, tied with a string below his chin. A thin, enormous red nose, probably over a foot long, protruded from his face like the handle of a broom.

“Kitsune,” the daitengu said, and the huge digit bobbed in the wind as he cocked his head. “Pray tell me what is so interesting.”

Too late, I remembered Reika’s warning about not staring, and immediately dropped my gaze. “Sumimasen,” I apologized. “I wasn’t staring at your…ah…I’m sorry. Thank you for seeing me.”

He sighed. “For centuries, the tengu have remained here, isolated and far removed from the affairs of the mortal world,” he told me. “We watch, and sometimes we offer guidance to exceptional souls, but we have no desire to entangle ourselves in the short, chaotic lives of humans.” His bushy eyebrows lowered, his raspy voice turning dark. “However, one thousand years ago, a mortal made a wish to the Dragon that threw the very land into such turmoil, we knew we could not stand by any longer. As the humans’ war raged on and the world became soaked in blood, a secret council of yokai, kami and humans was formed for the first time. Together, we decided that the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers was too dangerous to be used again. The scroll was torn into pieces, and each group took one of the fragments, promising to keep it hidden so that the Harbinger’s shadow could never threaten the world again.”

His enormous nose angled toward me. “Your temple was the human order that swore to keep their fragment safe,” he said, not accusingly. “Another piece resides here, at the top of the Dragon Spine Mountains, watched over by the tengu who call this place their home.”

“And the third?” I asked.

His mouth curved in a grim frown. “The third piece of the scroll was taken away by the kodama of the Kurai Tsuki Mori and hidden deep within the forest. Those kodama don’t exist anymore. The Kurai Tsuki Mori, or the Forest of a Thousand Eyes as it is known today, has been thoroughly corrupted by Genno and the taint of his blood magic, and the kami who lived there have either fled or have been corrupted themselves. We can only assume the final piece of the scroll is lost, or in the hands of the Master of Demons.”

I shivered, remembering Tatsumi’s warning that Genno already had one piece of the scroll. The daitengu sighed, and the end of his nose trembled. “In any case,” he went on, “you are here, and you have done remarkably well for one so young. The journey could not have