Soul of the Sword (Shadow of the Fox #2) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,32

But, because his body was completely destroyed, we had only his skull to draw him back from the pit.”

“Ah,” I said. Summoning a soul from Jigoku and permanently binding it to the mortal realm again was a complex and dangerous blood magic ritual, one that had to be performed just right to avoid catastrophe. You had to have a physical body to bind the soul to, and it was best if it was the soul’s original remains, or all kinds of mishaps could occur. “Something went wrong, I’m guessing,” I told the hags. They winced.

“We were able to bring back Genno’s soul,” said the blue hag. “But…”

“His physical form never materialized,” her green sister finished. “The wretched mortals must’ve purified his body before destroying it. Lord Genno is here, in the mortal realm, but his soul is bound to his skull.” She paused. “Only his skull.”

My laughter bounced off the cavern walls, as the hag sisters stared at me. “So, you’re telling me that the most powerful human blood mage that ever walked the mortal realm, who commanded hordes of yokai, demons and undead, and single-handedly led a demonic revolution that almost brought the entire land to its knees…is now an angry floating head?”

The red hag moaned. “Not even that. His spirit can materialize, and he can walk the realm as a ghost, but he cannot travel far from his skull. He wields a fraction of the power he once had, because he has no physical body.”

“I see.” Understanding dawned, and I grunted. The timing was too convenient to be chance. “So Genno was hoping to take advantage of the Dragon scroll,” I guessed. “That’s why he was brought back in this era, when the night of the Wish is almost upon us.”

“Yes, Lord Hakaimono,” confirmed the green hag. “His original intent was to use the Wish to make himself emperor and kill all the daimyos. However, with the…unforeseen accident, he needs the scroll for another purpose.”

“So he can wish himself whole again, back to his full power.”

“And resume his plan to conquer Iwagoto,” the blue hag finished, nodding. “Because of his condition, he doesn’t have the army he once commanded, but he is steadily growing his numbers. Blood mages, yokai and demons join his cause daily. Just the knowledge that the Master of Demons has returned to the mortal realm is enough to draw disciples from every corner of the land.”

“Have you come to join us then, Hakaimono-sama?” the red hag asked. “Like you did in the Master’s first rebellion? With you on our side, the humans will fall before us like rice before a sickle.”

I smirked. I hadn’t so much joined Genno’s last little uprising as much as I’d taken advantage of the chaos to spread my own bit of bedlam and slaughter. Four hundred years ago, with an army of undead and demons wreaking havoc through the land, a samurai by the name of Kage Saburo tried to prevent the destruction of the Shadow Clan castle, by taking a powerful, cursed sword from its sealed tomb beneath the keep. He was foolish, desperate and thought Kamigoroshi would grant him the power to kill the monsters invading his home.

He was right, but not in the way he expected. Back then, I was admittedly a little insane from the long, long centuries of imprisonment in the sword. Kage Saburo was the first human I’d possessed, but instead of plotting and planning my next move, that first taste of freedom in centuries had caused something inside me to snap, and I’d gone on a killing spree that the Kage still talk about today in hushed voices. In the madness of the final battle, Kage Saburo was slain not long before Genno was struck down and killed by the clan champions, so many believed that the Master of Demons had struck a bargain with the First Oni, and that we were working together to overthrow the empire.

That wasn’t entirely true. I’d never made a deal with Genno; it just happened that our goals were similar. I would happily kill humans alongside the blood mage’s army, as long as he understood I was not his to command and never would be. Hakaimono bowed to no mortal, not even the self-proclaimed Master of Demons.

The first time Genno marched on the empire, I had been a frenzied, raging creature of vengeance, existing only to kill as many as I could before being sent back into the sword. Now, I’d had a bit of time