Soul of the Sword (Shadow of the Fox #2) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,52
the same mistakes. I’m sure he will discuss everything with you once you get there, Hakaimono-sama.”
That was very unlikely, I mused. Not if Genno was the same angry, arrogant human I’d encountered four hundred years ago. Though he wasn’t always all-powerful. The empire knew Genno as a talented, terrifyingly evil blood mage, and the history scrolls were full of the atrocities he’d committed as the Master of Demons. There was not much information about the life of a certain farmer, the headman of a village somewhere on the edge of Earth Clan territory. At that point in time, the clans were all at war, tearing each other apart and, as was the case in most wars, the commoners suffered in the cross fire. According to one small part of a history scroll, the headman of the Earth Clan village became aware of an invading Hino army and sent word to the local samurai lord, imploring him to send help. But rather than heed Genno’s request, the Earth lord pulled all his warriors out of the area to fortify his own castle, abandoning the village to the Fire Clan. The Hino army swept through the defenseless village and razed it to the ground, slaughtering nearly everyone there, including Genno’s family.
What happened next wasn’t hard to imagine. The enraged headman swore vengeance upon the samurai caste and the empire that had failed him, and turned to blood magic to exact his revenge. Unlike the fickle magic of the kami-touched, Jigoku was always happy to bestow its dark power to willing mortals, in exchange for the practitioner’s soul. The angry, grieving headman of the Tsuchi village became an extremely powerful blood mage, and the rest of his story became legend.
Four hundred years ago, I thought, swatting away a mosquito the size of my hand that kept buzzing around my face. Genno has had plenty of time to scheme and plot revenge while he’s been in Jigoku; I wonder if his plans to conquer the empire are the same, or if he’s going to try something dif—
My musings were interrupted by a scream somewhere overhead, as something big and black dropped from the branches of a hackberry tree. I leaped back, drawing Kamigoroshi in a heartbeat, as the trio of hags scuttled away and whirled around, raising their claws with menacing hisses.
The bloated, disembodied head of a black horse dangled upside down from the tree branch, mouth gaping to show rotten yellow teeth. There was no body; a sinewy coil of muscle at the base of its neck was all that kept it attached to the tree. Bulging white eyes rolled back to stare at us, as the creature opened its jaws and screamed again, the shrill, wailing sound of a dying animal.
“Wretched sagari!” The blue hag straightened, giving the swinging horse head a disgusted look. “A curse on all your kind, for I cannot think of a more useless creature to exist in the mortal realm.”
I rolled my eyes. Sagari were twisted creatures that came from the spirit of a horse whose body was left to rot where it had died. They were grotesque but harmless; the most they could do was drop down from the tree branches and scream, though some humans had been known to die of fright when they saw one. The bigger concern wasn’t the sagari itself, but the hair-raising shriek it produced that could be heard for miles. On a lonely road it was merely an annoyance; here in the Forest of a Thousand Eyes, it had just announced our presence to the entire wood, and every demon, ghost and yokai that lived here.
With a flash of steel, I severed the pathetic beast’s neck. The head hit the ground with a thump and another ear-piercing wail, before seeming to melt into the dirt and disappear.
Silence descended, and in that heartbeat, I felt the entire forest turn its attention inward and find us in the shadows. I grinned back at it. Come on, then. I’ve gone nearly a week without a fight, and Kamigoroshi is thirsty for blood. What ever murderous horde, vengeful yurei or towering monster you have hiding in this forest, send it at me. I’m dying for a little slaughter.
I turned to the hag sisters, who were gazing warily into the trees; they knew something would be coming, too. “Hope you’re ready for a fight,” I told them. “Everything knows where we are now, and things are going to get interesting.”