soul.”
A tingle of foreboding stirred inside, yet Gonji pressed on in unquenchable curiosity. “Does it have a name?”
Simon replied nothing, but he smiled stiffly and with a tense smugness that seemed so filled with emotion that Gonji dared ask no more of it.
“Your pain is evident,” he said, “and I honor your noble effort at stoicism. But why do you so resist fellowship? Good friends can so often serve as a rampart against anguish.”
“Ramparts shatter under assault, and friends die too easily.”
“Ah, so desu—the inescapable fact of death hounds you. So sorry, but it is an immature attitude to allow the certainty of death to affect the way one lives his life. That is an incongruous fear among many Christians that has always puzzled me. Still, I myself have often lamented at how soon friends have betrayed my trust by dying on me—” He chuckled humorlessly. “But that’s never stopped me from seeking after kindred spirits to share my strange karma.”
Simon sighed and leaned back on the stool, then tossed the scroll on the oaken table. “The parasite feels as I feel, knows what I know. Why should I grant it the comfort of a friend?”
Gonji thought for a space and then shook his head, for deep in his heart he could not bring himself to understand. He stood and took up his daisho, sashing the swords so that their hilts bristled from his waist.
He moved toward the cave exit but paused and turned to Simon. “Is it with you now?”
“Of course.”
“What does it say?”
A bleak shadow crossed the man’s visage, moving, threatening. “That I should tear out your heathen heart.” A flash of white teeth. A slow-spreading grin.
Gonji’s brow creased. The spell of the man’s presence was dashed. “You punish yourself to punish the Beast, Herr Grejkill. It’s probably just as well, then, that you choose to live as a hermit. If friends are such a burden, imagine your difficulty if you had chosen to take a wife.”
By Simon’s sudden tensing, the glow that colored his cheeks, Gonji knew the words had borne even more of a malicious sting than he had intended. Discretion.... He eased out into the rain to clear the air and permit Simon private space.
The tranquility of the rain-dappled forest sank into Gonji as he sulked under a dripping eave of granite. Suspicious jays arked in their tree lofts, and starlings gathered to drink from a misty pool, fluttering away when the spray suddenly grew to a hard drizzle. Gonji moved out from under the eave and turned his face up to the rain.
To be alone among companions is the most dreadful sort of loneliness. Hai, that is very so....
He sensed Simon’s presence behind him.
“Don’t ever expect to understand my suffering,” came the words in a tone that pleaded for the very understanding they denied. Gonji turned slowly. The pearl-gray luster in Simon’s eyes surprised him, an uncommon sentimentality softening their predatory sheen.
“I’ve learned to confide in no one,” Simon went on. “All who have known the truth of my condition in the past would see me dead....” He waxed wistful. “Sometimes I’ve gone to the city out of hopeless desperation, by night. Sat beneath a window and listened to a mother sing soothingly to a child frightened of the dark. I imagine I am that child. And then I—I—I say too much.” He broke off in a strangled voice, turning away.
Gonji swallowed. “I’m afraid I spoke too soon before, gomen nasai—I am sorry. You see...I, too, have been called a monster in these territories. So I do understand, at least in part.”
Simon spoke without looking at him. “How can an infidel come to love a Christian people?”
Gonji sputtered. “It doesn’t matter how. The fact is that I do care for many here, and I wish to help them. There are other things, as well...debts to repay...failed duties to atone for. And a final duty still to be done.”
He looked to his sash, grasped the hilt of his wakizashi, the short sword used in seppuku, the ritual suicide. Then he broached the forbidden subject again:
“Simon...why not the Beast, Simon? Why can’t the Beast be used after the full moon in the defense of the city? Is it true that you then control its—”
“Nein! I’ve told you, insolent fool! None may see what it does to me. I’ll not suffer that pain for any man—”
“Damn you!” Gonji fumed. “Don’t you think all other men know pain? Don’t you think Vedun has known suffering? With more to suffer?”
Simon glared at him. “You’ve heard women describe the anguish of childbirth? Imagine, then, the pain of childbirth racking one’s entire body, yet without the joy of bringing forth life. My pain gives birthing to death.”
Gonji sighed with annoyance. “Where in hell will you go to be so far from warm-blooded creatures, in the full of the moon?”
Simon pointed to the encircling Carpathians. “Up there. There are places I know, far above the snow line, which should seal me off from the world of men. And the animals will know their peril and abandon their shelters for safer ones on that night. Then I can bear my cross alone...in silence.”
Gonji stared at him, his brain itching, and he thought: All that this man’s God allowed to befall him was no worse than what he had done to himself.
Simon strode back inside the cave, and Gonji followed.
“When we’re back in the city we could have Garth fashion shackles for you in some well-fortified—”
“Out—of—the—question!” Simon roared, his back to him.
The samurai blinked at the finality of the outburst. His expression sagged with defeat. Shuffling over to his now unstrung bow, he stuffed the string into an inner kimono pocket, where it would remain dry.
“We’d best strike out for Vedun. There is no more time to lose,” Gonji decided. “At a good pace we can make it by nightfall, if our legs don’t give out first.”
“You go ahead,” Simon said bleakly. “I’ll join you in three days when my...time has passed.”
“So sorry,” Gonji countered firmly, “but if you are to help, then your presence is required at once.” He saw Simon about to object and raised his voice in intensity and pitch. “There is no time to lose in planning immediate actions. How will you know our circumstances or tactical decisions if you’re not with us to help form them? Three days from now, we could all be dead.”
Gonji stretched out with his will, defiant of their tenuous relationship, of the man’s tight tether. It would be his way or no way.
Simon ran a white-knuckled hand through his coarse hair, matting it down. After a moment’s indecision he retrieved his sword, which he strapped about his waist, and a threadbare traveling cloak. On second thought he went to a chest in a back corner of the cave and plucked out a short, hooded mantelet. This he tossed at Gonji. The samurai bowed gratefully and smiled, a smile that Simon didn’t return. They donned the cloaks and stepped through the brief entrance tunnel and out into the soft rain, Gonji carrying his unstrung longbow and quiver.
