The Undying Soul (4)

—— Esria Kingdom Calendar, Year 482, Late Summer

Sunbeams filtered into a grove where slender trees stood in dense ranks.

When their delicate yet supple trunks swayed in the wind, deep-green leaves rustled. Their sharp shapes rode the breeze and played a gentle music.

The serene air pricked the skin. The fresh bamboo leaves softened the strong light and wove patches of shade upon the ground. In that otherworldly grove—like a hidden foreign sanctuary—flagstones had been laid, guiding those who visited.

“R-really… is Ornis in a place like this?”

“He is.”

Held in one of Kardia’s arms, Noi clung tight to his head. From the floating isle where they lived, the two of them had changed from boat to carriage and spent ten hours getting here.

—Kardia, a mage who had lived a hundred years, and his former master turned provisional fiancée, Noi, had come down to the surface to collect Kardia’s disciple, Ornis.

When Kardia’s body had been damaged by a magic surge running wild, Ornis had crossed from the floating isle to the surface to seek help. But Kardia recovered completely before Ornis returned and, using his self-invented magical device, the Water-Illusion Post, ordered Ornis to stay put.

Among mages, hierarchy ran vertical.

Ordered to remain, Ornis had quietly kept waiting beyond this grove for the two of them.

“What a grove… it’s so beautiful it’s as if it’s been landscaped…”

“It has been landscaped.”

“Th—the grove has!?”

“Not just the grove—this entire mountain.”

Noi stared, slack-jawed, at Kardia. She was so astonished she forgot to blink.

Born and raised in the royal capital, Noi came from a distinguished mage family.

Her background and the house she’d been raised in were respectable enough—but this was another dimension entirely.

“…I-isn’t Ornis going to shrink into himself in a place like this…?”

“Ah, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

Because Kardia said it like nothing at all, Noi let out a deflated, “Huh?”

“Ornis is probably stretching his wings for the first time in a while, and while he does, there’s one more errand I wanted to take care of—ah, there it is. Look.”

With the arm not holding Noi, Kardia pointed. His loose outer robe stirred in the wind threading through the grove.

Noi looked where he pointed and caught her breath.

Deep in the trees stood a mansion like a grand palace.

A large arch rose at the front, its delicate ornamentation set out in perfect symmetry. Nature’s grove and the fine design together created a strikingly sacred vista.

Overwhelmed by the solemn façade, Noi leaned back even farther.

To welcome Kardia and Noi, easily more than twenty people bowed their heads toward them.

Between the two rows of people, an old woman slowly walked forward, tapping her cane—tok, tok.

Dignity suffused the old woman; a stately aura cloaked her. Her white hair—speaking of long years—was gathered up with a beautiful ornament, and a red rouge colored her lips. The garments she wore were refined yet splendid, exuding even a sense of nobility.

Each step she planted was graceful even with the cane.

When she reached Kardia, she slowly bent at the waist.

“Welcome, and thank you for returning. Sensei—”

Noi was captivated by the woman’s smile on her deeply lined face. Her gentle voice soothed, and the compassion in her eyes inspired those around her to a deep respect.

Kardia set Noi down, then crouched to one knee himself and took the bent old woman’s hand.

“Kukuvaya. Thank you for coming to meet us. You’ve grown even more beautiful, haven’t you?”

The woman called Kukuvaya smiled softly and accepted a kiss upon those wrinkled fingertips from Kardia.

Inside, the mansion was even more astonishing than it had seemed from without.

Between the towers connected by covered walkways were courtyards like the grove they had just passed through. Noi had never seen a building of this design; its overwhelming majesty made her shrink.

Feeling as if she would sully the place whether she stood or sat, Noi erased her presence in the corner of a walkway.

“Well now. You came too?”

“Here.”

Ornis, walking along the corridor, tossed her a plum. Given food—and seeing a familiar face—Noi felt relief from the bottom of her heart.

“O-Ornis!”

“Please don’t make that creepy noise. Why are you just standing around out here? If it’s Sensei, didn’t he try to bring you inside too?”

Kardia was, at the moment, invited by the old woman from before—Kukuvaya.

Paying respects to the master of the house was a guest’s duty. Even so, the special atmosphere—the bond the two had given off—made Noi hang back.

“Even I have enough sense to be considerate.”

They didn’t seem to visit all that often, so surely there were things to catch up on. Mumbling with the plum held up to hide her mouth, Noi earned a showy widening of the eyes from Ornis.

“Heh! That’s news to me.”

Noi sat down beside Ornis where he leaned on the walkway rail, then nudged him with her shoulder. And just like that, she sidled closer and pressed up against him.

In all her life so far, Noi had seldom felt lonely.

During her apprenticeship, her master—her grandfather—and her senior disciple Fengalow had always been at her side.

The other senior disciples, aside from Fengalow, had envied her, but it only made the days lively and fun.

Even after she began serving at the palace, Noi—hailed as a prodigy—was often placed at the center of things and always surrounded by mages.

When she withdrew to the deep mountains, it was by her own will; far from loneliness, she reveled in being alone.

—In short, despite there being so many people around like this, this was the first time she had felt such a hollow uncertainty about where she belonged.

Seeing Noi nibble her plum so dejectedly, Ornis opened his mouth—and shut it again. Even so, he didn’t peel her clinging body away.

“Well, it’s his ex’s house. Hard to walk right in when you’re the current fiancée.”

“H-his ex…?”

She’d never heard the term, but it was a word whose meaning she could imagine.

What’s that supposed to mean? Noi gaped; Ornis smiled sweetly.

“My mistake. His former disciple.”

“T-there’s got to be a limit to how wrong you can be…??”

Noi stared at Ornis’s carelessness in disbelief, then tilted her head.

“Hm? Disciple?”

“Yeah. Lady Kukuvaya, the mistress of this house, is the first disciple Sensei ever took—his number-one disciple.”

Startled, Noi looked toward the room where Kardia and Kukuvaya were. They were within sight, but she’d kept her distance from the room, and the door had been shut, so she had no idea what the two of them were talking about inside.

Even so, she could assert they were having a special conversation.

For Noi, her number-one disciple was Kardia.

She had cherished Kardia as much as she cherished the feelings she had for her own master.

Those two must, without doubt, be in that room now with the same kind of feelings.

“This is the home where Lady Kukuvaya and her disciples—and their families—live. Those disciples are all of a good age now. Then they take on their own disciples, and those families live here too—and as that continues, you get a big household like this.”

“Ah… so this is a Weavers’ Enclave.”

A Weavers’ Enclave was a home where a mage of a major school lived while training disciples.

Needless to say, as a school grew large, its number of disciples increased; if disciples started families, they needed places to live all the more.

Whether a master could provide such facilities was one of the factors disciples considered when choosing whom to serve.

Noi’s grandfather had kept a Weavers’ Enclave as well—though it hadn’t been nearly so magnificent a structure.

“You again… how do you even know a term like that?”

“I r-read it in a book! I borrowed one from Kardia the other day, remember?”

“Ah, that makes sense.”

“I never imagined the estate would be this grand, so I didn’t realize.”

“Grand, sure. Lady Kukuvaya, for how she looks now, used to be royalty. I’ve heard that when she struck out on her own, the king at the time gave her this entire mountain as a parting gift.”

Noi’s eyes went round at the sheer scale implied by “parting gift.” That was why, earlier, Kardia had said “the entire mountain.”

(So she was royalty…)

That noble air that hadn’t faded even with age must have been something she’d been born with. Noi stared fixedly at the room where she was.

“—Most days, that lady can hardly see at all, and she spends the day almost entirely bedridden. Walking alone is out of the question.”

While staring at the same room, Ornis murmured it. Noi looked up at him in surprise.

The Kukuvaya Noi had seen earlier had certainly shown signs of a failing body, but her bearing had been imposing.

“You wouldn’t notice. She only becomes like that on the days Sensei is coming. She gets up straight on her own from the morning, even puts on rouge, and waits. …Maybe you can’t understand it without mana, but a master is that important a person.”

Noi squeezed the plum tightly.

(…I understand. I really do.)

Even without mana, Noi knew the feeling of treasuring one’s master.

And yet—for some reason—Noi felt as if she shared feelings beyond that with Kukuvaya, and it made her restless.

The plum she gripped hard bore the imprints of Noi’s fingers.