Chapter 24 — The Sorcerer And The Fox (2)

By the time they passed Sannomine, more than ten foxes trailed along behind them.

It was here that Shin Hweein realized something he had overlooked.

“I had the sacrifice-rite, didn’t I.”

He’d assumed it would be enough to ingratiate himself with the god Inari’s messengers while mending the vital essence Honwondorae’s mischief had frayed.
As it turned out, the inari-zushi he offered them had its effect amplified, and the fox-spirits had grown a touch too lively.

‘If I’d taken this talent from anyone but Do Yuna, it would weigh on my conscience…’

A wry smile crossed his face, but Shin Hweein never once stopped setting out inari-zushi at every fox-statue that came into view.

And so, by the time they passed Ninomine, even the edges of the world around them had blurred, until, beyond the bare fact that they were climbing a mountain, it had grown hard to say where they were headed at all.

But then, at some point, a boy and a girl appeared as though out of nowhere and led the party on, like guides showing them the road they were meant to take.
They wore the fox-faced masks one might buy near Fushimi Inari Taisha, and traditional dress so old there was no telling what era it belonged to.

“Young master, is the going hard on you?”
“Is it all right for you to show yourself again now.”

Geum Moa, who had kept out of sight the whole climb, reappeared at that.
She, too, wore a passable fox-faced mask. When on earth had she gotten her hands on it.

“If I caught the god’s notice, it would only make things troublesome.”
“Yes, I’d guessed it was something of the sort.”

The ones Shin Hweein had been making offerings to were foxes, on the one hand, and at the same time they were the god Inari.
Passing through Sannomine and Ninomine, he had taken care that the object of his veneration never strayed; he paid no mind to any other god and fixed himself solely on Inari.
And so, at last, the presences of all the other miscellaneous gods faded away, and he was able to step into the precinct that Inari, and Inari alone, presided over.

“Curious. It isn’t an Other Realm. It’s clearly a space overlapping with the present world, yet it feels as though only that god’s influence has been stretched over it…”

“Ah-ah.”

Watching Eulha turn his curiosity-brimming gaze in every direction, Shin Hweein reached out, caught him by the scruff, and forced his head back to face forward.

“Don’t go pushing your foot too deep into another god’s precinct. It’s dangerous.”
“All right, all right, let go, master. The fox is scary.”

When Shin Hweein looked to the right, Geum Moa, behind her fox-mask, sharply turned her face away.
Even in a female form, her jealous streak was running right on schedule.

— The vital essence here is so pure and clean. I can hardly believe that pack of rubbish carried out their schemes in a place like this.

“Was it likely they’d come at it head-on. Just as they meddled with Aeshin through several intermediaries, here too they’ll have approached with the same care. Even so, all they managed was to pick a single torii and open a Specter Realm Gate at it, rather than twist the whole mountain out of true.”

As Flame-tail had said, the mountain path, turned now into Inari’s precinct, was filled with pure, dense spiritual power.
A little while ago the mingled presences of several gods had made it hard even to breathe; the difference now was as between heaven and earth.
What was more, perhaps thanks to the offerings, the vital essence of this place came to Shin Hweein as exceedingly familiar.
Were he to linger and practice austerities here, no doubt he’d attain achievements beyond all reason.

“It would be well if I had that kind of leisure. But stay too long here, and I’d lose the way back to the world of men.”

— It might do for us to live together.

It was just then that a woman’s voice, its pitch hard to make out, came down to them.

— If it’s you, I’d be glad of it. To pour your heart into the affairs of men brings only sorrow and suffering; why, then, return to that windswept, dust-blown world? Tarry here, take your ease in my company, forget your cares. Even were you to return a hundred years late, or a thousand, the world would be that much the more at peace for it.

To speak of a hundred years, of a thousand, as nothing more than a brief moment’s rest was proof enough that the speaker was unmistakably a being of divine standing.
With the world outside in such disarray, was she suggesting they sit here together until the very handle of his axe rotted away, playing baduk?

Before the dumbfounded Shin Hweein could so much as reply, Geum Moa cut in, her voice gone cold.

“Out of the question.”

— My, my. Well, now. An old friend met after so long says such cold-hearted things, and won’t even show me her face.

The voice that had appeared so suddenly and seized hold of the party was coming from somewhere above them.
Past a great torii of gray stone, on the stone steps that climbed to a small shrine, a woman in elegant traditional dress had appeared as if from nowhere and settled herself partway up.
Her face, like the faces of those who had guided them this far, and like Geum Moa’s now, was hidden behind a fox-mask.

“Ahh. I see.”

Shin Hweein reflexively raised his head to look the torii over once more.
On the upper crossbeam, in the central section where the name of the god enshrined at the small shrine should have been written, smears like red blood had been daubed in irregular patches, obscuring it.
That the master’s name had been erased meant the one now showing herself before them was not the master of the shrine.
And of course, the very fact that she had brazenly appeared in a space no god save Inari could enter made it perfectly clear who she was.

“Are you the god Inari.”

— Indeed. And it is none other than you who sought me so desperately, is it not. I’d expected a tearful embrace at the very least; people are such cold-hearted creatures.

“You already know why I have come.”

He had meant to be courteous, but not so easygoing as this.
At the sight of Inari making light of the matter, Shin Hweein came straight to the point.

“I mean to drive out the Honwondorae crew stirring up trouble in Gyeongdo. I came already knowing they have opened a Specter Realm Gate at one of the torii hereabouts, and are causing your influence to wane. For Aeshin’s sake, and for yours too, they must be cleared out of this place as soon as may be.”

— Is that so. And yet, I would not know about that.

As to who, exactly, was the cold-hearted one here: Inari merely answered so, even to Shin Hweein’s earnest voice, and idly swung her two legs in the empty air.

Speechless at the reply, Shin Hweein pressed her.

“You would not know…? How can you say you do not know. The master of Honwondorae, who could hardly dare lay a finger on the other gods of Hwa-guk, set his sights on you precisely because you’d been driven down by those very gods, your divine power grown weak. He sought to use the connection between you and Aeshin to weaken the two of you at once.”

— Is that how it was? It seems not so to me. I have not been weakened on their account.

“But your present state is —”

It was almost as though she were determined to prove she truly was a god, playing the innocent at his words, idling the question away.
Looked at that way, the mask suited to her face just now would be a cat’s, not a fox’s.
That Inari was in a weakened state was plain to any onlooker. Her presence was small, ill-suited to the bearing of a great god long worshipped by many.

‘Hm? Don’t tell me.’

But instead of pressing the case, Shin Hweein, struck by a sudden intuition, fell silent.
What she had just denied was not that she had been weakened. She had not been refuting her present condition.
She had denied that the cause was Honwondorae: that she had not been weakened because of them.
In which case, was this what she was trying to say?

“The ones who weighed you down were only the people who did not serve you.”

— Khook.

It seemed he had hit on the answer.
Lifting her mask just enough to bare her mouth, Inari laughed dimly.

— On the day I left the land of the gods, the people of that land promised they would not forget me, and would offer up rites in my honor. But before long all the gods were driven from the present world, and those in that land who had remembered me, every last one, vanished too.

Naturally, the one facing them now was not Inari’s true body either.
No matter how much a precinct was dedicated to a given god, it was impossible for that god to descend whole.
What a human could just barely call forth, by paying an immeasurably vast price, was a god’s surrogate.
For any god, no matter how low their divine standing, to descend in their true body would require the offering of at least a single city; gods of high standing would have to abandon the very thought of descending into the present world.
In this age, at least.
And the ones who had made it so were none other than the forefathers of Aeshin.

“So. You will not help me because you bear a grudge against Aeshin. And truly, Honwondorae has done you no harm at all.”

— I do not hate Aeshin Korea as it is now. Only, they are not welcome to me. They committed deeds that deserve to earn the hatred of every god, and even forgot to offer me rites. The ones who came across the sea and settled here served me long, true enough, but in time they were absorbed into Hwa-guk, and ever since I have only clung to Uka-no-mitama and held on to the last thread of my life by her.

To think that, even granting one was a fellow countrywoman, he was being resented for it rather than winning her goodwill.
The reply was so heavy with feeling that Shin Hweein wore a wry smile and was just beginning to wonder whether he ought to give up on her aid, when from beside him Geum Moa opened her mouth.

“Still haven’t picked up on it, young master? What it means that Inari was not harmed by Honwondorae. And the reason Honwondorae was nevertheless able to send a kudan across the sea all the way to Aeshin.”

— …

“…Don’t tell me.”

Shin Hweein took off his mask and fixed his gaze on Inari.
She, perhaps not yet wholly lost to shame, flushed at the cheeks and turned her face aside. Shin Hweein, however, did not give way.

“Don’t tell me you cooperated with them? Of your own accord?”

— …

“Did you not just now say they were not welcome to you, yet that you did not hate them?”

— Well, that, that is…

After a moment with her mouth shut, Inari, unable to bear Shin Hweein’s gaze, at last parted her lips and answered in a mumbling voice.

— A bit of mischief, you might call it…

“Even when a prophecy that might destroy Aeshin had been let loose?”

— But you cleared it up without trouble in the end, and you have, after all, come to me yourself, have you not. The truth is, from the very first moment I met them I anticipated this. This very moment of meeting you again —

“You know what happens to a god who lets a lie pass her lips, surely?”

When Geum Moa cut in with a cold voice, Inari shut her mouth once more, then in a small, timid voice rounded on her.

— Up until we were on the mountain, you were the one hiding her presence, and the moment I opened my divine domain, you cravenly —

“If she’d known I was coming, no matter who her opponent was, even my master, she’d have run for it.”

So that was it.
Geum Moa had not been hiding herself from the other gods of Fushimi Inari Taisha. She had been hiding from Inari herself, who turned out to be the secret culprit behind this whole affair.

Shin Hweein was so exasperated he wanted to raise his voice in a shout, but he knew that doing so now would help nothing at all.
What was the use of calling a god to account, of seizing a hollow avatar and pouring curses over it? He might feel better afterward, and that was all.
For the moment, he had to focus on what needed doing.

“In that case, the reason you have shown yourself before me is… ah, yes. It was for the offerings, was it.”

— …Mm. It seemed to me that consorting with you would let me recover more strength than cooperating with them. The offerings did not seem to carry all that much power in them, and yet, wonder of wonders, they restored a great deal of my vitality.

That she had at least dropped the foolish dissembling and confessed honestly was fortunate in itself.

Beside him, Geum Moa watched him with a look that seemed to ask whether he really wasn’t going to grind the god down a little more.
But Shin Hweein only shook his head, stepped forward, and put his question to her:

“I want this confirmed by the god Inari directly. Is your bargain with Honwondorae ongoing? Or can it be undone?”

— A god has her dignity; I do not let them hold me by the throat like some slave! It was only the once!

“Which is to say, you sold Aeshin to them, without even securing yourself a steady payment in return.”

— It was… it was not selling, exactly…

Inari shrank into herself once more.
Shin Hweein let out a sigh and made his demand of her.

“Before we have a constructive conversation, there’s something I must have you promise me first.”

— I have, of course, no intention of having anything more to do with them! Of course, they spun me some plausible-sounding lines, that they’d arrange for gods and humans to live again in a single world, and so on, but from of old, anyone whose words run too smooth has never turned out to be a decent sort!

“The name of their head? Their form, the power they wield?”

— That, I cannot bring back to mind. To tell the truth, even the organization’s name, ‘Honwondorae,’ I had been forgetting all this time, and only just now remembered.

He had been expecting as much.
He, Shin Hweein, had broken the curse of perception Honwondorae laid down, and as compensation had taken the curse of perception from the head himself, but even so he could not be certain he had drawn the whole of it out. The man was that formidable.

…Perhaps, in truth, the fellow stood very nearly on a level with a divine being.

“Very well. Then let us go on with the talk. What I want is simple. To drive Honwondorae out, and to see to it they can never again set foot in Gyeongdo. Can you do that?”

— Yes, yes, but I would have you come yourself, at least once a month, to offer me rites!

“Are you trying to die.”

— Th, three months!

From that moment, at last, a ‘constructive conversation’ could be had between Shin Hweein and the god Inari.
Of course, every time Inari let slip a shameless remark, Geum Moa cut in from the side and made her shrink by reminding her of her original sin, but thanks to that, Shin Hweein was able to secure, in exchange for one visit a year and a fitting offering, her wholehearted support and aid.

“In that case, since we know the exact place now, let us move at once. They’ll already know the gate has been discovered; before even the last traces of evidence are wiped away, I must pick up at least one strand of the thread.”

— Aw, just a moment, you.

Inari, who had half-lifted her mask and was stuffing inari-zushi into her cheeks until they were fit to burst, beckoned him over with a wave of her hand.
When Shin Hweein drew near, she asked, carefully:

— If ever you meet the King of Aeshin, I’d be much obliged if you would put one question to him. Ask him: was not what Honwondorae pursues, originally, also what you yourselves pursued? Why did you change your hearts and drive us out from the world of men?

“The Aeshin royal house… pursued honwon?”

— No, no. What I mean is, they pursued harmony. Was that not also the will of the Divine House¹?

Shaking her head from side to side, Inari added a further word, and at it Shin Hweein went stiff where he stood.
When she looked at him with a puzzled expression, he at last barely managed to open his mouth.

“The royal house of Aeshin… from the very moment of its founding, has been the House of Yi.”

— Eh, isn’t the ruler of that land, generation after generation, the Divine House?

“Ah. Ah.”

Geum Moa let out a great, theatrical sigh and said:

“This one. What with being forgotten by mortals, her sealing-ban had slackened as well, hadn’t it.”