Chapter 8 — The Sorcerer Lost In A Dream (6)

The instant Old Aengseol dropped her bombshell, Shin Hweein turned a quiet glare on the little creature.
Whether what she’d said was actually the truth, and whether, even granting that it was, she’d had any real need to blurt it out here and now of all moments…

One thing he could say for certain: she was not his shikigami.
Had she been, she could never have disclosed sensitive personal matters without his leave in the first place.

Still, her words made it plain enough that some kind of connection ran between Old Aengseol and himself.
A connection different in shape from the shikigami contracts the Shin House handed down nowadays, and yet a firm one.
Loose as its constraints were, it drew scarcely any spiritual power from him in return; instead, by every sign, Old Aengseol was being fed energy from somewhere else entirely.

‘Perhaps this is the very thread that binds a House to its contracted shikigami. I may have been handed a chance to learn the substance of the House’s age-old pacts.’

Disowned or not, Shin Hweein still carried the firm conviction that he was a son of the Shin House, and how could he not long to feel his way along that thread?
But gifted as he was, he understood just as well how dangerous it would be to touch it with the abilities he had now.
Grope along it, trace it to its source, and he would surely come to know much, and gain much.
And after that, perhaps, he would die, his body bursting apart for having taken on what it could not bear.
He was already weighed down with bombs enough inside him; there was no reason to court a new danger for nothing.

— As ever, Master is wise.

Though he hadn’t spoken a word, Old Aengseol said as much, as if she’d read straight into his heart.
Shin Hweein lifted the index finger of one hand to the mouth of his mask, a sign that she was to read no deeper.
Old Aengseol gave a kik-kik of laughter and followed his lead, raising her own index finger before her lips.

“My thanks. As for the matter of our contract, then, let us take it up again when the proper time comes.”

— If Master truly desires it, I will tell you whenever you wish.

“Just so. And from here on, when I have summoned you, answer my questions and mine alone. That much can be done, yes?”

— If Master desires it, that too, of course. Should any other try to summon me, I may even refuse them.

“That is…”

A declaration of exclusivity, in all but name.
The very moment Old Aengseol’s talk of master, master took on the weight of something real.

Shin Hweein knit his brows and sank into thought, and Ham Seoyeon sidled up to him, jabbed him in the ribs, and whispered in his ear.

“Hey, can’t you at least let Myeongin go on summoning her? Honestly, it was Old Aengseol being around that kept her off my back as much as it did.”
“If you have something to say, just say it plainly.”

His expression soured, but he understood the feeling behind it too, this needless clinging and murmuring at his side.
Earlier she had, in her own way, used her spirit-power to deliver what she’d meant for a private aside; for Old Aengseol to have caught it on the spot and spilled a piece of important business, that must have mortified her.
So this time, in place of the spirit-power, she’d gone so far as to throw up a barrier around the two of them before whispering, though no doubt Old Aengseol could hear her through it all the same.
And of course the fox-of-flame burning with rage at his back, Geum Moa, could hear her just as well.

Shin Hweein waved a hand a couple of times to signal that he didn’t much mind, then turned back to Old Aengseol.

“I am not so greedy a man. If there is any who desires your help, answer them.”

— Mm. Then I shall do as you say. But from now on, others will have to pour in more spiritual power and richer offerings to call upon me.

“Hm?”

Old Aengseol, some ttungcaron or other in her mouth, munched away as she spun once in place.
The colorful festival-clothes she wore fluttered and ballooned around her like a butterfly’s wings.

— Until now I have been a remarkably good shikigami, answering every manner of question obediently no matter who pestered me with them. The worms beneath the rank of men, of course, who lob deliberately filthy questions at me, excepted.

“From what Myeongin says, you don’t really answer her and you’re greedy as anything about offerings, though…”

Old Aengseol ignored Ham Seoyeon’s muttering.
In truth, just as she’d been kind to Shin Hweein from the very first, she showed no special inclination to take Ham Seoyeon’s side now.

— That was possible only because I have a separate source that supplies me with spiritual power. Just as Master surmised.

“Is that so.”

— But I have gained a true master now, and I can no longer squander that source as I please. The same goes for my time, and so I had shut out every attempt to summon me altogether. Yet if Master commands me to answer them even when he himself has no need of me, I am of a mind to obey that command gladly.

“…I am persuaded.”

Old Aengseol gave a mischievous smile and tipped the rest of the ttungcaron into her mouth in a single bite.

— But since I cannot take as small a price as before, from now on they must offer more spiritual power and more precious tribute to draw the same level of answer from me. That benefits me, and benefits Master too.

“Whether to call this glad tidings or ill, I cannot decide…”

— Of course, high-ranking sorcerers will be able to summon me with little burden. But those shameless collateral wretches who used to call me up willy-nilly over trifles, from now on they shall have a far harder choice to make!

“…”

Shin Hweein quietly studied Old Aengseol, who had finished her explanation with a shrug, then glanced at the priest and the nun staring at him with dazed expressions.
Had Yun Jubaek been here, he’d have seen through her identity at a glance, but happily, those two were clerics, ignorant of the sorcerer-world.
Even now they were only watching him with eyes that said, Seems his standing was higher than we thought?

…Of course, he didn’t imagine he could keep it hidden forever.
The moment he had wielded Old Aengseol in plain sight of a priest, it was clear the matter would come out one day.

“I should be glad if all you have learned in this place today went no further. You can promise me that, yes?”
“Of course. Are we not, the Brother and I, of one mind?”
“Now, just what is going on between you two…”

The priest and the nun nodded together, then turned their eyes on Ham Seoyeon.
Theirs was a look that seemed to ask whether they oughtn’t to extract a vow from her as well, and Ham Seoyeon answered before they could.

“Ah, I already know what he is. We’re friends. If you must know, we’re—”

The words had been tumbling out, but Ham Seoyeon suddenly looked a little embarrassed and stopped.
Plain as day, she’d been about to say they’d known each other for ever so long, then gone bashful and let it drop.

Shin Hweein saw Father Lucas about to say something more, disbelief all over his face, and shook his head, cutting in first.

“We have strayed rather too far afield. Aengseol, I should like to come to the heart of the matter now.”

— I await Master’s question.

Whoo. After a short breath, Shin Hweein put his question.

“Who is the prime mover that brought Do Yumi to this state? Is it the same one that even now keeps turning out narcolepsy patients across the capital, one after another?”

— A difficult question. They have laid sorcery in many layers to keep it from being traced.

“Sorcery.”

At that answer, not only Shin Hweein but Ham Seoyeon’s face as well went hard.
Astonishingly, that single word was already answer enough.

Yokai don’t bother with such things.
They are beings who make their names known so as to be feared, and so gain their power.
A yokai that wished to lie hidden would never, from the outset, stir up so vast a commotion across the whole of the capital.
Which meant the prime mover behind this incident…
Was a person.

“You are telling me there is a sorcerer wielding a mongma.”

— Master is clever, as ever.

“…One of Aeshin, then.”
“That we don’t know yet!”

Ham Seoyeon, her face slightly tense, pressed him on the point.
For her, as a member of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses that held the nation’s power in their hands, the prospect of domestic powers up to suspicious doings was harder to stomach than foreigners storming in to run riot.

“It might be people who came in from abroad to sow confusion in the capital! For one thing, we don’t really have yokai famous as mongma in our country either… Couldn’t it be the Jap bastards?”
“Hwa. Use the proper name, not a slur. If we abuse them first, with no cause, then we have handed them, too, the right to abuse us.”
“You’re surprisingly enlightened about this kind of thing. My grandfather just says dweh bastards, Jap bastards, no matter what.”
“In any case, it will not be Hwa. Though, granted, the bad blood stored up between us goes back a fair way…”

Hwa beyond the sea was not the only one. Jin, lying to the north of Aeshin, was no country Aeshin could simply trade smiles and laughter with either.
That much stood to reason: sitting close to one another, the two had carried on much cultural exchange since ancient times; sitting close, they had found no end of occasions to quarrel; and above all, to this day each still insisted that its own land was the seat-of-origin of sorcery, contesting the point in the international community without yielding an inch.
That said, Shin Hweein took the view that, since Aeshin’s sorcery had taken much from Jin and much from Hwa, and had likewise given much that shaped both in turn, it was more to the point to argue who was strongest now than to bother quarreling over origins.

In sheer sorcerer-headcount, Jin led overwhelmingly, on the strength of its population.
In the variety and pace of development of its sorcery, Hwa stood out, on the strength of the many yokai it had to fight.
But the single strongest sorcerer of any age, raised within the long tradition and history of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, was always to be found in Aeshin. That much was the international community’s objective assessment.

“Therefore, Aeshin is strongest.”
“Ai, you’re no different from me, then. Let’s just curse them in peace, however our hearts move us. Repeat after me. Jap bastard.”
“Be quiet.”

Shoving away Ham Seoyeon, who closed the gap again the instant he gave her any softness, Shin Hweein went on.

“It is Jin and Hwa who are more conscious than anyone of the international community’s assessment. So were they to mount an operation inside Aeshin, they would choose to reveal their identity rather than conceal it. They would want it known, officially, that they had screwed Aeshin over.”

Granted, it was also possible they truly meant to set off an incident in Aeshin in secret, to breed chaos.
But if so, all the more reason: they wouldn’t bury their identity in total mystery either.
If Jin were the culprit, they would have set things up to throw suspicion onto Hwa; if Hwa were the culprit, they’d have set things up to throw it onto Jin.

“Ah-ah-ah, now you put it that way, it does sound right…”
“And there is one decisive reason besides. Only one based in Aeshin could, in so short a time, ready sorcery enough to block off Old Aengseol’s ability.”
“…Ah.”

Easy as it might be to underestimate Old Aengseol, since any sorcerer of the Shin House could summon her, she was in truth a very rare yokai who dealt in information.
What was more, depending on the offerings and the spiritual power fed in, she could even shatter most defensive sorcery, so once you’d succeeded in opening Old Aengseol’s mouth, there was no question of failing to draw the information out.

“Then, really…”
“Answer me only so far as it lays no burden on you, Aengseol. …Did this matter first arise in Zone 0?”

— I thank Master for that question! It did not!

So, to begin with, the Royal House and the court officials were ruled out.
And as Shin Hweein and Ham Seoyeon let out a sigh of relief side by side, Old Aengseol added with a cute laugh:

— Nor in Zone 2, nor in Zone 3! But if I tell you exactly where, I shall be caught by the rebound-curse (sorcery that turns a hex back upon the caster), so I cannot say!

“That is as good as an answer already. Are you all right…?”

— I am with my true master now, so I can dodge that much. Puhahaha.

Old Aengseol planted both hands on her hips and laughed gallantly.
It was an expression so bright one would have laughed along without meaning to, but the present situation left no room for such ease.

Not Zone 0, and not Zone 2 nor Zone 3. That left one answer alone: Zone 1.
And what stood for Zone 1 was…

“The Three Capital Houses.”
“It can’t be. These people have no need to do such a thing, surely it can’t be…”
“Of course I wish for it to be otherwise as well.”

Unfortunately, the odds that the Three Capital Houses were not the prime mover were vanishingly slim.
For to begin with, no one short of them could turn a rebound-curse, could turn a sorcery back, on Old Aengseol.

That said, having learned his lesson from earlier matters, Shin Hweein resolved not to act rashly.
Judgment could well wait until he had done everything else he could do otherwise.
If the Three Capital Houses were indeed mixed up in this, he already had ties with the Yun House and the Shin House, and he could simply look into it through them.
And should they shield it as their own family’s fault, the shielding would show itself soon enough.

“Uuugh, what do I do if it turns out to be someone I know… Take responsibility, you idiot. My stomach hurts.”
“Responsibility is for the other party, the one who did this deed, to bear.”

After shooting Ham Seoyeon, who was wincing and rubbing her own belly, a glare that said how pitiful, Shin Hweein opened his mouth once more and put a question to Old Aengseol.

“One last question. You will already know what I intend to do. If, going on as I am, I obtain what I want, will I then be able to resolve this matter directly, by my own hand?”

— Of course; if you obtain only that, a matter such as this is easier than eating a slice of cake. But it will be hard to obtain. It will be painful. Master is already pitiful to me.

“…Whoo.”

The gaze of Geum Moa, glaring fiercely at him from behind.
Leaving the questioning gazes of the rest of the party behind him, Taeju Doryeong still held in his arms among them, he tossed one parting word to Old Aengseol.

“From now on, in place of cake, you would do well to use the expression cold porridge.”

That night, Shin Hweein pried off Geum Moa, who had been trying desperately to stop him, and fell asleep in a state utterly defenseless to sorcery.
And when he opened his eyes within the dream, he was falling endlessly downward through a black space in which there was nothing at all.