Chapter 19 — The Shin House And The Royal House (3)

There was once a woman.

She was loved by every thing in the world.
All sought her, and they hung on her every gesture, her every word, as on the thread of their own lives.
As a sorceress who commanded powerful shikigami, she made her name in the Capital, and so caught the eye of more than a few nobles besides.
The heir of the Aeshin Royal House, the Crown Prince himself, desired her, yet she answered to no one, as though walking some solitary road of her own.

Then, as if by fate, she met a single promising young man and fell in love, and the way water finds its course, she married him.

Every man who had wanted her despaired that he had never been given so much as a chance.
And among them, only those of keen instinct dimly suspected the truth.
That perhaps she had decided, from the very first, the one she would be joined to.
That letting so many crave her and chase her shadow had been, perhaps, nothing more than a way to raise her own worth, so that she might marry the heir of a renowned house without trouble.

But there was something even the young man who married her could not yet know.
Whether their meeting, their marriage, even the bearing of a crippled child and the labor of preparing that child to overcome his future, had all of it been her fate.
And if even her falling in love with him was nothing more than what fate had ordained, could what they had truly be called love?

Even now, grown into a grand sorcerer who divined the futures of men and the fortunes of the nation, he still had not found the answer.

“Brother.”
“…Yes.”
“…”

At Yun Jinseong’s voice, Shin Yuhyeon raised his head.
Behind them, Shin Hweein followed in silence.
The three of them alone had been led to another empty room within Manchunjeon, and a barrier had just been set so that nothing from outside could enter.

“I don’t know if Brother is aware, but the situation is pressing. There’s no telling when the kudan’s prophecy might come to pass.”
“It will not be at once.”

Shin Yuhyeon swept his hand this way and that as he spoke, arranging the various objects in the room into orderly positions of his choosing.

“They cannot let the prophecy be fulfilled before they have lured us out.”
“What do you mean… surely you are not saying the kudan itself is the trap?”
“A monster that vomits forth a prophecy which must be stopped. To stop the prophecy, one must find a monster of the opposite sex. If they can secure the opposite-sex counterpart in advance, what surer way is there to draw the enemy out?”
“…Truly, it is sickening.”

Shin Hweein had been turning the same matter over on his own.
He had not especially wanted to be the first to speak, but he let out a breath and asked.

“If they have the kudan in their keeping, would it not work to lure out only the creature, on its own?”
“They will be ready for that. The artificial creation of a kudan is impossible in the first place without the most thorough preparation. To have made two pairs of them and yet not be ready for the summoning, that cannot be.”
“So you mean to leap straight into a trap that is in plain sight?”
“I will not take you with me. You have already done enough.”
“…”

If this were truly a stratagem to lure out the sorcerers of Aeshin, then no place could possibly belong to Shin Hweein, who had only just been recognized at Rank-Two.
But as Shin Yuhyeon himself had said, the artificial creation of a kudan was a feat of immense burden.
How many sacrificial offerings Honwondorae must have prepared to bear the karmic debt of doing such a thing not once but twice was beyond imagining.

Even an organization of considerable size would have its load-bearing pillars buckling by this point. And yet, if Father is right and they are also prepared against the summoning of the kudan…

The party held the ashes of the kudan that had died earlier.
It was offering enough, more than enough, to serve as the medium for summoning the kudan that paired with it.
For that summoning to fail even when carried out by Shin Yuhyeon himself, the strongest sorcerer of Aeshin, how many offerings would the enemy have to assemble, how many sorcerers would they have to bring to bear?

They would have to pour in the whole of the organization’s strength, sorcerers and sorcerous implements alike.
They would have to match time and place to a hair’s breadth, leaving no room for the slightest error.
If theirs were an organization that could do all that without strain, they would never have needed so roundabout a course; they would simply have stood against Aeshin face to face and brought it down.

“To Old Aengseol…”

But perhaps, Shin Hweein thought.
Perhaps he had already opened one great breach in their otherwise meticulous plan.

“…To Old Aengseol. What if we put the question to her?”
“So eager are you for the credit, then?”
“What lies before us is not my glory, but the fortune of the nation.”

Shin Yuhyeon and Shin Hweein looked at each other once more.
It was Shin Yuhyeon who looked away first.

“…Very well, let us do so. Only, with an ordinary offering you will get no answer from Old Aengseol. The burden is too severe.”
“Fortunately, I have just the thing.”

Shin Hweein opened his subspace storage once again and drew out a single new bottle.
It was the bottle of wine he had received from Yun Jinseong some time before, the one from which he had poured two cups at his mother’s grave, one for himself and one for his mother, and left the rest behind.
In itself it was already a rare and precious spiritual elixir; but now, holding within it both Shin Yuhyeon’s qi and his mother’s qi, it gave off a holy aura scarcely to be found anywhere in the mortal world.

“That is…”
“Oh-ho.”

Shin Yuhyeon recognized the bottle at a glance, its provenance and its particulars all at once, and was left at a loss for words.
Yun Jinseong, who had noticed that the bottle was rather different now from when he had handed it over through his nephew, gave a deliberately drawn-out exclamation.

“Brother’s been outdone, looks like.”
“Hers… where, no. There is no need to ask.”
“Will a single cup be too little?”
“No. It will be enough.”

Shin Yuhyeon answered Shin Hweein’s words at once, then turned to him as though there were something he wished to say, hesitated, and in the end looked away.

“You might as well have simply asked plainly.”
“…Call her now. There will be no interference.”

Ignoring Yun Jinseong’s remark, Shin Yuhyeon spoke.
Striving not to let a self-satisfied smile cross his lips, Shin Hweein held out a cup into the empty air and pulled the stopper from the bottle.

“Aengseol,”

— Here I am!

Before he could even finish calling the yokai’s true name, a girl in a brightly patterned dress sprang up out of the floor as if from nowhere and stretched out a hand for the cup he held.

“You are quick.”

— Heehee. I wanted a cup poured by my master’s own hand, so I came in haste.

“This is preposterous. I have seen many sorcerers of the Shin House, but never have I seen Old Aengseol follow anyone so well. Brother?”
“She is not a yokai whose true form is easily seen to begin with.”

Old Aengseol ignored the adults muttering behind her and kept her beaming face fixed on Shin Hweein.
Shin Hweein was no less dumbfounded himself, but he obligingly tilted the bottle and poured.
Before the cup was even half full, Old Aengseol shook her head with a look of regret and stopped him.

“Will it not be too little?”

— It is too much. Only, the matter is also great, so this once I have taken more than my share.

“With only this?”

— Has my master forgotten his own gift? Remember it. For the rite that is to come, as well.

“…Ah, yes. Of course.”

The sacrifice-rite.
He had been mindful of it during the gut, yet had he forgotten it again so soon?
When he had taken the gift from Do Yuna, he had thought it far too excessive a blessing for that woman to hold; and indeed, it was a power that reached into every domain, far beyond anything he had imagined.

“Drink.”

— Wine poured by a young and handsome master tastes all the finer for it!

“That little one talks like an old man.”
“She is an old one.”

Old Aengseol drained the cup in a single draught, then let out a kah, a sound truly like an old man’s.

— In all my life I have never drunk wine so delicious! Since my master has a prior engagement, I shall not ask him to drink with me. But next time, you must not leave me to drink alone.

“My thanks. I will keep it in mind.”

— Now then, I must pay my due.

With a smirk, Old Aengseol spoke in a clear, bright voice.

— Just as my master suspects, the curse of recognition has been undone, and Honwondorae’s company has taken a grievous blow. The one who laid that sorcery was the head of them! Their head, struck down by a curse he never dreamed would rebound, lies now on the brink of death; the lot of them are too busy keeping the beast that bears the female kudan from running wild to do anything else. The reason I can speak of these things so freely now is that he, too, lies fallen.

“You truly drove off their head by turning his own curse back upon him!”

Yun Jinseong cried out in astonishment.
Shin Yuhyeon, for his part, regarded Old Aengseol in silence.

— But the creature is a monster by nature; in another full day he will recover his senses and rise. Within that day, you must summon the kudan. The thing that bears the kudan is a yokai stronger than an ordinary Gyuki, so you must take care over both the place and the time of summoning.

“So that is how it stands.”

A male yokai, a Gyuki, had borne a male kudan.
What, then, was the yokai that would bear a female kudan?
Thanks to the clue Old Aengseol had given, Shin Hweein could already guess at the creature’s identity.

Only then did Shin Yuhyeon at last cut in.

“Wait. Say only what must be said. If you put too much into words…”

— Hoho. My master’s measure is already beyond what you imagine. With the offering I have just received, I can answer everything my master would ask. Be at ease.

With a slight smirk, Old Aengseol brushed aside Shin Yuhyeon’s interruption and went on in good cheer.

— They had other means at their disposal, but the reason they chose, of all yokai, the kudan and Gyuki of Wae was to turn Aeshin’s eyes toward Wae. Aeshin is already wary of Wae after the recent affair. If yokai of Wae cause trouble again at a time like this, then no matter the truth of the matter, Aeshin will be drawn into a contest of nerves with Wae and squander its precious manpower on it.

“That much is far too easily foreseen.”

— But that is precisely the trap. For the Onmyo Bureau of Wae, however much it may dislike Aeshin, regards Aeshin in the end as a partner it can cooperate with. Still, it is not the kind to sit quietly when provoked; and while the two waste each other’s strength on posturing, Honwondorae will be free to work its schemes on Aeshin and on Wae alike with ease.

“So the body of the organization lies on the opposite side entirely. …And say Hwa.”

— Now I shall set out, in order, what is actually to be done.

As though tracing the trail of the bottle that had already returned to Shin Hweein’s breast, Old Aengseol stared fixedly at his bosom, smacked her lips, and went on.

— First, as you originally planned, have Shin Yuhyeon divine the kudan’s location. But in this, the one who offers the sacrifice must be my master. Doing so will save a great portion of the kudan’s ashes; you already know why.

“The unique sorcery that increases the value of an offering…”
“Ha. So she has even that talent.”

Watching Old Aengseol reel off her words after only half a cup of wine, and listening to what came next, Shin Yuhyeon spoke aloud what he had already surmised.
Yun Jinseong, hearing it, could not contain his admiration; and Shin Hweein, unable to bring himself to admit he had taken the gift from another, kept his silence.

— The sorcery will of course succeed. There will be no resistance to begin with; but in turn, the truth will become known to the enemy. That is the very thing they have been waiting for, so they will believe themselves to have succeeded and will begin preparing to crush the foe they have drawn into their trap.

“And it is then that…”

— Yes. When the enemy has turned its strength elsewhere, you will use the ashes you have saved and carry out the ritual to summon the kudan, or, more exactly, the kudan’s mother-body. It must be done within one full day from now, and from beginning to end the rite must be performed by my master. Otherwise the offering will be insufficient and the rite will fail.

Shin Hweein and Shin Yuhyeon both fell silent at the same time, sunk in thought.
Ritual sorcery, for the most part, was difficult, and its mastery demanded years.
The most representative example of all was the mudang’s gut.
He had seen Ham Seoyeon perform a gut with his own eyes; he knew it was no light matter.

— Once the summoning is done, the rest is settled by striking down the mother-body. The female kudan is set to be born together with the death of its mother. As for the kudan itself, even I cannot know every detail, so the precise handling I leave to my master.

“To me?”

— To my master, and to no other.

Speaking thus, with emphasis, Old Aengseol smiled brightly and turned her face about, taking in everyone at once.

— I have told you all I had to tell. Is there anything lacking?

“You are unsettlingly kind. Not at all the Old Aengseol I have heard tell of.”
“Old Aengseol.”

With Yun Jinseong clicking his tongue beside him, Shin Yuhyeon called Old Aengseol once more.

“You will know the after-effects of such a ritual. A young sorcerer cannot easily bear them.”

— Then an old sorcerer can help him.

“…”

— What you wished to know was the proper time for the divining, was it not? The answer is now. If it is done now, no harm will come of it. Not to you, nor to anyone else.

Shin Yuhyeon and Old Aengseol glared at one another for a moment.
No one could tell what lay behind it, but at last Old Aengseol gave a snort and turned her face aside.

— Master, I shall be on my way. Next time we shall drink together. That is a promise. For the dish to go with it, cake will do.

“I will bear it in mind.”

Old Aengseol, who to the very end had wanted to drink with Shin Hweein, vanished only after she had heard his answer.
Only then did Shin Yuhyeon open his mouth and call to Shin Hweein.
When he came obediently forward, Shin Yuhyeon held out to him the bottle that held the ashes.

“Watch closely the sorcerous rite that is about to be performed, and remember it. Its basic frame is no different from the summoning rite we shall perform tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“This will be the second sorcery you learn from me.”

A faint smile crossed Shin Yuhyeon’s lips.
Shin Hweein had a great many things he wished to say to him, and a great many things he wished to ask, but for now he chose to smile along with him.
For the first time in his life, his father’s heart was visible to him.
There was only transparent affection, and regret.