Sergeant Orozco, Buey, and Luigi Leone located Gonji in a secluded dell the next morning. The samurai glistened with a fine film of sweat. Stripped to his breechcloth, he drove himself through a long series of kata. They held their place, allowing him to finish his practice at scintillating ken-jutsu draws.

He paused to greet them, then continued with flexibility exercises and ju-jutsu gyrations as he spoke with his comrades.

"Were ready to leave when you are," Orozco apprised him. "This G.o.dling thinks he can put us on our way. I get the feeling its more out of good riddance than any wish to help."

Gonji nodded curtly. "We upset his contemplative paradise."

"Soon Ill be strong enough to take you on again, eh, Kyooshi?" Buey said with an impish grin, flexing his arms, and Gonji smiled to hear the Ox use Captain Salgueros pet word.

"Hai, you best be good and strong. Leone-san, I see his magic grove couldnt restore your lost eye."

Luigis hand went to his eye patch. "Now, you know-you must be a witch, like they say. Shem talked to me about a place where they sometimes can-replace a-"

Gonjis eyes narrowed. He saw Leone turn uncharacteristically reflective. Shems spell had seemed to captivate him, as well.

"And youre going?"

Leone snapped back to reality. "Me? h.e.l.l, no. I aim to see what youre about. I lost this eye in good faith, you know. This is what it cost me to prove my mettle. Brigands back off when they see this. Id just have to start fighting em again, if I-"

"It would improve your fencing to have two eyes again," Gonji pressed, testing his resolve.

"Ah, horses.h.i.t. It was never any good anyway. Just give me a good pistol and plenty of powder and shot."

The samurai looked them over, bowing to them at last. "Domo arigato, my friends. Your company will be much appreciated. Though I do understand...it will be difficult for any of us to live our lives in quite the same way again."

Simons shadow disturbed the s.p.a.ce between the lengthening shades of the trees as night whispered in the distant slumbering hills.

"Youre looking well," Gonji said when hed recovered from the abrupt jolting out of his meditation. The lycanthrope had begun to move with his accustomed stealth, and as usual hed withdrawn again from the others company.

"Lets leave this place," he said. "I dont like this drowsiness it induces."

"I know what you mean," Gonji replied. "It weakens ones guard. Too much of this, and-Has this 'Prober also offered you a refuge to run to? An escape from the battles of life?"

Simon sighed. "Something-he said something about a lifeless land I might roam on the Night of Chains."

"Mmm." Gonji looked toward the distant arch where most of the others reclined, their voices lilting in the twilight. They heard Bueys uproarious laughter. And Orozcos.

"It was thoughtful of him," Simon added. "It seems I do offend his fastidious sensibilities."

"Is he also a heathen?" Gonji probed, igniting an old fuse.

"In his fashion. Not like some I know. When were back in France, Im going to haul your infidel a.s.s off to chapel one day. Just to see whether you really will burst into flames."

"On the Night of Chains?" Gonji shot back.

"Thats not a fit subject for humor." Simon turned away.

"h.e.l.l, it is time to leave this place. Everyones getting as touchy as you. And what is this business about France youve said, more than once? I hate France, you know that."

"I said I needed help with something. Remember? You promised yours."

Gonji watched him lope off into the dell, dimly recalling a promise made on the road.

"Your witch was wrong, you see," Shem declared, strolling beside Gonji with hands behind his back. "Att.i.tudes and policies, not evil armies, are what most commonly bleed through the gateways to enslave the beings who inhabit the spheres. Much too difficult to combat by sword. The powers that vie for control are far too complex to explain to you. I must admit I do not understand it very well myself."

"Thats a rare admission for you," Gonji observed with a trace of sarcasm. "Im glad to hear it. Actually, I believe the sword is a valid weapon with which to begin the fight against universal evil. And one honorably begins where he perceives a single wrong. Or he does nothing, as you do, and the wrong grows into a larger one, feeding on everything around it."

Shem seemed indignant, but he pondered this for a s.p.a.ce, and Gonji went on with a dawning sense of irony. "Actually, Im my own worst argument for what Im saying. I seem to have gained nothing here. Stasis. Ive placed the dead back in their graves. In fact, Ive lost. Ive laid good companions beside them."

"That depends on what you count as gain," Shem said in a comforting voice. "You have given me much. Rarely can a man from the common spheres enhance a Probers existence. You have influenced me to see certain things...differently. Listen to me-I have been speaking with the others. They hold you in the highest esteem. They have helped me understand your aims. And there are certain predicted events, expected in this Age..." Shem drifted off, then quickly regained focus. "Perhaps it does matter when one being reaches in a hand to pluck a single living truth from a drowning pool of deceit. I cannot help you. You must fight the noisy, dirty battles of your own world. The dark powers in Akryllon may have seen your future, and it may be that that future crosses purposes with their own.

"But out of your insistent arguments, I have framed this decision: I can attempt to influence the governing of the pa.s.sages through the gateways, the use of the keys. That much I will try. I shall devise a modern codex for the spheres and present it to the other Probers. You have...quite possibly succeeded in making me a renegade like yourself. Albeit, on a larger scale."

Shem smiled with more sincerity than Gonji had seen before. "And youve given me something else."

"What else?" Gonjis brow creased.

"The company of Valentina."

"Do you think it would be wonderful if all people were born with wings?" Valentina asked in serene humor as she laid the wrapped infant wygyll on the gra.s.s beneath the arch.

"Hai," Gonji said absently as he stared at the grave of Pablo Cardenas. "This foul business has made orphans of more than one. I must see that Cardenas family is cared for. One more duty. Karma." He snapped out of his morose mindset and turned back to the woman. "Will you make this creature your own?"

"Dios mio, no!" She chuckled in surprise. "Do I look that maternal to you? I couldnt see to the care of my own." There was a trace of bitterness that lent her voice a murmuring timbre. "Ill find a place for it."

"Hai, there must be other wygylls about. Your new friend here can probably help." He at once regretted this expression of unwonted jealousy.

She was looking at him, studying him closely. "You turned out different than I expected."

"And you," he replied.

"You still have your enchanting eyes, though," she said. "Ill never forget how you first looked at me through that dungeon grill. Thinking G.o.d knows what infidel thoughts."

Gonji raised an eyebrow in mock petulance. "Ah, so desu ka? You gave me a lot to think about, as I recall."

She laughed breathily. "And you still have an arrogance that rivals Shems."

Gonjis fists clenched imperceptibly to hear his name again. "Hes not your type."

"Maybe not," she allowed. "Maybe my type needs changing, who knows? You had your chance. Now, instead of a warrior, Ill motivate a thinker." She saw a glimmer of pique in Gonjis eyes and appended: "A different sort of thinker."

They shared an uneasy silence.

"Tomorrow I begin the-cleansing," she spoke softly. "It takes three days at the healing arch. Shem says-I understand the days are long on that sphere. You could dally until...then. But I dont suppose-"

"No. The others are chafing, and I must confess that so am I. Theres a lot to do. We dont even know whether those ships made it to Genoa. And-" He went on, not hearing his own words as he looked at her with deep yearning.

She knew, as well as he, that his expressed itch to leave was merely the thinnest veneer of rationale. The truth was that he had rejected her before, and his sense of honor would not permit him to avail himself of her love now that fate had seen fit to alter things in its agonizing way.

"Its odd to think of how things might have worked out," Valentina said. "We might have been going to the healing arch together-to spend those long days."

Karma.

EPILOGUE.

Shem had delivered them into the hands of the enemy.

That was what they all thought as they cursed and drew cold steel in rasping concert on a windswept Genoese beach under a wintry sky.

The Golden Fleece Knights surrounded them, crossbows leveled for the simple volley that would execute Gonjis company at a single command, though the wiles of the undead and the dangers of sea and desert and disrupted s.p.a.ce could not achieve that end.

And then the burly priest was lumbering forward to embrace the shocked Gonji.

"k.u.ma-san? Sir Bear?" he wondered aloud. "Brother Jan?"

"Father Jan to you, now, you young heathen!" And the priest was embracing him and shaking him by the shoulders, embarra.s.sing him now even as such familiar public contact had nonplussed a young samurai many years and half a world ago.

The knights relaxed as the band put up their weapons, for it had been their startling appearance, as if out of nothingness, that had caused the hostile reaction. But, of course, theyd merely been taken off guard.

Sebastio began to explain how Father de la Cenza and Archbishop Texeira had taken control of the Church in Toledo since the Grand Inquisitor had gone mad. How Balaerik was still at large, known to be an enemy of the Church; how hed been linked to certain ghastly crimes, including the murders of ten lancers. The knights wished only to hear from Gonjis own lips that he had not helped Balaerik engineer any of his crimes. That he was not in fact in league with the evil donado.

And then Sebastio was speaking of Dai Nihon. Of a great battle fought on Sekigahara Plain. Of his fathers continued good health, though hed fought on the side that had lost. Tokugawa had come to power. And many things had changed in the Land of the G.o.ds since Gonjis departure.

And of Reiko. His once beloved Reiko.

"She will not speak your name, but her eyes are eloquent enough when it is mentioned," k.u.ma-san noted.

The priest was babbling about Roma. Orozco, Buey, and Leone were reminding him of Austria. And Simon Sardonis was withdrawing again in hostility, seeming out of place. Curling into his self-pitying sh.e.l.l, feeling betrayed, saying his farewells, for the moon would be full in two nights.

Gonji listened. And thought. Until he could listen and think no more.

He bowed to them and begged their leave for the night. Their questions still hanging over the surging tide, the others watched mutely as he strode away along the beach, hand on sword hilt, to be alone for a time beneath the undemanding sky.

BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY T. C. RYPEL.

The Deathwind Trilogy.

Gonji: Red Blade from the East.

Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel.

Gonji: Deathwind of Vedun.

Other Gonji Adventures.

Gonji: Fortress of Lost Worlds.