Now Master Suzaku's voice can be heard in the Infirmary.

The fugitive has nowhere to run but the sunken doorway.

This may be the end, Orito shivers, this may be the end . . . this may be the end . . .

The Scriptorium is walled from floor to ceiling with shelves of scrolls and manuscripts. On the other side of the sunken door, someone trips and mutters a curse. Fear of capture pushes Orito into the large chamber before she can be certain that it is unoccupied. A pair of writing-tables is illuminated by a double-headed lantern, and a small fire licks a kettle hanging over the brazier. The side-aisles provide hiding-places, but hiding-places but hiding-places, she thinks, are also traps are also traps. Orito walks along the aisle towards the other door, which, she guesses, leads into Master Genmu's Quarters, and enters the globe of lamplight. She is afraid to leave the empty room but afraid to stay and afraid to go back. In her indecision, she glances down at a half-finished manuscript on one of the tables: with the exceptions of the wall-hangings in the House of Sisters, these are the first written characters the scholar's daughter has seen since her abduction, and despite the danger, her hungry eye is drawn. Instead of a sutra or sermon, she finds a half-composed letter, written not in the ornate calligraphy of an educated monk but a more feminine hand. The first column she reads obliges her to read the second, and the third . . .

Dear Mother, The maples are aflame with autumn colours and the harvest moon floats like a lantern, just as the words of The Moonlit Castle The Moonlit Castle describe. How long ago seems the Rainy Season, when the Lord Abbot's servant delivered your letter. It lies in front of me on my husband's table. Yes, Koyama Shingo accepted me as his wife on the auspicious Thirtieth Day of the Seventh Month at Shimogamo Shrine, and we are living as newly-weds in the two back rooms of the White Crane describe. How long ago seems the Rainy Season, when the Lord Abbot's servant delivered your letter. It lies in front of me on my husband's table. Yes, Koyama Shingo accepted me as his wife on the auspicious Thirtieth Day of the Seventh Month at Shimogamo Shrine, and we are living as newly-weds in the two back rooms of the White Crane obi obi-sash workshop on Imadegawa Street. After the wedding ceremony a banquet was held at a famous Teahouse, paid for jointly by the Uedas and Koyamas. Some of my friends' husbands turn into spiteful goblins after capturing their bride, but Shingo continues to treat me with kindness. Married life is not a boating party, of course - just as you wrote in your letter three years ago, a dutiful wife must never sleep before her husband or rise after him, and I never have enough hours in the day! Until the White Crane is well established, we economise by making do with just one maid, as my husband brought only two apprentices from his father's workshop. I am happy to write, however, that we have secured the patronage of two families connected with the Imperial Court. One is a lesser branch of the Konoe-- The words stop but Orito's head is spinning. Are the New Year Letters Are the New Year Letters, she wonders, all written by the monks? all written by the monks? But this makes no sense. Tens of fictional children would have to be maintained until their mothers' Descents, and then the subterfuge would be discovered. Why go to so much trouble? But this makes no sense. Tens of fictional children would have to be maintained until their mothers' Descents, and then the subterfuge would be discovered. Why go to so much trouble? Because Because, twin lamps dot Fat Rat's knowing eyes, the children cannot write New Year Letters from the World Below for the reason that they never the children cannot write New Year Letters from the World Below for the reason that they never reach reach the World Below the World Below. The Scriptorium's shadows are watching her react to the implications. Steam rises from the kettle's spout. Fat Rat is waiting. 'No,' she tells it. 'No.' There is no need for infanticide. If the Gifts were unwanted by the Order, Master Suzaku would issue herbs to trigger early miscarriages If the Gifts were unwanted by the Order, Master Suzaku would issue herbs to trigger early miscarriages. Mockingly, Fat Rat asks her to explain the letter on the table in front of them. Orito seizes on the first plausible answer: Sister Hatsune's daughter died from disease or an accident Sister Hatsune's daughter died from disease or an accident. To save the Sister the pain of bereavement, the Order must have a policy of continuing the New Year Letters.

Fat Rat twitches, turns and disappears.

The door by which she entered is opening. A man says, 'After you, Master . . .'

Orito rushes for the other door: as in a dream, it is both near and far.

'Strange,' Master Chimei's voice follows, 'how one composes best at night . . .'

Orito slides the door open three or four hand-widths.

'. . . but I'm glad of your company at this inhospitable hour, dear youth.'

She is through, and slides shut the door just as Master Chimei strides into the lamplight. Behind Orito, the passageway to Master Genmu's Quarters is short, cold and unlit. 'A story must move,' Master Chimei opines, 'and misfortune is motion. Contentment is inertia. Hence, into the story of Sister Hatsune's Miss Noriko, we shall sow the seeds of a modest calamity. The love-birds must suffer. Either from without, from theft, fire, sickness - or, better yet, from within, from a weakness of character. Young Shingo may grow weary of his wife's devotion, or Noriko may grow so jealous of the new maid that Shingo does does start tupping the girl. Tricks of the trade, you see? Storytellers are not priests who commune with an ethereal realm, but artisans, like dumpling-makers, if somewhat slower. To work, then, dear youth, until the lamp drinks itself dry . . .' start tupping the girl. Tricks of the trade, you see? Storytellers are not priests who commune with an ethereal realm, but artisans, like dumpling-makers, if somewhat slower. To work, then, dear youth, until the lamp drinks itself dry . . .'

Orito slides her feet along the corridor to Master Genmu's Quarters, staying close to the wall where, she hopes, the wood is less likely to squeak. She reaches a panelled door. She holds her breath, listens, and hears nothing. She opens it a tiny crack . . .

The space is empty and unlit: blocks of darkness in each wall indicate doors.

In the middle of the floor lies what might be discarded sacking.

She enters, and approaches the sacks, hoping they can be roped together.

She thrusts a hand into the mound and finds a man's warm foot.

Her heart stops. The foot recoils. A limb turns. The blankets shift.

Master Genmu mumbles, 'Stay here, Maboroshi, or I'll . . .' the threat disintegrates.

Orito crouches, not daring to breathe, much less run away . . .

The quilted hills that are Acolyte Maboroshi shift; a snore snags in his throat.

Minutes pass before Orito is even half sure the two men are asleep.

She counts ten slow breaths before carrying on to the door ahead.

Its sliding rumble sounds, to her ears, loud as an earthquake . . .

The Goddess, lit by a large votive candle and carved in a fine-flecked silver wood, watches the intruder from her plinth in the centre of the small, luxurious altar room. The Goddess smiles. Do not meet her eyes Do not meet her eyes, an instinct warns Orito, or she shall know you or she shall know you. Black robes with blood-maroon silken cords hang along one wall; the other walls are lined with paper, as in the richer Dutchmen's houses, and the mats smell resinous and new. To the right and left of the door on the far wall, large ideograms are written in thick ink on the papered walls. The calligraphic style is clear enough, but when Orito peers at them by the light of the candle the meanings elude her. Familiar components are arranged in unknown combinations.

After replacing the candle, she opens the door on to the Northern Courtyard.

The Goddess, whose paint is peeling, watches the surprised intruder from the centre of the mean altar room. Orito is unsure how the Shrine's outer walls can accommodate it. Perhaps there is no Northern Courtyard. She looks behind her, at the Goddess's spine and neck. The Goddess ahead is lit by a vigilant candle. She has aged since the first room, and there is no smile on her lips. But don't meet her eyes But don't meet her eyes, insists the same instinct as before. There is a lingering odour of straw, of animals and people. The boarded walls and floors evoke a farmhouse of middling prosperity. Another one hundred and eight ideograms are written on the far wall, this time on twelve mildewed scrolls hanging at either side of the door. Once again, when Orito pauses for a moment to read the characters, they retreat into troubling unintelligibility. Who cares? Who cares? she berates herself. she berates herself. Go! Go!

She opens the door on to what must be, surely, the Northern Courtyard . . .

The Goddess in the centre of the third altar room is half rotted away: she is unrecognisable from her incarnation in the Altar Room in the House of Sisters. Her face might be a tertiary syphilitic's, far beyond the salvation of mercury medicine. One of her arms lies on the floor where it fell, and by the glow of the tallow candle Orito sees a cockroach twitching on the rim of a hole in the statue's skull. The walls are bamboo and clay, the floor is straw, and the air is sweet with dung: the room would pass for a peasant's hovel. Orito speculates that the rooms have been hollowed from a spar of Bare Peak; or even hewn out of a series of caves from which the Shrine grew as the ages passed. Better yet Better yet, it occurs to Orito, it may be an escape tunnel dating from the Shrine's military past it may be an escape tunnel dating from the Shrine's military past. The far wall is caked with something dark - animal blood mixed with mud, perhaps - on which the unreadable characters are daubed in whitewash. Orito raises the poorly made latch, praying that her guess proves accurate . . .

The cold and darkness are from a time before people and fire.

The tunnel is as high as a man and as wide as outstretched arms.

Orito returns for the candle from the last room: it has about an hour's life.

She enters the tunnel, proceeding step by cautious step.

Bare Peak is above you, taunts Fear, pressing down, pressing down . . . pressing down, pressing down . . .

Her shoes click-clack click-clack on rock; her breath is hissed shivers; all else is silence. on rock; her breath is hissed shivers; all else is silence.

The candle's grimy glow is better than nothing, but not by much.

She stands still for a moment: the flame is motionless. No draught yet No draught yet.

The roof stays at the height of a man and the width of outstretched arms.

Orito walks on. After thirty or forty steps, the tunnel begins to bend upwards.

She imagines emerging into starlight through a secret crack . . .

. . . and worries that her escape may cost Yayoi her life.

The crime is Enomoto's, her conscience objects, Abbess Izu's, the Goddess's Abbess Izu's, the Goddess's.

'The truth isn't so simple,' her confined echo tells her conscience.

Is the air becoming warmer, Orito wonders, or do I have a fever? or do I have a fever?

The tunnel widens into a domed chamber around a kneeling effigy of the Goddess three or four times larger than life. To Orito's dismay, the tunnel ends here. The Goddess is sculpted from a black stone flecked with bright grains, as if the sculptor chiselled her from a block of night sky. Orito wonders how the effigy was carried in: it is easier to believe that the rock has been here since the Earth was made, and that the tunnel was widened to reach it. The Goddess's back is erect and cloaked in red cloth, but she cups her giantess's hands to form a hollow the size of a cradle. Her covetous eyes gaze at the space. Her predatory mouth opens wide. If the Shrine of Shiranui is a question If the Shrine of Shiranui is a question, the thought thinks Orito as much as Orito thinks the thought, then this place is its answer then this place is its answer. Inscribed on the smoothed circular wall at shoulder height are more unreadable ideograms: one hundred and eight, she is quite sure, one for each of the Buddhist sins. Something draws Orito's fingers towards the Goddess's thigh, and when they touch, she nearly drops the candle: the stone is warm as life. The scholar gropes for an answer: Ducts from hot springs Ducts from hot springs, she reasons, in nearby rocks . . . in nearby rocks . . . Where the Goddess's tongue should be, something glints in the candlelight. Ignoring an irrational fear of the stone teeth severing her arm, she reaches in and finds a squat bottle, nestling snug in a hollow. It is blown from cloudy glass, or it is full of a cloudy liquid. She removes the cork and sniffs: it has no smell. Both as doctor's daughter and Suzaku's patient, Orito knows better than to taste it. Where the Goddess's tongue should be, something glints in the candlelight. Ignoring an irrational fear of the stone teeth severing her arm, she reaches in and finds a squat bottle, nestling snug in a hollow. It is blown from cloudy glass, or it is full of a cloudy liquid. She removes the cork and sniffs: it has no smell. Both as doctor's daughter and Suzaku's patient, Orito knows better than to taste it. But why store it in such a place? But why store it in such a place? She slots the bottle back inside the Goddess's mouth, and asks, 'What She slots the bottle back inside the Goddess's mouth, and asks, 'What are are you? What is done here? To what end?' you? What is done here? To what end?'

The Goddess's stone nostrils cannot flare. Her baleful eyes cannot widen . . .

The candle is extinguished. Blackness swallows the cavern.

Back in the first of the altar rooms, Orito readies herself to pass through Master Genmu's quarters when she notices the silken cords on the black robes and curses her previous stupidity. Ten of the cords, knotted together, form a light, strong rope as long as the outer wall is high: she attaches another five to make certain. Coiling this up, she slides open the door and skirts the edge of Master Genmu's room to a side door. A screened passageway leads to an outer door and the Master's Garden, where a bamboo ladder leans against the ramparts. She climbs up, ties one end of her rope around a sturdy, unobtrusive joist and throws the other from the parapet. Without a backward glance, she takes her last deep breath in captivity and lowers herself to the dry ditch . . .

Not safe yet. Orito scrambles into a lattice of winter boughs.

She keeps the Shrine wall on her right and refuses to think about Yayoi.

Big twins, she thinks, a fortnight late; a pelvis slimmer than Kawasemi's . . . a fortnight late; a pelvis slimmer than Kawasemi's . . .

Rounding the western corner, Orito cuts through a swathe of firs.

One in ten, one in twelve births in the House end with a dead woman.

Through stony ice and needle drifts she finds a sheltered bowl.

With your knowledge and skill, this is no vain boast, it would be one in thirty it would be one in thirty.

The wind's quick sleeves catch on the thorny glassy trees.

'If you turn back,' Orito warns herself, 'you know what the men will do.'

She finds the trail where the slope of tori tori gates begins. Their daylight cinnabar orange is black against the night sky. gates begins. Their daylight cinnabar orange is black against the night sky.

Nobody can ask me to submit to enslavement, not even Yayoi . . .

Then Orito considers the weapon she acquired in the Scriptorium.

To doubt one New Year Letter, she could threaten Genmu, is to doubt them all . . . is to doubt them all . . .

Would the Sisters consent to the terms of the House if they weren't sure their Gifts were alive and well in the World Below?

Morbid vengefulness, she would add, does not make for fruitful pregnancies does not make for fruitful pregnancies.

The path turns a sharp corner. The constellation of the Hunter appears.

No. Orito dismisses the half-thought. I shall never go back I shall never go back.

She concentrates on the steep and icy path. An injury now could ruin her hopes of reaching Otane's cottage by dawn. An eighth of an hour later Orito turns a high corner above the wood-and-vine bridge called Todoroki, and catches her breath. Mekura Gorge plunges down the mountainside, vast as the sky . . .

. . . A bell is ringing at the Shrine. It is not the deep time-bell, but a higher-pitched, insistent bell, rung in the House of Sisters when one of the women goes into labour. Orito imagines Yayoi calling her. She imagines the frantic disbelief prompted by her disappearance, the searches throughout the Precincts, and the discovery of her rope. She imagines Master Genmu being woken: The Newest Sister is gone . . . The Newest Sister is gone . . .

She imagines knotted twin foetuses blocking the neck of Yayoi's womb.

Clattering acolytes may be despatched down the path, the Halfway Gatehouse will be told of her disappearance, and the domain checkpoints at Isahaya and Kashima will be alerted tomorrow, but the Kyoga Mountains are an eternity of forest for fugitives to vanish into. You shall go back You shall go back, Orito thinks, only only if you choose to if you choose to.

She imagines Master Suzaku, helpless, as Yayoi's screams scald the air.

The bell could be a trick, she considers, to lure you back to lure you back.

Far, far below, the Ariake Sea is burnished by the moonlight . . .

What may be a trick tonight will be the truth tomorrow night, or very soon . . .

'The liberty of Aibagawa Orito,' Orito speaks out loud, 'is more important than the life of Yayoi and her twins.' She examines the truth of the statement.

XXII.

Shuzai's Room at his Dojo Hall in Nagasaki

Afternoon of the Thirteenth Day of the First Month 'I set out early,' Shuzai reports. 'At Jizo-sama's statue at the marketplace I lit a three-sen candle to insure against mishap, and I soon had cause to be grateful for the precaution. Trouble found me by Omagori Bridge. A captain in the Shogunal Guard on horseback blocked my path: he'd glimpsed my scabbard under my straw cape, and wanted to check that I had the rank to carry one. "Fortune never favours he who wears another's clothes", so I gave him my true name. Lucky it was I did. He dismounted, removed his own helmet and called me "Sensei": I taught one of his sons when I first arrived in Nagasaki. We talked awhile, and I told him I was bound for Saga, for my old master's seventh-year funeral ceremony. Servants wouldn't be appropriate on such a pilgrimage, I claimed. The captain was embarrassed by this attempt to disguise my poverty, so he agreed, bade me good luck and rode on.'

Four students are practising their best kendo kendo shrieks in the shrieks in the dojo dojo.

Uzaemon feels a cold blossoming in his sore throat.

'From Oyster Bay - a midden of fishermen's hovels, shells and rotting rope - I turned north to Isahaya. Low, hilly land, as you know, and on a dismal First Month afternoon, the road is atrocious. By a crooked bend, four porters appeared from behind a shuttered-up tea-shack - a leerier pack of wild dogs you never saw. Each carried a hefty bludgeon in his scabby hand. They warned me that robbers would pounce upon a luckless, friendless, helpless traveller like myself, and urged me to hire them so I'd arrive at Isahaya unharmed. I drew my sword and assured them I was not as luckless, friendless or helpless as they believed. My gallant saviours melted away, and I reached Isahaya without further excitement. Here I avoided the bigger, more conspicuous inns, and took lodgings in the loft of a talkative tea-roaster's. The only other guest was a pedlar of amulets and charms from holy places as far off as Ezo, so he claimed.'

Uzaemon catches his sneeze in a paper square, which he tosses onto the fire.

Shuzai hangs the kettle low over the flames. 'I tapped my landlord for what he knew about Kyoga Domain. "Eighty square miles of mountain with not one town worthy of the name", save for Kashima. The Lord Abbot takes a cut from the temples there, and harvests rice taxes from the coastal villages, but his real power flows from allies in Edo and Miyako. He feels secure enough to maintain just two divisions of guards: one to keep up appearances when his entourage travels and one barracked in Kashima to quell any local troubles. The amulet pedlar told me how he'd once tried to visit the shrine on Mount Shiranui. He'd spent several hours climbing up a steep ravine called Mekura Gorge, only to be turned back at a gatehouse halfway up. Three big village thugs, he complained, told him that Shiranui Shrine doesn't trade in lucky charms. I put it to the pedlar that it's a rare shrine that turns away paying pilgrims. The pedlar agreed, then told me this story from the reign of Kan'ei, when the harvests failed for three years all across Kyushu. Towns as far off as Hirado, Hakata and Nagasaki suffered starvation and riots. It was this famine, swore the pedlar, that led to rebellion in Shimabara and the humiliation of the Shogun's first army. During the mayhem, a quiet samurai begged Shogun Ieyasu for the honour of leading, and financing, a battalion in the second attempt to crush the rebels. He fought so audaciously that after the last Christian head was hoisted on the last pike, a Shogunal decree obliged the disgraced Nabeshima clan of Hizen to cede the samurai not only a certain obscure shrine on Mount Shiranui but the entire mountainous region. Kyoga Domain was created by that decree, and the quiet samurai's full title became Lord Abbot Kyoga-no-Enomoto-no-kami. The present Lord Abbot must be his . . .' Shuzai calculates on his fingers '. . . his great-great-grandson, give or take a generation.'

He pours tea for Uzaemon, and both men light their pipes.

'The sea-fog was thick the next morning, and after a mile I struck off east, circling Isahaya from the north, around to the Ariake Sea Road. Better to enter Kyoga Domain, I reckoned, without the guards at the gate seeing my face. I walked along half the morning, passing through several villages with my hood down, until I found myself at the noticeboard of the village of Kurozane. Crows were at work unpicking a crucified woman. It stank! Seawards, the fog was dividing itself between weak sky and brown mudflats. Three old mussel-gatherers were resting on a rock. I asked them what any traveller would: how far to Konagai, the next village along? One said four miles, the second said less, the third said further; only the last had ever been, and that was thirty years ago. I made no mention of Otane the herbalist, but asked about the crucified woman, and they told me she'd been beaten most nights for three years by her husband, and had celebrated the New Year by opening his head with a hammer. The Lord Abbot's Magistrate had ordered the Executioner to behead her cleanly, which gave me a chance to ask whether Lord Abbot Enomoto was a fair master. Perhaps they didn't trust a stranger with an alien accent, but they all agreed they'd been born here as rewards for good deeds in previous lives. The Lord of Hizen, one pointed out, stole one farmer's son in eight for military duties and bled his villagers white to keep his family in Edo in luxury. In contrast, the Lord of Kyoga imposed the rice tax only when the harvest was good, ordered a supply of food and oil for the shrine on Mount Shiranui, and required no more than three guards for the Mekura Gorge gate. In return, the Shrine guarantees fertile streams for the rice paddies, a bay teeming with eels and baskets full of seaweed. I wondered how much rice the Shrine ate in a year. Fifty koku koku, they said, or enough for fifty men.'

Fifty men! Uzaemon is dismayed. Uzaemon is dismayed. We need an We need an army army of mercenaries of mercenaries.

'After Kurozane,' Shuzai shows no undue concern, 'the road passes a smart-looking inn, the Harubayashi, as in "spring bamboo". A short distance on, an uphill track turns off the coast road and leads up to the mouth of Mekura Gorge. The trail up the mountain is well maintained, but it took me half the day. The guards at the checkpoint don't expect intruders, that much was clear - one well-placed sentinel would have seen me coming - but . . .' Shuzai wrinkles his mouth to indicate an easy climb. 'The gatehouse seals a narrow mouth of the gorge, but you'd not need ten years of ninja training to climb up around it, which was what I did. Higher up, patches of snow and ice appeared, and pine and cedar muscled out the lowland trees. The track climbs a couple more hours to a high bridge over the river; a stone marker names the place Todoroki. Not long after, there's a long, steep corridor of tori tori gates where I left the path and climbed up through a pine-forest. I came to the lip of an outcrop midway up Bare Peak, and this drawing,' Shuzai removes a square of paper hidden in a folded book, 'is based on the sketches I made on the spot.' gates where I left the path and climbed up through a pine-forest. I came to the lip of an outcrop midway up Bare Peak, and this drawing,' Shuzai removes a square of paper hidden in a folded book, 'is based on the sketches I made on the spot.'

Uzaemon surveys Orito's prison for the first time.

Shuzai empties dead ash from his pipe. 'The Shrine sits in this triangular hollow between Bare Peak above, and those two lesser ridges. My guess is that a castle from the Age of Warring States once sat on the site claimed by Enomoto's ancestor in the amulet pedlar's tale - note these defensive walls and the dry moat. You'd need twenty men and a battering ram to force those gates, too. But don't be disheartened: any wall is only as strong as the men defending it, and a child with a grappling hook would be over in a minute. Nor is there any chance of getting lost once we're inside. Now this this' - Shuzai points his bowstring-calloused forefinger - 'is the House of Sisters.'

Unguardedly, Uzaemon asks, 'Did you see her?'

Shuzai shakes his head. 'I was too far away. The remaining daylight I spent searching for ways down from Bare Peak other than the Mekura Gorge, but there are none: this north-east ridge hides a drop of several hundred feet; and to the north-west, the forest is so dense you'd need four hands and a tail to make any headway. At dusk, I headed back down the gorge and reached the Halfway Gate just as the moon rose. I climbed over a bluff to the lower path, reached the mouth of Mekura Gorge, crossed the rice terraces behind Kurozane, and found a fishing-boat to sleep under on the road to Isahaya. It was damp and cold, but I didn't want witnesses coming to share a fire. I returned to Nagasaki by the following evening, but let three days pass before contacting you to hide the link between my absence and your visit. It is safest to assume that your servant is in Enomoto's pay.'

'Yohei has been my servant since the Ogawa family adopted me.'

'What better spy,' Shuzai shrugs, 'than one above suspicion?'

Uzaemon's cold feels worse by the minute. 'Do you have solid reason to doubt Yohei?'

'None at all, but all daimyo daimyo retain informers in neighbouring domains; and these informers acquire understandings with major families' servants. Your father is one of only four Interpreters of the First Rank on Dejima: the Ogawas are not people of no importance. To spirit away a retain informers in neighbouring domains; and these informers acquire understandings with major families' servants. Your father is one of only four Interpreters of the First Rank on Dejima: the Ogawas are not people of no importance. To spirit away a daimyo daimyo's favourite is to enter a dangerous world, Uzaemon. To survive, you must doubt Yohei, doubt your friends and doubt strangers. Knowing all this, the question is: are you still intent on liberating her?'

'More than ever, but' - Uzaemon looks at the map - 'can it be done?'

'Given careful planning, given money to hire the right men, yes.'

'How much money and how many men?'