The old servant gazed thoughtfully at me and Cara for a long moment. He did not look entirely sure of us, and I suddenly saw myself from his point of view; a tall, pale-skinned, fair haired, broad-shouldered man with a strange accent in a land of small, dark-skinned and darker-haired folk. It was no surprise he wondered who we were, and questioned whether his master was right to trust us with his dark tale.
“We’re here to help,” I said reassuringly to the old man, and after a moment longer, he nodded. Quickly, I explained to him our knowledge of the Festering, how it had come to our land, and how Cara and I had driven it away and traveled here, looking for more Festering-taints to fight and cleanse. I didn’t go into detail about the Keeper or the Personas, nor about exactly how we’d got here, but Win seemed satisfied with my explanation.
“Well,” he replied eventually, “if my master trusts you, that’s good enough for me. He was not such a good judge of actions back in the old days as he is now. I will trust his judgement on this.”
“Thank you, Win,” Toshiro said sincerely, and I realized that these two had a relationship of mutual respect that went back way further than master and servant, and even than warrior and squire. Toshiro and Win had fought together on countless battlefields and had probably saved each other’s lives more than once. They were true brothers-in-arms.
Toshiro took up the story. “After I saw the terrible sight of Shogun Morai communing with the Kanosuru demons, Win convinced me that I would be serving a greater purpose by learning about the terror that had come to taint the heart of the land, even as high as the Shogun himself. Win made me realize that committing Seppuku would be a selfish action, since it would save my honor, but might cause me to miss the opportunity to save the land and the Shogunate from even worse doom.”
He glanced fondly at his old retainer, who stood by the table, listening to the conversation with a quiet smile. “Foolish is the wise man who cannot heed the wisdom of another,” Win said, and both he and Toshiro nodded emphatically as if this was an old saying. I liked the sound of it; it made sense to me.
“We were convinced that we had to tell people of what I had seen,” Toshiro went on. “I retired from the guard company—it would have been unthinkable to stay—and that did not create much of a stir, since many knew I’d been considering leaving anyway. The Shogun gave me a handsome payment, and Win and I set out to discover what we could about this cursed magic that our Shogun was involved in.”
“We traveled far and learned much,” Win said, “but everywhere we went we found a reluctance to speak about it. Yamato—you may not know—Yamato is an archipelago, a great group of many hundreds of islands all packed close together in the sea. We traveled throughout Yamato and we found pockets of the Kanosuru taint all over the land. Yet everyone we spoke to was in denial about its existence. We found that it took over remote shrines and corrupted the spirits there, but rarely went further. Most people simply stopped going to the shrines. They would shake their heads and say, “No, that has become a bad place,” but no one ever decided to do anything about it.”
Between them, Toshiro and Win told Cara and me how they had traveled away from the archipelago of Yamato, taking ship to the continental coast off to the northwest of their land, looking for more evidence of the Festering and for people who were willing to fight it. They found none, instead finding only denial and people determinedly ignoring the influence. Eventually, they had returned to Yamato.
Back home, they had spoken discreetly to a few trusted people in Otara and in the other nearby towns, and found that things were strange at the top of the power structure. The Shogun was wilful, causing problems for his subordinates and sometimes displaying cruel traits. He sought sorcerers and soothsayers, and some said he communed with evil forces in the darkness when other men slept.
Despite these rumors, there was no acceptance that anything should actually be done about it. The few to whom Toshiro directly told his story had refused to believe him. The power structure of Yamato was based on a rigid, immovable code of honor and hierarchy. People would rather die than ever be suspected of openly questioning their superiors. It made my head hurt, and I could see that Cara was as bewildered by this attitude as I was.
In Saxe, men and women alike gained rank and prestige based upon their actions, whether warlike or otherwise. We prized honesty above all things. If a ruler—a warband leader, or even a thane of a town—were suspected of using evil magic, his nearest warriors would be the first to call him out for it. Even a merchant suspected of slicing coins or smuggling would freely admit his scam and take the lashing which was due him as punishment. He would rather cut his tongue out than lie about it. And if he did he did happen to tell a lie, his friends would gladly cut his tongue out for him.
Here in Yamato, by contrast, the goal of their honor code seemed to be to maintain the facade of decency even when what was going on behind the scenes was dark, dangerous, and deadly.
“Eventually,” Toshiro concluded, “we came to realize that there was nothing to be gained by our investigation of the taint. Too many people were beginning to ask questions about us, and word got back to us that the Shogun himself had shown an interest in our questionings
