in the shrine garden, each drawn from childhood memories

which took on a frightening, mad life of their own in his

dreams. Light and shadow also moved through his dreams, for

neither consciousness nor sleep could deal with impenetrable

darkness.

In the case of the old crone, a strange clanking and creaking

preceded her appearance. Then the darkness split into thin lines

of gold forming a rectangle which expanded suddenly into

blinding brightness. He closed his eyes in fear. A sour smell

reached his nose, and the sound of soft scraping his ears. Some-

thing clanked down dully beside him and an eerie voice

squawked, “Eat.”

He blinked then, cautiously, and there, not a foot from his

nose, a horrible goblin face hung in the murk made by the flick-

ering light reflected from black stonewalls. Long, shaggy, kinky

hair surrounded a moonlike visage dominated by a broad nose,

a wide mouth turned down at the corners, and small pale eyes

disappearing in folds of orange skin pitted and covered with

wens. She was female, he deduced from her voice only, and he

was glad when she turned her scrutiny and the light of the

lantern away and left him once again to the silence and darkness

of his grave.

But the intrusion of the goblin had marked a return to

awareness. After a while he overcame his nausea enough to feel

around for the bowl. When he lifted it to his face, it stank, but

the shaking weakness in his hands and wrists convinced him to

eat. It tasted slightly better than it smelled, and it was best not to think about the gristly, slimy bits in the thick soup. He had

managed about half of it before he vomited and fell back to

doze off again.

He slept a lot. Lack of food or his injuries were responsible

for that, and he was grateful for the oblivion because his waking

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

257

moments were filled with terror. He was unbearably hot—

feverish?—and his grave was indescribably filthy. The stench of

urine and excrement mingled with the sour smell of vomit and

sweat. Why did they bother to feed him?

Why did he bother to eat? Yet after each visit, he would

raise himself on an elbow and make another effort. In time he

managed to keep down some of the food. In time he slept less

and was forced to take notice of his body, which remained stub-

bornly alive, adding periodically to the filth around him and

protesting against each movement with sharp pain.

He charted the pain as if his body were unknown territory

and he were taking gradual possession of it. Head and neck

at first seemed the worst, especially the back of his head. He

managed to turn it enough to avoid contact between the sorest

area and the hard stone. But twisting his neck brought on new,

lesser, but persistent pains. The other center of agony was his

right leg. He could not bend it, and a steady dull ache radiated

from hip to knee and from knee to ankle even when he was not

moving it. The rest was uncomfortable but did not take his

breath away at every move. As for his skin, apart from being

covered with sweat, almost every part of him was painful to the

touch, and there was an itching scab on his forehead.

At first he did not bother to think, to remember, to wonder

what had brought him to this state. But pain is a great stimula-

tor of thought. Pain will be recognized and acted upon. Pain has

nothing to do with dying, and everything to do with being alive.

You might wish you were dead, but pain fights blessed oblivion

and forces you into some sort of action.

The blinding ache in his head and the swelling on his skull

had no associations whatsoever, but when he thought about the

leg, touching it and encountering a grossly enlarged knee,

something clicked. A cudgel. Many cudgels in a forest clearing.

Wada’s constables. The mad escape attempt on the horse and

258

I . J . P a r k e r

Wada with his sword raised high. Then nothing. Strange, he felt

no sword wounds, smelled no blood.

But wait. Someone else had been there. Kumo!

With Kumo’s image came the rest. So it had been Kumo all

along! And that raised the question: why was he still alive?

The fact that there was no satisfactory answer exercised him

for days, though he did more than think. During those days he

managed to explore his grave by touch, a very slow process

because of his weakness and injuries. He learned that it was

carved from solid rock, moist, and hard under his fingers, that

the rock floor was gritty and full of sharp bits of gravel. This

fact jarred his memory about the distant hammering, which

seemed to last for hours at a time. A stonemason might make

such sounds. Somewhere nearby people were chipping their

way into the rock.

He was in one of Kumo’s silver mines. For no logical reason

this discovery gave him new strength of will and curiosity.

He could not stand, so he was uncertain of the height of his

grave, but by careful rolling and shifting, he established that he

occupied a square slightly larger than he was, perhaps six feet by

six. Its only opening was barred by thick wooden planks, a door

of some sort that was only opened by the female goblin with his

food and water. The rock walls felt rough and were bare.

He moved away from the vomit and excrement to a clean

corner and took off most of his filthy clothes, using them to

clean himself with. The shirt he kept on. All of this took the best part of a day and required concentration and willpower, but

afterward he felt marginally better.

At some point he had begun to count the visits of his

wardress, but he soon became confused. He guessed she had

come ten times since he had first seen her. But how much time

had passed before, he did not know. He wondered if someone

was looking for him. Surely Mutobe would have sent out search

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

259

parties to comb the island from one end to the other. But they

would scarcely look for him underground.

In his blackest moments he thought of Tamako, his wife.

And of his baby son. Of old Seimei, who had been both father

and mother to him. Of Tora, with his ready smile and his eager-

ness to be of service. Surely Tora would come to find him.

Dear heaven, where was this mine? Kumo’s secretary had

said the mines were in the northern mountains. Not too far

from Mano, then. Two weeks, perhaps more, had passed. On a

small island like Sadoshima that meant he was hidden too well

to be found. Only his jailers knew he was still alive.

He forced his mind away from the present and thought

of the conspiracy. Okisada, Taira, Sakamoto, Nakatomi, and

Kumo. As unlikely a group of rebels as he had ever encountered.

The prince, of course, had rebelled before, and Taira supported

him. But Sakamoto, a fussy professor who spent his nights get-

ting drunk in Haru’s restaurant, was hardly a useful ally. Nor

was Nakatomi, who had neither the rank nor the education

of the others, though he appeared greedy enough for the spoils.

At best, these two were minor players. Kumo was different.

Though he was without ties to the capital, he had enough

wealth and local power to make their grandiose plot feasible.

He had been playing for control of Sadoshima, just as Mutobe

had charged.

The plot failed when the prince had killed himself, yet the

conspiracy had continued and was still continuing, or Akitada