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Hirata hid in plain sight as he traversed the castle grounds, walking noiselessly a few paces behind groups of soldiers. He damped down the energy that his body gave off, and they didn’t sense his presence. When they passed other people, he hid behind them, his human shields. Nobody noticed him, but he could detect each person before they came within his sight or hearing. They emitted energy that shone like beacons to Hirata’s inner consciousness. When he felt soldiers approaching from his rear along a path, he darted into a doorway and waited for them to pass him. Then he followed them, their silent shadow.
His journey took him by the storehouse where the natives were imprisoned, its walls stained orange by the rising sun. He could feel their energy inside, two faint pulses. Hirata was tempted to break in and rescue them. It would be so easy, but the hard part would be getting them out of the castle, then defending them and their people from the whole Matsumae army. Not even the best martial artist could do that alone. And Hirata’s first duty was to Sano. No matter now lured by other interests he felt, he would always choose Sano because his honor depended on how faithfully he served his master who was also his dearest friend. Solving the crime and assassinating Lord Matsumae were Sano’s top priorities and thus Hirata’s. And there were clues that nobody except Hirata could hope to find.
Hirata headed for the castle gate through which the funeral procession had passed. He approached it along the wall and stopped. Twenty paces farther, a sentry paced in front of the gate. Hirata backed away from the wall, crouched, drew a deep breath, and concentrated his physical power in his legs. He flexed a spiritual muscle within his mind and sprang.
A burst of energy fired along nerves and tendons through him. It launched him in a high, fast arc. He landed on his feet atop the wall, with a soundless impact that the guard didn’t notice. There he squatted, looking down the other side. The hillside and path were empty, the woods dark as night except for the treetops, which glowed in the rosy dawn. Hirata jumped down from the wall and ran for the woods. As he followed the path that the funeral procession had taken, he blotted out his sensory impressions of the trees and snow, birdsong, the air’s coldness in his lungs. He kept a small part of himself anchored to his surroundings; the rest walked in another dimension.
This dimension was a black void illuminated by traces of energy left by human emotions in the past. His hours spent meditating and attuning himself to the cosmos had developed his skill in detecting them. Along the path Hirata saw sizzles of light-the grief, anger, and dread experienced by the funeral party. He took the fork in the path that led toward the hot spring. Ahead, the energy flared into sparks and fountains where the Matsumae troops had massacred the natives. Hirata slowed his steps, looking downward, searching.
He didn’t know the precise location of the murder scene, but he stopped at a tangle of luminescence that lay on the snow. Here Tekare had fallen, struck by the arrow from the spring-bow. He read her pain, her terror. Sano hadn’t found any clues here, but since Hirata had come to Ezogashima he’d discovered a new realm of existence. On the hunting trip, Chieftain Awetok had opened him to a glimpse of its power, its potential to reveal information heretofore secret. Now Hirata hoped to use his new perception to solve the murder case, for the natives’ sake as well as Sano’s. The truth might yet save Awetok, Urahenka, and their people.
As he had during the deer hunt, Hirata immersed himself in a meditative trance. Again came the sensation of escaping his body, the propulsion into a rich, vast, unfamiliar world. The spirit of Ainu Mosir flowed through Hirata. He was a dust mote tossed by its power, awash in the energy from the earth, the wild creatures, forest, and sky that comprised its mighty self. Their voices barraged him. Deafened by messages he couldn’t interpret, feeling completely lost, Hirata clasped his head in his hands. Even if the world of nature did harbor clues about Tekare’s murder, how would he sort them out from this chaos?
He instinctively reverted to the breathing techniques learned through long years of training. Their rhythm steadied him, slowed the deluge of sensations. Hirata found himself balanced between two realms-the human world and the natural-as if on a raft on a turbulent sea beneath a stormy sky. Two disciplines-samurai art and Ainu magic-worked together within him. Hirata gasped with sheer, joyous exhilaration. This was the breakthrough he’d been seeking. Arduous training had prepared him for it, but only in Ezogashima could he have found it. But this breakthrough was a station on the way to his ultimate destiny. He had work to finish before he could move on.
He revolved beneath the brightening sky, in the shadows that dispelled as day came. From a tall pine an owl took flight, heading to its nest after a night of hunting. Around the owl, around every branch and pine needle, and along the earth, pulsed a limpid green energy held that hummed with nature’s life-force. The light where Tekare had fallen and the sparks from the massacre blended with the radiance °f the nonhuman world. Hirata called upon yet another discipline, the skills he’d learned as a police detective. He looked for something in the picture that didn’t belong-a clue.
The green energy field wasn’t uniform, its hum not continuous. There were interruptions with jagged edges. He spied one in the forest and stepped off the path to examine it. He discovered a hole on a leafless tree, the interior eaten away by insects. The tree was dying, its voice a moan of pain. Hirata listened harder. Sharp noises, like metal impinging on stone, led him to a snow-covered mound. Brushing off the snow, he found a rock about the size of his head. Small white scratches marred the rock’s flat gray surface. Hirata recognized them; he’d seen their like at the archery range in Edo Castle, on the stone wall near the targets. Sometimes novice archers missed their shots by a wide margin, and their arrows hit the wall. These scratches were arrow marks.
Hirata gazed in a straight line from them, through the place where Tekare had fallen. The spring-bow had been set somewhere along the line, in the woods on the path’s opposite side. The killer had tried out the weapon before the murder, had sprung the trap to see where the arrow flew. Hirata examined tree trunks near the rock. Caught in the rough bark of a pine tree were tiny fibers from the string that had triggered the spring-bow. They made a barely audible, trilling vibration in the field. Hirata envisioned and followed the string across the path, into the woods. He found more fibers on two more trees. The killer had experimented with different positions and angles, determining which was best. This told Hirata that the killer had a methodical mind-but did not reveal his identity.
The green energy glow diminished; Hirata couldn’t sustain forever the trance that allowed him to see it. The sound of a temple bell ringing interrupted nature’s voices. Hirata strained his perception, listening with all his might; his head ached with the effort. As the glow disappeared, he felt an otherness in the woods, from some small, foreign object.
The voices went silent. He was back in the ordinary world. The sun was shining, the sky blue above the trees, the forest’s mystical dimension closed to him. His feet were numb from the cold, his senses deadened. He searched frantically for the foreign object, but he couldn’t see anything that stood out.
His teacher, Ozuno, spoke in his memory: Reality isn’t just what yon see on the surface, you fool! It has layers beneath infinite layers. When the truth eludes you, dig deeper!