Heaven's Net Is Wide Lian Hearn (leveled readers .TXT) 📖

with the Tohan. In that case we will have to put away our personal gratification and concentrate on the art of war.”

7

A few days later, the preparations for the journey were completed, and Shigeru left for Terayama with Irie Masahide, to arrive before the plum rains made travel unpleasant with their sticky warmth. Horses and men were ferried across the river in large flat boats. The stone bridge had three of its four arches completed. It will be finished when I return, Shigeru thought.

The journey to Tsuwano would take two or three days; the road followed the river valley between the ranges, but after Tsuwano, where the land became much more mountainous, it circled the slopes and then curved back through two or three steep passes to Yamagata. Here Shigeru would spend some time reacquainting himself with the city before the short journey through the mountains to the temple.

Kiyoshige was not to accompany him; he returned to his family house. His father was raised to a higher rank and given an increased stipend. It could hardly be considered a punishment, yet to Shigeru it felt like it. He missed the cheerful, high-spirited Kiyoshige, his irreverence and his jokes. As he rode on the black, Karasu, he missed seeing Kiyoshige’s gray, Kamome, with its black mane alongside him. But he kept his feelings to himself. The Kitano brothers went with him, summoned by their father to Tsuwano. The boys were puzzled by the sudden command. They had expected to remain in Hagi or go with Shigeru to Terayama. They envied him the opportunity to be taught by Matsuda Shingen and wondered why their father would not permit them to take advantage of these circumstances.

“It would be better to stay in Hagi,” Tadao said for the fourth or fifth time. “We have no teachers in Tsuwano like Lord Irie or Lord Miyoshi. Father is a great warrior, but he is so old-fashioned.”

The spring planting was completed and the clear green of the young seedlings shone against the mirror surface of the rice fields, in which the blue sky and the high white clouds were reflected. On some of the banks around the fields, beans had been planted, their white and purple flowers attracting many bees. Frogs croaked and the summer’s cicadas were beginning to drone. Shigeru would have liked to be able to look more closely at the land and talk to the farmers about their crops and methods. The last two years had been good for harvests-no infestations of insects, no great storm damage-which made everyone cheerful, but he couldn’t help wondering about their lives. He knew them only as figures from the clan records of what their fields should produce and what proportion they should pay in taxes.

The secrets his father had told him hung in his mind. The idea that he should have a brother, so many years older, tormented and fascinated him. And the boy’s mother, the woman from the Tribe. The sorceress and shape-shifter. His father had met such a woman, had lain with her. The idea both horrified and aroused him. He reflected deeply on his father’s life and saw his weaknesses more clearly. He also wondered how many of the grooms who accompanied them now on the road, or the servants at the inns, might be Tribe members, spies or assassins. He did not share these thoughts with anyone but resolved to question Matsuda Shingen during his stay at Terayama. He did not want to listen to the other boys’ gossip and complaints; he had too much to think about. But he forced himself to joke lightly with them, masking his preoccupations, finding he could be two people-the ordinary fifteen-year-old and an inner ageless man, more watchful and more guarded, the emerging adult self.

On the afternoon of the second day, they descended through the pass into a fertile valley that belonged to one of the Otori branch families, distant cousins of Shigeru’s. Though of extremely high rank, this family had always farmed their own land rather than exacting taxes from tenants. Shigeru was enchanted by their residence, which combined the restrained elegance of the warrior class with a rustic informality, and he was impressed by the head of the household, Otori Eijiro, who seemed endlessly knowledgeable about the nature of the land and its crops. His family was large and boisterous, though somewhat subdued on this occasion by the status of their guest and his companions.

After the visitors had washed the dust of the journey from their feet and hands, they sat in the main room, all the doors open to catch the soft breeze from the south. Eijiro’s wife and three daughters brought tea and sweet bean paste cakes. His sons put on a display of horsemanship in the grassy meadow to the south of the house; then they all competed with the bow, shooting both on horseback and on foot. Tadao was declared the winner, and Eijiro gave him a quiver made from deerskin. The two older girls also competed and were equal to their brothers in skill. When Shigeru commented on this-for though most Otori girls learned to ride, he had never seen women taught the arts of war-Eijiro gave his usual loud laugh.“My wife is from the Seishuu. In the West they teach their girls to fight like men. It is the influence of the Maruyama, of course. But why not? It keeps the girls healthy and strong, and they seem to love it.”

“Tell me about Maruyama,” Shigeru said.

“It’s the last of the great Western domains to be inherited through the female line. The present ruler is Naomi; she’s seventeen and recently married. Her husband is a much older man closely connected to the Iida family. It seemed a strange alliance; there’s no doubt the Tohan hope to acquire the domain by marriage, stealth, or war.

“Have you been there?” The West lay at least a week’s journey beyond Yamagata.

“Yes, I have. I spent some time with my wife’s parents