Read Online The Disfavored Hero by Jessica Amanda Salmonson - Free Book Online Page A

pieces from samurai. Perhaps Lord Shigeno’s own head had been torn from the shoulders of his corpse, and now kept the company of the two-headed monster. Perhaps the beast had eventually lost both heads, and found not only the head of Shigeno to place upon its shoulders, but also the head of the warlord’s horse.
    Tomoe shook with horror, shook the vision from her brain. All that she had failed to experience this past month flooded over her in waves more torrential than the plunging falls, and she quaked beneath the weight of those memories.
    The warrior rose from her seated, meditative position, then lowered herself ceremoniously to the floor of the little cavern on her knees. She seized the knife strapped to her thigh, removed the sheath and placed it behind herself, and used the strap to bind her legs lest her corpse be found in a compromised position. Carefully, expression firm, she placed the sharp point of the weapon to the vein in her neck.
    She did not regret this act, only the acts that had led to this last. It was the prerogative of samurai to regain honor through suicide. Her spirit would be pure again, ready for another and possibly better life.
    The rustle of heavy robes stayed her hand a moment. There was someone else in the darkness of the fall’s cavern. Tomoe looked around, to find who invaded her sanctuary, who intruded upon the private ceremony of self-inflicted death.
    In the shadow stood one of the magician-ninja, though Tomoe could not fathom how the jono priestess had come without a sound.
    The eyes of the priestess glinted in the dark, burned Tomoe’s agonized spirit. She moved from the shadow, making herself into a silhouette against the wall of glistening water. She spoke to Tomoe, and in spite of the roaring of the falls, her voice echoed through the chamber with clarity, sounding somehow as from another place in time:
    â€œJigai is not your destiny, Tomoe Gozen.” The jono raised her hand; the blade flew from Tomoe’s grip and broke against the inner wall of the cave although the steel was tempered. Another pass of the slender hand, and the strap around Tomoe’s legs burst like ragged yarn. The magician-ninja said, “Do not think that your honor can be restored by fleeing from this life, your tasks left half undone. It may be the way of the samurai, but not of Tomoe Gozen.”
    The warrior remained on her knees, anger rushing to blooden her features. She said to this intruder, “Tomoe Gozen is samurai.” She did not like jono any more than she did a common, skulking ninja. Priest or otherwise, they had the same origin—children of dainty, flying ogres some believed. The original cult had arisen centuries before, and was not originally comprised of sorcerers. It had begun as a formalized society of spies—wily, but having no genuinely magic powers. Their group gained status through extortion and terrorism. When their family of spies made occult discoveries and added actual magic to their trade, there was a revolution among all the ninja clans; although revolution among spies was not visible to the world at large. Afterward, the ordinary agents maintained their furtive ways, and the jono elite raised shrines to their ambiguous faith. The honor of jono was said to be as sacrosanct as that of samurai. Still, they were sly.
    The magician-ninja’s eyes glistened like the wall of water behind her. Tomoe imagined that the mysterious woman grimaced behind her wrappings, perhaps guessing Tomoe’s hateful thoughts.
    â€œYou are samurai,” the priestess said, as though it were a grave concession. “But jigai is not your prerogative. You cannot regain honor in this fashion, for no master has given you permission, and you have tests before you. I do not threaten, but warn: If you die for seeking honor, you will search in hell and never find it.”
    The arrogance of the magician-ninja roiled Tomoe’s blood, for she knew the prerogatives