Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [274]
Everything about the man, from the words he chose to the way his face lit up when he spoke made him seem so much younger than he had before. It was uncanny.
“We need to get you out of here. Your face is pale. This cold will give you pneumonia if you stay here too long,” Wataru said, putting his hand on the man’s forehead. Where he thought to feel the warmth of a fever, it was cold to the touch. The man’s skin was the color of lead.
“Are there any others here? We should get them too. We need to go someplace warm.”
The man slowly shook his head. “No one is left. All have died. Only I remain.” More than sad, the man sounded deeply ashamed to have lived. “You may call me the Precept-King. That is what everyone called me. I was their leader—in name at least.”
The Precept-King. Precepts were religious teachings or laws. If the Special Administrative State of Dela Rubesi was indeed a bastion of belief in the Old God, it seemed a fitting title for their leader.
Still, there was so much that made no sense.
“What happened here?” Meena said, kneeling by the man. “Was it a plague? Did everyone die of illness? Was it always this cold here?”
“Time enough to talk later. Let’s get out of here,” Kee Keema growled. “Meena, would you mind giving my back a quick rub. That should get me moving again. And I need to carry this guy.”
The white-robed man reached out and placed his hand over Wataru’s. “No. I may not leave this place. This city will die soon, and I plan to die with it. I cannot escape. The Goddess would not allow it.”
The Goddess? Wataru’s eyes opened wide. He pointed at the room around them. “What do you mean? I thought this was—aren’t you believers in the Old God?”
“No, it is not so.” The man gave a weak smile, the expressionless mask falling from his face like a shard of ice. “This too was part of the agreement with the Goddess. It was the best way to ensure that we did not trouble the lowlands. That is why we kept our promise—for so long, we kept it. Yet promises were made to be broken, and our time finally came. Surely, the Goddess knew it would. Men are crafty, and their hearts are weak. Someday, one among us would go against our promise held for eternity—and all of us would be punished for his trespass.” The man muttered softly to himself, half singing. Wataru had trouble following the meaning of his words.
“What are you talking about?”
Then the white-haired, youthful Precept-King looked Wataru straight in the eyes. “I was once a Traveler, like yourself.”
He’s from the real world too?
“Including myself, there were eleven of us from the real world in this place, all of them Travelers. All thought to change their own destiny, and so passed through the Porta Nectere to Vision.” His eyes looked back in time as he spoke. “But we were never able to realize our dreams. We failed on the difficult journey through Vision and chose to abandon our path. Yet, at the same time, none of us wished to trudge back to the real world in defeat, having been unable to change our destinies.”
Wataru silently watched the man’s sharply cut jaw move. Oddly, the look in his eyes was less one of fatigue and more of boredom. There was something else too. He looked familiar—like someone Wataru had met before.
“So you stayed in Vision?” Meena asked quietly, her breath a wisp in the air.
“Yes,” the Precept-King nodded. “The Goddess made this city for us, the failed Travelers. Here, we were commanded to live our lives apart from the rest of the world. That was the condition of our stay in Vision.”
Meena looked up at the high ceiling. “You were all trapped in here? Unable to even step out into the world outside?” It was clear from her expression that Meena couldn’t imagine ever being so confined to one place.
“Didn’t you ever get tired of it, or bored?” Wataru asked. “Did you have some sort of work you were meant to perform here?”
The Precept-King lifted his eyes and looked at the large Mirror of Truth to his