Fortune's Fool by Mercedes Lackey Page B

place, and putting the souls in that stone.” She pointed to the glowing stone on the floor mat between them. “From those souls, she gained magic power. From the demons doing her bidding in place of men, she gained temporal power. There is no telling, now that she is gone, but I believe that she intended to make herself Empress here eventually. Perhaps even set herself up as the rival to the Good Goddess.” Tamiko shrugged. “If your words are true, and the seabirds were crying ‘doom,’ I can well believe that. If the Good Goddess abandoned us…”
    She and her warlord exchanged a somber look.
    “But it didn’t happen,” Katya pointed out. “My father takes a dim view of that sort of thing going on at the border of his ocean. If I had failed, he would have come himself, with allies.” She raised an eyebrow. “With Godmothers, and more than one if he could. Even a would-be goddess should beware of Godmothers.”
    That made them both laugh. “Then perhaps,” suggested Tamiko, “I might speak to the Twelve-tailed Kitsune, the head of our clan, and she might find a way to keep your father better informed on the matters within Nippon than relying on the gossip of seabirds.”
    “That,” Katya said with satisfaction, “would be excellent. My father is always glad of allies, and it is one of the reasons he sends me out to be his eyes and ears, and sometimes his hands. But what about the spirits that are still in this stone?”
    “Ah,” the shogun said with a raised brow. “I think this is where I come in. I have arranged for all of us to take a journey on the morrow.”
    And so it was. The next day, three litters and an entourage embarked from the shogun’s palace. Runners went out beforehand, looking for men of rank and influence who had suddenly collapsed in the night. This had happened, of course, as the demons controlling them had been ripped from their bodies at the defeat of the witch. Each time one was found, the shogun offered to resolve the tragedy. As the son of the famous Ghost-hunter Prince, he was welcomed warmly by desperate and frightened families.
    Once in the presence of those families, the shogun soothed their fears while the kitsune went to work, taking the stone from Katya—for it seemed to be most “comfortable” in her presence—and releasing the spirit held within it back into its proper vessel.
    After a night of hospitality, they would move on. With every soul released, the stone grew dimmer, quieter.
    Finally there was only one left. And this was where they made a slight detour. The shogun diverted them all down a path through the forest, a path so overgrown that Katya wondered how he could find it. And yet, when they came to the end of the path, there, in the midst of forest that seemed to have never felt that presence of man—
    There was a Temple. And not merely a Temple, but an entire complex that included living spaces, smaller shrines, teaching rooms, halls for meditation, and several spaces for the training of martial arts. This was a place full almost to bursting with priests and monks.
    But before they could step onto the grounds of the Temple, a priest appeared before them, holding up his hand.
    “It devastates me to demand this of you, honorable visitors,” he said, “but only you, Prince, may go forward. I beg your companions to remain here.”
    The kitsune looked startled, the Prince frowned, and Katya felt as if she had been slapped.
    “Why?” Katya asked, making no effort to hide the fact that she felt insulted by this. The trek through the forest had been long and tiring and she had been a long time from open water….
    “It is not because you are female, valiant foreign devil,” the Priest said, with a smile that softened the unflattering term. “Nor is it because you are a foreign devil. It is because you are both creatures of magic, and your presence will disturb some delicate magical workings, I fear. That stone you bear, weakened though it is,