The Moonlit Night Ends (2)
It was a drowsy afternoon, sunlight spilling lazy and warm across the grounds.
Najin wandered the marquis’s garden alone. The incident was settled, and what followed was no longer his stage. He had done his part the moment he delivered Dieta here safely, and he knew it.
What came next would be a war of politics and justification—politicians flipping through the tangled clauses of imperial law, driving knives home with three inches of tongue and a few carefully chosen lines on paper. Najin was ignorant of that world, and he had no intention of stepping into it.
There’s a specialist for that side of things, anyway…
The gold-swallowing serpent, Dieta.
She had already slipped back into the cold, sharp mind of a merchant, preparing her counterattack with Marquis Edelmar’s help. She had told him it would not take long to reclaim the trading company.
“Don’t worry. This is my stage.”
“When we return to Cambria, I’ll repay you properly.”
A fight did not always require drawn steel and spilled blood. Dieta had a battlefield of her own. So that he would not get in her way while she moved, Najin had taken to walking the marquis’s estate.
As long as he carried the medal the marquis had given him, he was treated well wherever he went. There was no discomfort in it.
In the middle of one such walk he stopped and settled onto a bench, gazing absently ahead. A tall tree stood there. It was not a thorn tree, yet looking up at its height brought the battle of a few days past flooding back.
Griffin, wielding the aura of a crimson thorn tree.
A heavy opponent—one who had driven Najin to the brink of death more than once. The knight who had burned into him exactly what a Sword Seeker was. Sword Seeker. Mindscape. The landscape within. Najin turned the words over slowly in his mind.
Then he blinked, and closed his eyes.
When he shut out the world and focused inward, the mindscape he had barely managed to sprout during the fight with Griffin was waiting. A space still no wider than a few paces.
The subterranean city of Atman, set against pitch-black void.
Two stars hung there—one in the sky, one upon the earth—and a girl sat perched on a wall, looking up at the star overhead. Najin walked through the landscape that lived inside him.
One step. Another.
The girl swinging her legs on the wall turned her head and looked at him. Hair the color of flowing water, pale blue-white. Eyes the deep blue of a still lake. When her gaze met his, the corners of her eyes curved.
“What, you’re here?”
The Mage of the Lake, Merlin.
The presence nested in his inner world greeted him.
2.
“Feels like it’s been a while.”
“Well, seeing each other’s faces properly has been a while, yeah. Four months? Three?”
“Something like that.”
Merlin patted the space beside her with her palm. Najin climbed the wall and sat. It was the best place to see the star high above.
“So meeting like this is possible now?”
“Not often, but if you close your eyes and focus, it should work.”
Merlin answered.
“My consciousness is rooted in your mindscape. The clearer and more concrete the landscape you paint becomes, the sharper I’ll be. Still a little blurry, right?”
She leaned in close. It was true—her form still wavered, like a reflection on water. Different from when they had met in her own domain.
“Anyway.”
She turned her head and took in the surroundings—the interior of Najin’s mind, the scenery burned most deeply into him—and let out a short breath.
“Bleak place.”
“Is it.”
“Yeah. No forest, no lake, no sunlight getting in. Dark and gloomy. This is that underground city you said you lived in, right?”
“Something like that. It’s actually a little brighter than this.”
Najin gave a bitter smile.
“In front of the tavern over there there are a lot of sunset-colored ore lamps hanging. Sister Ipoly comes out every day to wipe the sign and check the lamps.”
Blink—and ore lamps appeared around the tavern. A soft dusk-colored glow settled shallowly over the street.
“That way’s the road to the window. It doesn’t look like I’ve drawn that far yet… but past that road it’s a little more splendid. Brightest place in the underground city.”
A path stretching into darkness. Light leaked from its far end. He had not managed to realize what lay beyond, but he could at least call up the light spilling out.
“That so?”
“Yes. And over there…”
“There’s stuff like that too?”
“The people here miss the upper town. They must have wanted to paint even a little of something that looked like it. I don’t really know.”
Talking with Merlin, Najin looked around. Lamps large and small now hung through the once-pitch-black city, turning it into a more finely detailed landscape.
Of course, the moment his concentration slipped even a little, all of it would vanish. Things that had not yet fully taken root in the mindscape. A bittersweet, faintly homesick feeling rose in him as he gazed at the scenery inside himself.
“It’s a strange feeling.”
Najin murmured.
“I thought it was a miserable place. A place I never wanted to call up again. Looking at it like this, though… I feel a little homesick.”
“Hometowns are like that.”
“Yours too?”
“My hometown was a miserable place, but after the witch burned it to ash, I did miss it some.”
Merlin smiled wryly.
“Anyway, it’s good to come in here now and then and polish the mindscape. If you stop holding it consciously, it slowly wears away until it crumbles.”
She let out a long breath.
“What you should fear most is forgetting, and Erosion. So treasure this landscape you made for the first time.”
Chin in hand, Merlin looked at the view of subterranean Atman with distant eyes—eyes that seemed to be remembering something, mourning something.
“Once you lose it, you can’t even regret it. Because it won’t come to mind anymore.”
“My memory isn’t that bad.”
“What are you talking about? This is a different story from memory.”
Merlin laughed as if she couldn’t believe him.
“There are always bastards who try to dirty a mindscape. Bastards who wreck memories, who stick their fingers into your head and stir. That’s why I’m telling you to be careful.”
“It still feels like a distant story.”
“You never know. Might be closer than you think.”
Well then—Merlin hopped down from the wall. Walking the streets of Atman, she said,
“Your landscape’s not bad. Cozy feeling.”
Hands clasped behind her back, she looked back at him.
“If we’re wishing, a lake would be nice. Make me one sometime.”
“I’ll try.”
Najin snorted a quiet laugh and blinked twice.
The underground city vanished. The marquis’s garden returned. He stared a while at the tall tree, then finally rose and walked on.
3.
Marquis Edelmar’s study.
Knight Commander Wulfhild finished his report and, last of all, offered his personal assessment.
“By my evaluation, he is close to Sword Seeker.”
“…Is that true?”
“Yes. By any objective measure, Sir Griffin, Knight Commander of House Arvenia, is a powerhouse. A man who deploys the swordsmanship of Arta Trigadian with an aura extending past five meters is never an easy opponent.”
Wulfhild continued.
“In close quarters I would lose without question. Even at range I could not guarantee victory alone. The epithet ‘First Sword of the Ducal House’ is not attached to Sir Griffin for nothing.”
Griffin was strong.
He was not a Sword Seeker who had only just awakened his mindscape; he was a seasoned swordsman who fully commanded his own.
“That youth received that man’s blade. He even cut through a fragment of the aura itself. A feat impossible at the level of a mere Sword Expert.”
“That is…”
“He is either on the verge of Sword Seeker, or he has already seized a fragment of a mindscape. His instantaneous physical ability already looks to have reached the Seeker’s realm.”
Wulfhild had watched Griffin and Najin clash. He was a knight who wielded a greatbow, a man who had spent more than a decade honing the observation and insight required of an archer.
The marquis trusted those eyes.
Because he trusted them, Marquis Edelmar made no effort to hide his astonishment. He let out a long breath.
“Remarkable. At that age, to reach such a height?”
“Officially he is twenty-eight, but…”
“Even counting that age, he would be the youngest Sword Seeker. Talent to rival Sir Caron, the Sword Saint.”
Or talent that surpassed Sir Caron.
If word spread, the aftershocks would be severe. For now the youth’s story still circulated only inside Cambria, but…
“Soon he will stand out. Outside as well.”
This was not a man who would stay confined to Cambria.
Soon he would move on to a wider stage. No one of that caliber remained long on a single stage. Marquis Edelmar laughed as if he could not believe it.
“Where in the world does a talent like this come from, I ask you.”
Birthplace, true name, real age—everything hidden. Dig as one might, not a single scrap of information surfaced. Was he truly the scion of some house whose records had been erased? No one should be scrubbed this cleanly.
“Identity unknown. A youth who holds chivalry dear and possesses outstanding talent with the sword…”
Turning the facts over, the marquis suddenly smiled.
When his master laughed aloud, Wulfhild tilted his head and asked,
“My lord…?”
“I must have been watching too many plays lately. An absurd thought just struck me.”
To his blinking knight the marquis spoke with a wry smile. A ridiculous fancy—yet the more he turned it over, the more plausible it seemed.
“Doesn’t that youth rather remind you of King Arthur?”
“…Pardon?”
“Unknown identity. A figure who simply appears from nowhere. Holds chivalry dear, takes honor and pride seriously. Outstanding talent with the sword… and already standing at a high realm despite his youth.”
The traits the young man carried.
“And the place where he first begins to distinguish himself is none other than the City of Opportunity—Cambria. Setting out on his journey from this city… does it not call the life of King Arthur to mind?”
Each piece alone was common enough. Stack them all together and a rare story emerged.
“A youth resembling King Arthur, appearing in the City of Opportunity after centuries. Ah—how that sets the heart racing!”
The marquis looked at his knight with shining eyes.
“What do you think, Sir Wulfhild?”
“If I may be so bold, I believe Your Lordship might do well to reduce your theatrical outings.”
“Tsk. Is that so? True, I have been stopping by the company almost daily these past months. Perhaps I should cut back…”
“Support for the company as well might be trimmed a little…”
“Ah—now that will not do.”
The marquis’s face turned serious.
“That is a venture I am personally advancing. Once the company grows, tourism will make Trevache’s name known far and wide. In the long view it is pure profit.”
Well, that was as it was.
Muttering, the marquis looked down at the documents on his desk—papers sent from the Cambria Central Guild. At the top was written the phrase Final Approval for Rank Promotion.
Marquis Edelmar scanned the examination record in silence.
The adventurer’s activity log was not long, yet every entry was a major one, and under the eyes of specialists from every field he had scored near-perfect marks on the promotion trials.
At this point promotion was all but decided.
Once a man reached Red Rank, he was a powerhouse guaranteed by Cambria itself; the foundation’s representative merely offered ceremonial consent. The marquis smiled as he looked at the name written on the form: Ivan.
Identity unknown.
Nothing known.
Risk of identity concealment.
Without so much as a glance at the sections listing such “risk factors,” the marquis signed his name, then brought the seal bearing the marquisate’s crest down with a solid thump.
In that moment, Najin’s promotion to Red Rank was finalized.
A few days passed, and the matter was closed.
Dieta, who had spent those days dancing through a filthy political arena of complications, sticky dealings, and endless fault-finding, collapsed onto the bed in a boneless sprawl.
Still, the affair was settled.
Her return to the seat of company head was confirmed. In a day or two she would leave for Cambria and resume ordinary life. Of course she would face the ducal house’s interference from now on, but that was a problem to navigate as it came.
Lying there, staring out the window, she saw a brilliant moon hanging high. Looking at the bright yellow disc, Dieta suddenly smiled.
The moon was truly beautiful.
The same yellow moon she and Najin had seen while fleeing flashed through her mind. For no reason his solid back rose before her eyes, and the arms that had lifted her, and she twisted a lock of her hair between her fingers.
Come to think of it…
Before they left the estate, had the marquis not said he would host a banquet? Dieta had never been fond of noble gatherings—balls, festivals, the like. She had always received nothing but contempt in such places.
But this banquet would be different.
It was the marquis’s own banquet, and she would attend as his guest together with Najin. No one would dare insult a guest of the marquis to his face.
A banquet… which means… dancing.
Dieta swallowed dryly.
Banquet and ball. And dancing.
A scene that appeared often enough in sweet romance novels. Lovers dancing beneath brilliant lights—the climax that crowned the evening. Thinking of such things, she recalled the marquis’s sly wink, aimed straight at her.
It had looked exactly like he was shouting, You know who you’ll be dancing with, don’t you? A theater-loving marquis, of course he would prepare a stage to close out the moonlit escape.
The intention was blatant, yet if asked whether she disliked it, the answer was no. Heat rose uselessly to her face; Dieta scrubbed her dry palms over her cheeks.
“Dancing… so I would…”
With him?
Dieta’s heart hammered. Face buried in the mattress, she drummed her feet against the bedclothes for no good reason at all.