freedom_is_grey | What happens in the library stays in the library. Unless it's demons

"Indeed not. I have seen my share of them, some worse than what is detailed by the author of that diary. Fortunately neither of my marriages were like that."

Seimei turns a page in the storybook.

"Ah! Here is Kamo no Tadayuki," he says, showing the picture to Ysalwen. In it, a young boy (presumably Seimei himself) is writing Chinese and Sanskrit on a paper with a calligraphy brush. Sitting beside him and overseeing his efforts is a man with a flowing grey beard and prodigious eyebrows. He looks down on the boy with a smile of approval.

"Kamo-sensei did have a beard like that, but he almost always looked very stern. And I would not have been writing on paper at that age! Paper was too expensive in those days for a child to scribble on. I had a tray of wet sand and a stick. I didn't graduate to paper until I knew my characters." Seimei shakes his head and clucks his tongue.

"I was fortunate to have such a teacher, even if he was a curmudgeon. He had studied yin-yang magic - onmyodo, we called it - with the Daoist masters in China. To him it was not simply a job or a means to an end, as it was for so many, but a sacred calling.

"My mother also had a hand in my training - beyond engaging Kamo-sensei, I mean - but that is not generally known."

Ysalwen studies the picture for a moment or two, listening to Seimei speak.

"What was it like? To be taught by your mother. And -- her magic was different, then? Than this onmyodo, I mean."

"As my mother and Kamo-sensei understood it, their magics were of a different nature," Seimei answers. "As I understood it, each of them knew certain spells that the other did not. The truth is that they both experienced and practiced magic in very different ways, even though the magic itself came from the same source."

This was a concept that Seimei instinctively grasped for centuries before he learned how to put it into words.

"Unlike the magic Kamo-sensei taught me, my mother's magic involved no incantations, implements, or components. It was just something she did. She taught me how to change shape, how to create glamours and illusions, how to perceive spirits and magic that most humans don't notice."

"And one of those isn't any easier for you than the other?"

It's an important question -- and a useful one.

"I took very well to both," Seimei says. "That was...sort of what my mother was concerned about. When I was born I had no fox features at all, and she thought I was completely human. But when I was five or six, I did a very unusual thing.

"Out in Osaka, we were very isolated. I had no other children to play with. So where a child my age would normally have one imaginary friend, I had a few. And one day, they stopped being imaginary." Seimei turns back a page, to the picture of him and his mother. He points to a group of small ogre-like creatures in the near distance.

"Huh."

Ysalwen studies the image of the creatures, leaning forward a little for a better look.

Then she glances up at Seimei.

"Had they always been real, or did you make them so?"

"I'm not sure what I did. I think they were imaginary at first, and then I wished very hard for them to be real. As a result I summoned a group of small oni. They are a kind of demon, and normally very bloodthirsty creatures, but they did not behave that way with me - fortunately. We played tag in the garden, until one of the servants saw and went running for my mother. She chased them off." Seimei sighs.

"Initially, I was very cross. I didn't understand how much danger I had been in, or how much I had frightened my mother. What I had done, a fox spirit could never do, and even human mages with decades of practice would have a difficult time doing. If I could do a thing like that, what would I do the next time I had a tantrum? Or when I was older, and wanted something I could not obtain by legitimate means?"

She raises one eyebrow, studying his face intently.

"And now that you are older?"

"I'm glad my mother had the wisdom to set me on the right path," Seimei says. "Many hanyou like me - those born of unions between spirits and mortals - are not so fortunate. They are rejected by the societies of both parents, and often end badly. Along with others in the general vicinity."

Seimei gazes down at the picture of his mother. "She was very determined that I should live a human life, and use my powers for good, not evil. That is why she got Kamo-sensei to teach me." He turns the page back to the picture of his childhood self and the old man. "I have seen how magic without discipline or ethics turns out. I suspect you have, too. It's very ugly."

"Almost as ugly as magic used with discipline and the wrong ethics."

There's a wryness to her voice that is not matched by the look in her eyes.

Not at all.

"I've seen that too," Seimei says. "And if this storybook proceeds how I think it does..." he turns a couple of pages. "Ah. It does."

There is a picture of an older Seimei, kneeling in a great hall surrounded by serious-looking men in layered robes and black hats. Sitting in front of him is a lacquered box. Across from him, on the other side of the box, is an intimidating-looking fellow glaring back at picture-Seimei's knowing smile.

"The divination contest at Court," Seimei says. "I remember this. Here is the Emperor, sitting on the dais. Here are the ministers. I think that one sitting nearby is supposed to be Fujiwara Kane'ie. There you can see the ladies peeking around and between the curtain stands. And this man" - Seimei taps the picture of the glaring fellow seated across from him - "was Ashiya Doman, who ran the Bureau of Divination. Goodness, this picture makes him look absolutely demonic. He was actually very good-looking, and would never have let his anger show this way."

Until the end, of course.

Ysalwen laughs a little, very quietly.

"Well. Tricksters do hate being tricked themselves."

So much.

So very, very, very much.

"He was worse than a trickster," Seimei says gravely. "In this incident, he just cheated in a divination contest. We were supposed to divine the contents of this closed box - there were a dozen or so oranges in it - but the person who filled the box was one of his lackeys. So when Fujiwara Kane'ie asked us what was in the box and we gave our answers, I did a little trick and said that the box was full of rats."

Seimei turns the page. The next picture shows the court scene, but a number of things have changed. The lid is now off the box: the Emperor and the courtiers have looks of shock on their faces. The ladies can no longer be seen peering around their curtains, presumably because they are hiding behind them. Fujiwara Kane'ie and Ashiya Doman are both scooting backwards on their behinds. And no wonder: there are a bunch of very ugly-looking rats erupting out of the open box.

"It was an illusion, but it was realistic enough to cause a panic," Seimei says. "I shouldn't have done that. I should have turned them into stones or birds or something more innocuous." He shrugs.

"Where was I...ah, yes. Ashiya Doman. He would kill small animals and insects with magic to impress the ministers. And he did black magic for hire, mostly at the behest of the Fujiwara family."

"Well," she says, mouth twitching at one corner.

"Lesson learned."

Whose lesson?

Maybe a lot of people learned something that day.

Seimei nods. "After that I learned to be more subtle with my magic. Ashiya Doman learned that I was more than just a young upstart of dubious parentage: I was a real threat."

So yes, everyone learned something that day.

"A few months after that, one of the Emperor's Consorts gave birth to a son. She was not as high-ranking as some of the other Consorts, but she was one of the Emperor's favorites, and he seemed inclined to designate her infant son as the Heir Apparent. The Fujiwaras were concerned, for they had daughters in the Emperor's harem, and the prospects of their royal grandsons were in jeopardy. The infant suddenly came down with a strange and perplexing illness."

"Ashiya Doman again?"

It seems likely.

"Was healing one of your gifts?"

And is it now?

"Not healing sickness. But the child had been cursed, and that I was good at dealing with. Which was fortunate, because his poor mother had nowhere else to turn," Seimei says. "The physician she had called said the child was cursed: the other onmyoji, under Ashiya Doman's thumb, insisted that he wasn't. It took all night and was a very close thing, but I broke the curse and put a charm on the child so he could not be harmed that way again."

Seimei wishes he could say that was the last time he'd seen something so horrible done to a child, but if he did he'd be lying.

"After that, it was war. Ashiya Doman and his cronies started sending demons to attack my house, and my wife's house - she lived with her father, which was not uncommon in those times - and though I had defenses in place, I was compelled to send her away from the Capital for her own protection."

Akiko, fortunately, had understood the gravity of the situation and agreed to Seimei's suggestion that she 'go on pilgrimage for a while' without too much fuss.

"I developed the trick of binding the shikigami to objects, like paper dolls, so I could spy on Ashiya Doman and the Fujiwaras who were commissioning evil spells from him to attack their rivals. Things went on like that for a while, with all parties involved acting perfectly normal at Court despite it all."

Her brow furrows, very slightly.

"How many others were hurt or killed in the meantime?"

It seems like the answer might be 'a lot'.

Seimei sighs. "He killed some of my household guards, before I secured the alliance of the heavenly foo dogs." It is, obviously, something he still regrets. "I did not kill any of his servants, or even those who were working with him. As things escalated, some of them started attempting spells that were beyond their skills, and they were either killed or lost their minds."

Seimei turns a page in the book. There is a picture of a courtyard, surrounded by some buildings that had obviously seen recent (and severe) damage. The intimidating man from the divination contest is there, looking more demonic than before. His robes and hair are disheveled, and he brandishes a bloodstained sword in one hand. Seimei, apparently untouched by the destruction around him, brandishes a handful of prayer slips in his direction.

"Ashiya Doman grew increasingly frustrated as I foiled his schemes. Increasingly desperate, too. He started to slip up. People whispered about the evil spells he had cast. There was a rumor that he'd killed some of his household servants in a fit of rage - actually, it was a blood sacrifice - and Fujiwara Kane'ie, once his patron, was trying to disassociate himself from Ashiya. He was, so I understood, advising the Emperor to exile him to Tsukushi or have him executed."

Seimei taps the picture of the disheveled, evil-looking Ashiya Doman.

"He had gathered up all the power he could - the bad kind, so by that time he really did look demonic. He stormed the palace, intending to kill me, Fujiwara Kane'ie, possibly the Emperor, and everyone who got between him and us."

"Of course it was blood sacrifice."

She sounds very tired.

"How badly did his attempt go?"

"He killed six of the palace guards on the way in and threw my friend Minamoto no Hiromasa over the stables, breaking his arm," Seimei says. "Everyone else, fortunately, had the good sense to get out of this way. Except me, of course, but who else could have stopped him?"

Really, Seimei should have stopped him sooner.

"I wish I came through it looking at pristine as I did in this picture. But actually, he threw me through a couple of walls and burned off half my hair." Seimei shakes his head. "I put up a good fight, using every trick at my disposal, but by the end he had the best of me. The only reason I survived is that he wanted the pleasure of throttling me to death. And I was able to grab a roof tile and hit him with it."

Seimei smacks the side of his head with the heel of his hand for emphasis.

"He was stunned, and I was able to put a binding spell on him. I promptly fainted away. While I was, ahem, preoccupied, the Emperor had him dragged off the Palace grounds and put to death."

Not so neat as it is in all the stories.

"Luck can be kind that way," she allows, quietly. "Except when it isn't."

Planning can only do so much.

"Did he have apprentices or co-conspirators that tried to continue his work, after that?"

"Well, after I was sufficiently recovered, the Emperor made me head of the Divination Bureau, and I put the fear of Fudō-sama into those of his allies who were left." Pause. "Sorry. Fudō-sama, Buddhist guardian deity. I never had any trouble with them after that."

And Seimei kept an eye on them with shikigami spies, just to make sure.

"Destroying a leader tends to do that. What was the divination bureau responsible for? All magic, or just the divination part, or -- "

She's curious. Very, very curious.

"Divination primarily, but also protecting the Capital, the Palace, and the person of the Emperor from evil magics." So, really, Ashiya Doman had not been doing his job very well at all. "There were other kinds of magics, but they were more explicitly religious. Not that we really made much of a distinction in those days."

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