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

"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."

"But you make it now? What's -- if I can ask, what's the difference? The source, or the incantations, or -- "

The Chantry doesn't do magic. Or miracles. So she wonders how it works elsewhere.

"There isn't a difference," Seimei answers, his tone surprisingly curt. He takes a deep breath, drags his hand down his face, and bows apologetically. "Please forgive me, Ysalwen, I did not mean to snap at you. But this touches on a matter of great concern for me."

'Concern' is an understatement.

"Every religion has certain esoteric knowledge and practices, not just for propitiating the gods but for calling on them to do specific things, or reading their will in natural phenomena. These esoteric practices would usually be performed by people with proper credentials - priests, monks, shamans...or onmyoji. And such practices were magic. They were not acts of worship, but belonged to religion nonetheless."

Edited 2016-01-03 20:34 (UTC)

She huffs out a breath, sharp and quick, her expression gone closed.

"Did they start arresting people without the proper credentials that chose to practice any kind of magic? Because that seems like a next step that a lot of people take. Religious people, I mean."

"It varies by society, religion, and time period," Seimei says. "Japan has been, for much of its history, very hospitable to what you might call 'hedge mages.' As long as they were not frauds, fakes, agitators, or bent on doing harm through magic, official institutions had no quarrel with them."

Well, most of the time.

"Other countries and their religious institutions were a lot more picky about that sort of thing."

"Of course they were. And are."

It's not a surprise in the least.

"What made Japan different?"

"Well, the official line is that we are a very special country," Seimei says with a cheeky grin. "But unofficially, Shinto - our native faith - is by its nature a very disorganized religion. Some of our people would even argue against calling it a 'religion.' It's a cultural practice, or just part of the way the world works."

"Huh."

It sounds -- interesting.

"How do you mean, cultural practice?"

"I cannot speak to that generally," Seimei says, "but as far as Shinto is concerned, it's a cultural practice in the sense that one does it because one is Japanese, and can't imagine not doing it."

There really isn't a better way of explaining it than that.

"There are certain things that a Shinto priest or shrine maiden might do that, say, a Christian would label as 'magic' if they had not been previously informed that Shinto was a religion. Or if they were a particularly obnoxious sort of Christian, they might call it magic anyway."

"Can't anything be both?"

It's a --

Well.

One day it might be a useful question to ask back home, as well. Later.

"Yes! And that's exactly what I mean!" Seimei's emphatic agreement is accompanied by a similarly emphatic gesture. "But many people no longer see it that way. If one asks a deity to do something - say, heal the sick, or bring the rain - and leaves it in their hands, it's religion. But if one uses one's own spiritual powers to do the same things, with or without the aid of gods, it's magic, and somehow a lesser thing."

Seimei's not even going to get into the issue of how many people in his world simply don't believe in magic anymore. That's a more recent development.

"They may make some allowances if such magic is done by a cleric, and involves powers and rites recognized by their own religion. But otherwise, it's magic. Or, well, heresy. Sometimes the two are used interchangeably."

"Because magic is randomly bestowed and religious powers come from gods that ostensibly love them?"

She's guessing.

"It's more that religious institutions don't want the competition, but the uneven distribution of magical talent is certainly part of it. Although it is not actually random: it's an inherited capacity sometimes triggered by environmental..." Seimei stops short and blinks, as if trying to clear the cobwebs. "Wait. Do you have a general understanding of genetics, or dominant and recessive traits?"

If Ysalwen knows about those things, good. If not, she is probably very confused right now.

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