The Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon

remaining behind.
    She had thought Kou poor. It was nothing compared to the destitution of Kei. Her heart ached as the images piled up of refugees huddled together at the foot of the city walls. They surely all wanted to go home. She knew well the misery of not having a bed of her own to sleep in at night.
    The ground rolling by beneath them, they flew across the Sea of Clouds for half a day before arriving at Iryuu, the capital of Sei Province. In Iryuu as in Kankyuu, there was a high mountain whose peak jutted above the Sea of Clouds. One of the buildings at its peak was the castle of the province lord. Keiki was sequestered somewhere inside that castle.
    While still a good way off from the castle, Youko saw a swarm of black shadows rising from the castle like a flock of birds taking to wing. The castle's airborne defenders.
    To fight meant to kill. Up till now, Youko had killed everything except a human being, but only because she had not had the courage to take the weight of a human death upon her own shoulders. When she had decided to go forth, she resolved herself to the task ahead of her. It was not that noble ends justified taking human life any more lightly. She would remember forever her opponents and the number of those she struck down. This, she understood, was as much as she could do.
    "Are you ready for this?" the En asked.
    Youko nodded.
    "Keep your head about you. Losing the Royal Kei now, just as she is coming into her own, that would be a tragedy."
    "I'm not so easy to kill. I don't have the good sense to know when I'm defeated, you see."
    The En responded with a puzzled frown. And then smiled with his eyes. Youko drew her sword from its scabbard and faced the charging cavalry. The kitsuryou galloped unfaltering through the air. They plunged into the mist of the flying horsemen climbing up into the sky from the castle.

Chapter 66
    A solitary beast, imprisoned deep within the fortifications of the castle, shackled within a thick wall of netting . . .
    " . . . a kirin. "
    This is a kirin.
    An animal with a translucent golden coat and a single horn on its head. The kirin's slender legs, like those of some species of deer, were bound in iron chains. The kirin looked at Youko with its deeply colored eyes. When she approached closer, it touched her arm with its slightly rounded muzzle.
    "Keiki . . . . "
    At the sound of her voice, the kirin looked straight at her. It folded its legs beneath itself and prostrated itself at her feet. When she knelt and reached out her hand, it did not shrink back. She stroked its golden mane and it closed its eyes.
    The other half of me. The beast who had delivered such a fate to her, who in that other world existed only in fairy tales.
    Youko said, "I've been searching for you."
    The kirin brought its muzzle next to her knees. Several times, almost as if bowing to her, it nuzzled its head against her. Again, as she stroked its mane, she heard a hard noise at her feet, the sound of the chains binding it.
    "Hold on. I'll get those things off you."
    She stood and focused her attention on the shackles. Aiming the tip of the blade, she drove the sword straight down, severing the fetters. The kirin sprang nimbly to its feet, but continued to chafe its head, specifically its horn, against her arm.
    "What's the matter?"
    She looked closer and noticed a subtle pattern of designs on the horn, characters a hand's breadth high in a reddish-brown color that looked an awful lot like dried blood.
    "Where did this come from?"
    Keiki went on scraping the horn against her arm. Youko couldn't help but attend to this vexing behavior. Rakushun was a hanjuu and he could talk. In this world, where even the enchanted magical creatures could speak, should not the kirin, the preeminent of the sacred beasts, be capable of speech as well?
    Now that she thought about it, she recalled the vision she had seen in the sword. Kourin had said something like, With its horn sealed, it cannot return to human form and cannot speak. When she lightly brushed her hand against the horn, the kirin calmed down. She scrubbed harder with her sleeve, lightly grazing the surface, but changing nothing else. Examining it more closely, she saw that the thin characters were etched into the horn.
    A wound she could do something about. Youko took the jewel from her pocket. Applying the jewel and gently abrading the surface she saw the characters growing fainter. Repeating the process until the characters were almost