Heaven's Net Is Wide Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Acknowledgements

  PRAISE FOR TALES OF THE OTORI

  Heaven’s Net Is Wide

  Across the Nightingale Floor

  Grass for His Pillow

  Brilliance of the Moon

  The Harsh Cry of the Heron

  “One of the most thrilling new series of our time . . . Gorgeously violent, complex, and well-written.”—The Times (London)

  “With its smooth surfaces, deft allusiveness, and powerful undercurrents, the writing is apposite to the setting and the story. . . . Passion has clearly been invested in the detail but this is never allowed to become a burden on the reader. . . . There’s an air of authenticity in this fiction that puts the Tales of the Otori up there with James Clavell’s Shōgun as the most alluring English language fiction set in feudal Japan. For those who are new to the Otori, this is . . . a good place to begin the series.”

  —The Sunday Morning Herald (Australia)

  “Satisfyingly rich in incident yet admirably spare in the telling . . . Hearn has created a world I anticipate returning to with pleasure.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “The Otori saga gets better with each book, and this is the most absorbing entry in the series, complete with intrigue, magic, romance, and action. A perfect final chapter to the story.”—Booklist

  “As exciting a debut as any in recent years—part Shōgun, part Lord of the Rings, and entirely enchanting.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “Powered by fairy-tale magic and an action-packed plot . . . good old-fashioned storytelling at its best.”—The Daily Yomiuri (Japan)

  “Adept at creating vivid natural settings where the supernatural feels unusually plausible, Hearn catches fresh details of trees, birds, rivers, and mountains. With quick, direct sentences like brushstrokes on a Japanese scroll, she suggests vast and mysterious landscapes full of both menace and wonder.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Seizes you from start to finish.”—The Washington Post

  “The stuff of truly original fantasy.”—Locus

  THE TALES OF THE OTORI SERIES

  Heaven’s Net Is Wide

  Across the Nightingale Floor

  Grass for His Pillow

  Brilliance of the Moon

  The Harsh Cry of the Heron

  The Three Countries

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2007 by Lian Hearn Associates Pty Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without

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  RIVERHEAD is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The RIVERHEAD logo is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  eISBN : 978-1-429-55195-3

  Hearn, Lian.

  Heaven’s net is wide : the first tale of the Otori / Lian Hearn.

  p. cm.

  Prequel to the Tales of the Otori series.

  I. Japan—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9619.3.H3725H

  823’.914—dc22

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Heaven’s net is wide but its mesh is fine.

  HEAVEN’S NET IS WIDE

  CHARACTERS

  The Clans

  THE OTORI

  Otori Shigeru: heir to the Otori clan

  Otori Takeshi: his younger brother

  Otori Shigemori: his father, lord of the clan

  Otori Masako: his mother

  Otori Shoichi: his uncle

  Otori Masahiro: his uncle

  Otori Ichiro: Shigeru’s teacher

  Chiyo: head maid of Lady Otori’s household

  Otori Eijiro: head of a branch family

  Otori Eriko: his wife

  Otori Danjo: his son

  Harada: one of Shigeru’s retainers

  Komori: a Chigawa man, “the Underground Emperor”

  Haruna: owner of the House of the Camellias

  Akane: a famous courtesan, daughter of the stonemason

  Hayato: her lover

  Yanagi Moe: Shigeru’s wife

  Mori Yusuke: the Otori horsebreaker

  Mori Yuta: his oldest son

  Mori Kiyoshige: his second son, Shigeru’s best friend

  Mori Hiroki: his third son, who becomes a priest

  Miyoshi Satoru: an elder of the clan

  Miyoshi Kahei: his older son, Takeshi’s friend

  Miyoshi Gemba: his younger son

  Irie Masahide: the sword instructor to the Otori boys

  Kitano Tadakazu: lord of Tsuwano, an Otori vassal

  Kitano Tadao: his oldest son

  Kitano Masaji: his second son

  Noguchi Masayoshi: an Otori vassal

  Nagai Tadayoshi: the senior retainer at Yamagata

  En
do Chikara: the senior retainer at Hagi

  Terada Fumimasa: head of the Hagi fishing fleet

  Terada Fumio: his son

  Matsuda Shingen: a former warrior, now a priest, later the Abbot of Terayama

  THE SEISHUU

  Maruyama Naomi: head of the Maruyama clan

  Maruyama Mariko: her daughter

  Sugita Sachie: her companion, Otori Eriko’s sister

  Sugita Haruki: senior retainer to the Maruyama, Sachie’s brother

  Arai Daiichi: heir to the Arai clan at Kumamoto

  THE TOHAN

  Iida Sadayoshi: lord of the Tohan clan

  Iida Sadamu: his son, heir to the clan

  Miura Naomichi: a Tohan sword instructor

  Inaba Atsushi: his retainer

  The Tribe

  Muto Shizuka: Arai’s mistress

  Muto Zenko:

  Muto Taku: their sons

  Muto Kenji: Shizuka’s uncle, head of the Muto family, friend to Shigeru

  Muto Seiko: his wife

  Muto Yuki: his daughter

  Kikuta Kotaro: Shizuka’s uncle, head of the Kikuta family

  Kikuta Isamu: his cousin, one of the Tribe

  Bunta: a groom

  The Hidden

  Sara: Isamu’s wife

  Tomasu: their son

  Shimon: Sara’s second husband

  Maruta: their older daughter

  Madaren: their younger daughter

  Nesutoro: an itinerant priest

  Mari: his niece

  Horses

  Karasu: Shigeru’s black

  Kamome: Kiyoshige’s black-maned gray

  Raku: Takeshi’s black-maned gray

  Kyu: Shigeru’s second black

  Kuri: a very clever bay

  1

  The footfall was light, barely discernible among all the myriad noises of the autumn forest—the rustle of leaves scattering in the northwesterly wind, the distant beating of wings as geese flew southward, the echoing sounds of the village far below—yet Isamu heard it and recognized it.

  He put the digging tool down on the damp grass, along with the roots he had been collecting, and moved away from it. Its sharp blade spoke to him and he did not want to be tempted by any tool or weapon. He turned in the direction of his cousin’s approach and waited.

  Kotaro came into the clearing invisible, in the way of the Tribe, but Isamu did not bother concealing himself in the same fashion. He knew all his cousin’s skills: they were almost the same age, Kotaro less than a year younger; they had trained together, striving always to outdo each other; they had been friends, of a sort, and rivals their entire life.

  Isamu had thought he had escaped here in this remote village on the eastern borders of the Three Countries, far from the great cities where the Tribe preferred to live and work, selling their supernatural skills to whoever paid them highest and finding plenty of employment in these times of intrigue and strife among the warriors. But no one escapes the Tribe forever.

  How many times had he heard this warning as a child? How many times had he repeated it to himself, with the dark pleasure that the old skills induce, as he delivered the silent knife thrust, the twist of the garrote or, his own preferred method, the poison that fell drop by drop into a sleeping mouth or an unprotected eye?

  He did not doubt that it echoed through Kotaro’s mind now as his cousin’s shape came shimmering into sight.

  For a moment they stared at each other without speaking. The forest itself seemed to fall quiet, and in that silence Isamu thought he could hear his wife’s voice far below. If he could hear her, then Kotaro could, too, for both cousins had the Kikuta gift of far-hearing, just as they both bore the straight line of the Kikuta that divided the palm of the hand.

  “It took me a long time to find you,” Kotaro said finally.

  “That was my intention,” Isamu replied. Compassion was still unfamiliar to him, and he shrank from the pain it awakened in his new born heart. He thought with regret of the girl’s kindness, her high spirits, her goodness; he wished he could save her from grief; he wondered if their brief marriage had already planted new life in her and what she would do after his death. She would find comfort from her people, from the Secret One. She would be sustained by her inner strength. She would weep for him and pray for him; no one in the Tribe would do either.

  Following a barely understood instinct, like the birds in this wild place that he had come to know and love, he decided he would delay his death and lead Kotaro far away into the forest; maybe neither of them would return from its vastness.

  He split his image and sent his second self toward his cousin, while he ran swiftly and completely silently, his feet hardly touching the ground, between the slender trunks of the young cedars, leaping over boulders that had tumbled from the crags above, skimming across slippery black rocks below waterfalls, vanishing and reappearing in the spray. He was aware of everything around him: the gray sky and damp air of the tenth month, the chill wind that heralded winter, reminding him that he would never see snow again, the distant throaty bellow of a stag, the whir of wings and the harsh calls as his flight disturbed a flock of crows. So he ran, and Kotaro followed him, until hours later and miles from the village he had made his home, Isamu allowed his pace to slow and his cousin to catch up with him.

  He had come farther into the forest than ever before; there was no sun. He had no idea where he was; he hoped Kotaro would be as lost. He hoped his cousin would die here in the mountains on this lonely slope above a deep ravine. But he would not kill him. He who had killed so many times would never kill anyone again, not even to save his own life. He had made that vow, and he knew he was not going to break it.

  The wind had shifted to the east and it had become much colder, but the pursuit had made Kotaro sweat; Isamu could see the gleaming drops as his cousin approached him. Neither of them breathed hard, despite their exertions. Beneath their deceptively slight build lay iron-hard muscles and years of training.

  Kotaro stopped and drew a twig from within his jacket. He held it out, saying, “It’s nothing personal, cousin. I want to make that clear. The decision was made by the Kikuta family. We drew lots and I got the short piece. But whatever possessed you to try to leave the Tribe?”

  When Isamu made no reply, Kotaro went on, “I assume that’s what you are trying to do. It’s the conclusion the whole family came to when we heard nothing from you for over a year, when you did not return to Inuyama or to the Middle Country, when you failed to carry out tasks assigned to you, commissioned—and paid for, I might add—by Iida Sadayoshi himself. Some argued that you were dead, but no one had reported it and I found it hard to believe. Who could kill you, Isamu? No one could get near enough to do it with knife or sword or garrote. You never fall asleep; you never get drunk. You have made yourself immune to all poisons; your body heals itself from all sickness. There’s never been an assassin like you in the history of the Tribe; even I admit your superiority, though it sticks in my gullet to say it. Now I find you here, very much alive, a very long way from where you are supposed to be. I have to accept that you have absconded from the Tribe, for which there is only one punishment.”

  Isamu smiled slightly but still said nothing. Kotaro replaced the twig inside the front fold of his jacket. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said quietly. “That’s the judgment of the Kikuta family, unless you return with me. As I said, we drew lots.”