As the nights grow longer and Halloween draws near, the witching hour can be especially perilous. In Rokugan, the Hour of the Ox is the time for spirits, when the barrier between the living and the dead is at its thinnest…

To celebrate the spooky season, Aconyte Books is pleased to present “The Bloodied Stone,” a new short story from Marie Brennan, bestselling author of The Memoirs of Lady Trent.

Read or listen to this haunting tale below. You can also find the audio version on Acontye Book’s YouTube channel and the Aconyte Fiction Podcast.

The Bloodied Stone

by Marie Brennan

The scene should have been tranquil, even idyllic: a green mountainside bathed in sunset light, the air warmed by the scents of fresh wood and new tatami. But it was eerily empty, the buildings uninhabited except for two men and an inugami, and the chill that traced up Ryōtora’s spine could not entirely be blamed on the wind’s evening edge.

He and Sekken didn’t have to be here yet. Others would come soon, the teachers and scholars and students who would populate their new school, and then this place would be full of prayers and conversation, banishing the eerie solitude of the mountains. But Ryōtora had wanted a chance to familiarize himself with the place before everyone arrived, and Sekken – giddy with the delight of their recent wedding – had agreed.

Sekken was probably regretting that decision now, city man that he was. But Ryōtora, watching Tanshu romp through the ferns with his tail up like a flag, spotted the faint smile on his husband’s face. Sekken was getting better at sharing the perception of his spirit dog through their shared spirit bond, and so Ryōtora could partake of the inugami’s joy, rather than sensing Sekken dwelling on how far they were from anything resembling civilization. Seibo Mura, the nearest village, was half a day’s walk away.

The journey here had tired them both, so they shared tea before dinner. The ceremony helped restore and balance the energy of their linked spirits, and afterward, they ate their rice balls in companionable silence.

“Tomorrow,” Sekken said, suddenly.

His voice startled Ryōtora more than it should have, and he coughed on a bit of pickled plum. “What?”

“We’ll have company tomorrow,” Sekken said. “Or the day after. Then this place won’t feel so… quiet.”

Ryōtora smiled, burying his uneasiness. “Yes. And they’ll bring books for you to read.”

“I’ll probably be too busy for that,” Sekken predicted, but the prospect no doubt cheered him all the same. Together they unfolded the futon they’d brought, stripped down to their lightweight inner robes, laid down side by side.

It took longer than it should have for Ryōtora to fall asleep. He knew these mountains, knew the silence broken by only crickets and owls, the creak of branches in the wind. Yet a tension seemed to thrum behind them, as if something watched them, and he fell asleep thinking, Tomorrow, I’ll make sure nothing’s amiss…

Only to be jolted awake by Sekken. “Ryōtora! Up, up! We must get outside!”

The building shook in the throes of an earthquake, the beams creaking ominously around them. Outside, Tanshu barked an urgent, repetitive warning. Habit made Ryōtora move before his sluggish brain caught up. Earthquakes were common in Dragon lands; this wasn’t the first time he’d fled a building in groggy stupor.

They might have stayed put. No sooner did they rush out into the chill night than the ground stilled, though Ryōtora knew better than to assume they were safe. “We should take a look around,” he told Sekken. “If the building is damaged–”

“I’m not some coastal Crane. I know.” But Sekken’s attention wasn’t on Ryōtora. It was on Tanshu, whose monotonous barking had not ceased. The inugami stood poised, facing the building, as if trying to direct his master’s gaze to something there.

Sekken knelt, putting his hand on the back of the dog’s neck. “It’s all right. Just an earthquake.” Slowly Tanshu subsided, but a concerned whine slipped out.

By the waning moon’s position in the sky, it was some time after midnight. Ryōtora paced a circuit around the building, looking for cracked or displaced beams. Everything seemed fine… except the night was again eerily quiet. No crickets or owls. Even the wind seemed to have stilled.

Returning to Sekken and Tanshu, he tried to sound more confident than he felt. “We can probably go back inside.”

Suiting deeds to words, he stepped up onto the veranda, approached the open screen door. Behind him, Tanshu began barking again.

Sekken said, “Ryōtora…”

The moment Ryōtora’s foot touched the tatami, the building trembled, shaking violently again.

He leapt back, stumbling on the grass. Sekken caught him, and for a moment the two clung to each other, hearts beating a matched warning.

Unsteadily, Sekken said, “Tell me. In Dragon lands, do earthquakes often strike just one building, and leave everything around it absolutely still?”

Ryōtora stared at him, all sleepiness banished. “No. They don’t.”

No other buildings objected to their presence. Returning to the first one, they circled the structure warily, keeping their distance. Tanshu growled low in his throat, but when Sekken reached for the inugami’s mind, all he received was a general wariness, a sensation of presence. Whatever disturbed the place before had gone quiet now.

“I wonder if the builders accidentally placed a support pillar upside down.” Ryōtora peered at the exterior columns. “That can offend the spirit of the tree.”

“Really?” Sekken said. “In Phoenix lands we do that on purpose.”

Ryōtora stared at him. “Why? Do you hate trees?”

Despite their situation, Sekken laughed. “No, because of the old saying, ‘as soon as a building is complete, it starts to fall apart.’ So we turn one of the pillars upside down to keep it from being ‘complete.’”

“We leave off one roof tile, instead.”

“I don’t think it’s the spirit of the roof that’s offended.”

“An earth spirit, perhaps,” Ryōtora mused. “But the builders were told to carry out all the appropriate rites. Saiun-nushi should be satisfied.”

Nevertheless, he sat down on the ground to pray quietly. By the time he opened his eyes and shook his head – no sign of trouble from the spirit of the mountain – an absurd thought had come to Sekken. “We didn’t name this building Something of the Hundred Somethings, did we?”

Ryōtora smiled with wan humor. “No. It’s simply the Northeast Hall.”

Sekken took what comfort he could from that. “Look, let’s go to sleep in one of the other buildings. It will be uncomfortable, but we can address this problem in the morning.”

But Ryōtora’s gaze focused on the sky. “I don’t know if we can. It’s the Hour of the Ox.”

How he could tell that by moonlight alone would forever remain a mystery to Sekken, but the implication was much clearer. The Hour of the Ox. When the barrier between the living and the dead was at its thinnest.

The hairs on the back of Sekken’s neck rose. “This is a new building. There was nothing on this site before it, was there?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then how could there be a ghost?”

“I don’t know,” Ryōtora said. “We had no trouble in the daytime. I think we must resolve this tonight… and I don’t want to wait until the others arrive. What if that makes the problem worse?”

They would have more allies with which to confront it, but Sekken recognized the expression on Ryōtora’s face, that sense of duty as immovable as the mountain. This was their school. If something had gone wrong in its construction, addressing it was their responsibility.

The doorway still sat open, a maw opening onto darkness.

It can’t be any worse than what we’ve faced before, Sekken thought, then promptly wished he hadn’t.

Trying to steady his voice, he said, “If it looks like the building is going to collapse, then we get out.”

“Of course.”

Sekken waited until Ryōtora began to pray again, hands linked in a complex mudra. Then he called Tanshu to his side, buried his own fingers in the dog’s thick ruff. “Sniff it out,” he said softly. “Ghost, yōkai, angry pillar… whatever it is, find the problem for us.”

Tanshu whuffed once, and together, the three of them went inside.

The shaking started immediately, stronger than before. The earth felt like it would collapse beneath them. Sekken lost his balance, crashing to his knees. Tanshu fared better and staggered forward, attention homing in on a spot in the murk. Sekken crawled after him, trusting the inugami’s instincts, trying to slide his mind sideways so he could share Tanshu’s senses. What was that? Hatred; horrible crawling hatred…

Hot fire shot up his left arm, breaking his concentration, causing him to scream. One of the ceiling beams had given way, crashing down and just clipping his arm but still snapping the bone. But through Tanshu, Sekken had seen enough.

“It’s underneath us!” He couldn’t see Ryōtora in the strange dark but thank all the Fortunes his left arm was broken, not his right. With his good hand, Sekken drew his wakizashi and flung himself forward, stabbing the blade through the mat, through the boards.

And into something that shrieked.

A boulder erupted through the floor, tossing floorboards, mats, and Sekken aside. Impossibly, Sekken’s wakizashi was embedded in the boulder – and where it had struck, blood poured from the stone.

The building stopped shaking. The oppressive darkness lifted, the ceiling fully caving in. Ryōtora finished his prayer, and with a howl, a woman, neither old nor young, with the wild hair of a specter coalesced above the stone. “You desecrate my grave!” she roared.

Ryōtora bowed low, shaking. The last ghost he’d dealt with had nearly killed him; he could only hope this one was less dangerous. “Forgive us, stranger. We did not know.”

“This place was built in your name,” she said venomously. “It is your builders who tore up my memorial tablet and used it in the foundation of your home.”

His gaze went to the stone beneath her. A memorial tablet? It was just a weathered boulder.

But the seeping blood was flowing into strange lines, as if following grooves too faint to see. Sekken, clutching his arm, raised himself enough to look. “Bonsu,” he said hoarsely. “It’s carved with the name Bonsu.”

At the sound of her name, a tremor went through the building. The walls cracked and other pillars tumbled down.

“Why were you buried here, Lady Bonsu?” Ryōtora asked, hoping courtesy would blunt her rage. “We are miles from the nearest village. There was never a settlement here, no record of even a shrine.” They’d checked the archives before choosing their site. For a school dedicated to the study of karmic bonds, they wanted a clean slate.

With a blast of cold air, she suddenly appeared right in front of him. “I was murdered,” she hissed. “Hunted down and killed by Phoenix Inquisitors.”

Now the chill was inside him. Mahō.

Blood magic.

Pain loosed Sekken’s usually cautious tongue. “Why would someone erect a memorial tablet for a madōshi?”

Bonsu shrieked again, the sound piercing enough that Ryōtora clapped his hands over his ears. “I only read the texts! I never used them! But the Phoenix hounded me from their lands to here, because I was rōnin, because no one cared enough to speak up for me, not until it was too late. I merely read the wrong scrolls, and they killed me for it and burned my corpse. I told them I was innocent, but they didn’t believe me until after I was dead!”

Ryōtora could piece together the rest. The memorial tablet would have been set up to appease her spirit and prevent this exact haunting. Clearly, it had worked… but then centuries passed, the story was forgotten, the stone too weathered to read. Then came the builders for the school, who saw a boulder of useful size and moved it to serve as a footing for the floor joists.

Sekken’s mind, predictably, focused on the more distant past. “My clan’s inquisitors–”

Whatever else he meant to say was lost in the sudden jolt that threatened to collapse what remained of the roof upon them. “Your clan?” Bonsu whispered, her voice sinking inhumanly low. “You are Phoenix?”

“Not anymore,” Sekken said hastily. “A slip of the tongue, that’s all. I married into the Dragon not long ago, and I haven’t adjusted to the change.”

“A Phoenix,” she hissed. Her hair began to float on an unseen wind. “A Phoenix has found me again. Chasing after me. Hunting me. Just like before.”

“Very different! Not at all like before!”

But Bonsu’s mind was trapped in the trauma of centuries past, when she’d been cut down by merciless foes – the inquisition determined to punish and destroy any trace of corruption with brutality. “I held back, and you killed me anyway,” she snarled. “What point is there in restraint, if it only ends in death?”

And she began to chant.

Not the words Ryōtora had been taught, sacred prayers to the spirits of the four material Elements, to the Thousand Fortunes and the ancestor spirits. These words crawled into Ryōtora’s ears like worms, twisting around his bones.

Invocations to the kansen. To corruption.

Her attention wasn’t on him, though. It was on Sekken… and the bloodstained sleeve of the man’s broken arm.

Sekken screamed.

Sekken had once been possessed by a spirit. He knew what it was like to feel supernatural force reach within him, but then he had been a vessel, a container for something greater than himself.

Now he felt like the ink-soaked moss of a writing kit, being squeezed for what was inside him.

Pain pulsed in his arm as his blood flowed more freely and rose into the air toward the ghost’s waiting hand. I only read the texts, she’d said. I never used them.

But she knew what they said. Scrolls describing mahō rituals. And now, in her maddened fear, she reached for that forbidden power.

Tanshu leapt for her, snarling, but the ghost grew and arched her back along the broken roof, chanting profane words and blocking the night sky. Sekken clamped his good hand over his arm to stop the bleeding, ignoring the flare of agony, but it did no good. The blood continued to seep between his fingers, around his palm, rising into the air for the ghost to use for evil.

Then Ryōtora was at his side, rattling out a frantic prayer to the water spirits. He wasn’t much of a healer, but it was enough to close the open wound on his broken arm.

Too late, though. Bonsu controlled his blood, and what she might be about to do with it, Sekken didn’t want to guess. He scrabbled for his wakizashi, with the half-formed thought of throwing it at her.

Ryōtora stopped him with a hand on his wrist and a desperate cry to the ghost above. “Bonsu! Please, I beg you! Don’t taint your soul like this! Not after so long. Don’t prove your murderers right!”

“What does it matter?” she howled. “They will never leave me in peace! See him there? The inquisitor ready to destroy me again!”

Sekken released his wakizashi as if it had burned him. “No! Not an inquisitor, not looking to destroy you. We’d rather help you.”

Somehow. Could Ryōtora exorcise this ghost?

But his husband was talking, not praying. “It’s not too late,” Ryōtora said, with all the intensity he could pour into his resonant voice. “The kansen have not yet answered your call. Whatever you intend to do with that blood, you can stop. Let those blasphemous texts fade from your mind. Your spirit is still pure, but once that changes, there will be no hope for you. Do not go any further down that road.”

Scooting on his knees and one hand, Sekken shifted away from his blade, moving ahead of Ryōtora. In his peripheral vision he saw his husband twitch, wanting to stop him, but Ryōtora, may all the Fortunes bless him, trusted Sekken and let him go.

He bowed twice, then gritted his teeth and awkwardly clapped his hands twice. The impact shot up his arm like a lightning bolt, but maybe some of Ryōtora’s healing had gotten to the bone, because Sekken didn’t faint. Then, he bowed again.

As if he were at a shrine.

“Honored Bonsu,” he said, with all the courtesy he could muster. “Let this former Phoenix make amends for the errors of the past. If you do as my husband begs and turn aside from this tainted path, then we will not merely erect a tablet in your memory. This place is to be a school, with a shrine to the Fortune of Fate. We will enshrine you as well, to serve as a guardian spirit to our students and instructors.”

Behind him, Ryōtora inhaled swiftly. That was no small thing to offer. While any ancestor or predecessor might get a memorial tablet, Sekken was proposing to treat a murdered rōnin like a revered spirit.

But after a moment, Ryōtora said, “Yes. If you resist this temptation and lay aside your rage… then yours will indeed be an example for our students to learn about and respect.”

Slowly, Bonsu descended toward the floor. Tanshu retreated but did not turn his back, his ears still pinned back. Sekken wondered what would happen if an inugami bit a ghost.

He didn’t have to find out. Bonsu’s shoulders slumped, her hair relaxed from its wild halo. The droplets of his blood hanging in the air spattered to the tatami like filthy rain.

“I cannot trust your word, Phoenix,” she whispered. Her drowning black eyes locked onto Ryōtora. “But I trust yours. Remember me well.”

Then she faded out of view.

They spent the rest of the night in another building, not because Ryōtora feared the return of the ghost, but because the Northeast Hall was now well and truly unsafe.

Without a ghost hovering on the edge of damnation above them, he was able to focus his prayers and properly mend Sekken’s arm. But the effort of the night’s events left them both exhausted. They slumped together on the bare tatami. Their futon was too blood-spattered to think about using it.

“We’ll have a hard time explaining everything when the others get here,” he said, pillowing his head on his husband’s shoulder.

Sekken’s laugh was a minor earthquake beneath his cheek. “No, we won’t. By now, they expect this kind of thing from us.”

Tanshu thumped heavily onto their feet. With that inadequate blanket to warm them – and praying for no further disturbances – they went, at last, to sleep.

Sekken and Ryōtora originally appeared in Marie Brennan’s Hundred Tales trilogy. Their story begins in The Night Parade of 100 Demons, which sees the pair join forces to investigate a lethal supernatural mystery. Their adventures continue in The Game of 100 Candles and The Market of 100 Fortunes. All these titles are available from Aconyte Books, and for a limited time they are discounted on DriveThruFiction.com and select other retailers.

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