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The Tale of the Demon Lord	By : Arianawray Category: InuYasha > Yaoi - Male/Male > InuYasha/Sessh?maru > InuYasha/Sessh?maru Views: 56279 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
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XXXI: Mirror, Mirror
While Sesshomaru had a post-lunch drink with Naraku and the ministers before they were all to tour the gardens on the grounds, the younger members of the party were advised to return to their rooms to change their footwear if necessary. The ground would be wet after the shower that had fallen during their lunch, and Kanna's and Hakudoshi's sandals were too flimsy not to be muddied and soaked through by the excursion.
Inuyasha took the chance to flee upstairs to his bedroom, to calm his unsettled emotions. He was still a little injured by Naraku's pointed revelation of Sesshomaru's past prejudice against half-demons. On the other hand, his heart had felt light enough to take flight when he heard Sesshomaru's honest response to the spider lord's verbal stab.
He had to find his balance now, between the injury and the delight, and to process what his exchange with Sesshomaru at the dining table had meant, with all its undercurrents governing words so openly spoken, but holding so much more than their plain meaning.
It was also a good opportunity to escape for a while from the stifling social etiquette required when guests were present. Proper court behaviour was not new to him – his mother had taught him well both at the castle and at the home of her relatives. Her family, although they had fallen far from the days when they had ruled small human territories of their own, had retained some measure of social status among other mortals. That had meant regular visits from other important members of the extended clan, so she had made certain he knew what to do and carried himself well. But as a half-demon shunned by his human relations, he had never been expected to stay long at any gathering, nor would he have been welcome if he had tried to take a greater part in social events.
He hated being stiff and proper, anyway. It was so suffocating. Within Sesshomaru's castle, the seat of power of a demon lord who far outranked what Inuyasha's human family would have been even at the peak of its glory, the demands of etiquette were vastly more onerous than when he was growing up under his mother's care.
He exhaled a great, held-in breath when he entered the royal wing, where Kazuki was just bringing Natsumi's lunch in to her. Although the presence of the two servants meant that he wouldn't have the space or privacy to think about what he and his brother had said to each other earlier, he was pleased to see the friendly racoon demon from the kitchen.
Kazuki bowed to him and was hastening to set out the plates and excuse himself when Inuyasha told him: "Why don't you sit here and eat with Natsumi before you have to get back to your work? I'll only be in for a few minutes, and Natsumi must be bored out of her skull by not being able to move freely about as she usually does!"
Inuyasha quickly told the guards at the door that he was permitting Kazuki to eat with Natsumi today.
"You are very generous and kind, Your Highness," Kazuki said, delighted by his suggestion, for he had missed meeting his intended mate last night, as he always did after both of them had completed their work for the day. "I would be very happy to spend some time with Natsumi."
"I just need to put my writing paper out here on the desk, so that I'll remember to write to Kikyo and Kaede about what I've been up to these few days," the prince said, rifling around in his desk drawers.
"Your Highness, the letter you began writing to your friends in the village just before you learnt that you would be visiting them is still in the top drawer. You may wish to continue on the same sheet unless you have decided on a very different start to the letter," Natsumi reminded him.
"Hmm…" Inuyasha murmured, staring at the sheet addressed to Kikyo and Kaede, with the few lines he had written on the night Sesshomaru had told him about the secret passage and given him leave to visit his friends. "I suppose it's safe enough – I can always move on to newer news after a neutral opening like that, right?"
He put the sheet down on top of a small stack of writing paper on his desk, then shooed Kazuki and Natsumi over to their seats at the small table on which the dishes were set, telling them to ignore him and just enjoy the food.
He spent a bit of time trying to decide whether to wear the suede-textured blue boots he already had on out to the wet gardens. Finally, he made up his mind to change to a more moisture-resistant black pair, so that Natsumi wouldn't have to spend hours sponging grass stains out of the suede. Then he was off, walking briskly out through a side door into the castle grounds, where he was supposed to join the others for the start of the garden tour. The moment he stepped outdoors, however, the rising wind carried to him a distracting scent of either Naraku or his children, coming from the direction of Bokusen'o's forest patch.
Inuyasha immediately headed that way to find out who was there. He and his brother had agreed with Bokusen'o before the spider demons' arrival that the tree demon should remain undisturbed by the visitors. They decided that it would be best if the visitors had no knowledge of his existence, for Naraku was not known to be a friend of trees or tree demons. Sesshomaru wanted no trouble for their godfather while the spiders remained.
Fearing that the guests might have sniffed out his godfather, Inuyasha sprang into the trees, trying not to snag his formal robes on the twigs and branches. He moved in complete silence, his hair streaming back in the downwind like a thick white sash.
He did his best to conceal his presence in the forest patch. During his training sessions with Totosai, when he had learnt to sense his Tetsusaiga's spirit and demon-fang energy, he had also grown more aware of how his own half-demon aura was projected. Now, he experimented with pulling his aura into itself, so that it would not broadcast his arrival to those who were sensitive to the spiritual energies of others. He was pleased to find that he could do it. He had not yet learnt the trick of hiding his scent through magical spells, but this forested area was full of his scent, as he regularly spent so much time here. He thus hoped that he would not be noticed by those he had come to observe.
True to what his nose had alerted him to, Kanna and Hakudoshi were in these woods. Bokusen'o was in no immediate danger, for the spider children had not succeeded in sniffing him out. Besides, two castle guards on patrol at the wall were watching the visitors from a distance, ready to raise the alarm if they noticed anything wrong.
The young pair had only been following what little they had detected of a peculiar demon presence in the woods, going by what Inuyasha heard Hakudoshi say: "How odd – I'm sure I caught a hint of an extremely powerful presence all the way over here from where we were in that garden – but there's nothing now."
Kanna was ignoring her brother, looking as completely withdrawn as she had from the moment Inuyasha had seen her. It did not seem to bother her that the wind whistling through the forest was blowing her hair all across her face. She simply gazed blankly into her mirror through the colourless, flying strands whipping across her eyes, and did not respond to her sibling in any way. Inuyasha thought she was looking at her reflection, but his sharp ears soon caught the tiniest whispers moving past her pallid lips.
She was saying:
Mirror, mirror in my hands,
Who is the fairest in these lands?*
He thought he heard the mirror whisper back:
Sesshomaru is the fairest in these lands.*
Then Kanna said:
Mirror, mirror in my hand,
Who is the fairest of our clan?*
And Inuyasha heard the mirror whisper back:
Kagura is the fairest of your clan.*
"So she's not dead," Hakudoshi snapped, having heard the mirror's reply. "If she were dead, your mirror wouldn't keep naming her every single time you ask that question."
He began to stomp his way out of the forest patch, possibly with the intention of finding Naraku at once and telling him what the mirror had confirmed.
Kanna said nothing, but lowered the mirror again and held it before her like a child clutching a pillow or toy, before following her younger brother out of the woods. Inuyasha noticed that the mirror was still chipped where he had observed it to be damaged earlier. That thing was certainly taking a long time to repair itself from being dropped… or could it be the case that one shard had not returned to the main body of the mirror…?
He dropped softly to the ground once they had left. Hurrying over to Bokusen'o, he quickly said: "Don't show your face, in case any of them are spying on us. I just want to make sure you're all right."
He heard Bokusen'o's voice in his head returning the answer: Young prince, I am well. You should not be worrying about one as old and experienced in self-defence as I am – worry about yourself first.
"I'm fine," Inuyasha told him. "I'll be off now. Talk to you more when these nuisances are gone, okay?"
Yes, when they are gone.
So Inuyasha made his way back through the forest patch the way he had come, and hurried back to the meeting point in the autumn garden, where the tour was to start. He was among the last of the party to arrive.
His appearance provoked a skin-crawling smile from Naraku, and a look of quiet relief from Sesshomaru, who had wondered why he was taking so long. He bowed to them, and they soon began their walk.
The head gardener and two of his assistants were in attendance to introduce the visitors to some of the more interesting features in each landscaped space, and to tell them the names and histories of plants that aroused their curiosity.
"Where have you been?" Sesshomaru asked Inuyasha under his breath when Naraku and his children were asking the gardener about a particular species of tree that intrigued them because it was new to them, and because the garden staff had mentioned the healing properties of its roots when cut, pared and boiled into an essence.
"The two eldest spider sprogs were hanging around near Bokusen'o. I was worried about him; I spied on them to make sure they weren't up to mischief," he whispered.
"You should have taken a guard with you – I told you I didn't want you alone near them."
"A guard would only have announced my presence!" Inuyasha hissed back.
"Even so."
"Bokusen'o was there, and two guards were at the wall."
They had to break off their exchange there, for the group was moving on, and Naraku was returning to their side.
They toured three gardens before proceeding to cross the open field in front of the royal wing to reach another garden on the other side of the grounds. On the way, they passed Satoshi shepherding his child-demon followers into one of the gardens. The children all bowed to their king, prince, ministers and guests – the smaller ones needed prompting from their teacher not to shrink away from the intimidating spider visitors, but when they did bow, they looked adorable.
The gathering wind, which had not died down since the noontime shower, rose again and whipped every blade of grass around them into movement. Robes and hair flapped wildly as the royal party and the guests passed the children and Satoshi.
Alas, the wind was also disturbing things within the castle, as Inuyasha quickly found out when they were directly in front of the royal wing and he spotted movement inside his own bedroom window. The letter he had begun to Kikyo and Kaede, and some of the sheets of writing paper on his desk next to the open shutters, had been caught up by the sharp wind and were turning mad circles in the air between his room and the outside of the castle.
He heard Natsumi's soft exclamation and saw her attempting to catch the sheets.
He could now see her perfectly from where he was out in the field. Unfortunately, it meant that Naraku too could see her clearly, framed as she was by the open window.
The spider lord, still seething from the lunchtime discussion and the emotions between the two brothers he had witnessed, lost all sense of self-control at the sight of the racoon demon who had once been his slave, but who had been smuggled out of his clutches by a rebellious daughter he had tried to murder.
He recognised her immediately.
A growl that blended fury and excitement in equal portions was the only warning anyone had before a startlingly long tentacle shot out of Naraku's body towards the royal wing, where its muscular, curling tip lashed through the open window, wrapped around Natsumi, and snatched her right out of Inuyasha's bedroom.
Natsumi was mute with shock and terror, but Kazuki, who had lingered in the room to spend more time with her, shouted her name and leaped out of the window after her as she was drawn away from him, gripped in an unyielding, swiftly retracting tentacle.
The children that the royal party had just passed were still in the field, and the smaller ones were now crying loudly with fear and clinging to Satoshi as they saw Natsumi, whom they all knew and loved, being seized by the frightening spider lord.
"You!" Naraku snarled with a ferocious smile on his face as he slammed Natsumi to the grass without releasing her from his grip. "My runaway slave!"
The racoon girl had turned as pale as death. She uttered not a sound even though she must have felt the sharp physical pain of hard impact with the ground. Sheets of writing paper fluttered about; several sheets were crumpled between Naraku's tentacle and Natsumi's body.
Inuyasha's hand flew to his Tetsusaiga's hilt, and he was leaping towards Naraku to sever his tentacle in defence of Natsumi when Sesshomaru caught him by his robe and held him back.
Sesshomaru made certain that Minister Atsushi had a firm, restraining hand on Inuyasha's sash before he himself stepped towards the spider lord.
"Naraku!" Sesshomaru roared. "How dare any part of you trespass into my castle's royal wing?"
The demon lord's anger was palpable, and it shook some sense back into Naraku. Not enough, however, to make him release Natsumi. The polite mask quickly set back in place over the spider lord's features, and he smiled shakily, but his tentacle tightened its grip on the racoon demon girl and drew her closer to him.
"Let her go!" Inuyasha yelled, trying to squirm free of Minister Atsushi without injuring the old chieftain.
"Naraku!" Sesshomaru raised his voice again. "Your conduct is unacceptable!"
"Lord Sesshomaru," Naraku said in a deliberately pleasant voice that only shook very slightly with rage and loss of control. "This racoon demon is my slave. She ran away from me sixty years ago. I am astonished that you have her – perhaps the rumours I have heard about you also being in possession of my eldest daughter are true as well!"
"Get that fucking tentacle off her!" Inuyasha shouted. "You're hurting her!"
The prince was on the brink of slashing off his own sash to get away from Atsushi when a sudden blast of flame shot out of the sky above them and concentrated such a sharp, fierce burst of heat at Naraku's tentacle on its midpoint that the spider lord cursed in pain and loosened his hold on Natsumi, although he did not release her fully.
Everyone looked up in astonishment to see Totosai hovering above their heads on his flying cow, staring down at the scene.
"What is this outrage?" Naraku demanded shrilly. "Lord Sesshomaru, how dare one of your people attack your guest within your castle grounds? Who is that creature above us?"
"Naraku, do not think me as ignorant of etiquette as some others are," Sesshomaru said coldly. "I would never dream of permitting any of my people to attack a guest of mine. That fire demon you see above us, unfortunately, is not one of my people."
"Indeed I am not!" Totosai exclaimed, blinking at Naraku. "I am no subject of this land. I wander freely through many lands. Let's see now… was it 400 kingdoms I've passed through at the last count…? But I don't suppose you'd be interested in the details."
"Citizens of other lands are permitted such free access to the airspace over your castle?" Naraku asked Sesshomaru in disbelief.
"Not normally," Sesshomaru answered calmly. "That old fellow, however, was a good friend of my late father's, and he appears wherever and whenever he pleases."
"No better time to appear than when a damsel is in distress, is there?" Totosai murmured, descending to earth, dismounting and walking across the grass to peer at Natsumi, who was shaking with terror within the coil of Naraku's tentacle while Kazuki's attempts to free her from it with his bare hands and relatively small racoon claws were futile. "Such a pretty little thing! Now, if only I were two thousand years younger, I would… oh, but I see the young racoon fellow here glaring at me… I suppose he is your paramour… I'd better not try to relive my youth by kissing your lovely face, then…"
"What is this ridiculous creature chattering on about?" Naraku hissed to the rest of the party.
"Ridiculous?" Totosai echoed. "I? Ridiculous? Let's give you another blast of my firepower and see how ridiculous you find it! We'll be eating charred tentacle for tea, we all will!"
Totosai puffed up his cheeks to ready his flames for another attack, but Sesshomaru held up one hand to stop him and turned to Naraku, saying: "Naraku, I would strongly recommend that you release the girl. Those flames about to go your way are not to be trifled with – trust me, I would know."
Naraku seemed to weigh the pros and cons of backing down.
At last, very reluctantly, he uncoiled his tentacle from around Natsumi and drew it back into his body. He collected himself, then repeated to Sesshomaru in as calm a voice as he could muster: "The racoon demon girl is my slave. She vanished from my castle sixty years ago."
"Indeed?" was Sesshomaru response. "Well, she is now my servant."
"A master has the right to reclaim a runaway slave," Naraku said smoothly. "I never gave this girl leave to depart from my castle alive."
"A master does indeed have the right to claim his slave," Sesshomaru agreed. Inuyasha and Kazuki looked at the demon lord in surprise, but Sesshomaru was continuing to speak: "That gives us an interesting problem, as Minister Atsushi here is also the girl's master."
"Is that so?" Naraku asked, directing a pained smile in Atsushi's direction.
To his immense annoyance, Inuyasha now found himself – or rather, the back of his robes – passed into Minister Ryota's iron grip, as Minister Atsushi stepped forward.
"Lord Naraku, I am indeed the girl's rightful master," the old minister said. "I purchased her legally and in good faith, sixty years ago, from slave traders at the south-eastern border of this kingdom. I still have the papers to show that I made the purchase."
"Then perhaps you would be willing to sell her back to me?" Naraku proposed.
"I am afraid I cannot do that, Lord Naraku," Minister Atsushi answered. "For I gave her to Lord Sesshomaru as a gift. She may legally be my property, but she is no longer mine to give."
"I don't suppose Lord Sesshomaru would be willing to sell me one of his people?" Naraku asked, although it was plain from his voice and the look in his eyes that he knew he was fighting a losing battle.
"I do not sell my people, Naraku," Sesshomaru stated icily.
"Then I obviously have no hope of taking back this delightful creature."
"Lord Naraku, perhaps I might interest you in accepting some fine sculptures from my own collection at home?" Minister Atsushi suggested. "I hope it will be some compensation for having a single slave taken from you sixty years ago. Although I purchased her in good faith, I would not want you to lose out in a transaction you did not authorise."
Naraku was very fond of stone sculptures, having few craftsmen in his lands who were good at that particular form of art, and Minister Atsushi knew it well.
"I agree that it might be a fair exchange," the spider lord murmured, his avarice and love of fine things overcoming his desire to reclaim a girl who would eventually have died at his hands in any case. Besides, Totosai seemed to be puffing out his cheeks again; with him standing so close, it seemed wiser to offer no further resistance.
"I am so pleased to hear that," Atsushi said. "I shall send for the finest pieces from my town house gallery at once, and you may see if any or all of them are to your liking."
The immediate crisis thus passed. Kazuki quickly lifted Natsumi into his arms and hurried back into the castle with her, escorted into the royal wing by Totosai. Inuyasha accompanied them to the nearest entrance to the castle before walking over to Satoshi and the children to make sure that the little ones were all right.
The smallest of the group, the fox kit he had patted when he had first met them some days ago, was so frightened that he had jumped into Satoshi's arms and was clutching the healer's tunic in his paws, which had balled up into tight little fists. "It's all right now," Inuyasha said to him, leaning towards the child and stroking his head to reassure him. "The bad spider lord won't hurt Natsumi any more. She's safe and well."
"Natsumi will be okay?" the fox kit asked, staring at the prince through wide green eyes that glittered with tears.
"She'll be okay," he told the child, and gave the same assurance to the others around them. "We all like Natsumi, right?"
"Natsumi is nice," another child agreed in a hushed voice. "That spider lord is not."
"She is very nice. And she's fine now. That horrid fellow will never touch her again."
"Thank you for reassuring the little ones, Your Highness," Satoshi said. "They are quite upset, but I know they are brave children, and they will be right as rain in no time at all. If you would like me to attend to Natsumi, I would be honoured to do so."
"Yes, please," Inuyasha said gratefully. To a guard nearby, he said: "Please tell the guards outside my room that I want Satoshi to treat Natsumi for her injuries."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Jaken and some of the other staff who worked near the royal wing had rushed into the field when they had heard the commotion, and Jaken now offered to take charge of the children while Satoshi saw to Natsumi.
"Thank you, Jaken-sensei," the healer and the prince said to the little kappa demon.
"I will talk the children through this to make sure they don't become too traumatised by it," Jaken promised the prince as Satoshi hurried back to his office to pick up his medical equipment. "I believe Lord Sesshomaru is waiting for you to rejoin them before they continue through the grounds."
Inuyasha thanked him in return, then walked back to his brother's side.
The tour of the gardens did continue, despite the prince's hope that the ruckus would have made Sesshomaru or Naraku decide to terminate it early.
He spent the entire time glaring at the back of Naraku's head, for he refused to walk up front with the spider lord.
Only when Sesshomaru took the opportunity of a moment when no one was looking to slip his hand into Inuyasha's and squeeze it firmly did the prince relax at last and stop glowering at the back of the group, or fantasising about driving the Tetsusaiga clean through Naraku's heart.
At the end of the garden tour, Minister Atsushi invited Naraku to one of the meeting rooms, to which his aides had rushed over some of the best sculptures from his town house.
"These are wonderful," Naraku purred, taking his time to run his hands and eyes over the pieces, seeming to be especially taken by a quartet of life-sized, white-marble human beauties sculpted in such flawlessly natural fashion that their hair, scarves and dresses seemed to flow with the wind. It disturbed Inuyasha that Naraku seemed particularly taken by one of the statues whose face very much resembled Kikyo's countenance in her youth.
"If Lord Naraku is pleased by the four beauties, I would be delighted to give them to him," Minister Atsushi said.
"I would be delighted to receive them. Thank you, Minister," Naraku said.
Inuyasha was disgusted by the spider lord's grasping nature, and upset that Minister Atsushi was losing pieces of art that he obviously treasured. But his spirits – and those of all the other dog demons present – lifted when Totosai appeared in the doorway of the meeting room, and Naraku quickly made his next declaration.
"I had not planned to make this a long visit," said the spider lord. "I thank Lord Sesshomaru for his generous hospitality, but this is perhaps a good time for me to take my leave, before I outstay my welcome."
Sesshomaru inclined his head in acknowledgement of Naraku's decision. He and his ministers were surprised, for they had all thought that Naraku would impose on them for several more days to come, Totosai or no Totosai.
His sudden haste to leave was, however, not unwelcome to them; no one tried to invite him to remain any longer.
With surprising speed, the spider lord, his children and his entourage had packed up by teatime and were escorted to the border by a group of guards, where they vanished into their own lands along with Minister Atsushi's marble sculptures.
More good news came in the shape of a letter notifying them that the soldiers who had been sent to the southern provinces to help repair the damage from the floods had completed their duties, rebuilt the village houses, and would be on their way back within the day.
The castle felt like a brighter, safer place.
=================
*Quotations adapted from English translations of the German fairy tale, Snow White, by The Brothers Grimm
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The Tale of the Demon Lord