At Kōnodai (Day 5)

[The Land of Sō: Kōnodai]

"Your Excellency, Hiratsuka in Musashi has fallen to an enemy of unknown identity."

"And those same creatures are even now locked in battle with the Library-City Dungeon, no doubt."

Kazusa-no-suke, lord of the realm, answered calmly. In this world, by the way, Sō is politically a single country, not divided into Upper Sō and Lower Sō.

"You knew of it?"

"No, of Hiratsuka I knew nothing. But these past two days the Library-City has been growing at a furious rate, so there can be no doubt that some great battle has taken place."

"It has grown taller again? It won't come toppling over onto us, will it?"

"That much is safe. That dungeon lies eighty ri off, a million shaku away. Light does not travel in a straight line but bends, so the lower portion of the distant Library-City cannot be seen, but once the distance is known, calculating the height is a simple matter. Nail a bamboo measuring rod to a pillar and have a woman check it through a spyglass, and you'll have your answer. By that reckoning it has, at most, only just passed a hundred thousand shaku."

A full eighty ri distant, it could not be made out well without a spyglass. And it is common sense that through a spyglass a man must look only at women, and a woman only at the scenery. The reason the lower part of the tower cannot be seen, by the way, is that it is the earth, not the light, that curves; but in this region the world is thought to be a flat plane with Mount Sumeru at its center.

"A hundred thousand shaku is no laughing matter either. Now, to continue the report: when the merchants bound for Musashi reached Hiratsuka, the town was deserted, with headless ghouls wandering about, so it is said."

"The end to which the townsfolk came, no doubt. A pitiful thing."

"And so they tried to turn back toward Sō, but partway they were set upon by a swarm of headless ghouls. They fled home in a panic, but their water ran out, and many fell by the wayside, so they say."

"There is no water between Kōnodai and Hiratsuka, after all. In times past they tried whether a well might be dug, but not a single drop of water came up, by all accounts."

"The world is an unfair place. The Library-City has water enough to make a vast pond, while in our Sō, Iinuma is salt water and the Hiratogawa cannot be tamed."

"The land beyond the Futoigawa is good-for-nothing desert anyway; it might be best to let the Director of Books take it off our hands. That stripling of Oda has had a highway laid right up to the gate of his castle and seems to have reaped no end of benefit from it. As a result, the road running north from Kōnodai to Yūki is all but abandoned."

"Your Excellency, that desert was never Sō's to begin with. And the road to Yūki fell into ruin not because of feeble little Oda, but chiefly because Tsukuba came to ruin and the road was left untended."

"That toad, plaguing our country at every turn. The forty-ninth day is long since past, so by now he's surely fallen into the Beast Realm and become a true toad. So, to continue the report: the headless ghouls came pouring out of the desert, hot on the heels of the merchants. Is that it?"

"Just as you have discerned."

"I shall knock those creatures straight back into the desert at once. Though I'll not play the fool like Awa and mount an expedition across the desert all the way to the Irumagawa. Hiratsuka's troubles are Musashi's to mind."

"Or else, perhaps, it will be swallowed up by the Library-City. Is that a possibility?"

"No, that won't happen. A town where people once lived, unless it is a hamlet so far gone it stands on the brink of extinction, will not fall within a dungeon's sphere of influence for many years even after it is emptied of people. Hiratsuka was a town that had prospered well enough."