Heretic: Betrayers of Kamigawa

Writer - Scott McGough
Cover Art - Chris Moeller
First Printing - Januari 2005

Quick reminder: because the Kamigawa trilogy is a continuous story written by the same person I'm saving the actual review till the end of book three. This entry just contains the summary, trivia and continuity section!

SUMMARY
A few months have passed in our story. Michiko has returned to Eiganjo only to promptly be put under house arrest, and has been teaching herself kanji magic to get a message to Toshi to break her out. Lady Pearl-Ear gets exiled, and Konda, after O-Kagachi ate three of his mounted divisions last book, summons Yosei, the Morning Star to protect the castle. Meanwhile Toshi is relearning his magic following the power boost he got from the Myojin of Night's Reach. Crime lord Boss Uramon tries to recruit him to move against the soratami moving in on her territory. He refuses, and Uramon sends a bunch of thugs after him, including Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer.

What, this cute little guy?

Toshi heads into the Heart of Frost, the realm of the ice spirit the Yuki-Onna. Since "cold" falls under the purview of the Myojin of Night's Reach and he is now Night's acolyte, he reckons he can claim its power. After getting most of her pursuers killed by the Onna he forces Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer into the Hyozan reckoners, then succeeds in gaining the Onna's power of frost and to capture her in a magic disk via a kanji ritual. He takes his new companions to Hidetsugu.

It turns out 'Tsugu's mission to the Yamabushi last book was a.... let's say a partial succes. The masters refused to work for him, so he killed them and abducted their apprentices, who he has tortured into his willing subjects. He also has Chroyu pinned to his wall, burned and dismembered but still kept alive by a magical crystal embedded in his chest. The ogre tells Toshi that he appreciates the "gift" of Choryu, but that the Hyozan oath isn't fulfilled until the vengeance for Kobo is complete. He plans on marching against the orochi and budoka, to raze the Minamo academy to the ground and to destroy the soratami city above it, until everyone even tangentially responsible is dead. Toshi convinces Hidetsugu that he needs more time and tells him to attack Jukai first. After that the two of them will meet up and attack Minamo together. They also trade magical items: 'Tsugu gets the disk the Yuki-Onna is trapped in, while Toshi gets a plate that can summon an oni.

Meanwhile, Lady Pearl-Ear is exiled from Eiganjo for failing to protect Michiko. She goes back to her home village only to find it burned and raided by the akki army. Her brother Sharp-Ear shows up, tells her the kitsune are now living in the forest. He also reveals captain Nagao survived and he and his soldiers are still around. The kitsune have severed their ties with Konda as he clearly can't protect them anymore. The elders want Sharp-Ear, who has lived with humans for over two decades now, to lead a diplomatic delegation to Minamo, after Michiko's friend Riko told them she "learned something" there, but the leaders aren't allowing her to research further.

Hidetsugu gives the Yuki-Onna plate to Godo as a way to get the armies of Eiganjo of his back. Godo takes it to the border and cracks it. The Yuki-Onna starts luring soldiers to their death, but now she looks like Michiko.

Toshi, Marrow and Kiku go to Uramon. Toshi sneaks in and follows her to the Shadow Gate, a shrine to Night's Reach. He goes through it and ends up in the Honden of Night's Reach (not the bit you see on the card though, the Spirit World equivalent). He barters with his new mistress, who gives him the power of the gate to teleport across the world as an innate power, making him indebted to her. After killing Uramon, Kiku and Marrow go lie low. Toshi uses his new powers to teleport Michiko out of Eiganjo, dropping her off with Pearl-Ear. He tells the kitsune to keep Michiko away from Minamo, but they do not listen. Toshi also teleports to Hidetsugu's lair and mercy kills Chroyu.

Konda is planning to send troops to look for his missing daughter and to deal with the attacks of the Yuki-Onna on the border, but then O-Kagachi attacks Eiganjo. All the refugees are told to evacuate, but while fleeing in the opposite direction of O-Kagachi they run straight into the akki army. Takeno also releases Isamaru.

The kitsune delegation, including Michiko, talk to Hisoka at Minamo. When the princess reveals herself, Mochi launches a soratami armada on Jukai, then heads down to talk to Michiko himself, showing her more of her father's actions, and revealing that what he took was in a way a "daughter" of O-Kagachi, a spirit-world equivalent of Michiko herself. Meanwhile, Toshi uses his new powers to follow Chiyo, one of the soratami who attacked him at the start of the last book, back to the cloud city. There they fight, until Toshi unleashes the oni Hidetsugu gave him, who mauls Chiyo. He then teleports next to Mochi, who admits the soratami plan to conquer Kamigawa (for its own good of course) after O-Kagachi has toppled Eiganjo. Then suddenly the academy is rocked as Hidetsugu attacks. Turns out the ogre skipped attacking the Jukai, wanting to focus on those who gave the direct order to kill Kobo.

As Hidetsugu, his yamabushi minions and his summoned oni kill Minamo's guardian, Keiga, the Tide Star, Toshi teleports to Eiganjo. There O-Kagachi bites Yosei clean in half and attacks the tower. Takeno dies protecting Konda from flying debris.  Toshi grabs That Which Was Taken and teleports out. O-Kagachi disappears. While in Night's Reach's realm, the Myojin tells Toshi to never bring TWWT there ever again, but she lets him go for now. Back at Minamo he freezes Mochi with his ice powers and drops TWWT at his feet, hoping Konda, O-Kagachi and Hidetsugu's All-Consuming Oni of Chaos will tear each other apart over it. He then teleports Michiko and her allies back to Jukai.

Pictured: Toshi during much of this book.

Outside the tower the soldiers that went with the refugees were hit hard by the akki, but the appearance of Isamaru and the hurt-but-fighting Yosei rallies them. Inside the tower an army of twisted ghosts, lead by a misshapen Takeno, rises to aid Konda.

In the epilogue, Night's Reach cashes in on the favor Toshi owes her. It is time he fully devotes himself to her, and thus she has him leave the hyozan reckoners. Well, officially he fully devotes himself, but we actually end on these lines:

"As the Myojin of Night's Reach withdrew back into herself, Toshi wondered exactly what work she had in mind. He wondered how vastly her plans differed from his."

TRIVIA

• Yuki-Onna's card is not nearly as cool as the army-destroying ice monster she is here. Also, no idea how the "cold is part of night" reasoning matches with her card being red...
• Nezumi speak "nezumi tongue"
• Sharp-Ear's kitsune village is called Sugi Hayashi.
• Soratami claim to be descendants of the "moon myojin". Presumably that's another title for the Myojin of Seeing Winds?
• Godo is over 40 years old, and descended from a mountain tribe that fought for 3 generations to keep Konda out of Sokenzan. Remember that Konda is only 70 at this point, so his incursions into Sokenzan probably started early on in his career.
• Among Boss Uramon's creatures are "gaki ghosts, "exotic akuba" and a half-ogre.
• At the start of part 2 of the book Konda says he has a plan to summon the other three spirit dragons in addition to Yosei and Keiga, but then O-Kagachi attacks and nothing comes from it.
• O-Kagachi is described as the embodiment of the kakuriyo itself.
• I've been referring to TWWT as "That Which Was Taken" because that is the name everyone (who was around during Kamigawa block at least) knows it by, but in the book it is always called "The Taken One". Which is not nearly as cool a name, in my opinion. Though maybe I've just been conditioned to accept the other name for too long.

• The Yumegawa River leads to the Kamitaki falls
• It is in this novel that the soratami who was present when Kondo took TWWT is revealed as Meloku. He doesn't play any other role though, Mochi's two main co-conspiritors are Uyo, the silent prophet and leader of the Soratami, and Chiyo, Uyo's pupil and one of the two soratami that went after Toshi last time.
• The Minamo academy was hit hard by the kami at the beginning of the war, until they were saved by the soratami.
• Konda's actions created a rift in the border between the two worlds, that the kami attacks have been widening ever since. Much of this will be made in the Saviors set and online articles, but it actually plays a fairly small role in the novels.
• Isamaru is an Akita dog
• Hidetsugu's original plan was to feed all the myojin to his oni, but apparently he needed the right apprentice for that, thus the death of Kobo set that back significantly (especially since he keep killing his other apprentices...)
• Mochi says he introduced Toshi to Night's Reach "to keep her busy", thus getting two possible people who could interfere with his plan out of the way. No spoilers, but that doesn't really work out for him...

CONTINUITY

• Hidetsugu's home is now called Shinka, after remaining unnamed last novel, but it looks like a "small, one room domicile", that continues downstairs into big cavernous rooms. Which honestly sounds less like what is shown on Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep and more like Salón del Señor de los bandidos... Also, Hidetsugu and Kobo seem to have lived there alone, without any other ogres as Gatekeepers. Other sources, like upcoming online articles and the Champions fatpack booklet also mention it as being full of ogres. Most of the Kamigawa continuity issues seem fairly small, contradicting details or characters having different names. The portrayal of Shinka is one of the more egregious. After what we've seen in the last three trilogies though, this is actually a huge improvement!
• The soratami city above Minamo is called Otawara her. It will suddenly be called Oboro in the next novel though.