The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind Read Online Free PDF Page B

all at the age of fourteen.
    From the small, seaside village she'd been sent to a bigger town. Not knowing what was going to happen next, she was trundled here and packed off there for days. Finally, she was taken to a big city and was handed over to a troupe of traveling entertainers.
    She had spent a little over three years with the troupe. To Suzu, it was a solid blur of incomprehension. They visited cities hither and yon, high and low, met many, many people. All she gathered was that she had somehow been separated a great distance from the land she knew. There were mountains that pierced the heavens, cities surrounded by high walls, strange manners and customs, a strange language. All of it was far beyond her grasp. That was the conclusion she was forced to come to.
    With every new city, Suzu harbored fresh hope that, by some happy accident, she would run into a person who could understand her and could send word back to her village. Every expectation was dashed. About the time she began to abandon hope that such a person existed, they arrived in Jin County and there she met Riyou.
    In four years she hadn't learned a single one of the troupe's performances. She was consigned to cleaning duties. She knew it was because she didn't understand what anybody was saying.
    No matter where they went, she didn't recognize the language people spoke. No matter how many times people talked to her and she talked to other people, nothing made sense. Nobody knew the way home. She had no idea what to do. Every day ended with her in tears.
    People would just laugh at her when she said she didn't understand what they were saying. Eventually, Suzu stopped talking all together. It was too intimidating either to speak or be spoken to.
    So it was hardly unreasonable that she should be delighted beyond belief when, in a city in Jin County, she met Riyou. It wasn't long before Riyou was deriding her at every turn, but Suzu relished at least being insulted with words she understood.
    Riyou could communicate with her because she was a wizard. Learning that if you became a wizard everybody would understand you and you would understand them, Suzu begged to be made a wizard. She'd happily become a servant, work as hard as she had to. And so, answering her pleas, Riyou invested her as a wizard.
    And now, for a century, she had been all but a prisoner in this place.
    She'd thought of running away any number of times. Yet if she left the grotto without Riyou's permission, Riyou would have her name erased from the Registry of Wizards. And if that happened, she'd be plunged right back into that incomprehensible world of misfortune.
    "Well," said the old man, patting Suzu on the shoulder. "You'd better get back to work. No rest for the weary."
    Suzu nodded, clenching her cold fingers together. Somebody, she repeated to herself, somebody please save me.

Chapter 6
    P ale blue heavens, the color of winter. Beneath the low-lying skies, a noisy commotion poured out from the city and snaked up the side of the mountain. The tumultuous echoes rebounded from the towering Ryou-un, almost loud enough to shake the city to dust.
    The name of the city was Gyouten. The faces of the people walking its streets were bright and cheerful. Neither the scattered rubble from the wrecked facades nor the poverty apparent in the dress of the city's occupants weighed heavily on anybody's mind. The reason why could be readily understood from the waving banners everywhere you looked.
    The design of the banner was that of a yellow branch against a black background. From the branch hung three fruits, peaches according to custom. A snake was coiled around the branch. This was the legendary branch given to each of the kings by the Lord God of the Heavens at the Creation of the World.
    Draped from every nook and cranny of every building, the banners ascended the slopes, as if showing people along the way to the auspicious events taking place at the Imperial Palace.
    The entranceway to every