So he hunkered down against the stone rail as the cold night wind gusted by, his teeth chattering despite the padded coat he had wrapped around himself, his fur hat pulled down over his ears, his chin sunk on his chest, his inner voice telling him that he was a fool for going through all this pain and humiliation. But doggedly he remained there, waiting, hoping, praying for a revelation.
It was a bitterly cold night. The moaning wind was like daggers of ice that cut through him mercilessly. Yamagata sat alone and miserable, trying to ignore the freezing wind, trying to find the path to atonement. Nothing. Only darkness and the glittering points of thousands of stars staring down at him from the black bowl of night.
He stared back at the stars. He could make out the Big Dipper, of course, and followed its Pointers to the North Star. Polaris was a thousand light years distant, he remembered from an astronomy lecture many years ago.
The nearest star was Alpha Centauri, but it was too far south to be seen from these frigid mountains.
Suddenly Yamagata threw his head back and laughed, a hearty, full-throated roar of delight that he hurled back into the teeth of the keening night wind. Of course! he said to himself. The answer has been all around me for all these years and I was too blind to see it. The stars! My path must lead to the stars.
BOOK I
THE REALM OF FIRE