�Come in, old friend,� Hikaru invited, �I have sake today. Some brave soul fetched
it for us this morning.�
	Roman entered the Hierophant�s hut and took his seat on a small black cushion on
the floor.
	�Sake?� Roman asked, trying to smile.  �Are you going to help me up?�
	Hikaru laughed his deep, hearty laugh. It boomed like thunder through the small
hut, draped with silk and sword.
	�We�ll help each other,� Hikaru said. �I fear the more we drink, the lower to the
ground we will get!�
	Roman tried to laugh.
	�Don�t be afraid, Roman,� Hikaru murmured in a low voice.  He sounded like a
different person.
	Roman sipped the warm, steaming alcohol.
	�I have much to tell you,� Hikaru began. �Rannoch tells me you have many
questions. About the Dark....�
	Roman nodded. Hikaru refilled Roman�s small round glass.
	�Greed and Importance, Hypocrisy and Ego.  Industry and Censorship, Prejudice
and Fear--these are the names of the Dark.  It has been with us since before Adam�s fall. 
It was necessary in the beginning--the dark frames the light;  opens the Void to us. But it
grew.  It grew until it took on a physical form: gray howling faces singing wind like a
thousand falling swords.  The Dark came for me, and for the others, and it came and
came, until it found us here.  And it trapped us here.�
	Hikaru filed Roman�s glass again.
	�This place was a perfect home for the Dark.  Hypocrisy and Censorship and
Prejudice and Fear are so rampant here.  The South is not a place of glorified white marble
pillars and wisteria, it is a place of darkness.  Of burning crosses in Negro preachers� yards
and lynchings by moss-covered riversides.�
	�Why did you come here?� Roman asked, sipping his sake.
	�Where Dark is stronger, Light is strongest.�
	Hikaru rose and crossed to a wall of the hut which was covered with swords hung
in their scabbards.  He took one large samurai; held it lovingly for a moment in its red
leather scabbard.  He drew the sword;  stood in a warrior stance.
	The blade of the sword was black tempered steel.  Along its edge, brown flakes
announced the blade�s bloody past.  Hikaru wielded it over his head in samurai fashion,
leering at some unseen face. Then he smiled, lowering it, and laughed his hearty laugh
once more.
	�This is the sword my second used in my suicide.  My blood is still on the blade.� 
he offered the sword to Roman.
	He took it.  The blade was heavy in his hand. His stomach was filled with sickness
and confusion.  He studied Hikaru�s blood, which flaked off the sword into his hands.
	�Do not be horrified by what you see here, my friend.  I am beyond such things as
blood and swords now.  Even my head severed from my shoulders cannot keep me down. 
All you have to fear is Fear itself--in the form of the Dark.�
	Hikaru took the sword from Roman; sat back on his cushions with the sword laid
across his knees.
	�The time has come to enter the Void, Roman.  We must send someone into the
Dark;  send someone to subdue it.  You are that someone.  You are to be the
Twenty-Second.  We have a Hierophant and a Priestess, a Hermit and the Moon, but we
need a Fool.  You are that Fool, Roman. You are our wise and innocent Fool.�
	Roman�s expression was one of shock and drunken displeasure.
	Hikaru erupted in a gale of thunderous laughter, tipping the sake pitcher and
spilling a small trickle of the dark liquid.
	It was then that both realized someone stood in the doorway.  It was Jay.  His face
was a taught, broken frown--his left jaw bowed out slightly; evidence of a fractured bone. 
Blood stained the floor around him as he crossed from the doorway and took a seat on
one of the black cushions, the fabric darkening his translucent form as it showed through
him.  Compound fractures at the elbow and knee revealed gleaming shards of ivory bone. 
And his sweater opened in a ruby-white gash in front, disclosing ropes of unbound flesh
and gore.
	Roman choked back the sake which rose in his throat, backing across the silk
cushions to lean against the crumbling dirt of the hut�s wall.
	�I have been to the Void of which you speak,� Jay said slowly. �Dark came upon
me, and I told myself to be still--but there was no hope, no love; no faith.  Dark engulfed
me--the pain of all that is evil in the world.  I was the victim of Prejudice and Hypocrisy,
lynched beside the river of my mind.  Torn by Greed�s hungry fingers;  forced to bear the
martyrdom of Self-Importance.  Seduced by Industry;  down her conveyor belts of steel
and nails. Crushed beneath the heavy feet of Ego; Censorship proofread my mind. Fear
hammered me against the earthen walls of my prison.  And within the Dark there was
silence--the silence of a quiet theater when all the people have gone;  of bored travelers
who don�t know each other.  The silence of the half-conscious mind.  And everything was
still.  And then the light--a bright, blinding peacock-white light.  Light of all lights.  The
Dark was the Light, and that stillness inside--that was the dance.  The dance that binds the
world itself together.�
	�You will be the Fool-Maker,� Hikaru said softly.