Quillblade

by Ben Chandler

  ‘This cannot be true.’ Tenjin covered his face with one of his sleeves.

  Arthur creased his brow even further. ‘What does this mean?’

  ‘If Seisui falls,’ Captain Shishi went on, ‘there will be nothing to stop the Demons from invading Shinzô. The Shôgo’s forces will not be strong enough to repel them.’

  Lenis had only half been listening to the babble around him. ‘What about Raikô?’ he mumbled. No one seemed overly concerned about what had happened to his sister.

  ‘I thought he had fallen long ago,’ the captain told him. ‘I am not convinced that the creature that emerged from that cloud was Lord Raikô at all.’

  ‘You don’t mean it might have been a Demon?’ Tenjin’s voice came from behind his sleeve.

  ‘It is possible.’

  Lenis rounded on the captain. ‘A Demon has my sister?’

  ‘We cannot know that. Seisui must be our priority now. If we lose her then we have lost everything. Shinzô will fall to the Demons.’

  Arthur cleared his throat. ‘Very well, Captain. I will accompany you into the Wastelands.’

  The captain bowed to his first officer. ‘Thank you, Lord Knyght. We will take the landcraft. Master Clemens, prepare the Bestia.’

  Lenis staggered backwards until he pressed against the infirmary door. ‘I can’t. I have to stay with Missy.’

  The captain stared him down. There was no animosity, no anger, but neither was there any sense that the captain would relent. ‘Speed is essential. Shamutar and his Demon horde could return at any moment. The landcraft is the quickest way to travel through the Wastelands. You are the only one who can pilot it.’

  ‘Who else will we take?’ Arthur asked.

  Yami had been crouching in a corner, trying, no doubt, to keep out of everyone’s way. He stood now. ‘I will go.’

  The captain turned to him. ‘You will not.’ The swordsman’s face darkened. ‘We cannot risk Gawayn taking control of you in the middle of the Wastelands.’ Yami looked as though he might protest, but Captain Shishi continued, ‘Lord Tenjin will come with us. I may need his help to decipher any writings we come across in Seisui’s temple.’

  Arthur placed his hands on the table in front of him and pushed himself to his feet. ‘Then let’s go.’

  Captain Shishi nodded. ‘It appears we are to become temple raiders for a time! I want the rest of you to return to Gesshoku and provision the Hiryû for a prolonged journey. We do not know what our next course will be.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the crew responded, and filed out of the mess hall.

  ‘Come on, boy,’ Hiroshi called to Lenis. ‘Fetch that Bestia of yours and leave your sister to the doctor.’

  Lenis nodded mutely and returned to his engine room. He had been given an order. It was as simple as that. It wasn’t a slave’s place to worry about his sister. The captain could always organise another communications officer if this one died, just as he could replace any other damaged part of the airship.

  When he got to the engine room, Lenis went to the Bestia hutch. Terra was slender, with long legs, brown fur, and a deer-like tail. As Lenis lifted him out of the hutch his eyes widened and Lenis held him tightly against his chest. He was close to crying and sought comfort in his Bestia’s fur. What if the captain got rid of him before he could find this World Tree and restore his sister’s soul? No one would buy a slave in Missy’s condition. They would be separated. That was assuming Lenis survived a trip into the Wastelands, of course. A shudder ran through his body. He was about to venture into the most dangerous place in the world. Demons were only a part of it. The Wastelands could infect him.

  Terra rubbed his cheek against Lenis’s face, trying to comfort him. Lenis took a steadying breath, wrapping Terra’s comfort around himself. Missy. He had to think about how he was going to help his sister. That crazy old doctor had told him he needed to speak to the World Tree. He had no idea what that was, but he knew someone who might. Tenjin knew all sorts of things, and the man was responsible for what had happened to Missy. Lenis vowed he would ask the records keeper about it at the first opportunity. He just had to try and think of a way to get him alone. Perhaps in the Wastelands the two could talk privately.

  Lenis found it hard to breathe past the lump in his throat. He could feel Terra’s comfort blanketing him, dampening his rising panic, but it was still there, smouldering, waiting to break free of the calm Lenis was forcing on himself. He somehow managed to haul himself and Terra up on deck. The others had already removed the landcraft from its hold and were attaching chains to it so they could lower it to the ground. The landcraft had four wheels that were taller than Lenis and it could seat five people comfortably. Lenis placed Terra in the machine’s engine block, located between the front two wheels, and crawled up into the driver’s seat just above and behind it. His chest felt chilled now that he was no longer holding the Bestia to him, and his muscles tightened against the cold. The terror began creeping back. He was about to journey into the Wastelands.

  Definitely not the best day of my life, he thought, and almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

  Tenjin climbed into one of the seats behind Lenis, and Arthur and the captain sat in the back. Once they were all settled, Kenji and Shin manoeuvred the airship’s winch into position and swung them out over the railing. Lenis thought about his sister and Long Liu’s strange rant. It was easier than thinking about where he was about to go. Could someone really lose their soul? Have it taken away from them? It seemed too unreal, but if the story of Yami were true then it was possible. He just had to corner Tenjin and demand the old man help him find the World Tree.

  The jolting ride down to the base of Gesshoku airdock rattled Lenis’s entire frame, but even the discomfort couldn’t distract him from his sister. They landed heavily and Terra started the engine. Lenis turned his thoughts to steering the landcraft through the village’s open gates and on towards the Wastelands. The people of Gesshoku came to stare at them, no doubt wondering why anyone would choose to venture into the realm of the Demons. They were right to wonder.

  Tenjin tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Pull up your scarf. Try not to breathe the miasma.’

  Lenis considered ignoring him. He was irrationally reluctant to take the records keeper’s advice. Anger sparked inside, strong enough to push aside the fear. Lenis nurtured it, but common sense won out eventually and he pulled the strip of fabric up to cover his mouth and nose.

  They sped west as though Terra could sense Lenis’s impatience. The gentle Bestia made no complaint, but Lenis knew he was pushing him too hard. It’s just for a little while. Just long enough to get to the temple ruins and back to the Hiryû.

  The stench coming from the Wastelands was stronger than it had been up on Gesshoku’s wall, and it grew ever more so as they approached. Lenis had to grind his teeth to keep from gagging. The others showed no signs of discomfort, but their scarves were tied tightly and he could tell they were breathing hard. The air smelt too sweet to be pleasant. Everyone held their breath as they finally passed into the Wastelands.

  The sight of the devastation around him drove all thoughts of Missy out of Lenis’s mind. As they drove along, patches of greenish fog seemed to give way before them to reveal glimpses of tainted land, only to creep back up behind them, surrounding them, cutting them off from the relative safety of Gesshoku and its walls. The trees they passed were bent at strange angles and their bark peeled away to reveal seeping cores of golden-red sap. The lichen that clung to them could have been the remains of decades-old flesh. Beneath their wheels the grass snapped.

  But it was not only the vegetation that was cursed. The ground itself was a patchwork of unwholesome colours. The rocky surfaces were uniformly grey; the soggy turf beneath the grass was not the dense brown of soil but a glossy, yellow-tinged quagmire. Unnaturally green veins ran through everything, gathering into large tracts or c
hasms of earth that glowed, fluorescent, beneath the shroud of vapour. Still other parts were a light tan colour that might have looked like sand if it weren’t so smooth. The interplay of dark and vivid patches on an ashen field made Lenis think of a diseased hide, as though the flesh of the earth itself was rotting. Even more unsettling, Lenis could feel the corruption in the terrain. He hadn’t sensed anything like it before. It felt like nausea, but that could just have been coming from his stomach.

  ‘We’re here.’ Captain Shishi’s sudden words jolted Lenis from his reverie. ‘Master Clemens, please turn off the engine.’

  As he did so, Lenis peered through the miasma. He had stopped the landcraft on a ridge overlooking a small depression, at the bottom of which was a temple shrouded in the heady vapour of the Wastelands. From their vantage point there was no mistaking the figure etched above the gaping entrance of the temple. It looked just like the dragon from Lenis’s dream.

  A slight breeze blew the miasma back and Lenis guessed the building to be roughly square in shape, though the temple’s far reaches were still cloaked and could have hidden outbuildings or other structures and corridors. The walls leant inwards, supporting a flat roof, and the dark rectangle under the carved dragon was large enough to have allowed Shamutar the Demon Jinn to enter without stooping. The well-defined lines of the walls and untarnished façade of the temple made it seem out of place in the rotting world that surrounded it. Only the tiniest slivers of green and yellow showed at the edges of the stonework, mute evidence that the Wastelands were eager to send their poisonous tendrils into Seisui’s temple.

  Arthur had been peering at the temple, too. ‘The damage doesn’t look too severe. How long ago did the Wastelands infect this area?’

  Tenjin answered, ‘Almost three hundred years ago.’

  ‘Do you think there is a connection between the location of these temples and the corrupted Totem? Perhaps that is how the Wastelands overcome them?’

  This time it was the captain who spoke. ‘No. There is no direct connection.’

  ‘You seem sure.’

  The captain nodded. ‘Kitachi, the Black Dragon of the North. Fûsei, the White Tiger of the West. Zenka, the Crimson Dragon of the South. None have temples in the Wastelands. All have fallen to its taint, yet Seisui, whose temple has been surrounded by the Wastelands for almost three hundred years, still holds out.’

  ‘How did you learn all of this, Captain?’

  ‘I did not wander all those years in vain, Lord Knyght.’

  Lenis thought about telling them about his dream, about his theory that Apsilla was the same Blue Dragon as Seisui, but he held back. He had no idea who Apsilla was, or even if she was real, and what good would it do now, debating theology in the middle of the Wastelands? The sooner they did whatever it was they were supposed to do and got back to the Hiryû, the better. Talking wasn’t going to get anything accomplished.

  Echoing Lenis’s thoughts, Arthur prompted, ‘So, what now?’

  In answer the captain nodded down to the gaping entrance. A Shinzôn man emerged from the shadowed doorway. He was as tall as Arthur and just as muscular, and he was dressed in black and red Shôgo robes. His hair, cropped to within an inch or two of his scalp, stuck out in all directions like the captain’s. Over his shoulder he carried the biggest sword Lenis had ever seen. It looked about two feet wide where it joined the hilt and almost seven feet long.

  ‘Akushin Karasu,’ Captain Shishi barely whispered. ‘He’s a member of the Shôgo clan, but his sword is for hire.’

  ‘So we can’t be sure the Warlord sent him?’ Arthur asked, and the captain nodded.

  As they watched, Karasu scanned the top of the ridges around the temple. Lenis cringed back.

  ‘He will not be able to see us through the miasma, Master Clemens,’ the captain reassured him.

  Lenis wanted to point out that they could see him perfectly well, but thought better of it. Captain Shishi had far more experience with the Wastelands than he did, and if he wasn’t worried about being seen, Lenis supposed it was safe enough.

  A small man wearing thick, heavy-rimmed glasses emerged from the temple a moment later carrying a large sack over his shoulder. He and Karasu starting speaking together, but Lenis couldn’t hear what they said.

  ‘That is Chûritsu,’ the captain supplied. ‘He is an orphan adopted into the imperial academy of Nochi. He showed a great deal of promise and has become one of Shinzô’s highest ranking scientists, despite the fact he has no family.’

  A landcraft came around the temple’s far corner and Chûritsu climbed aboard before Karasu, after another look around, followed. The landcraft sped off, deeper into the Wastelands, and Lenis relaxed.

  Arthur took his hand from his sword hilt and turned to the captain. ‘Do you want to follow them?’

  Captain Shishi watched the landcraft become enveloped in fog. ‘I do, but we cannot. We do not know how many warriors they brought with them, though there would certainly be more than the two of us could handle on our own. Karasu is no fool. He would not have come into the Wastelands unprepared.’

  Like us? Lenis thought.

  ‘The Demons could return at any moment,’ Tenjin pointed out. ‘We must hurry to the temple.’

  Terra started the engines again and Lenis followed the captain’s directions to find a way down off the ridge. When they arrived at the temple the others leapt out of the landcraft and made their way inside. Lenis followed more slowly and hovered at the edge of the opening.

  Though the opening was dim, the eerie, greenish glow of the Wastelands illuminated enough that Lenis could see something of the interior. Dragon-shaped columns lined the walls and between them were worn carvings and faded paintings he could only vaguely make out. They flared into sharp focus as the captain’s torch passed before them. Most showed people worshipping a dragon that seemed to vary in size from as tall as a human to as large as a mountain.

  Lenis didn’t follow the others inside. A part of him wanted to keep an eye on Terra and another part was afraid of what might happen if he entered Seisui’s temple. What if she really was Apsilla? Would his dream suddenly come to life? What would Captain Shishi do if a Totem suddenly addressed his slave? No, Lenis had given the captain enough reason to sell him off already.

  His three companions made a quick circuit of the temple, examining the dragon-themed artwork only in passing before coming to a stop at the far end by what looked like an altar. Lenis could hear their whispered words echoing through the vast chamber.

  Tenjin was the first to speak. ‘This is fascinating.’

  ‘You can read this?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘Of course.’ The old man chuckled. ‘Isn’t that why I’m here?’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Oh, the usual prophetic ramblings of a Shugoryû’s followers,’ Tenjin replied. ‘“Eternal darkness”, “Salvation through the chosen ones”, that sort of thing.’ He mumbled something to himself, too low for Lenis to hear. ‘Ah, here we are. “When all is lost ...” Hmmm, I’m not sure about what this part says. Something like “newborn? ... not-yet-created? ... yet-to-be?” Anyway, “shall guide the way”, and then it says something about an artefact or a stone.’

  ‘What sort of artefact?’ Captain Shishi asked.

  ‘I believe it might be an egg.’

  ‘An egg?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tenjin straightened up from his examination of the altar. ‘Dragon lore claims that dragons are born out of stones. Given where we are, I would say this refers to Seisui’s egg in particular. Assuming the artefact is an egg, of course. It is unclear what the connection between this “newborn” and the “stone” or “artefact” actually is.’

  ‘There is an indentation on top of the altar,’ Arthur pointed out. ‘It looks like some sort of sphere could have sat here. Could that have been this artefact?’

  ‘Jus
t a moment.’ Tenjin mumbled something and bent back to his scrutiny. ‘Hmmm, interesting. There’s a bit at the bottom that refers to a manuscript of some kind.’

  ‘Manuscript?’ the captain asked.

  ‘Yes, detailing the tenets of Seisui worship. Whoever wrote this last part didn’t write the rest.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s been added at a much later date.’ Tenjin straightened again. ‘Still a very long time ago, mind you, and it’s not written in Shinzôn.’

  ‘How is that possible?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘It’s very archaic writing, but it’s definitely Ostian in origin, and it bears what I believe to be a royal seal. I can only guess, but it seems that, long ago, around the final days of the Great War, someone with ties to the Ostian royal family came here to study Seisui. They either discovered or left an artefact here. Lord Knyght has already noted the depression where it rested on top of the altar. This artefact has something to do with the Blue Dragon of the East. Whoever carved this went off in search of something else: another, similar artefact, or whatever this “newborn” thing is. His or her adventures were probably chronicled in this manuscript, which would now, if it still exists, be held by the royal family of Ost.’ He turned back to the entrance.

  ‘Is there any indication of what happened to Seisui?’ the captain pressed. ‘Is she all right?’

  SAVE MY DAUGHTER.

  Lenis blinked. A wave of despair surged against his consciousness and it was all he could do to fend it off.

  ‘None at all.’ Tenjin sighed. ‘This temple was abandoned three hundred years ago, shortly after the Ostian royal visited here.’

  YOU MUST SAVE MY DAUGHTER.

  Lenis stared at the others, convinced that they must have heard what he just had. The despair returned, stronger this time. He couldn’t hold it off any longer –

  I AM DYING. YOU MUST ...

  – it broke through his defences.

  ‘No!’ Lenis shouted before he realised what he was doing. The others turned to stare at him. He ignored them. The dragon’s hopelessness burned into him. It drove all else out. Thoughts of his sister. His fear of being in the Wastelands. Even his trepidation as to what the captain was going to do to him.