The Shadow of Black Wings (The Year of the Dragon, Book 1)

by James Calbraith

  Samuel rubbed the back of his bald head, glanced at his pocket watch for no reason and came up to the boy with two gifts. One was a set of ivory-carved Staunton tafl pieces, where the blacks were Sun Priests and whites, the Wizards‌—‌the other, a small spyglass, richly ornamented with brass lions and copper elephants. The tafl was the doctor’s own, but he had another older one that was sufficient for his needs. The boy showed the keenness and eagerness of a neophyte towards the Royal Game, and would certainly appreciate the gift. The spyglass Samuel had picked up at a market in Temasek, when he had learned from Dylan that the boy was going to be celebrating his birthday on board.

  “It is a most precise instrument,” he explained, “and I trust you will take good care of it. The barrel was wrought on the island of Kilwa in Zangibar, the iron came from the secret mines of Motapa. The glass is Bataavian, of Walcheren, enchanted at Delft. The case is made of grey selkie skin from Brendan’s Island, so that it never sinks when dropped into the sea.”

  Samuel was delighted to see sparks of recognition light up in the boy’s eyes as he listed the exotic place names. Over the last six months he had witnessed Bran’s transformation from a country bumpkin, a landlubber, into a true sailor.

  It reminded Samuel of his own humble beginnings in the navy. Son of a mohel from Bethnal, he had known nothing of the world outside the dark, narrow stinking streets of eastern Lundenburgh until he had boarded his first ship as a surgeon’s apprentice. That very first voyage had opened his eyes. It had taken him through lands of myth and legend, through oceans and continents he had only ever read or dreamt of. He had seen monsters and Gods, and ancient magic hidden in the jungles and deserts‌—‌and he never wished to go back home again.

  It must have been the same for Bran. Any journey with Ardian Dylan and his dragoons was bound to be filled with adventures and excitement. On Brendan’s Island they had flown over active volcanoes, assisting a group of Dracologists in their research. At Oyo they went with the embassy to the Yoruban King, who had treated them to a show of horsemanship and archery. Past the Skeleton Coast they’d sailed through mist so thick one could not see the end of an outstretched arm. On a south-westerly gale they’d passed the whitewashed, many-pillared walls of Zangibar and tall-spired fire-temples of Pemba, past the islands of sea coconuts until they reached the jungles of Bharata. From Goa the Ladon hurried across the Bangla Sea, past Temasek, due east, towards Qin.

  Along the way Bran had become acquainted with most of the crew and the marines on board. The soldiers let him join their training in fencing and lancing. Samuel watched these bouts with slight concern at first. The army issue swords and cutlasses were larger and heavier than what Bran was used to, and their Soul Lances were solid flexible shafts of energy, a full nine feet of length, as befitted trained soldiers. The boy had to build up some muscle before he could think of matching their skill, but there was no harm in trying. The physical effort made wonders for his mood. Even Emrys eventually earned the crew’s sympathy as the ship’s informal mascot.

  Among all the new friends and in all the excitement of the journey, Bran must have felt even more acutely the neglect with which his father seemed to have been treating him throughout the journey. The first few weeks of the voyage had been exemplary. Dylan was showing his son around the ship, introducing him to the crew, spending as much time with the boy as he could, trying to rectify the years of abandonment. The two had spent an entire day together on Brendan’s Island and then another on the Rock; but the idyll had ended once the Ladon moved into the colonial waters. The commander of a Royal Dragoons regiment was rarely at rest. The dragons were too precious to idle for several months at sea.

  Even now, at his birthday party, Dylan was noticeably absent, urgently having to discuss some matter of state with a newly arrived messenger. At last, when the brief celebration was almost over and there was no cake left, the Ardian appeared in the mess with an apologetic look on his face and a small bundle in his hands.

  “Happy Birthday, son,” Dylan said sheepishly, “I’m sorry, I-”

  “It’s all right‌—‌work. I understand.”

  Bran waved his hand generously, although his voice was cold.

  “It’s only a little something…” Dylan presented the parcel. “I got it from a Bataavian physician we picked up on Birkenhead and thought of you. I hope it’s to your liking.”

  “Thank you,” Bran said quietly, unwrapping the gift.

  Father and son shook hands. Every show of affection between the two always seemed awkward, as if they weren’t sure how to go about it, but Samuel could see sincere concern in Dylan’s eyes. Bran, on the other hand, seemed much more interested in the present, a small dragon figurine, its red surface glistening with a reddish tint in the lamplight.

  “Thank you, Father,” the boy repeated, and gently placed the statuette into his satchel, along with Samuel’s spyglass.

  Samuel smiled to himself. The night before the Ardian had arrived at his cabin, visibly distressed.

  “I don’t have a gift for my son. I never had the time to go to the market at Temasek. I know you spend a lot of time with Bran‌—‌I need your help, Samuel.”

  The doctor nodded and thought for a moment.

  “I have just the thing.”

  He reached into a drawer of his desk and took out a small figurine of a dragon, intricately carved in red oriental resin. The serpentine creature resembled those of the Qin race, but was longer, more slender and sported two large leathery wings not unlike those of the Western beasts. The wide open mouth was surrounded by long whiskers and beard, two sharp horns split into antlers protruded from its head and the tail was on fire. In one of its three-clawed paws it held an orb. On the base were carved initials, in Roman alphabet: “P.F.V.S.”.

  “Bran is obsessed with the Eastern dragons, he should like it.”

  On the morning after his birthday Bran stood by the starboard railings, wrapped in a storm cloak of thick oily krakenhide. A cold eastern wind blew across the deck. The Ladon was passing a small harbour town clumped around a steep mountain. Through his new spyglass he observed a cluster of off-white buildings disappearing behind a rocky outcrop, warehouses, trade factories, merchant houses and the tumescent spire of a wizard tower. Some of the buildings had odd roofs that resembled peaked hats with up-curved brims, but most of them would not have been out of place in any town in the west. Dracaland Jacks fluttered in the breeze above the docks and on the masts of many merchant ships moving to and fro among large gaff-sailed junks of the Qin. The same imperial flag‌—‌red, white and blue dragon heads on green‌—‌was hoisted on a tall mast atop the summit of the mountain.

  “Ah, Fragrant Harbour!”

  A sudden voice jerked Bran out of his pensive observations. His father came up to his side, looking wistfully at the town.

  “Ten years have passed since I last saw its piers and storehouses. How it has grown!” He sighed like a proud parent observing his child. “It was barely a fishing village when we got it from the Qin. It may well become the greatest merchant port these seas have seen, one day.”

  “And what’s that over there?” Bran pointed to the west, where, farther away, a similar cluster of houses clung to a tiny island. He couldn’t see the design on the flag through the spyglass.

  “Vasconians.”

  “They seem to be everywhere.”

  “They’ve been here for much longer than us. Still, now the Qin prefer to make trade with the Dracaland. I suppose we’re more reliable than Sun worshippers,” Dylan scoffed.

  “We’re not coming to port here?” enquired Bran as the ship made no indication of changing its course.

  “No, our duty is elsewhere this time. We go farther up the river.”

  “Why, what’s up the river?”

  “Fan Yu, the Great Harbour! A Southern trade centre for all of the empire. Now brace yourself, we are passing through to Qin territory!”

  Dylan grinned broadly and pointed to the blue s
ky in front of the great ship. Squinting, Bran noticed a slight shimmering in the air some two miles ahead. As they moved closer, the shimmering grew to a visible distortion, a pinkish hue added to the blue of the sky, like misty dawn. The air around the ship turned noticeably colder and the waters of the delta, still and calm until now, rose in a windless storm. The Ladon started to heave fore and aft over the waves.

  Lightning cracked from a cloudless sky and, in its light, Bran saw the full size of the magical barrier. It stretched endlessly from east to west, separating the islands of the delta from the mainland, and rose straight up for at least a mile before starting to gently curve inland.

  “How do we get around that?” Bran cried out in disbelief.

  Dylan smiled again.

  “That, my son, is what we fought a war for.”

  Just as the ship’s bow was about to hit the barrier and shatter, Dylan raised his arms and bellowed in a deep voice, an incantation in a language Bran had never heard before. His hands flared up with golden light. More lightning streaked right above the deck and a round portal, bound in blue and green dazzle, opened before them. On that signal the engines of the Ladon pushed one last time and the ship surged forwards, passing the barrier. With a loud whoosh and a pop, the magic door closed behind them. The sea became calm and quiet again and the ship chugged along merrily like a packet steamer on a summer morning.

  CHAPTER VII

  The ship passed the whitewashed watchtowers guarding the entrance to the harbour, and Bran saw, spreading before him, the vast imperial metropolis of Fan Yu. It was almost a country of its own, sprawling over hills, terraces and islands of the delta for miles. Boats of all shapes and sizes, coal barges, tea junks, fishing sampans, dinghies, ketches and yawls passed in all directions, like grain carts on the busiest of market days. The Ladon had to move slowly in this maze of vessels, careful not to crush the boats beneath its powerful iron-plated bow. The riverside was lined with facades of the many-roofed, clay-tiled houses of the townsfolk, suspended on wooden pillars over the water. Further upstream the dwellings of the rich and powerful encroached on the rising banks. Tall, tiered temple towers, the red and yellow walls of monasteries, ancient gold-plated palaces of local magnates and new, Western-styled marble facades of trade princes’ houses.

  It was all designed to awe the passengers of the vessels passing towards the harbour, but all this magnificence, all this splendour was marred by signs of destruction and misery. Walls were pocked with shot marks, wooden pillars splintered, shutters broken to pieces. Paint was peeling off in patches, and of the gold leaf on the sculptures and carvings only sad remnants remained. A layer of dust covered the rooftops and gutters. The damage seemed old, as if the city was in a constant state of disrepair, slowly eaten by some creeping war with no beginning and no end in sight.

  It took Ladon half a day to navigate from the shanty outskirts of the town to its centre, where Thirteen Factories stamped their heavy colonial mark on the oriental surface of the city centre: a collection of western-style buildings, two and three storeys tall, fresh, new and magnificent. The colonnaded facades of purest white marble shone brightly in the sun like polished ivory, as did the zinc-covered roofs. Flags of the colonial powers and trade corporations flapped in the wind on tall masts of cedar wood, the Dracaland Jack flying between the banners of Midgard and Bataave. A small aerostat floated in the air, moored to a landing mast, which also served as a receiver for carrier wisps.

  There was no pier big enough for the Ladon, so the ship was forced to stand at anchor a little off the harbour. A few of the crew, Bran and his father among them, boarded a cutter and made landing near the mouth of a small creek, by the customs station.

  The Imperial Factory was the greatest of all, a three-storey edifice, with a row of blue-shuttered windows above a sculpted architrave showing the greatest triumphs of the Dracalish and Prydain might. Bran strained his memory trying to recall all the wars and battles he had always paid little attention to. He easily identified Arthur’s march into Rome and the defeat of Norsemen at Crug Mawr, for that was part of Gwynedd’s history too. It took him considerably more effort to name the siege of Ar Roc’hell during the Wizardry Wars and a more recent sea battle of Cape Spartel, where the dreaded Kyrnosian Imperator’s invasion fleet was vanquished. The conquest of the northern Bharata he recognised from the stories told by some of the elder soldiers. But the last scene he could not remember no matter how hard he tried: an ironclad battleship sailing into a walled harbour with all guns blazing.

  There was a warehouse on the lower level of the factory, full of tea bricks and bales of fresh golden silk piled in pyramids on one side, and large unmarked crates of red wood on the other. A group of Qin workers emerged with another cartload of tea, and it was the first time Bran had seen these mysterious people in the flesh, with their narrow eyes, flat noses and long braided ponytails under round cloth caps. They moved about silently, like automatons, their emotionless faces grey with fatigue. Their vacant eyes glanced through Bran as if he was invisible, as they proceeded to unload the cart onto the warehouse floor.

  The meal they were served was, somewhat disappointingly, what one would expect to eat in any dining room of the Dracaland. Only the surroundings made it feel exotic. There was white fish with roast vegetables, imported all the way from the West but, not having survived the journey well, everything was withered and bland.

  Bran wondered why anyone would go through so much effort when the land around the city seemed fertile and plentiful. He chewed the badly seasoned fish in silence, sitting at one end of a long table, his father at the opposite end already discussing some important local matters with a gentleman in a black magisterial robe. They talked in hushed voices, sometimes slipping into some sort of code, and Bran could not make much sense of the conversation. Prices of rice and silk were mentioned, and army movements, weather forecasts and geomantic divinations. Bran wiped his lips with a serviette, coughed and excused himself to leave the dining room.

  Dylan paused the conversation and turned to his son.

  “Father, may I-?”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought I might do some sightseeing in the harbour.”

  Dylan thought for a brief moment then nodded.

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  He snapped his fingers, whispering a spell. Bran felt a tinge of protective magic field surrounding him.

  “Just don’t go out too far. There’s not much to see outside the Factories anyway, and you won’t be allowed past the walls of the city proper on your own.” Dylan lowered his voice. “The locals…”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, they rarely speak our language, that’s all.” He smiled and patted Bran on the shoulder. “Off you go. There’s a boat dwellers’ village to the west‌—‌that might be of some interest. Be back by supper. Don’t get into trouble.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Good lad,” said Dylan and turned back to the man in black robe. “I’m sorry, tai-pan, you mentioned Xiuquan’s new policies…”

  Bran walked the long narrow lane at the back of the factories. There were no magnificent facades here, clean white plaster replaced by plain practical wood and low-fired brick, but it was still a neat and well-kept area. He passed dozens of natives, construction workers, dockers and porters, carrying their goods on bamboo poles. There were very few Westerners here, mostly foremen or guards. A few loud drunk sailors stumbled from a tavern on Hogs Lane, noticed they were in the wrong part of the city and swayed back. Among themselves, the Qin walked straight, talked and laughed, but when Bran or any other Westerner approached they all fell quiet, turned their eyes away and dispersed, skulking. All except one of the porter gaffers, resting under the eaves of a tea house, looking the passing men straight in the face in silence. His hair was uncut, his eyes bright and on his forearm was carved a tattoo of a black lotus flower. Bran nodded at him lightly and the man’s lips curved in a wry, mocking smile.

  The drag
on rider turned left towards the riverside, past the anchorages of long narrow boats covered with thick canvas, and noticed an opening in the fence surrounding the Factories, through which some workers sneaked with sacks of rice and construction materials. Curious, he decided to follow them.

  Past the fence lay a different, more native area. The houses here were low, but densely packed, with blue-tiled overhanging roofs. The wooden and clay walls were painted in bright colours, the windows and doors opened out onto the loosely cobbled streets and narrow canals filled with stale smelly water. People lived here, not only worked. Old women sat outside spinning yarn or milling grain, children played with their funny little dogs. That much was the same as in every village in every part of the world. The natives here were not as frightened of foreigners as the wharf workers. The women and children looked at him curiously and without apprehension. He saw a few girls who resembled the image in Ifor’s medallion but their faces were grimy and their teeth had fallen out.

  But there was something else, odd, disturbing. On the constricted alleyways, along the canal shores and gutters lay half-naked emaciated men with blank eyes, smoking long wooden pipes attached to some copper contraptions. The men looked straight at him and through him as if in a daydream. The whole district was filled with the sweet and sickly scent of the strange smoke.

  The farther into the village Bran went, the more of these poor people he saw, gathered around their copper pots and clay pipes, huddling together, shivering. He noticed some of them sitting on top of red unmarked crates, the same as the ones he had seen in the factory warehouse. These were darker, more sinister alleyways. The houses here were poor, dirty, half ruined, in disrepair, just like the ones along the river. Again he found markings of some past war, never fixed, and there were people wounded or maimed by sword and bullet, in rags, hauling buckets of water or pots of rice to their desperate households. The children were running naked amongst the rubbish and rubble strewn on the streets and, what somehow seemed the most ominous about the area, there were no dogs here. Bran instinctively touched his shoulder where the unseen Seal of Llambed buzzed patiently, and hoped his father’s protection spell worked.