“I’m hungry,” she complained, rubbing her eyes, “now I wish I had eaten more of that aubergine.”
“Nobody could eat more aubergine than you did yesterday,” Satō said, laughing.
“What did the monks tell thee about this Unganzenji place?” asked Bran, rummaging inside his satchel.
“It’s on the other side of that,” the apprentice replied and pointed towards a mountain that rose up from a valley to the west. It wasn’t very tall and sloped gently, but it sprawled extensively in either direction.
“I’d say that is easily a day’s walk,” noted Bran, studying the road ahead through his telescope.
“We’re not going to make it on an empty stomach,” remarked Satō..
“Why the disguise?” asked Bran, as they descended towards the villages, moving far off the main roads as advised. He was still not sure how to react to what he had learned the night before. The women in the Dracalish military, like Reeve Gwenlian, wore the same uniforms as men and sometimes it was easy to make the mistake — and yet somehow he could not come to terms with the discovery.
“Isn’t it obvious? A woman cannot study the art of war,” explained Satō, “a girl can’t study anything important at all really, unless she’s a nun or a priestess. I couldn’t wear a sword, couldn’t inherit the school… Soon I would have to marry somebody and spend the rest of my days between a lathe and a stove. In Yamato, only men can be truly happy.”
“Oh,” Bran said simply.
“Is it not that way in your country?”
“It used to be, but not anymore. We have womenfolk in the army and in the Academy. A woman rules all Dracaland from the Dragon Throne — a strong woman.”
“Impossible — a female ruler?”
“I assure you ‘tis the truth.” Her doubt stung him unexpectedly.
“There was a woman Mikado in the days of our grandparents,” said Nagomi, “and before, in the time of legend.”
“Yes, but they never ruled. Is your Queen also powerless, Bran-sama? Is there a Taikun in your country?”
“I’m not sure — who is this Taikun exactly? I’ve heard Tokojiro use this word many times.”
“Eeh!” She scratched her neck. She seemed surprised that somebody might not know it, even a Westerner like Bran. “He is the true ruler of Yamato. He commands all the armies, controls the ministers, lords over all the daimyo.”
Bran thought for a moment.
“There are ministers and secretaries in Dracaland, but no man in the kingdom hath more puissance than the Queen.”
Satō pondered his words in thoughtful silence.
A small farming hamlet appeared from around the bend. Bran stopped. It seemed as if some disaster had gone through the village. Except one, all of the houses were tiny, single-room huts, even smaller than those in the servants district at Kiyō, and all were half-ruined with neglect and disrepair. High peaked roofs of loose thatch were full of holes and mouldy, as were the walls of bamboo slates tied with reed. The air was filled with the acrid stench of old moisture. Everything looked temporary, more like a gathering of straw-covered sheds than a village. The local shrine was just a box with no offerings, vermillion paint peeling off in patches and the torii gate leaning over to one side. The only road was a narrow path of dirt and mud, overgrown with weeds. A couple of starved cats sleeping in the tall grass and the crying of a child in the distance were the only signs of life.
“So poor…!” Bran was astonished. “What happened here? Where is everybody?”
“Out in the fields,” replied Nagomi, leaning over a moss-grown well to draw some water with a cracked pot standing beside it. She tried the water and spat it onto the grass. “It’s stale!”
“You mean some poor folk live here?”
“Can’t be helped,” Satō said with a shrug, “it’s the mountain soil, not good enough to sustain an entire village. Poor or not, the headman’s bound to have some food.”
She headed for the largest of the houses, the only building in the village to have a door. Inside they found a plump man with a bushy moustache, counting copper coins on a flat wooden board. The headman stood up suddenly, startled by their appearance, scattering the coins all over the floor.
“T-tono!” he stuttered. “To what do I owe… Is it about the new tax?”
“We did not come here from thy master,” Bran said, stepping forward. “We became lost on the way to Kawachi. Do you have some — ”
“Give us food, peasant,” Satō interrupted.
“Of course, of course.” The headman bent in a deep bow, his eyes shooting from her to Bran. “I only have some barley gruel, though…”
“Are you trying to lie to my master?” Satō asked, frowning. “You’re a village headman, I’m sure you can do better than that. Give us rice and saké.”
“Right away, tono.”
“Didst thou have to be so rude to him?” Bran asked, as they finally sat down to the bowls of plain brown rice and pickled onions. The headman disappeared into the only other room in the house, leaving his guests undisturbed.
“Rude?” The girl looked at him blankly. “That’s just how you speak to these people. You can’t use the language of noblemen. I doubt they would even understand.”
He seemed to understand me perfectly, Bran thought.
He heard the sound of a horse stopping on the muddy road outside and somebody leaping down onto the mud. A samurai wearing a dark blue kimono, embroidered with an eight-circle crest Bran saw on the tiles of the Kumamoto Castle, barged into the house calling for the headman. He saw Bran and reeled in surprise. He bowed quickly, acknowledging their presence, but remained aloof.
The headman ran out of the backroom bowing profusely.
“Have you seen anyone suspicious passing through the village?” the samurai asked, interrupting the man’s flow of polite platitudes.
The headman glanced towards Bran then shook his head.
“No, tono.”
“There’s a fugitive foreigner on the run from Kiyō, we heard rumours he might be somewhere in this area. You do know the punishment for harbouring foreigners, don’t you?”
“Of course, tono, I wouldn’t even dream — ”
“Enough. I don’t have time to search this whole village. I trust you, Keichi. Keep an eye out for strangers.”
“I will, tono.”
The samurai then turned to Bran.
“And you are…?”
Bran glanced at Satō and Nagomi; they were silent, their eyes turned downwards. A woman and a servant could not reply to a noble born if they weren’t asked directly, he remembered. He felt anger stir within him, struggling to break out. He could barely contain himself.
That’s no way to talk to a nobleman. Even a pretend one.
He rose slowly. Already a good head taller than the average Yamato, he was now also standing on the slightly raised part of the floor, so he easily towered over the samurai.
“ ‘tis polite to introduce oneself first before asking another,” he said with indignation.
The samurai took a step backwards. For a moment they were staring at each other. At last, the samurai bowed.
“Apologies, tono. I am Matsuo, servant of the Hosokawa clan.”
“I am Karasu, of the Aoki clan,” replied Bran.
“Honoured to meet you, Aoki-sama,” Matsuo said. “Forgive me, but… what are you doing here, in this…” he looked around with disgust, “peasant’s hovel?”
“We became lost in the mist. This serf was telling us the way to Kumamoto.”
“Ah, yes, there was a terrible mist this morning.” The samurai nodded. “Please be careful. There is a dangerous fugitive on the loose.”
“Well then, thou best be in pursuit,” Bran said, losing his patience.
Matsuo bowed once again and backed out of the headman’s house. Bran sat back again, sighing deeply. He looked at his hand in surprise — it was clenched around the hilt of his sword. He thought he heard a chuckle deep inside his hea
d.
“For a moment I thought it was Shigemasa-sama again,” Nagomi looked at him with concern.
“No, I have him under control,” he replied, calming down. His heart was still beating fast, his nostrils wide open. Why did I get so angry?
“We should be going.” Satō stood up. “You heard that samurai. They know we’re here.”
Bran let go of the sword with some effort. His hand trembled, covered with sweat.
CHAPTER X
His gag had been removed, his hands untied. Shūhan’s throat and mouth were so parched he could only whisper; lack of food and sleep had reduced his life energy to the level where he could not perform even the weakest of spells, and, just in case, his fingers had been shattered at the knuckles. The Crimson Robe no longer feared his magic. He was powerless and drained — or so his captors believed.
The wizard crawled up to a thin straw mat he had been given to sleep on, rolled it away and pressed his broken fingers against the packed dirt. He bit his lips, bravely stopping himself from screaming. The pain was almost unbearable, but he had to endure.
The wounds on his hands opened and started bleeding again. His fingers traced a wavy trembling line of scarlet on the floor, joining with other similarly shaky lines into an increasingly complicated pattern.
This was his last resort — the forbidden, hated, cursed practice. He would fight his tormentor with his own weapon. Shūhan recognised the stench of blood magic right away, the demon in the crimson robe must have been its avid practitioner. Every Rangakusha knew of its dangers and disadvantages — but also of its daunting power.
The pattern he was so meticulously and painfully drawing was a beacon spell, a distress signal. Anyone sensitive to magic within range would pick up on this call for help. His tormentor would undoubtedly have noticed it too, but Shūhan had no other choice but to risk it. He only hoped it would reach out far enough.
He tried to guess where he was being kept. The only window in his cell opened to the east. In the day he could hear the shrill cries of black kites and at night, the faint roaring of the waves. Sometimes the wind blew the faint smell of sulphur through the window. He gathered from that he was near some source of the volcanic fumes, by the sea — but there were many places like this on the Chinzei Island, assuming the Crimson Robe had not transported him even further.
The door to the tiny prison opened and the guard cast something large and heavy to the ground before shutting the door. Shūhan’s weary eyes could not tell what it was at first. He crawled closer and, in the faint moonlight seeping through the narrow window, recognised it as a human being; a young man with the top of his head shaven - a samurai. The newcomer was almost naked, his skin covered in bloody wounds, scars and bruises. A huge, ugly gash split his face, running through his nose and one eye.
The wizard lowered his ear to the stranger’s nose. The man was barely breathing. Shūhan gently touched his shoulder with bloodied knuckles. The slightest of shudders went through the man’s body, but he didn’t wake.
Shūhan hesitated for a moment, but he could wait no longer. The man was bleeding from his many cuts, the blood sinking into the dirt floor; a terrible waste.
“Poor boy,” the old wizard whispered, “I’m sure you won’t mind… Your blood is precious to me.”
He dipped his shattered knuckles into the young man’s blood and, as quickly as he could before the liquid dried up on his hands, crept back to his spot.
“I’m eternally grateful,” he whispered, half to the boy, half to himself. “Thanks to you I will finish this much faster.”
He repeated the procedure several times until the newcomer’s wounds were finally covered with dry scabs and became unusable for Shūhan’s ritual.
“No matter, no matter,” the wizard murmured, “we’ll get back to that later.”
At noon — or at least Shūhan judged it to be noon from the way the sun appeared in the narrow window — the newcomer awoke suddenly, gasping with pain.
“Poor boy, poor poor boy,” Shūhan whispered, crawling towards him, “what have they done to you? Why? Our captor has no need for torture…”
“I… resisted.” The newcomer spoke with great difficulty, turning his face towards the wizard. “I meditated… and overcame the sokukamibutsu’s power.”
“What a great feat!”
“I can think… in two languages… that confused the mind-reader.”
“You’re an interpreter?”
“I am Namikoshi Tokojiro… Black Raven’s student. I know you…” The boy pointed at the wizard with a weak hand. “You’re that samurai girl’s father, aren’t you…Takashima…”
“You’ve met Satō?” Shūhan was enlivened, finding new strength at the mention of his daughter. “Have you seen her? Is she all right?”
“I…” The young man hesitated. Speaking was causing him visible difficulty. “I accompanied her on her journey.”
“A journey — what journey?”
“She left the shrine to search for you.”
“Poor Satō… She must be so alone…”
“Not… alone… the Westerner - and the red-hair-”
“Nagomi and the boy…? Why is he there? Why is he not kept safe at the shrine?”
“His dorako… is somewhere on Chinzei…”
“But how can he travel? He would be captured in an instant…”
“The — ritual…”
Tokojiro dropped his hand and closed his eyes, exhausted.
“Ritual? What ritual?”
Shūhan tried to nudge him awake, but the interpreter remained unconscious.
“Yes, yes,” the wizard said, patting the boy gently on his scarred back, “sleep, rest. You will tell me — later. Oh look, one of your wounds opened up — back to work, eh…?”
They were brought food — two bowls of thin gruel containing more water and mud than millet, but it was sustenance — and the portions were much bigger than the last time. They were also given water clean enough to drink.
“Eat boy, eat,” Shūhan urged, pressing the edge of the bowl against Tokojiro’s lips.
The interpreter managed a single gulp before spilling the rest of the gruel on his chin, coughing.
“What ritual?” the wizard asked when Tokojiro pushed the bowl away.
“I’m sorry…?”
“The ritual, you said yesterday, the boy and Satō and Nagomi…”
“Oh, yes… it… changed the Westerner’s face. He now looks like one of us. They are all disguised.”
“Are they safe? Yes, they must be, or he wouldn’t torture you,” the wizard answered himself before Tokojiro managed to speak. “Is she going south? Is my girl going south like I told her?”
“Y-yes, she is going south.”
“Wonderful! Marvellous! Thank you for the good news.”
“It’s — nothing… What are you doing?”
Tokojiro gasped with pain and shock as Shūhan inserted his hand into a wound in his side.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I just need a little more of your blood.”
“My blood! What are you…?”
Tokojiro tried to raise himself and crawl away from the wizard, but the effort caused him to pass out again.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m not taking much, just a few drops, that’s enough…” Shūhan mumbled before noticing his conversation partner was no longer conscious.
The door to the cell opened and the Crimson Robe walked in, smiling broadly.
“I’ve given you two enough time,” he said and clapped his hands once.
The terrifying living mummy entered the room again, creeping slowly.
“It’s no use, you still won’t break me,” said Tokojiro defiantly.
He had regained a little of his strength by now — enough to crawl away from Shūhan to the other side of the cell. The wizard welcomed this development with disappointment. His pattern under the sleeping mat was almost finished.
The Crimson Robe cackled abruptly.
&n
bsp; “I did not come for you, my young friend. I’ve wasted enough time trying to get through that labyrinthian mind of yours.”
Shūhan lifted his eyes, as if only now noticing the demon and his undead abomination.
“You’ve learned everything I know…” he whispered hoarsely as the sokukamibutsu approached him.
“Ah, but that was before you so masterfully interrogated the young interpreter.” His tormentor smirked. “I knew it would prove useful to spare you.”
At last Shūhan understood, and his eyes widened with terror.
“No, no! Get away, don’t…”
He then fell silent, his mouth drooped. The living mummy began its patient work on his memories.
By late afternoon at last the three travellers had reached the village of Kawachi. This one did not look as shabby and desolate as the one they had seen in the morning. Bran approached an elderly man sitting on a stone bench outside a small, clean house and asked him about the temple.
With some reluctance, the man raised his hand and pointed towards a low spur of the hill to the west.
“We never get any visitors here,” he added, eyeing Bran suspiciously.
The boy smiled, trying to seem confident.
“I have a family buried at the cemetery.”
The man nodded. He still seemed doubtful but did not dare to contradict a samurai.
I can get used to being treated like a noble man.
The temple turned out to be very small, at least compared to the vast affluent compound of the Honmyōji. There were only two main buildings and a couple of smaller ones, hidden in the unkempt overgrowth of a long-neglected orchard. Of the rest only the burnt out ruins remained. It seemed almost abandoned.
Nobody came out to meet them, so they started exploring the precinct by themselves, trying to find a way to the cave mentioned in the chronicle. There was a path at the back leading up the hill through the forest, lined with stone statues of sitting monks. Following it they came out onto a wide, sunny hillside glade. Bran looked around. Facing west he could see all the way to the sea, while to the east the spur rose in a rocky outcrop staring at them with a single black eye of a cave. The glade was covered with countless more stone statues, hundreds of them, all positioned in concentric rows around the cave, facing towards it. Most of them were overthrown, some broken in two, all incredibly ancient, covered with lichen.
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 36
