“You liked her!” Bran realised with surprise. He got used to thinking of Shigemasa only as a malevolent presence in his head. Now for the first time he had to consider him a real human being.
“She knew she would die because of what she had been doing — I foretold it myself — but had no fear of death. I respected that.”
The General fell silent for a while, and when he spoke again, he picked a new subject.
“Your beast… it is asleep all the time.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can see it snoring in front of the gates of your Innermost Keep. I could walk past it now without a problem.”
Innermost Keep…? The red-eye tower!
“Don’t you dare try anything!”
The General laughed bitterly. “If I wanted to, you couldn’t stop me. I can see the walls of your castle crumble all around me. I know how the battle must have exhausted you.”
“Then why — ?”
“I am now intrigued with you, Barbarian. This talk of prophecies tonight… I know how they work. I’ve been there. If what the red-hair says is true... I have waited so long, I can wait a little more ...”
“That’s… a relief, I suppose. Of sorts.”
“Make no mistake, it’s not because I’m growing soft on you or anything.”
“I’ll remember that.”
He wanted to ask about their new companion, but the spirit had already slid away into the dark silence, leaving Bran alone with his thoughts.
He flicked a weak light and directed it towards the carvings on the wall. Their strange inner power continued to intrigue him. He took out his pencil and notepad and copied the drawings as well as he could. No Westerner has seen these things before me, he realised. I’m an explorer, like Cook or Brendan. I should have been noting everything all along.
Some of the human silhouettes had wings drawn in the same way as the dragons above them. What did it mean? Were they shamans disguised as dragons, or was there some greater mystery behind it?
He touched his ring and it lit up lightly. Satō was right, nobody in Yamato wore this kind of jewellery. Obviously it had been drawing everyone’s attention. How could he have missed it? His entire disguise could have been ruined by the tiny trinket. He slipped the ring off his finger and put it inside the black lacquer box. It was safer that way.
The blue stone and the dragons — he had dismissed the connection as coincidence earlier, but now he wasn’t so sure any more. All the questions that had made him embark on the sea adventure in the first place were now coming back. What secret had his grandfather bestowed upon him? Who was the Yamato beauty, the beloved Omon? He dared not think yet of Nagomi’s divinations. Satō had said so herself, the prophecies were often vague...
He turned away from the wall and looked at the girls, sleeping on the naked floor in their travelling clothes, their silhouettes faintly illuminated by the flamespark. The apprentice lay still, on her back, her dark red hair, with traces of henna washed off by rain, spread on the floor. She seemed barely alive, like some enchanted princess in a fairy-tale. Satō kept moving about, changing position, unable to keep still even in her sleep. She had uneasy dreams.
He needed to stay awake, to protect them from whatever lurked outside. With his father so often absent, he had felt it his duty to protect their small family from whatever dangers he had imagined. And right now, he realised, Satō and Nagomi were the closest he had to a family in this strange land. I can’t let any of them get hurt, he thought. I owe it to them. The brave wizardess who had lost her father because of him, and the copper-haired girl who had performed what amounted in his eyes to a miracle — and yet remained so humble about it all; these were debts that were difficult to repay.
The girl was a healer — and apparently, one of the many in Yamato. His mother, being a Cunning Folk, knew how to brew restorative poultices and soothing concoctions and he had heard of some experiments in using strong, precise thaumaturgy for medical uses, but the conflicting Potentials of the patient and physician made it an expensive and difficult matter. The ability to heal a broken arm within mere minutes remained the stuff of dreams and legends.
His thoughts raced back to his father and the Marines. What would the army of the Dracaland do with the power of healing the wounded on a battlefield? The first modern nation to get its hands on this magic could easily bid for mastery of the whole world. It was a good thing the Yamato were so isolated after all. The Bataavians in Dejima must have known about this, but they chose not to share the news with anyone. The small republic could never defend itself or the Yamato from the likes of Dracaland, Breizh or Midgard, if any of these powers discovered there was something worth fighting for here.
He could not even begin to grasp the rules of the native magic. What good was his knowledge of Potentials, Willpower, Energy Equivalence or Conduits if the spirits of the dead themselves were able to come from beyond the veil to assist the caster? The spirits of the Yamato dead — the kami, as Nagomi called them — seemed to simply bypass all the barriers, disregard the laws of nature; and that mage — shattering his tarian, fed with Bran’s own life energy, with a piece of paper… Summoning demons to aid him… None of this made any sense. How could he try to protect the girls if his magic proved so powerless? Perhaps they did need a bodyguard after all…
The night passed slowly — or so he guessed, unable to see the sky and the stars. The damp air inside the tomb induced a fit of coughing. Satō stirred, almost woken up.
He started quietly chanting the lullaby his mother used to sing, a long time ago on the long winter nights, when they waited for Dylan’s return:
Huna’n dawel, heno, huna,
Huna’n fwyn, y tlws ei lun;
Pam yr wyt yn awr yn gwenu,
Gwenu’n dirion yn dy hun?
He remembered Rhian’s face by the bed, the carved oaken frame and the cold white-washed walls of his bedroom, illuminated by a dancing fire fae trapped in a jar on the shelf.
Paid ag ofni, dim ond deilen
Gura, gura ar y ddor-
There was a shrieking yelp and a brawling noise outside. Bran leapt to his feet at once, extinguishing the light. He looked through the slit in the door, but could not see anything in the darkness. He heard growling, which subsided to gurgling and then silence.
Carefully, he removed the door boards and peeked outside, but could see nothing in the darkness. He lit the flamespark again and walked out into the rain, sword in hand. He walked past the bodies of the bandits and further into the forest, crossing the circle of stones, towards a ruined shack, where the strange samurai was supposed to be sleeping.
How could he possibly sleep in this rain? The shed had barely any roof and only faint remains of walls. In the flickering light Bran glimpsed a large shadow to his right. With a heart beating feverishly, he turned towards it. There was a man-sized shape of a creature, sinister in the darkness, slouching, silent. Bran approached the mysterious figure, the grip of his sword now slippery with sweat and rain. Every step he took filled his heart with ever more dread. The night was filled with the smell of death and blood.
What am I doing? I should be running away. No, I should wake the girls and then we should run away.
“Halt, demon!” he cried out. The spectre turned around. For a blink of an eye, in a flash of lightning, the shadow twisted its face into an evil, hellish, inhuman mask, but in the next moment, Bran realised it was Dōraku.
The samurai sighed with relief and put a hand on his chest, jokingly.
“You’ve frightened me, boy! And not many managed that and lived to tell the tale.”
“What… what are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I’ve been taking a night’s piss!” the samurai replied, adjusting his hakama, “what are you doing in this cursed weather? Go back inside, you’ll catch a cold.”
“I… heard something... You haven’t noticed anything strange?”
“Apart from seven corpses lying in fro
nt of an old shrine?” Dōraku grinned. “No, it’s as peaceful as it gets tonight. You must have been dreaming.”
Purple-green rays of a forest dawn penetrated the tomb, casting playful reflections on the limestone wall. The wind had chased the clouds and the mists away, the morning was bright and almost cheerful.
There was a knock on the door. Carefully, with sword in hand, Bran looked outside to see Dōraku holding a couple of sodden-through bundles of cloth in his arms. The samurai observed the boy for a while before speaking.
“I found your luggage on the road,” he announced, presenting the bundles.
Bran did not respond, so the samurai laid them on the ground before him.
“And I believe I’ve discovered the source of your nightly fears. Please, come with me.”
Reluctantly, Bran followed. Dōraku parted the ferns on the eastern side of the dale revealing the body of a wolf, with its throat gruesomely torn off.
“The wolves must have fought over the meat. Will you help me dispose of the corpses?”
“We do not have time to dig graves,” Bran replied.
“I’ve dug a pit already. It would be unwise to leave the traces of battle out in the open.”
The bodies were stiff, cold and heavy. Having grown up in the countryside, Bran had seen a few dead bodies in his life, but never handled any, certainly none as gruesome as the corpse of the onmyōji. Flies and woodland creepers had already started nibbling on the bloodied stump of the neck and the chest, blistered and charred by Bran’s dragon flame. The samurai kicked the head unceremoniously into the grave before picking up the body by the shoulders. Bran lifted the onmyōji’s legs and together they hauled the rigid carcass across the glade.
“Eeh, would you look at that!”
Dōraku pointed to the onmyōji’s chest. The pentacle tattoo was half-washed off with rain.
“What does it mean?” asked Bran. Looking at the headless body he could barely contain nausea.
“It means he wasn’t an outlaw, only pretending to be one. He must have been licensed to work at the court.”
“The Taikun…?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” the samurai said, ruffling through what remained of the dead mage’s clothes. Bran turned his eyes away.
“Ah, there it is. This will have the crest of his lord…”
Dōraku picked up what looked like a golden coin, covered in dried blood. He spat and cleaned it off. He then stared at the golden disc for a long time, scratching his beard.
“Well, what is it?”
“Most interesting. That’s the crest of the Hosokawa,” the samurai said, casting the coin over to Bran. It was decorated with the eight circles pattern he had seen everywhere in Kumamoto.
“Wait — isn’t Yokoi-dono serving under the lord Hosokawa of Kumamoto Castle?”
“Last time I checked,” the samurai replied, nodding. His bushy eyebrows moved closer together and his brow furrowed.
“Then I don’t understand…”
Why are you showing me this? This proves you’ve been in league with those bandits.
“The daimyo has no need to consult all his moves with his retainers, and a retainer doesn’t share all his secrets with his samurai. There are some very complex games being played, boy.”
And I’m the prize, Bran realised.
CHAPTER III
He heard Satō call out to them. She was looking through the bundles brought by Dōraku.
“I found these all over the road,” the samurai said, “I brought what I could.”
The wizardess unpacked one of the lacquer boxes with delight. “That’s the food I bought in Hitoyoshi! It’s still dry. Nagomi, wake up!” she cried inside the tomb. “Karasu-sama, come, maybe you’ll want to eat this one.”
Bran glanced nervously at the samurai.
“Karasu-sama?” Dōraku said, bemused.
“Karasu of the Aoki clan,” Bran murmured, bowing slightly.
“I see.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the wizardess standing up, “we haven’t been introduced properly.” She bowed politely and, before Bran managed to stop her, said:
“Takashima Satō, heir of Takashima Shūhan.”
He winced. She was being so careless in the presence of the samurai! Of course, if this Dōraku was really in Yokoi-dono’s service, he’d know about Satō already, but if he wasn’t…
Nagomi clambered out of the mound, rubbing her eyes. Sleep did her well. Her skin had healthy colour, only her hair remained mousey and drab.
“Nagomi-sama, is it?” said Dōraku, “that will be Itō Keisuke-sama’s young daughter, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” the girl opened her eyes wide, “how did you know?”
“I have been quite recently to Kiyō. The city is full of rumours…and certain names are often repeated.”
“You have news from Kiyō?” Satō looked at the samurai curiously, “have you heard anything of my father?”
“I’ve heard some say he’s not as... dead as the Magistrate thinks.”
“And what of the High Priestess of Suwa? Is she really…” she stopped, glancing at Nagomi.
“When I left the city she was still in the Magistrate’s prison. I’m sorry Nagomi-sama, as her apprentice, you must be — ”
“She’s dead,” the red-haired girl said with confidence, reaching for the food. “And I’m a priestess, not an apprentice.”
Bran and Satō stared at her in surprise.
“Kazuko-hime had me ordained as a priestess of Suwa before passing away,” Nagomi said. “Are these our things?”
She started to unravel her bundle.
“Congratulations, priestess,” Dōraku said, bowing. “The High Priestess must have held you in high esteem. Now, I’ll scout the way ahead. We should be moving out soon.”
“But you don’t even know where we’re going yet,” protested Bran.
The samurai smirked.
“The road goes in only one direction. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.”
They trudged through the dense woodland, Dōraku in front, cutting the trail along the animal paths and lumberjack tracks through the tall ferns and young, slender camphor trees. Bran followed close behind him, with the girls at the back. He preferred to keep an eye on their guide.
The samurai insisted they didn’t follow the main road, wary of more unpleasant surprises waiting further on. He led them down the mountainside, avoiding the densest parts of the woods, bypassing the gullies and the windthrows. It was certainly a safer way than the road, but it meant they were moving at a much slower pace. By evening they were still in the deepest part of the forest. As the twilight grew around them, the trees seemed to grow closer, the green canopy above them tightened into an impenetrable roof. They walked now in a dark, humid tunnel, tripping over the roots and dodging the low-hanging branches. Bran mumbled curses under his nose directed towards their guide, but Satō and Nagomi said nothing.
At last they reached the side of a small babbling brook; a cascade of liquid ice shimmering in the starlight. The brook turned north here and its gentle bend formed a cosy, sandy cove, shaded by a large weeping katsura tree.
“We sleep here,” decided Dōraku, dropping his luggage on the grass underneath a camphor tree.
“What, just like that?” Bran protested. “Shouldn’t we at least start a fire?”
“Too risky,” the samurai said, “it might draw more bandits or… other things.”
“Other things?” Bran felt cold, remembering the warnings of the creature from the hot spring.
“It’s an old forest.”
“We’ll be fine,” said Satō, “it’s not the first time we have had to sleep under the stars. Let’s just be glad the weather turned out fine.”
Bran looked up. The stars twinkled brightly in the sky; as far as he could tell, this meant no rain for at least one more day. The forest air was surprisingly warm.
Satō stepped up to him with a smile. “I too would have
preferred a bed at an inn,” she said, “but there is soft grass and thick moss here that should be enough of a mattress, considering the circumstances.”
The mention of the inn and her closeness reminded him of the night in Hitoyoshi. How much does she remember? he wondered. She behaved as if nothing important had happened between them. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m just imagining something where there was nothing.
A strange buzzing noise woke Satō up, as if a huge bumblebee droned among the trees. When she listened closer she also heard electric crackling and the sound of splintering wood .
She waited until her eyes adjusted to the dim starlight and sneaked carefully towards the sound. Soon she could see a white light flickering among the cedars and a blue streak of lightning jumping from tree to tree.
There was a round glade where a large tree had fallen not long ago and other plants had not yet grown over it. In the middle of the glade stood Bran, panting, holding in his hand a six-foot long shaft of solid blue light. A flamespark hovered above his head. All the tree trunks around the glade bore scorched scars.
He heard her come through the undergrowth and pointed one end of the shaft towards her.
“It’s me, Satō.”
The dragon rider breathed out and the blue light in his hands flickered and disappeared.
“What was that?”
“Soul Lance. A dragon rider’s weapon. Did you not see me use it in battle yesterday?”
“I was busy enough with my own fight. How does it work?”
“It is part of my life energy. Instead of using it to power spells, like the wizards do, I use it to create this long, unbreakable piece of light… umm… crystal.”
“Can anyone do that? Or only dragon riders?”
“Anyone with magic talent, I think. But it’s really only good for dragon combat. It’s the only weapon that is certain to withstand dragon flame and penetrate a fully grown dragon’s armour. It’s virtually unbreakable.”
“But…?” she asked, sensing Bran was not telling her everything.
“It’s only as strong as the rider that’s wielding it. And it failed me yesterday.”
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 49
