The Year of the Dragon Omnibus

by James Calbraith

  “This is why you’re here, training,” she guessed.

  He summoned the lance again with a buzz.

  “A trained soldier’s lance is nine feet long. My father’s is at least twelve feet, the blade as broad as a glaive. This…” he said, giving the lance a shake. Air shimmered around the blade. “…this is pathetic. If we are to face a real enemy — one that is likely to be much more powerful than that onmyōji — I need to make it work.”

  “If we are to face an enemy, you need to be rested,” she said, smiling.

  “You’re right.” He opened his palm and the lance vanished with a flicker. He moved back towards the camp, but just as he was passing her, he stopped, turned and looked her straight in the eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “That song you sang in Hitoyoshi… what does it mean?”

  “What song?” She looked away, feeling suddenly hot. “I sang many songs. So did everyone.”

  “Now, now, now…” he hummed.

  “It’s just a song,” she lied, feeling her cheeks burn up. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I…was thinking about that night.”

  She looked back at him. Even though his Yamato face was familiar, she could not penetrate the stare of his alien, jade eyes.

  What does he…

  She held her breath, feeling his fingers on her cheek. She wanted to run, but made no move. All fell silent; she could only hear the thudding of her own heart. She closed her eyes and shivered.

  “What was that?”

  His touch vanished and she heard a buzz of summoned lance.

  What?

  She opened her eyes and saw him crouching defensively, pointing the lance towards the treetops.

  “There’s something up there. Look!”

  A black shadow jumped from tree to tree noiselessly and disappeared into the darkness.

  “Let’s go back to the others,” Satō said quickly. “Dōraku-sama might know what it was.”

  “Yes.” He scowled at her mentioning the samurai’s name. “He might.”

  They found Dōraku waiting for them under the katsura tree, trying to light his long bamboo pipe.

  “The tabako got wet,” he said. He gave up and hid the pipe away into the sleeve. “Do you still have trouble sleeping, Karasu-sama?”

  “There is some… thing in the forest,” Bran said quietly, careful not to wake Nagomi.

  “I told you. It’s an old forest. There are always things.”

  “Still, we thought it’d be best to keep watch,” added Satō. “For the rest of the night.”

  The samurai nodded. “All right, I’ll take the first shift.”

  “No,” said Bran, “I will keep watch first. Then Satō. Then you.”

  Dōraku chuckled. “Very well. Have a good night.” And with that, he got back to his bedding.

  “What?” Bran asked. He could not see Satō’s face clearly in the gloom, but he could sense her anger.

  “That was extremely rude!” she fumed. “The way you spoke to Dōraku-sama, that mistrust in your voice…”

  He raised his arms in exasperation. “He knows I don’t trust him. Why should I pretend otherwise? Our lives are at stake. I grow tired of all these Yamato niceties!”

  The last sentence came out as a shout. She stepped back.

  “You… you may speak our language, but you still have a lot to learn about us!” she said and turned around in a huff, leaving him alone in the night.

  Bran watched the silver-lined wisp of a cloud move slowly across the night sky. He put his fingers to his mouth, remembering the touch of Satō’s skin.

  I wonder if her lips taste different than Eithne’s...

  She hadn’t run or shirked away from his touch. He no longer doubted — there had definitely been something between them. Except now he’d ruined it all.

  He bit his lips and clenched his fist on the hilt of the sword.

  I may not get another chance.

  There was a change in the wind. The silver-lined cloud obscured the moon; the forest fell silent, shrouded in pitch blackness.

  An army of bandits could sneak up on me in this darkness. He remembered his duty and summoned the power of True Sight to sweep the area around him.

  Contrary to what many laymen thought, it wasn’t a real “see-in-the-darkness” spell. What he saw were subtle differences in the layout of mystic energies and ley lines caused by physical objects around him — and, of course, any spells or magic objects. Since he wasn’t a trained wizard, the True Sight always put a great strain on his eyes whenever he used it for more than a blink. After a few seconds of studying the forest his head started aching and he was forced to return to normal vision — but not before he spotted a brightly shining shape in the branches of a tree before him.

  Things in the forest.

  Slowly and quietly, he slid his sword from the sheath and lay it on his lap. Whatever the creature was, it did not make any attempt to attack them — it just sat on a branch, watching.

  What is that?

  “Nothing worth losing sleep over,” a voice spoke in his head. Bran jumped up.

  “Taishō!”

  The General chuckled. “I see you’re learning to refer properly to your superiors.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “I can’t see with your magic eyes, boy. But I sense no malice in the creature. If I were you, I’d be more worried about your new companion than whatever lurks in these forests…”

  “Dōraku? Why?”

  There was a long silence and Bran thought Shigemasa had once again wandered off, but the voice spoke again.

  “Be cautious. Listen, observe. Strangers you meet on the road are rarely what they at first seem.”

  Bran sensed the General retreating. “No, wait! You must tell me more!”

  “I must?” the voice resounded with sudden anger. “Child, you presume too much!”

  This time, the old spirit’s voice vanished from his head for good.

  Bran sighed. Tonight I manage to annoy everyone I speak to. He looked up at the tree before him. The watching creature was gone. The forest was so quiet that he could hear Satō and Nagomi breathe in their sleep. The wizardess muttered, suffering again from another nightmare. But there was a sound missing. The third breath.

  Listen, observe. Bran rose softly and snuck up towards the massive dark frame of the sleeping samurai. His chest seemed to make no move under the silk kimono.

  Is he dead?

  Bran reached out to touch Dōraku’s hand. Moonlight seeped through a gap in the cloud and fell on the samurai’s face. He snored loudly and turned to the other side. An owl hooted. The wood came back to life with a myriad of night voices.

  Bran shook his head and returned to his post.

  Tiny fish danced around Nagomi’s toes as the priestess stepped into the freezing stream to refresh herself before breakfast.

  “This place is beautiful,” she said, sighing. The sunlight danced on the babbling water. The spirits in this part of the forest were calm, joyful. The stream was too cold and shallow to bathe in, so she just washed her face and hands.

  “It is pretty in the daylight,” agreed Bran, taking a bite off a large, flat rice cracker, “but how long will it take us to get down from these mountains at this pace? Are we sleeping rough tonight again? We’re running out of food.”

  The samurai puffed on his pipe.

  “Don’t worry, I know a safe place we can stay today,” he said, “and tomorrow we should descend into the valleys.”

  “How long are you planning to accompany us?” Bran asked.

  Satō gave him an angry look, but the dragon rider either failed to notice it or decided to ignore it.

  What’s up with these two again?

  “As long as it’s necessary to keep you safe,” the samurai replied, “or do you wish me to leave you alone?”

  “No!” Satō said hastily. “Please. We’re glad to have a swordsman of your skill on our side, Dōraku-s
ama.”

  The samurai bowed politely.

  “I have never seen anyone fight like you,” the wizardess said. “Who was your teacher?”

  “I had no teacher. I invented this style myself.”

  Satō gasped.

  “Impossible!”

  “You fared well yourself against those bandits, Takashima-sama. That mage was a difficult opponent for one so young.”

  The girl looked down in embarrassment.

  “We would perish without your help.”

  “You’re being too modest.”

  He’s playing with her, Nagomi realized. Why can I see it but she can’t?

  Bran stood up abruptly, knocking over the water flask.

  “Shouldn’t we be moving on already?” he spoke through clenched teeth.

  He noticed it too.

  Dōraku smirked and reached for his bag.

  “As you wish, Karasu-sama.”

  Dōraku led them for a few more hours down a slightly descending path, along the hollows and ravines, across cold streams and over the crags, until they reached a cliff-side, a sheer drop of rock barring their path. He pushed the ferns aside and gestured them to have a look.

  Nagomi stood beside Bran, taking in a magnificent view spreading below. A vast, low-lying plain stretched all the way to the horizon, flooded by the mists, steams and vapours coming down from a jagged line of mighty cone-shaped peaks bordering the valley to the south. The fire mountains rose from the haze below like an archipelago of small islands rising over the ocean of mist, a few of them bellowing out thin wisps of grey, ashy smoke.

  There was a town in the middle of the plain, crouched on both sides of a silver ribbon of a river among the fields of tall, pinkish grass, sweet potato farms, tea groves and citrus orchards.

  Bran opened his satchel and put the spyglass to his eye, studying the landscape.

  “This is Kyomachi on the Sendai River. Beyond that, Ebi no Kogen, the Highland of Shrimp Grass,” explained Dōraku. “See how the grass turns pink in the sun? Like boiled shrimp.”

  “And those peaks on the horizon?” asked Bran.

  “That’s Kirishima, the Island in the Mist.”

  “Kirishima...!” Bran exclaimed, almost dropping the telescope. The samurai looked at him curiously.

  “I… I’ve heard it has a magnificent shrine.”

  Where did he hear that? thought Nagomi.

  “How do we get down there?” asked Satō, peering over the cliff.

  “There’s a gully further east we can use to descend,” the samurai replied, “but that’s not for today. We need to reach our lodgings before the night.”

  Bran raised an eyebrow.

  “There is lodging, here, in this wilderness?”

  “You’d be surprised. I know I was the first time I found it.”

  This was by far the greatest tree Nagomi had seen in these mountains: an enormous cedar shooting straight towards the clouds like a pillar supporting the heavens. The twisted maze of roots thicker than a man’s thigh sprawled like veins and tendons of some ancient creature at its base. There was a well dug out among the roots, lined with round stones and covered with a bamboo mat, and a tiny box shrine nailed to the trunk. She bowed a quick greeting to the tree’s ancient spirit, then looked around, searching for a dwelling. She found none.

  “Who lives here?”

  Samurai pointed upwards with a grin.

  Half-way up the trunk was a rectangular platform of wooden planks with walls of bamboo and reed.

  “Wait here,” said Dōraku and approached the tree. Finding hidden leverages in the trunk, the samurai climbed up to the tree-house with the speed and deftness of a hungry bear.

  A minute later a trap door opened and a rope ladder unrolled to the ground. Dōraku’s head appeared in the opening.

  “Come up. He’s not here.”

  “He? Who’s he?” asked Bran, grabbing the ladder and testing the strength of the ropes.

  Nagomi scaled the ladder after him. The tree-house was neat and surprisingly spacious. A small clay stove stood in the middle with a cast iron pot on top, a bed of thickly packed straw by one of the walls, a small chest of heavy wood, darkened with age, and little else.

  “Is this a yamabushi’s hut?” she asked.

  “Of sorts,” agreed Dōraku.

  “Can we really stay here? Won’t the host mind?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see. Sit down, I’ll make some tea.”

  The pot bubbled merrily away on the stove. Nagomi tried to take as little place on the floor as possible, in case the mysterious owner of the tree-house returned. The samurai opened the wooden chest unceremoniously.

  “There should be… ah, there they are.”

  He produced five tea cups and put each before one of the travellers, setting the fifth one aside. The cups were of superb quality, each a slightly different style, but they had all seen better days. Nagomi’s vessel was burnt orange in colour, chipped and cracked in several places, with markings of some ancient master still discernible near the bottom.

  “Eeh! These are worthy of a daimyo’s treasure,” Satō said in admiration. Her bowl, black and metallic, was perfectly irregular, blotched with white glaze like snow clouds in the winter sky.

  Bran paid little attention to his cup — red with silver streaks - absentmindedly contemplating the wall ahead.

  Dōraku poured the hot brew into all five cups and raised one to his lips. Before taking a sip he turned towards the same wall that Bran stared at.

  “Aren’t you going to join us, Kabuto-sama?”

  “Why are you bringing strangers to my house uninvited, Swordsman?” a disembodied voice croaked.

  “Come now, Kabuto-sama, you know very well that would be impossible. You invited me here a long time ago.”

  For a moment nothing happened and then something started revealing itself in the corner, as if from under an invisible mantle. A humanoid creature, tall and slender, clad in the red robes of the mountain hermit. A single wing of black feathers twitched nervously over the creature’s shoulder. In the middle of its red face, between two golden, eagle-like eyes, protruded a long sharp beak.

  Nagomi cried out and jumped away in terror, reaching for her wand.

  “A tengu!”

  Satō drew her sword a few inches. Only Bran remained calm.

  “You’re one of the kappa’s friends, aren’t you?” the boy said matter-of-factly. “I saw you last night.”

  The bird-like creature’s eagle eyes narrowed. “It takes a keen eye to spot a tengu in the darkness wearing its mantle.”

  “What are you talking about?” Satō leaned over to Bran “What kappa?”

  “I met one in Hitoyoshi. In all the commotion since then I almost forgot about her.”

  “The old lady from the hot spring!”

  Kappa? Tengu? All those fairy tale creatures were supposed to be extinct, hunted down by the Taikun’s armies generations ago…

  “If you’re referring to Kuma-hime,” the tengu croaked, “then yes, I have the honour to be her acquaintance.”

  Dōraku laughed heartily.

  “You are full of surprises, Karasu-sama!”

  “Karasu-sama?” the creature turned its head to one side, studying Bran with curiosity.

  “That is my name. Aoki Karasu,” the boy replied.

  “What a coincidence. So is mine. Karasu Kabuto — Kabuto of the Crows.”

  The tengu bowed clumsily, spreading its wing in greeting.

  “Your tea is getting cold, old friend,” Dōraku noted, pointing to the cup.

  “What cause do you have to disturb my isolation — again?” the tengu asked, lifting the tea bowl. It opened the beak, stretched out a long thin tongue like a woodpecker, and started slurping the drink loudly.

  “We are simply passing through the mountains, trying to avoid the main road — again,” the samurai answered, smirking.

  “When last you had to hide you were alone, Swordsman, but now you have a p
riestess and two wizards for company. Have your enemies grown so strong since?”

  “How did you know…” Satō asked.

  The tengu let out a screeching sound which terrified Nagomi until she realized the creature was laughing.

  “I am Kabuto of the Crows. It was I who conversed with Kobayakawa-dono on the summit of Mount Hiko. You think a fledgling like you can keep a secret from me?”

  Satō hid her face inside the teacup.

  “You are here because of the Great Magic, aren’t you?”

  “The Great —?” Bran started, but Dōraku interrupted him.

  “We do not wish to burden you with our tale. Can you spare us a roof for the night?”

  “As long as you promise to leave in the morning,” the goblin replied, “there are blankets in the chest — as well you know.”

  “Excuse me,” Satō spoke, her voice trembling, “but do you have any food to spare? We can pay…”

  The tengu scoffed.

  “Look around — what good is your gold for me? There’s plenty of rice and bamboo shoots in the larder, but you’ll have to go down among the roots to find it. You may wash yourselves while you’re at it. What are you looking at, priestess?” the goblin said gruffly, turning towards Nagomi. She almost dropped her cup.

  “I’m sorry!” she said and bowed deeply, her head touching the floor, “I was just wondering… about your other wing.”

  The tengu’s face turned sour — or so Nagomi guessed.

  “Matsudaira Nobutsuna himself slashed it off with his great sword Daihanya. He wanted to make me a gift for the Taikun — the last tengu of Chinzei. With only one wing I could no longer fly or use my magic… still I escaped.”

  A rattling sound made everyone turn their attention to Bran. The boy’s cup lay overturned, his hand clenched around the hilt of his sword.

  “Nobutsuna…” the dragon rider struggled to speak. His eyes darkened.

  The Spirit! Nagomi realised. What does he want now?

  “Matsudaira Nobutsuna led the Taikun’s armies to victory at Shimabara,” explained Dōraku, observing the boy carefully. “He subdued this island all the way to Satsuma. Why does his name anger you so?”

  Bran breathed in deeply and loosened his grip on the blade.

  “It is his deed that angered me, that’s all.”