“Ozun!” the man spoke with a voice that sounded like death itself. “I have not yet released thee from my service. Fight for me!”
At this signal a dark, sinister spirit rose from the dead man’s body. It grabbed the bell staff and stomped it one-two-three times. In answer to the summons, the spirits of all who had been slain until now also abandoned their bodies and appeared, hovering above ground, holding ghostly, translucent weapons.
“Abomination!” cried the Head Priest. The surviving acolytes and the samurai picked themselves off the ground, ready to continue the fight. “These spirits must be put to rest!”
The battle broke out anew around the oxcart. Magic, holy power, ghostly energies and steel blades clashed in deadly strife. Wherever a man fell, the jingling staff brought him back to life. But whenever a ghost was slain, either by cold blade or by a priest’s exorcism, one of the paper dolls at the Crimson Robe’s feet burned out.
Somebody was calling Bran’s name. A despairing voice slowly made its way through to his brain, muddled with fury, bloodlust and confusion. Satō... She was still kneeling on the road, clutching the priestess in her arms. Blood trickled slow and thick from the wound in Nagomi’s chest. The priestess was pale, her lips blue, her chest no longer rising in frantic gasps.
“We need to run, boy,” a familiar voice in Bran’s head broke through the dizziness.
“Shigemasa! Where have you been?”
“No time to explain now! Trust me, I’ve seen many battles in my life, and this one’s already lost. We’ll be slaughtered if we stay here.”
“But there’s …nowhere to go.”
They were now cut off from the shrine by the heat of the fighting. Even the female assassin was getting back up, ready to attack again. In the opposite direction stood the Crimson Robe, the orb in his hand shining with cold red flame.
A few men led by Captain Kiyomasa broke through towards Bran. They all stopped between him and the Crimson Robe, but for one youngster who charged at the demon.
The Crimson Robe’s great sword flashed forward, cutting right through the man. Black fangs dug deep into the priest’s neck. The man died with a gurgling cry and the demon cast him aside.
Bran stared at the dead body which shrivelled and shrunk, like a quickly drying piece of meat. The Captain’s voice broke him out of the stupor.
“I don’t know who or what you are or what you want, but I won’t have a priestess’s death on my conscience. If she’s still alive, save the girl and yourself,” said Kiyomasa. “We’ll guard your retreat. Run!”
Bran cast a final look at the oxcart and the remnants of the chains. Emrys was lost from him, a dot of green flame in the night sky, flying westwards first, then turning north in a blind rage.
“I’ll come for you,” he sent a thought through the Farlink, without a hope of an answer. “I’ll find you again.”
“You’ll find your death in a moment,” a nagging voice in his head urged him on. Having a little of the Dragonform strength still left in his arms, Bran lifted the unconscious priestess gently from the road, nodded at Satō to follow him and darted into the deep forest.
The right sleeve of her kimono felt wet. Surprised, she looked down — it was soaked with her own blood. At some point in the heat of the battle, either the assassin’s sickle or one of the grey-clad swordsmen’s blades must have reached her.
Though Nagomi was dying, she was not dead yet, and Bran — if it was still him under the dragon-like disguise — was carrying her off into darkness, into safety. She noticed a sword lying on the road, and a leather satchel with a broken strap. She picked them up, thrust the weapon into her sash alongside the Matsubara sword and, clutching the bleeding arm, she followed the transformed boy, crying with pain.
The Crimson Robe noticed the escape and tried to follow, but she did not let him. She now had no need for the glove’s needle; she had plenty of fresh blood to spare. She put her left palm on her right arm, and the right hand on the trunk of a nearby cedar tree, discharging all the power she had left and could yet summon. A web of thick ice spread from tree to tree, halting the demon’s pursuit.
The release made her tremble with ecstasy. She gasped. So much power! If only I could wield it all of the time…
She heard the sound of a bugle conch in the distance, but there was no time to wonder what it meant. Bran was already out of sight. She forced herself to run.
The dense forest muffled the noise of the battle and suppressed the lights from the blazing shrine. She was running in silence and darkness now, up the hill, along animal paths and lumberjack cuttings. The Westerner in front of her grew smaller. She was too exhausted to wonder at what had happened to Bran. His monstrous form now all but subdued, he looked almost human again. He seemed to barely have enough strength remaining to carry Nagomi’s body over the gnarled roots and wet, mossy stones.
“Are they… following us?” he asked, breathing heavily. His voice was croaking, guttural.
“They must be — but I don’t see anyone yet.”
“I… have to… rest.”
They halted by a large rocky outcrop, a wall of sheer black basalt. Bran laid Nagomi down. Part of the assassin’s sickle blade, snapped off by the ice, was still sticking out from her breast, as they were afraid to remove it without a way to stem the resulting bleeding. The priestess was pale like a sheet of paper but she was still breathing.
“I can’t run with her anymore,” Bran explained feebly. “My strength is gone.”
“We’ll just have to carry — no! They’re already here!”
A glimpse of crimson appeared among the trees in the light of the moon. The pursuit was almost upon them.
“Young tono! Over here!”
Satō looked at where the voice was coming from. A girl was crouching on top of the outcrop, her hands reaching down towards them, touching about blindly.
“Yōko! How did you…”
“Please hurry!”
The wizardess pulled herself up the ridge and, together with the servant girl, took Nagomi’s limp body from Bran, who soon followed to the top.
“It’s no use, he’ll find us here,” said Bran quietly, as the Crimson Robe appeared at the glade, accompanied by the ashen-clad assassin and a bald Nanseian warrior.
“Please come,” Yōko whispered and led them, crouching, into a small niche in the rock. The nook seemed barely large enough to fit one person, but turned out to be an entrance to a long cave. When they were all inside, Bran lit a flamespark. They were in a tunnel.
“What is this place?”
“I do not know,” Yōko replied, “but there are tunnels like this all over t’ mountain. As old as Gods, some say. This one will lead you to safety. Please hurry.”
“How did you know we’d be here?” Satō asked. They were now running down the damp corridor lined with limestone flags. Bran was again carrying the priestess, but he was now only his normal height and strength, and could barely keep up the pace.
“I — ‘tis a curse,” the girl said shyly. “Sometimes I have visions of t’future… sometimes I can see things others can’t. Like the samurai inside you, tono,” she said. “This is how I learn’d about them tunnels in the mountains. I saw terrible danger befalling you all, and I jus’ had to try and help.”
“And with a gift like that, you are still just a kitchen servant?”
“T’priests say there is no kami presence about me and that only a demon could grant such powers. It is a grace that they allow me to stay at t’shrine at all.”
It was obvious to Satō that the girl had latent magical powers and, with proper training, could grow into a great wizardess. The priests must have known it, too. They keep her hidden from Shimazu…
“This is the end of t’tunnel,” Yōko pushed open a wall in front of them. There was nothing but darkness and silence outside. “You are far from t’shrine, and from your enemies. I hope yer’ not too far from help,” she said.
“What about you?” asked Satō
. The girl smiled.
“My place is in t’shrine. The priests will need all help they can get.”
The girl rummaged for a while in the clump of tall ferns.
“’ere, take this.”
She handed them a small, shallow clay vessel and a bundle of grey cloth.
“What is this?”
“It’s a holy light that the priests carry ‘round. Your friend will need it.”
“These are my things!” Satō said astonished, checking the inside of the cloth bundle. “My books, my notes!”
“Thank you,” Bran put the vessel into his satchel. “A day will come when we will repay our gratitude properly.
“Please, just let me sister know I am well, young tono.”
“I will, Yōko,” said Satō.
The hatch closed behind the girl and the tunnel exit blended into a rock wall. They were in the middle of the cedar forest, somewhere high up on the slopes of Mount Takachiho. Bran laid Nagomi’s body on the damp ground and lit a faint flamespark. Satō knelt beside the priestess to assess her injuries. Around them, the wood was dark and deadly quiet.
Satō took out a dagger and cut through Nagomi’s sash. He turned his eyes away as she parted the priestess’s robe to reveal the pale, soft skin underneath.
“Don’t be so squeamish,” the wizardess said, misunderstanding his embarrassment. “Can you still do magic? I am spent.”
He nodded. “It’s fading away without my dragon, but I still have a little left…”
“I need you to cauterise the wound.”
She guided his hand. “Here.” Bran produced a small, hot flame from his fingers at the same moment when Satō pulled out the sickle shard. Nagomi stirred in pain, but the wound bled only for a second. Pink dribble trickled out of the corner of the priestess’s mouth.
“We need to find some help,” said Bran, “or find a way back to the town.”
“The Crimson Robe must have his men all over that place. Besides, I don’t even know how to get back. I lost my orientation in that winding tunnel.”
She tore a strip off her sleeve and prepared a makeshift bandage.
“There must be something around here,” she added, looking around. “Why else would a tunnel lead into the middle of the forest?”
“I’ll go look for some shelter. It’s starting to rain. Will you manage on your own?”
“I may not be a spirit healer, but I’ve observed Ine and Itō-sama at work many times. I’ll do what I can.”
He returned a few minutes later. The rain was beating on the leaves above, but not much of it was yet getting through the canopy.
“How is she?”
“I don’t know. She’s still breathing... barely... she may be bleeding inside — there’s no way to tell. Have you found something?”
“There’s a cave nearby. But the path is slippery. We need to be careful.”
They wrapped Nagomi in her robe and carried her slowly along an old, long-overgrown path leading up the hill. The priestess seemed fragile, as if her body was made of fine china. She moaned and whimpered quietly a few times when Satō or Bran tripped on the slippery stones.
Using his sword like a machete, Bran cut through the vines, ferns and bracken to clear the way. The path wound for a few hundred feet over slick outcrops and lichen-covered boughs. At last it reached a large cave, carved by a trickling waterfall in the volcanic rock of Mount Takachiho. Bran’s faint flamespark could not light all of it, but he could see the remains of a camp on the floor.
Hunters or poachers, he thought, seeing remnants of traps, bits of rotten rope and broken-off shards of spearheads and harpoons.
“It smells,” Satō wrinkled her nose.
Somewhere at the back there had to be a fissure leading to the depths of the volcano, from which seeped the fumes, filling the cave with the faint stench of brimstone — but also making it drier and warmer than it at first seemed.
“It’s a shelter. And look, there’s water,” Bran said, pointing to a waterfall trickling away in the corner. “Lay her here, I’ll start a fire.”
He gathered all the bits and pieces of wood scattered around the cave floor, brought in some of the drier deadwood from the forest and set the shoddy campfire aflame. It burned fast, bright yellow in the sulphur-infused air.
Satō crouched over her unconscious friend, washing the wound with the pitiful amount of water she managed to bring from the waterfall in the clay beaker the servant girl had given them — the only container they had. Her movements became automatic, rigid, as she struggled to cope with pain, exhaustion, and the shock of battle.
“You’re hurt as well,” Bran said, touching Satō’s shoulder gently where the enemy blade had cut the deepest. The silk of her kimono was soaked red.
She shook her head.
“It’s nothing. I’ve had worse at swordplay trainings.”
“It still needs to be looked after…”
“Not until we find help for Nagomi.”
“Will she make it through the night like that?”
“We can but pray.”
Gently, but forcefully, he sat her down away from the priestess. She had neither strength nor will to oppose him.
“You can do no more now,” he said. “In the morning it will be easier to look for help.”
“Yes,” she answered feebly. “What about you…?” She raised her hand to his face.
Now that the battle rush in his veins had gone, he was feeling the dumb ache in his broken nose again, and the stinging on the cheek where the assassin’s blade cut him.
“I got lucky,” he said with a forced smile. “Scars only make a man more handsome.”
That’s what my mother used to say about my father. Am I too going to be covered in scars when I’m old?
He took the clay beaker from Satō’s trembling hands.
If I ever manage to grow old…
“What do we do with this?” he asked.
“I don’t know…”
Bran put the vessel into Nagomi’s hands. A tiny orange wisp of light appeared inside the shallow bowl, flickering weakly. It seemed the priestess’s face became more peaceful and relaxed, but it may have been just a trick of the dancing light.
“Look there, by the waterfall.”
As if in answer to the holy flame, a tiny sparkling dot appeared above the stream, then another, and another. A cloud of fireflies danced in the shadows like a school of fairies.
“So beautiful,” whispered Bran, but Satō rose, picked up a stone and threw it at the fireflies.
“No! Get away!”
The dancing lights vanished.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s the souls of the dead coming for Nagomi! I won’t let them!”
She threw another stone and then slumped down to the ground, exhausted and dejected. Bran reached his hand towards her.
“We must rest. I’m sure in the morning everything will work out — somehow.”
They lay down on the damp, rocky floor. The flames of the campfire illuminated the cave walls, casting strange, trembling shadows. They did not even have blankets to cover themselves from the cold of the night; they had used both their cloaks to wrap up the priestess.
“What was that… charm you were under?” Satō asked.
“Dragonform, the last resort of a rider... I was channelling Emrys’s raw magic power — at least for as long as I had contact with it.”
“I’m sorry you lost your dorako… again.”
Bran did not reply. He was trying to remember his actions under the spell’s power.
Did I… did I kill somebody?
“I have seen it,” said Satō. “Up close. It was magnificent, even bound and locked like that. And then when it rose and spewed the flames… I could feel its power — it was immense.”
“Emrys is yet small and not fully grown. You should’ve seen my father’s dragon...”
She sneaked closer to him in the darkness, shivering from cold. He reached his arm
around and embraced her.
“Tell me something about it,” she urged.
In the darkness he could hear her laboured breathing.
He spoke at last. “Nine years ago my father took me to the hatchery by the Pont-y-Pair Falls on River Llugwy, to let me choose my first dragon.”
“You were seven and you were given a dorako?”
“I would not get to own it for three more years, while it grew in the hatchery. And it hadn’t even hatched yet when we arrived. There were just three eggs to choose from, the baby dragons ready to break out. While we watched, two green heads emerged from the eggs. Viridians of Gwydyr Forest, proud, stout beasts of ancient lineage. Father liked one of them immediately. Take this one, son,” he said, “look at how bright its eyes are.”
“Was it Emrys?”
“No!” Bran said with a quiet chuckle. “Emrys started hatching last. Its egg was smaller, less shiny. As soon as it came out, the hatchmaster wanted to take it away and drown it.”
“Why?”
“It was a swamp wyrm. We knew it immediately by the smell. A poor, cheap breed that must have got mixed up with the others. Nobody would offer one of these to the son of Dylan ab Ifor. It would have been an insult.”
“What happened?”
“It fought back. It bit the hatchmaster’s hand and leapt towards us — it couldn’t fly yet. My father wanted to kill it, but I stopped him. The dragon jumped on my lap. It stank of the swamp — it still does — but I didn’t mind. It snuggled up to me, seeking protection. I knew then that I never wanted another dragon. Since then, it never threw me off, never bolted, and although I’ve had it for six years now, it never showed any signs of going feral — until we got here. And now… it is lost.”
He fell silent. Satō had stopped paying attention to his story a while ago, dozing off between the sentences with her head resting against his chest.
I lost everything. Emrys, Nagomi, a chance to go home — I couldn’t even keep the ring…
It was his last thought before he fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 70
