The Year of the Dragon Omnibus

by James Calbraith

  “Fascinating,” he said. “I wonder just how much she told your grandfather.”

  How does he know?

  The Crimson Robe gestured at somebody beyond Bran’s field of view. Something moved, slithering and shuffling in the periphery of his vision, a bright orange robe on a dark, withered body; an odd smell of lacquers and essential oils licked his nostrils. A skeletal hand, covered with dried up skin, browned with age, picked up the needles and tubes from the floor and hovered over Bran’s arm, still protected by the bwcler.

  “You can’t keep that shield forever,” the Crimson Robe said. “How do you like my chair? It’s an old Western design. Vasconian, I believe.”

  A Roman device! A remnant of the Wizardry Wars.

  The Fanged was right — Bran could feel power flow from his veins along with the blood, and through the wounds inflicted by the bronze spikes on his hands and legs. Even a powerful wizard would not last long in this trap.

  But I’m not a wizard, thought Bran. The Crimson Robe did not know everything. Bran was a dragon rider; the source of his power was his mount. And Emrys was somewhere near. He could feel it again, just as close as in Kirishima. And just like then, despite the same veil, the envelope of dark energy separating them, the dragon’s life energy flowed towards him — a narrow trickle but enough to sustain whatever the chair drained from him.

  There was something else, very faint under all the layers of spent energy, hunger, and fear; an undercurrent of longing, like a sad, wistful song hummed in the distance; the dragon was lonely and miserable. These weren’t the feelings of a feral beast at all!

  “Why are you smiling?” the Crimson Robe asked, irritation slipping into his voice. Bran became serious. The Fanged stood up, picking up Bran’s sword and weighing it in his hand. The runes on the blade glowed a sickly pale blue.

  Theatrics.

  “Tell me, have you come here to duel me, boy? Sword against sword?” The Fanged raised his eyebrow in mocking surprise. “You would die in one second from my swallow-tail cut,” he said with a sneer.

  Bran recognized this sneer. It was the sneer of one who believes himself superior to all around him. Wulfhere and his bullies always sported this grimace on their pure-blood Seaxe faces; always stronger, faster and more self-confident than Bran. But this time, there would be no teachers coming to help, no roofs to leap from...

  “What’s the matter, boy? Fear got your tongue?” Crimson Robe said in the prolonged silence.

  He dismissed the creature holding the tubes and needles and stepped forward. Bran said nothing. He was breathing heavily, his mind focused.

  Just a little bit closer…

  Ganryū leaned over to examine the contraption. Bran rejoiced quietly in his confusion — and what he was sensing from Emrys. The dragon finally noticed his rider’s presence; the sad song turned into one of joy and welcome. The link wasn’t yet strong enough to summon the Dragonform, but maybe…

  The Crimson Robe straightened, his golden eyes studying the boy with annoyed curiosity.

  “Why are you — ”

  “Rhew!”

  A narrow, blade-like tongue of dragon flame burst from Bran’s open palm. The Fanged covered his face with the wide sleeve of his robe. Fire enveloped him, as Bran continued to feed it with the dragon’s energy. The bluish flame poured ceaselessly from the outstretched hand. At last, when he was certain that no thing, living or dead, could survive so much heat, the boy let go, exhausted.

  The scorched remains of the robe fell to the floor. Ganryū’s skin peeled off in burned patches, the ends of his black hair were singed white. The sickly-sweet stench of charred flesh and boiled blood filled the room. But the Fanged was still alive. He spat out bits of flesh and loose teeth.

  “You ruined my robe, Barbarian. It will take a lot of blood to dye a new one.”

  At the flick of his fingers, the straps and bracelets snapped open. He dropped the sword with a clang and raised Bran from the chair by the neck.

  His eyes turned black, his fangs glistened.

  “I will drink you dry, and then move on to your friends. I will leave the priestess for last, so she can watch you all die.”

  The boy lifted his head and looked straight into the demon’s jet-black eyes.

  “Fooled you.”

  For a moment, Ganryū’s eyes reverted to gold as he looked at the boy with confusion. Bran pressed his right palm against the Fanged’s chest. The blade of the Soul Lance pierced the demon through.

  “Gwrthyrru!”

  The spell ran down the lance; the push threw Ganryū ten feet back against the wall. The red jewel dropped from his hand and rolled off into the corner of the room. Bran fell to the floor, his consciousness slipping away.

  The Fanged shook his head, half-stunned, and jumped at the boy with a furious snarl.

  “You’ll pay for this!” he yowled and Bran felt a terrible, paralysing pain he didn’t know existed as fangs tore his skin and hot blood gushed from a vein. Ganryū lapped it up and spat it out in Bran’s face.

  “Just as I thought, disgusting. Now I’ll have to drink a Yamato girl to get rid of the taste.”

  He stood up.

  My shirt’s all wet, the boy thought, dying.

  And then the roof exploded.

  The dragon carried Nagomi high into the storm; she held on for dear life to his scaly neck, swathed in the beast’s hot, brimstone-smelling breath, too scared to open her eyes. After a few seconds, however, the fear passed, replaced by a rush of excitement. She looked down at the mansion and the garden below her and laughed. She had never experienced anything more exhilarating than this.

  “Bran!” she remembered. The dragon roared and banked sideways, almost dropping her; she grabbed the horns at the beast’s neck.

  “I’m sorry if it hurts,” she said, but the dragon paid no attention. It swooped down towards a small square building in the middle of the garden, the size of a tea pavilion.

  The dragon landed, crushing a wall and part of the roof with its weight, its wings spanning almost an entire length of the hut. It lowered its neck so that Nagomi could slide off it to the floor, trembling. She stepped over what looked like a pile of bones wrapped in skin, covered in a monk’s robe, half-crushed by the rubble, and looked around.

  It took her a few seconds to guess that the tall, half-burned, naked man standing over Bran’s mangled body was the Crimson Robe himself. The demon cursed and looked around the room, barely noticing the dragon. A large round jewel, glowing weak red, lay in the corner. Nagomi recognized it in an instant.

  What through blood stone can you see?

  Emrys roared and spat a lash of flame, but failed to stop the Fanged from reaching the stone. The stench was sickening. The demon’s hand was now little more than strips of fried meat hanging off the bones, but there were enough muscles and tendons still left for him to grab the jewel strongly. The jewel shone blood red.

  The dragon flapped its wings and breathed fire again, but something was wrong. It swayed from side to side; for a moment the beast rose, towering over the Fanged, but then it dropped to the ground with a fleshy thud.

  The Fanged stared at Nagomi with eyes black as night.

  “You.” He drew and pointed his great sword at her. He seemed to have no difficulty wielding it with only one hand. The discarded scabbard clanged on the stone floor. “I know you. You saw me take the orb from Mekari.”

  She stepped back.

  The Prophecy. It was him!

  She thought about the glowing white light she had summoned during the sea crossing; the pain it had caused Master Dōraku…

  But before she could even start the chant, the Crimson Robe leapt across the room with inhuman speed and landed several feet from her, raising his two-handed sword. She cowered before the falling blade.

  Time slowed down to a crawl. A humming noise filled Bran’s ears, and milky white mist shrouded the world around him.

  He felt dirt under his feet. He stooped down and picked up
a handful. It was the colour of iron ore; he was somewhere on the red-dirt plain again.

  He wandered blindly through the mist until the ground beneath his feet started to rise. He found himself on a hill top. There were other peaks rising from the white mist, and an entire mountain range on the horizon.

  A wind blew, parting a tunnel in the mist. Somebody was coming through.

  “Taishō!” Bran shouted. The General picked up the pace, climbing up the hill the boy was standing on.

  “You’ve made it here, boy,” he said.

  “Where is here?”

  “This is the place you wanted to see. Where the Spirits dwell.”

  “You mean I’m… dead?”

  “Not yet. Then you’d be beyond those mountains,” the General said, pointing to the jagged peaks. “But you’ve not long to go.”

  “But I can’t die… I need to save Emrys! And Nagomi… and Satō… everyone’s relying on me!”

  “Calm down, boy. I’m not looking forward to spending eternity on this island. The wights of Dan-no-Ura make for poor companions. I’m here to help you.”

  “Can you really do that? Can you bring me back from the dead?”

  “I told you, you’re not dead yet! First, we need to find your beast. Can you sense where it is?”

  Bran closed his eyes and focused as he had done so many times before. Instantly, he picked up a faint buzz.

  “Over there,” he said, pointing towards a nearby hill, split in two by a dark gorge.

  The phantom Emrys waited for Bran at the saddle of the gorge, sitting on hind legs bent like a sphinx, wings spread wide on the ground.

  Its sage eyes followed the boy as he neared the beast cautiously. Bran reached out his hand, but the dragon flapped its wings and leapt aside.

  “What’s wrong, Emrys?”

  He ran up to it again, and again the dragon raised its wings. Bran jumped and grabbed the horns on its neck; the beast whinnied and shook its head up, glaring at the rider with mad, bulging eyes, like a frightened horse.

  “Ease!” cried Bran, sending soothing thoughts through Farlink. “Ease, Emrys!”

  But the beast was in panic. It launched into the air with Bran clutching at the horns. Bran managed to hook a leg around its neck and gain a firmer grip. He could feel his signals reaching the dragon, but there was no response.

  “Perhaps it doesn’t want you to fly it,” cried Shigemasa, observing the scene from a safe distance.

  “What do you mean?”

  The General shrugged. “It’s your mount.”

  Bran clung to the dragon’s green scales with his entire body and dug deep into the beast’s mind, past all the barriers and past the dumb, beastly bewilderment.

  Like a jewel hidden in the darkness, Bran found the dragon’s true feelings. The connection was still there, faint and erratic; the beast had fought hunger, exhaustion and its feral nature, still loyal, still, amazingly, steadfast and obedient. Just as it had always been — ever since Bran had got the ring …

  The ring.

  Bran looked at his hand. The blue stone was missing again.

  What does that mean?

  And then it dawned on him. The ring he got from Lord Shimazu was a fake; a forgery. That’s why he wasn’t able to use it anymore.

  Of course. He’s keeping the stone for himself. But that means…

  He remembered the first time he had flown Emrys; it was just a brief flight over the Caer Wyddno; he’d flown above the town earlier, with Dylan, so he hadn’t thought anything would surprise him. But the way the wind felt around him that day, the exhilaration of altitude and speed, the freedom, it was like nothing he had ever dreamt of before. It had taken Bran just a few flights like that to establish a strong, special bond with the jade green dragon.

  Dylan had always dismissed his story as fanciful.

  “You were just an impressionable child,” he’d say. “No rider your age had ever achieved a Farlink. You were imagining things.”

  Did I have my ring then, on that first flight? He tried to remember. No, he wouldn’t have got it for at least a year.

  The beast flew on its own over hundreds of miles of featureless sea in search of Bran. It struggled to find his rider and remain in contact through weeks of entrapment and bondage. This connection was not the result of some magic stone. There was no other dragon like Emrys. And Bran wanted to repay this loyalty. He had crossed an unknown land, fought powerful enemies, all to find and free Emrys from its shackles.

  “I will not give up yet,” he whispered and closed his eyes.

  He sensed an impulse coming now from the phantom dragon, almost a message; Emrys was telling him what to do.

  “Dragon Form? Here? Now? But… Oh, I see. Y Ddraig Ffurf!”

  He felt his body disappear, melt and fuse with that of the phantom jade dragon.

  Bran saw Ganryū’s blade fall on the priestess and shot his head forward; he wanted to bite the Fanged through, but miscalculated and instead punched him through the wall into the garden outside.

  Bran leapt after him. Unused to having wings, and struggling to stay aloft, he swayed from side to side. His claws caught in the rubble and he tumbled down. He shook his head, stunned, but picked himself up. He saw Ganryū stare at the gem in his hand in surprise and disgust, trying to comprehend why it didn’t have any effect on the dragon.

  “No matter,” the Fanged decided. “I don’t need this to kill you all.”

  He let go of the gem and grasped the sword in two hands, raising it flat above his head.

  The boy spewed fire. The pure dragon flame was nothing like the poor imitation Bran had tried before. Hot like the Sun itself, it burned the rest of the skin and flesh off of Ganryū. What stood now in the garden was a blackened skeleton covered with patches of scorched muscles and tendons, staring at the dragon from empty eye sockets. But the Curse still powered the Fanged, and he still held the sword firmly with blazing hands.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” the lipless mouth said and laughed. Bran heard in the voice the buzz of the Otherworld he had heard a long time ago in the roar of the skeleton dragon. Ganryū leapt high and struck. Bran dodged, but the sword grazed his neck, cutting through the celadon scales. The wound burned as if doused with acid.

  A magic blade! I must be more careful.

  He leapt into the air and flapped his wings a few times to stay aloft. The chaotic Ninth Wind of the island buffeted him about, like a paper toy. He swooped down and snapped his jaws, but Ganryū rolled safely aside and Bran’s teeth only caught dirt. He flew back up but not before the magic blade struck again, leaving a deep, bleeding gash.

  Ganryū could not reach him in the air, but Bran did not dare to get close to the great sword. His flame could not cause the Fanged any more harm. It was stalemate.

  Nagomi lifted Bran’s head; he was covered in his own blood and there was no heartbeat in his chest. A torn, gaping wound on his neck left no doubts to his fate. The dragon rider was dead.

  She did not cry. All the despair and panic floated away, leaving just an empty shell behind. Her mind withdrew, fleeing from all the pain and suffering. The world around her turned hazy, distant.

  A streak of white fur leapt out from the mist. A white fox coiled around her legs and nudged her sleeve with its long, slender nose. Nagomi stood up and pulled the Spirit Light from within the folds of her priestly robe. The orange flame burst brightly, clearing the darkness.

  Bran heard a beautiful chant coming from the pavilion. He looked down and squinted, the dragon’s eyes blinded by the bright white light. Nagomi’s voice, clear, pure and strong, filled the garden. Her skin glowed with the sacred light, reflecting the one dancing in the clay beaker she was holding. Her body was ablaze; she was a naked pillar of light. The white flame surrounded her and spread in a spherical wave, her copper hair raised by the hot wind. The sphere grew, encompassing the entire pavilion and the garden around it, until it reached Ganryū. The Fanged cried out in pain, dropped his sword and cov
ered his ears.

  “The screech! Make it stop!”

  He stepped back.

  “It burns!”

  But it was too late. His body froze as the divine whirlwind of light and fire tore into the bones, causing him to howl in agony. He reached out the skeletal hand at Bran.

  “Make. It. Stop.”

  The smouldering knuckles clenched into a fist as the Fanged gathered all his remaining power and struck back. The holy flame withered, pushed away by the darkness of his cursed soul.

  The chanting stopped; Bran heard her abrupt cry, the sound of shattering clay, and felt himself torn away from the dragon back into his own body.

  The world was bathed in dazzling, warm light. The white haze receded only enough for him to see outlines of what was going on around him. His body was strangely weightless, wispy and… fragrant? There was no mistake, his skin — strangely pale, glowing white — smelled of cherry blossom and incense. The walls of the pavilion — what was still left of them — were shattered and half-melted, as if after some enormous explosion.

  “Focus, boy. You have not won the fight yet,” a familiar voice spoke beside Bran. The General’s spirit hovered in the air the same way it did back at the straits.

  “Pick up the sword,” the old ghost ordered. “Kill Ganryū.”

  “But…”

  “Trust me. Pierce him with your blade.”

  The boy picked up his weapon and stepped over a smouldering crossbeam into the garden. The Fanged turned his attention from fighting off Emrys and stared at Bran, nuggets of gold gleaming within the terrifying, scorched skull.

  “You’re only prolonging the inevitable, boy. You can’t kill me. Nobody can kill me!”

  He let another cone of dragon flame wash over his charred bones and raised his nodachi sword at the boy.