The Chrysanthemum Seal (The Year of the Dragon, Book 5)

by James Calbraith

  The Yamato knowledge of diseases and various illnesses was appallingly poor. Certainly, they were making progress under the watchful eye of their Bataavian teachers, but their country still suffered from bouts of smallpox, measles, and other easily preventable diseases, which they tried valiantly to fight with the usual remedies of the primitives: herbs, diet and hygiene.

  But their treatment of injuries, no matter how violent, was something else entirely… it went far beyond anything Samuel had ever seen. No Yamato ever requested his help with a broken arm, a sprain, or a cut. Several times he had seen a porter or shipwright suffer from what would normally be a crippling mishap — a busy harbour never lacked in those sorts of incidents — only to see him seemingly unharmed and fully fit just a few days later. Whatever was going on, it was nothing short of miraculous.

  The Bataavians never mentioned the phenomenon, at least never near Samuel. They seemed to ignore its existence and avoided the subject, even when asked directly. He had to rely on his observations, and they could only get him so far without actually descending on the mainland and talking to the injured Yamato themselves. There was no way to do it on Dejeema.

  Admiral Otterson was a generous man: he had offered to leave Samuel on the island, from where he could return home with the next Bataavian ship. A month earlier, Samuel would have jumped at the opportunity; not anymore. The Diana was heading for a bigger city than Keeyo, a place where he would perhaps be allowed to land and speak directly with the locals. It was his best chance of discovering the truth behind the mystery. He had to board the Varyaga underwater ship once more… even if it meant travelling with whatever was locked in that deep, cold cargo hold again.

  Bran drew the pail full of icy cold water from the well. He dipped his fingers in, and touched the still tender bruises on his eyebrow and a cut on his forehead. He washed his arms, wincing and hissing. Once again, his “custodians” had decided to show him how much they loathed the “barbarians”. There was no point in protecting himself from their blows with magic — he knew it would only make them angrier and force them to come up with more subtle, more frustrating ways of harming him — such as withholding food for a few days.

  Bran’s skin, where bare, had gone beyond tan and into deep, burnt red, peeling in places; his lips were parched, and his eyes glued with dry dust. He scratched his itchy cheek. He needed a shave, badly. He had grown thin over the last few weeks and that only made the problem worse, as the skin on his face seemed to shrink; to wither.

  He put on the yukata – the only clothes he had were the ones in which he’d been arrested — and poured the rest of the water onto the hot scales of his dragon. The Yamato summer was scorching hot — just like the one in Gwynedd had been… and just like then, Bran’s main concern was to stop the parching heat from drying out Emrys’s hide.

  “Has it really been a year?” he asked the air. “The Ladon… the disaster…?” He wiped sticky sweat from his brow.

  The beast opened one eye, startling a fly, looked around, then closed it again.

  “This is ridiculous,” Bran said, irritated, and threw the pail away. “I went through it all just to be stuck here with you, like some hermit?”

  He stormed off and sat down inside the dilapidated boat shed — the only structure on the tiny island which was now his “home”, or rather, his prison.

  The Chōfu coast was a mere mile away, and on most days he could easily see the city’s ochre-yellow walls and gold-plated palace roofs glistening in the summer sun, or track the busy boat traffic in the harbour. “His” island — the larger of the two clumps of rock in the middle of the Dan-no-ura Straits — was a little smaller than Ganryūjima, and completely devoid of any features apart from a few clumps of trees, the boat shed, and a deep well dug out in the middle. Bran guessed it must have served as a refuge for fishermen during the fierce winter storms, but in the summer, no ships ventured near it.

  The earth beneath his feet rumbled gently. He knew well what it meant.

  “Are you hungry again?” he asked, irritably. “Well, you’ll just have to wait. It’s still light.”

  Having convinced Lord Mori that he’d be unable to control Emrys for too long if the dragon grew hungry, Bran was allowed to let the beast loose at night, hunting in the forested hills of the Ogasawara land – the Mori clan’s sworn enemy — on the other side of the strait. His own needs were more or less satisfied by a boat of supplies arriving once every few days at the narrow strip of a beach.

  It was a strange prison. There were no guards, no bars, no chains; and yet, Bran could not escape. The deal he’d struck with Lord Mori was enough to keep him on the tiny island indefinitely.

  As long as I’m here, Satō is safe from harm.

  “How long are you planning to stay here?”

  Bran jerked up in surprise, hitting his head on the shed roof.

  “You,” he said, noticing Dōraku leaning on the edge of the well, smoking his pipe. “How in Annwn did you get here?”

  The Swordsman raised a brow.

  “Are you still surprised by my ingenuity?”

  Bran shrugged. “I suppose not.”

  He didn’t like the idea of being alone with this man. Much like Nagomi, he never managed to completely bring himself to trust the Fanged.

  “You’re hurt.”

  Bran didn’t answer. He gazed gloomily at Dōraku’s sandals, avoiding his inquisitive stare.

  “It’s time for you to run away,” the Swordsman said.

  Bran went over to pick up the pail and filled it with water again.

  “If I leave now, something may happen to Satō.”

  “Well, if it’s the wizardess you’re so concerned about…” said Dōraku, “that should be motivation enough for you to haul your bottom out of here. She sacrificed a lot so that you might live — and you squander that away?”

  “I live,” Bran said, and shrugged again. “And where would you have me go? There is nowhere in Yamato where my presence would be welcome.”

  “You do realize she doesn’t even know you’re here. She thinks you’re away on some spy mission for Mori.”

  Bran pondered the news briefly, but he couldn’t find it in him to be surprised by such trifles anymore. He poured the water on the dragon’s back.

  “It might be better that way,” he said. “No need to worry her.”

  Dōraku tapped the pipe against the rim of the well and put it away into his sash.

  “Sooner or later, Mori will have to do something about you.”

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” said Bran. He was growing tired of the conversation.

  “What if he decides to kill you? What if the choice is your life or hers? How far are you willing to go?”

  Bran had no answer for him. He didn’t feel comfortable at Dōraku’s line of questioning. What did the Swordsman want from him? To put his friends’ well-being on the line for his own sake once again?

  “I thought you, at least, would understand,” he said carefully. “There are more important things in life than… well, life.”

  “You’re not a samurai, boy,” the Swordsman replied. “You don’t have to act like one.”

  “I will choose the way I behave myself, thank you very much.”

  Dōraku’s lips narrowed, and his nostrils puffed.

  “You’re wasting everyone’s time,” Dōraku said, anger creeping into his voice “Stop this sulking, boy!”

  Bran stood up. “Leave me alone! Who do you think you are, coming here, telling me what to do? You’re not — ”

  He bit his tongue. He had almost blurted my father. But that would have been such a childish thing to say…

  He shook his head. “Just go. I’ll think about what you’ve said.”

  “That you will,” said Dōraku with a slight bow and walked off towards the sea.

  Bran turned his back on him and punched the sand with his fist.

  Emrys snored.

  As they approached the cliff, a
sudden updraft caught Emrys unawares, bringing with it the heady smell of iron — the inescapable scent of the dry red dust below. Emrys pulled up and then levelled its flight over the scarred plateau, which Bran called the Wounded Highland.

  Other than watching ships in the Chōfu harbour, exploring the Otherworld was his only pastime during the days of exile. He had been plotting its strange, inexplicable topography, trying to figure out a way to map it to the real world. He knew it was possible ever since he had managed to locate Nagomi by tracking her on the red dust plain… but it was not a straightforward task. The Otherworld was an idea, rather than a place. It had a few common points with the physical plane — hot spots of power, like the Takachiho Mountain — which enabled Bran to orientate himself in his journeys, but other than that, the relation seemed to be random. The distances changed, the locations moved around.

  This was an empty, lonesome land — but Bran was not alone here. He could sense other minds, in the distance… the Black Wings were a constant, faint presence, for instance, puttering about somewhere in the North, always on the move. But there were others who travelled through the Otherworld, darker, more sinister spirits that he tried to avoid.

  Reaching other minds, other red light towers was a nigh-impossible task. Even if Bran spotted one, it seemed to move away almost as fast as he tried to reach it. There was a secret to finding them that only the Gorllewin possessed; Bran suspected it had to be voluntary, agreed upon prior to contact. If that was true, then all his attempts were futile. He hoped there was a way to overrun that limitation.

  At times he reached Nagomi’s tower. Physically, they were a mere two miles apart, but in the Otherworld the distance varied from a few hours to a day of flying, sometimes over the Wounded Highland and across the Canyon of Pain, sometimes down the Slopes of Gravel — all names Bran had put on an ever changing map he’d been trying to draw in the sand of his little island. The school of magic was a bright yellow — sometimes blue — beacon which was present on both planes, and that always helped Bran to find his way around.

  Nagomi’s “tower” was, fittingly, a small shrine, with white-washed walls and blue tiles on the roof. The door was shut and guarded by a sleeping black bear, which Bran assumed had something to do with Torishi. Every time Bran got too near the shrine door, the bear woke up and snarled at him, his fierce, dumb eyes showing no recognition.

  At length, he stopped trying to contact the priestess. He sensed a dark, creepy presence. The shadowy beings were getting closer every day, and stronger. It was as if they were looking for him, and he didn’t want them to find Nagomi as well.

  A few days after he had first detected their presence nearby, Bran resolved to stage an ambush. He landed Emrys in a deep crevice on one of the Slopes of Gravel and waited. As soon as he felt the creature near enough, they leapt into the air. A shapeless shadow crept and crawled over the red surface. It spotted Bran and began to crawl away with surprising speed. Emrys swooped down towards it; Bran summoned his Soul Lance and slashed it through. The shadow disappeared without a sound, leaving only a faint scent of ozone.

  The smell of salty air and the burning rays of the sun told him he was back. He opened his eyes and stared into the sea. What were those things, and what did they want? There was no doubt now that they were after him. Was there reason to it, or were they simply drawn to him, an anomaly in the otherwise empty land?

  As he pondered the question, a drop of rain fell on his sun-blistered shoulder. He looked up, surprised. It hadn’t rained for days, and the sun was relentless in its brilliance, turning the whole sky into a blazing haze of azure, so bright it was almost white. This time, however, half the sky had gone dark blue; a torn curtain of rain approached from the north, and the wind had picked up, raising whirls of sand on the beach.

  The supply boat made it just in time before the full rage of the storm opened over the Dan-no-ura Strait. The warden thrust a large, richly decorated bento box in Bran’s hands. It was filled with succulent fish, fresh fruit, and even a few moist slices of cured venison from the mountains.

  “What is this?” asked Bran, astonished.

  “Your last meal,” replied the warden brusquely, angry at having to even talk to the barbarian, and irritated by the first drops of rain falling on his bald head.

  Bran’s heart raced.

  “Last meal?”

  “His Excellency Mori Takachika-dono orders you to commit suicide,” the warden said, throwing a piece of paper and an unsheathed short sword, without the scabbard, on the ground before Bran. “He grants you this rare privilege as a mark of his graciousness. Far too generous, if you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked you,” mumbled Bran, picking up the sword with shaking hands. A sudden, sharp blast of pain flashed in his eyes. The warden whacked him in the face with full force, causing him to drop the box and the sword in the sand. He staggered and spat blood.

  “I could kill you right now, barbarian!” the man growled. “But I respect Mori-dono’s wish. I will be back to pick up the body…” he added, and looked to the sky. A thick drop of rain hit him right in the eye. He grunted. “…as soon as I can. And make sure that monster of yours is dealt with, too!”

  In a hurry, he pushed the boat back into the swelling sea, leaving Bran alone to his thoughts.

  An order to commit suicide?

  He picked up the paper. It was a clear enough statement — and once again, the daimyo mentioned Satō’s well-being in what seemed a casual passing, but which was an obvious threat against her. The girl’s life and happiness is in my hands, the letter said, between the lines. And don’t you forget it.

  Bran cursed and crushed the letter in his hand. Was that it? Was this the choice Dōraku was taking about? But why now? What had happened in Chōfu to change the daimyo’s decision?

  He sat down and started picking at the food randomly. Maybe it’s just another bluff, he clung to a sudden hope. Or a test.

  A gust of wind threw sand and sea in his face. The storm had finally come, and it looked like it was here to stay for a while.

  A man, dressed in a cloak of oiled straw and holding on to his bamboo hat, torn and soaked through, burst into Bran’s boatshed home, past the sleeping Emrys, whom he failed to notice. Huffing and puffing, he sat down by the campfire burning under the roof and rubbed his hands.

  “Oh good,” he said, “you’ve managed to get the fire going.”

  The storm had been rampaging for three days now, and Bran lay huddled on his bedding, wrapped in cloaks and dirty blankets next to the fire he had built out of damp wood and sustained with regular bursts of dragon flame. He tried to move as little as possible to conserve heat. The man didn’t see Bran’s face in the shadow and mistook him for just another castaway.

  “What weather, eh? And in the middle of the summer!”

  Bran grunted in vague agreement and sneezed.

  “I didn’t see another boat,” the man continued, “are you stranded here? I can take you back on shore.”

  “Don’t you know where you are?” Bran asked from under the blankets.

  The other man looked around, perplexed. “This is Kanju Island, isn’t it? I have been away for a few months, but I think I know my way around Dan-no-ura, even in this storm.”

  “So you haven’t heard about the prisoner on Kanju? This island is off-limits by Mori-dono’s orders.”

  “Oh!” The man covered his mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know — I was in Naniwa all this time… As soon as the weather clears, I’ll… wait – ” He pointed at Bran. “If it’s a prison, where are the guards?”

  “There are no guards here. Only me.”

  “You’re the prisoner?”

  “I am. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you were here.” Bran pointed into the corner of the boatshed. “There’s some rice in the crate. I don’t have much to spare — I haven’t had any supplies since the storm started.”

  “Ah, thank you! I have some fish in the boat, I’ll bring it in the morning.�
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  The fisherman reached for the box and grabbed a handful of wet rice.

  “You’re very kind,” he said, with his mouth full of sticky grains, “for a criminal. What did they put you in for?”

  Isn’t that obvious? thought Bran, before remembering the fisherman couldn’t see his face and of course his flawless, if archaic, Yamato wasn’t at all helpful.

  He sat up and moved closer to the light of the campfire. The fisherman stared at him, dropping bits of rice to the floor, then screamed, scrambled on all fours and ran out of the shed.

  “Wait!” Bran shouted, but it was no use. The fisherman was gone, pushing his wobbly boat into the stormy waves, away from the island, into the darkness and inevitable death.

  Looking out of the second floor window onto the smooth surface of the sea, dazzling in the summer sun, and the wide, calm bay bound by rolling green hills, Dylan thought of fate, and chuckled quietly.

  This place was supposed to be the closest guarded secret in the East. And yet, if Admiral Reynolds was to be believed — and Dylan had no reason not to believe him — he was only the third of his family to visit the fabled island of Dejima.

  “What is so funny, Dracalish?”

  The question was posed by a man who looked like a bank manager, who was sitting on the other side of a simple walnut table: Overwizard Hendrik Curzius, the master of this island prison in which the Yamato held the Bataavian merchants, the chief of the inmates.

  Dylan scratched the walnut surface lightly.

  “I was just wondering how you had managed to keep this place a secret for so long.”

  “Why did you attack my ship, Commodore… ab Ifor, was it? Our nations are not at war. I will be forced to write a stern note of protest to your government.”

  “I did not come here as a Dracalish officer. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t involve the official channels. This is a private mission — I’m looking for my son.”