Many people came to the village. Merchants and fortune-tellers, traveling artisans and gamblers, con men and bodyguards, drifters and criminals . . . Still, up until last spring it had always been peaceful. This year, it didn’t look like that was going to be the case. There’d been a lot of travelers that day—some were just passing through, while others had various aims and would stay a while. The peaceful village accepted them all without complaint. Even though there were some the community would’ve done well to reject.
There were two places to stay in the village. One was a lodging house for merchants where everyone slept packed into the same room like sardines; the other was a hotel with private quarters. Ry chose the hotel. Having camped out all the way there, he still had money to spare, and he also suspected the trio might check into the merchant inn. He somewhat regretted ever having mentioned the village of Anise to them.
While the accommodations were hardly what anyone would call spectacular, the room was at least clean. It was also unpretentiously strung with high-voltage lines and various charms to ward off evil spirits and smaller monstrosities. Just as he was unpacking his baggage and considering what he should do next, a steady knock rang out and the door to his room was opened before he could even reply.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” said the girl.
The room seemed to brighten immediately due to her confident tone and bearing. She must’ve been related to the sulky old man who’d showed Ry to this room—her carefree demeanor didn’t fit that of a mere employee.
“I’m Amne. I work here at the hotel. I just came by to drop off something you forgot. Well, I actually heard there was someone about my age staying here and I wanted to have a peek at you. Mind if I come in?”
Once again, she didn’t bother to wait for an answer but rather strutted right in. Over her blue blouse she wore a dowdy employee jumpsuit, but like a doe, she also had an almost impudent vigor that was violently at odds with her attire.
“And just what did I forget?” Ry asked, a bit perplexed.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had any experience with girls back in his home village. To the contrary, his lithe build and sensitive nature made him quite popular compared to all the rough and tough country boys there. Still, none of the girls he’d known had been quite so forward.
“These. Put them in if you’re going to be outside at night.”
A pale hand opened before the boy’s chest. Taking the two little rubber items from her, Ry stared down at them.
“Ear plugs?” he said.
“That’s right. So don’t go sticking ’em up your nose by mistake. Why? Something wrong?”
“No, it’s nothing. Why do I need these things?”
“I don’t rightly know,” the girl replied. “It’s just a custom. We all use them when we’re out walking at night, too.”
“Hmm.”
As he intently scrutinized the little rubber plugs, Ry wondered if he should ask Amne about the song. In a sense, it was taboo for a common traveler to ask about the history or traditions of the villages he visited. Quite naturally, in cases where the area had been under the direct control of the Nobility and their servants and the villagers had been terrorized day and night, they were fanatically loath to revisit their fearful past.
Amne chuckled knowingly.
“What?”
“Actually, the story behind the ear plugs is no big secret or anything,” she told him. “It all goes back to the days of the Nobility. Long, long ago, there was a great big mansion on the western mountainside.”
Ry was at a loss for words.
“While they say that hundreds of Nobles lived in the mansion, one of them was a singer skilled enough to be called to the Capital to perform at the great theaters there. The story goes that upon hearing the singer’s voice, not only the birds and the beasts but even the very wind and the rain would be drawn to the mansion. And I suppose you can guess what happened to the people when they went up there, can’t you?”
Ry imagined the mellifluous voice drifting out in the moonlight night after night and the eyes of the young people as they intently climbed the steep mountain road toward the mansion. For all their fear, their eyes must’ve been ablaze with delight. And while that delight burned in them, surely there was also some sadness.
Though she sounded far off in the distance, he heard Amne say, “The people all came back pale-faced, with teeth marks on their necks. And then, at night, they’d get up out of their beds and sink their fangs into the throats of their wives and children—no, no, that’s all just one big lie.”
“A lie?”
“That’s right. Just a tale cooked up to scare the villagers and travelers. None of them did anything. Recent research has shown as much.”
“Research?” Ry said, completely thrown off balance. “They didn’t do anything? We’re talking about victims of the Nobility, aren’t we?!”
“No, I suppose they did do a little. After all, the Nobility had got to them. But apparently it was nothing like the tall tale I just told you. Research shows all they did was sing.”
Here was another mention of singing.
“A song . . .”
“Yes,” said Amne. “When night came, they’d slip out of the place where they were held and begin to prowl the village streets with their hands stuck in their pockets. Like this, kinda slouched forward, while they sang a certain song.”
“What kind of song was it?”
“I don’t know. All of this happened fairly far back—more than two hundred years ago. And the Nobility suddenly vanished about that time. But even now rumors still remain that they’re actually hiding out somewhere and are going to swoop back down on us.”
“You mean to tell me no one wrote the song down?” Ry asked.
“Who’d ever do such a thing? You think we’d bother committing to paper every rotten thing the Nobility ever did to us? But now that you mention it, I heard that when rumors were going around a while back that they had come back, a traveling composer went into the mansion and jotted down the tune. But that’s got to be a bullshit story.”
Given that she was working in the service industry, the girl’s use of profanity with a customer probably crossed the line. But Ry didn’t even seem to notice.
“That talk about them coming back—how long ago was that?”
“Let me see . . . It’d have to be nearly twenty years, I suppose.”
In addition to the wandering composer, his father must’ve heard the song as well.
“Is there anyone who can recite the song?” asked the young man.
“Not a soul. A long time ago, you used to be able to hear it anywhere you traveled in these parts, because all the men and women who heard it went up to the mansion. And after they came back, the villagers who hadn’t been affected had no choice but to listen to them sing. However, they say it simply can’t be duplicated. The tune itself is straightforward and beautiful, but you can’t even hum the first couple of bars. The only people who can sing it are the ones who’ve heard it themselves at the mansion. And I suppose by the same token no one could jot it down, either.”
Perhaps as a result of not inhaling for so long, Amne stopped here and took a few breaths.
“Are you sure it’s okay telling me that?” Ry said, smiling wryly all the while.
“Sure it is! When I’m at school, no one there listens to the results of my research.”
“Your research? You mean to tell me that was the theory you came up with?”
“That’s right! Why, I’m even in the ‘historical research society’ at school. Seems like you’re kind of interested, too. So, what are you here for anyway?”
“I came to hear a song, actually.”
“You’re pulling my leg!” the girl said, but she looked rather pleased. She must’ve figured he’d enjoyed her theory. “Well, not that it matters. You know,” Amne continued, “it’s past noon, so you should probably head out and get yourself some lunch. After that, I’ll show you around
the village.”
“That’d be a big help, but you really don’t have to. You’ve got a lot to do here at the hotel, don’t you?”
“Not a problem,” the girl replied. “At the moment, you’re the only guest we’ve got, and the saloon downstairs doesn’t get crowded until after sundown. So, where would you like to go?”
In his heart, Ry now faced a dilemma. He couldn’t very well tell her he’d come to hear the Noble’s song or to meet the singer. But now that he knew a Noble was involved, his interest hadn’t waned in the least. To the contrary, the knowledge had only fanned the flames of his tenacity all the more.
“Well, that’s a good question—that mansion’s probably pretty far off, right?” he said with a calculated disinterest.
The answer came instantaneously.
“Hey, it’s no problem. It’s thirty minutes by wagon. After you have lunch, we’ll still have time for a nice, leisurely round trip. We’ve even got a wagon we’re not using now. Now, run along to the diner. You go out and take a right on the street—”
—And going straight for about two minutes, he found the sign for the diner. Right above it the words “liquor” and “dry goods” were written in large letters. In small towns and villages, it was typical to combine the general store, diner, and saloon into a single establishment. Although Ry thought they might be in there, he wound up being the only customer.
Finishing his meal of stew and bread, Ry followed the street west. The fence at the edge of the village was where he was supposed to meet Amne.
Snow still remained in a few spots along the road. Stepping into an alley he’d been told was a shortcut, Ry stopped in his tracks.
Countless gold sparkles drifted in the air—seeds of the golden snow flowers dancing on a gentle breeze. They weren’t an uncommon sight in the eastern Frontier sectors. Exceptionally heat and cold resistant, the seeds could also withstand poor soil conditions and severe weather until one bright, sunny day in spring when they’d bloom into small golden flowers that delighted people’s eyes.
Bathed from head to toe in their golden light and seeming to almost suck up the glow, a figure in black suddenly stood there on muddy earth not yet dry from the previous night’s rain. He wore a wide-brimmed traveler’s hat and a long coat, and he had an elegant longsword across his back—that was all the young man could see of him from behind. A short distance from him, a cyborg horse was toppled by the side of the road.
Ry didn’t move. There was something about the figure in black that was even more dangerous than the trio he’d encountered the previous night. Suddenly, it occurred to him that the rider who’d saved him in the forest might be this very same man.
A spring breeze stroked the end of his nose, and as if that harmless sign was a declaration of war, the figure in black made a leap. Looking like darkness coalesced, the figure sent flecks of light flying everywhere.
The roof of the warehouse off to his right was ten feet high, and at the top of it there was a silvery flash. There were two simultaneous thuds, and a brief cry of pain rang out. Ry then saw something red fly off at an angle and strike the ground.
“We’ll meet again!” a voice he’d heard before shouted in apparent pain from somewhere in the heavens.
Ry ran out into the middle of the road—the spell over him had broken. As he looked up, the figure in black landed right in front of him without a sound. The young traveler was once more thrown into a hopeless daze. Could a human face possibly be this beautiful? He had to wonder if he weren’t perhaps still in the forest, and all of this was a dream.
“It looks like you made it out okay,” said the man.
Although that was hardly what someone fresh from a deadly conflict would be expected to say, Ry seemed free from such concerns as he nodded. “Thanks for what you did last night,” he said with bowed head. “That character just now—was he one of them . . . ?”
“Apparently they hold a grudge. You’d do well to watch yourself.”
“I will,” the young man said, adding, “Um, I’m Ry.”
“Call me D,” said the youth in black, brilliant bits of gold dancing all around him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel Demon City Shinjuku in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has authored numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, writing novels in the tradition of occidental horror authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. As of 2004, there are seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many live action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based on Kikuchi’s novels.
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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
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Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime artist and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the U.S. as G-Force and Battle of the Planets). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel Sandman: The Dream Hunters with Neil Gaiman and Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer with best-selling author Greg Rucka for Marvel Comics.
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