The shogun held out his left hand. Black smoke appeared from nowhere and curled around it. The smoke condensed in his palm, and a katana appeared there. The weapon seemed as insubstantial as the smoke that had created it, but Hana remembered it from a sparring bout between Shogun Melwar and Iren last year. It was both solid and not at the same time. It would pass through an enemy’s blade and then slice that enemy in half.
“Everyone believes I am not a Dragon Knight, but I am,” the shogun declared. “I am the Darkness Dragon Knight.”
Hana couldn’t help but tremble. She knew Shogun Melwar was powerful, but the man had held back his true strength all this time, more than a thousand years, to keep Shadeen’s existence secret.
That begged a question. “Forgive me for asking,” Hana said, “but why reveal Shadeen now? You aren’t the type to do anything without purpose.”
“I needed you to know so you would understand what I have to show you next. This strength is the true key to our victory. Hana, have you guessed why I sent you looking for Ryokaiten these past few months?”
“I assumed you wanted to create Dragon Knights to aid us.”
Shogun Melwar shook his head. “For a thousand years I have used others to achieve the long task of restoring Maantecs to glory. I believed the best I could do was direct the plan from the shadows. Now I see that was foolish. I put my faith in Iren Saito and his son to serve as our figureheads, but they abandoned their people. I expected the Fubuki to conquer Lodia, but they lost. I relied on Azar to kill the Aokigaharan Kodamas, but he was slain. The time to watch has passed. It is time the Maantecs had a leader they can depend on, a shogun with power so immense no one would dare resist him.”
“What does that have to do with the Ryokaiten?” Hana asked. “How are they useful to you if you won’t give them to others? You’re already a Dragon Knight.”
The excited glitter returned to Shogun Melwar’s eyes. “That is the real secret I wanted to share today. You needed to know Shadeen’s past in order to understand it. Now, let me show you why we will triumph where even Iren Saito failed.”
He stood and removed both his shirts so that he stood bare-chested before Hana. She gasped; both the Burning Ruby and Frozen Pearl were embedded in Shogun Melwar’s torso. A pair of kanji rings were tattooed around each of them.
“Do you understand?” he asked. “This is the power of a shogun. This is the Melwar clan’s genius. We who proposed the Ryokaiten have now perfected the design.”
He pointed to the two rings encircling the Burning Ruby. “The Ryokaiten have three rings. The first lets you use the dragon’s power. The second lets the dragon test would-be Dragon Knights. The third prevents the dragon’s will from escaping except when you draw on its magic. It was the second ring that was the problem. It gave the dragons a choice in who could use their magic, and it prevented a person from wielding more than one dragon at a time. I removed it, so now both Feng and Yukionna have no choice but to accept me as their master.”
Hana dropped to her knees. With three dragons at his command, Shogun Melwar was invincible.
Then Hana panicked. It wasn’t three dragons. It was four. She had brought him Mizuchi’s Ryokaiten. The Aqua Sapphire now belonged to Shogun Melwar.
And if he had four dragons, why stop there? He could kill Hana at any time and take the Rock Topaz. Then he would have a majority. Even if every remaining Dragon Knight assaulted him at once, he would still have them outnumbered.
Shogun Melwar must have read her fear. “Worry not, Hana Melwar. Your Ryokaiten is safe. Even with all this power, I am but one person. I can only be in one place at a time. I will need another leader to help me win this war.”
Hana thought back on the people she’d killed, the destruction she’d unleashed in the name of Maantec restoration. A few years ago she would have enjoyed it. Now it appalled her. She’d become a monster, just like her master.
But maybe it was worth it. There was conflict in Raa because it lacked a strong ruler. Once Shogun Melwar was in charge, there would be peace. No one would dare oppose him after they saw the dragons’ gems embedded in his flesh.
There was only one response Hana could make: “How may I serve?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Preparations
Balear stood alone on Kataile’s plateau. The catapult crews had left for the day, gone back to their families for dinner and rest.
Not Balear. He’d spent the day supervising construction, so he hadn’t had time for his own practice.
It had been worth it, though, to see the progress. Most of the catapults were built, and the crews had begun hauling stones from the plateau over to them. Balear helped where he could, inspiring them to greater effort. If their general could keep going with only one arm, surely they could do the same with two.
Balear wandered to the plateau’s edge and looked north. How soon would the enemy come? Spring had arrived, and the inland cities’ winter stores would be all but exhausted. If the war continued, they would starve.
But the war wouldn’t continue. Balear had worked through the scenarios. He knew the one he’d settled on would play itself out.
They would come soon. They wouldn’t risk giving Kataile any more time than necessary.
Balear turned from the edge and looked through the deepening gloom. He confirmed that he had the place to himself, and then he drew the Auryozaki.
He tried a few practice swings, slowly to get the momentum down. There was plenty of room up here. In fact, it was the only place in the city Balear felt comfortable using the gigantic sword after he’d wrecked that fountain.
Balear slashed the weapon in all directions, working through the motions of past battles. The wind whistled off each attack.
It wasn’t magic. Balear kept telling himself that. It was just that the weapon was so large, yet so light, that he could swing it fast enough to push away the air.
Yet with each strike, he wondered: when the enemy came, could he raise this sword against them? Could he keep his oath?
Visions of Veliaf danced in his mind. He would keep it. The Sky Dragon would never see daylight as long as Balear lived.
The other cities would come, and Balear would face them as he was. One way or the other, Lodia’s civil war would end here in Kataile.
He would be ready.
* * *
From a window on the top floor of Kataile’s city hall, Elyssa Orianna watched Balear practice. She ran a hand through her graying auburn hair.
Try as she might, she couldn’t take her eyes off the young general. He was amazing. He started before everyone else and finished after everyone else. She had never seen anyone so motivated. Even Balio hadn’t been this strong.
Her right hand gripped Balio’s scroll, the one he had dictated to her twenty years ago. Every night since Balear had started the catapult construction, Elyssa had come to this window to watch him practice. Every night she brought the scroll, and every night she thought about going out onto that plateau and giving it to him.
She’d promised Balio. She owed it to him.
But no. The time wasn’t right yet. Elyssa couldn’t afford for Balear to be distracted. Later, when her city was saved and she made queen, there would be time. She would give him the scroll and apologize for using him.
Until then, he would have to be her pawn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Maantec Armada
Iren Saitosan tracked the fleeing samurai back to a massive camp. Fifty samurai kept watch over five hundred conscripts from the surrounding farms.
Their draft effort must have finished, because a day after Iren arrived, they broke camp and set off in the direction of Hiabi. Iren had no trouble following them. By day the samurai drove the men hard, but each night they stopped and rested. Iren kept clear while they marched, using the time to search for food in the wilds of Shikari. In the evenings he followed the samurai’s trail at high speed and caught up.
He had no fear that he might lose them
. The force made no effort to disguise its passing, and the man at the head of the column kept the banner of Shogun Melwar aloft at all times.
Iren didn’t worry about someone noticing him either. The samurai positioned themselves not to defend the conscripts but to guard against them escaping. The notion that someone might stalk them must never have entered the samurai’s minds.
After a week of travel, Iren entered lands he recognized. The conscripts had almost reached Hiabi. Once there, maybe Iren would get some answers about this war Melwar had planned. With luck, he’d find a way to stop it too.
Iren topped a craggy hill coated in scrub and beheld Hiabi splayed out below him. Even though he’d spent several months in the city, its appearance still astounded him. It surpassed any Lodian city in size, and its castle keep made Haldessa’s look like a farmhouse. The sweeping, concave roofs of ceramic tiles guided the eye up.
Not only was the city beautiful, it was also a cunningly devised fortress. Its stone perimeter wall was a hundred feet tall and twenty feet thick. Even if a force somehow breached it, Hiabi’s narrow, twisting streets would quickly split up and disorient the attackers. All the while, the defenders could take them out with arrows, rocks, and burning pitch.
Today though, it was neither Hiabi’s strength nor its splendor that most drew Iren’s attention. That prize went to the twelve enormous ships stationed in a semicircle off the city’s coast. Four hundred feet long, they dwarfed the largest ships Iren had ever seen set anchor in the Bay of Ceere. Each had four decks and half a dozen masts. Wooden beams stretched in rows across the square sails that were as tall and wide as the ships themselves.
Atop each ship’s tallest mast flew a purple banner with the symbol of a mountain. Iren shuddered as he realized what those ships were: an invasion fleet.
The rumors from the samurai at Goro and Chiyo’s farm were true. The Maantecs were going to war.
* * *
A few hours past dawn, Rondel and Minawë lay prone on a hill northeast of Hiabi. They stared in wonder at the ships below them.
“I never thought he would do something like this,” Rondel whispered.
“What are those things?” Minawë asked.
Rondel furrowed her brow, but then she remembered that Minawë had grown up in a forest. She’d never seen a ship before. “They’re called junks,” Rondel said, “and don’t think they’re worthless because of their name. Those ships are the largest Raa has ever seen. Each carries a thousand men, and they’ll be well armed with everything from clubs to katanas to fire-arrows. See how the sails have wooden bars going across them? The sailors can change their configuration in any number of ways to grab the wind. Even without a breeze, there are spots to extend oars to row the ships. Junks are big, fast, and designed to carry a lot of men into combat.”
Minawë gulped. “So that’s Melwar’s plan. He’s going to invade another country, but he doesn’t want to risk sending his army through Aokigahara.”
“It’s still too big a risk for him,” Rondel said. “There are only twelve junks. Assuming they’re full, that’s more than ten thousand Maantecs. That would be more than enough to conquer Lodia or Tacumsah, but even junks can’t survive the ocean storms between here and those countries.”
Rondel activated Lightning Sight and examined the junks. Melwar was too careful not to realize they couldn’t make the journey. He must have another plan.
Maybe he didn’t intend to go up the eastern coast. The western ocean didn’t get storms like the eastern one did.
But that wouldn’t improve his situation. The only landing sites along that route would be in Serona or Charda. Those wastelands would wipe out his army as easily as a storm.
There had to be a clue somewhere. Melwar had waited a thousand years for this war. He wouldn’t gamble his plan on the vagaries of weather.
Even at this distance, Lightning Sight made every detail of the junks clear. Still, Rondel saw nothing that suggested they were any different from junks she’d sailed on during the Kodama-Maantec War. Whatever Melwar’s plan was, the ships themselves weren’t part of it.
Then Rondel caught sight of Melwar himself. He stood on the middle deck of the junk at the fleet’s center.
Rondel took an involuntary sharp breath. Melwar was in full formal dress, his plum-colored kimono flowing around him. Hana stood at his side, looking tense.
“What do you see?” Minawë asked.
“Hana and Melwar are talking. Let me focus; I might be able to read their lips.”
She watched them for several seconds. Then she said, “Melwar’s saying that preparations are complete. They’ll be leaving within the hour. They’re going to take the ships north along the coast, but far enough out to sea that they won’t risk running aground.” She paused. “Hana wants to know her orders. Melwar says they’ll land in Ceere. Hana will captain the Torment, while Melwar will command the Shadeen.”
“Torment sounds like Melwar’s style, but what does Shadeen mean?”
“I have no idea,” Rondel admitted. “I’ve never heard the word before, and I was raised by the best Maantec teacher in history.”
The old Maantec frowned. “Something else is odd,” she said. “Hana belongs to the Akiyama clan, but Melwar keeps calling her by his name: Hana Melwar.”
“He married her?”
“It’s possible, but I doubt it,” Rondel said. “It’s more likely that he adopted her into his family as a sign of status. Heads of clans have that privilege. Still, it’s a softhearted move for him.”
“Maybe you were right back in Aokigahara, and Hana isn’t convinced she wants to help Melwar,” Minawë said. “If Melwar suspected that Hana doubted his cause, then bringing her into his family might be a way of securing her loyalty.”
Rondel smiled. “For someone unfamiliar with clan politics, you figured that out quickly. That’s my guess too.”
She kept watching them, and then she gasped. “So that’s it!”
“What’s it?” Minawë asked.
“Hana was as in the dark as we were about how they were going to avoid the storms. They aren’t going to avoid them. Melwar plans to sail through them. He has the Aqua Sapphire, and he’ll use its magic to steady the seas so the ships can keep moving. It’s clever. I didn’t know Melwar was the Water Dragon Knight.”
She paused a moment, then smirked. “If Melwar’s the Water Dragon Knight, that should make our fight against him easier. My lightning magic will have an advantage over him.”
“In that case we should head down there,” Minawë said. “If Melwar can calm the sea, then our only chance to stop him is here in Hiabi. Once the Maantecs leave port, they’ll be too far away for us to damage their ships.”
Rondel nodded. “Let me see if I can find an unguarded route down. If we get in close, I can distract Melwar and Hana while you manipulate the kelp to grab the junks and rip them apart.”
“Kelp?” Minawë asked.
“It’s an aquatic plant. In shape it looks like the vines you’re fond of using.”
Minawë whistled. “I didn’t know there were plants underwater.”
“Minawë, there are a host of creatures great and small in that ocean. For someone who lived in a forest all her life, most are beyond your imagining. In my younger days, I remember seeing beasts larger than those ships; whales, I believe the Tacumsahens called them.”
“Whoa,” Minawë said. “I hope I see one someday.”
“With your abilities, perhaps you’ll be one someday,” Rondel said with a wink.
The old Maantec turned her attention back to the distance between their hill and Hiabi. Melwar didn’t expect an attack. He would have a few guards stationed just because he was careful, but they would be stretched thin. There had to be a clear path to the water’s edge.
As she searched, she noticed a figure on the hill next to theirs. It was sneaking through the scrub toward the city. Rondel focused on the creature and realized it was a man.
Rondel’s eyes n
arrowed. Recruits would be in companies led by samurai. Even if there were lone volunteers, they wouldn’t sneak around. They would walk boldly and announce their intention to join Melwar’s cause.
Rondel examined the sneaking man more closely, and that’s when her heart suddenly skipped. Lightning Sight had caught a flash of white amid the green bushes and brown kimono. A final look at the man’s face told Rondel everything she needed to know.
It was Iren Saitosan.
What was he doing here? From the way he was moving, it was clear he knew about Melwar’s plan. Was he here to stop Melwar like Rondel and Minawë were, or did he intend to join the Maantecs?
Neither choice would surprise Rondel. If Iren thought helping Melwar would get him closer to revenge, he would ally with the noble in a second.
Rondel had to know the answer. Lasting long enough against Hana and Melwar to let Minawë cripple the junks would be difficult as it was. If Iren joined the fray too, Minawë’s mission would become impossible. Even if Iren intended to stop Melwar, once he saw Rondel under attack, he would take advantage and target her. Rondel’s only chance was to reach Iren before he entered Hiabi.
That just left the matter of what to do with Minawë. If Minawë saw Iren, she’d forget the junks and intervene. Rondel couldn’t allow that.
Then an idea came to her, a way to distract Hana and Melwar, let Minawë complete her mission, and fulfill Okthora’s Law all at the same time. Rondel smiled. If she and Minawë lived through today, this was going to be fun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Promised Hour
Iren Saitosan crept along the ground down the hill to Hiabi. He couldn’t let anyone spot him until he got to the beach. Once there, he could use light beams to blow holes in those ships. They were huge, but they weren’t numerous. If he sank even half of them, it would cripple Melwar’s force. It might even convince the self-proclaimed shogun to give up his war.
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