Laura Joh Rowland - Sano Ichiro 08 - Dragon King's Palace

by Dragon King's Palace(lit)

  "Priest Ryuko lies," Yanagisawa declared, now willing to openly denounce the priest rather than give up his life without a fight. "If he's the great magician that he claims, he would have predicted the kidnapping beforehand, and prevented it. It's he, not us, who has tricked you."

  "... Aah?" The shogun pursed his mouth.

  Sano was glad to see that Yanagisawa had undermined Priest Ryuko's influence and the shogun's certainty about his own judgment. Yet the guards propelled Sano, Yanagisawa, and Hoshina toward the door, and the shogun didn't intervene. Sano's panic grew. Unless he could sway his lord, he would die in disgrace. Reiko would die without him to save her. All because his honor had forced him to protect Hoshina, who didn't deserve protecting, and because he'd failed to convince the shogun that executing Hoshina wasn't the solution to their problem.

  "Yes, Priest Ryuko is a fraud," Sano said in desperation. Speaking out against the powerful cleric couldn't hurt him any more than could keeping silent. "You need us, Your Excellency. We're your only hope of saving the honorable Lady Keisho-in."

  Irresolution, and his tendency to quail when anyone opposed him, wavered the shogun's stance.

  "Destroy us, and she's doomed," Chamberlain Yanagisawa said. "Spare us, and we'll prove our loyalty by returning her safe and sound to Your Excellency."

  A short eternity passed while Tokugawa Tsunayoshi vacillated. Crows in the garden cawed like the carrion birds that flocked the execution ground. At last, the shogun raised a tentative hand to the guards. They paused, bridling Sano, Yanagisawa, and Hoshina at the threshold.

  "You haven't, ahh, found my mother yet, so why should I, ahh, believe you can ever rescue her?" Tokugawa Tsunayoshi demanded.

  Sano noted that crises affected people in different ways, and this one had improved the shogun's wits. Hoshina mutely waited, his face confused, as if he couldn't guess whether he was about to be saved or on the brink of his downfall.

  "That we've learned why the kidnappers took the honorable Lady Keisho-in has opened a new avenue of inquiry," Sano said. "I now know where to begin looking for them." All his hopes for Reiko hinged on that belief. "This time I'll find her." Conviction strengthened his voice. "I swear it on my honor."

  Abruptly, the shogun plopped down on the dais. "Very well," he said with the air of a man eager to trust what he heard, make a decision, and spurn responsibility. "I grant you the, ahh, right to continue your search." He waved off the guards who held Sano and Yanagisawa. "Resume your, ahh, seats."

  "A million thanks, Your Excellency," Yanagisawa said, meek for once.

  Sano exhaled a trapped breath. He and Yanagisawa slunk back to their places, knelt, and bowed to the shogun. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi said, "But what should we, ahh, do about the, ahh, ransom letter? It seems that whether I comply or not, I am damned."

  Chamberlain Yanagisawa gave Sano a look that said, Yes, what should we do?

  "Hoshina-san is your insurance of your honorable mother's survival," Sano told the shogun. "Therefore, I advise you to postpone his execution. The kidnappers will keep Lady Keisho-in alive because the promise of her return is their only means of forcing you to meet their demands."

  Sano didn't voice his fear that the women were already dead and whatever the shogun did wouldn't help them. "The kidnappers have gone to great lengths to destroy Hoshina-san," he continued, "and the fact that they want him dead so badly works to our advantage. They'll wait for you to execute him. Stalling them will give me time to hunt them down."

  "That sounds like a, ahh, good plan," the shogun said, mollified.

  Hoshina cleared his throat. "Then may I be freed, Your Excellency?" His voice was unsteady, his complexion blanched.

  The shogun nodded, but Sano said quickly, "No-you must imprison him and announce to the public that he's been sentenced to death. The kidnappers will hear the news and think you intend to give in to them. The longer they think so, the longer we have to rescue Lady Keisho-in."

  Furthermore, Sano couldn't let Hoshina go free because he might panic and run. Hoshina was also insurance of Reiko's survival, and Sano wanted him under close watch.

  "Very well," said the shogun, then addressed the guards: "Place Hoshina-san under, ahh, house arrest."

  As the guards led Hoshina from the chamber, he cast an ireful glance at Sano: He obviously thought Sano should have done better by him. He displayed no gratitude toward Sano for saving his life, nor relief that the shogun had spared it.

  The shogun turned to Sano and Yanagisawa. "I shall, ahh, announce that Hoshina-san will be executed in, ahh, seven days." The crisis had also spurred him to rare, decisive authority. "That is how long you, ahh, have to rescue my mother."

  "Yes, Your Excellency," Sano and Yanagisawa chorused.

  Although their moment of gravest peril had passed, Sano foresaw the dangers of the plan he'd foisted upon his lord. His skin was clammy, his hands and feet turned to lumps of ice; nausea lurched his stomach.

  "If you don't succeed by then, Hoshina-san dies." Menace darkened the shogun's gaze, infused his voice. "And if you've, ahh, advised me wrong, and my mother dies, I'll, ahh, execute you both."

  "Yes, Your Excellency," Yanagisawa said in a subdued tone.

  Sano could barely nod, for if he tried to speak anymore, he would vomit up the dread born of knowing that if he'd advised the shogun wrong, he'd not only doomed himself but sealed Reiko's destruction.

  14

  Sunshine fell across Reiko's face and penetrated her closed eyelids. Jarred suddenly awake, she found herself sitting with the broken rafter on her lap, slumped against the wall of the prison. Rays of morning light pierced the window shutters and ceiling and meshed in the dusty air. Reiko bolted up. She'd meant to wait alert for the kidnappers, but sometime during the night she'd dozed off. Now she hastened to Midori, Keisho-in, and Lady Yanagisawa, who lay asleep and motionless.

  "Wake up," she said urgently, shaking them. As they groaned and stirred to life, Reiko said, "The kidnappers might arrive any moment. We must prepare."

  The loud, abrasive opening of the door reverberated up through the floor. They all jumped.

  "They're coming!" Midori cried.

  Reiko pointed Midori and Keisho-in toward a back corner. "Sit over there. Hurry!" They obeyed. Reiko seated Lady Yanagisawa against the rear wall, opposite the door. The woman's face was still vacant with drowsiness, her movements slow. "Do you remember what to do?" Reiko anxiously asked.

  A hesitant nod from Lady Yanagisawa inspired little confidence in Reiko. She hurried to stand in her own place beside the door. She gripped the rafter in both hands, raising it like a club. As they all waited in suspense, footsteps thumped up the first flight of stairs. Reiko thought she heard only two men this time, and she was glad. The fewer of them, the better her chances.

  The footsteps mounted higher. Outside, pigeons cooed and fluttered wildly on the roof; the lapping waves registered each moment. Suddenly Lady Yanagisawa said, "Reiko-san?"

  "What?" Reiko said, disturbed that the woman should speak at a critical moment.

  "Yesterday, when you said you think my husband loves me. Did you really mean it?" Lady Yanagisawa eyed Reiko as intently as though the answer was all that mattered.

  Reiko was surprised that Lady Yanagisawa had heard what Reiko had told her while she'd seemed dead to the world. Though she regretted the lie, Reiko didn't want to upset Lady Yanagisawa by admitting the truth. "Yes, I did mean it," she said, and trained her gaze on the door.

  Outside, the footsteps paused. Reiko's heart raced; her breaths came fast as her hands tightened on her weapon. Keisho-in and Midori watched the door with dread. Lady Yanagisawa sat in apparent tranquility. The door opened. In stepped the cruel samurai who'd come yesterday. Suddenly Lady Yanagisawa flung back her head and let out a bloodcurdling scream. She tore open her kimono, baring her breasts. She clawed at them, and her fingernails raked raw scratches across her skin.

  The samurai exclaimed at the sight of this woman who'd evidently gone ins
ane. Reiko, Midori, and Keisho-in gaped, amazed, at Lady Yanagisawa as she kept screaming and her body twitched in violent spasms. She'd managed a better diversion than Reiko had expected. The samurai didn't notice Reiko because Lady Yanagisawa had all his attention. Reiko swung the rafter with all her might at the samurai. The wooden beam struck his temple-and snapped in two. The long, broken half thudded to the floor. The samurai grunted in surprise. He pivoted toward Reiko. His eyes aflame with pain and rage, he drew his sword.

  Horror filled Reiko as she looked from him to the useless stub she held. Keisho-in and Midori shrieked. Lady Yanagisawa dropped to all fours, half naked, bleeding, and panting. Suddenly the samurai's eyes rolled upward. He toppled unconscious to the floor.

  The peasant youth who'd brought the food yesterday rushed into the room, shouting, "What happened?" He carried a pail, which he set on the floor as he bent over his comrade.

  Reiko tossed aside the stub, lunged, and shoved the youth. With a cry of surprise, he stumbled headlong across the room. He crashed against the wall. As he regained his balance and turned, Reiko lifted his pail that contained what looked to be soup. She hurled the pail at him.

  It struck him in the stomach. Broth, seaweed, and tofu splattered the room. The youth gawked at the women. Across his childish, naive face flashed his dismay that the prisoners had rebelled and there was no one but him to restore order. Then awareness of his duty braced him. He let out a yell and charged at Reiko, hands extended to snatch.

  She picked up the long end of the rafter and swatted his forehead. He fell, with a thud that shook the room, and lay unmoving.

  In the sudden quiet, the women stared at their vanquished foes, then at each other. Wordlessly they shared their disbelief at the success of Reiko's plan. That the whole battle had lasted just an instant amazed Reiko.

  She bent, light-headed, from delayed excitation. Her heart banged wildly in her chest, but she couldn't spare any time to recuperate. "Help me tie the men up," she told Lady Yanagisawa.

  Quickly they rolled over the samurai, removed his sash, and used the long cotton cloth to truss his ankles and wrists behind him; then they did the same to the peasant youth.

  "Why not just kill them?" Lady Keisho-in said. "The way they've treated us, they deserve to die."

  "We don't want their comrades to take revenge on you." Reiko pulled off the men's sandals and jammed their socks in their mouths so that when they woke, they couldn't call to their comrades. She snatched up the samurai's fallen sword and thrust it into Lady Yan-agisawa's hands. "Use this to defend yourself and Midori and Lady Keisho-in if necessary."

  Lady Yanagisawa held the weapon as though afraid of cutting herself. ". But I don't know how."

  There was no time for Reiko to teach her sword fighting. "Do the best you can," Reiko said. She yanked the samurai's dagger from the scabbard at his waist, then hurried to the door. "I must go now."

  "Good luck," Midori said. "And please be careful!"

  "Bring back the army," Keisho-in commanded.

  Lady Yanagisawa sat in her disheveled garments, the sword wavering in her grip, her expression forlorn.

  Hating to leave her friends so helpless, Reiko slipped out the door. She found herself in an empty room whose barred windows gave a view of leafy branches. Walls of thick beams embedded in plaster, blackened by fire, enclosed this room and divided it from the prison. In its center, a wooden staircase slanted upward to a square hole in the ceiling. Daylight poured through the hole. The foot of the staircase ended at another opening in the floor. Clutching her stolen dagger, Reiko hastened to peer down the hole and saw more stairs zigzagging through the building's lower levels. She paused, listening. She heard only the sounds of birds, water, and wind. Then she plunged down the stairs.

  Loose, uneven slats wobbled under her sandals. She leapt over spaces where risers were missing. The smells of old smoke and rotted wood intensified. She passed through a room similar to that above. As she clambered down the next flight of stairs, the need for caution vied with her urge to hurry. She slowed her pace near the end of the staircase and hesitantly entered the bottom level.

  This contained a room that must have once been an armory; hooks and racks for hanging weapons protruded from the walls. On the stone floor lay a rusted cannon. Double doors, made of heavy timbers and iron plates, beckoned Reiko. One door stood opened outward, framing a rectangle of daylight. Reiko ran to the door and peeked outside. A narrow landing preceded a short flight of stone steps that led to paved, empty ground. Beyond this, a forest of pines, cypress, and maple obscured the distance. To her right and left rose more trees that grew close beside the building. Reiko savored the prospect of freedom. She hurried down the steps into cool, humid fresh air and across the cracked paving stones. A gap in the forest marked the path along which the kidnappers must have brought her and the other women. There Reiko paused, looked backward to see if anyone was coming, and got her first glimpse of her prison.

  It was a tall, square tower. Many of the flat rocks that banked its sloped foundation had dropped away, exposing the clay understructure. The tower's walls were plaster, once white but now discolored black and gray by fire and crumbling off the wood framework. Upturned eaves shaded the three lower stories and their barred windows. On the fourth, highest story, a crumbling segment of wall and the remains of a tile roof enclosed one corner. The room stood open to the sky, where dark storm clouds drifted over the sun. Fallen wreckage surrounded the tower. Reiko realized that her prison was the keep of a castle, probably ruined in the civil wars during the last century. But she had no idea where in the world the castle was located.

  She crept down the path, over weeds flattened by footsteps. A breeze enlivened the forest; sun-dappled shadows whispered. Unaccustomed to the wild, Reiko flinched at noises. Was that an animal's cry, or a human voice? A bird pecking a hollow tree, or someone drumming a signal? Reiko tiptoed, holding her dagger ready to stab, should anyone leap out of the forest at her. She regretted that her kimono, with its pattern of lavender irises on aqua silk, rendered her conspicuous.

  She'd traversed some thirty paces into the forest when the path divided. Looking down the right-hand branch, beyond a cypress grove, Reiko saw the peaks and gables of tile roofs that belonged to the castle's other buildings. There the kidnappers must have their headquarters. Reiko hurried down the left path. It circled back around the keep, whose ruined top she could see above the trees. Then the path and forest ended.

  Before her, a narrow strip of sloping ground, covered with tall grass, separated the forest from the water she'd heard while imprisoned. The water, rimmed with reeds, sparkling blue and indigo beneath the scudding clouds, appeared to be a lake that stretched some two hundred paces to the opposite shore, where woods rose into hills. The wind rippled little waves across the lake's surface. Looking right, Reiko saw that the shoreline at her feet gave way to marsh as it curved into the distance. To her near left, the ground had eroded, and the keep jutted into the lake; waves smacked the stone base. Reiko was alarmed. She couldn't cross the lake to safety because she didn't know how to swim-females of her class weren't taught during childhood, as were daughters of fishermen. Nor could she follow the lakeshore in the hope of finding a village, because she couldn't get around the keep or through the marsh. She'd chosen the wrong direction and wasted precious time.

  Reiko darted back into the forest, heading west and inland, climbing over fallen logs, wading through underbrush, and ducking under low branches, until she stumbled upon a path. This led her dangerously near the castle, within twenty paces of a burned building that had collapsed. Reiko saw smoke rising above the roofs of adjacent, intact structures. She smelled fish roasting over a charcoal fire. Her stomach growled with hunger, for she'd eaten nothing since the kidnappers had brought the food yesterday. She raced on, afraid of encountering the men, past crumbled walls and more trees, seeking a road to any place she could find friendly people. Soon she burst free of the woods-and foundered on another grass
y slope that inclined toward more water.

  She stared in disbelief at the sparkling lake, marshy shallows, and the forested land beyond. Had she lost her orientation and returned to the same place she'd just fled? But when she turned, she saw the keep behind her; and on the far horizon across the water were mountains she hadn't seen before. Reiko's heart plummeted as an awful thought occurred to her. She ran along the lakeside, first in one direction, then the other. The way the shoreline curved around the forest and back toward the keep, and the ever-present vista of the lake, confirmed her worst suspicions.

  The castle was on an island.

  She was trapped.

  Gasps of anguish heaved Reiko's chest as she gazed across the lake. The opposite shore, so tantalizingly close, mocked her disappointed hope. Clouds darkened the morning; raindrops dimpled the water. Reiko thought of Midori, Lady Yanagisawa, and Keisho-in, waiting for her to bring help, trusting her to save them. She thought of the risk they'd taken, only for her to fail. In her despair, Reiko wanted to wave her hands and shout to anyone who might heed a plea for rescue.