He noticed Nagomi looking pale-faced staring at the bizarre composition.
“What is it? Do you feel something again?” Satō asked, scratching her shoulder.
“Only a faint remnant… These statues were supposed to keep something inside the cave — but it’s no longer there.”
“That’s good to hear,” the wizardess said.
Is it? Where is it now, then?
The condition of the statues worsened the closer they got to the cave. The ones just before the entrance were shattered into pieces, shards of stone, barely visible in the tall grass. Bran hesitated at the cave’s entrance. He laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. The cavern was wide and shallow, and with the sun at his back he could easily see that it was empty, yet he could feel some lingering presence within, as if somebody was still inside, hiding in the shadows.
Satō was the first to cross the threshold, with bated breath as if she was submerging herself underwater.
“Somebody did live here,” she said, pointing at a few utensils and accessories, including a pipe and tobacco pouch, scattered under the bottom wall, “and not that long ago.”
“A samurai,” noted Nagomi.
In one corner of the cave was something like a miniature study room; a low wooden table, writing pad, a whetstone, an iron-bound chest and a black lacquered rack for two swords — empty. Satō kneeled to examine it.
“It’s very good quality, but has no markings,” she said. “Everything is well kept here. This cave was recently inhabited.”
“But by whom?”
“It wasn’t the Crimson Robe,” the wizardess said. “This rack is for katana and wakizashi, and so is the whetstone. There’s nothing here for a sword as big as the one he carried.”
“Perhaps this chest could reveal something.”
Bran touched the lock on the coffer and tried to manipulate it using his pen-knife. He had a little practice unlocking his grandfather’s chests back in Gwynedd, but this lock was of a better quality. Satō asked him to step away, getting ready to use her magic to open the chest.
“No, I can do that,” he said proudly and summoned what little power of his dragon he could. He wasn’t sure if it would work at all with Emrys so far away. The blue stone on his finger lit up briefly and he suddenly smelled methane and sulphur, the Farlink momentarily enhanced. He channelled the power of the dragonflame through his fingers. It was a feeble flame, but focused just enough to burn through the wood around the lock. After a bit of a struggle the lid popped open with a satisfying creak.
There were papers in the chest in neat bundles, dozens of pages written in thick but elegant calligraphy, and drawings in black ink, delicate yet precise, which even Bran could tell were made by someone with great skill and an eye for nature. At the bottom there was a set of at least fifty drawings of the same peony flower, each slightly better than the last, until the final exquisite image, which somehow seemed even more true and genuine than a real live flower would be — an essence of natural beauty captured on a piece of paper.
While Bran admired the ink paintings, Satō browsed through the rest of the papers.
“These are notes to a treaty on swordsmanship,” she announced, “but there is no name or date on any of these pages, nothing that could tell us anything about the author.”
“Then we’re back to where we started,” said Bran, placing the drawings back into the chest.
A voice startled him.
“Perhaps I can help you.”
A lonely monk in a white robe stood at the entrance to the cave, studying them with great curiosity.
“Yes, I know the legend of the Immortal Swordsman…”
His name was Sozaemon, and he was, as it turned out, the last monk left to take care of the temple. Those who did not die of old age moved away to larger, richer temples.
“Some say he had lived in the cave for countless millennia. Others claim he had only arrived here when Katō-dono started building the castle at Kumamoto.”
“Who was he? Why was he immortal?” asked Satō.
“I don’t know. I have never seen him — the cave had been empty for long decades when I became ordained at the temple.”
“But it’s not empty now.”
“What you saw is how it always has been. Time seems to pass in a different manner inside the cave; everything always looks like new, untouched. Sometimes we used to store food there — it would never spoil.”
“Why was the cave surrounded with those statues?”
“To imprison the Swordsman inside. According to what’s written in the temple archives, demons of this kind can’t suffer anything holy. Sanctified ground, priests and monks whose faith is strong — all this repels them.”
“Them?” Nagomi asked. “You mean there are more of his kind?”
“There were… other legends. My predecessor studied them, trying to find a way to cure or defeat the cursed creature. The demons were called variously — kyūketsuki, Fanged Ones, or simply Abominations — but they seemed to appear in stories throughout the Yamato.”
“Did this Abbot leave any writings? Can we see them?”
“Yes, by all means. They’re in the library, but… Why are you so interested in an old legend?” The monk eyed them with amusement. “You’re too young to be scholars.”
“We…” Satō hesitated. “I think I met one of them.”
Sozaemon’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth and then closed it. He scratched his beard in thought.
“Even so, why would you want to find one again? By all accounts, these are very dangerous creatures.”
“What happened to the one in the cavern? Where be he now?” asked Bran, evading the question.
“One day, more than a hundred years ago, the Swordsman came out, destroyed all the statues and broke out of the temple. As to where he is…” The monk shrugged. “The land of Yamato is vast, and it’s been so long...”
“And thou knowest of nothing that would help us find him, or one of his kind?”
“I’m afraid that is all I know, young tono.”
Bran nodded. He glanced outside; it was getting dark. “We must go down to the village for the night. We would come back tomorrow to see thy Abbot’s writing, if that’s all right with thou.”
“Oh, there’s no need to trouble yourselves; I can give them to you.”
“Verily?”
“There’s no point in me guarding these scribblings if you can find better use for them. Nobody ever comes here, and when I die they will fall prey to robbers. Just wait here, I’ll bring them to you, I have them just here…” He disappeared into the room at the back for a moment and returned with a bundle of notes. “Here you are,” he said, “life’s work of the fourteenth High Priest.”
Satō read the title page in disbelief.
“The Tale of the Blood Sucking Ghost?”
“I believe that’s one of the names the legend is known by in the north,” replied the monk. “You can stay here, if you wish,” he added. “There are lots of empty rooms, and there is no inn in the village.”
“Thou hast our thanks,” said Bran, grateful for not having to share an inn room with the girls that night.
“This is all very interesting, but I doubt it will give us any new clues.” Satō was holding the fourteenth High Priest’s notes in her hand, browsing through them idly. “We don’t really know where to go from here, and we can’t stay in this village longer than one night — they will find us sooner or later.”
“I… I think I may have a clue,” said Bran hesitantly. “Dost thou know the crest of a cross within a circle?”
“Of course,” said Satō. “It’s the Shimazu clan, daimyos of Satsuma.”
“Where did you see it?” asked Nagomi.
“Last night, just before you came for me, I had a vision through my dragon’s eyes. I saw a man wearing this crest, and sensed great puissance within him.”
Satō whistled.
“A Shimazu retainer… That’s a bit out
of our league, although — ”
“Yes?”
“My father did tell me to go seek help in the far south. I believe he had even met Lord Nariakira once. Perhaps we could find friends at the Kagoshima court, like we did in Kumamoto.”
“It’s worth a try,” said Nagomi, “at least this gives us a direction to follow.”
“How long will it take us to get there?” asked Bran.
“More than a week,” replied Satō. She was the only one of the party who knew her way around the Saikaidō, the network of highways criss-crossing the Chinzei Island. “As long as we don’t dawdle along the way.”
“Let us not dawdle then,” said Bran with a smile. “I can wake us up at dawn tomorrow.”
“Not at dawn!” Satō protested. “I will need time to go through these notes.”
She’d spent most of the night studying The Tale of the Blood Sucking Ghost. She was lying on the straw mat on her stomach, flipping through the pages with one hand, holding a slowly disappearing sticky rice cake in the other.
Nagomi went to sleep early and was peacefully lying on her futon by the wall. The red-haired apprentice was quick to tire, and Satō couldn’t blame her — a shrine life was a peaceful one, simple and undemanding compared with what they had endured over the last few days. Nagomi was coping with the strain remarkably well, all things considered. She never complained.
The stories and legends gathered from villages and temples, mostly around Chinzei, differed little in their content from those told about any other kind of magical monster. The Fangeds, as the High Priest referred to them in his work, were immortal, blood-drinking demons invading remote lonely hamlets, killing everyone within and spreading terror throughout the countryside until a Shinto priest or a Butsu monk came to exorcise them. An often repeated detail was that the kyūketsuki were created from the Spirits and bodies of the dead, animated by a powerful curse, but that, too, was not in itself a unique feature.
One of the pages Satō marked with black ink and put aside read:
The Fangeds were known for wearing clothes of a peculiar manner, long priestly robes of a single colour with no markings. An acolyte in the Hachimangu Shrine on the eastern shore of the lake Biwa reported the colour as crimson red; villagers near Funai said they were dark purple or indigo blue; mostly, though, they were said to be wearing the white of death.
In all these tales the Fangeds behaved like all other demons; ruthless, feral, bloodthirsty, mad with rage and lust. A few black ink drawings, made by the book’s author, showed googly-eyed, long-fanged creatures hovering in the air, with sharp claws reaching out and black, snake-like hair flowing in the wind. They looked almost comical. They used no weapons, their victims rather slashed to bits with teeth and talons. There was no mention of any greater agenda that would motivate their actions. Satō could find no explanation as to why one of these creatures would suddenly appear in the middle of Kiyō, searching for Bran and attacking her father.
Perhaps they were looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps the man she saw was not a demon after all, or at least not of the kind that had lived at Unganzenji. It seemed the Westerner and his dragon were still the best chance she had to stumble upon her father’s kidnapper.
She put away the papers and rested her chin on her hands in thought. The Westerner and his dragon. She had been so absorbed in the task of finding the crimson robed man that she had almost forgotten why her house had been attacked in the first place. It was surprising how quickly she had become used to the boy’s presence. It did help that, for most of the time, Bran sounded and looked so… ordinary.
It didn’t matter to her anymore if the boy was a spy. He stood in her defence when he could have just run away from the enenra. In her eyes this had proved Bran’s honesty. From now on, they were all in this together.
She yawned and realised the better part of the night had passed. It was time to go to sleep. She stood up and unrolled a futon under the window. The night was muggy, clammy, foreboding of a storm. She slid open the paper blinds to let some fresh air into the room.
A shadow of a bat fluttered from under the eaves, startling her for a moment. A lonely night heron crowed in the distance. The nights in the countryside were so different to those which she was used to back in Kiyō - so full of life. She could smell pine resin and the faint scent of dew on wet soil hanging in the air. She could hear night birds calling to each other in the forest, a choir of frogs in the rice fields and a haunting shriek of a fox. There was something primeval in the darkness, but she wasn’t frightened of it. Instead, she felt a part of the scenery outside the window, a sense of belonging to some greater whole. She was part of the Yamato — not only the people, but the land itself. This was what the priests must have felt all the time, she realised, what Nagomi experienced. Perhaps this was why the apprentice had kept her calm on their journey. The land itself was giving her strength.
The wizardess unravelled her travel bundle to hide The Tale... inside. Something fell out of the baggage and rolled to the floor with a metallic clang. It was the thaumaturgic device Master Tanaka wanted to give her father. She hadn’t even remembered she still carried the artefact. The memory of that fateful day appeared before her eyes all over again. The Crimson Robe, the purple lightning, Shūhan’s screams... Satō shook her head. No, she had to be strong and focused. That’s what Father had taught her. She was certain he was being strong too, not giving up to whatever tortures the enemy subjected him.
She picked up the leather glove and studied it carefully. She twisted a few gears and adjusted a couple of clockworks at random. The glass dial lit up with blue phosphorescence, but nothing else happened. Master Tanaka had written many pages describing the ways to adjust the cranks and gears, but they were now all buried in the well at the Takashima Mansion.
The bronze needle, however, was pretty straightforward. It was sharp, deadly. Satō pricked herself accidentally trying to pull it out. A single drop of her blood was enough to make the gears start whirling, releasing the power hidden within the mechanism. The wizardess almost dropped the device. The dial went up momentarily before dropping back down to zero and the clockwork went quiet again.
She remembered her father’s words.
“Blood magic. It’s cruel, it’s addictive, it’s unreliable and dangerous. It changes you. It drains your soul. It drives you mad.”
“Then why do people learn it?” she asked.
“Because it is powerful. No magic is more powerful except perhaps the one the priests use — whatever its true nature. That’s why it still fascinates scholars, even though it is largely forbidden in the West.”
Master Tanaka had no qualms about creating a device utilising the blood magic. Why did Shūhan order an artefact so blatantly defying the unwritten rules of Rangaku? What need did he have for something like this?
Curious, she tried the glove on her right hand. It suited her perfectly. Only somebody who had precise measurements of her palm could have made such a snug fit. Satō realised the truth. A new, expensive Matsubara katana, manufactured to her father’s precise directions; a device created by a master mechanician according to Shūhan’s guidelines and measurements. These were supposed to be her weapons.
Her father was preparing her for a war.
CHAPTER XI
It had taken them another day of climbing up and down the forested hills before they reached a small farming village on the shores of the Shirakawa River that they thought was far enough from Kumamoto to spend a night in. The next morning they took a ferry across and from there a winding road of flat small cobbles led them east, along the left bank of the great river, to a busy crossroads where, among inns, teahouses and little shops selling all sorts of travel accessories, it joined the main highway heading south.
Along the way Bran observed Satō discreetly. He thought he could now sense tiny differences in the way the girl moved or talked, but he was fooling himself. There was simply no way to tell. Satō spoke the brash manly style of the
Yamato tongue, walked straight and fast, both the samurai and the servant boy clothes fitting her perfectly.
“Did you know, General?” he asked Shigemasa.
“Are you disappointed?” The voice in his head chuckled. “I did think the boy seemed effeminate — but then, so do you, to me. I thought you enjoyed his company.”
“Me?”
“You did say your school was like a Satsuma one.”
“I didn’t know what you meant.”
“All boys, no women... Friendships changing into passions... You must have been an ‘under’, right?”
“What...” A sudden understanding dawned on Bran. “No! I’d never...!” he shouted out loud with indignation.
“You’d never what?” the wizardess enquired, looking at him curiously.
“Nothing,” he replied and looked away, “just a bad memory.”
There was a road block across the highway, by the watch tower. Across the sandy road, between a rundown teahouse to the right and a sandal-maker’s shop to the left, stood half a dozen soldiers, armed with leaf-blade spears and long-barrelled ornate muskets, and one city official, looking nervously at a paper scroll in his hand. He glanced at the travellers passing him by, but did not stop any of them.
The official was a low-ranking samurai, visibly out of his depth as he tried to perform the difficult duty. Bran, taking a cue from what he had learned so far of the complicated system of Yamato ranks and classes, approached the checkpoint at a proud broad pace, pretending not to notice the soldiers. Nagomi and Satō followed a few steps behind, their heads low. The official looked at him, stepped forwards and bowed deeply. His face was supposed to be a mask of formal detachment, but it twitched nervously. Bran stood back, feigning irritation and appal at the man’s behaviour.
“What is this?” he asked, as if he had just noticed the checkpoint.
“I beg your apologies, tono, but I have orders to question all strangers going in or out of the city.”
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 37