Maybe if I could purify this place and make an offering, its kami would yet return...
“The Ancients?”
Bran flicked a faint flamespark. The hollowed-out chamber was lined with flat limestone flagstones, its surface smooth and cool to touch.
“People who used to live here before the Yamato came,” explained Satō.
“Used to live? What happened to them?”
“Never mind the history lesson — it was thousands of years ago,” Satō said impatiently, “what did those bandits want from us? From you? Why were they after your ring?”
“I wish I knew. I thought it was just a curious memento my grandfather retained after his…” He hesitated. “His journey to Yamato. But those bandits thought that shard of sapphire was a more interesting prize than your roll of gold coins.”
Nagomi bit her lips. A shard of sapphire… The High Priestess did ask her not to tell anyone about the Prophecy for fear of reprisals — but surely they could not find themselves in a more desperate situation. The priestess was dead, and they were all pursued by some terrible monsters — and all, she guessed, because of the Prophecy; that strange disturbing vision she had saw so many months ago. They had the right to know.
Before any of them managed to say anything, a twig cracked and a bush rustled outside. Bran immediately vanquished the flamespark.
“They’ve found us,” Satō whispered in the darkness.
Bran joined the wizardess by the narrow entrance, observing the onmyōji and his weird companions. There were now six of them, approaching the tomb quietly through the fog in a fan-shaped formation.
Bran reached for the sword readying himself for another battle, but the scabbard was empty. The Prydain blade lay abandoned somewhere in the dirt of the road.
Satō drew her katana with trembling arms.
“I… I don’t think we’ll make it,” she whispered. “I thought I’d covered us well enough. I failed again.”
“You did all you could — we’re only human,” said Bran, trying to console her. “Maybe we can still sneak out…”
She shrugged his hand off.
“I’m a samurai!” she said firmly, “and if I can’t fight like one, at least I can die like one. I’ve been running away long enough. Takashima!”
“No, wait…!”
Before anyone could stop her, with a fierce battle cry on her lips she kicked out the door, raised her sword and leapt outside, ready to charge to her death.
Suddenly a blade flashed in the fog behind the bandits’ backs, then another. One of the enemies collapsed face down without a sound. Before the others could react, the second also fell victim to the unseen swordsman. The blades flashed once more like twin lightning strikes, and the third tumbled down, flailing bloody stumps of arms. The swords skipped from one enemy to another like two steel vipers hiding in the mist. Within seconds, only the mage remained alive. The onmyōji turned to face the enemy and raised his mace with a defiant roar, but it was already too late. The two mysterious swords flashed one last time in a neat, flawless strike and the mage’s head rolled slowly off his body, leaving a trace of bloody spurts in the grass.
Silence fell like a death shroud upon the forest.
CHAPTER XVII
The night was hot and uncomfortably muggy. Yezaimon Kayama stirred uneasily in his sleep, throwing off the thin quilt. He had been suffering from nightmares ever since the Taikun, in his great wisdom, had resolved to make him the Governor of Defences of the Uraga Channel. The heat and humidity of early summer nights only made the anguish worse.
The position, although ostensibly prestigious, was a burden in the best of days. His wife was right to warn him not to accept it, but it was impossible — nobody refused a gift from the Taikun and lived. The domain consisted of miles of empty shoreline, dotted with ancient forts built in times immemorial to thwart some invasion of a forgotten foe. There were no pirates on these seas, no invading fleet sighted in centuries.
Boredom and useless chores filled Kayama’s days as he travelled up and down the coast, hopelessly trying to build up some pretence of defence. The local samurai feigned effort only for as long as they could feel his eyes on their backs. Money was short, the treasury almost empty. The breaches in the walls of the coastal forts were covered with grey cloth instead of stone. The cannons remembered the days of the first Tokugawa Taikun, some of them had barrels made of wood, painted black to imitate iron. It was all make-believe, a theatre stage with outdated props.
Nobody ever threatened these shores. The Divine Winds protected the islands with a tight impenetrable maze of storms and twisting currents, passable only in one secret place south of Chinzei Island. Once every ten years or so, a barbarian ship tried to break through, but always failed. Sometimes the waves would cast away a few hapless survivors. The regularity with which the barbarians attempted the landings baffled Kayama’s mind. Did they not know that as long as the Taikuns ruled from their Edo castle, the Gods themselves protected the Sacred Soil of Yamato?
Recently, if the rumours were true, another foreign ship had been sighted off the Nansei Islands, heading north. Like so many times before, the governor had to make sure at least some of his cannons were able to shoot more than blanks, and that a few of his archers and arquebusiers were stationed at their proper posts, in the unlikely event that the barbarians would somehow succeed.
The obviously exaggerated rumours of the size and strength of the barbarian flotilla did little to ease his anxiety. For the last few nights he’d been dreaming of great monsters emerging from the waters of Uraga Bay and devouring towns and villages along the shore. These were ominous menacing dreams and he sincerely wished that the foreigners would already come and go, and leave his poor soul in peace.
The desperate ringing of gongs coming from the beach awoke the governor from an uneasy slumber. Kayama pulled himself off the rice hull-stuffed mattress, grumpily.
“Enough already,” he mumbled, “you call yourselves samurai? I thought I’d trained you better than this.”
Without haste, he put on his everyday clothes, a plain grey haori jacket and sand-yellow, pleated hakama skirt, thrust two swords into the sash around his waist and opened the door of the coastal outpost in which he was spending the night.
The ringing continued. He inhaled deeply and instead of the usual scent of sea and wind, he smelled soot and smoke.
Intrigued but not yet worried, Kayama gazed over a high cliff overlooking the port of Kurihama, the gateway to the Uraga Bay. In the pink glow of dawn, a scene of chaos and destruction was unfolding before his eyes. The town was ablaze. The gongs of the military were by now joined by the loud booming drone of the temple bell and the clanging little bells of fire guards. Raging flame was devouring houses along several of the streets, feeding on the wooden frames and thatched roofs. People were running towards the hills in panic, leaving all their possessions to the fire.
Before he could take all this in, a bewildering sound came from the sky, as if a giant lion roared in the clouds. Kayama looked up and reeled in terror. For a moment he thought he was still dreaming or had gone mad. Above the town, far beyond the range of any cannon, bow or matchlock, circled four giant black beasts, like enormous eagles, slowly beating their great wings and weaving long serpentine tails. One of them was greater than the other three, flying higher, as if commanding all this destruction. Every so often, one of the lesser monsters spewed a ball of flame from its mouth which fell into the sea with a deafening blast and a hiss of steam.
There was nothing Kayama could do but admire the destruction from afar. He was, after all, an educated samurai, and could find poetry even in death and ruin. The monsters, he understood quickly, were no doubt Gods or their messengers, coming from the sea to inflict punishment on the unsuspecting sinners. The famines and earthquakes were just a prelude: this was what the prophecies and divinations of the priests had been all about. Kayama sat down on the ground, resigned, as the unbelievable beasts continued to circle a
bove the harbour.
Oh, poor Yamato, the shadow of black wings portends thy doom!
In his head he began to compose the first stanza of an epic poem On Destruction of Uraga Harbour when, to his surprise, the black monsters stopped their circling and swooped towards him. As they soared above Kayama with tremendous speed, heating the very wind before them, he noticed tiny silhouettes of men riding atop the beasts, two on each except a lonely figure on the largest one, their faces hidden in the shadows of grey hooded cloaks.
They weren’t Gods, he realised with relief, which quickly turned into renewed terror. They were human beings — invaders. They were heading straight for Edo, and he could do nothing to stop them…
THE END
THE ISLANDS IN THE MIST
Book Three of
The Year of the Dragon
James Calbraith
The spring is a dawn. The vast sky turns pale, the peaks of the mountains brighten gently. In the purple glow, the thin clouds linger towards the horizon.
The Pillow Book
PROLOGUE
The white silk of his robe was stained with the blood of his brethren.
Wet sand squeaked under his bare feet. At the break of dawn the sea was silent, cold and dark like the swords which slaughtered the priests at the Mekari. His brothers had thrown themselves against the blades to protect him and that which he carried away.
The Jewel was not for human hands to hold. The orb of white crystal burned his skin and flesh like a glowing ember. He bit his lips and endured.
The black line of gnarled, twisted pines moved closer with his every breath. He dared not look back; he knew the grey-clad assassins were near. He hoped to lose them in the dark forest growing on the windswept seaward slopes of the nearby dune ridge. If he could only make it to those trees…
Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed the falling blade and instinctively raised his hand to shield himself. The sword clanged harmlessly. The white sleeve of his robe fell, revealing an arm covered with black scales, glinting in the first rays of the rising sun.
He grasped the blade and snapped it in two. The swordsman stared incredulously at his broken weapon, then at the long, sharp claws reaching for his eyes.
He left the howling assassin to bleed out onto the sand and kept on running. The trees were now less than fifty paces away, their safe shadows beckoning him invitingly. The others were now so close behind he could hear the shuffling of their feet. He stumbled, losing precious seconds. Thirty paces. Twenty. His aching calves cried for him to stop, but he ignored the pain. His heart pounded as if trying to break free from the ribcage. Just a little more effort. Just a few more steps.
He glimpsed them standing among the trees, swords drawn, and realised all was lost. He slowed down and stopped. The men behind him stopped too, waiting, patient. He turned around. There were three of them, all in the same grey, unmarked uniforms, solemn faces without a trace of emotion. Two more approached unhurriedly from the forest.
They could see the Jewel clearly, shining like a beacon through his right hand and the white silk sleeve, but, for the moment, were more concerned with the left hand, armed with its deadly claws. Wary of the fate of their comrade, the swordsmen bid their time until, at last, the first one leapt towards him with the weapon raised. There was no war cry, not even a hastening of breath.
The sun rising over the dunes painted the sea as crimson as the blood of the five men lying in the sand and the robe of the long-haired, gaunt faced man standing before him.
“I’m impressed,” the man said, grinning to show his sharp, black teeth. His eyes glinted like nuggets of pure gold. In his right hand he was holding a giant sword, almost four feet in length. “So, this is how the last of the Sea Dragons fights.”
The priest said nothing, saving his strength. Two of his claws were broken, his left eye gouged, his stomach and chest cut with many deep wounds but, somehow, he was still standing. He no longer felt any pain, only weariness.
The man in the crimson robe drew his sword and threw away the plain wooden sheath.
“This is where you should say something poignant,” he remarked and raised the weapon horizontally above his head. The priest wondered if it was too late to pray to the great Watatsumi for help.
With a sudden roar he lunged forwards. The man in the crimson robe stepped back and brought the sword down. The blade struck the priest’s right shoulder, slicing the arm cleanly off his body, but the claws pierced deep into the enemy’s chest. No blood pulsed in the swordsman’s veins; no heart beat inside the ribcage.
The demon laughed and pushed the priest away. He reached down and wrestled the Jewel, clutched in the hand, though the arm was cut clean off. A frown marred its pale face as the gem’s white light burned through the parchment-thin skin.
“That’s not right,” he murmured to himself. The priest tried to crawl away, slipping and stumbling, but the demon grabbed him by the folds of the white silk robe, turned effortlessly and, with a swift stab, pierced his chest.
With dying eyes, the priest watched as his own blood stained red the Jewel of the Ebbs, turning the stone from a white diamond into the purest of rubies.
CHAPTER I
Slender fingers picked the polished piece of white clamshell up from the wooden bowl and dropped it onto the intersection between the straight black lines with a soft tap.
Atsuko straightened and looked up from the board. Her eyes met those of Komatsu and she smiled encouragingly. He lowered his gaze immediately and pretended to focus on the setup of the black and white stones on the rectangle of golden kaya wood.
The boy is very silent today, she thought. No, not the boy. Komatsu is a man already. They were both the same age after all. With his top-knot perfectly straight and his black kimono lined on his shoulders without a crease, he seemed very presentable. Any woman he chose for a bride could deem herself fortuitous.
The stone of black slate clicked on the board. Komatsu nodded, acknowledging his move.
“I am to travel to Edo,” she said, picking up a white stone and studying its surface carefully. Komatsu looked at her, startled, but composed himself in an instant.
“I know,” he replied.
“Ah?”
“Tadayuki-sama told me.”
“I see.”
Tap. The white stone joined four others in a group which seemed hopelessly trapped in a ladder pattern.
“I may never return.”
Komatsu swallowed loudly before answering.
“If such be the will of Nariakira-dono…”
His fingers reached for another stone.
“I’m leaving in two days.”
The black stone dropped back into the bowl with a clatter.
“Two days…? But I thought…”
“Father’s request. The auguries for a later date proved inauspicious. Everything is ready for my departure.”
“Hime…”
He closed his mouth, straightened his back and nodded again.
“I wish you all the best.”
“Thank you.”
The black stone tapped louder than the others.
“You broke the ladder, Komatsu-kun,” she noticed, “you haven’t got any better since we last played. Have my lessons been so bad?”
“I’m sorry, hime. I am a poor student. And your skills at igo are unmatched.”
“Nonsense,” she said sharply, “I can see your mind is elsewhere today.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
A black kite screeched in the sky. They were sitting in an open room in the summer house overlooking Nariakira Shimazu’s famed garden. She could see the summit of the great Sakurajima above the treetops, a thin plume of white ash rising from the tip straight into the sky — or was it the smoke from her father’s elemental processing plants?
She looked to the corner of the room where a Bataavian wind machine of brass and polished wood stood, placed there to please the guests with a cooling breeze. Lord Nariakira w
as very proud of the invention and had one installed in every building in the garden, but she didn’t like the clackety sound the device made. She unfolded her paper fan and started to cool herself the traditional way.
“The air is still today,” she remarked, “it feels like summer already.”
“Yes, hime.”
“Oh, stop being so formal, Komatsu-kun. You act as if we hadn’t known each other since childhood.”
He looked her straight in the eyes. His face tensed.
“You weren’t a princess then, Atsuko.”
“No, I suppose not.” She sighed. “We all must carry our burdens without complaint.”
“Is being the daughter of a daimyo really such a burden?”
Atsuko twisted her mouth in a wry smile. She smiled a lot, knowing that her wide, slightly pouty mouth was not one of her best features; smiling helped a little.
“Father has great expectations of my mission to Edo.”
Komatsu nodded.
“Nariakira-dono is greatly preoccupied with the matters of state.”
She touched the stones in the bowl, enjoying their smooth coolness.
“Do you know why I have learned to play igo so well?”
“I have often wondered. It is an unusual pastime for a woman.”
“It is perhaps because I am a woman.”
“Ah?”
“In shōgi every piece has a rank and a role. Even the golden general can only move in one way. But in igo all stones are equal and their fates are never determined. Depending on the player’s actions, an igo piece may die a pointless death, or change the fate of the entire battle.”
“Like the ladder breaker,” he said and smiled. “Are you a ladder breaker, hime… Atsuko?”
“I am but a humble woman,” she replied softly, “and my fate is what the player wishes it to be.”
She heard the tinkling of bells and the whirring of wheels squeaking across the floor of the verandah. Her chaperon automaton was returning to escort her back to the female quarters.
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 46