“Bran?” Nagomi asked quietly just as he was about to cast his spell.
“Yes?”
“What are you planning to do once you get your dragon back?”
He turned around and saw Nagomi look at him intently, waiting for an answer. Her face, in the flickering light of a flamespark, was serious and sad.
“We’ll run away and hide somewhere in the forest. Emrys should manage all three of us for a brief flight.”
“That’s not what I mean. What will you do after that?”
What was she expecting him to say? He was a stranger in a foreign land, a fugitive with a price on his head. His home was Gwynedd, far beyond the western horizon, not the alien land of Yamato...
“I... I’m not sure,” he lied. “I should probably fly to Dejima, and get some help there... find out what happened to my father, maybe, if he’s still alive...”
“I see,” replied Nagomi and said no more. Her lips were pursed tightly, and her eyes darted away from Bran, into darkness.
Satō sighed and stood between him and the priestess. “Let’s leave that until we have made it through, shall we?”
Nagomi nodded.
Bran touched the fence with his open palm.
“Llwch!” he whispered, and with a flash, the boards turned to sawdust, leaving an opening big enough for them to squeeze through.
Suddenly he staggered back and almost fell. Satō supported him.
“What is it? Surely that little spell — ”
“No, that’s not it. It’s Emrys, for a moment I thought it…” Bran frowned and shook his head. “Now it’s gone. Let’s hurry. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Captain Kiyomasa’s battle instinct told him this was the perfect night for a surprise assault. Everyone in the shrine was busy preparing, watching or taking part in the kagura performance. There were crowds in the courtyards and among buildings of the outer enclosure; there was chaos, loud noise and bright lights. There had already been a disturbance the night before, when the dragon suddenly awoke in the middle of the night. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it was enough for the Captain to order all of his men to stand guard throughout the night of the kagura.
Satsuma’s wizards were also agitated, though none of them could quite tell why. Their magically enhanced intuitions warned them about some vague threat. Between them and Kiyomasa’s men, whoever decided to attack the shrine would have to be desperate, mad, or have access to resources available only at the rank of a daimyo.
There had been no open conflict between the daimyos since the last of the rebellions, over two hundred years ago. Any lord who dared to wage war on a neighbour faced the full wrath of the Taikun’s armies — and utter disgrace. Besides, which daimyo would be able to strike undetected, here, in the middle of Satsuma territory? Saga was too far away, Sagara too weak…
Logic, then, advised against there being any threat of a major strike against the shrine, either on this night or any other. But this was not the time or place to depend on logic and reason. There was a real, living and breathing dragon kept asleep in the inner compound. There were wolf spirits attacking armed men in the middle of the road. Some evil lurked in the dark woods around Kirishima. No, logic could not be trusted anymore. Something was bound to happen on this night, the Captain could feel it with every hair on his body.
Once again he made sure that the sentries were awake and watchful, that the weapon and armour racks were in place and that Heishichi’s wizards were doing their job, whatever it was.
As night fell, evening fog began to rise from the wet grass. It thickened quickly in the stale, damp air.
“This is just what I needed,” he scoffed, “mist so thick you can barely see the end of your sword. Where did it come from? I don’t remember it being so bad last night.”
He shrugged and wrapped his kimono sash tighter.
“Can’t be helped, I suppose. It’s been a muggy evening.”
He ordered the lookouts to announce their position loudly once in a while and went towards the outer compound, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the performance before the change of guards.
They hurried between two long houses with wide colonnades of cedar under broad eaves, towards the storehouse. Bran could still hear the noises coming from the dance stage, the fireworks and sound effects going off and the cries and applause of the enthusiastic crowd.
In contrast, the inner shrine was eerily quiet and empty. There were no birds singing, no frogs croaking, no insects buzzing, none of the background noises he remembered from the previous nights. It was as if all the living things had disappeared from the shrine. The compound was filled with an evening fog so thick and pale it seemed unnatural.
Nagomi whispered, confirming his fears.
“I know this mist.”
“How?” asked Satō.
“It’s the same mist as in Honmyōji.”
As they ventured deeper into the shrine, the fog thickened even more around them. Bran could only see for less than thirty feet ahead.
“It’s going to be hard to find our way around if it gets any worse,” said Bran.
They found a low wall and azalea bushes to hide behind and tried to crawl as close to the storehouse as they could without arousing suspicion. Was it the same wall he had hidden behind with Atsuko; the same bushes where he had smelled her skin?
He soon spotted the great, dark blue shadow of the stilted building, carved out of the gloom by a few stone lanterns spread throughout the compound. The fog seemed to be at its densest here, as if emanating from the storehouse itself.
“Something’s wrong,” Bran whispered. “There should be guards.”
As a waft of wind spread the curtain of fog apart for a brief moment, they saw the bodies of five samurai lying face-down on the grass before the storehouse. The building’s gate had been shattered open. Bran closed his eyes, trying to contact Emrys. The link was still there, but it was much more subdued, as if the dragon had been hidden behind some new kind of barrier, even stronger than Heishichi’s spell. In that instant, the noise from the outer courtyard quietened as there was a pause in the performance.
“I hear battle!” Satō stood up from behind the wall, trying to pierce through the fog. The clanging of weapons and the sound of battle cries came from the direction of the forest gate.
“It’s over there!”
“I know,” replied Bran, “that’s where my dragon is.”
“Then the Crimson Robe must be there too,” said Satō with blazing eyes.
.
CHAPTER XV
He woke up with a headache more intense than any pain he had ever suffered. Every heartbeat released lightning strikes from the corners of his eyes. He could barely stand up. Moaning, he crawled to the basin in the bathroom and splashed his face with icy cold water. It helped a little, enough for him to gather his senses.
With his head bandaged with wet cloth, Koyata staggered to the street and then wandered the merchant district in search of a herbalist open at such an early hour. He found one, as expected, nearer the harbour, where the taverns started. Many a late night reveller queued up at the counter of old Nagayoshi.
The pharmacist took only one glance at Koyata’s pained expression and bandaged head and reached for a well-worn cupboard. He took out a large square tablet of pressed brown powder.
“Break off a chunk and dissolve it in a cup of water — or saké, if you feel brave enough.”
“I’m not drunk,” the doshin said, weakly.
“It doesn’t matter. This will deal with any pain.”
“What is it?”
The pharmacist smiled. “For you, doshin-sama, this is sugar and rice flour.” Koyata shrugged — he didn’t care if it was Cursed Weed as long as it eased his ache. He took the tablet and reached for the money, but the pharmacist stopped his hand.
“On the house, doshin-sama.”
I have to remember to check his warehouse one day, Koyata thought and winced. Even thinking was pain
ful.
He returned home and lay on the floor, waiting for the brown powder to start working. He was in no shape to work today. Lately he was doing much more than was expected of him anyway. He had led several raids on the dens of the rōnin connected to the night attack on the Magistrate. He had been trying to discover where the grey-clad samurai had come from and gone to. He had investigated the rumours of the man in the purple cloak who had been asking many strange questions and then vanished without a trace.
He deserved rest. Perhaps it was the exhaustion that brought on the headache. Koyata was not young anymore. He reached for the basin he had brought near his bedding and changed the wet cloth on his forehead. The lightning strikes continued to pound mercilessly.
At length the medicine seemed to have started working. The ache lessened, but disturbingly, the flashes of light under his closed eyelids intensified. There seemed to be a pattern to them, a complicated design of red lines. Koyata opened his eyes and then closed them again. The pattern continued to flash, and now there was no doubt — he was beginning to see other vivid images, blinking bright against the black screen of his eyelids.
A dirt floor — a man crawling in his own blood — a stone watchtower concealed among pillars of black rock — a dark valley on a slope of jagged boulders — a fuming mountain overlooking the sea…
The images flashed in repeated succession and all the while the red pattern pulsed in the background. After what seemed like an hour, the pain started returning — the powder’s effectiveness was subsiding. As his head began to throb again, the images under his eyelids melted away, replaced by the familiar lightning strikes.
He stood up abruptly; blood rushed from his head and he almost fainted, but he swayed to the cupboard and broke off another chunk of the brown tablet. This time he simply swallowed it. He had to know what the strange vision was. He had no power of prophecy like the priests — of that he was certain. It was almost as if somebody was sending him a signal…
He waited for the images to return. They were weaker this time, but since he was prepared, he could spot more details. The red pattern was drawn in blood on the dirt floor. The fuming mountain was scarred on the sea-ward slope. The man was tortured and beaten but alive and, beside him, lay another man with a face torn by a jagged scar. Koyata had seen this scar somewhere before.
The interpreter. And the other man — was he the wizard, Takashima?
He knew the mountain. His grandfather was a fireman in Shimabara and had died on that broken slope, rescuing villagers from the lava flow. It was far away, but he could reach it in a day, perhaps, if he made haste.
Koyata grabbed the brown tablet, thrust his jute truncheon into his sash beside the short kodachi sword and ran out.
“No, I don’t care about your cousin’s inn. We’re not stopping at Kuchinotsu.”
The old steersman snapped his toothless mouth shut and shook his head. The sky was turning dark and the waves grew higher on the evening breeze.
“Kuso! Here’s a golden coin — do you recognise it? Have you seen so much money in your life?” Koyata shook the piece before the steersman’s face. “This is what you will get if we reach Shimabara before night. And this,” he said, tapping the truncheon’s handle, “is what you will get if we won’t.”
The steersman’s arms drooped. He turned the boat to the wind and raised the sail as high as he could. The boat picked up some speed but it wasn’t enough.
When the evening star twinkled above the horizon, Koyata gave up at last.
“Just put us to shore wherever you can. I will walk the rest of the way.”
When he reached a tavern on the outskirts of Shimabara it was past the Hour of the Rat and, at first, the landlord refused to let him in. Even calling on his authority helped little — this wasn’t Kiyō, after all, and the people here had little respect for the city guards. At last, a mixture of pleading, threats and calling on the virtues of his grandfather, caused the door to slide open.
“All right, all right, you will wake up the guests! What have you been eating?” the landlord cried, waving his hand before his nose, “you reek!”
“Medicine — for my head. Please, I just need a roof to sleep under, I will be gone at dawn.”
“So you’ve said — and trust me, I’ll make sure of it.”
Why is he so hostile? What is wrong with this place?
He bit off another chunk of the brown tablet and swallowed. The bitter taste no longer disturbed him; in fact, it was now sweetly pleasant. Soon the powder started working its magic and he was able to fall asleep.
It was dawn again when the boat wobbled up to one of the many piers of the Shimabara harbour. All through the night Master Tanaka had guided it around the crescent-shaped peninsula, following the blood beacon’s weakening call, making notes, trying to determine with more precision where the signal was coming from.
“We will rest a while and then start on our way up the Unzen Mountain,” he decided, upon consulting his notes and maps. His companion nodded silently.
What an odd fellow, thought Hisashige. Etō was, reputedly, one of the most trusted and skilled of daimyo Naomasa’s retainers, but his constant grim vigilance was most unnerving.
He knew the road to the top well. Mount Unzen was just across the narrow sea from Saga and he had often taken the trail. All along the winding path there were countless hot springs flowing from the volcanic rock, bringing relief to aching backs and limbs. If only they were not in such a hurry he would gladly soak his old weary body once again.
As they sat down to a quick breakfast, Hisashige noticed a familiar narrow face at another table. The flared nostrils were unmistakable, as were the triple dragon-scale markings of the Hōjō clan on his vest. The other samurai noticed them also and rose to greet them.
“Yokoi-dono!” Master Tanaka bowed, “what a timely meeting. What are you doing in Shimabara?”
“I’m on my way from Kiyō where I had some errands to run. You’ve met young Motoda, my pupil?” A barely adolescent man standing behind Yokoi bowed deeply, silently.
“Kiyō?” the old mechanician eyed him suspiciously. He knew Yokoi Tokiari was a mutual acquaintance, but he wasn’t certain how much the man could be trusted.
The samurai leaned down and lowered his voice.
“Truth be told, I am investigating a disappearance of a certain Rangakusha.”
“On whose authority?”
Why would Kumamoto be interested in the Takashimas?
“My own,” replied Yokoi, straightening back. “Or rather, his heir.”
“You’ve seen Satō-sama? Is the boy all right?”
The samurai nodded with a smile. “I see you know which family I’m talking about. He was fine when I last met him — although it was in the strangest of circumstances and I can’t vouch for his safety now. I was hoping I could help in the search for his father, but alas, I could find no clues.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“What do you mean? I’m waiting for the ferry back to Kumamoto. My mission has failed.”
“But — ” Hisashige hesitated. He still wasn’t sure how much the other man could be trusted. Then he remembered the divination. The strength of allies… “ — but Takashima-sama is here!” he finished in a whisper, “on Mount Unzen.”
Yokoi stared at him in amazement for a while then clapped his knee in joy.
“Good fortune brought us together! Tell me, tell me all, how come you know of this? But I will let you finish your breakfast first. We shall be waiting outside, pondering the twisted paths of Fate!”
Master Yokoi travelled in an elaborate, four-man palanquin and so, to keep up with him on the journey, Master Tanaka reluctantly had to rent one as well. His was a light, two-man piece, a little more than a cushioned chair with curtains. It allowed him to soak in the scenery of the mountain path and inhale the sulphur-infused air which he knew were good for his old lungs.
Etō refused a transport and instead walked at a hurried
pace beside the two palanquins, ever watchful, as did young Motoda on the other side. The blood trail was now faint but it led them unmistakably straight up the mountain slope, a dome of black lava a few ri east of the main peak. The entire eastern mountain-side was sliced off as if with a great knife, a terrible mark left upon the earth by the devastating earthquake.
Master Yokoi loudly expressed his dissatisfaction with their chosen route, but had no choice but to follow. As the palanquins climbed up the path the wind whistled through the rocky outcrops and it seemed to Hisashige that the spirits of the thousands that perished in the Shimabara catastrophe still filled the land with their wails and despair. Even sixty years on, no plants grew upon the black, scarred stone. Past the huts of the quarry workers and poor farmers who struggled with their buckwheat and radishes on the hardy soil there were no settlements and the path seemed to end amid the rubble and outcrops of lava.
“Time to leave the palanquins,” said Hisashige, climbing out of his vehicle. The wind dispersed the clouds and the sulphuric fumes and the pale sun was high up. He looked down, towards the harbour and the sea stretching to the azure horizon. Through some phenomenon of echoes the sound of the crashing waves reached his ears even here, mixed with the cries of the kites and the shouts of the fishermen.
“Are you certain of this, Tanaka-sensei?” Yokoi asked. He came up to the chunks of lava rock, perforated like a petrified sponge, piled across the path and searched for a way forward.
Hisashige focused on the beacon. He could barely sense it now, its power almost spent. He opened a small round box at his sash and looked at the geomantic compass inside. The needle wobbled and stabilised, pointing towards the peak of Mount Unzen.
“We’re not far,” he said.
Etō came up to them and said quietly: “I found a passage on the left side of the rubble. It’s narrow, but we can make it.”
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 66