The Year of the Dragon Omnibus

by James Calbraith

  In the quickly falling dusk, the Iroha Maru puffed inconspicuously away from the secret wharf. As the boat increased its speed, cutting through the waves of Kinkō Bay like a frolicking whale, excessive emanations of the elementals’ magical energy transformations rose in a column of grey smoke from a narrow chimney. The paddle wheels rammed the water with a rhythmic roar, like a dozen waterfalls at once.

  “We will sail her far into the open ocean,” the Captain explained to Satō, “and circumnavigate Chinzei beyond the range of patrol boats.”

  “How far have you sailed this ship before?” she asked.

  “She’s been to Amami and back once. That’s seventy ri each way. She’s quite capable,” Kawamura patted the steering wheel with a caring smile.

  The fishing boats had all come back for the night already, and the waters of the strait between Sakurajima and the city were still and empty, cleared for the passage of the daimyo’s ship. Satō could barely see anything before her, except the ominous shadow of the mountain concealing the stars lighting up in the darkening skies.

  She was about to ask the Captain how he was planning to steer them in the night, when a bright yellow spark appeared in front of them.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s the lighthouse on the Okagashima battery, Takashima-sama. There’s five more between us and the Kaimondake cape where we turn westwards. I’ve sailed this route many times at night. Before dawn we’ll be out in the open ocean — and then you’ll see what she’s really capable of!”

  It was Minazuki, Month of Water, according to the Yamato calendar, Bran remembered; somewhere between May and June by Western reckoning, he guessed, but had no way to be certain. He had lost count of days a long time ago, when wandering the dark forests and high mountains of Chinzei.

  The scorching sun stood high at noon, a slight cooling breeze having blown all the clouds away towards the land. The ocean was still and the weather was as perfect as they could ever wish for. Everything had a warm, fuzzy, dreamy quality to it.

  Nagomi decided to stay on deck during the day, lying lethargic on a bench with her face turned to the sun and her eyes half-closed.

  “This is like a holiday,” she sighed, relaxed, “I never knew sea travel could be so pleasant.”

  Bran grunted back too lazy to answer. With Captain Kawamura at the wheel, there was nothing for any of them to do but watch the sea. He was leaning on the stern bulwark, munching on a juicy mikan. They had a whole crate of the fruits in the ship’s hold, and in the heat of a summer’s day this was about all the food they needed to sustain themselves.

  Heishichi came out of the engine bay and sat on a bench, studying some square-shaped measuring instrument. Bran turned serious at once. He threw the fruit into the sea, wiped his hands on his clothes and came up to the wizard.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “for what my dorako did.”

  Heishichi looked up, blinking with one eye. The burned half of his face remained still.

  “At least I’m alive,” he said, darkly. “Your dorako snapped one of my men in half.”

  A faint half-memory, half-dream returned to Bran; a sense of dread and fear.

  “I… I didn’t know.”

  The Daisen shrugged.

  “We all understood the risk. It doesn’t matter now. All my men are dead anyway.”

  Bran felt sorry for the wizard, and slightly guilty until he remembered this was the man who had held Emrys in its cage all this time, preventing their reunion until it was too late.

  Heishichi returned to studying the device and adjusting the dials. He frowned and raised it to the sun.

  “How good are you with Octagonometry?” he asked Bran.

  “Terrible,” the boy replied with a weak smile. He sat down on the bench beside the wizard and played with a piece of thin copper wire he had found lying on the deck.

  It looks like Nagomi’s hair, Bran thought.

  “Riding a dragon is my only talent, really.”

  “When you got separated… how did you know how to find it again?”

  Bran scratched his nose in thought.

  “It’s a power all dragon riders have… we call it Farlink . We can command dragons during flight and in combat. But I can also sense my mount wherever it is.”

  The wizard listened intently, from time to time turning to his device to adjust another gear.

  “And what happens when your dorako dies or is lost for good?”

  “The rider will be assigned a new mount, but it takes a while to readjust. A few weeks to make it listen to basic commands, months to reach the full union. Some riders are better at it than others.”

  “And are you better than others?”

  Bran hesitated.

  You are a good rider, he remembered Madam Magnusdottir. One of our best.

  “So I’ve been told,” he said at last.

  Heishichi nodded.

  “So you can’t just take a dorako and make it yield to your will in an instant?”

  “No. That would be a great feat.”

  “Then how did this… Crimson Robe manage to steal your beast at Kirishima?”

  So that’s what he’s been getting at.

  “He had some kind of an artefact. A ruby orb, about this size,” Bran said, showing a clutched hand, “he could control my dragon and weaken me, when I transformed.”

  Heishichi looked at him sharply.

  “A ruby orb? Are you sure?”

  Bran nodded.

  “I almost touched it. In True Sight it glowed like the Sun. Do you know about it?”

  The Daisen didn’t answer. He leaned over his instrument and carefully bent a thick copper wire. A bluish electric arc sparked across the device.

  He stood up abruptly and pointed one edge of the device towards the horizon.

  “Captain Kawamura, I have the radius!”

  Bran stared in the direction Heishichi to which had pointed. All along the southern edge of the sky ran a thick, black, ominous wall of clouds, illuminated from inside by countless flashes of lightning; a massive storm, the likes of which he had never seen before.

  The Iroha Maru continued to skirt the edge of the great storm all through the day. By evening a worried Bran joined Satō and Captain Kawamura in the helmsman’s cockpit.

  “Shouldn’t we be turning back towards the land soon?” he asked, studying a navigation chart. It was oriented with the West to the top, so it had taken him a while to learn to read it.

  “Soon, tono. We’ll be taking a wide turn around these islands here, and I hope to get you near Aso-san in two days.”

  “And where is Aso-san?”

  The Captain put his finger roughly in the middle of the map of Chinzei.

  “So we’re going back to Kumamoto,” remarked Satō, pointing to the nearest harbour.

  Kawamura shook his head.

  “No, Takashima-sama. We can’t be seen anywhere near the city. That’s where His Excellency will be heading to draw attention from us. We will land somewhere in the marshes of Saga, to the north. Unless you tell me otherwise, tono.”

  “Me?” Bran looked up, startled.

  “That’s what I’ve been ordered. Listen to the boy with green eyes if he orders a change of course.”

  “Oh.”

  When Emrys moves somewhere else.

  “Of course.”

  What if I order him to sail to Qin?

  He looked through the left window, where the black wall of clouds still loomed, crested with white billows, neither grown nor lessened since he had first seen it.

  “And if we had to go through this storm?”

  The Captain blinked and laughed.

  “That’s no storm, tono. Those are the Divine Winds, Kamikaze. And we’re not going there even on Taikun’s orders.”

  Divine Winds?

  There was something his father had told him… what seemed a very long time ago…

  The Sea Maze! We’re so close!

  “How do the Bataavians get t
hrough that?” he asked.

  “Believe me, if we knew the secret, His Excellency would have already sent ships to survey the Great Ocean.”

  Emrys got through on its own. And if it did, so could others.

  He had sensed the other beast — or beasts — again last night, soaring through the dark sky. He was certain now the dragons were somewhere in Yamato.

  The air cooled a little by the evening. Bran stepped out of the bridge, leaving Captain Kawamura leaning lazily over the steering wheel, chewing a chunk of tobacco.

  The middle deck was illuminated by a single evertorch, powered by the lightning box on the mast. The faint beam obscured all but the brightest stars in the dark blue sky, and Bran moved to fore to see more of them. It was a curious thought: despite Bran being half-way across the globe, the stars looked the same as in his home country. There were one or two constellations he had only seen in the southern seas, but all the old summer familiars were there. He recalled Doctor Campion’s lessons: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn... The Moon was just beginning to wane. Venus rose proudly from the East, and Vega, Bran’s favourite, shone brightly to the Northwest. The Polaris hung to the right of the bowsprit, indicating they were headed north-west.

  Nagomi stood on the prow with Torishi, eagerly discussing something. Her hair glowed warmly in the evertorch’s light. Bran came up to them. The bear-man gave him a quick glance, smiled and left.

  The priestess lowered her eyes and stepped aside to let Bran stand beside her by the gunwale.

  “Do you know the names of the stars?” he asked.

  “Some of them, yes.”

  “What do you call that big one?” he asked, pointing at Vega.

  “That’s Orihime, the Weaving Princess. And that’s Hikoboshi the Shepherd,” she replied, nodding at Altair hovering low above the horizon on the other side of the Milky Way.

  “Her… lover,” she added and flushed.

  “What did you talk about with Torishi-sama?”

  “His people have… had… a different way of communicating with Spirits than the priests. It’s more… intimate. They did things I didn’t think possible.”

  “Such as?”

  “Travelling into the Otherworld or speaking with the kami directly.”

  Otherworld?

  “Did he tell you what that place looked like?” he asked.

  “A great, flat plain of red dust at first. A spirit guide can help you to reach other lands, where the kami dwell. For the Kumaso a spirit guide was the bear.”

  Is Emrys my spirit guide, then?

  The waves lapped softly against the hull of the ship. The deck vibrated lightly under Bran’s feet. Underneath, in the engine room, Satō and Heishichi were working on some experiment. With the bear-man gone to his cabin, Bran and Nagomi were all alone on the deck.

  The priestess was clutching the rail tightly, facing the breeze.

  “The years I spent in the shrine were an endless cycle of …seasons, festivals, rituals and chores,” she started, “I was sure that was how I would spend the rest of my life. I got used to it. This… simplicity and repetitiveness. I felt at home with it. But when I was… dying,” her voice broke a little, “all I could think of was ‘too short’. ‘My life was too short.’ Those last few weeks with you and Sacchan… I was so scared that would be all I would ever know and — ” She paused.

  She’s cute when she’s sad, thought Bran. He shuddered, remembering her heartbeat slowing down, her body growing cold in his hands as he carried her up the forest path. Then he remembered her kiss — clumsy, naïve, and so unlike Satō’s thirsty caress. It had taken him completely by surprise.

  It must have been her first.

  He reached his arm around her and pulled her close. She didn’t resist, but didn’t look up to him, either. She let out a quiet sigh and he felt her body relax; it seemed she was content just standing near him. She looked up to the sky and sung in a soft voice:

  Sora-kara miteiru…

  The stars twinkle in the sky

  Looking at us from above…

  “I’ve never heard you sing before.”

  “It’s a song of the Tanabata festival… the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi. They can only meet once a year, on a bridge of magpies thrown over the River of Stars…”

  She fell silent again. He didn’t know how long they stood like that, looking at the moon and the sky splattered with bright pin pricks. His breath slowed down and his mind was clear; he realised he inadvertently slipped into the meditation Shigemasa was teaching him. Outside the red dust plain — the Otherworld - he couldn’t quite sense his dragon yet, just a certain weak buzz, like a droning insect. He raised his hand and focused. A tiny flame, no greater than a burning match, appeared in the middle of his palm.

  “Oh!” Nagomi clasped her hands. “You can do magic again!”

  The flame disappeared.

  “Yes, though only this much, and with great effort.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be able to ride your dorako again?”

  “I hope so,” he replied.

  A sudden movement in the water caught Bran’s eye.

  “What in Annwn — ”

  A long, black shape cut swiftly through the dark sea across their path. Captain Kawamura had no chance to avoid it — it was too low and too fast for him to see. At the last moment, the shape swerved aside — but it was too late. Iroha Maru’s prow jumped up and the entire ship rocked from side to side, throwing Bran and Nagomi onto the deck.

  By the time Bran scrambled to his feet and helped Nagomi up, the ship was listing at a few degrees to starboard. He had spent enough time on sea to know what it meant; the hull was breached and they were taking in water.

  Not again…

  CHAPTER 10

  Wulfhere of Warwick woke up, raised a hand to wipe his tired eyes and hissed in pain.

  “Careful. That arm is still healing.”

  I don’t remember being wounded in the arm.

  He opened his eyes. Hywel was sitting by his bed, half-smiling, his shoulder in a binding, his head swollen and wrapped in thick bandages.

  “What happened?”

  “They say it’s because you struck that… thing. It will be sore for a few days.”

  “What was it?”

  Hywel shrugged with one shoulder.

  “Only the Qin know.”

  Wulfhere spotted two Qin faces in the tent’s entrance. They disappeared the moment they saw him look at them.

  “And who are they?” he asked Hywel.

  “Your worshippers,” the Prydain boy said with a chuckle.

  A Qin man entered the tent; round-faced, sporting a crescent moustache over narrow lips.

  “You’ve made quite a name for yourself, Lieutenant,” the Qinese said in good, slightly lisping Seaxe.

  “I’m just an Ensign.”

  “Not anymore,” said Hywel. “You were promoted.”

  “Why? And what do you mean, ‘worshippers’?”

  “You’ve struck down a Black Lotus,” the Qin man said.

  “Black Lotus… is that what you call it?”

  “It, and others like it, yes. They are members of a secret society, attaching themselves to any disturbance in hope of profit.”

  “But I… I didn’t kill it.”

  “Nobody can kill a Black Lotus — or so they say… but you’ve harmed it and made it leave the battlefield, Lieutenant. That is a feat worthy of a great warrior,” the Qin main said. He wrapped his right fist with his left hand and bowed.

  “I was lucky,” replied Wulfhere in a subdued voice.

  “What is wrong with you, Wulf!” Hywel said, laughing. “I thought you’d be bragging about this to everyone!”

  The Seaxe closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The sight of Nechtan, twitching and dying in the creature’s grasp, flashed under his eyelids.

  “I’m still tired, that’s all.”

  “Sure, sure. I’ll let you rest.”

  Hywel stood up and left the t
ent. The Qin man remained.

  “Who are you?” asked Wulfhere.

  “My name is Li,” the man replied, bowing again. “I am merely a servant of my Lord Bohan, the Commander of the Imperial Army.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “To see the hero and wish him good health.”

  “Thank you.”

  Uninvited, Li pulled himself up a stool.

  “I hear you have royal blood in your veins.”

  How in Hel does he know that?

  “My ancestor was a king of Dracaland, yes.”

  “Forgive me asking, but why then were you a mere ensign until now? And one without a dragon, too? In Qin, you would be a high-ranking officer already.”

  As I should be!

  “My commanders aren’t fond of me. They are mostly waelesc.”

  “Waelesc?”

  “Prydain. They are of a different, older race. A race we once conquered. They hold many grudges against us, Seaxe.”

  Li nodded. His face brightened.

  “Ah, now I understand. My commander is of the Hunan people, from the South. We seem to have similar… misunderstandings. But, Commodore Dí Lán is a Prydain, no?”

  “I don’t know much about him. His son…”

  “His son?”

  “Why are you interested in the Commodore anyway, Li?”

  “I am a curious man,” Li replied with a smile. “And the Commodore is an interesting person. I didn’t know he had a son?”

  “I studied with him at the Academy. He would be here if it wasn’t for the disaster at sea.”

  “He is dead, then. How unfortunate.”

  “No, no,” Wulfhere said, waving his hands excitedly. “He’s got a Llambed Seal. That would have saved his life.”

  “A Llambed Seal?”

  “A spell all graduates of Llambed have. The rumour has it he’s been transported out of Qin, nobody knows where. Somewhere safe.”

  “Out of Qin? And the Commodore is not trying to look for him?”

  Wulfhere shrugged. “He’s a soldier. He’s got his orders.”

  “Fascinating. Well, it’s been an interesting chat,” the Qinese said, standing up. “I certainly enjoyed it. Do you mind if I come here again?”