The Year of the Dragon Omnibus

by James Calbraith

  They reached a small wicket gate in the bamboo fence. Torishi kicked it in with ease. A pair of guards appeared on the path beyond the bamboo fence, their spears lowered against the intruders. Torishi roared, grabbed the shaft of the nearest spear and pulled it. The helpless soldier stumbled forwards, his face meeting the bear-man’s head with a bloody result. The other guard struck at Satō, but the wizardess deflected the spear’s blade and cut him across the chest with ease. The guard fell back with his arms thrown apart.

  The path climbed up the raised mound through an azalea thicket beyond which lay the door of the mansion; a thick slab of ancient, riveted bronze. Its frame was scribbled in odd runes. The markings glowed bright blue. The dial on her glove twitched when she ran her finger along them.

  Torishi barged against the door with his shoulder, but it didn’t budge.

  “The runes,” said Satō, pointing to the door frame. “Like on my father’s shard.”

  She took the piece of bronze from her sleeve and put it up to the door.

  “Hand me the dagger,” she asked Nagomi.

  With the tip of the blade she copied the rune onto the door’s surface. Nothing happened. Satō cut her finger and pressed it to the scratch. A jolt ran from her hand, along the shoulder, to the place where the bronze dagger had hit her. The copper conduits on the glove buzzed and sparked. The rune drank her blood greedily; the markings on the frame glowed purple. The door swung wide open.

  They ran out onto a small square garden surrounded by a shaded veranda. A tall, broad-shouldered figure awaited them, casting a huge black shadow in the light of a burning brazier.

  Silently, the enemy approached. He had a beard almost as thick and bushy as that of Torishi, and long, black, braided hair; his clothes bore similar ornaments to those of the bear-man, but were more elaborate and colourful. Several bronze bracelets jangled on his wrists. He was unarmed, but poised to strike. She noticed beads of glass and polished stone tied into the man’s beard and hair.

  Satō raised her sword, but Torishi put his hand on the blade and pushed it down. He stepped forward, his face grave, his fists clenched. The two giants seemed like long lost brothers.

  “Irankarapte, nipa,” said the bear-man.

  “Irangarapte na,” the other one replied, raising his fist to his chest.

  “You know him?” Nagomi whispered. Torishi shook his head.

  “He’s my kin. Of those who departed north and lost their unity with the Bear.”

  The two hairy giants stared at each other for a long while.

  “I cannot let you pass,” the Northerner said.

  Torishi grunted. “Then I will fight you.”

  He then turned to Satō and Nagomi.

  “Go. I shall join you later.”

  Torishi had never told the young cubs of how he had wandered about the forest for days and months, slowly losing his human mind along with the will to live.

  He wanted to forget about his wife dying a slow and painful death, her skin covered in bloody blisters; about his daughter, the last child buried in the burial pit. When the hunters finally found him, he had been resolved to die with no regrets. He let them trap him.

  Since he first met the three youths, he had sensed a greatness inside them; courage and strength they themselves had not even begun to realize. The Spirits had confirmed his suspicions; go with them, they said. Help them fulfil their destiny. Once, he had resolved to die because he had no reason to live. Now he wanted to live, because they had given him a reason to die.

  He met his opponent’s gaze.

  “Why are you with the Shamo?” the Northerner asked, not unkindly. “I know what they did to your people.”

  “I am not here with the Shamo,” replied Torishi. “I am here with three young cubs that need help. Why are you here? Do you not know who lords over this island?”

  “I know he is a demon that feeds on blood,” the Northerner said, laughing. “How is that different from any other Shamo?”

  “What will you gain in exchange for your service?”

  “He promised me he would help unite the tribes of the North and drive away the Shamo from our mountains and forests.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Of course not. But he also promised me a great hunt, and a good fight. And on those he delivered.”

  He looked the bear-man over and nodded in appreciation.

  “You seem strong. I hope you Southerners have not forgotten how to brawl.”

  “There are no more Southerners. I’m the last of the Kumaso.”

  “Pity. But don’t think I’ll go easy on you because of that.”

  “I might think that. The bear won’t.”

  Torishi laid his weapons on the ground and raised his arms high with a roar. In a flash of lightning, the great black bear appeared, the glistening fur quickly soaking in the rain. He felt his reason slowly give way to bloody instinct.

  The Northerner let out a joyous cackle.

  “A worthy opponent, at last!”

  He leapt forward and grappled with Torishi in a deadly embrace.

  Satō crossed the courtyard and broke through the door in the northern wall. There was another corridor here, dark, narrow and winding.

  The corridor seemed empty, but she stopped. They were in enemy territory, and there had to be traps and ambushes waiting if the Crimson Robe expected their arrival. She was not trained in True Sight, but her senses had grown sharper ever since she had first stepped on the island, as if she was somehow growing attuned to the energies of the place.

  “Look out!” she cried and pulled Nagomi down to the ground just as a pair of darts zipped above their heads. The shinobi assassin in a tight black uniform leapt down noiselessly from the top-right corner. The chain-and-sickle weapon whizzed through the air inches from Satō’s neck. The wizardess rolled aside and jumped to her feet, her sword in her hand.

  Between the black facemask and the dark blue hood she could only see the eyes of the assassin, seething with fury, concentrated.

  It’s the kunoichi woman from Kirishima.

  Satō accepted the unspoken challenge and stepped forward.

  “I will give you a fair duel,” she said. “But this one’s just you and me.”

  The assassin narrowed her glinting eyes, looking at Nagomi as if she had only noticed her now.

  “I killed you once already, priestess,” she said. “Twice would be bad luck.”

  “I can’t leave you alone,” said Nagomi.

  “You must,” replied Satō. “Somebody has to save Bran.”

  “But I’m —”

  “My patience is running out,” the assassin seethed through her mask.

  “Go!” Satō pushed Nagomi towards the darkness of the corridor. The assassin made no move to stop the priestess as she went past her.

  When Satō had entered the hall, the shinobi had thrown three poisoned darts at her. Two she managed to avoid, the third embedded itself in her left thigh. The numbing poison was slowly spreading through the entire leg.

  A sudden, unwanted memory came to her now. The master of one of Kiyō’s best fencing schools, humiliating her in the test match, breaking her leg with the wooden sword. He had done it to teach her a lesson; Satō easily surpassed all other applicants, but she had to be shown her place. A girl could never be a swordsman.

  It had been this contempt which forced her on the path to years of lonely, arduous training of both magic and swordsmanship; fighting against straw dummies, wooden boards, and her father’s illusions, she pursued perfection. Had she been a boy, it would have been enough for her to be of average skill; but as a female, she had to be the best to be considered equal.

  But that was all theory and mock fighting. Nobody in Kiyō wanted to spar with her. The men deemed it beneath them, the boys weren’t skilful enough.

  The month-old wound in her shoulder throbbed with heat, like a second heart.

  All this knowledge and training would have been for nothing, she though
t, had I not met Bran and gone off on this quest…

  She had got a chance to try herself against the bandits, the rōnin and the hunters... She stood her own against Master Kawakami and that old annoying Spirit in Bran’s head. She had gained more experience and confidence in the last month than in her entire life. At Kirishima, just for a second, the wizardess had glimpsed what it would have been like to achieve self-mastery, the unity of purpose and means which had been, until then, only a theory in Shūhan’s writings.

  And now, at long last, she faced an opponent of equal skill in a proper duel.

  Another woman.

  The assassin’s dark, cold eyes studied Satō in silence, as they both circled each other slowly, looking for an opening. The sickle whooshed on the end of the chain rhythmically like a pendulum. The tight uniform clung to her taut, supple muscles, leaving no doubt as to her physical prowess. The wizardess wondered briefly if the shinobi’s life had been as difficult as hers.

  Worse, probably, she thought. She ended up here.

  “Who was the man in Kirishima? Your lover?”

  The pendulum stopped.

  “He was my everything.”

  “I’m sorry. It was the heat of the battle.”

  “Enough.”

  There was a barely noticeable flinch in the assassin’s stance; she was ready to strike. Satō focused on the single point at the end of her sword. She felt the energies of the island go through her like freezing winter wind. The countless, ancient spirits of those who had died in the many battles fought over the Kanmon Strait; and the new, evil force brought on by the Crimson Robe’s dark deeds. She knew now why he had banned anyone else from using magic here — and what power had been calling her to the island: his presence alone made it a miniature magical nexus, the mogelijkheit of the place almost as strong in its concentration as the Takachiho Mountain.

  She no longer needed to speak out the spells. She didn’t even need to use the needle in her glove: all the power of her blood, that trickling down her knee, the one making her left palm slippery or that running through her veins, was now at her disposal. In the darkness of the narrow corridor, she and the blade became one; a streamlined conduit of magic. Her senses sharpened, her movements magically enhanced.

  For a brief moment, in a flash of concentration, the wizardess saw the world the way the Scryers saw it. She saw all the points in time, all the possible outcomes of the duel. At last, before what might have been her final battle, she became what Takashima Shūhan had wanted her to be; the samurai wizard.

  And when the shinobi’s sickle blade struck for the first time — her sword was already there.

  The winding corridor was eerily quiet. On one side there were rooms Nagomi dared not enter, on the other it ran along the back garden. Lightning flashes painted the shadows of the trees on the semi-translucent paper windows. The monotonous noise of the rain shrouded the faint sound of blades clashing back in the mansion where Satō fought her deadly duel. The smell of freshly blooming peonies lingered in the heavy air, seeping through the cracks in the wall.

  Nagomi touched her way forward; the corridor turned left, then right, then split in two opposite directions. The wall in front of her was made of solid oaken planks, and there was nothing on either side that could help her choose.

  She pulled the Spirit Light and studied the way the orange flame danced in the beaker. A sudden chilling gust of wind blew from the right-hand wing, bending the flame. She turned there and, after twenty paces, she reached a dead end; the same plain oaken wall. She was ready to turn back, but the cold wind made the orange light flicker again — and it seemed to be seeping from the wall.

  She could hear steps running towards her from the other end of the corridor: guards, she guessed. She moved the dancing beaker up and down the wall, looking for the source of the draught. There was a narrow slit in one of the planks. She drew Satō’s dagger and pushed it in. Something clicked, and the wall slid open, revealing a cold, narrow, stone staircase leading straight down, into even blacker darkness.

  Hearing the guards approaching the place where the corridor split, Nagomi took a deep breath and stepped onto the first stair. The wall slid noiselessly behind her.

  There were no more doors to pass. The staircase led her to a long hallway lined with flat slabs of white stone. A hundred or so paces later, she reached a large square room with walls and floor of the same material, made bright by a single flaming brazier.

  A broad ramp led out of the room on the opposite side; between this puzzling gateway and Nagomi stood a huge, ornate, steel-walled box, with only a narrow opening at the top.

  The priestess felt a paralyzing fear creeping over her, as if oozing from the box. Her knees buckled under her and her teeth chattered. She hugged the Spirit Light close and withdrew until her back touched the cold stone wall.

  What monster is this…?

  And then she remembered. She had seen this place before — in a dream, in Kagoshima.

  Emris! I found Bran’s dragon!

  Gathering all her courage she stepped forward.

  Maybe if I could open it… I could release it? Would that help?

  She touched the steel wall. It was cold and vibrating slowly as the beast within breathed. It belonged to a Fanged — how would a demon like that make sure only he could open the container? She looked the box over, pressed and pushed the coiling, snake-shaped carvings, tugged and pulled on the runed walls, all to no avail.

  What trickery or magic would he use?

  Then she had an idea. She took a hairpin and pricked her finger. A large drop of blood appeared at the tip. She pressed it against the wall of the box. The metal glowed purple for a moment, absorbing the red liquid, but nothing else happened.

  Not enough, she thought desperately. She took the dagger and slashed her left palm deeply. She cried out; it hurt and bled a lot more than she expected; a thick stream of red liquid trickled down her wrist and forearm.

  Suddenly, she felt she had become the focus of somebody’s attention. The torch light dimmed, the air grew cold and stale; Nagomi’s breath quickened. The primeval fear she had felt before was replaced by the terror of the Otherworld. Drawn to the blood like hungry koi fish in the shrine pond, malevolent, tortured spirits were swirling all around her. She put her palms together and spoke a quick prayer with trembling lips. Her hands glowed with weak blue light, and the air nearest her cleared enough so she could breathe freely again.

  In a hurry she smeared as much of the blood as she could onto the surface of the metal box. The wall glowed again in the shape of a magic rune, much brighter this time, and something inside clicked.

  Clutching her bleeding hand, Nagomi opened the door. A wave of hot, stale air rushed from the inside, as if from a furnace. She saw the shadow of a massive, heavily breathing beast. This was the first time she had seen the dorako up close. She had never imagined anything so big could live on land, much less fly. The beast lay asleep, bound in thick steel chains.

  Strangely, now that she could see the dragon, her fear lessened. The evil spirits perished, as if unable to withstand the monster’s presence. The priestess approached the beast closer. Its scales were warm to touch and smelled of brimstone. She studied the chain and discovered it was all one length of metal links, wrapped around the beast’s body, with no padlock or knot. She pulled on it with all her might, but it didn’t budge. The sleeping dragon growled and shuddered. Its claws contracted, scratching the iron floor of the box. She jumped away.

  A distant thunder rolled above, its rumble reaching the underground room magnified by the echo. The dragon stirred and the snake eyes flashed open. Fear was beginning to grip her in its cold grasp again; the dragon’s jaws could easily snap her in half, its claws shred her to pieces...

  But she didn’t step back. She watched the monster stand up shakily. With a shrug of its massive shoulders and flap of muscular wings, it ripped both the chain and the steel box apart as if they were made of paper.

  The
priestess was resolved to die.

  With dorako at Bran’s side, the battle is as good as won.

  She closed her eyes and felt the dragon come closer.

  Seconds passed and nothing happened. Surprised, she opened her eyes; the dragon gazed at her patiently. It lowered its neck beside her.

  “You… you want me to…?”

  The dragon snorted. Nagomi clumsily mounted the beast’s neck. Not sure what to hold on to, she grabbed one of the long, sharp horns protruding from the dragon’s head. As soon as she did that, Emrys turned and shot through the ramp, into the stormy night outside.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Wake up, boy!”

  A nagging voice prodded Bran slowly into consciousness. His first feeling was a strange, numbing pain, difficult to localize.

  “Careful. Don’t open your eyes yet.”

  “Why…?”

  “I can sense He’s near. Pretend you’re still asleep.”

  “It hurts…”

  Bran twitched his hands and felt thin blades piercing deep into the skin on his forearms and shoulders. Something sharp was stuck in his neck as well, pulsating in the rhythm of his heart.

  He half-opened one eye. His head was spinning. He was sitting in a high metal chair in a small room, encircled by bright candles. Bronze needles and tubes of oiled canvas were sticking out of his arm. Spiked bracelets kept his wrists and ankles safely in place.

  He couldn’t see much else without opening his eyes fully; but he could sense a dark, cold presence in the room.

  “This room feels exactly like that place above the heretics’ town,” observed Shigemasa.

  “He’s draining me…”

  “He’s changing you into one of his own!”

  Bran strained to focus; with clenched fists and gritted teeth, he summoned a bwcler along his left arm. He gasped as the magic shield cut through the tubes and tore the needles out of his body. Blood spurted from the open vein.

  “You’re awake,” a freezing voice spoke. Bran opened his eyes fully. The Crimson Robe was sitting cross-legged on the floor before him, outside the circle of candles, underneath a fresco of an eight-headed serpent outlined with black paint on the clay-daubed wall. He held the glowing orb of red crystal in his hand. The great two-handed sword lay by his right side — and Bran’s Prydain blade at his left, along with the satchel and all the items from inside were laid out neatly, the blue ring among them. The Fanged was studying the medallion with great interest when he noticed Bran stir and gasp.