Fortress of Lost Worlds

by T. C. Rypel

  Gonji ran a hand through his long, unkempt hair, pondering it all. He saw Valentina begin to tremble.

  “I’m afraid it’s come to an end for me. Fight well, Gonji-san,” the witch urged in a tremulous voice.

  “Wait, Domingo-san. The woman, Valentina—is there any help for her?”

  “None. It’s the sickness Fracastoro gave name to—ahh, syphilis.”

  “Hai, syphiris,” Gonji echoed, remembering now, his intensity of thought giving rise to his occasional pronunciation problem. “They blame an evil spirit.”

  “Si,” she replied, shivering fearfully now, “they make magic culpable for such ugly things—adios, conquistador!”

  Gonji watched Valentina’s eyes roll upward and her head snap back. Then the woman’s form sank from view. Slowly, as if descending through dream mist.

  * * * *

  When the shifts changed at dawn, Gonji was not surprised to discover that he hadn’t thought of sleep all that night. Nor was he sleepy. Fatigued, a-twitch with nervous tension, to be sure. But not interested in sleep.

  He heard Valentina’s voice as Morales came around to greet the prisoners and bring their morning meal. Gonji searched the woman’s eyes, which were still strained with sleep.

  “Buenos dias, Gonji-san,” she said wanly, not seeming herself. “Did you dream of me?”

  “Si,” he replied. “I think I did.”

  “Dreaming is not the same as having, my sweet. How do you say ‘my sweet’ in Japanese?”

  Something stirred inside the samurai. “You can say ‘chan’—call me Gonji-chan.”

  “Gonji-chan.” She laughed, liking the sound of it. “And I am Val-chan?”

  Gonji shook his head slowly, his mind still elsewhere. “Iye. Tina-chan. The other lacks poetry.”

  “Poetry? Hah! Listen to him, now.”

  Gonji gazed deeply into her eyes, holding his breath before whispering to her: “Domingo!”

  He said it not as a name but with the flat enunciation of a simple word.

  “Domingo?” she responded. “Sunday? What about it? Are we off to church?” She smirked at him, then seemed to grow pensive. “Did I talk in my sleep last night?”

  Gonji swallowed. “You always talk.”

  “Sometimes it’s all one can do.”

  “Sometimes it’s best not to be alone with one’s thoughts.”

  Valentina cast him a critical glance, looking insulted. But Gonji was peering down the corridor to see how near Morales and his men approached. Two cells away on Gonji’s side.

  “Tina-chan, listen,” he whispered.

  “Que?”

  “Just listen, por favor. Last night, I—I sent you something. I’ve been practicing, you see. Don’t be frightened. Just see whether—whether you still have it.”

  She arched an eyebrow, regarding him for a moment as one did a lunatic. Then realization dawned, and she felt under her robe, a knowing look spreading over her features.

  “Diablo!” she said in a low voice. “What else did you do? My plague demon will devour you! How—?” She seemed disturbed by the mystery of it all.

  Gonji gulped and lifted a reassuring hand. “Never mind. I did nothing else, just—just hide it. You must trust me. There’s no harm in it for you. I must—”

  “Ohayo, Gonji-san!”

  Morales stood before him suddenly, and Gonji’s face instantly came to its blank set.

  “Ohayo, Morarei-san. I must request—”

  “No, all requests are denied again.”

  “Why don’t you give him his swords?” Valentina grumbled at the sergeant’s back. “And then let me have his bath?”

  “Silence, witch,” Morales called over his shoulder.

  “Up your ass!”

  “Well, amigo,” Morales said, “I have some bad news, and I have some worse news. The bad news is that you have another visitor, but since you’ve refused to see visitors—”

  “A visitor? Who?”

  Morales seemed puzzled by Gonji’s sudden avidity. “A…a Jew. A rich one, by the look of him. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind in time to receive a Jew down here! The only Jews we’ve ever…entertained never left before!”

  “Hai, let me see him, por favor.” Gonji’s mind reeled, came up empty. His lot had never been stranger. “What else?”

  “Ah—si, I’m afraid I’ve been transferred. Your new warden on this shift will be Sergeant Padilla, as of tomorrow.” He fielded Gonji’s questing look negatively. “No, you won’t get along. Do you really wish to see this Jew? I thought you samurai were stubborn about such resolutions—”

  “This food is the morning’s bad news,” Valentina complained from across the corridor.

  “Silence, witch, or you taste the torturer’s lash!”

  “That can be taken two ways—”

  “Morarei-san,” Gonji said in earnest, “have you heard anything else, however slight, about their intentions for me?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I can only wish you good fortune.”

  Gonji bowed stiffly, and Morales looked about uncomfortably before casting him an abbreviated salute.

  Gonji finished his meal quickly, and his mysterious visitor was brought to him. The samurai gaped an instant before composing himself: Striding up the corridor with many a birdlike flutter and nervous cluck over the oppressive dungeons, the merchant Jacob Neriah, from lamented Vedun, was admitted into Gonji’s cell.

  “A Jew!” Valentina was shouting. “An infidel! What’s he doing walking about these dungeons freely while I rot here?”

  “Hush up, Valentina. He’s an old friend,” Gonji said without rancor.

  “Your amigo?” she replied incredulously. “I shall immediately change my opinion of you, slant-eyes. Tell your friend how we mate our lice!”

  Neriah stared at her in abject indignance until the door was clanged shut. He was visibly shaken by his surroundings.

  “May all good kami smile upon you, old man, despite your dishonorable merchant’s calling,” Gonji said warmly, bowing to him.

  “And may Yahweh spare you all torture most foul, friend samurai,” Neriah replied quaveringly, “though I’m afraid my prayer may be in vain.” He beat his breast and gazed about the tight, austere chamber. “Where I found the foolish courage to come to you here, I’m sure I don’t know. Judging by how thoroughly they searched me, I’d guess they might be considering keeping me here.”

  “Except for your money,” Gonji said, smiling knowingly as he scanned the wealthy merchant’s well-appointed traveling garb.

  “Yes, my friend, except for that, we’d be sharing the rack! Are all your parts intact?”

  Gonji smiled thinly and stretched in response. He was both astonished and warmed to share a visit with the garrulous, wizened merchant, whom he’d not seen since the destruction of Vedun. He liked old Jacob, despite having been raised in a cultural structure in which a merchant occupied a social stratum below that of a gravedigger.

  Neriah seemed more stooped with the years, but, if anything, more loquacious than ever. They spoke of the settlement that the Vedunian survivors had established on land owned by Neriah in Austria, and of the amazing circumstances that had brought him to Gonji.

  “We shall get you out of here,” old Jacob was saying, “we shall, you know. By all the holy tribes, but this place stinks! How do you reconcile this with your strict upbringing? My, my, my—well, do you know, Wilfred and Genya Gundersen have sent their prayers and well-wishes? And the Benedettos, and the Monettos, and—and—well, have you come to hear of the marvelous social movement you’ve spawned?”

  Gonji shook his head vapidly.

  “Yes, well—social, religious—it’s hard to say exactly, except that it involves tolerance of another’s belie
fs, and the sense of duty in opposition of political Evil, and I think it grows more militant with the passing years. You’ve become quite infamous. You do have supporters in high places: Grand Duke Frederick of Vienna, and certain prelates among the—the—”

  “The Knights of Wonder?” Gonji inquired.

  “Yes! The Wunderknechten! My, my, their work penetrates even this fanatical Christian grinding mill.” He extracted a handkerchief and cleared his irritated nose.

  “I think this movement, or whatever it is, has caused me all my grief. Have they dared use my name in conjunction with their efforts?”

  “Well, but, you are the chief influence behind it, you must know. You and your teaching about a place for every mode of thought, and all such. You haven’t changed your beliefs, have you?”

  “I’m not sure I hold fast to any beliefs anymore. What of this business about getting me out of this reeking hellhole?”

  “Ah, well, I’m not certain what they’ll do yet. They wanted me to discern for myself whether you were surviving as the Inquisition has claimed. You have no idea what letters of transit were required to—ooh-ooh! Be cheered, my friend! Your precious swords—your dai…dai…”

  “Daisho,” Gonji breathed in wonder, snapping alert.

  “Yes! I’ve rescued them for you. Of course, I couldn’t bring them here, but—”

  “You have my swords?” Gonji asked with shining eyes.

  “It’s amazing what the Church will sell in the interests of money to support its cause. It seems they’ve deemed your witch’s blades free of black magic, now they’ve immersed them in enough holy water. I hope they haven’t rusted.”

  “Oil them, dozo, and lay them away safely.”

  Neriah nodded. “Done! I will keep them close to me, and I plan on staying until your disposition. Take heart. Letters demanding your release are, well, not in truth pouring into Toledo, but…” He spread his hands in a gesture that Gonji found no comfort in. “You know, Gonji, you are a most unusual goy—gentile, that is. If it weren’t for your strange heathen ways, I’d compare you to—to Moses himself, in your fashion. Even Moses was raised by heathens.”

  “Never mind that. Just do what you can to get me out of here, dozo. Now that you’ve bought my swords, I can’t talk them into permitting me to commit seppuku to escape this dishonor.”

  “Still bound for a martyr’s death?”

  Gonji sighed. “The prospect is strangely compelling. But you—and others—have given me more lively thoughts to consider now. There’s evil about, Neriah-san. Palpable evil that is committed to destroying me. I would know why.”

  Neriah nodded in assent. “It abounds, but so does good. The Evil One revels in this religious strife.”

  “Hai, but what do I have to do with it? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Be comforted,” the merchant urged. “I must leave this place before I am suffocated. Shall I convey the word to your friends?”

  “Word?”

  Neriah angled a smile of impish privity at him. “Shi-kaze—Deathwind. The word that tells them you will lead them in the fight against the evil that threatens to devour Europe.”

  Gonji bowed. “The word is given, then. Shi-kaze.”

  Jacob bobbed his head in satisfaction and turned to go.

  “Oh, Neriah-san—what of Simon Sardonis? Has anyone seen or heard from him?”

  The merchant grimaced and shuddered. “No one,” he whispered. “Forget that tormented soul. He must seek his own redemption.”

  Gonji was alone again. His mind raced backward and forward, sifting through the experiences of his life, attempting to make sense of them, weighing them against the new and electrifying information of the past day. He only dimly heard Valentina’s taunting of Neriah, as he departed, and the old man’s torrent of rebuffs and scathing criticisms of the deplorable dungeons.

  Morales came to the door grating later that day, his last shift about to end. They exchanged good-byes.

  “One last bit of advice,” Morales rasped in a voice shielded from eavesdroppers. “They never told you, but you chose the sanbenito that bespeaks the unrepentant soul.”

  “Que?” the samurai puzzled.

  “That robe. You might do better to ask for the yellow one, with the red St. Andrew’s cross before and behind. At least—feign repentance. For your own good, you know?”

  The merest smile perked Gonji’s lips. “I am neither repentant nor unrepentant in this business.”

  Morales shrugged and, after a final exchange of slight bows, departed the dungeons. When he had gone, Gonji considered something, then removed his black sanbenito and tore it with his teeth, ripping it all the way around until it was about the length of his old short kimono. Most of the red flames of Hades and diabolic figures had been riven with the bottom portion. From the discarded red ornamentation he fabricated a tattered sash, an obi, for his waist and a bright hachi-maki to tie about his forehead. The samurai’s headband of resolution.

  Thusly attired and seated in the lotus position, Gonji meditated, forming a new spirit of determination.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sub-cellar of the four-hundred-year-old stone church on the outskirts of Toledo had not seen such clandestine activity since it was new, when the Almohad invaders were defeated by Christian forces and Moorish power was broken in Spain.

  Now a steady stream of surreptitious refugees, adventurers, and dissidents who feared and hated the Inquisition’s might crept into the church by night. After careful screening, those who were deemed trustworthy were brought for individual interview before the renegade officer and his religious counterpart, Father Marquez.

  The landless, the unjustly oppressed, the exasperated.

  And friends and former comrades of Gonji Sabatake.

  “De la Hoz,” the man said by way of introduction as he glanced circumspectly around the taper-lit cellar. “Gabriel de la Hoz. My grandmother—they accuse her of healing by witchcraft. It is said that the soldiers will come soon to arrest her. We don’t know what else to do. She is not a witch. I swear by all that is holy that—”

  “I believe you,” the officer said comfortingly. “Even if I didn’t, it is not for us to judge. Is there anything that might bind you to Toledo? Shake your resolve when it’s time to move?”

  “Nothing. My family would leave tonight, if—”

  “Have you considered the possibility that you could die in the action that might follow? We’ll try to bring you to safe harbor. That has been arranged. But only with the understanding that you will play your part in helping us free the oriental warrior.”

  De la Hoz hesitated, then nodded firmly. “I understand.”

  Final instructions were given, and the blessing conferred, by Father Marquez. De la Hoz departed, and another man was led in. This one was a burly, seedy-looking fellow with an angry facial scar of the sort that could be found in large numbers in the waterfront inns of the Mediterranean, where sword duels were still the most popular sport.

  “Corsini,” the big brigand announced. “That’s all you need to know. You have to trust me, just as I am forced to trust you. But I think I can. This business is too crazy not to be the chapel-bell truth. I’ve got to admire your loco idealism, captain.”

  “Just senor will do, for now.” The officer eyed the man levelly, suspicious. “What is your interest in this affair?”

  Corsini pulled out a pipe, tamped it and lit it from a taper as he spoke. “I want to see the samurai freed, as you seem to. We have a debt to settle.” Clouds of smoke rose to the low beamed ceiling.

  The officer regarded him suspiciously. “I don’t think he’s going to be able to pay any debts, under the circumstances.”

  “I’m not here to collect,” Corsini told him, eyes sparkling with an unexpected mirth. “I’m here to
pay. He’s an honorable hombre, and I’m damned if he didn’t turn me into one also,” he said, a far-off vision beckoning his gaze. “I owe him my life, at least once. That’s a heavy debt. You’ll be needing me, then?”

  “Si.” They shook hands tenatively, and Father Marquez moved in to take over his portion of the briefing.

  “Gracias, Senor Salguero,” Corsini said with raised brows over twinkling eyes. “I hope your retirement will be long and prosperous.”

  Salguero felt a chill to have been recognized. He pondered Corsini’s words, hoping not only that the wry wish would come to pass but also that he could trust the man. If so, it could only be by providential design, for the road he had paved ahead of him was not lined with fortuitous portent. The raid on Port-Bou had spread his notoriety—though he cared nothing of that, for it had been successful; they had evacuated their families and many other refugees, leaving the French bewildered as to the attackers’ origin. Yet they were considering reprisals against Spain, and that hung heavy on Salguero’s conscience. And now he and his men dared rise up against their country, their former fellows—and Holy Mother Church herself!—in this hotbed of Inquisition activity. And all for the sake of a single Japanese.

  No. Not just for him. For the ideas he held that the renegades themselves had come to believe in. And to combat the confusion and terror spread by unknown Dark Powers.

  But now there was divisiveness among Gonji’s supporters, as well: The rich Jew, Jacob Neriah, was warning them against initiating hostilities, insisting that money and political influence would see the samurai freed without bloodshed; diplomacy was the proper tack that would steer their course to sanctuary in Austria. Salguero and Neriah were at loggerheads over divergent plans, the latter all the more stubbornly self-assured since he had found Gonji in reasonably good health and spirits.