The Dragon’s Mark (11 page)

I feel good, was Annja’s first thought, and she truly did. She felt rested in a way she hadn’t for a long time, as if she’d laid down for a quick nap and had awoken a dozen hours later instead. Her physical and emotional batteries felt recharged and ready for whatever was to come next.

“Is it over?” she asked, glancing around for a clock. Just how long was I out, anyway? she wondered.

“Yes, it’s over,” Dr. Laurent said. Realizing what Annja was looking for, she answered her unspoken question. “You’ve been in a trance for just about an hour, give or take a few minutes.”

“And did it work?”

“I believe so.” The doctor picked up the sketch pad off her lap and handed it Annja. “Does this look familiar?”

While the drawing wouldn’t win any awards for its artistic merits, it was immediately clear what it was she had drawn—the face of the swordsman she’d encountered at Roux’s. The figure in the picture stared out at her from behind the concealment of a hood and face mask, but she would recognize the look of superiority in those eyes anywhere. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she stared at the image and had the eerie sense that the image was looking back at her at the same time.

“Yes, that’s the man from my dreams,” she said in reply to Dr. Laurent’s question, and gave herself a quick shake to dispel the lingering sense of disquiet the image was giving her.

“That’s what I thought. How about what’s on the next page?”

Annja flipped the page and found the image of a
katana.
But it was the two images she’d sketched onto the blade itself, just above the
tsabo,
or hilt guard, that really caught her attention. The first was a set of Japanese characters that she couldn’t read so she had no idea what they said. The second was easily recognizable, however; it was an elegantly drawn image of a dragon straight out of Japanese mythology. The beast had been rendered standing on its hind legs, its wings outstretched to their full extent and its long whiskers drooping past an open mouth full of teeth.

Annja was surprised, as the drawing was not only well done but extremely detailed. It was considerably better than the first one, as if she had tapped into some long-forgotten well of artistic talent deep in her soul. “I did this?” she asked.

“You did that,” the doctor replied. “Perhaps you have a second career as an artist.”

“Yeah, maybe so.” As she stared at it, Annja realized the etching had been on the sword that the Dragon had wielded, the one that had almost taken her head off. Her unconscious mind had seen and made note of the details even in the midst of the fight that her conscious mind and body was trying frantically not to lose.

Annja also knew that just as artisans today signed their creations, so, too, did the ancient swordsmiths, etching small sets of kanji characters into their blades to show evidence of their craftsmanship. You could tell the provenance of a blade from those tiny images, and once you knew what type of blade it was, you had a shot at tracking it down as the ownership and heritage was often carefully cataloged.

For the first time since her search started, she’d found a solid lead.

Dr. Laurent asked her something, but Annja missed it.

“I’m sorry. What was that?” she said, looking up from the drawing.

The doctor’s eyes were filled with sorrow.

“I asked if you were ever injured in a fire.”

No sooner had the words left the doctor’s mouth than the sense of fear and danger that had reared its head at the start of the session came sweeping back in like a tsunami. Cold fingers scurried up her spine and her breath caught in her throat. It was as if her entire system had been shocked into immobility; she couldn’t have responded to Dr. Laurent even if her life had depended on it.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling passed and she could breathe again.

“No,” she managed to whisper back in answer to the question.

“Lose a loved one to a fire, then? Maybe when you were younger?”

“No,” she said, more firmly this time. “I was raised at an orphanage in New Orleans. I never knew any of my family.” The doctor hadn’t asked if she’d ever had nightmares about dying in a fire, so Annja had no intention of mentioning them. Besides, she’d outgrown that long ago.

Dr. Laurent leaned forward in her chair and said, very gently, “Turn the page, Annja.”

As she did as she was asked, Annja said, “I don’t know what this—”

The rest of the sentence died. She stared at the page in complete shock.

She’d drawn an executioner’s fire straight from the history books—a central pole surrounded by a heaping pile of bound hay and wood that burned out of control, the flames reaching for the edges of the page as if hungry for more. A great cloud of smoke and ash filled the space around the image and Annja had the sense of figures standing there, watching the spectacle as if enjoying an afternoon at the movies.

But what made her heart pound and her thoughts freeze like ice was the suggestion of a figure at the center of the image, the thin slender shape of a woman, just the whisper of a ghost at the heart of the inferno.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed.

Frantic, she flipped the page, only to find the exact same image on the next sheet in the pad.

Dr. Laurent was speaking to her, but Annja’s head was filled with a great roaring noise, a curtain of sound that blotted out everything else, and she didn’t hear anything that was said. All she could do was stare at the pages in front of her, astounded at what had come bubbling up from her subconscious like some ancient beast waiting to devour the unwary.

Page after page, the sketches were the same, until she came to the very last page of the drawing pad. Maybe her subconscious mind had recognized that this was it, there were no more pages to draw upon, for a small detail had been added to this image that was not present in any of the others.

In the right-hand corner of the page, almost lost in the swirling cloud of ash and smoke that covered the area, the image of a dove had been added to the scene, wings spread as it soared toward the heavens.

It was too much for Annja. With the pad clutched to her chest, she mumbled her apologies and got out of there as fast as she could.

Thailand 1996

“No!” old man Toshiro barked. “Feel the pattern, do not think it.”

Shizu nodded at her instructor and returned to the starting position, ready to run through the kata again from the beginning, all two hundred specific moves, despite her exhaustion and pain. She’d been at it for two straight days and the lack of food and drink was starting to take its toll on her concentration and on her fifteen-year-old body. And Toshiro would brook no error; if she made a mistake, she would start again from the beginning, just as she was now. A single complaint or groan of pain would only prolong the session; Toshiro had once kept her going for five straight days, when she’d voiced an argument over why she shouldn’t have to practice the basics with such fervor and repetition, until she’d finally passed out from exhaustion.

It had been three years since she had first arrived here at Toshiro’s. She remembered that morning as though it was yesterday. The old man had been waiting outside when she and Sensei had arrived. She had clung to Sensei in the limousine, scared of the wizened little man waiting outside the car.

Sensei had spoken to her gently, but firmly. “You are going to stay here with Toshiro for the next few years, Shizu, and he is going to teach you many things. When you are finished, when you have learned all you need to know, then I will return for you. Your destiny awaits you, but destiny is a harsh mistress and you must be strong if you are going to bend her to your will. Can you do that, Shizu?”

She remembered staring into his eyes, seeing the challenge there, and knowing deep down in her heart that if she did not get out of the car and do as she was asked, then the second chance at life that she had been granted when this man walked into the warehouse in Kyoto would be finished. He would abandon her as quickly as he had taken her in.

With a trembling hand, she had opened the car door and presented herself to Toshiro.

“Again! Begin!”

Focusing her concentration, Shizu started the sequence of movements that began the kata, letting her thoughts drift as she felt the proper movements more than thought about them. Katas had been developed to allow a martial artist to practice against an imaginary opponent—or, in this case, opponents—and as Shizu moved through the sequence she concentrated so strongly that she could picture them before her. She could see their strikes, feel the passage of their limbs, as they punched and kicked and spun, trying to defeat her. Shizu was a good pupil, probably one of the best Toshiro had ever trained, though he’d never tell her that, and she moved from defense to attack and back again with almost effortless ease.

Toshiro had been a harsh taskmaster over the years, but a fair one as well. He had taught her so much—art and language, history and culture, math and science. She took to it with an aptitude and a hunger that had surprised both of them, and in a very short time she had surpassed even his brightest students.

It was in the second year of her residence that the physical training began. Strength conditioning to prepare her body. Meditation to train her mind. Martial arts to prepare her for what was to come in the years ahead. Karate. Tae kwon do. Brazilian jujitsu. Thai boxing. Wing Chun kung fu. Ninjitsu. A mishmash of styles and disciplines, all designed for one end—to prepare her for the destiny that Sensei said awaited her.

She had learned much, it was true, but even she knew there was more to come. Toshiro was not done with her yet. This was just another of his seemingly endless tests, but Shizu welcomed it as she had all the others.

Besides, this day was different.

Sensei was there.

She did not know how she knew; she just did. She had not seen him, had not heard Toshiro speak of his presence, but she could feel him, out there, somewhere, watching.

And so she strove to perform the kata without error.

Seeing the near perfection of her movements, Toshiro decided to show his unseen guest just how good his pupil actually was. With a nod at the doorway in the back of the room, the martial-arts master summoned those he had handpicked for the occasion.

Five darkly clad warriors rushed into the room, armed with a variety of weapons, from a bo staff to a
katana.
Without hesitation they rushed across the room and attacked Shizu, who was still moving through the sequence of her kata.

The young prodigy felt them coming, could sense them in her mind’s eye, and she waited for them to reach her.

Then, once they had, she fell on them like a lightning storm.

It didn’t matter that they were armed and she was not. It didn’t matter that they were warriors who had been studying for decades, well versed in their particular disciplines, while she had been studying for only three years. It didn’t matter that she had been enduring a grueling training session for forty-eight hours without a break while they were well rested, well fed and eager to show Toshiro what they could do.

None of that mattered.

What mattered was the heart of the warrior, and Shizu had that in spades.

She made it look easy.

One by one, her opponents were disarmed, beaten, battered and tossed aside like leaves before a gale-force wind. Even as they lay there groaning, trying to figure out what had just hit them with such ferocity, Shizu continued with her previous exercise, flowing into the next step in the kata as smoothly as if she had never been interrupted.

Behind her, out of sight, the old teacher smiled in grim satisfaction.

When she had finished all two hundred steps of the form with perfect execution and flawless precision, she turned to her teacher and bowed low, just as she’d been taught on the very first day.

But then Shizu did a surprising thing.

As Toshiro watched, his pupil turned to face the wall behind which their guest stood, observing the session. With just as much respect as she had shown her teacher, Shizu bowed to their unseen guest.

The move brought a bark of laughter from Toshiro, something his students heard so seldom that it caused Shizu to spin around and stare at him in surprise.

T
OSHIRO SAT AT THE FEET
of his guest and served him tea prepared the old way, the only way that mattered. As any true warrior would, the man accepted the proffered cup and then offered it back again to Toshiro, indicating that the elder should be the one to drink first. Back and forth it went until honor had been satisfied and his guest took a long drink from the tiny cup.

With the ceremony out of the way, the two men could get down to business.

“You saw?” Toshiro asked.

The other man nodded. He’d been watching from behind a hidden slot in one of the studio’s shoji screens, the same one Shizu had so impertinently bowed toward, and was privately thrilled with how far his protégé had come. “She has learned well, yes?”

“She is a good student. Still thinks too much, but we’ll drive that out of her yet.”

Toshiro’s guest frowned. “You think she needs to remain here longer?”

The shorter man beamed. “Oh, yes. Another year, maybe two. She is not yet ready.”

“But I thought you just said she was a good student. That she
was
ready.”

The grizzled old warrior shook his head. “Not ready. Still has not learned the path of the lotus flower, the way of the crane, the—”

His guest held up his hands. “Okay. Enough. I will not argue. You are the master here, not I.” Still seated, he bowed low to show his respect and to apologize for his doubt.

The older man slapped him on the knee, an affectionate move that one might not have expected for a man of his reputation, but the two of them had known each other for a long time, a long time indeed.

“You shouldn’t worry. I will forge for you a weapon with such precision that not even Death will know she is coming.”

The other man smiled. “I know you will, Toshiro, I know you will.”