The Shattering Waves (The Year of the Dragon, Book 7) (33 page)

Nagomi knew all these things from when Bran had flown with her, but Gwen did it in a calmer, more composed manner. There was nothing accidental about anything she did. It was the difference between a young student of fencing and a wizened, war-hardened swordsman.

Bran had not told her much about the Western woman. She couldn’t even imagine how many wars Gwen had seen in her service in the Dracalish army, how many deaths. There was no trace of any of that on her face, except a certain sadness glimpsed once in a while in her dark eyes when she thought Nagomi wasn’t looking. But those moments were brief, masked in an instant with the professional demeanour of a seasoned warrior.

This is what Sacchan always aspired to be.

By the end of the first long day of flying, they reached the northern end of the Kanto Plain, having drawn a wide crescent around its edge. Nagomi assumed it was to avoid passing too close to Edo, which she guessed lay somewhere to the east.

Is my family still there?

Gwen showed her the map during one of the stops and tried to explain their position with mime, but it was drawn in Bataavian runes and barely resembled any maps Nagomi had seen. The details of the interior were sketchy, the features marked with symbols she could not comprehend, but the coast was depicted in a thick wavy line of black ink, with each gulf, bay, inlet and river delta noted with precision, and dozens of names jotted all along the shore, from Kiyō to Edo and beyond. Even the northern island of Ezo was noted at the top of the map, though its shoreline ended in a blank, empty space.

The map was also laced with magic: four red dots pulsated when Gwen touched its edge in a special way — one on Chinzei, two more near Edo, some distance from one another. The fourth marked the position of Gwen and Nagomi, moving ever northwards.

It surprised her how small her home island of Chinzei was compared to the main one, Hondo.
The Shimazu do not control even all of that. And they wanted to prevail over the
Taikun
?
But she was never good with geography, and at the end the runes and symbols were meaningless to her. She shook her head and Gwen rolled up the map.

North of the Kanto Plain stretched a long, narrow corridor of joined-up flat river valleys and terraced faults hemmed in between two mountain ridges, a vast fracture in the earth’s surface, as if God’s sword had cut through the rock. As the sun touched the edge of the mountains, Gwen searched for a place to stay the night in the swampy, wooded hills stretching to the west of a slow-running broad river.

She was efficient in setting up the camp. Within minutes, the campfire was crackling away, the triangular tent of thick, dark cloth rose between the trees and before Nagomi noticed, the woman had even dug an elegant leaf-covered latrine. It was as if Gwen had used magic to prepare it all, but Nagomi did not see her cast any spells.

The chores finished, she took off her clothes, put them neatly on the rock and submerged herself in a mountain brook babbling along the camp’s edge. Nagomi dipped her toe in the water. It was freezing: a stream of liquid ice. Yet Gwen was indifferent to the cold. She rubbed her body vigorously with soap and a bit of pumice, until her pale skin turned as pink as boiled crab. She then offered the soap to Nagomi. Overcoming the cold, the priestess entered the stream and waded towards the woman, water cooling her bruised thighs.

Something glinted between Gwen’s breasts: a pendant, a small round orb of jade on a leather string. Nagomi gasped and reached out to touch it. The woman jerked away at first, but then let the priestess’s hand rest on the jewel. It felt no different to any other smooth, polished stone. She felt Gwen’s heartbeat through it, and some Qin letters cut shallow along the circumference, but that was all. There was nothing magical about it, it was just a regular piece of jade — a souvenir or a spoil of war brought over from Qin.

“I’m sorry,” Nagomi said and stepped away, frightening a school of tiny fish from under her feet. Gwen gave her a puzzled look, then touched the jade on Nagomi’s neck — the gift from Lady Kazuko. A spark of static jumped between her fingers and Nagomi’s skin. She pulled her hand away and climbed out of the stream. She handed Nagomi the soap and pumice and proceeded to hang the damp clothes on a line above the campfire.

It occurred to Nagomi that she was to share the drab, dark cloth tent with this silent, foreign woman she knew almost nothing about. Somehow, of all the strange things that had happened to her since leaving Kiyō, this seemed to her the most peculiar.

The piece of soap slipped from her fingers and plopped into the icy water. She started laughing.

Having to endure a dragon flight lasting from dawn to dusk, almost without pause, exhausted Nagomi to the limits. The Eagle’s Path was out of her reach. She wanted to ask Gwen to slow down and rest more often, but the woman did not — or refused to — understand her gestures.

Bran must have asked her to hurry,
she guessed.
She must have other duties, too.

By the third day the fault line they had been following ended. They reached the coast again. The air grew cold, and the trees turned golden — it was already early autumn here. They were in the North, the lands of Aizu. In a few brief months, Nagomi had passed through all the regions of Yamato — a feat paralleled only by official couriers and itinerant monks. She knew this land only from a few short poems that Lady Kazuko had used to teach her calligraphy. She remembered one of them.

Don’t forget to show my master
The famous twin pine of Takekuma
Late cherry blossoms
Of the far north.

She glanced down, struggling with nausea. If there still was a twin pine at a place called Takekuma — wherever it was — it would have zoomed beneath them in a blink of an eye. Even the famed Matsushima Islands were just a blur of green specks scattered along the shore. And, of course, it wasn’t the season for cherry blossoms.

That night, looking over Gwen’s shoulder as she pored over the map, Nagomi realized they had only one, maybe two, days left before reaching their destination.

Too fast. I’m not ready!

Before going to sleep in that stuffy tent smelling of a strange woman, she indicated to Gwen she didn’t want to be disturbed for a while and went off to find a quiet place in the forest. She lay on the dry, fragrant blanket of sun-parched yellow leaves and pine needles, took out the willow-wood stick and the golden button from the container at her waist and attempted to reach Bran.

The Eagle’s Path was empty and dark. She prodded deeper. There was no trace of Bran, not even the faint resonance that meant he was sound asleep and not ready for contact. Her pulse quickened.

No, it’s all right,
she told herself.
I’m just too far away.

After all, Nodwydd had taken her halfway across the country. She didn’t know the precise rules of Prince Shakushain’s method. Maybe it wasn’t even possible for the path to stretch that long?

The Shadows crawled towards the path from the darkness. She cast one last mental shout, in case he heard her but couldn’t respond, and retreated to the world of the living.

She tasted iron on her tongue. The murmuring of the Shadows subdued, but did not vanish entirely. It remained an aural haze in her ears, a faint background noise, barely distinguishable from the wailing of the wind in the trees. She turned her head, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. The noise was strongest in the north.

It was the Gate, calling her to hurry.

Gwen put up the front tent pole, stretched the guy ropes, grabbed the trenching spade and hammered at the eight wooden pegs around it. She was doing all this absentmindedly, leaving her thoughts plenty of space to wander.

Only one day remained of their mad dash to the northernmost point of the island, marked by Bran on the map with a five-pointed star. She didn’t know what to expect once they got there, but no matter what happened, for her that would be the end of the journey.

She had only promised Bran so much, and as nice as the red-headed girl seemed, Gwen had no inclination to spend any more time with her than necessary. She still had to go back to Chinzei — easily another week in the saddle. Her bottom and back already felt like a tangle of gnarled old roots. Nodwydd was a good mount, but she didn’t have Edern’s gentle touch with the dragon and the lack of Farlink made controlling it a nightmare.

She wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to Bran’s request in the first place. She was only supposed to deliver the message and check up on Bran’s safety. It didn’t take a lot of pleading for the boy to convince her. Maybe it was plain curiosity, or maybe an unexpected desire to do something on her own for once.

Without Dylan
.

Either way, it was a brief moment of madness, the price for which she was now paying with soreness and discomfort.

She tested the tension on the guy ropes and, satisfied with the result, moved deeper into the pine wood to search a suitable latrine spot. This wasn’t strictly necessary for their brief, one-night stops, but she felt the need to keep up a daily routine to stay sane in this strange land, where the Spirits were always near.

Every night now Gwen sensed them around her. They seemed harmless, playful and curious. Most of the time they would gather around the red-haired girl like a halo. Other times, she sensed their curiosity focused on the green jewel on her neck, or on Nodwydd.

She wished she could speak about it with the girl. Bran had mentioned something about the girl being a
priestess.
She appeared at ease in the forest, among the invisible ghosts. The place they were trying to reach — the
Gates —
had something to do with the spirit world. Edern claimed it was the
Annwn
of Prydain legends. There was much she would have asked the girl …

Edern.
She wondered how he and Dylan were faring. She had taken their only dragon, after all, and was taking her time in returning it. Dylan tracked her with the same hex he’d used on Bran’s saddle, but it didn’t tell him
why
she chose this direction
.
Did he wonder why she was taking such a long way around to return to Chinzei?

Is he worried about me
?

She didn’t worry about him. Worry was not an emotion she entertained often. She knew Dylan and Edern would come out of any trouble without harm, even without the dragon she’d taken.

She leaned on the spade’s handle and breathed in the moist, deep, savoury scent of the forest. She missed this smell. She’d been at sea almost two years now — with only a small interlude at Brigstow, when the Second Dragoons relocated to
Ladon.
These northern woods were the first she’d seen that resembled those of her homeland, the mountains of northern Gwynedd — pines and spruce, oak, beech, and a slender, silver birch. There were wild boar tracks in the undergrowth and fox droppings on the moss. A woodpecker rattled against the birch trunk and some small bird chirped in a branch right above her.

No jungle or savannah compares to this.

She missed the woods of Prydain. And she missed Dylan as well, an odd, new sensation. The nature of their jobs meant they often spent months apart, and it had never been a problem before. Now, just a few days’ flight away from the rebel base, she felt a twinge in her heart.

The calm days of Dejima were the best she’d remembered ever spending with Dylan. A part of her had never wanted it to end. Was this what she was now missing?

She returned to the camp and started chopping firewood with the spade’s sharp edge. The red-haired girl watched her from within the tent in silence, her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Hungry?” Gwen asked. The girl tilted her head to one side. Gwen mimed eating, and the girl nodded. She reached for one of the small, big-tailed fish she’d caught earlier and stabbed it with a sharpened stick. She hung it over the flames and started cleaning the rest of the meal. Nagomi watched her for a while, then stood up and walked over to the fire. She rotated the fish and moved it a few inches to one side.

“Oh?” Gwen smiled. “Well, I suppose you know better. These are your fish after all. Your land.”

CHAPTER XXI

As the narrow, slim boat heaved and hurled in the waves, Bran couldn’t decide whether their helmsman was brave, foolish, or maybe both.

He was the youngest fisherman in the Hōjō village, a tall, ruddy youth. Dressed only in a loincloth and headband, he was all sinews and muscle, his arms curled around the tiller the way a wrestler held an opponent. What favours had Yokoi to call upon, or what bounds of honour to appeal to, to get the man to launch his boat in this unquiet twilight?

The fisherman reached into a small sack at his waist and shoved a handful of tiny dried fish into his mouth. His eyes met Bran’s and he beamed a wild grin.

Maybe it didn’t take much convincing,
he thought.

A wave pushed the boat to the left, the helmsman dragged the rudder to counter it. The knife-sharp edge of a submerged rock whizzed inches past the starboard.