The Shattering Waves (The Year of the Dragon, Book 7) (36 page)

Gwen drew her short knife. Nagomi’s heart froze.
What is she—
The woman bit her lips and cut a thin line along her inner palm and presented it to the priestess.

“Oh. Yes. Umm … I really don’t think I should—”

Blood foamed at the wound and trickled down Gwen’s wrist. Nagomi pushed her thumb to Gwen’s palm and let the blue light seal the cut. The woman raised her hand to the moon, stared at her hand from both sides, and touched it with her other hand. She spoke again before remembering the priestess couldn’t understand a word. She took a deep breath and calmed down. She made a gesture Nagomi didn’t understand and turned away. Stepping over the dead bodies, she reached the tent and started dismantling it.

“You’re right,” said Nagomi. “We can’t stay here with the dead.” She helped Gwen take their things out of the tent. “That was amazing what you did there!” she gushed. “You moved so fast … almost like Dōraku-
sama
! I’ve seen Bran fight with that light weapon, but that was nothing like it. If only Sacchan was here to see you fight!”

Gwen smiled. She must have guessed the meaning of Nagomi’s words from her tone. She stopped packing for a moment and looked at the priestess. “
We were not bad today, both of us,”
her eyes seemed to say. “
Not bad at all.”

Azumi gnawed at the floorboard with her nails and teeth all through the night. By the morning, it had moved by an inch.

She wrapped a piece of her chains around the board and pried it open. She slid her legs into the opening, but couldn’t pass further. There was no way she would fit inside as she was. She took a deep breath, clenched her hand into a fist, and struck her chest with full force. She hissed and gasped as the ribs cracked and dislocated.

Azumi pushed her chest through and fell into the shallow bilge water below, writhing in pain. If she still had the power that Chiyo had given her, the broken bones would regenerate, the pain would subside … For now, she had to endure.

You’re a Koga assassin,
she told herself.
Magic power or no magic power. You’ll get out of this.

The bilge was less than three feet high, and filled halfway up with stale brine. She crawled towards the aft, feeling every inch of movement piercing in her chest. She reached the small opening through which the pump’s pipes reached into the bilge water. She kicked through the boards and climbed up.

She was in another part of the dark cargo hold. The sea was splashing against the outside of the ship.

I’m still under the waterline.

She was not familiar with the design of Tosa warships, but she guessed somewhere above her were the crew cabins, maybe even the officers’ quarters.
Intelligence.
News regarding the
kiheitai
campaign. If she could bring it back to Chiyo, perhaps she’d be forgiven for her failure.

She searched around in the darkness, her hands running over crates, barrels and drums, rope, and folded canvas. At last, her fingers touched cold metal. She couldn’t believe her luck: it was a nail-prying tool, a foot-long bar of cast iron. At a pinch, it would even make a decent weapon.

She started tapping at the ceiling boards, looking for the weak spot.

A knock on the door resounded in Takasugi’s aching head, waking him up from a numb daydream.

“Come in,” he said, wearily.

Master Dōraku threw a round object on the table. Takasugi focused his eyes. It was the head of the Fanged that the swordsman had brought from Tosa and kept in his luggage. Shrivelled and dried, the head was now the size of a grapefruit, black and barely recognizable.

“What’s happened to it?” asked Takasugi.

“It’s no longer of use to its owner,” replied Dōraku. “Which means he’s awake and active again.”

“Does that mean the
daimyo
of Tosa is no longer on our side?”

“I shouldn’t think so. I sent Li out to make sure nothing changes at the Kōchi Castle. But we won’t be stopping there anymore — it’s too risky.”

“Good.” This meant they would reach their destination a few days’ sooner than originally planned — although they wouldn’t be able to resupply and leave the wounded on dry land until Chōfu.

The samurai winced and touched the bandage on his forehead.

“Are you still in pain? You weren’t
that
hurt,” said the Fanged.

“It’s the sea,” explained Takasugi. “I’ve never been much of a sailor, I’m afraid. It gets worse when the waters are calm, strangely enough. I can stand a storm, but not silence.”

He rose from the straw mattress and leaned on the table. “What does it take to kill one of you?” he asked, staring at the shrivelled head.

“More than this, certainly,” the Fanged replied. “A Bataavian blade of Living Iron would make the regeneration last longer — but as long as the cursed spirit exists, it will find a way back to this world.”

“Then the Crimson Robe—”

“Ganryū is done for good. We were lucky. Another spirit took his curse upon itself and went with it to the Otherworld.”

“That doesn’t sound so difficult. I’m sure any of us would willingly sacrifice himself for the cause.”

The Fanged shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. In fact, I’m not even sure Shigemasa knew what he was doing. The Curse lives on, even on the other side. Your spirit remains trapped in it forever, unable to pass on or return. It’s an eternal torture.” His face turned into a grim, dismal mask.

“
Eeeh
. You’ve seen it happen.”

Dōraku scowled. “A long time ago, when I was still with them … One of us perished in a similar way. We tried to recover his spirit through foul experiments, but all we got in response was the horrid wailing of the ensnared soul.” He smoothed his whisker. “I think it was then that I first felt the fear that drove me to flee the Serpent.”

They stood over the table in silence for a while, until Takasugi heard a distant splash off the ship’s aft.

“Do you think she heard enough?” he asked.

“I’m sure she did.”

“I still don’t know why you’re letting her go. She’s very dangerous.”

“I have a hunch she’ll be more useful to us that way.”

“You’re making me wager the life of my men on a hunch?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing all the time?” The Fanged smiled. “Besides, when you’re as old as me, hunches tend to turn into prophecies.”

This was as far as the Bataavian map could take them.

The land ended with a sickle-shaped spur reaching far out into the sea around a cold, dark blue bay. The head of the spur swelled into a flattened mound of a grey and bald mountain — the last vestige of Yamato mainland. Waves seethed and frothed against the spit from the east, having raced across the ocean from where the black wall of the Divine Winds loomed. Even the sky was grey and overcast here, where everywhere else was still the bright azure of early autumn.

The summit was fractured and torn into a maze of fissures, valleys filled with stone rubble and rivers of gravel, as if the mountain had fallen from the sky here and shattered under the impact. Nothing grew on the mountain except lichen. No road led along the spur, and no settlement nestled in its dreary shadow, except a cluster of hermits’ huts on the shore. But the mountain was
alive
in a different way.

The dragon broke through the low clouds and dived towards the ruined slopes. A haze of yellow fumes descended from the cracks at the top, shrouding the mountainside almost to the sea. Nagomi clenched her fists on the saddle. She could barely hear a thing over the din of the Spirits howling about the mountain.

The Gate … so near.

How would they find it among all the rubble? She had seen it clear enough in her visions up close — but not from a height, and not through this dense, white mist.

Gwen bade the dragon fly low and slow around the mountain. She waited for Nagomi to point the way. The priestess strained her eyes, but could not pierce the mist.

We have come this far, and now I cannot find it?

She closed her eyes and prayed. The voices in her head grew louder. She was now able to distinguish the different strains in the rumble. There was the familiar one, calling her name — a sound that had followed her since childhood. There was the wailing of those fallen in illness and hunger, and the angry roars of those slain in war. Once in a while a dark, voiceless streak broke through the cries and silenced them all for a blink of an eye: a silent cry of an unborn child. All those spirits, leaving the mortal world and departing into the land of the red dust, and beyond, into the mountains of white mist …

She had been
told
this place existed, but even as a priestess, she’d had her doubts. How could an actual, physical entrance to the Otherworld be real? Maybe it was just a symbol, a way visions presented it. Maybe all those spirits simply disappeared out of this world once they reached the top of the mountain.

Gwen jabbed her heel into the dragon’s side and Nodwydd swerved towards the mountainside. Nagomi opened her eyes. The woman pointed at something near the summit. A gust of wind parted the mist, revealing a flat plain of rubble, a cascading stream spurting from a fissure, and at its head, a small vermillion dot.

“Yes!” cried Nagomi. “That must be it!”

Nodwydd roared and sped towards the target like a silver bullet. The vermillion dot became a red square, then an open gate. Everything looked exactly like it should: the stream, the plain of strewn stone shards, the whirlwind of the white and yellow mist ...

Gwen shouted something over the wind. She pointed again.

What is it?

There was another dark dot in front of the Gate, moving back and forth along the stream. It grew fast as Nodwydd flew ever nearer.

A human!

His clothes fluttered in the wind, a plain brown
Butsu
monk’s robe. He held a long staff in his hand and raised it to them. Gwen drew one more circle before coming to land on the shore of the frothing brook.

She leapt off, summoned the Soul Lance, and bade Nagomi to stay in the saddle.

It was like walking on a beach made of pot shards. Gwen was thankful for her sturdy military boots, protecting her from the sharp edges of the grey fragments strewn all around the mountainside. The Lance in her hand buzzed and flickered in brief ripples, like fire in the rain. The power of this place did not tolerate Western magic.

She sensed a stronger presence of the spirits here than ever before. Her head hurt from what felt like a buzzing of a million bees coming from a great distance, a faint sound at the edge of her hearing, but impossible to ignore.

There were few other noises to compete with it: the babbling of the mountain stream, which flowed an unhealthy-looking current of yellowish-grey water, and the whooshing of the wind, blowing in circles around the red stone gate, leaving it the only spot on the mountain not cloaked in mist.

The “gate” — a rickety construction of three flat slabs of rock splashed with ochre, reminded her of the remains of ancient tombs on Mon Island. The entrance was covered with what looked like a sheet of steel or untarnished silver. The wandering Spirits whirled around that barrier in confusion, longing to reach through but unable to penetrate it.

The man in the brown robe approached at an unhurried pace. Gwen didn’t see any path or road leading to where they stood. The rock-strewn platform was bounded by a sheer cliff on one side, over which the fuming stream cascaded into the white mist, and a steep wall of rock on the other.

Did he climb all the way?

There was no trace of a camp or even so much as a pilgrim’s bag anywhere. The only accessory in the monk’s possession was the jingling staff with a large glowing pearl on top — and a white mask of a scowling demon.
Is he one of those Fanged Bran warned us about?
She grabbed the Lance’s shaft firmer in her hand and stepped up to the water.

The monk reached the opposite shore. Only a few feet of shallow current separated them now, but the barrier felt almost impassable. He raised the mask, revealing his face.

It was gaunt and pale, wrinkled, old, the face of a grey-haired Yamato man in his sixties or seventies, with green eyes and a bushy white moustache over narrow lips. As she watched, the bones and muscles of the face bulged and sank and dislocated, the eyes grew wide, the nose swelled, until the entire face morphed into that of a Westerner.

I know that face.

The man who stood on the other side of the stream looked like Dylan, some thirty years in the future.

“What trick is this,” she said out loud, pulling back.

“A trick?” the man replied in perfect, if tired, Prydain. It was as if he struggled to remember how to make his mouth and tongue compose the sounds. “There are no tricks here, Gwenllian ferch Harri.”

“How do you know my name? Who are you?
What
are you?”

“I am exactly what you see.” He bowed with a wave of his hand in the Western manner. “They know me here as Maki Tadaemon of Ezo. But I used to be called Ifor ap Meurig o Cantre’r Gwaelod. And I’m very glad you two made it here at last.”