The Shattering Waves (The Year of the Dragon, Book 7) (24 page)

“No!” She pressed back with her mind. A barrier of purple lightning crackled between the Fanged’s hand and her forehead. He scowled and pulled away, then slapped her face. Stars danced before her eyes.

“Father Saturn,” said Yodo, shyly, “we must leave …”

Yui took a deep breath. “Yes. I don’t have time for this right now.” He took Satō’s chin in his hand. “We’ll be back soon. And when we do, we’ll have a lot of things to
discuss
.”

Neither of the Fanged returned the next day, or the day after. She was alone in the valley, chained to the rock, abandoned to her fate. At least she was getting to see the sun again — and lots of it.

The air halfway up the slope of Mount Fuji was crystal clear, with views spreading for tens of
ri
each way, over the lakes, forests, and tea plantations of the caldera. The wind rolled down from the summit of the mountain with the force of a typhoon, raising the grey volcanic dust in great plumes around the wizardess and her boulder — but she felt no cold. Neither did she feel the sun’s rays on her face, or any hunger or thirst other than for blood.

I’m changing into one of them.

She sensed the energies of the Fuji nexus surging through her and around her. Whatever spells were woven into the fabric of this place, the nexus amplified them tenfold. Blood ran thick and slow in her veins under the influence of a powerful magic field.

Why did they leave me here? Where have they gone?

On the third morning, Satō’s patience ran thin. She tapped into her blood magic reserves and burned through the chains. They snapped open with ease. As she did so, the earth under her feet trembled. Moments later, a palpable darkness emanated from inside the stone shed. The feelers of the thick mist resembled the Shadows of the Otherworld. The tentacles oozed under Satō’s feet, searching, prodding. She moved out of their way.

Her insides churning with hunger, she began a long descent down the slope. The dark mist slithered after her: a sentient stream of black ghostly lava. The edges of the rocks around her seemed to shimmer in and out of existence.

By the evening, she reached the shore of a long, narrow lake and followed alongside it, through a thick cedar forest, until she reached a small harbour town. She had feasted on a deer at noon — the speed and force with which she’d caught it and snapped its thick neck shocked her — and though its blood did not taste as sweet as human blood, it at least satiated her hunger for a while.

Now she felt thirsty again. Hiding in the azalea bushes, she observed the harbour town at a distance. It was strangely quiet. There was no movement at the samurai checkpoint on the highway. The ships at the pier rocked on the gentle waves in silence. There were no porters on the dock, no fishermen tending to their nets. She decided to investigate closer, and entered the town’s narrow streets.

An odd grey smoke hung low by the ground, like morning mist. She sniffed and frowned. It had a sickly sweet, herbal smell. The wind spread it all around the town, but it appeared to come from one particular direction.

It took her a while, but finally she found the source of the smoke. It spewed from under the door of an inn on the outskirts of the town. She slid the door open. The inn was full of people. It seemed like entire the town was here, men, women and children alike — samurai next to commoners. They were lying on the dirt floor, the straw mats and the low tables, all of them thin, emaciated, corpse-like. The grey smoke emanated from a brass furnace contraption in the corner, and slowly filled the hall, up to Satō’s knees.

She grabbed the nearest man by the folds of his kimono and raised him to her face. The pupils of his eyes were wide and dark, his breath smelled even worse than the grey smoke. For a moment, the world around Satō dimmed.

“You! What happened here? What is this thing?” She pointed at the furnace. “Answer me!” She shook him until his eyes focused on her. He moaned. She brought his mouth nearer to her ear.

“
Kujin …”
he muttered.
“Gai …”

“
Gaikokujin?
The foreigners were here?”

“…
weed …
”

“The Cursed Weed. Of course, that smell ...”

She let go of the man and he tumbled onto the floor. She leaned over one of the samurai and picked up his sword. Outside, she glanced at the creeping, oozing darkness. It was still there, following her, keeping at a distance of several feet.

She heard the flapping of huge leathery wings. A silver dragon landed on a dried rice paddy at the town’s edge. Several smaller beasts descended next to it, each with two riders on top. She clenched her hand on the hilt of the sword and hid in the shadows of the inn’s eaves. She watched two men climb down from the silver dragon’s back — the taller one was wearing a dark blue uniform, the shorter one — a black Yamato kimono over a Western white shirt.

It’s Bran,
she realized, her heart beating faster. She made no move.

The boy remained by the dragon, while the other man approached the town accompanied by the other riders. Satō felt the slithery, cold touch at her feet. The darkness was here. Another offshoot of the black stream poured in the direction of the Westerners. They didn’t seem to notice.

A Western soldier emerged from the back of the inn to meet his compatriots.

“How’s the test going?” the man in the dark blue uniform asked.

Somehow, Satō was able to understand them perfectly. Was it the dark mist’s doing? With the shadowy appendages, it now touched each of the men as well as herself.

“Better than expected, Commodore Dylan,” the soldier replied. “The fumes alone were enough to neutralize most of the town. The rest were too weak to resist.”

That’s Dylan? That’s Bran’s father?
She tried to spot a resemblance, but whether it was the smoke or the blood hunger, she couldn’t focus her eyes enough. The man’s face — as were the faces of all the other soldiers, except Bran — was just a pale, featureless blur.

“Excellent,” said Dylan, if that was indeed him. “Prepare the device. We’re taking it to Edo. The
Taikun
is the last one standing in our way.”

The blood that cursed in her veins now froze almost to a halt.
So that was their plan all along? Addle us with their foul herbs, like the Qin, and pick up the spoils? Did … Bran know?

“You are wrong. We are still here to protect these islands, barbarian!”

Three robed figures appeared on the street, out of nowhere: Yui, Yodo, and a third Fanged she hadn’t seen before, wearing a bronze robe and holding a mighty spear. They all looked worse for wear — their robes torn and muddied, their hair dishevelled.

Dylan ordered his men back to the dragons. He remained on the ground, summoning a translucent, semi-circular shield and lighting a Lance in his right hand — a great golden weapon, longer and sturdier than the one she had seen Bran wielding.

The three Fanged struck at the Westerner with rays and missiles of black and purple light. The spearman in the bronze robe charged forward, thrusting the point, smashing at the shield with brute force. It crackled and vanished. Satō let out a quick whoop. But her joy was premature: Dylan whirled a spell, and a ball of flame hit the Bronze Robe in the chest, throwing him in the air. When he landed, several feet away, a great black hole smouldered where his heart should have been.

The smaller dragons took to the air. Yui and Yodo dragged the Bronze Robe under the inn’s wall. They noticed Satō.

“Help us,” Yui pleaded. “We can’t counter their
Rangaku
magic, or their dragons.”

She glanced at the Westerner and saw that Bran had now joined his side, brandishing his Lance and supporting the magic shield with his own power.

She shook her head. “I can’t … Not against him.”

The dark mist rose to her knees, clinging to her legs like a tight-fitting cloth.

“If we fall, there will be no more Yamato,” said Yodo. “What happened in this village is the future of these lands. You see it now, don’t you?”

Satō stood motionless as the Fanged returned into the fray. Silent, she watched them exchange fire and lightning with Dylan. In a purely professional way it was fascinating to observe this one Western wizard who was able to stand against two of the mighty Fanged — but in the end, the onslaught forced even him to retreat towards his silver mount. The Bronze Robe stood up, the wound in his chest sealed halfway. He grabbed his spear and charged again with a powerful battle cry.

It was then that the dragons struck. One by one they dived in waves, silver bullets shooting cones of sun-hot flames. The Fanged stood no chance. Their robes burned away first, then charred flesh started falling from their bones. They struck back, but their magic could not reach the flying beasts.

Yui — what was left of him — reached out a scorched hand towards Satō and again begged her for help. She hesitated: Bran was once again standing next to his father.

He knew all along that Yamato would share Qin’s fate. He used us.

Dylan whispered an order into his son’s ear, mounted the silver dragon, and launched into the air. The beast zoomed over the heads of the Fanged. A mighty blast of dragon flame from its gaping mouth turned the three warriors into little more than blackened skeletons, crawling on their hands and knees. The blood power which sustained them could no longer regenerate their tissue fast enough. The dragons halted their attacks and hovered in the air.

Bran, alone of the Westerners, was left on the ground. The boy gripped the Lance firm and approached the crawling Fanged. He raised the weapon and with one slash cut off the head of the Bronze Robe — Satō recognized him by the spear still clutched in his dead hand.

Bran moved over to Yodo. She raised an arm to protect herself, but the blade of light cut through bone and skull with the same ease. Two smouldering heads now rolled on the sand, turned to glass by the dragons’ flames.

The dark mist now enveloped Satō up to her neck. It didn’t hinder her movements, rather, it felt like a dense, cold vapour.

Bran reached Yui. There was no fear, only defiance and pride in the Fanged’s golden eyes. Bran put his foot on the Fanged’s head and pushed it to the ground, exposing the neck to his executioner’s Lance.

“Bran, stop!”

He stared at her, only now noticing her under the eaves.

“Why are you doing this? We were supposed to fight together …”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to do my duty. I
am
a Dracalish.”

“So that’s what it was all about? To conquer us with Cursed Weed?”

He raised the Lance again.

“Answer me!”

Something inside her snapped. Her limbs moved of their own accord. She reached Bran in a few long leaps and plunged her sword straight through his chest.

The dark mist covered her eyes.

Yui released Satō from the shackles with a snap of his fingers, and then introduced himself formally, at last, as Yui Shōsetsu, Father Saturn of the White Robe, chief strategist of the Eight-headed Serpent.

She looked around, barely hearing his words. There were scorch marks and melted sand on the lava streams all around her, leading towards the stone shed and inside. Her hands were burned and blistered, but the wounds were healing fast. The world had a permanent tint of a faint crimson hue, all except the robes the Fanged wore — these retained their true colour.

“I’m glad,” said Yui. “You have made the right choice. You see it now, don’t you?”

“Yes, Father Saturn,” she replied with deep reverence.

“How do you feel?” asked Yui, touching her shoulder. His voice was soothing and warm.

“I’m … fine, Father Saturn.”

“What do you wish to do now?”

“I … I want to protect Yamato.”

“Good. We must leave now.” He led her towards the stone shed. “There’s much work waiting for you, Initiate.”

She wasn’t sure what he was referring to. She strained her memory. Odd
visions plagued her mind.
A Western boy with jade-green eyes. A red-haired priestess.

She blinked, and the dream was gone.

The Mountain loomed on the horizon for days, the perfect triangle peering over the lower ridges like a mother hen over the chickens.

As they approached the peak, Bran could fully ascertain its size. The base of the volcano, a vast circular plain of ancient lava surrounded by a wall of shattered crags, was a country almost of itself, twenty or more miles across — as wide as Bran’s entire home province of Cantre’r Gwaelod. The cone rose ten thousand feet into the sky, its summit capped with a thick white cloud, hovering in place, heedless of the winds tearing at it from all sides. Smaller peaks dotted the landscape around it, each as tall as the tallest volcanoes of Chinzei, but mere molehills in comparison with the central pinnacle.

Bran despaired. It would take a full day to just circumnavigate the caldera. How were they supposed to find anything here? The Fanged could have had an entire town hidden among the dense forests covering its ridged, concave slopes. In True Sight, the Mountain, like all the magical nexii, was a messy jumble of coloured lines, lights and flares, impossible to penetrate. His head ached from the strain.

“Do you sense anything?” he asked Nagomi.

She shook her head. “It’s too much …” She gazed at the mountain, too overwhelmed with awe to focus. Bran guessed at the immense sanctity of Mount Fuji. If Gods lived on the lofty peaks of Kirishima, what powerful beings inhabited this monster of a mountain?

And if great spirits really live here, would they even allow the presence of the Fanged?

“We will have to land somewhere,” he said. “Ask around, get supplies. I don’t suppose you know any suitable site around here?”

“There should be a lake — and a large shrine at the lake. It’s one of
Taikun
’s personal shrines, like Suwa.”

There were several lakes scattered around the foot of the mountain, long and thin, filling the valleys and rifts among the crags like rockpools left after the tide. The largest of the lakes stretched south-eastwards, beyond the caldera, towards the sea. At the bottom of a steep valley, it wove its way around its own steaming, belching fire mountain — a miniature one, compared to the great Fuji. Even at the dragon’s altitude, the air over the volcano was filled with the stench of rotten eggs and brimstone. It reminded Bran of flying over the Brigstow factories.