The Withering Flame (The Year of the Dragon, Book 6)

  THE WITHERING FLAME

  Book Six of

  The Year of the Dragon

  James Calbraith

  Published June 2015 by Flying Squid

  ISBN: 978-83-936713-4-2

  Visit James Calbraith’s official website at

  jamescalbraith.com

  for the latest news, book details, and other information

  Copyright © James Calbraith, 2015

  Cover Art: Anndr Kusuriuri

  Map Illustrations: Jared Blando, Flying Squid, Metruis

  Cover Design: Flying Squid

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Fan fiction and fan art is encouraged.

  Calendar Note

  In modern Japan, in most regions, the two summer festivals of Tanabata and Obon are celebrated over a month apart: the former in early July, the latter in mid-August. However, in the lunar calendar of old, both holidays came a week from each other, on the seventh and fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month respectively, with Obon marking the end of the short, hot Japanese summer.

  He is cast forth as a branch, and is withered;

  and men gather the branches, and cast them into the fire,

  and they are burned.

  John, 15:6

  PROLOGUE

  The mechanical servant clacked over with a bottle of saké.

  “No!” Sakuma Zōzan pushed it away. “Bring me cold water. Lots of it.”

  The automaton wobbled back to the kitchen. Zōzan held his heavy head in his hands. The night before had been one of the worst in his memory. The celebrations after the young Taikun’s wedding with princess Atsuko of Satsuma’s Shimazu clan had lasted three days, and as a newly appointed Councillor, he attended all of them — and pretended to enjoy himself. The only way to do that was to bathe his brain in alcohol.

  I should have stayed in Heian, with Keinosuke, he thought. But one did not refuse a direct summons from the Taikun. Not in Edo.

  Ignoring the pounding in his temples, he reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a stack of scrolls. He flattened them on the table and leaned over, deciphering the old writing. The scrolls had been given to him by Chief Councillor Hotta, and analyzing them was part of his new job. The documents contained ancient onmyōji spells he was to research to find out if they could be of any help in the upcoming conflicts facing the court.

  “The Southern rebels have their Rangaku wizards,” Chief Councillor had said, “but we should be proud of our native magic. We have been neglecting its study for too long!”

  The ancient Yamato characters danced before Zōzan’s eyes. He rubbed his eyelids and stared at them again. As he read the columns of letters, the characters lit up with a red glow. The paper vibrated under his touch and he heard a new sound, like a rustling of a distant wind or… a whisper.

  The sound of the automaton returning with the clay pot broke his concentration. Zōzan poured the ice-cold water into a bowl. He took a gulp and spluttered it out; the water tasted of iron, and had an ominous red hue.

  “What is this?” he roared. “The well must be leaking!” He threw the bowl away, leaving the automaton to pick it up from the floor, and returned to the documents. His hands trembled.

  “Sakuma Zōzan,” the scroll whispered.

  He jumped on his buckwheat-filled pillow. The letters danced and formed into a black circle, and from the circle, as if from a dark hole, a clawed hand emerged and grasped his wrist.

  “Sakuma Zōzan …”

  “W-who are you?” The scholar struggled to speak, fascinated by the sheer power emanating from the clawed hand.

  “You know me… you know me…”

  The letters whirled again, and formed the shape of an eight-headed serpent. The scroll dripped red from its edge.

  CHAPTER I

  The guard unlocked the wooden grate and slid it open with a dry grinding noise. He let Koyata into the long corridor, lined with cells on either side. The policeman looked around. The rooms were understandably small, and had no tatami mats on the floor, but each was furnished with a small writing table and a straw-packed pillow. This was, after all, the wing for the noble-born prisoners.

  Koyata passed a few empty cells before reaching his destination. He looked inside, through the grate — the captive samurai was sitting in the far corner, cross-legged, eyes closed. His face was covered in black and purple bruises, his left eyebrow was swollen, and his lips were painted ochre by the freshly dried blood; still, the samurai managed to retain an imposing presence.

  The recently appointed Chief of Guards entered the cell and sat opposite the prisoner, waiting for him to finish the meditation. The samurai opened his swollen eyes with effort and turned his attention to the intruder.

  “You’re wasting your time, guardsman,” he said. “I haven’t told your thugs anything, and I’m not telling you.”

  Koyata crossed his arms. “Miyabe-sama, all I want to know is who helped you hide out when you and Gensai-sama were in Heian. Your Kumamoto companions are long gone — they are not under my jurisdiction anymore. Let the Edo guards deal with them.”

  The samurai pretended to study the intricate patterns of clay particles on the earthen wall beside him.

  “What kind of nobleman betrays his friends, guardsman?”

  “What kind of nobleman betrays his master?”

  The samurai’s eye twitched. Koyata stood up and stepped closer. He crouched beside the man and stroked his chin in thought.

  “You intrigue me, Miyabe-sama,” he said. “I keep wondering what have you done to anger both the Shimazu and the Tokugawas? My superiors won’t tell me anything. They say I’m getting in over my head. It must be some kind of state secret then, eh?”

  Miyabe made brief eye contact with him.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Oh?” Koyata tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “You’re underestimating me, Miyabe-sama. I’ve seen my share of strange things. I used to be a doshin in Kiyō, you know. In the Rangaku district. I knew all the wizards.”

  Miyabe shrugged and returned to scrutinising the wall.

  “You know what I think?” said Koyata. “I think you stole something from Satsuma. Something that Nariakira-dono was planning to utilise against Edo. That’s why the Taikun’s upset, too — he now fears you may want to use it. Knowing Satsuma…” He tapped his lips with his fingers. “I’d guess it’s some kind of magic weapon. Bataavian, maybe. Am I right?”

  The twitch in Miyabe’s eye was all the response — and it was all the response Koyata needed.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said and straightened his knees. “As I said, that’s not my jurisdiction. I was tasked by Matsudaira-dono with flushing out the rebels in Heian and I will do what it takes to fulfil my duty.” He turned to the exit. “I’m sorry for what those thugs did to you, Miyabe-dono,” he said, shutting the cell’s grate door. “I will try to ask them to be gentler next time. You are noble-born, after all.”

  The samurai looked up sharply. Fear glimpsed in his eye for a split second.

  “They — they will be back?”

  Koyata shrugged. “I’m
afraid they too are beyond my jurisdiction.”

  “Why is it taking so long?” Nagomi asked the helmsman.

  This was the first day since the freak storm had started that they were able to find a boat willing to take them across. The wooded hump of the Mekari Mountain seemed a stone’s throw away from the Chōfu shore, and yet, tantalisingly, the rickety, flat-bottomed boat she and Torishi were on was taking ages to cross the narrow straits.

  I could swim to the other side from here, she thought.

  “So sorry, priestess-sama,” the helmsman replied with a small bow, “but we are ordered to steer clear of Manju Island, and the currents have gone mad after the storms. We’re lucky we’ve even managed to get this far.”

  As if in response, a great wave heaved the boat up and down. Nagomi grasped the edge until her knuckles turned white.

  “We should have waited until the sea calmed down,” Torishi uttered from the bow. His face was grey and unmoving, as if carved out of stone; in a wreath of soaked hair and beard he looked like a sad, wet dog. He gazed into the dark, tattered clouds, averting his eyes from the howling horizon. “This is too dangerous. The Spirits are angry.”

  “We can’t wait any longer,” said Nagomi.

  She dreaded to cross those swelled, murky waters, but she saw no other choice. The news from Satō and the Kiheitai militia, at first frequent and triumphant, had stopped flowing once the safety of the province had been ensured, and now their actions were shrouded in official secrecy. She now knew more about Bran’s whereabouts than she did Satō’s — and she was fed up waiting.

  She was also fed up with Torishi’s careful deliberations and reluctance to act. True to his bear-like nature, he was slow to rise to action and keen to keep her safe from any harm. But she needed to do something, go somewhere, and right now there was only one clear direction before her.

  “Every day and every night, all I saw was the slope of Mekari. It is beckoning me.”

  “It might be a trap,” the bear-man muttered. “Demons,” he added.

  “Can demons send false visions?”

  Torishi shrugged and pointed at the mountain.

  “Spirits! Who knows what—” Another freak wave interrupted him, sending them tumbling to the bottom of the boat.

  He said nothing more. The boat, carried headlong by the wrathful current, beached with a tremendous thud and creak of the shattering prow. Nagomi’d had enough. She clambered overboard, splashing into the knee-deep water, and waded to the shore. Torishi followed. The odour of rotting seaweed marking the tideline hit their nostrils. A dark row of gnarled, twisted pines overlooked the edge of the beach. The curtain of rain parted, revealing Mekari’s wooded hump rising right above her, and the shrine’s vermillion gate and copper-coated roofs below.

  As they got closer, Nagomi noticed traces of the fire she’d heard about from the sailors. The gate was singed at the corners, where the new coat of paint didn’t reach. The roofs were full of holes, patched with straw, paper, and loose timber. Not all buildings of the compound had yet been rebuilt, and the stumps of their black skeletons only added to the grim, silent mood of the place.

  There were no priests or acolytes anywhere; the shrine seemed abandoned, except for a jumble of fresh, unswept footprints in the sand before a small talisman-vending stall at the entrance, closed for the night.

  A shadow moved silently between the buildings. Nagomi tensed. A trap, she remembered Torishi’s warning. She looked to the bear-man; he too stood rigid, his back slightly bent, fists clenched, eyes narrowed.

  A balding, small-faced, pointy nosed priest appeared before them out of the dark. He was wearing a dazzling white robe and an odd jade pendant in the shape of a dragon claw. His face showed no surprise at the late visitors. He glanced from Nagomi to her companion, then back at the priestess, and then nodded.

  “Come with me,” he said. “He’s waiting for you.”

  Nagomi stepped back. “He?”

  “Come, come,” He beckoned them. “There’s little time. He’ll die soon.”

  He started off briskly towards one of the rebuilt buildings, a straight-forward dwelling built of golden cedar wood, with a cypress veranda. Nagomi followed, hesitant. The priest slid open the veranda door and went inside, without looking back.

  The only room in the house was dark, filled with the heavy scent of fresh timber and incense — and faint stench of rotting meat; on a raised bed in the middle lay another man, his head supported on a wooden pillow. He turned weakly towards his visitors. The man who had brought them in bowed and disappeared back into the shadows.

  Nagomi knelt down by the man’s bed.

  “Are you hurt? Do you need healing?” She couldn’t think of any other reason why anyone would be waiting for her.

  The man chuckled but the laugh turned into coughing. Blood from his lips spattered the white linen bedding and his silk robe.

  “My child,” he said, rasping, “my wounds are long beyond your, or anyone else’s healing. I have lain here, suffering, for over a year. I am glad I can finally die today.”

  “Why today?”

  “Because today you are here, priestess-sama.” He touched her hand. “I have waited long. Too long for you to get here.”

  He let go of her hand and tore off the sheet. Nagomi covered her mouth. Bloodied bandages covered most of the priest’s torso, and the crimson stain grew wider with his every breath.

  He really is dying, she thought. I would not be able to help him even at my strongest. But… a year of this? How did he survive so long?

  “Why didn’t you contact me sooner?”

  “I tried to contact you all this time,” he said. “Perhaps you were not strong enough to hear my call…until now.”

  I saw this place in my dreams, she remembered. But I forgot…

  “Why…did you call me?” she asked.

  “You had to know.”

  “Know what?”

  The priest pulled down half of his white robe, revealing his other arm. It was a stump, sliced off at the shoulder, but the amputated half lay beside it, its detached end wrapped in thin silk.

  It was black, covered in scales, and ended in four sharp claws.

  “The great God Watatsumi answered my prayers,” he said, as Nagomi watched in stunned silence, “and sent you the visions that brought you here. But even he can no longer sustain my ebbing life. Lean closer, child,” his voice grew noticeably weaker, “my tale is long and strange.”

  His name was Ōen, and he was the last of the Sea Dragon people.

  He said it matter-of-factly and seemed surprised when Nagomi showed no understanding.

  “Has the legend been forgotten already?” He sighed. “What a world this is, when the wizards know more than the priests.”

  “Satō would know for sure,” Nagomi said, recalling the wizardess’s fixation with dragons. Then she remembered one of the stories her friend had been fond of telling.

  “Hanryū,” she whispered. “Half-dragons.”

  “Ah, so you do remember.” The priest nodded. “Yes, that’s what they called us… but there was far less dragon blood left in our veins than half. If there ever was any.”

  Dragon blood?

  “There were always people who could change into dragons or half-dragons here on Chinzei,” he continued. “Descendants of legendary heroes, Prince Hikohohodemi, Princess Tamatori…This was, after all, their ancient homeland.”

  Nagomi stared at the clawed hand before her, struggling to comprehend.

  “Are you… born of the Gods?”

  This wasn’t the strangest thing she would have to believe in. She had talked to creatures of magic and had flown a dragon herself. Even Bran was able to transform into a dragon-like creature. What was one more mystery to add to the growing list?

  Still…

  The old man touched the claw with a gentle stroke.

  “That is what the legend says, at least,” he replied, as if reading her mind. “Whether our power came from s
ome tryst with the Dragon Gods, or was the result of ancient onmyōji experiments, I don’t know. But I have learned not to doubt the evidence of my own eyes,” he said, eyeing the severed hand.

  “Who did this to you?” she asked, sensing the answer.

  “The one who ruled from Ganryūjima,” he replied, confirming Nagomi’s visions. “I am but one of the many victims you have avenged.”

  “The red orb,” she guessed, “that’s what he had come for.”

  Ōen nodded.

  “It was white when he came. He washed it in my blood.” He winced at the memory. “Bent it to his will… but made it weaker in the process. The Tide Stones remain strongest when they are pure.”

  What through Tide Stone can you see…?

  “The Tide Stones…” she whispered. “Can you tell me about them?”

  “This orb is last of the last pair to survive from the age when dragons roamed these islands,” he said. “We guarded it with our lives, though we didn’t know what good it was in a world without the monsters it could control.”

  She curled her toes in anticipation. She was so close to solving the riddle of the Prophecy! She was almost living it now. The colours swirled before her eyes: the blue of the Tide Stone, the red of the Blood Stone…

  “Sacchan has it now,” she said.

  “Sacchan?”

  “My best friend, the wizardess… She has Ganryū’s orb with her.”

  He frowned.

  “She is in some danger, then. Or rather, she would be, if she was able to use it.”

  He closed his tired eyes, as if falling asleep, or dying. She shook him by the healthy arm.

  “What danger? Ōen-sama!” she asked.

  “Oh,” he stirred awake. “There is a blood curse on the orb, as on anything the demon touched. A human might soon become consumed by it… But of course, for that, your friend would need to face a dragon — and there are… no dragons left in Yamato…”

  Her stomach clenched.