Dragons on the Sea of Night (18 page)

‘So it was you I had the idyll with all the way back to Corruña.'

‘Yes. I became Aufeya because that was what I thought you wanted. And what I wanted was to be close to you, to be loved by you. But very quickly the lie began to pall. I did not want to be Aufeya; I did not want you loving her. I ached to be me. But I was trapped in her skin. And I was terrified of what you would do if you learned the truth. I resolved then never to let you know. I was willing to become another person if that meant you would be mine. Or so I thought.

‘All across the ocean voyage to Iskael my own personality fought to be free, and each time it rose up you knew, even though you will never admit it. You knew I could not be Aufeya.'

Sardonyx was done now, but though her words had died, the ghosts of the images she had conjured from out of the past still floated in the shadows. In a way, she had done the impossible: she had caused time to reverse itself. She had, for a little while, called upon the great spiral of time to open its iris so that they could peer across the gulf of the years to what had been, and what very well might be again. He was all too aware of the painful repetition. Was what Narris Seguillas y Oriwara visited upon her different from what she had suffered at the hands of her former slave-master? He did not believe so, and yet she had chosen a different resolution the second time.

Moichi looked into her clear blue eyes and, in doing so, peered into his own heart. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘You are right in what you say. I fought you in every way I knew how.'

‘Not only me,' she said. ‘Yourself.'

He sat, simply breathing for a time, trying out the air in this brave new world he was discovering. At last, he said, ‘Will you tell me about the scar? Why do you still have it? Surely someone with your sorceress powers could excise it, restore yourself to the way you once were.'

‘But I am no longer what I once was. I am something else now.'

‘Is it a form of self-inflicted punishment, then?'

Sardonyx was quiet for some time and he found he had no desire to intrude because he felt that silence involved him.

‘Once I was beautiful,' Sardonyx whispered. ‘I knew it and everyone around me did, too. They acted appropriately. They reacted to my face and I learned to use my body to get what I wanted. But, you know what, I discovered those things weren't what I craved. And then I understood the inadvertent grace that the bitch of Corruña had bestowed upon me. She had set me free – free of the prison of my beauty. And so I became a freebooter – independent – a city-state unto myself in the land of the Opal Moon. And like a city-state that is required to fortify itself against unwanted intrusion I cloaked myself, masked and armored in my own enchantments until I could no longer remember the woman beneath. Then you came and I found that I was afraid of everything that lay beneath the masks.'

Her hand lifted to her face briefly, then fell to her side. ‘I can, if you ask me, make it disappear.'

He knew just what she was asking of him, saw in her face how profoundly his wrong answer would cut her. He reached out, touched her cheek. ‘The scar means a great deal to me,' he said, taking her in his arms. ‘But not in the way you feared.'

And when his lips closed over hers, when he felt her hot tongue meeting his, he also felt her tears burning his skin like the images from her past, embers lifted by emotion, like time, swirling around and around in a spiral without end.

NINE

S
ATELLITE

There was a place in Ama-no-mori
where, it was said, the wind made no sound as it blew through the cryptomeria. These sentinel pines climbed a steep and ugly scree overlooking the ocean. At the summit, a dizzying height, so the tales went, lay a forbidden cavern.

In ages long past, it was said, the ancient ancestors of the Bujun were in possession of weapons of mass destruction and in the cavern were buried the remnants that survived the holocaust that had consumed nine-tenths of mankind. This alone was incredible enough but the stories were more specific. It was said that the cavern was guarded by evil kami who glowed, emitting invisible energy that sapped human strength, a kind of vicious borer that, once in the body, ate it away from the inside out.

Chiisai ascended the sparsely vegetated scree in the company of the magus, Kaijikan, and the reanimated Tokagé. The terrifying warlord was in possession of her dai-katana, her longsword, along with her wakizashi, the long-bladed Bujun dirk.

It had taken them three days to get here, riding astride swift luma. Always, Chiisai was between her two captors, her luma tethered to their mounts, her wrists bound tightly and painfully behind her back, with no chance to escape.

The weather had turned bitter, with icy winds whipping the mottled underbrush on the scree. As she scrambled along, Chiisai glanced up at the boughs of the cryptomeria swaying in the wind. No sound came from them and her heart was chilled.

Half-way up the scree it began to snow, drifting white skeins heading in from the ocean that had all but disappeared in the front. The brightness of the day devolved to an unnatural milky twilight. A conch shell foghorn sounded every now and again, melancholy and remote, increasing her sense of isolation. Tokagé had unbound Chiisai's wrists so she could climb without undue difficulty, but he had tethered her around the neck as he had her luma on the journey here. It took some time for full feeling to return to her numb fingers.

At length, they rested in the lee of a copse of cryptomeria. Chiisai had never been to a place that was so utterly still. The powdery snow filtered through the boughs and needles, piling up quickly. While she watched, Kaijikan fed Tokagé as if he were a child. What she put in his mouth Chiisai had no idea, lumps like coal from an inner pocket of her robe. He drank no water nor liquid of any kind. The living dead, for certain. She thought of Kaijikan's manservant, the hunchback Te-te, and wondered. She had been able to frighten him, but when she had pricked his throat with her blade what had run out? Surely not blood.

As for herself, Kaijikan ate nothing. Even the Dai-San ate, so what kind of creature was she? Even magi must ingest sustenance. Chiisai shoved the last of her fish paste and cold sticky rice into her mouth while she pondered the imponderable. Then they continued their assault up the scree.

Clearly, their goal was the summit, and Chiisai approached it with an increasing sense of trepidation and fear. What if the stories were true? Magi and the living dead might not be susceptible to evil kami and their invisible energy but humans surely would be.

They reached the summit at the height of the snowstorm. It was impossible to see much further than a pace in any direction. Still, Kaijikan did not hesitate, but guided them unerringly across rock-strewn ground bearded with pale and efflorescing mushrooms. These, when trod underfoot, gave off a sickly sweet odor not unlike the stench of death.

All too soon an unnatural darkness loomed before them, and Chiisai knew that they were approaching the cavern. It was blown out of a matte-black massif unlike anything she had ever seen. The rock seemed to have a powdery surface which clung like sweat to a warrior's muscles, and there was a peculiar odor which invaded her nostrils, making her throat and lungs prickle as if with ten thousand minute insects.

‘I will not go in there,' Chiisai said, standing her ground. ‘It is forbidden.'

Kaijikan turned and smiled. ‘Are you afraid, Chiisai? But I will protect you. My magic is stronger than the ancients' mistakes.'

‘So the stories are true. There are guardian kami in there.'

‘Not a bit of it,' Kaijikan said. ‘But beware, the earth of the cavern floor is highly toxic.'

‘Earth poisoned by the ancients?'

‘As inimical to life as anything on this planet can be,' Kaijikan affirmed with an almost erotic pleasure.

‘I will not take another step,' Chiisai said, digging her heels into the ground.

‘I am afraid that decision is not yours to make.' Kaijikan gestured at Tokagé, a runic swipe in the air, and he jerked upon her leash so hard that she was pulled off her feet. He advanced toward the cavern mouth and immediately she began to choke on the noose. He dragged her along the hard-packed earth, making a wide runnel in the drifting snow.

He stopped at the mouth of the cavern as if by some pre-arranged signal. Kaijikan knelt, one knee pressed painfully on Chiisai's chest. ‘If you fail to obey me it will go ill with you, this I promise. And do not mistake me. Death will not be your punishment. No, for what I do to you, you will cry out for death, believing it your only salvation.' She gave a quick meaningful glance at the reanimated Tokagé. ‘But I shall see that it never comes to you. To bring him back I required the Makkon's tongue. This is because he made a blood-pact with Chaos. But I will not have so much trouble with you. Remember Te-te?'

Pulling the noose from her throat, Chiisai looked at Tokagé through watering eyes. She could not imagine what it must be like to be undead and under Kaijikan's spell. The very thought unnerved her, and she nodded meekly.

‘Excellent,' Kaijikan said, rising. She reached down and, with surprising strength, helped Chiisai to her feet. ‘Once we are inside remember one thing: while you are with me you are perfectly safe. But if you are thinking of escaping, don't. Without my protection the poison buried in the soil will claim you.'

Chiisai nodded, her heart a block of ice.

The cavern had no smell at all, and Chiisai was aware of being neither cold nor warm. There were no sounds, none of the dripping or small crackings one associated with deep caverns. And this one was deep. It was as if they had entered a void, a zone of nothingness.

Kaijikan had lit the tarred top of a reed torch, and by its flickering light Chiisai stared with morbid fascination at the ground upon which they walked. It was dark, but here and there it appeared streaked with a substance that seemed whitely metallic, faintly glowing. Could this be the source of the invisible death?

Far back in the cavern a wall rose up. In the center of it was a jagged streak of black, as if some primitive tribesman had crudely rendered a bolt of lightning. But, on closer inspection, Chiisai saw that it was no daub of paint but a fissure in the living rock.

As she stood before the fissure, Tokagé came up behind her. She could feel his massive armor plate at her back, his curious breathing on the nape of her neck. Kaijikan took Chiisai's dai-katana from him and placed it in Chiisai's hand. At once, Tokagé's heavy mailed fist closed over hers.

‘Now,' Kaijikan said, ‘I want you to direct the blade into the fissure.'

‘What is going to happen?' Chiisai asked.

‘Do as I say, child.' The warning in her voice was unmistakable.

‘No.'

Kaijikan sighed. ‘This was unavoidable, I suppose. Such a strong will would be applauded in other circumstances.' She made a series of signs in the air and Chiisai screamed. There was a pain inside her so intense, so terrible there was no name for it. It was as if Kaijikan had opened her flesh and was scraping raw one nerve at a time.

Chiisai, her eyes streaming tears, would have fallen to her knees, save for Tokagé's hold on her. She could not breathe, could not think, and, yes, she wished for death, anything to escape the unendurable pain.

Then all at once it was gone and she felt whole again.

‘Now do as I ask, child,' Kaijikan said softly.

Chiisai's mind was blank with the intense sensory overload. Without conscious thought she lifted the blade and, flat side up, slipped it into the fissure.

Nothing happened.

‘No, no,' Kaijikan said, irritably. ‘You must
think
. You must want to do it.'

‘But I
don't
want to do it,' Chiisai said.

‘Then you choose the alternative?'

Chiisai closed her eyes.
I am weak
, she thought.
I am not worthy to be a Bujun warrior
. But she knew this to be untrue. Now she regretted bitterly not finding an opportunity during their journey here to use the slim, pearl-gripped tanto she had secreted inside her right boot. But there had been no opportunity and she had failed to make one. She had erred on the side of caution, knowing that she would have only one chance. She thought the undead Tokagé might be vulnerable but what about Kaijikan. The magus was the one Chiisai feared, and so far she had detected no weakness in her. Further, she did not know the extent of her powers. How then to fight her and prevail with only a tanto and limited knowledge of the enemy? She would have no more than an instant before Kaijikan reacted and brought her magic to bear. The odds had been untenable, and so she had chosen to do nothing.
Inaction
, her sendai had once told her,
is equal to action in its consequence
. Now she understood fully the meaning of that lesson.

But that was the past. Here, now, she was presented with another choice. Action or inaction, which would it be? Passivity would only get her more mind-bending pain that would continue until she either acquiesced or her mind snapped. Then, Kaijikan would surely do as she promised – she would kill Chiisai and reanimate her. Like Te-te, she would be Kaijikan's slave for ever. If she chose action, she would still be strong and clear of mind. There was at least a chance, no matter what the magus thought to the contrary.

Therefore, Chiisai raised the dai-katana and slid it into the jagged fissure. At first, nothing happened. Then, so gradually it took some time for her to become aware of it, a certain vibration was transmitted from the forged steel to her arm and, thence, into her body. It jarred her senses, rattling her teeth and making her heartbeat erratic. She nearly passed out, but Tokagé's strong right arm held her fast.

‘Yes,' Kaijikan said. ‘It is happening.'

When Chiisai became aware that her eyes were closed, she opened them. She could hardly breathe. In fact, if she did not know that it was impossible she would swear that she was absorbing something other than oxygen from the air, as if she had turned into another form of creature altogether.