Stormdancer (2 page)

Our prelude was Void.
The vast possibility, before life drew breath.
Unto none came two; shining Lord Izanagi, Maker and Father, His beloved bride; great Lady Izanami, Mother of All Things, And from wedded bliss, eight children drew precious life: The Isles of Shima.

She rolled aside as her cover was smashed to kindling, azalea petals drifting over the oni’s shoulders like perfumed snowflakes. The demon loomed above her, twelve feet high, all iron-tipped tusks and long, jagged fingernails. Stinking of open graves and burning hair, skin of polished midnight blue, eyes like funeral candles bathing the forest with guttering light. The club in its hands was twice as long as Yukiko was tall. One direct hit, and she would never see the samurai with the sea-green eyes again.

“Well, that’s clever,” she chided herself, “thinking about boys at a time like this.”
A spit- soaked roar pushed her hard in the chest, scattering a cloud of sparrows from the temple ruins at her back. Lightning licked the clouds, bathing the whole scene in fleeting, brilliant white: the endless wilds, the stranded sixteen-year-old girl, and the pit demon poised to cave in her skull.
Yukiko turned and ran.
Trees stretched in every direction, a steaming snarl of roots and undergrowth, stinking of green rot. Branches whipped her face and tore her clothes, rain and sweat slicked her skin. She touched the fox tattoo sleeving her right arm, tracing its nine tails in prayer. The demon behind her bellowed as she slipped away, over root and under branch, deeper into the suffocating heat.
She screamed for her father. For Kasumi or Akihito. For anybody.
And nobody came.
The trees erupted and toppled in front of her, cleft to the heartwood by an enormous ten-span sword. Another oni appeared through the shower of falling

green, tombstone mask for a face, lips pierced with rusted iron rings. Yukiko dived sideways as the great sword swept overhead, clipping her braid. Strands of long, black hair drifted down to the dead leaves.

She was rolling to her feet when the oni snatched her up, quicker than flies, its awful grip making her cry out. She could read the blasphemous kanji letters carved on its necklace, feel the heat gleaming from its flesh. The first oni arrived, bellowing in delight. Her captor opened its jaws, a black maggot tongue lolling between its teeth.

She drew her tantō and stabbed the demon’s hand, burying six inches of folded steel to the hilt. Blood sprayed, black and boiling where it touched her skin. The oni roared and hurled her against a nearby cedar. Her skull cracked against the trunk and she crashed earthward, rag-doll limp, the bloody knife skittering from her grip. Darkness reached up to smother her and she desperately clawed it away.

Not like this.
The first demon’s laughter reminded her of screaming children, burning on Guild pyres in the Market Square. Its wounded comrade growled in a dark, backward tongue, stalking forward and raising its sword to end her. Lightning glinted on the blade’s edge, time slowing to a crawl as the blow began to fall. Yukiko thought of her father again, wishing for all the world she’d done what she’d been told for just once in her life.
Thunder cracked overhead. A white shape burst from the undergrowth and landed on the oni’s back; a flurry of razors, broken blue sparks and beating wings. The demon shrieked as the beast tore into its shoulders, ripping mouthfuls of flesh with a blood-slick beak.
The first oni growled, swinging its war club in a broad, hissing arc. Their attacker sprang into the air, tiny whirlwinds of falling leaves and snow-white petals dancing in time to the thrashing of its wings. The demon’s tetsubo slammed across its comrade’s shoulders. Bone splintered under the war club’s impact, the oni’s spine shattering like dark, wet glass. It crumpled to the ground, its last breath spattered in steaming black across Yukiko’s terrified face.
The beast landed off-balance, digging bloodstained claws into the earth.
The oni glanced at its companion’s corpse, shifting the war club from one hand to the other. Howling a challenge, it lifted the weapon and charged. The pair collided, beast and demon, crashing earthward and tumbling about in a flurry of feathers, petals and screams.
Yukiko wiped at the sticky black in her eyes, tried to blink away her concussion. She could make out blurry shapes rolling in the fallen leaves, dark splashes staining the white azalea blossoms. She heard a crunch, a choking gurgle, and then a vast, empty silence.
She blinked into the gloom, pulse throbbing behind her eyes.
The beast emerged from the shadows, feathers stained black with blood. It stalked toward her and lowered its head, growl building in its throat. Yukiko groped toward her tantō, pawing through the muck and sodden leaves for the blade as her eyesight dimmed. The darkness beckoned, arms open wide, promising an end to all of her fear. To be with her brother again. To leave this dying island and its poisoned sky behind. To lie down and finally sleep after a decade of hiding who and what she was.
She closed her eyes and wished she were safe and warm at home, nestled in her blankets, the air tinged blue-black with the smoke from her father’s pipe. The beast opened its beak and roared, a hurricane scream swallowing the light and memories.
Darkness fell completely.

It was on a sweltering morning two weeks earlier when Yoritomo-no-miya, Seii Taishōgun of the Shima Isles, emerged from his bedchamber, yawned and declared that he wanted a griffin.

His elderly major-domo, Tora Hideo, fell perfectly still. His calligraphy brush hovered over the arrest warrants piled on the table in front of him. Blood lotus smoke curled up from the bone pipe in his left hand, and Hideo squinted through the haze at his master. Even after seven years as Yoritomo’s chief minister, there were still days when he found his Shōgun impossible to read. To laugh, or not to laugh? That was the question.

“My Lord?” he finally ventured.
“You heard. A griffin.”
“My Lord refers to a statue of some kind? A monument, perhaps, to celebrate

the bicentennial of the glorious Kazumitsu Dynasty?”
“No. A real one.”
One traitorous eyebrow rose toward Hideo’s hairline.
“But, my Lord . . .” The old man cleared his throat. “Thunder tigers are extinct.”

Dirty opalescent light filtered through the sitting room’s tall bay doors. A vast garden stretched out in the palace grounds below, its trees stunted and sickly despite the multitude of servants who toiled beneath them every day. Faint birdsong drifted from the greenery like mist; the mournful cries of a legion of sparrows. The birds were imported monthly from the north at the Shōgun’s request, their wings kept clipped so they couldn’t flee the reek.

The sky hung heavy with a pall of fumes, sealing in the day’s already oppressive heat. As the Ninth Shōgun of the Kazumitsu Dynasty stalked to the balcony and looked out over his capital, a sky-ship rose from Kigen harbor and started its long trek north, trailing a suffocating plume of blue-black exhaust.

Hideo sighed inwardly, placed his calligraphy brush aside with care. Smoke curled up from his pipe to the ceiling; a vast dome of obsidian and pearl reminiscent of the once-clear night sky. The silken sokutai robe he wore was abominably heavy, layer upon layer of gold and scarlet, and he cursed again at having to wear the confounded thing in this heat. The old man’s knees creaked as he rose. He inhaled another lungful of lotus and stared at his Lord’s back.

Yoritomo had changed much in the seven years since his father, Shōgun Kaneda, had passed on to his heavenly reward. Now in his twentieth summer, his shoulders were broad, jaw chiseled, long black hair tied up in the style of manhood. As was custom among all the great bloodlines of Shima, he had been adorned with beautiful tattoos on his thirteenth birthday: the fierce tiger prowling down his right arm venerating the guardian spirit of his clan, and the imperial sun over a field of blood lotus flowers down his left declaring him Shōgun of the Four Thrones of the Shima Empire. As the major-domo watched, the tiger tattoo blinked, flexing claws as sharp as katana across his master’s skin. The totem seemed to stare right at him.

Hideo squinted at the pipe in his hand, deciding he’d smoked enough for one morning.
“These cloudwalkers were men of the Kitsune clan, hai?” He exhaled a plume of narcotic midnight blue. “The wise man never trusts the fox, great Lord.”
“You have heard the rumor, then.”
“Nothing escapes my spies, great Lord. Our web is spun across the entire Shōgunate.” The old man moved his arm in a broad arc. “Fox, Dragon, Phoenix or Tiger, there is no clan and no secret that—”
“You did not think to report it to me?”
Hideo’s arm fell to his side, the faintest shadow of a frown creasing his brow. “Forgive me, my Lord. I had no desire to trouble you with the superstitious babbling of peasant folk. If I roused you every time the taverns or brothels crawled with some fancy about flying tigers or giant sea serpents or other yōkai—”
“Tell me what you know.”
A long silence fell, punctuated by the calls of choking sparrows. Hideo heard the soft footfalls of a servant roaming distant hallways, ringing ten notes upon an iron bell and announcing in a clear, high voice that the Hour of the Crane had begun.
“A fantasy, great Lord.” Hideo finally shrugged, “A crew of cloudwalkers

arrived in port three days ago, saying that monsoon winds drove their sky-ship off course beyond the cursed Iishi Mountains. While praying that their inflatable would not be burned to a cinder by the Thunder God Raijin, several of the men claimed to have seen the silhouette of an arashitora among the clouds.”

“An arashitora,” Yoritomo repeated. “A thunder tiger, Hideo. Just imagine it.” The minister shook his head.
“Sailors are fond of their tall tales, my Lord. Those who sail the skies most

of all. Any man who spends every minute of his day breathing lotus exhaust sooner or later finds himself possessed of an addled mind. I heard of one crew who swore they saw the blessed Maker God Izanagi walking among the clouds. Another group claim to have found the entrance to the Yomi underworld, and the boulder great Lord Izanagi used to seal it closed. Are we to believe their demented fictions also?”

“This is no fiction, Hideo-san.”
“My Lord, what—”
“I have dreamed it.” Yoritomo turned to face Hideo, his eyes alight. “I have

seen myself riding among the thunderclaps astride a great arashitora, leading my armies to war overseas against the round-eye gaijin hordes. Like the Stormdancers of legend. A vision sent from mighty Hachiman, the God of War himself.”

Hideo covered his mouth and gave a small cough.
“Great Lord, equal of heaven—”
“Spare me.”
“. . . Shōgun, there has not been a confirmed sighting of a thunder tiger since

the days of your great-grandfather. The lotus fumes that claimed the sea dragons have claimed them also. The great yōkai beasts are gone forever, back to the spirit realms that once bore them.” Hideo stroked his beard. “Or to the realms of the dead.”

The Shōgun turned from the window and folded his arms. The tiger tattoo paced around his bicep, crystalline eyes glittering, pausing to roar silently at the now sweating minister. Hideo fidgeted with his pipe.

“The beast will be captured, Hideo-san,” the Shōgun glared. “You will visit my hunt master and send him forth with this decree: he will bring me back this thunder tiger, alive, or I will send him and his men to dine with dread Lady Izanami, Mother of Death, and the thousand and one oni demons birthed from her black womb.”

“Will what? Deny their Shōgun? Hideo-san, the only will you should be concerned with at this moment is my own.”
The silence gleamed like an executioner’s blade.
“. . . Hai, great Lord. It shall be so.”
“Good,” Yoritomo nodded, turned back to the window. “I will feast before breakfast. Send in three geisha.”
Hideo bowed as low as his old back would allow, the tip of his thin beard sweeping the polished boards. Retreating a respectful distance from his Shōgun, he turned and hurried away, closing the elegantly decorated rice-paper doors behind him. His sandals beat a rapid pace along the nightingale floor, boards chirping brightly beneath him as he scurried through the sleeping quarters. The thin walls were adorned with long paper amulets the color of blood, scribed with protective mantra in broad, black strokes. Spring-driven ceiling fans were affixed to the exposed beams overhead, fighting a futile battle against the scorching heat. At each doorway loomed a granite statue of the Tora clan’s totem; great and proud Tiger, fiercest of all the kami spirits, his claws raised and fangs bared.
Next to each statue stood two members of the Shōgun’s personal guard, the Kazumitsu Elite. The samurai were clad in golden jin-haori tabards that reached almost to the floor, their armored hands clasping the hilts of chainsaw katana. The guards watched Hideo depart, as motionless and silent as the statues they stood vigil beside.
Hideo mopped his brow with the long sleeves of his robe as he shuffled out of the royal wing, his trail marked by the blue-black smoke still drifting from his bone pipe. He wheezed, his walking stick tapping a crisp beat across the boards. His stomach was busy turning somersaults.
“So now he’s receiving visions from the gods,” he muttered. “Heavens preserve us.”