Dragons on the Sea of Night (13 page)

He went on, rising until he was within three feet of the ceiling. He could see the rift in the wall now, a dark ruffled scar in the sand. Carefully, he reached up until his fingertips closed over the top of the rift.

It was a ledge of some sort!

God of my fathers, he breathed silently, thank You!

He had one dirk sheathed, and now he put the flat of both hands onto the ledge and, with a massive effort, pulled himself up. It was very tight. The rift itself ran for more than eight feet horizontally, but it was only about eighteen inches in height, and that was in its center. It tapered off on either side so narrowly it seemed that no one could squirm through. Moichi turned around and, reaching down, pulled the dirk out of the wall. Then he turned his attention to the rift.

He could feel clean fresh air blowing on his face, and there was a dim illumination some way in the distance. That was good news indeed, since he had been forced to leave the lamp behind on the chamber's floor.

He examined the rift and calculated that if he went headfirst into the center of it he could just about make it through. In any case, he had no choice. He had to try.

The way was somewhat easier going than he had expected. The sand here was so dry it was like shale, cracking off in thin layers so that he could work the aperture wider in spots. Also, the rift was shallow, so that he was through it in just over two body lengths.

He sat for a moment on the other side, bathed in the eerie bluish glow and wiped the sweat from his forehead. I'm still not out of this, he had to remind himself.

And that was when he saw the six red eyes staring at him from the shadows. It was a moment before the image resolved itself and he understood that all six eyes belonged to one entity.

God of my fathers, he thought, so Dujuk'kan wasn't lying about everything after all.

Slowly, he took one dirk, held it point first in front of him. He crouched in the gloom, his muscles tense, his nerves singing with adrenaline.

‘Fe'edjinn.' It was the voice he had heard just before he and Aufeya had tumbled into the swirling waad. ‘Fe'edjinn.'

‘I am
not
Fe'edjinn,' he said emphatically. He thought of the fate of Tamuk and his men and his stomach turned over in revulsion. ‘Who are you?'

‘I am I.' The thing shifted in the shadows but Moichi still had no clear idea of its shape or size. He knew only that it was blocking his sole path out of this underground prison. As if it had read his thoughts, the thing said, ‘I am Jailor. I mete out punishment.'

‘Is that why you swallow Fe'edjinn whole? To punish them?'

‘I only punish one. The others are sustenance. I must live; I must eat.'

Moichi crept a little forward, willing his gorge not to rise. What was it about this creature that caused such absolute antipathy? Was it simply its gruesome diet?

‘Your prisoner?'

Those horrific red eyes staring at him. ‘Yes. The Adenese Dujuk'kan. He is criminal. His cruelty is boundless. Incarcerated, he was here for a purpose. Now you have disturbed that purpose.'

‘Dujuk'kan told me he was a merchant.' The Adenese had told Moichi many things. Which ones were the truth and which the lies?

‘As is usual with him he lied and truthed all at once,' Jailor said. ‘Merchant he is, but in only one specific way: he is a slaver. For years, he ran an Adenese slave camp in the Mu'ad. Iskamen settlers – mostly children and adolescents – were his prey. Cruel he was to them. Inhuman he was.' An odd, chilling sound filled the cavern, rolling and echoing. It was only after a time that Moichi understood that the thing was snickering. It had used the word ‘inhuman' ironically. It was at this moment that it came to Moichi that this was no unthinking monster as Dujuk'kan had led him to believe.

‘Oh, yes, he is merchant. He sold his contraband or himself tortured them until he laughed hard and long.'

‘But someone must have put an end to it,' Moichi said. ‘Someone put him down here with you as his guardian. Who?'

‘Bjork.'

‘Who is Bjork?' Moichi asked.

‘Bjork made me with his magic. With his magic he set Dujuk'kan's poor livestock free. He caused Dujuk'kan's prison to be made. I am prison and guard, yes, one and same.' The eyes wavered and seemed to glow more brightly. ‘There was a plan. Bjork's plan. Now you have disturbed it all.'

‘I? How?'

‘Dujuk'kan has escaped. Because of you.' Those six eyes were like fiery coals blasting the shadows, and Moichi could feel an animus rising, dark and dangerous. ‘You and the woman have my attention diverted.'

Moichi's heart leapt. ‘The woman. Aufeya is alive?'

‘Dujuk'kan clever is,' the creature continued. ‘Taken the woman he has. Gone he is.'

Moichi shifted forward. ‘Then I must go after them. Is Aufeya all right?'

‘Unconscious she is. All I know.'

‘You must let me go. You–'

‘NO!' The shriek filled Moichi's ears, overflowing the cavern, echoing on and on without end. The eyes grew as the thing slithered forward until it blocked the way completely. In a moment it would emerge from the shadows and Moichi would see. ‘You will go nowhere. Here is where you will stay in place of Dujuk'kan.'

Moichi flicked the blade of his dirk. ‘But I am no criminal. You have no cause to keep me against my will.'

‘Best cause,' the thing said, and that odd, chilling snicker came again. ‘My life, my existence, depends on prisoner. I told you of Bjork's plan. He created me to guard. When Dujuk'kan dies, I cease to exist. But while Dujuk'kan lives, so must I. Without someone to guard I will perish. Happen I will not let that.' The six eyes seemed to expand exponentially as it came straight for Moichi. ‘You are my prisoner now for all your days until the moment of your death.'

When Chiisai knocked on the thatch and willow door of the mean house at the end of the foul-smelling lane in Hinin, she was clad in the rags of a street urchin. She had made it her business to follow High Minister Ojime to the Shinsei na-ke Temple where, unbeknownst to her, Ojime had stolen the Makkon's tongue and had callously murdered the chief Rosh'hi. She had hunkered down in the shadows, waiting patiently for him to emerge, and so she had observed him at length slip out of the temple and hurry away. He had led her a merry paranoid chase through crowded shops and teeming marketplaces, beneath arching bridges, down cobbled thoroughfares thick with produce carts and itinerant calligraphers and fortune-tellers, and along narrow alleyways, some of which he had furtively doubled back on. But she had persevered, shadowing him all the way to the Hinin bridge where she quickly slathered her clothes with mud and hurried after him. Seeing where he was headed, she rent her already filthy clothes and, to make the picture perfect, had rolled around on the packed-dirt lane until she had acquired the right degree of ripeness. Then she had boldly knocked upon the thatch and willow door.

‘We have no food to spare,' the humped figure muttered from the open doorway. ‘Be gone with you. Weeee–'

The voice turned into a screech as Chiisai put a knife to the hunchback's throat. ‘Where is he?' she said.

‘Who?' The screech came again as she drew the edge of the blade lightly across his curiously hairless skin.

‘Do you think I am joking?' she hissed in the hunchback's ear. ‘Do you think I am unaware of the treasonous activities attributed to the owner of this place?' She tightened her grip upon the figure. ‘Ojime. Where is he?'

‘You will wish you never came here,' the hunchback said as Chiisai propelled him through one evil-smelling chamber after another.

‘I am already wishing that,' she said, her nose wrinkling.

‘My mistress will kill you,' the hunchback whined. ‘She guards her privacy most jealously.'

‘Don't we all.'

‘Not like her,' the hunchback said, racing along as fast as his short, misshapen legs could carry him. ‘She is fanatic. You'll see.' He tried to twist his head around to look at her and she rapped him smartly on the temple. He made a low gurgling sound, like a cud-chewer, and hurried on. She was almost climbing his back as she urged him on.

‘No matter how quickly we get there, you will not unnerve her. She knows everything. It is her business.'

‘And what business might that be?' Chiisai said.

‘She is Kaijikan, the Keeper of Souls.'

Chiisai grabbed at the shell-like back, hurling the figure against one filthy wall. He bounced off with a grunt and she slammed the heel of her hand into his chest. She put her face up against his, pale, sickly and worn, as if he were centuries old instead of decades. ‘What nonsense are you promoting? Kaijikan is a myth, an ugly creation to frighten young children into behaving. Kaijikan does not exist.'

‘Then you will be slain by a myth,' the hunchback said through thick lips the color of freshly seeping blood.

‘Go on,' Chiisai said, hurling him forward, ‘show me where she is.'

‘No need,' said a soft but commanding voice. ‘I am here.'

The hunchback gave a little moan as the tall figure reached out, enfolding him in an embrace of sorts. In a moment, he was no longer there.

Chiisai squinted through the gloom. ‘Who are you? And where is High Minister Ojime?'

‘I am as Te-te said. Kaijikan, the Keeper of Souls.'

Chiisai laughed, but she was uneasy. She could not make out a single feature in the gloom.

‘But you have already met one,' Kaijikan said. ‘A soul, I mean. Isn't that right, Te-te.' And just like that the hunchback reappeared, cowering and shivering.

‘I hate when you do that,' he said. ‘It hurts.'

With a yowl he disappeared again.

‘Spiritually, he means,' Kaijikan said. ‘Of course he is beyond feeling any form of physical pain.' She lifted one long arm. ‘Come. You wanted to see the High Minister. This way.'

She turned and went through the doorway. Chiisai had no choice but to follow. She did not for a minute believe that this creature, whoever she might be, was the mythical Kaijikan, Keeper of Souls. She was a madwoman, but no doubt cunning and dangerous for all that.

The brightness of the solarium was almost blinding for the first few moments. As Chiisai adjusted to the flood of light, she saw Kaijikan's features emerging, one by one. She saw the long black hair first, in its asymmetrical, non-Bujun style, then the enormous eyes, the bright bow of a mouth, the long, elegant neck, and the slim, firm body wrapped in the magnificent white and cloth-of-platinum kimono.

She was taken aback, though she struggled mightily not to show it. The eyes, for instance, told her that this woman was clever, yes, but not mad. Madness, she had come to learn, had its own spectrum of toxins that dissolved the color of the irises, causing them to become nothing more than lenses beyond which could be glimpsed the dark void of insanity. These eyes glittered with life, with energy beyond understanding.

On the other hand, the snowy skin was like nothing she had seen on a human. It was without line or blemish and, when she looked more closely, was without pores as well.

‘You are wearing a mask,' Chiisai said.

‘Do you think so?' Kaijikan pouted, then opened her mouth wide, making certain Chiisai saw there was no possibility of a mask. She put impossibly long fingers up to her cheek. ‘Do you think I need one? So many men – and women – have fallen in love with me it never occurred to me that I might need one.'

‘Where is Ojime?'

‘Oh, yes,' Kaijikan said sweetly. ‘I almost forgot.' She turned toward the rear of the solarium, where it was damnably hot from a squat kiln and a roaring fire. It seems as if the Chief Minister doesn't feel himself today – to say the least!'

Chiisai looked in the direction Kaijikan indicated and her heart thudded so heavily in her breast it seemed to skip a beat. There, stood a huge, dark-bearded man, immense and powerful, dressed in full battle armor of a manufacture unfamiliar to her. His square face was heavy-jowled, with slanting cheekbones and thick, almost alien, brows over heavy-lidded black eyes that were all glittering iris. Upon his helm was soldered a golden, writhing reptile that Chiisai recognized as a salamander, the creature of eternal life, and the same signal creature was depicted in a clasp at his throat carved from a single ruby with onyx eyes. It was surrounded by onyx flames which reached up into its open mouth.

‘Tokagé!' she intoned. ‘But that is impossible!' She turned to Kaijikan. ‘What trickery have you conjured? What illusion? This beast – this traitor to mankind – was killed by the Dai-San in the Kai-feng.'

‘True enough,' Kaijikan said. ‘But I won't try to convince you this is indeed Tokagé. Illusion, do you think? By all means, go to him. Touch him. See for yourself.'

Chiisai went hesitantly across the solarium. As she passed Kaijikan a scent came to her nostrils of rose petals and silver sage, and she gasped, for these odors were associated with the mythical Keeper of Souls. She paused for a moment, staring at Kaijikan, who merely smiled back at her. Then she turned and went up to Tokagé. As she did, his glittering eyes followed her, but when she reached out to touch him – he was indeed solid enough – he did not move.

‘Satisfied now?' Kaijikan asked.

‘No. He could be anyone,' Chiisai said. But she was staring into his eyes and she recognized that look and knew, despite what she might rationally believe impossible, that this was indeed the arch-traitor of mankind. ‘Besides, he hardly seems alive.'

‘In that you have some justification,' Kaijikan said. ‘He is but halfway back from the dead.' And when Chiisai turned to look at her that smile was still in place. ‘You see, I needed two things to reanimate him. The tongue of the Makkon and someone living ambitious enough so that when Tokagé's soul re-entered the physical realm the body – and mind – would not be torn apart. High Minister Ojime fit the bill perfectly.'