Dragons on the Sea of Night (4 page)

With that the downpour began anew. Moichi glanced around. The
Tsubdsa
was already lying low in the water, her scuppers blocked with twisted masses of sea grape and wrack.

‘What do you think,' he asked the Bujun, ‘if I ask for all sail to be set will this ship take it?'

The Bujun looked into his face and nodded. ‘She'll take anything you put her to, Captain. Of that you can be assured.'

Moichi nodded and, turning toward the crew on the deck below, called for all sail to be set. They needed all speed now in order not to ship more water and risk a high wave pulling them under.

One of the mates, a glum-faced giant with an oily drooping mustache and some years' sea experience, mounted the companionway.

‘You're not thinkin' o' fillin' the yards in this foul weather, Cap'n,' he growled. It was not a question.

‘We'll go under if we don't raise the sails,' Moichi said, not bothering to look at the mate as he directed the crew to clear the last of the debris over the side.

‘You're wrong, Cap'n. We'll surely go under if we do set sail.' He was close enough now to smell the rum on his breath. ‘That god-rotting demon wave was an omen. We'll do nothing now but ride out the storm.'

Moichi swung at him. ‘Look at how low we sit. With this heavy rain and the scuppers clogged we'll be sunk inside a watch. You'll follow my orders, by God!'

‘I warn you,' the mate said, ‘do not tempt the gods further.'

‘I said set all sail,' Moichi said in a menacing tone.

The mate did not back down, but pulled agitatedly at his oily mustache. He nodded his head in the Bujun's direction. ‘It's he who gave the order, isn't it? That Bujun bastard. I heard stories of how they sail their damned ships.' The mate spat, a heavy yellow gob of saliva. ‘This is no time t'be takin' the advice of a rotting Bujun.'

‘I am the captain of this vessel,' Moichi said, knowing he had to restore his sovereignty immediately, ‘and you will obey my orders.'

‘But why should I, Cap'n?' The mate raised his arms wide. ‘Why should any of us? You saw it as well as anyone, I reckon.'

‘Shut up!' Moichi thundered. ‘Or I'll give your job to the Bujun!'

The big mate spat again and tried to laugh; it came out as a moan. ‘Well, who cares a whit now, eh? This is a damned voyage and you've murdered us all, in any case.' Unable to tolerate the heat from Moichi's glare, he turned to the men, his voice raised in a hoarse shout. ‘Ye all saw it plain as day, I'll warrant. The face in the wave. All gods curse the day I set foot on this miserable alien ship!'

‘I told you to shut your yap!' Moichi shouted, hauling the big man all the way up the companionway.

‘Too late, Cap'n, it's happened. The moment all seafaring men dread. We've all looked into Miira's Mirror! We're all dead men now! You can't deny the legend! We're doomed!'

Moichi slammed his huge fist into the mate's greasy face, sending him reeling down the companionway, tumbling head over heels. He was about to descend after him when he saw that the door to his cabin was open. Aufeya had emerged. Unused to the rigors of the sea, she should have been white-faced and weak, but she seemed to have weathered the typhoon without ill effect. How long had she been standing there? Moichi wondered. Long enough to have heard the rantings of the mate? By God, he prayed not. She looked at him, making the sign of the Palliate. She was Daluzan – a people whose culture, like Moichi's, was intimately bound up with their religion.

‘Set all sail!' Moichi bellowed. ‘Snap to it, mates! All those thinking otherwise will find a watery grave, this I swear, for I'll tolerate no mutiny aboard the
Tsubasa!
'

The crew snapped to, breaking out the sheets as quickly as they could. But while all about him was frenzied activity, Aufeya stood her ground, her long red hair whipping her shoulders and cheeks, her copper-colored eyes glancing back and forth from the supine mate to Moichi's stern gaze.

He could see the curiosity in her face, and the fear. Aufeya came from a people who were overly superstitious. And she had witnessed her own demon – the Diablura – come to vivid and terrifying life, almost destroying her. To her, the world of sorcery and devils had not entirely passed into oblivion. Moichi knew now that she had overheard the mate's warning regarding Miira's Mirror, and he cursed the man all over again.

He was descending toward her, when a sudden burst of rain obscured his vision. The wind howled and the ship heeled dizzyingly to port. Moichi was knocked over the railing of the stair, crashing to the mid-deck. He was up on his feet in an instant, shaking off the sparks behind his eyes, the pain in his shoulder and hip. He shouted instructions to the men tying down the mainsail. It was then that he realized he did not see Aufeya.

He broke off his tirade, rushing to the port rail. He could just see a hand, small and pale, the white knuckles gripping hard the lower wooden railing. He reached down, saw Aufeya's face, pinched with fear, her eyes wide and staring, her long copper hair whipping around her face and neck.

‘Aufeya! Hold on, I have you!'

As his fingers closed over her wrist, the ship lurched again to port and the angry sea rose up as if it were a beast with a will of its own. It smashed against the hull of the Bujun ship, inundating Aufeya completely.

At that instant, Moichi felt a tugging, an added weight that almost pulled his arm from its socket. He knew that it was impossible, but it was as if something from the deep was trying to pull Aufeya under.

Then the ship rose upward on the breast of a swell and the wave receded, bringing Aufeya back to him. She was drenched and gasping, her thick hair clinging to her like sea grape. She coughed, spewing seawater, and reaching down with his other hand, he began to haul her upward.

The ship dove down again into a trough, the rain beating at them like hail and it was as if a kind of shadow fell over them as the sea rose up her hips, chest and shoulders until it appeared to tower over them. It was then that some inner tingling caused Moichi to look up into the blue-gray underside of the wave. In its shifting depths he saw again the eerie primordial face, filled with rage. The slash of a mouth appeared to open and he heard a rumbling as of distant thunder.

He shook his head as if to clear his ears of water, but it did no good. He heard the rumbling again, breaking apart and re-forming into what could only be construed as words:

I
WANT HER. I MUST HAVE HER
.

What
, he thought wildly,
am I hearing?

IT IS MIIRA'S WISH
.

Miira!

DEFY ME AT YOUR PERIL!

The water was rising, lapping up over Aufeya's mouth and nose. She was struggling now, clearly terrified. And with good reason. In a moment, she would drown.

With an extreme effort of will, Moichi looked away from the sorcerous face, concentrating on the task at hand. He was Aufeya's only chance at life, and he had only moments within which to act. Already a larger wave was forming, heading toward them. The ship was beginning to climb the next crest and Moichi knew this was his last shot at saving Aufeya from a watery grave.

He pressed his knees against the side timbers, hauled upwards, using all the strength in his legs, back and arms. Muscles popped, corded tendons pulled his skin this way and that. He could feel Miira dragging against him, fierce in her determination. But Moichi was more determined. He called upon the strength of his bond-brother, the Dai-San, and slowly, painfully slowly, he drew Aufeya toward him, until as the ship crested the wave, he brought her, gasping and shivering over the rail to his side.

He had one last glimpse of that rage-stained face in the sea, then it broke apart into ten thousand shards, the wave crashed harmlessly against the hull of the ship, and was gone in white plumes along the ship's wake.

TWO

M
IIRA'S
M
IRROR

Of course, Aufeya had heard the voice
.

And, of course, he had to tell her about Miira's Mirror. He had no choice. They had come too close to Miira – or something that called itself Miira – for him to be able to do otherwise.

He had spent several hours seeing to the ship, but in truth the magnificent prowess of the Bujun ensured that what damage had occurred was minor. Again, he marveled that such a slight-looking vessel could so courageously weather such an evil storm, and he thanked the Dai-San all over again for his gift, for he was certain that no ordinary ship would have survived.

In the end, he left what remained to be done to the tillerman, whose name was Arasomu, and who he had now elevated to first mate. He climbed the crosstrees of the mainmast like a monkey. At its tip, he tested the wind and tasted the sweet smell of the ocean's marker that meant fair winds. Back on deck, he broke out his navigator's instruments and, fixing on the shining constellations of the stars, calculated their position. He relayed all this information and his instructions to Arasomu. Confident that the weather had turned for good and that within hours they would be back on course for Iskael, he went belowdeck to his cabin, where Aufeya was waiting for him.

He told her the legend of Miira's Mirror as she lay in their berth, swathed in warming blankets, while the
Tsubasa
rode a tranquil sea and lightly gusting trade winds beneath a star-filled night sky toward Iskael. Just her nose and eyes peeped out from beneath the blankets and she seemed, with her wild hair and copper eyes, to be no more than a small child readying herself to hear a night-time tale before sleep.

Miira, it is said by seamen the world over, was a woman of exceeding grace and beauty (Moichi began). She lived in Syrinx, a land far, far away on the other side of the Mountain Sin'hai, on the edge, it is said, of a stony abyss that plunged into the very heart of this planet. Her people, I think, must have died out long ago.

These people were political animals. Power meant everything, and intrigue was second nature to them. Miira's husband was a vice-minister in a government rife with internecine warfare.

At the time of the birth of Miira's son, her husband, Bnak, was engaged in a potentially explosive power struggle with the leader of the main opposition movement. He was a staunch loyalist, and had dedicated himself to battling those who sought to overthrow the reform-minded regime.

Again and again Bnak would uncover plots against the highest government officials and he would take measures to thwart them because his sources were numerous and he was as exceedingly clever as Miira was beautiful.

Now you may well ask, if Bnak was so clever and possessed of so much power in a power-oriented society why had he not risen to full ministerial rank? The answer is as simple as it is distressing.

Miira was Shinju.

The Shinju were the indigenous people of this land. Centuries before, Bnak's people had swept across a vast, turbulent ocean on a mission of expansion. They found the Shinju's land and had straightaway sought to colonize it. In the process, they decimated the Shinju, driving what was left of them into the bleak, desolate highlands. There Bnak's people left them, to die of starvation and the elements, or so they thought. The Shinju were as tough as they were resourceful and they survived like the sure-footed mountain goats, whose thick winter coats they sheared, processed and wove into fantastic garments that were as light as air and as warm as a blazing fire.

As a young man Bnak had a penchant for anthropology and he spent two years in the highlands among the Shinju conducting his studies. It was here that he met Miira and fell in love with her. Her people would never have allowed her to court him, let alone marry outside her race had they not come to know Bnak and to appreciate his special qualities. For his part, Bnak had never shared nor even understood his people's abiding antipathy and scorn for the Shinju. He knew they were not inferior. Quite the contrary, in fact. He discovered that in many ways his own people would never fathom, the Shinju possessed far more knowledge and wisdom. They were simply not a warlike race.

Though it would have been far easier for Bnak to have stayed with Miira among the Shinju, he was no coward. He chose to return to the capital and to work from within to change the laws regarding the Shinju, to help educate his people about Miira's people. The reformers were his best hope. No other faction would even have given him a minor post. And Miira, at her intuitive best, agreed to help him in any way she could.

That Miira was beautiful beyond compare or as graceful as a lark descending from the heart of the sun, that she was cleverer than most men, meant nothing to the ministers who ruled the land; in their minds, Miira and all her people were inferior. Though they readily admitted Bnak's cleverness and exploited it and all his assets to their benefit, yet they mocked him behind his back, made disparaging remarks about Miira and refused every promotion that was his due. In short, they made pretense of listening to his impassioned treatises on the Shinju and then dismissed them as if they were the ravings of a lunatic.

Still, Bnak, loyal to the end, continued on their behalf.

As for Miira, she went about her life as if the scorn of these men and their high-born wives meant nothing to her. That is, on the outside. On the inside, (here Moichi shrugged) who can say? Though she was by no means a vain woman, Miira used her Shinju mirror to make up her face each morning. Now, it was her husband's habit to sit with her and watch her at it. The very early morning was their quiet time, and because Bnak often did not return from his work until midnight or later it was here that the peace of those deeply and truly in love descended over them.

‘You are the most beautiful,' Bnak would tell Miira in a voice filled with wonder. ‘Each morning you grow more so. And do you know that your reflection is beautiful … and different. There is, somehow, a purity of image I can see that comes from the deepest part of you. It is as if when I stare at you in the mirror I see you as a young girl, untouched and unmarked by time, care or worry.'