Fortress of Lost Worlds (22 page)

Gonji chuckled without amusement. “
Hai.
They still direct their energies in all the wrong directions.”

“Does he exist? Will he come?” the prelate asked earnestly.

“He exists, but he is not what you make him out to be, though he is surely of interest to the soldiers of Iasu. He is
one
of you. He believes as you do. He cannot help himself, in his own curse… But I can’t imagine him coming here, of all places. He seems to have had as much trouble with the clergy as I have.”

De la Cenza bowed his head, finally nodding gravely. He turned as if he would go, but paused.

“Gonji-
san
, it is hard to make you understand, but we do what we must. It is our duty to battle assaults against the faith. Sometimes the methods seem…questionable.” He glanced about to see whether any soldiers overheard his potentially dangerous statement.

“I see,” Gonji replied, raising his voice so that the priest would remain to hear him out. “I believe certain tales of the Christ, though I don’t understand many of them. And because I live outside your influence, you will destroy me. And then you will destroy the reformers on the continent, and they you. And then what strength remains to raise the cross of Iasu? Tell me that, Martin-
san
.”

De la Cenza stared at the slimy flooring stones a long while, seemingly disturbed by the samurai’s words. Gonji, sensing an inroad had been made, pressed him all the harder, sacrificing composure for intensity.

“Send me my swords, that I may end this pointless horror.”

The spell was broken. The prelate’s eyes widened with disgust. It had been the wrong thing to say.

“That’s quite impossible. You know that.” He moved to go again.

“Well, then—then have them take me out of this god-cursed cell long enough to bathe! They can aim cannon at me, if they wish! Bind me hand and foot! Do you know, I’ve heard that a witch so bound in water will float, while an innocent man will drown. So, in the name of Iasu, let them drown me! Vermin crawl on my body—do you know what anathema that is to a samurai? That way I’ll be both cleansed and exonerated,
neh
?”

Father Martin’s eyes crinkled to see the gleam in Gonji’s own. He laughed breathily. “You are indeed an amazing individual. I’m sorry, Gonji-
san
. No charges have been fixed against you yet, but there is some evidence of subversion. I simply
can’t
remove you from here, even to bathe, lest I take your place.”

“All right, all right,” Gonji said, lowering his voice and lifting his palm in a steadying gesture. “Then,
dozo—
please, send me some writing materials. Day by day my thoughts and observations drift into nothingness in this timeless hell.”

“You seem to have done well enough out of your own ingenuity, judging by the walls of your cell.”

Gonji peeked over his shoulder desperately. “
Iye
!
Twice the guards have shattered my work space with their stupid tools. Poetry comes hard when etched on stone, and once lost…” A wild hope shone from Gonji’s face in the flickering lamplight.

De la Cenza slowly lifted his hand and conferred his blessing, via the Sign of the Cross.

“
Por favor
,”
he said, “abide your situation as you can.” And with that he disappeared from view.

Gonji stared into the empty corridor, his jaw working tensely. He felt, by turns, foolish, betrayed, and irate.

* * * *

Gonji lay on the stinking mat with arms crossed, weaving in and out of the shallow half-sleep that had become his mode of slumber. Now and again scratching at his itching beard or scalp. Listening to the scuttling of rats, the deathless moaning of human misery. And another sound—a soft scratching outside his door.

He jerked up onto an elbow. A face tilted up and down fitfully, freezing like an alarmed hare when their eyes met.

A middle-aged man, bearded, eyes glistening with fever-light.

“Time to rise anyway. Morning prayers ring out above.” He studied Gonji closely as he spoke, and his words seemed less directed at the samurai than like spoken thought.

“Who are you?” Gonji inquired. But no answer came in reply. “I said, who
are
you?”

The man’s face-tilting seized up again as though he were startled out of some waking reverie. “I see no reason to make answer to you.”

Gonji’s eyes narrowed. He stood and ambled menacingly toward the grated door. And although safe behind the iron portal, the man’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped.

“Kyriakos,” the man said as if commanding a dog to mind its place. He returned to his alternating visual attentions. Gonji could see now that the man was sketching with charcoal on a board.

“A Greek?”

“Cretan,” the artist replied throatily, plainly annoyed at these interruptions. “Turn to your left—my right,
por favor
.”

“Get out of here,” Gonji growled.

The artist stopped abruptly and peered deeply into Gonji’s glaring eyes. “You’re not so fascinating as I’d hoped, after all. Why do you embattle the Church?”

“Leave me alone.”

“
Why
?”
Kyriakos persisted.

“Why do they fear me?” Gonji countered.

“Fear you?” the artist echoed scornfully. “They wish to save your heathen soul, can’t you understand that?”

“Then tell them to send me my swords.”

Kyriakos tilted his head as if studying a curious animal. “A pagan barbarian, just as they said. You might have proven to be the subject of an important salvation painting—”

“Get out of here.”

“Now,” the artist spat as he withdrew, “now perhaps you’ll wind up in some obscure corner of—”

Gonji showered him with a torrent of invective that would have done any sailor proud in the waterfront inns of Barcelona.

Moments later, Morales approached him, looking like he might offer some reproach. “You’ve won over another
amigo
,
no?”

“
Ohayo
,
Morarei-
san
.” Gonji brought himself under control at once.

“Do you know who that was?”

“I don’t care—”

“That was the great artist, El Greco—”

“Never mind that. I must respectfully request—”

“No-no,
senor
,
no suicide this morning—”

“Then,” Gonji persisted, “will I be allowed to bathe, or shall I at least be given a hammer so that I may deal with these lice that crawl in my useless—”

“No, the lice stay, but listen—” Morales waved his hand in a way that bade attention. “Is Simon coming today?” he asked in a jestingly conniving whisper.

“Who knows?” Gonji replied, playing along. “Why?”

“If he comes, will he devour me?”

“He might dismember you, but his tastes don’t run to rotten Spanish flesh.”

“You’ll protect me, then, if I’ve been your friend, no?”

Morales was hiding something, and Gonji’s curiosity was stoked.

“What are you getting at?”

The sergeant shrugged as if to dismiss it, then brought in the covered pan with his morning meal and his ewer of water. A grim
pistolero
watched Gonji closely from the corridor until Morales had withdrawn and locked the door.

Gonji doffed the black robe with its grotesque red ornamentation and began wedging it into the small grated window of his iron-bound cell door.

“What are you doing?”

Gonji pulled aside the garment and peered out. “No more visitors, eh?”

The sergeant began to laugh, his mirth rising as he moved away. “Too dark to eat like that.”

“I’ll manage,” the samurai replied from the blackened cell. He removed the linen from his tray. A moment later he was whisking aside the robe again.

“
Yoi! Yoi—
good! Morarei-
san
!”

The sergeant returned, still grinning.

“You?” Gonji whispered.

Morales shook his head. “Father Martin—but I didn’t have to bring it.”

Gonji bowed to him, then moved to the floor, where he knelt in grateful silence, running his hands over the quill pen, small cruet inkwell, and parchment that lay beside his food.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As the summer heat slowly permeated the land above, causing the dungeon stones to swelter and the mold to prosper on the slimy upper reaches of the cells, something new altered Gonji’s stoic existence.

Valentina came into his life.

The cell opposite his had been unoccupied for a space of days following the execution of the murderer who had suffered therein.

One morning Sergeant Morales’ face appeared at the grating ahead of the noisy party that wrestled the squalling woman into the cell across from Gonji.

“You’ll like this,” Morales told him. “Something to write about, eh?” He fluttered his eyebrows rakishly.

Gonji scratched absently as he watched the spectacle. He had never heard such vulgarity from a woman.

“Scum-ridden bastards! I’ll rip your
cojones
from between your bowed legs and feed them to you! Come on—one at a time! I’ll send you all writhing into hellfire agonies! Your shriveled members will rot away with the plague, you goddamn—!”

A swing of the iron-clad door batted her down onto her rump. Then the portal was swiftly locked. A nailed hand clawed through the grating at a guard whose scratched face bore evidence of her spirit.

“Meet
La Strega—
The Witch,” Morales told Gonji.

“Valentina de Corsia is my name,” she railed, “and don’t you forget it,
cabron
! Though witch I am, as you’ll all soon see. For you, there’ll be no resisting my spells. You’ll each come lusting after me in the night, and then my curse will
destroy you
!
Bloody bastards! A plague on thee, blackguards! A thousand plagues of pain and misery on
all
you
macho
limp-dicks!”

She noticed Gonji looking at her through the grating. “Dramatic, no? I always wanted to be an actress.” She tipped her head back and laughed coarsely, her humor dissipating a second later. “Well, what the hell are you staring at, slant-eyes? You want something to stare at?”

She tore open the bodice of her soiled dress, struggling with it like a bedlamite before removing the entire garment and throwing it at the wall of her cell. She propped something against her door and stood up on it. Tearing off her nether garments, she displayed her ample bosom.

“How about it, Man of Cathay—a double helping of delight, no? Even you will find a way to break out of your cell and get at me, and then you’ll be pox-ridden like the rest of them.”

“All right, La Strega,” Morales interrupted, “put this on.” He
screaked
open her rusty cell door and threw at her one of the black robes decorated with red devils and the flames of Hades. “Now you really have something to write about,” he told Gonji.

The samurai kept staring at his new neighbor, hoping that what he felt in his loins wasn’t mirrored on his face. He had seen no woman for months, though he had heard the sounds of women prisoners in agony, but their subhuman wailings had helped him keep his thoughts from carnal pleasures; he needed no additional torture to remind him of how cleanly he had been severed from the mainstream of life. But now he would have to readjust, and it would not be easy. His shrunken stomach felt hollow, and his innards flared with the heat of desire such that he began to tremble. His breath soughed through his nose in short gasps. He watched her toss her long, tousled black hair over the cowl of the robe. Her eyes were wild and dark; the kohl that had colored their sultry lids, smeared from her rough treatment by the guards. A small trickle of blood issued from her nose. She wiped it roughly on a sleeve as she peered out into the corridor again.

“You’re probably right,” Gonji found himself saying without thinking, “though I don’t know how I’ll manage it.”

She looked at him dimly a moment till comprehension dawned, and a sour twist came to her rouged lips. “Save it. It’s not you that I want. You’ve enough trouble already.”

Gonji pondered her words awhile, and, still unable to take his eyes off her, he engaged her again. “What have they charged you with?”

She shrilled a harsh laugh. “Impersonating the king—what the hell do you care?” Then her tone changed almost at once. “Sorry. We may need each other to keep from going
loco
in here. Seduction and witchcraft—what did you expect? That’s most of the women in these shit-crusted dungeons, I suppose—seduction and witchcraft. Only they caught me too late—” She had raised her voice to a bellow. “Your captain of artillery knows my curse, knaves, and there is no saving him!”

Gonji listened to her expend her rage for a time, at last growing weary of it. But before he moved back to his daily habits, he remembered something.

“By the way,
senorita
,” he said to La Strega, “I am not from Cathay. I am samurai, from
Dai Nihon—
Japan.”

“Is that so?” she responded archly. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“
Si
,” he replied evenly. “It is.”

Her eyes flickered ever so slightly, but she said nothing. Gonji quietly moved to his mat, where he sat cross-legged, for a long time, with his writing materials. But he scribed nothing as the morning hours dragged by achingly.

* * * *

The evening shift arrived and tilted with Valentina as had the morning sentries. Gonji smiled in spite of himself to hear the endlessly inventive outpourings seasoned with her viper’s tongue. He heard the guards combat her imprecations with curses of their own, or loud prayers and promises of perdition. Then there was a noisy din as her meal tray slammed into a wall.

The samurai went to the grating.

“You’ll have a taste of the rack for that, evil wench,” a spattered soldier was saying.

“Up your ass, you son of a swine and a bitch!”

“Is that possible?” Gonji asked in amusement.

“Same to you,
senor sa-moo-rai
,”
she retorted.

“It was probably just as well that you declined your dinner. Let me tell you something. Only the morning shift can be trusted with a meal.”

“
Oh, gracias, senor
,”
Valentina said, affecting a dainty curtsy. “What business is it of yours? There’s nothing this scum can foul my food with that I haven’t handled before.”

Laughter issued from a couple of the other cells, as Gonji turned away, annoyed and vaguely disgusted. But she halted him.

“Hey, listen.” Her voice was lower now, sincere. “When I say I’ll curse the men in here, I don’t mean you who are captive. Just these strutting bastards who think they rule the world. The ones who think they can have their way with any woman. What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. Call me Gonji.”

“Gon-
shee—
what does it mean?”

“It’s my given name. Since we’re equals in this hellhole, you may call me Gonji-
san
. Or if you like, since you’ve recognized that I’m superior to these barbarians, you may call me Gonji
-sama.
”

“It remains to be seen whether you’re superior, my dear,” she said suggestively.

He chortled. “Gonji-
san
, then. I take it you’ve had a lifetime of grief from the soldier class,
neh
?”

Valentina sighed bitterly. “Since I was thirteen. When my Milanese mother died of the plague. I inherited her irresistible Italian charms. Well, you didn’t think I blossomed like this yesterday, did you? I was a waif of the streets when I was thirteen. The brutes used to take their pleasure with me. Sometimes I could live with it. Other times…Finally I learned to hate what I’d become. And
them
,
for having done it to me. I prayed, but there was no deliverance. So I began to curse them and curse them until one day Satan gave me power over them. Now
I
am on the attack! I take them, writhing in torment, to their graves. Of course it takes time, but they all die. I am on a crusade, you see. I intend to send every man I hate to a plague-ridden death by my touch. I bequeath my curse with every pleasure they take of me, and I’ve bedded my share, mind you.”

Gonji felt a sympathetic pang. His lips parted twice before he spoke. “You have…the disease of the Gauls?”

“What are you talking about?” she roared. “What I have is power—the dark power they
fear
!”

“Only the power that’s destroying half this filthy continent.”

“Disease of Gauls,” she repeated disdainfully. “What do you know?”

She lowered her head to the grating, and when she spoke again, her voice was muffled. “Do they have it in your land?”

“Rarely. Only since the Spaniards came. Of course, they blame the Dutch, and the Dutch blame the Portuguese and the English. Lately, I think, they’ve all formed a truce and selected the Gauls as the culprits.”

“Can your people drive the evil spirit away?” she asked in a voice suddenly plaintive but devoid of hope.

“
Iye.
So sorry. All they can do is drive the
Yoroppan
traders away.”

“I’ve tried sarsaparilla. It’s supposed to help, you know. Hell, I’m awash in the stuff. Shit, piss, and hellfire! What do I care? My crusade continues, that’s all!”

“Good questing,” Gonji said, moving away from the door, as the guards grumbled at them. He begin his evening meditation, which always seemed to unsettle the guard shift.

* * * *

He lay in a cold sweat, the darkness an almost palpable thing as he drifted in and out of nightmare-haunted sleep.

Huge, leering faces sprouted unseemly appendages that grasped after him, never giving ground, though he ran and ran and arced his sword at them with all the pent-up fury of his long imprisonment.

Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara…

He rode astride Tora again, exhilarated, leaping chasms as if borne on invisible wings, monstrous predators strafing him with gnashing teeth—leaping another gorge inset with the chattering heads of slain enemies who mocked him with their immortality.

Red Blade from the East—

He jolted upright, raising a fending knife hand. He heard only the smothering silence, then the soft moaning from another cell. No murmuring from the guards.

Then—the whispering voice from the cell across the corridor:

“Hurry, Gonji-
san
, there isn’t much time.”

He rushed to the door grating and peered out, saw Valentina’s anxious face but no warden about.

“They’re asleep,” she said, “but we don’t know for how long. We must speak.”

“What is it, Tina-
san
?” For so he had come to call her.

“Don’t call me Valentina. Call me
Domingo
.”

Gonji’s breath rasped as he gathered his reeling thoughts. “Domingo? The witch Domingo Negro?!” And gazing deep into her transformed eyes, he recognized the truth of it. “
Yoi
!
Can you—can you get us out of here?”

She shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid not,
mi amigo
,
though I wish it were so. It’s amusing, you see—they strive so hard to ensnare witches, and now they’ve caught a real one. But not for long—and this one came willingly. It’s a shame I had to sacrifice this troubled woman to get in here, but she was my best chance. They were going to arrest her anyway, I believe, and the cohabitation subjects must be entered through some imperfection. Some physical weakness: Paco’s simple mind; Valentina’s disease—there must be an avenue.”

Gonji was shaking his head. “
Wakarimasen—no entiende—
I
don’t understand. You’re here now. You had the power to get here. Haven’t you some power left to distort space, create a doorway in this wall like with your magic hedge?”

The witch’s eyes closed with finality. “Impossible. This region is firmly fixed in this sphere.”

Gonji’s head bowed. “Then why in hell have you come?” he asked hotly, gloomily. Then, remembering: “How did the assault fare? Obviously you overmatched the Spaniards.”

“Why ‘obviously’?” she countered. “Do you know whence I’ve come? Facile assumptions are dangerous when one is dealing with sorcery.”

The samurai felt a peculiar unease. He looked deeply into her expressive dark eyes. There he found a languid resignation. His mouth opened to speak, but she continued:

“They destroyed it all, Gonji-
san
. Evil power aided them, and I was foolishly complacent. They obliterated the result of generations of life-affirming earth magic. And they destroyed me with it. And my sons.”

“But how?”

“How they did it is not so important as why. That’s why I’ve come to you. As to
how
I’ve come—” She made a low gurgling sound. “I’m not sure, embarrassingly enough. Only believe me when I say that I’ve been given time enough to roam the land of the living apart from my riven body so that I might see things as they are. And, I believe, to set
you
upon a new course. The agents of the Evil Unknown are strong here, and they’ve singled you out for discredit and terrible doom. Somehow, you must identify them. Stop them. Somehow…you are
very
important as an agent of change in this interspheric system.”

“How? Why?” Gonji replied haltingly, befuddled by it all. “And why should I care what evil overtakes
Yoroppa
, after the many painful years I’ve spent here?”

“Because it is…your duty.”

“Duty?” Gonji’s eyes narrowed in bewilderment. “Explain,
por favor
.”

“You’ve spread your influence far and wide on this continent, if unwittingly. You have friends and supporters you may not even be aware of. And it is not merely Europe that is affected. The Evil Unknown recognizes no boundaries. And Gonji—perhaps the dread Akryllon you’ve inquired about yet exists, and its power is presently allied with the side of evil.” She eerily waxed rhapsodic. “
That power must be broken, for the good of all sentient races
! I speak not of the mundane wickedness born of twisted purpose that you see here in this land. I warn you of the silent, deadly, grasping tide of evil that seeks to pervert and control and crush until there is nothing left of freedom in all creation! It seeks you out!
Will you
run from it
?”