Quillblade (10 page)

Lenis ignored the captain's question and hurried back to the
Hiryû
with the rest of the crew, no longer caring what the captain did to him. He had to make sure Missy was all right, had to know what had happened to her. Yami had far outstripped them, but they soon reached the airdock and boarded the airship.

Yami was waiting for them on deck. The swordsman had smoothed his hair into its tail and now stood in front of the hatch leading below decks. ‘The doctor is caring for her. He asks that you leave him in peace for the moment. He will call us when he has seen to Miss Clemens.'

Shin strode up to the swordsman, stopping with her face only inches from his. ‘It is true what they say about you. I saw you change on the battlefield. You really are cursed!'

Lenis's top lip quivered. She seemed far more interested in Yami than in Missy.

The swordsman avoided her gaze. ‘It is true.'

Hiroshi spat over the railing. ‘I knew it!'

‘What are you all gabbling about?' Kenji demanded.

‘Yûrei no Gôshi Yami is a cursed man, Mister Jackson.' Shin's eyes never left the swordsman's face. ‘Surely you have heard the rumours of the man with two souls?'

‘No, I haven't.'

‘Everyone has heard the tale of Sir Yami the Cursed.'

‘Well, why doesn't
everyone
just tell me what it is?' Kenji snapped.

The captain motioned Shin to move back and then placed himself between Yami and the rest of the crew. ‘I will tell you the tale, Mister Jackson. Forty years ago, the Yûrei clan sided with the Shôgo clan during the Divine Restoration. The two clans had long been allies, so it was not surprising the Yûrei supported the Warlord's claim that he only wielded his power to defend Shinzô from the Demon threat. The rebels of the Divine Restoration movement demanded the Warlord relinquish that power back to the Emperor. Their first act of open aggression was the attempted assassination of the Warlord's young cousin, Shôgo no Assen Chi, the woman responsible for assembling the
Hiryû
's crew. Chi was saved by a man named Yûrei Hikari, who died defending her. Gôshi Yami was also present during the attack and later attempted to commit ritual suicide to atone for his failure to protect Hikari, the heir to his clan. Somehow, Sir Yami survived the ordeal and rumours spread that ever after he had been cursed.'

‘Demon cursed,' Hiroshi said.

‘I was cursed, but not by a demon,' Yami said softly. ‘The restless soul of a long dead Kystian warrior was sealed within my breast. Gawayn. He thwarts any attempt to end my life.'

‘Suicide is forbidden in Kyst,' Arthur told them. ‘Ancient warrior tradition holds that it is a cowardly and unholy act. It leaves the soul trapped in the body after death, or so they say.'

‘And this Gawayn can take control of your body?' Shin took a step towards him.

Yami nodded. ‘He has no notion of true Shinzôn honour, and so he will not let me die. I can control him most of the time.'

‘Most of the time?' Kenji asked dryly.

‘Gawayn's spirit not only seeks to preserve my life, but has an unquenchable desire to slay Demons. At times their presence is enough to rouse him.'

Arthur crossed his arms over his chest and managed to look sterner than ever. ‘Complications.'

‘I will not allow Gawayn to prevent me from fulfilling my duty,' Yami said.

During the exchange Lenis had made his way to the forward hatch. He tried not to make any noise as he lifted the wooden latch and entered the galley. Long Liu's cabin was below the foredeck, with its door leading into the galley. Lenis raised his hand.

‘Come in, patient-brother,' the doctor called before he had a chance to knock.

Lenis squared his shoulders and opened the door. His sister lay on a thin bunk in the centre of the cabin. The walls were lined with shelves full of vials with wispy gases and strange liquids in them. There were also silver instruments with unfathomable uses, a mortar and pestle, a series of earthenware jugs, numerous leather-bound books and a small, portable stove. On the rear wall was another bunk, covered in straw.

His sister's labouring breath filled the cluttered infirmary. Missy's chest rose and fell in an unsteady rhythm, but still Lenis felt nothing from her. Her eyes were closed.

Lenis took her limp hand. ‘What's wrong with her?'

‘Mm, very grave.' Long Liu shook his untidy mane. ‘Raikô Lord take soul.'

‘What?' Lenis looked sharply at the old man. He had heard enough of captive souls for one day!

‘She summon Raikô Lord.' How did he know
that?
The doctor ground the marble pestle into its mortar. ‘Raikô Lord not himself. Very sick. Very angry. Very sad. Take sister-patient soul.'

‘How?'

The old man shrugged. ‘Totem powerful.'

‘Will she be all right?'

Long Liu lifted Missy's other arm from where it lay on her chest. ‘Bracelet keep her here for time. Not all time, but time still. Bestia-speakers only talk. Good Bestia-speakers can go. Best Bestia-speaker go for long time. But must come back. Patient-brother must go and get sister-patient soul back from Raikô Lord.'

‘Get her soul back? From where? How?'

The doctor laughed and capered around the room. ‘Sister-patient sleep-go but can't return. Raikô Lord has her! Raikô Lord has her!' When he came back to stand beside Missy's prone form, his face was serious. ‘You are full of questions, Lenis Clemens.' All traces of his accent were gone. ‘That is a good thing. You must go and speak to the World Tree.
There
you will get answers.'

Lenis stared at the old man. ‘World Tree?'

‘Out you go! Patient-brother leave sister-patient to rest.' The old man grabbed Lenis by the wrist and hurried him to the door.

‘Wait, what –'

‘No time! No time!' Long Liu thrust Lenis out into the galley and slammed the door shut.

The galley was full. Lenis's first thought was to turn around and bang on the door, but he couldn't do it with everyone watching him.

The captain looked up from a conversation he was having with Arthur. ‘How is your sister, Master Clemens?'

‘I don't know,' he stammered. ‘Master Long just mumbled some nonsense and kicked me out!'

‘Master Long is a very good doctor. You should trust he knows what he's doing.'

Lenis didn't
want
to trust some crazy doctor to look after his sister. What made the captain think he had any idea what Master Long was doing in there? He was probably brewing some potion or chanting some stupid spell. But what could Lenis do about it? The others didn't seem to think Missy's condition was a priority.

‘What happened out there?' Andrea pushed herself away from the wall and strode around the galley, clearly agitated. ‘That was more like a staged battle than a rout. Those Demons were organised.'

Hiroshi cleared his throat. ‘Demons don't have the mental capacity to act together. They're worse than beasts, I tell you!'

‘Well, they all seemed to be working together today,' Andrea countered. ‘And what was that ...
thing?
'

Tenjin rubbed his eyes. ‘I think I can explain that.' The captain nodded for him to proceed. ‘It is true that most Demons do not have the mental capacity to function in an organised manner. They are creatures of instinct only. But there are a few Demons in the Wastelands that are clearly something more. They have a cold intelligence, a cruel disposition. We call them
Onishu
in Shinzô, which translates as “Demon Lord” in the common tongue, but “Jinn” was what they were once called. Totem are the only ones strong enough to fight the Jinn.'

‘Wait a minute.' Kenji waved his hand in the air. ‘All this talk of Totem and Jinn and Lords – they don't teach this stuff in Puritan schools. What's going on?'

Tenjin turned to him. ‘You have seen Bestia. They are elemental creatures descended from beings known as Totem. There are nine Totem, guardians sent to protect our world from harm. Before the Wastelands appeared, however, there were also creatures known as the Lilim – spirits with physical forms who gain power by forming pacts with humans. They are capable of great mischief, even evil. In the same way that the Bestia descended from the Totem, the Lilim descended from the Jinn, a race of creatures who were equal in power to the Totem. The Jinn guarded the spirit world, and like the Totem were nine in number.'

‘What do you mean
were?
' Kenji asked. ‘I thought we just saw one of these Jinn.'

The old records keeper sighed and seemed to fold in on himself. When he spoke again his voice was husky, as though his throat was tight. ‘Three hundred years ago, after the Great War, a miasma began to spread throughout the world. Wherever it spread, the Wastelands grew and Demons appeared. Any creature that remains in the Wastelands for too long becomes infected by its taint. The Demons that first appeared were just ordinary beasts, driven mad by the sickness. They were ferocious, but they lacked true power. The Wastelands only began to spread when the Lilim were corrupted. Now it seems that the Jinn have also fallen, which means the Wastelands have penetrated deep into the spirit realm and will only spread further.'

Lenis shivered. Kenji was right. They didn't teach such things in Pure Land, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't have bothered teaching them to a slave. How lucky the Puritans were to live in a land with no Demons and no Wastelands!

‘So the Demon Jinn can get the lesser Demons to work together?' Arthur asked.

‘It seems so.'

‘What happened with Raikô?' Lenis didn't care about Jinn or Lilim. All he wanted was to help his sister. ‘If he's supposed to be a guardian, why did he do that to Missy?'

There were startled gasps from the other crewmembers. So, Tenjin hadn't told them what Missy had done.

The old man hid his arms in his robe. ‘I believe Raikô
has been attacked by Demons. He was not himself when he appeared above the battlefield. That is why he took her soul.'

Tenjin looked right into Lenis's eyes. Lenis could feel the old man's guilt, and he knew Tenjin hadn't known what would happen to his sister, but that didn't mean Lenis had to forgive him. Neither did the fact he hadn't told anyone it was Missy who had summoned Lord Raikô. Just because they shared a secret didn't make things all right between them.

The captain stood abruptly. ‘The Demons are attacking the Totem. They are growing stronger. We must make haste.'

‘Finally!' Kenji also leapt to his feet. ‘Let's get out of here.'

‘No, Mister Jackson. We are not leaving Gesshoku just yet.'

‘Then where are we hurrying off to?' the navigator asked.

‘We must go into the Wastelands.'

Missy crouched on the stone floor. She knew that at any moment the slave traders would come and drag her out into the light again. She savoured the darkness. It was calm, quiet, safe. No one could buy her if she hid in the dark with her brother.

... brother ...

Where was Lenis? He was never more than a few feet away. Always there. Always close. She groped after him in the dark but couldn't find him. Missy curled into a ball and wept.

She felt something soft settle over her shoulders and looked up. The darkness was empty, but the cloak blocked out the chill of the stone. She pulled the strange fabric closer to her and continued to cry.

‘Calm yourself, Misericordia Clemens.' The rasping voice echoed all around her.

Missy screamed and buried her face in her hands.
This isn't a slave pen. Think! I was in Gesshoku. With Lenis. Then the Demons came. Then I tried to summon –

‘I have need of you.'

Lord Raikô's words thundered in her ears and shook her body, forcing her teeth to chatter together. Missy tried to cast off the cloak and run, but she could not. The fabric settled over her, suffocating her, holding her down. She was trapped.

Arthur raised his hand until the crew fell silent. ‘Captain Shishi, this is madness! What possible reason could there be to go into the Wastelands?'

The captain's lip curled upwards. ‘Curiosity, Lord Knyght.'

The Kystian noble stared at the captain with his arms crossed over his chest. ‘We should leave Gesshoku now, Captain.'

‘Do you not wonder why a Shôgo airship would fly into the Wastelands just before a Demon attack, leaving Gesshoku apparently undefended? It is the Warlord's duty to repel Demon attacks, yet that airship did not stop to help defend the village when the warning bells sounded. If we had not been here the Demon Lord and his minions might have overrun Gesshoku and invaded Shinzô. What could have been more important to the Shôgo? The only thing out there is the ruin of a Totem's temple.'

Arthur opened his mouth to answer and then pressed it into a thin line.

‘Captain,' Shin began, ‘even if the Shôgo are interested in Seisui's temple, that doesn't mean –'

‘Lord Tenjin is correct.' The captain rose from his chair. ‘The Demons have been attacking the Totem. They have been systematically eliminating our defences. There is only one Totem remaining. Seisui.'

‘This cannot be true.' Tenjin covered his face with one of his sleeves.

Arthur creased his brow even further. ‘What does this mean?'

‘If Seisui falls,' Captain Shishi went on, ‘there will be nothing to stop the Demons from invading Shinzô. The Shôgo's forces will not be strong enough to repel them.'

Lenis had only half been listening to the babble around him. ‘What about Raikô?' he mumbled. No one seemed overly concerned about what had happened to his sister.

‘I thought he had fallen long ago,' the captain told him. ‘I am not convinced that the creature that emerged from that cloud was Lord Raikô at all.'

‘You don't mean it might have been a Demon?' Tenjin's voice came from behind his sleeve.

‘It is possible.'

Lenis rounded on the captain. ‘A Demon has my sister?'

‘We cannot know that. Seisui must be our priority now. If we lose her then we have lost everything. Shinzô will fall to the Demons.'

Arthur cleared his throat. ‘Very well, Captain. I will accompany you into the Wastelands.'

The captain bowed to his first officer. ‘Thank you, Lord Knyght. We will take the landcraft. Master Clemens, prepare the Bestia.'

Lenis staggered backwards until he pressed against the infirmary door. ‘I can't. I have to stay with Missy.'

The captain stared him down. There was no animosity, no anger, but neither was there any sense that the captain would relent. ‘Speed is essential. Shamutar and his Demon horde could return at any moment. The landcraft is the quickest way to travel through the Wastelands. You are the only one who can pilot it.'

‘Who else will we take?' Arthur asked.

Yami had been crouching in a corner, trying, no doubt, to keep out of everyone's way. He stood now. ‘I will go.'

The captain turned to him. ‘You will not.' The swordsman's face darkened. ‘We cannot risk Gawayn taking control of you in the middle of the Wastelands.' Yami looked as though he might protest, but Captain Shishi continued, ‘Lord Tenjin will come with us. I may need his help to decipher any writings we come across in Seisui's temple.'

Arthur placed his hands on the table in front of him and pushed himself to his feet. ‘Then let's go.'

Captain Shishi nodded. ‘It appears we are to become temple raiders for a time! I want the rest of you to return to
Gesshoku and provision the
Hiryû
for a prolonged journey. We do not know what our next course will be.'

‘Yes, sir,' the crew responded, and filed out of the mess hall.

‘Come on, boy,' Hiroshi called to Lenis. ‘Fetch that Bestia of yours and leave your sister to the doctor.'

Lenis nodded mutely and returned to his engine room. He had been given an order. It was as simple as that. It wasn't a slave's place to worry about his sister. The captain could always organise another communications officer if this one died, just as he could replace any other damaged part of the airship.

When he got to the engine room, Lenis went to the Bestia hutch. Terra was slender, with long legs, brown fur, and a deer-like tail. As Lenis lifted him out of the hutch his eyes widened and Lenis held him tightly against his chest. He was close to crying and sought comfort in his Bestia's fur. What if the captain got rid of him before he could find this World Tree and restore his sister's soul? No one would buy a slave in Missy's condition. They would be separated. That was assuming Lenis survived a trip into the Wastelands, of course. A shudder ran through his body. He was about to venture into the most dangerous place in the world. Demons were only a part of it. The Wastelands could infect him.

Terra rubbed his cheek against Lenis's face, trying to comfort him. Lenis took a steadying breath, wrapping Terra's comfort around himself. Missy. He had to think about how
he was going to help his sister. That crazy old doctor had told him he needed to speak to the World Tree. He had no idea what that was, but he knew someone who might. Tenjin knew all sorts of things, and the man was responsible for what had happened to Missy. Lenis vowed he would ask the records keeper about it at the first opportunity. He just had to try and think of a way to get him alone. Perhaps in the Wastelands the two could talk privately.

Lenis found it hard to breathe past the lump in his throat. He could feel Terra's comfort blanketing him, dampening his rising panic, but it was still there, smouldering, waiting to break free of the calm Lenis was forcing on himself. He somehow managed to haul himself and Terra up on deck. The others had already removed the landcraft from its hold and were attaching chains to it so they could lower it to the ground. The landcraft had four wheels that were taller than Lenis and it could seat five people comfortably. Lenis placed Terra in the machine's engine block, located between the front two wheels, and crawled up into the driver's seat just above and behind it. His chest felt chilled now that he was no longer holding the Bestia to him, and his muscles tightened against the cold. The terror began creeping back. He was about to journey into the Wastelands.

Definitely not the best day of my life,
he thought, and almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Tenjin climbed into one of the seats behind Lenis, and Arthur and the captain sat in the back. Once they were all
settled, Kenji and Shin manoeuvred the airship's winch into position and swung them out over the railing. Lenis thought about his sister and Long Liu's strange rant. It was easier than thinking about where he was about to go. Could someone really lose their soul? Have it taken away from them? It seemed too unreal, but if the story of Yami were true then it
was
possible. He just had to corner Tenjin and demand the old man help him find the World Tree.

The jolting ride down to the base of Gesshoku airdock rattled Lenis's entire frame, but even the discomfort couldn't distract him from his sister. They landed heavily and Terra started the engine. Lenis turned his thoughts to steering the landcraft through the village's open gates and on towards the Wastelands. The people of Gesshoku came to stare at them, no doubt wondering why anyone would choose to venture into the realm of the Demons. They were right to wonder.

Tenjin tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Pull up your scarf. Try not to breathe the miasma.'

Lenis considered ignoring him. He was irrationally reluctant to take the records keeper's advice. Anger sparked inside, strong enough to push aside the fear. Lenis nurtured it, but common sense won out eventually and he pulled the strip of fabric up to cover his mouth and nose.

They sped west as though Terra could sense Lenis's impatience. The gentle Bestia made no complaint, but Lenis knew he was pushing him too hard.
It's just for a little while. Just long enough to get to the temple ruins and back to the
Hiryû.

The stench coming from the Wastelands was stronger than it had been up on Gesshoku's wall, and it grew ever more so as they approached. Lenis had to grind his teeth to keep from gagging. The others showed no signs of discomfort, but their scarves were tied tightly and he could tell they were breathing hard. The air smelt too sweet to be pleasant. Everyone held their breath as they finally passed into the Wastelands.

The sight of the devastation around him drove all thoughts of Missy out of Lenis's mind. As they drove along, patches of greenish fog seemed to give way before them to reveal glimpses of tainted land, only to creep back up behind them, surrounding them, cutting them off from the relative safety of Gesshoku and its walls. The trees they passed were bent at strange angles and their bark peeled away to reveal seeping cores of golden-red sap. The lichen that clung to them could have been the remains of decades-old flesh. Beneath their wheels the grass snapped.

But it was not only the vegetation that was cursed. The ground itself was a patchwork of unwholesome colours. The rocky surfaces were uniformly grey; the soggy turf beneath the grass was not the dense brown of soil but a glossy, yellow-tinged quagmire. Unnaturally green veins ran through everything, gathering into large tracts or chasms of earth that glowed, fluorescent, beneath the shroud of vapour. Still other parts were a light tan colour that might have looked like sand if it weren't so smooth. The interplay of dark and vivid patches on an ashen field made Lenis think of a diseased hide,
as though the flesh of the earth itself was rotting. Even more unsettling, Lenis could
feel
the corruption in the terrain. He hadn't sensed anything like it before. It felt like nausea, but that could just have been coming from his stomach.

‘We're here.' Captain Shishi's sudden words jolted Lenis from his reverie. ‘Master Clemens, please turn off the engine.'

As he did so, Lenis peered through the miasma. He had stopped the landcraft on a ridge overlooking a small depression, at the bottom of which was a temple shrouded in the heady vapour of the Wastelands. From their vantage point there was no mistaking the figure etched above the gaping entrance of the temple. It looked just like the dragon from Lenis's dream.

A slight breeze blew the miasma back and Lenis guessed the building to be roughly square in shape, though the temple's far reaches were still cloaked and could have hidden outbuildings or other structures and corridors. The walls leant inwards, supporting a flat roof, and the dark rectangle under the carved dragon was large enough to have allowed Shamutar the Demon Jinn to enter without stooping. The well-defined lines of the walls and untarnished façade of the temple made it seem out of place in the rotting world that surrounded it. Only the tiniest slivers of green and yellow showed at the edges of the stonework, mute evidence that the Wastelands were eager to send their poisonous tendrils into Seisui's temple.