The Forbidden Library (43 page)

*****

High in the Orichomo Mountains they met. Tepebono stood before the Winter Gate and lifted Fangthorn. An hour earlier he had stopped and placed an arrow made entirely of white steel on the floor of a cave deep within the mountain. White steel was incredibly rare in Okoro.

“I am here!” Tepebono shouted.

From the violent storm raging above, a lightning bolt struck, and on the blast mark appeared Naruwakiru in her human form. Beside her, in binding chains, slumped the Lady Amasan.

Tepebono handed over the sword and Naruwakiru shoved Amasan into his arms. 

“The binding on those chains will release once I’m gone,” Naruwakiru said, smiling. She trailed a sparking finger along Fangthorn’s blade. Hannya cried out in pain. “My revenge and the key to our lord’s rebirth, all at once. Did you miss me little Earth Dragon?”

“Hannya, attack!” Tepebono ordered unexpectedly. 

Forced by his command, she instantly billowed forth from the sword and in her dragon form struck Naruwakiru, knocking her back against the gate’s arch. Flame and shadow met wind and lightning, and for a few moments their battle raged. But Tepebono had been right. Even in her human form, Naruwakiru was now more powerful than Hannya had ever been. Naruwakiru drew down power from the storm above and smote Hannya.

Tepebono chanted a spell and broke the binding on Lady Amasan’s chains. But they were too late to help. While Hannya was reeling, Naruwakiru locked her palm against the blade and shouted a command that burned a new binding rune onto the hilt of the sword: the
Mark of the Storm Dragon
. 

“You are mine forever, Earth Dragon,” Naruwakiru said as Hannya seeped harmlessly back into the blade. “Now, shall we —” Naruwakiru spotted Amasan, and Hannya saw it through her eyes. The Shogakami of the Winds was pointing at the storm cloud above which had ceased to rage when Naruwakiru struck Hannya. “What are you —”

The white-steel arrow shot out from the cave and flew into the storm cloud. There was a sharp bang followed by a single, deafening peel of thunder. Naruwakiru vanished. The storm dissipated. And down fell the Storm Dragon’s jade heart. It fell into Amasan’s hand. The white steel had only cracked the surface.

“It will heal over in time,” she said, “but it would take powerful magics to resurrect her.'

“We must lock her heart away,” said Tepebono. “I know the perfect place.”

*****

Tepebono spoke spell after spell for days on end, but nothing worked. At last he gave up. 

“I can break the binding I put on you, Lady Hannya, but I can’t break the
Mark of the Storm Dragon
. Only Naruwakiru could do that. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“So I’m trapped in this blade … forever …”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?!” Hannya shouted. Her voice coming from the sword shook the earth and cracked the walls in Tepebono’s workshop. “You took away my freedom!”

“It was the only way we could defeat her. And I knew you’d want to see Naruwakiru stopped.”

“The plan was idiotic, and you know it! You traded my freedom for Amasan’s!”

“If ever I find a way to release you, I swear that I will do so.”

“I hope you rot in Torment, Tepebono. I wish now that you’d freed the Blood King so I could see him slowly tear you and your precious Amasan to shreds.”

Tepebono started to saying something else, but Hannya howled incoherently at him until the blade started to smoke. Tepebono set it down and Amasan pulled him off to the side. 

“We must hide her away,” she said. “Bound like this Hannya is too dangerous. Someone else might one day find a way to use her and free the Blood King.”

“I know a place where we can hide her,” Tepebono muttered. “An island no one knows about. Bound by sea, the Earth Dragon will be hidden away, her power reduced.”

*****

Sea air whipped against her. Lady Amasan and Tepebono took Fangthorn to a shrine on an uninhabited island thirty leagues off the coast of Zangaiden. Few ships would ever be able to sail here through the reefs. They plunged the blade into a white marble slab and departed.

The sea sloshed outside. Gulls cried, zipped through spindrift, and plunged after prey. Seals barked on the shore. Storms rolled over. No one ever came. Days passed, years passed, centuries passed. A few people came at last and built a tiny shrine and worshiped her. The
Mark of the Storm Dragon
had weakened and Hannya won enough freedom that she could billow forth from the blade, but only so far. She was anchored to the blade and the ruby kavaru in the pommel. 

Still, she emerged rarely. Only enough that the worshipers would remain and she wouldn’t be alone. But that was a lie she told herself. She was utterly alone, always. 

She missed freedom. She even longed for war and heartbreak, and for the days before she became the dragon. She wished now that she had sipped from the bowl offered to her by the Blood King, for her soul had fallen into Torment all the same.

Millennia passed. The sun turned red. The world grew cold. Then someone of power came to the island, a Kaiaru she had known in the distant past: Ooloolarra. She took pity and tried to free Hannya from the blade, but she too failed, even with the mark now diminished.

“I wish to build my Grand Library here,” Ooloolarra said.

“Do whatever you wish,” Hannya replied. “I do not care.”

Her existence became nothing but darkness and suffocation and the endless awareness of both. And yet she could feel the world, whispering to her as a dream, as it aged and iced over. The sea stopped crashing against the shore. The gulls stopped crying. Time ceased to have any meaning to her. The Keepers came and they did nothing for her, never even making an attempt.

And then one day, Naruwakiru called on Kaiwen Earth-Mother, and her … now
his
… cries resonated through the earth and even into the Shadowland. And Hannya heard them like a trumpet blaring a note of hope. She awakened from her stupor. And she knew, beyond any doubt, that Naruwakiru would come to the blade again. How the Storm Dragon had returned, she did not know and did not care. He was back. He would come to her. She would kill him. She would have her revenge. That was all that mattered. Not freedom. That had lost all meaning to her. Only a single death mattered: Naruwakiru’s. And she was certain that she could manage it, despite the binding. She’d prepared herself, imagining what she’d do a million times, should this day ever come.

*****

Turesobei became himself again, his awareness slamming back into his brain as if pounded in by a hammer. Panting … overwhelmed … he laughed … he screamed … he burst into tears … he sang … he whimpered … he curled up into a tiny ball, muttering, rocking himself.

Hannya loomed over him, laughing.

“And to think, we have only just begun, Naruwakiru, and already you are breaking.”

*****

He became aware of himself again. Darkness spread through his mind. Pain through his body. How much time had passed? Minutes? Hours? He faded in and out of himself. At times he saw himself through her eyes, as if he’d already left the world and his spirit had drifted into her. Tendrils of her shadows wrapped around his throat, squeezing ever so gently. A fourth trip through Hannya’s worst moments would kill him. The last time, though he remembered little of it, she had taken him deep into her past, before she came to Okoro. 

He was dying. He thought of all the ones he’d loved. He wished he could see them one last time. He thought of Iniru’s last words to him.

There was one choice left to him.

The Storm Dragon.

He opened the channel.

Chapter 53

As the
Mark of the Storm Dragon
blazed bright on Turesobei’s cheek, the power of Naruwakiru poured into him. The tendril of shadow around his neck snapped away. Lightning fired up from the floor and through his spine. Thunder boomed in the chamber. The walls shook. The floor cracked. The last of the cedar beams fell from the ceiling. 

Turesobei’s eyes blazed with electric fire. Wings of mist unfurled from his back. His body began to change, flesh becoming compressed storm cloud, his bones turning into ice. He stood, still human for a few more moments. Howling winds circled him. Sparks danced along his limbs. 

He snarled at Hannya and she cackled with joy.

“Oh, this is so much better,” the Earth Dragon said, her veins of volcanic energy pulsing. “The wait has almost been worth it. I will defeat you in your dragon form.”

Turesobei heaved a bolt of lightning. The shadows that made Hannya’s body parted and the bolt passed through harmlessly. Then, unexpectedly, the lightning diverted its course. Hannya screamed as the bolt struck the storm mark on Fangthorn’s hilt and was absorbed into the blade. “Nooo!”

Though he was changing rapidly, Turesobei wasn’t the dragon, not yet. And now he had a plan to avoid that fate, but he had to move fast. In a few more moments he would fully expand into his dragon form. Possibly forever since he wasn’t a Kaiaru like Hannya who’d spent years mastering the power within.

Hannya rocketed toward him, but Turesobei fired another bolt through her. When the bolt contacted the sword, Hannya cried out and drew away. Body shifting, face elongating, Turesobei charged forward and dove onto the marble block. He unleashed the most intense burst of storm energy he could muster and grabbed the sword, placing his hand directly onto the
Mark of the Storm Dragon.

“Return to the blade!” he commanded.

With a tremendous thunderclap and a flash of blinding light, Hannya’s form dissipated. The blast cracked the floor, the walls, and the ceiling.

Dust rained down on him.

Dust … onto his human body … He was free from the Storm Dragon. He gasped in pain. He wasn’t free from the wound on his chest, though, and the vigor given to him by the storm energy was fading fast.

The blade vibrated and hummed like a tuning fork, but Hannya was silent … for now at least. The black-steel sword had soaked up the excess storm energy just as it had once drawn in her earth energy. The blade had saved him from becoming the Storm Dragon.  

Shaking, he drew the black blade from the stone as easily as if he were drawing it from a sheathe. He flipped the sword to view both sides of the broad, symmetrical blade. No one made two-handed longswords like this anymore, not from any material. It was an ancient Tengba Ren design he’d seen only in pictures. The Chonda Clan’s white-steel swords, over a thousand years old, were of a newer, smaller design than this one. 

The binding runes blazed with blue-white fire and suddenly he realized something. In the visions, he had watched Tepebono repeatedly fail to break them because he had to first undo the powerful
Mark of the Storm Dragon
on the hilt. Only the Storm Dragon could do that. Which meant Turesobei could do it. And though he had no idea how to cast bindings this complex and powerful, thanks to Tepebono he knew the commands to break them. Turesobei could free Hannya and trade her freedom for cooperation. 

Though he wasn’t certain why that was necessary. She was bound and could be commanded. That had been Naruwakiru’s plan for her, yet Ooloolarra had told him he
needed
Hannya’s willing cooperation. There was something else to this. Did Ooloolarra think he couldn’t command Hannya because he wasn’t Kaiaru? Or because he’d have to become the Storm Dragon to make the commands work? Or was it because that binding had weakened over the years? Hannya could free herself partly from the sword on her own now after all. Maybe commanding her to do something she strongly resisted could no longer be managed.

The blade stopped vibrating. And then he felt Hannya clouding his thoughts, trying to influence him through the blade, through the connections they had made in his Shadowland nightmare and through the visions she had imposed on him. She would attack him with the visions of her torment again. She wasn’t through fighting him in any way she could. The power he’d blasted her with and the command he’d spoken had restrained her physical manifestation, though probably not for much longer.

“Do we have to do this?” he asked. “If I have to command you to cooperate, I will.”

Her voice entered his mind through the sword. “Go ahead and try. Do you think Amasan hid me here for no reason? You were always so arrogant, Naruwakiru. Even at your strongest, you would have had to fight me for control every moment you wielded me. And these bindings have grown weak over the last thirteen millennia.”

“I don’t want to make you do anything.” He couldn’t constantly call on enough kenja to control her anyway. He’d end up tapping the storm sigil and then he’d end up being the Storm Dragon for good. Or he’d go to sleep one night and get eaten by a dragon. “Look, we can work together. We are not enemies.”

“You are Naruwakiru reborn. And I will have my revenge!”

“I’m
not
Naruwakiru!”