Laura Rowland - The Dragon King's Palace

The sound of sobbing aroused Reiko to groggy consciousness. She thought Masahiro must have wakened in the night from a bad dream. Maternal instinct compelled her to go to him-but she couldn’t move.

A force like bands of steel locked her legs against each other and her arms at her sides. Confusion blinked her eyes open, but thick, rough material covered her face, and all she saw was blackness. She drew a gasp of surprise, then gagged on something coarse and dry that filled her mouth. Now Reiko became aware that she was moving in rapid, jouncing rhythm, carried by hands that gripped her armpits and ankles. The sobbing continued, accompanied by moans. Panic seized Reiko; her heart lurched.

Where was she? What had happened to her?

Then memory seeped, hideous and dreadful, through the fog of sleep that clung to her mind. Visions of the ambush, the massacre, and the kidnapping assailed Reiko. The cries she heard must belong to Keisho-in, Midori, or Lady Yanagisawa. They were still captive, somewhere that defied imagination.

Terror exploded in Reiko. She wanted to thrash and scream, but that would only waste her strength. Reiko forced herself to be still, urged her somnolent brain to rational thought. She must marshal her wits and learn what she could of her circumstances, discover anything that might prove useful for survival, and keep terror at bay.

Reiko focused her attention first on herself. Ropes tied around her immobilized her body. The material covering her face was the black hood the kidnappers had put on her head. Her tongue tasted the dryness of cotton fabric stuffed in her mouth as a gag. She felt nausea and a throbbing headache that she attributed to the opium the men had poured down her throat, but otherwise she seemed unhurt. Stiffness in her muscles, and a need to urinate, indicated that she’d slept for a time long enough to have traveled a great distance beyond the scene of the abduction and beyond the reach of anyone looking for her.

But perhaps nobody knew yet what had happened. Perhaps she would die before someone came to the rescue.

Fresh panic agitated Reiko like wings fluttering inside her chest. She experienced such an intense stab of longing for Sano and Masahiro that she nearly wept. But she willed herself calm. She directed her senses outward.

Through the thick cloth of the hood, she heard footsteps treading dry leaves. Twigs cracked. Grass rustled. Men’s breaths rasped. Those noises pierced a mesh of sound composed of crickets and cicadas singing and wind rustling through trees. Owls hooted. Ahead of Reiko erupted phlegmy coughs from Lady Keisho-in; behind her, Midori wept. Where Lady Yanagisawa was, Reiko couldn’t tell. She felt branches snag her garments, and cool, damp air; mosquitoes hummed around her. Pine-scented smoke filtered through the hood. Reiko formed a mental picture of the kidnappers carrying her and the other women through a forest at night, their way lit by torches. The commotion signified many more men following. Reiko’s imagination showed her an endless line of hooded, stealthy marching figures.

Suddenly the footsteps slowed; movement halted. In the brief quiet Reiko heard a heavy door scrape open. Motion then resumed, and the atmosphere changed. The forest sounds were muted; the men’s feet shuffled on a stone surface; echoes reverberated. The air was still, warmer, and suffused with a musty odor: They’d entered a building.

As the door thudded shut, Reiko’s body tilted, head upward. The abrupt change of position nauseated her so much that she thought she would vomit and choke. She felt herself ascending, borne by the men whose weight creaked wooden stairs under their feet. They tipped her horizontal at a landing, then climbed more stairs. From above her came the coos of nesting birds frightened by the intrusion, the screech and flutter of bats. The men remained ominously silent. Reiko visualized an abandoned dungeon. Escalating fear prickled her skin.

They reached another landing, mounted another flight of steps, then stopped in a space where the men, redolent of sweat, crowded around Reiko. She heard thuds as they set down burdens. They thumped her onto the floor and released her. The metallic rasp of blades withdrawn from scabbards struck terror into her heart. Hands groped across her body. She keened and writhed helplessly, certain that the kidnappers meant to kill her and her friends. Mews of protest arose from the other women.

The hands on Reiko grasped the ropes that bound her. She felt tugs while a blade sliced through the thick cords. As they fell away, she blindly launched herself toward freedom while grabbing for the dagger under her sleeve.

But the weapon was gone, taken by the kidnappers during the fight. A whirlpool of dizziness drowned Reiko. Her sore muscles collapsed under her weight. She fell back, gasping as the nausea roiled her stomach, awash in cold perspiration. She heard the men bustle away, a door bang shut, and the clank of iron bars dropping into iron latches. Footsteps retreated down the stairs. Tears flooded Reiko’s eyes as she mourned the lost opportunity for escape and cursed her own weakness.

But she squandered no more energy on regret; her concern shifted to her comrades. With hands that felt thick and awkward Reiko tore the hood off her head, the gag from her mouth. She squinted at pale, meager light that came from vertical cracks in the shutters of windows set in the four walls of a square room in which she lay. Outside, far below her, waves splashed, and she smelled the marine scent of the water. As her eyes adjusted, she saw three prone figures on the floor around her.

“Lady Keisho-in!” she called. “Midori-san!” Lady Yanagisawa!”

Feeble cries answered her. Reiko pushed herself upright and breathed deeply for a long moment until the nausea and dizziness ebbed. Then she crawled over to the figure nearest her and removed its hood and gag.

“Ugh!” Lady Keisho-in coughed and sputtered. Her frightened eyes blinked in her haggard, sunken face. “This feels like the worst hangover I’ve ever had. What’s happened to us? What is this place?”

“We’ve been abducted, drugged, and imprisoned,” Reiko said, glad that the shogun’s mother was a tough old woman capable of surviving the experience. “I don’t know where we are, except high up near a lake or sea in the middle of a forest.”

Lady Keisho-in made a clumsy attempt to rise. She said, “I need to make water.”

Reiko looked around the room. It was unfurnished, the floor made of bare planks, the walls surfaced with peeling white plaster. Two metal buckets sat in a corner. Reiko fetched a bucket and helped Lady Keisho-in sit upon it.

After she’d urinated, Keisho-in said, “I’m so thirsty. I must have a drink.”

Reiko also felt a terrible thirst that parched her mouth and throat. Searching the room, she found a ceramic jar of water in another corner. She and Keisho-in drank eagerly, though the water was lukewarm and tasted of minerals.

Groans emanated from the prone figure whose mountainous belly identified her as Midori. She’d rid herself of the hood and gag, and as Reiko hurried to her, she retched.

“I’m going to be sick,” she said.

Reiko dashed for a bucket. Midori vomited while Reiko held her head. Afterward, Midori sat up and clutched her stomach, hands frantically pressing, rubbing.

“My baby.” Fright thinned her voice, widened her eyes. “It hasn’t moved since I woke up.”

She and Reiko sat in momentary speechless terror that the opium-or the trauma suffered by Midori-had killed the unborn child. Then Midori began to sob.

“No, oh, please, no!” she wailed.

“The baby will be fine,” Reiko said, hoping she spoke the truth. “It’s just asleep. Lie down and rest. Don’t worry.”