Cave of the Shadow Ninja: Part III Read online

  CAVE OF THE SHADOW NINJA

  PART III

  DAVID PARKIN

  Contents

  Title Page

  Map

  Part III: The Curse of the Black Manta

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part IV Preview

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2017 David Parkin.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or

  reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage

  retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, except in the

  case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Library of Congress Catalogue Number: TXu 2-013-773

  [email protected]

  www.daveparkin.com

  Map, title page, and chapter illustrations by Rachel Everett

  Cover art by Danny Haas

  For Junior, who was born in the middle of chapter six.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Let me get this straight,” Patrick said as he eased himself between two serrated pieces of large green glass. “You felt her pull a swing and came up with a theory.”

  “More or less,” Sendai said delicately, sensing the direction in which Patrick was steering the conversation.

  “And just a few seconds later,” the Wolfen continued, “you missed a block, on purpose.”

  “Yes.”

  “As her blade raced for my neck,” Patrick pressed.

  “The theory played out,” Sendai offered, “if I hadn’t done that then—”

  “My neck!” Patrick repeated, holding his throat with a hurtful look. “All my blood is in there!”

  “And I’m glad it still is,” Sendai maintained casually as he jumped from one large glass boulder down to another.

  “Do me a favor, friend,” Patrick said, “next time you formulate a theory, test it on your own neck!” Patrick’s raised voice echoed through the rock walls rising above their heads as the two mercenaries moved down a narrow ravine strewn with shattered glass and protruding weapons.

  Since they entered the treacherous canyon, Patrick and Sendai had witnessed the casting of stars in the thin ribbon of visible sky above them give way to a bright blue morning. After Akiko had stood at the edge of the rising cliffs above the Tomb of Glass and thrown their swords splashing into the dark lake below, the mercenaries were forced to make their way toward the northeastern trench, which was, as their map had described, the nearest canyon with an accessible trail to the frozen battle below.

  After the sound of clashing weapons reached their ears early that morning, followed by the familiar whistle of a samurai warning an opponent of their approach, Patrick and his faithful companion hid well through the night, fearing the Sons of Sato and their well-trained blades might be closing in.

  After dropping down an offshoot of the canyon, cutting off their only way back, the mercenaries were forced to press forward and hope that their map was accurate.

  As he moved across the smooth surface of the glass, Patrick’s boots suddenly lost traction, sending him sliding down a smooth boulder and shattering through a wall of glass icicles. Patrick continued tumbling down the sheer rock, heading toward the remains of two men who had struggled to climb from harm’s way all those years ago. Now their rusty swords and armor joined with the shimmering glass as Patrick and his vulnerable flesh careened toward them.

  As Patrick hit a plateau, he thought quickly before rolling beneath a shield protruding from the flow. With a loud clash, the brass deflected the threatening implements and spared the Wolfen’s pink flesh.

  “I ‘hunger for adventure more than riches,’ do I?” Patrick griped through gasping breath as he peered from beneath the shield. “Well, this canyon is quite a thrill, wouldn’t you say? Yet I’d take two brass shillings to be free of its ‘adventure’ any day.”

  “Look at it this way,” Sendai reminded him, as he appeared above, “the Sons of Sato would be arriving at our camp right about now. Would you rather be here or there?”

  Patrick kept quiet as he looked over his shoulder to an eerily preserved scene of the remains of four men pulling their brothers from the boiling glass. Like always, Sendai had a point. Even if the samurai knew they were in the canyon, considering the treacherous climb, the smart money would be on the two of them never making it out of there alive.

  “Once we get our swords,” Patrick said as he cleared the pieces of glass from his armor, “I say we make our way back to Khot. I’m sure the other bounties across Kaito have primed now that most the hired hands are otherwise occupied with the Ninja.”

  “Once we get our swords,” Sendai replied, “we’re going to find her.”

  “Excuse me?” Patrick demanded, unsure he heard his partner correctly.

  “She needs our help, friend,” Sendai said.

  “I believe she made herself perfectly clear on the subject of us gumming up her plans!” Patrick roared. “She outlined them plainly on my kidneys if you don’t remember.”

  “We’ll need a new strategy,” Sendai admitted. “I don’t think she’ll fall for the cricket in the supply bag a second time.”

  “We’re not going,” Patrick barked. “Forget it.”

  “How would you like to be out here all alone?” Sendai said, his voice reaching that irritatingly calm tone that made Patrick cringe.

  “Oh, could I dare to dream of something so wonderful?” Patrick said. “Imagine that, no little girls bruising my spine and no friends turning into Saint Petronius all of a sudden.” Distracted by his rant, Patrick tripped over the rocks once again, falling toward a crop of rusty spears protruding from the glass. With quick hands, Sendai grabbed the Wolfen’s armor and stopped his friend’s descent before the weapons pierced his face and chest. As he hung there in his partner’s sure grip, Sendai suddenly seemed to make sense. “Now that I think about it,” Patrick said, “you’re always good for a laugh. I think I’ll keep you around.”

  “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Sendai quipped, pulling Patrick back from the jagged rusty metal. Patrick tried to keep from blushing as Sendai dusted him off.

  “Don’t get any ideas, my little sandpiper,” he said. “I’ve seen the kind of trouble you get in when you take those goggles off.”

  “Not to worry, Wolfen,” Sendai assured him, “I don’t think I’m her type.”

  “No?” Patrick hinted, trying not to sound too interested.

  “I think she prefers redheads,” Sendai said as he jumped down to the next boulder, leaving Patrick to think over the theory for a moment.

  “Everyone does,” he finally said with a sigh before following his friend’s descent.

  Patrick would never admit it but in the short time since meeting Akiko, he had thought quite a bit about the mysterious woman beneath the mask. Sure, she was beautiful, smart, and capable, but she was also dangerous. Patrick was torn. Part of him wanted nothing more than to run to her and ask her to take him away from all the violence and the pain, but another part yearned to get as much distance between his neck and her sword as possible.

  Still, he couldn’t deny that he was worried about her. Not for her safety, of course, since he had first hand knowledge of just how well she could take care of herself, but he was concerned for her emotional state. Patrick didn’t need Sendai’s sword-reading skills to see that she was a woman without a kingdom, and as far as he was concerned nobody should face their problems alone.

  The two partners sighed in relief as the large flat river of glass came into view. As they approached the black lake in the distance, the rays of the midday sun shimmered off the surface of the flow beneath their feet, illuminating the dense and impassioned violence frozen in the deep below.

  Together, they approached the lake down the mountain slope and looked over the polished obsidian water and the tall glass obelisk standing on the opposite shore.

  “The Ninja was right,” Patrick griped as a foul smell from the black water wrinkled his nose, “there is something off about this lake. It smells like death.” Sendai nodded in agreement as he gestured toward a stream of dark water flowing into the pool from a crevice in the rock.

  Without choice or hesitation, Patrick stepped into the pool, wading toward its center. The moment the water saturated his boots, however, the Wolfen shuddered. “It’s freezing!” he said as the depth of the water climbed up his legs. “And I can’t make out what’s below the surface. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “Never,” Sendai answered from the shore, a shudder in his voice.

  “I’ll hand it to her,” Patrick offered, “of all the women I've ever met, that one found the most creative way to shrink my manhood.”

  As the water reached Patrick’s belly, something muscular and scaly brushed past the back of his knees.

  “Wonderful,” he said as he stopped, “now there’s something in here with m—” Patrick’s words were cut short as the thing that brushed past him suddenly took hold of his ankle and pulled him below the dark surface with terrifying speed.

  The Wolfen struggled through the blinding water as the mysterious creature forced him deeper into the depths of the lake. With the fight taking much of the strength in his legs, Patric
k kicked free. He tried to swim away, but the deeper he sank, more difficult it was to move. Patrick struggled, pushing uselessly through water as thick as tree sap but without the strength left to propel himself, Patrick fell limp.

  This is it? he thought, Am I really dying like this, in the most ridiculous way possible? I would have been better off killed by a girl.

  As his consciousness began drifting, Patrick’s eyes slammed into focus when the gnarly faces of two evil-looking catfish appeared, swimming toward him.

  His screams bubbled into the ink as the monstrous fish slammed into his stomach and forced what was left of the air from his lungs. Patrick watched his dying breath quiver up through the black as he took a large gulp of thick dark water.

  The instant the liquid entered his stomach, the Wolfen seized, helpless as the two spotted beasts came at him once again.

  The fishes’ jaws protruded from their frame like a gladiator’s chiseled chin. Long thick whiskers grew from the edges of their mouths and in grotesque patches down the length of their bodies. Just as the two leviathans’ jagged, needle-like teeth opened to take a piece of Patrick for their own, Sendai splashed into the dark water from above and pulled the Wolfen up by his armor just in time.

  The angry demons circled again as Sendai shifted, barely dodging their teeth. As he tried desperately to swim, however, Sendai appeared to learn, as Patrick did, about the draining faculties of the strange lake. As the two mercenaries drifted helplessly in the blackness, the monsters swam for them yet again, one from the front, the other from behind.

  As their gnarly teeth closed in, a shimmering sword appeared through the water, slicing one fish in two and stabbing through the other in one slick motion.

  Patrick turned quick to discover their savior floating against the black ink. Did I die? he wondered, scarcely believing the sight was real.

  Before him an old monk swam in billowing orange robes that moved around him like the tangling wrap of a siren. The Wolfen barely had the time to take in the angelic sight before the blackness finally whisked his consciousness away, pulling it fast toward the waiting hands of death.

  COLD RUSHED through Patrick’s veins like crystals of ice as he felt his body grow stiff. There were sounds wrapping around him like ghosts. After a moment, they became cries of pain and clashes of steel.

  Suddenly the blackness gave way to the spinning shapes of blue and gray drifting in and out of clarity. Patrick saw the reflection of the glass outcropping on the other side of the lake. He was perched on top of it, posed along with the dead men inside. He watched a troop of Kaito Royal Guardsmen approach from below and felt a sudden arrogance about how each of them had failed to see him.

  A feeling of invincibility came next as he found himself stalking a man through tall grass, shooting arrows at a group of sleeping soldiers, and flying through the air.

  “Patrick! Patrick!” Sendai’s voice smeared through the dark like swirls of paint in a bucket. A furious slap across his face drew focus to Patrick’s hallucinations until the sight of the glass outcropping appeared once again towering above him against a blue sky. Wait, he thought, is this real?

  The sight faded into the image of a sword cutting through the armor of a Royal guardsman until another slap brought the blue sky back, this time with a breath of consciousness. It was real! Patrick tried desperately to take hold of the world, but his spinning head threatened to throw him back into the nightmares, snarling for him like a pack of war dogs.

  Through his shivering eyelids Patrick saw the monk from the lake appear before him with a rather annoyed look on his face. The old man lifted the Wolfen into a sitting position and punched him in the gut. The impact brought Patrick careening into reality like a runaway cart. He doubled over onto his hands and knees in pain and the monk smashed two clenched fists into the flesh between his shoulder blades.

  In response, a wrenchingly awful sense of nausea tingled across the Wolfen’s scalp and rushed down the back of his neck until he spewed a stomach full of black water onto the glass before of him. Patrick gasped for breath and rolled forward on his hands and knees, attempting to cough the life back into his lungs.

  “Thank you, old man,” Sendai grunted with relief through huffs of lost breath. “I’ve never lost so much stamina so fast.”

  “Black manta settles in water, very dangerous,” the old man said with the thick accent of a Northern Kaitian.

  “Black manta?” Sendai asked, curious.

  “Did you swallow any?” the monk demanded, looking over Sendai with urgency.

  “No,” Sendai assured him.

  “You positive?” he asked. “Could mean life and death here, Sandlander.”

  “I’m clean,” Sendai assured him.

  Life and death? Patrick thought as his poisoned brain struggled to keep up with the rush of information that had come over him in the last few seconds. Standing above him, the monk pulled a small blue bottle from a leather pouch around his neck, dabbed a finger in the substance inside, and shoved it into Patrick’s mouth. Instantly Patrick felt as if his entire body were rejecting his own heart and lungs.

  “Bruuugggg!” Patrick vomited again. “What’re you doing?” he coughed, feeling his face turn red from the strain.

  “That water off,” the old man declared. “Gotta get it all out.”

  “We’ve heard,” Sendai responded as he placed a hand on Patrick’s shoulder.

  Exhausted, the Wolfen rolled onto his back. “Where did you come from?” he asked the monk, still gasping for breath. The old man answered Patrick’s question by sticking his finger in his mouth yet again, igniting another series of spewing. “Enough, enough!” Patrick begged.

  Satisfied, the monk sat back and looked to the cloudless sky. “You be okay,” he said with confidence. “I’m Yue-Fei. I live here.”

  “You live ‘here?’” Patrick asked, looking to the barren landscape and the endless death surrounding them. The old man nodded before signaling toward the lake.

  “Black manta is a witch’s brew. We used to have big problem with witches ’round here, but Yue-Fei hasn’t seen one in a long time. Tainted water like this moving all across the Backbone. A friend of mine up the road, his cow drink from a patty with black water and turn to a demon with three heads! It take every farmer in the bend to bring it down. Lucky for you, I just raise fish.”

  With his eyes now focused, Patrick finally got a good look at Yue-Fei. The bright orange of his loose and impossibly clean robes stood out as a stark contrast from the dim rock and dark glass of the mountainside. Every visible inch of his hands, feet, neck, and scalp were covered in highly detailed light-blue tattoos so thin and delicate, they faded into the illusion of dark skin from just a few paces away. On his lap, the old man held a thick wooden staff, half a foot taller than he was.

  “You hungry?” Yue-Fei asked, noticing Patrick looking him over. “I cook these up.” The monk turned and pulled one of the demon fish’s severed heads from the water. “Poison seems to cook out,” he continued. “Too bad we can’t cook you up, huh?” Yue-Fei laughed and slapped Patrick on the back.

  “Thanks but we have somewhere to be,” Patrick said, attempting pleasantry through his still churning stomach.

  “You need swords?” Yue-Fei asked, pointing behind a rock where Patrick and Sendai’s own swords had been laid on the glass. “I find them in the water this morning. Yours for five wushu each.”

  As Yue-Fei focused on pulling more fish parts from the water, Patrick stood to protest, but Sendai stopped him with a raised hand suggesting he’d take care of this.

  “I’m a monk,” Yue-Fei continued. “I have no use for money but times are hard.” With more fish parts at his feet, Yue-Fei turned back to the mercenaries. “You shouldn’t be traveling without a sword anyway, very dangerous.”