Cave of the Shadow Ninja: Part I Read online

  CAVE OF THE SHADOW NINJA

  DAVID PARKIN

  Contents

  Title Page

  Map

  Part 1: Enter the Ninja

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part II 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.

  PROLOGUE

  “This one’s different,” Shilo whispered. Something he couldn’t put his finger on filled his belly with angst.

  “I’ve never seen workers flee a compound like that,” Gishan agreed.

  “Maybe the thieves are vampires or ghosts,” Signa ventured, standing behind them in the shadow of the full moon.

  Silently, the Royal Guardsmen shifted in their leather-plated armor that fitted tightly to the torso. “Maybe it’s worse than that?” Shilo pondered as he held a low defensive stance with his honed sword reflecting the light of the lanterns above. “One would have to be part demon to have the courage to lie in wait for us,” he concluded with a smack of pride.

  “No crickets,” Signa questioned. “Have you ever heard such silence? The thieves chose a bad night to sneak around.”

  As he crouched in the well-kept garden, Shilo suddenly understood the strange feeling heating his bones. His mind was used to erasing the trivial blankets of noise around him, but now the deafening silence took over his ears. “Of course,” Shilo whispered as the tension grew in the air, “that explains it. They’re worried about witchcraft.”

  Shilo let the dark thought knead through his mind as he crouched in the shadows of the silk compound, keeping the rice paper and terracotta of the worm house in view. Flanked by a low bamboo fence and masterfully landscaped garden, the three warriors waited until the soft glow of the moon revealed Ping, their captain, as he approached through the shadows.

  Aside from the gray hair and the hardened skin from decades of violence, Ping looked remarkably like the younger soldiers he commanded. He wore the same black leather armor and polished wooden scabbard on his belt with no insignia or markings differentiating his rank. “The silk farmers blame witchcraft every time they break a dish,” Ping stated. “It’s not witches.”

  “How can you be sure?” Signa said, sounding as if he was eager to relieve his own racing imagination.

  “If you know how to listen,” Ping continued, looking to the clear night sky above them, “the crickets will tell you a great deal.”

  “When they don’t speak at all?” Shilo asked.

  “A storm,” Ping offered coldly. “The thieves didn’t pick a bad time to strike. They picked a very good one.”

  “We’ve tracked bandits through the rain before,” Gishan said.

  “That’s not what concerns me,” Ping responded. “If they speak cricket, then they’re as smart as I am.”

  Ping let that thought hang on the minds of his men for a moment before they eased their way up the worm house’s wooden ramp and through the sliding front door.

  Kaitian silk, the most diverse and coveted textile in both worlds was found in almost every home, on the back of almost every citizen, and performing a function in almost every trade across the two worlds. The fabric was tough, light, and inexpensive, and Kaito was the only country that manufactured it.

  As part of a regiment of warriors tasked with neutralizing the greatest standing threat to the empire, Shilo knew how important his job was, and he and his brothers in the guard worked hard to keep the monopoly strong. In a hundred generations, the guard hadn’t let so much as a single Kaitian silk worm into enemy hands. Tonight, after yet another unwelcome attempt, Shilo aimed to keep that tally.

  Inside the building, a lone lantern above their heads revealed one large room with high exposed beams ornately carved with blossoming mulberry trees. Ahead, row upon row of shoulder-high wooden drums stretched out into the darkness. With the polished wooden floor reflecting the lantern’s glow, Ping and his men moved through the rows of drums, low and deliberately, each silent step pushing them deeper into the black.

  “No witnesses?” Gishan whispered, his blood pressure rising.

  “All guards subdued without seeing or hearing their attacker,” Ping reminded them. “Six workers still missing.”

  “Could the workers be involved?” Signa asked.

  “Either way,” breathed Ping, “the rest of the compound was cleared. If the thieves are still here, they’re in this room.”

  The tightly wound rope soles of Shilo’s black moccasins moved like snakes across the polished floor until the greedy blackness opened like a river around a stone. Ahead, six stiff and frightened silk workers lay gagged and bound on the floor. They lay in a row, sweating and pleading with their eyes like sinners on their deathbeds. As Shilo knelt beside a trembling worker, the reason for his terror scuttled across the old man’s chest. A large angry scorpion appeared from the crook of the man’s arm, holding its poison-soaked stinger like a pulled arrow, itching to strike. Shilo felt the blood drain from his face as a deadly insect appeared on each worker’s pulsing chest, tied around each neck with a carefully placed string.

  “By the Ancient Ones,” Gishan whispered. At the sound escaping his lips, the scorpions tensed in unison like a troupe of dancers.

  Ping held up a hand, stopping his men. “So they won’t scream,” he said, soft as an exhaled breath. Shilo had never seen anything like this. His anxiety grew as the look from his captain suggested this was new to Ping as well. Intrigued, Shilo scanned the rest of the room and noted a closed and locked back door beside them.

  Confident there was nobody else in the room, the soldiers moved quickly to cut the strings around the workers’ necks and lift the scorpions by their tails before the animals had a chance to strike.

  In a rush of relief and terror, the frightened man beside Shilo grunted a single word: “Ninja!”

  The guardsmen gasped. Shilo raised his eyebrows in disbelief. Ninja? he thought, remembering Captain Ping’s warning about the silk workers’ superstitions. The only time he had ever heard that word was around a campfire, between stories of monsters and phantoms roaming the countryside.

  “Impossible!” Ping said as he grabbed the frightened man’s collar and pulled him upright. “First, witchcraft, now, Ninja? Do you think I’m touched? You’re better off blaming mermaids for this.”

  The old man gave no response; fear had him by the tongue.

  “They’re onyx tails,” Signa interjected, inspecting one of the polished black scorpions in the light, “from Bushan.”

  Shilo turned to the other workers, each as white as cotton, staring past reason, focused on some invisible terror that only they could see. With a faint murmur coming from the back of his throat, the old man simply pointed to the back door of the silk house.

  Slowly, Shilo, Ping, and the rest of the guards turned toward the door, now open to the water garden outside.
<
br />   “Who opened that door?” Ping barked with a look in his eyes Shilo had never seen before. “You six,” the captain ordered to the soldiers closest to him, “get the workers out of here. The rest of you, come with me.”

  Shilo, Signa, and Gishan followed Ping as they burst from the silk house and stood in formation in the meticulously cultivated garden. Shilo scanned the rooftops and shadows of the plantation, seeing nothing and hearing only the trickling water from the surrounding koi pond. Despite the imagery of a terrifying black-clothed assassin dancing in his head, Shilo tried his best to keep steady. No matter how secure he felt in his abilities, something had just slipped past thirteen of the greatest warriors in Kaito.

  Over the years, Shilo’s training had shaped his body into a supple killing machine with shoulders hard as iron and a step as soft as a rabbit’s foot. But perhaps more importantly, his training had shaped his mind to respect fear rather than push it away. To Shilo, fear was like a horse, an ally to break and ride, giving him quicker reactions and better instincts. He believed that without fear a man could not become a great warrior. But, now, standing in the moonlight, his timid horse reminded him that no matter how much control he thought he had, the mount was an unpredictable, wild animal just the same.

  “There’s nothing here,” Shilo whispered, the silence too much to bear.

  “Gishan’s right,” Signa added, “they’ve got their worms. What do they gain by fighting us now?”

  “They’re here!” Ping warned, keeping his eyes on the rooftops. “Why wait to make their escape, unless—?”

  Suddenly, a metallic flash caught the corner of Shilo’s eye. He turned quickly as something connected with his wrist and forced his sword from his grip. Half a second later, all seven of the guards’ blades clattered against the gravel at their feet as if the bones in their hands had all disappeared. Instinctively, Shilo crouched into a roll, aimed at picking up his sword and finding cover, but before he touched the carved hilt of his steel, an unseen force threw it from his reach and knocked him on his back.

  Before his nerves had the chance to react, a shadow struck Signa, and he fell on top of Shilo, unconscious. Shilo worked to push his brother off of him until his wrist began to sing with pain. The agony replaced itself with panic as Shilo discovered a throwing star lodged in his wrist. Around him, four other guards fell to the invisible force as Shilo pulled the star from his flesh, picked up his sword, and got back to his feet.

  Out of breath and terrified, Shilo caught sight of Ping, the only man left standing, holding his sword out before him like a blind man in an unfamiliar room. “Get the others!” Ping demanded, aiming a shaking and bloody finger back toward the silk house.

  The desperation in his captain’s voice frightened Shilo more than anything hiding in the shadows. “Heee—” he shouted as he turned toward the building and threw open the door. Shilo’s plea was cut short, however, as his eyes landed on the six guardsmen Ping had ordered to remove the workers, tied up, with scorpions of their own around their necks. Shilo turned back, horrified, as a silent black shadow appeared to leap from the stars themselves to engage Captain Ping.

  The head of the Royal Guard was a true master, the greatest fighter in Kaito. Shilo had seen him face the youngest, most agile men and the toughest, most experienced, battle-hardened mercenaries and neither could land so much as a single blow. Tonight, however, as the attacker’s black emptiness moved, quickly and silently like a fox through the snow, he struck Ping over and over again until the captain hit the gravel, bloodied and broken.

  The young warrior’s pounding heart scarcely had time to skip a beat before the black shadow’s quick steel moved from Ping and caught Shilo’s chin, pressing firmly against his jugular. The warrior froze. For a moment, he had hoped this entity was a ghost, something supernatural he could blame for the taste of failure burning his tongue. Unfortunately, the assassin’s cold blade was all too real.

  From what he dared to see through the corner of his eye, Shilo made out black clothing and a cowl that left nothing but the thief’s eyes exposed. This is the only one, he thought. Is that possible? As his veins ran cold, the warrior suddenly understood the fear he saw in the silk worker’s eyes. This “Ninja,” who held Shilo’s life in his hands, was no bedtime story.

  He stiffened as the Ninja finally moved, leaning in close and taking a slow, deep breath as if to drink his soul. The trembling soldier closed his eyes, waiting to drown in his own blood, but to his surprise, he felt the sword leave his neck.

  By the time Shilo dared open his eyes again, the Ninja had vanished completely.

  The guardsman fell to his knees, gasping for air. He moved his hands over his neck, chest, and back, searching for the fatal wound he was sure the adrenaline had hidden from him, but all he found was a small note tucked into his belt.

  With shaking fingers, Shilo opened the folded parchment and read the message: “You know what I am. If you value your life, don’t follow me.”

  As the note trembled in Shilo’s fingers, he felt his fear, that once trusty steed, throw him from the saddle and trample him beneath its feet.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The last light of the evening cut through the wind like an orange blade sharpening itself over the dunes of the Kaitian desert. The haunting echo of a chula, a bagpipe-like instrument made from the skin of a goat, serenaded the setting sun, its sound rolling through the abandon like the voice of the arid desert itself.

  The music filled the crevices of the rocks and the black recess of the wasteland until it settled on the tired ears of Patrick, who lay still in a dark place, refusing to open his eyes. “Why?” he moaned to himself stubbornly as the song stirred him from his dreams. “For the sake of Skyfire, it’s not dark yet. Or is it?” Patrick paused as he realized something inhibited his movements. This is strange, he thought. I’m submerged in something thick and warm and, wait a tic, sand? Am I buried alive?

  Patrick thought back over the last few days as he tried to keep the rumbling panic in his throat from reaching his spine. There were the orchards, then the word from the Emperor of Kaito about the Ninja, then desert, nothing but desert and hot chafing sand for two days. Where Patrick came from there was no sand. After spending so much time with the stuff, he had never been more proud to call the Woodlands of Bushan his home. Sure, it was no Palace of the Ancients, but at least there you’d never wake submerged in the worst substance known to mankind.

  “Kaitian gypsies are known to bury their enemies alive,” Patrick remembered, but he couldn’t recall angering any gypsies, at least not lately. Then again, he thought, I was pretty drunk last night. Oh, those pipes! Patrick’s mind groaned as the music took over his consciousness like a plague. I’d figure this were hell if I wasn’t such a stand-up guy. . . . As Patrick’s sleepy brain warmed to consciousness, however, the memories of the years he’d spent as a mercenary opened like a field of thistles. “Oh, right,” he recalled, grumbling aloud, “hell is a real possibility.”

  Patrick pushed his arms, legs, and back in all directions, straining and shifting against the claustrophobic predicament until his fingers finally broke into the hot wind of the desert above him. He recalled something about a sand storm. With relief, Patrick reminded himself that the deserts of Kaito were not actually hell, though they were close.

  A shock of Patrick’s red hair erupted through the sand like the blooming of deep-orange beach grass. He pulled himself from the depths of the shifting dune wearing chipped plated armor and a tunic wrapped around his nose and mouth. He took a deep breath of relief through a nose spattered with freckles and sunburned pink as the belly of a suckling pig.

  It’s a good thing I wrapped up last night, Patrick thought as the sand fell from the tunic around his mouth. Or else ol’ Patrick of Wolfwater might never have heard this cursed music again. At that, the redheaded mercenary shook the sand from his hair and turned to a nearby rocky mesa.

  Standing with his back to Patrick was Sendai, an attractive man
with copper skin who looked toward the sunset through a pair of strange dark goggles. The instrument under his arm continued breathing melodic sounds as he put the sun to sleep beneath a red and orange sky, glowing like a flaming field of poppies. Along with his goggles, Sendai wore the traditional cloak and head cloth of the Bushanese Sandlands and a thick black belt around his waist adorned with sequined coins that quaked like silver aspen leaves. Attached to his belt, a scimitar reflected the evening sky off its curved and well-used blade.

  Finally, Patrick thought, with a murderous smirk growing over his cracked lips, the Ancient Ones have given me a gift. Nay, he corrected, they’ve given everyone within earshot a gift.

  Patrick drew in close as he pulled a knife from his belt, wrapped an arm around Sendai’s neck, and jabbed the warm blade hard and deep into the piper’s side. Sendai’s face cringed in terror as the sound of his instrument wheezed and failed.

  After a moment, he looked down to Patrick’s knife, buried in the goatskin chula beneath his arm.

  “The immortal, Sendai Balthazari!” Patrick announced as his victim deflated along with his instrument. “The song of your people has been cut short this day by a Wolfen Knight who had listened to one too many wake up calls played through the skin of a dead goat.”

  “Patrick,” Sendai said, calm and uninjured, “the next time you fall asleep beneath a shifting dune, I shall leave you there to choke.”

  “Well, in that case,” Patrick exclaimed, “thank you for waking me up, partner!”

  The redheaded knight let go of Sendai and pulled his well-worn leather satchel from the sand. Together, the two men gathered their meager camp and, since horses were well out of their price range, walked toward the distant sandstone city, black against the fiery horizon.