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To Dream of Darkness

A story by DoggyStyle57

Chapter 40, Written February 2012

===

Chapter 40 - Entering the forbidden realm

Several days passed, as Sarina evaluated her options for getting to Japan. Unlike England, there was nowhere in Shanghai that a mage could simply rent a magical workshop. Mages here were more secretive, and preferred an isolated place to do their magical efforts.

Sarina spent several frustrating days ensconced in her hotel room, repeatedly attempting to send a portal in the direction of the Japans. She had hoped to look through a portal, with the far end hidden, as a way to spy on the isolated country, learn more about their language, people and clothing, and to find a safe place to step through and enter that land. Her efforts were blocked, however. She could only barely manage to get the far end of the portal to within viewing distance of the shore - just close enough to see a fishing village, with its people as tiny moving dots, and seeing the villager's boats, for example - but no closer! If she pushed it any closer, the portal was dispelled. Some powerful magical barrier was preventing any sort of portal or teleportation from the mainland to the island. The Japanese fishing boats stayed fairly close to shore, well within the magical barrier.

"Do you want to try going through Hell again, Mistress?" Ashley offered, after Sarina explained the difficulty she was encountering. "I still have four souls that I could use to pay the fee, and this time I could take my time, and pick a place in Hell that would be more comfortable for you, as we pass through. Surely they have not placed a barrier entirely between their land and my realm?"

"I will use that only as a last resort, Ashley. But thank you for the offer. I do understand that offering to pay that fee again would be costly for you," Sarina replied. "No, I think the best bet will be to go there on a boat. Perhaps we could make use of a Chinese or foreign fishing boat, or maybe even a whaler. I think I could conceal us upon such a vessel, or we could join the crew disguised as males, and once at sea, I could try to control the mind of its captain, and force him to take his ship close to those shores. Perhaps I could even force him to run his ship aground there. I would seek a smuggler's ship for the purpose, but as far as I can tell, not even smugglers contact that island! They probably did in the past, but no one does now."

===

Two days later, Sarina and Ashley, disguised as a mixed breed canine male in his early 40's, who gave his name as Peter Jameson, and a quiet mixed-breed canine boy about fourteen years old, who Peter introduced as 'Ash', signed on with an British merchant clipper ship called 'The Falcon', which was trading in silk and spices along the China coast, and down to India. It was due to head North from Shanghai to a port named Peking, to buy silk, and sell opium and spices. It had a crew of thirty seven, counting Peter and Ash, and the ship was a fast one, able to make 250 nautical miles a day in good weather. Peter was to work as a deck crewman, and Ash as a cabin boy, and if the need came to fight, as a 'powder monkey'. It greatly amused the fire elemental that 'his' duties might include having access to the ship's powder magazine, where the slightest spark or flame could blow up the ship.

By the time the ship was half a day out of Shanghai, Sarina had managed to place the captain and the entire crew under her control. In the captain's cabin, Sarina briefly assumed her vixen form, and effectively raped the captain, mating with him and taking all his memories and knowledge for her own.

The Captain ordered Peter to take over the duties as helmsman, and Peter steered the ship on a course that led them around the end of the Korean peninsula, and between the Mainland and China. The crew believed that they were between the Chinese mainland and Korea, still heading for Peking.

After three days, Peter had determined that the magical barrier was less than half a league east of the ship. They were well north of Nagasaki now, though less than one quarter of the way to where the island nation's capital city, Edo, was supposed to be. With the captain's spyglass, Peter spotted an unoccupied stretch of beach, with what appeared to be several large caves facing the sea. He also saw a band of Japanese people that seemed to be patrolling the top of the cliff that walled off that stretch of coastline. Peter gave a signal to the Captain. The ship dropped anchor, and the crew furled the sails.

Eight strong crewmen armed themselves with muzzle-loaded, flintlock Baker rifles and two foot long sword bayonets, and lowered two boats into the water. Peter and Ash joined them, on what was supposedly an excursion ashore to get fresh water.

Peter was relieved to see that neither he nor Ash suffered any ill effects as they passed through the magical barrier. The shape shifting that altered their appearance remained in effect. The barrier did seem to cancel the control spells on the crewmen, however. They faltered in their rowing for a moment, until Peter barked out a command for them to continue on to shore.

"Why are we going ashore for water so soon?" One otter crewman asked, as they pulled the two boats up onto the sandy beach. "Shouldn't we still have plenty of water?"

"We were cheated when we resupplied," Peter lied. "Most of the barrels of 'water' that we loaded were foul and tainted - hardly better than sewage. Likely it was some competitor's trick to make us ill, or force a delay in our run. Captain seems to think there may be water in those caves, or a way through the caves and up onto that headland to where we can find water. Let's just get this over with."

"Oh? All right then. Though I'd like to get my paws on the scoundrel that cheated us!" the crewman replied.

They walked into the sea caves, and found one that had obviously been used before as a refuge or storage place. Several ledges had been flattened and squared off, and there were a few low walls inside the cave that had obviously been built there, and were not natural formations. A water channel large enough for several ship's longboats let to a ledge the right height to use as a dock. "Smuggler cave," Peter observed. "Hasn't been used for quite some time, though. I see no fresh water source here. Look for a way to the cliff top deeper in the caves. If smugglers brought goods in here, they must have had a way to get those goods onto the top of the cliff."

Minutes later, one of the crewman screamed, as a very long arrow pierced his throat. Several more arrows buzzed through the air, coming from the back of the cave, followed in short order by over a dozen swordsmen in long brown silk robes. 'Peter' and 'Ash' were the only ones who understood the attacker's cry of, "There are the foreigners! Kill them! Kill them all!" They immediately vanished from sight, and retreated to one side of the cave, as the seven surviving crewmen fired their rifles once, drew their sword bayonets, and advanced to meet their foes.

It was a very one-sided battle. The samurai warriors were deadly and efficient, and seemed to care nothing for their own survival. They also outnumbered the sailors by two to one. The sailors had no time to reload their guns, and the sailor's sword bayonets were no match for katanas in the hands of expert swordsmen.

As the samurai slaughtered the sailors, Sarina took Ashley's hand and teleported both of them to the far end of the cave, behind two samurai archers that stood on a ledge. Before they realized she was there, she touched them both, mind-raping them and stealing their memories and skills. They fell without a sound, mindless and drooling. Then she and Ashley assumed the appearance of the two archers, and took their clothes and gear. Ashley dragged their bodies further back inside the cave, where she burned them to ash with her black fire.

Now with the identities of 'Ichitama' and 'Kuro', Sarina and Ashley joined the rest of the samurai on the bloody floor of the cave. Using the telepathy that she shared with her familiar, Sarina quickly filled in Asha on the names and roles of the other Samurai in the group.

The leader of the patrol poked at a dead sailor with his foot. "Foreigners! Faugh! When will they learn? We are fortunate that our patrol saw their ship sending boats ashore. Ichitama! Aki! Go to the beach, and make sure there are no survivors there! I thought I saw more of them when we first encountered these mongrels."

The one called Aki was a grey wolf, as were all the other samurai in this group. He asked, "What of the foreign ship?"

"We will watch, until they go away. If they stay near our coast, we will follow and slay any who attempt to land. Those are the daimyo's orders." The lead samurai said. He then ordered the remaining samurai to collect any guns or ammunition that the foreigners had, and anything else of value.

When 'Ichitama' got to the shore, he tried to release the compulsion spell that enthralled the captain and the remaining crew. Apparently the effort was successful. The ship raised anchor and turned South almost at once, returning to more friendly waters.

"They run. Good," Aki said. "Let us get back to our shore patrol."

Ichitama walked back through the cavern, aware of the blood and gore splattering the area. There was much blood, and several of the British sailors had either been decapitated or disemboweled. The otter that had questioned the landing earlier had been cut clean in half, from his collar bone to his crotch. The samurai left the foreigner's bodies where they fell, cleaned their swords and carried away the bodies of the four samurai that had died in the attack.

===

Later that day, the patrol entered a small fishing village, and ordered the headman to produce a feast for the samurai, and to find a low-caste peasant to prepare the bodies of the dead samurai. The villagers scurried about, eager to obey the samurai. Most of the peasants in the village were mice, rabbits or ferrets. Ichitama saw no wolves or foxes among them, and few canines.

Ichitama scanned the surface thoughts of the villagers. The peasant fishermen's thoughts were quite boring. They were terrified of the samurai, that much was clear. Foremost in their minds was that it was certain death to disobey a samurai in the slightest degree. Just a few weeks earlier a passing samurai had killed a villager merely to test the edge of his new sword.

Ichitama also peered into the surface thoughts of the other samurai. They were a coastal patrol unit that reported to a daimyo that lived in a fortified town near this section of the shoreline. Similar patrols guarded every place along the coast that any foreign ship might try to land. He was surprised to learn, however, that recent edicts from 'the Shogun', who was apparently the top military overlord, had indicated that foreign ships that were 'storm-damaged or shipwrecked, and which had come seeking food, fuel, or water' would be permitted to land in Japanese ports, to make repairs and to obtain sufficient supplies to return to their own waters. They were still prohibited from engaging in trade, and for a Japanese native to leave the country and return still carried a death sentence. But apparently in the last two years both the Dutch and The Americans had sent warships to Nagasaki, asking the Shogun to open trade again. The Shogun had refused, but the foreigners were becoming more insistent.

That night, the Samurai dined on grilled fish and steamed rice, and drank a surprisingly potent rice wine, called 'sake'. Ichitama noted that none of the peasants from the village joined in the meal, and he sensed that when they returned to their homes, the peasants would eat nothing better than a coarse millet gruel.

Halfway through the meal, they were interrupted by the village headman, who said that there were three other Samurai in the village, and that their leader wished to speak to the leader of the coastal patrol. The patrol leader gave his permission for that.

The fellow who came in was a red fox, still in his late teens or early twenties. He seemed uncomfortable with his swords, and bowed excessively low on meeting the patrol leader, "I would ask a great favor of you, Captain," he said. "I am Hattori Saburo. I am charged with escorting a samurai lady and her maid to Edo, to become the wife of Murakami Jiro, a hatamoto in the Daimyo's court there. But a band of ronin attacked our party along the way, and killed all the other warriors in our escort. I cannot get the Lady Hamada Kira safely to Edo on my own. Could you possibly spare just two of your men to assist us? The roads between here and Edo are less dangerous than the mountain passes where we were ambushed. Two good men should suffice for the remainder of our journey. The Daimyo that I serve would be most grateful for the service, as the Lady Kira-sama is promised to a young man that my Daimyo highly favors."

Ichitama touched the surface thoughts of the young man, and learned some very interesting facts. The woman Jiro was escorting was in love with this young man, and he was in love with her. But she had been promised by their daimyo to become the wife of a man that had never seen her, as a reward for the young man's bravery in service to his daimyo, and to cement a further alliance between the two daimyos. Though it was heartbreaking for the boy to take the girl he wanted to marry to be the wife of another man, his honor required him to do as his daimyo ordered.

Ichitama smiled, and addressed his captain, "Please. Allow Kuro and myself to assist them. We both have family in Edo, and we are near the end of our patrol assignment. It would reflect well upon our own Lord that we undertake a task that makes two daimyo's happy, would it not?"

"It would, at that," the patrol's captain stated. "Very well. You two will be given this assignment. Saburo-san? I trust this meets your needs?"

"Yes, my Lord," the boy said sullenly, not realizing that fate had given him a gift beyond measure.