Soul of the Sword Read online

  Books by Julie Kagawa

  available from Harlequin TEEN and HQ Young Adult

  (Each series listed in reading order)

  Shadow of the Fox

  Shadow of the Fox

  Soul of the Sword

  The Talon Saga

  Talon

  Rogue

  Soldier

  Legion

  Inferno

  Blood of Eden

  Dawn of Eden (prequel novella)+

  The Immortal Rules

  The Eternity Cure

  The Forever Song

  The Iron Fey***

  The Iron King*

  Winter’s Passage (ebook novella)**

  The Iron Daughter*

  The Iron Queen

  Summer’s Crossing (ebook novella)**

  The Iron Knight

  Iron’s Prophecy (ebook novella)**

  The Lost Prince

  The Iron Traitor

  The Iron Warrior

  +Available in the ’Til the World Ends anthology by Julie Kagawa, Ann Aguirre and Karen Duvall

  *Also available in The Iron Fey Volume One anthology

  **Also available in print in The Iron Legends anthology along with the exclusive Guide to the Iron Fey

  ***The Iron Fey series is also available in two boxed gift sets

  Soul of the Sword

  Julie Kagawa

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  To Misa sensei for all her help. And to Tashya, for everything else.

  Contents

  Books by Julie Kagawa

  Part 1

  1. Birth of a Godslaye

  2. The Demon of the Kage

  3. The Shadows Close In

  4. A Hidden Talent

  5. The Most Dangerous Quarry

  6. The Path of Shadows

  7. The Cursed Tomb

  8. Guests of Shadow

  9. The Forest of a Thousand Eyes

  10. Neko and Lucky Frogs

  11. The Castle of Demons

  12. Through Yume-no-Sekai

  Part 2

  13. Prophecy for a Ghost

  14. Castle of Nightmares

  15. Tea With My Enemy

  16. The Frozen Garden

  17. The Price of Illusion

  18. Yuki Onna

  19. The Sound of a Flute

  20. Guardians of Stone

  21. The Steel Feather Temple

  22. Questions of Yurei

  Part 3

  23. The Destroyer Comes

  24. Changing Fate

  25. The Plane of the Soul

  26. Battle for the Steel Feather Temple

  27. Finding the Lost

  28. Kitsune-bi and Demonfire

  29. Merging Souls

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Excerpt

  PART 1

  1

  BIRTH OF A GODSLAYER

  One thousand years ago

  His throat was raw from screaming prayers into the wind.

  The storm raged around him, beating the cliffs and sending sprays of ocean water crashing against the rock. The night was pitch-black, his drenched clothes were icy cold, and he could barely hear himself over the howl of the wind and the roar of the sea. Still, he kept chanting, the scroll clutched tight in shaking hands, the lantern flickering wildly at his feet. His vision blurred from salt spray and tears, but his voice never wavered as he shouted every line on the crumpled parchment as if it was a challenge to the gods themselves.

  Crying out the final prayer, letting the wind tear it from his lips and fling it over the ocean, he collapsed to his knees on the stones. Gasping, he bowed his head, his arms falling limply to his sides, the opened scroll fluttering in his grasp.

  For several desperate, pounding heartbeats, he knelt there, alone. The storm bellowed around him, slashing and clawing with foamy talons. His wounds, sustained from fighting a demon horde to reach this place, throbbed. Blood seeped down his chest and arms and over the scroll, staining the parchment pink.

  Many yards out to sea, the ocean stirred. Waves surged and roiled, and the surface of the water began to lift as if something monstrous was shifting just below.

  With an explosion of spray and the howl of a god, an enormous dark shape rose out of the depths and coiled up into the night. Lightning flashed, illuminating massive horns, fangs and glimmering scales the color of the tide. A rippling mane ran down the length of the creature’s back, and a pair of whiskers as long as a ship writhed and fluttered in the wind as the Great Dragon curled in the sky, flowing in and out of the clouds. A pair of eyes like glowing moons peered down at the tiny figure below, and a perfect, iridescent pearl shone like a star in the center of its forehead. With the rumble of an approaching tsunami, the kami spoke.

  “Who summons me?”

  Clenching his jaw, the man lifted his head. His heart trembled with the knowledge that he should not gaze so boldly upon a god, the Harbinger of Change himself, but the despair and hate-sickness deep in his soul drowned out any other emotion. Swallowing the pain from a throat raw from screaming, he raised his voice.

  “I am Kage Hirotaka, son of Kage Shigetomo, and I am the mortal who has called upon the power of the Dragon’s prayer.” His thin, raspy voice faded into the wind, but the huge creature cocked its head, listening. Its inhuman gaze, carrying the wisdom of eternity, met his own, and he suddenly felt as if he were falling into a bottomless pit.

  The warrior placed his hands on the ground before him and bowed, touching his forehead to the rough stone, feeling the gaze of the Dragon on his back. “Great Kami,” he whispered, “by my right as scroll bearer, on this night, the thousandth year after Kage Hanako made her wish upon the scroll, I humbly ask that you grant my heart’s desire.”

  “Once more, a Kage calls upon me.” The deep, thunderous voice sounded neither amused nor surprised. “Once more, the Shadow Clan toys with darkness and holds the fate of the realm in their hands. So be it.” Lightning flashed and peals of thunder shook the clouds, but the Great Dragon’s voice rose above it all. “Kage Hirotaka, son of Kage Shigetomo, bearer of the Dragon scroll, what is your heart’s desire? What wish would you see come to pass?”

  “Vengeance.”

  The word was barely audible, but the air seemed to still as he spoke it. “My family was killed by a demon,” the warrior went on, slowly sitting up. “It slaughtered everyone. My men and servants were strewn from one end of the house to the other. My wife…my children…it didn’t even leave anything to bury.” He closed his eyes, trembling with grief and rage. “I couldn’t save them,” he whispered. “I came home to a massacre.”

  The cold, indifferent observer waiting in the clouds said nothing. The warrior’s hand strayed to the sword at his belt, and his fingers curled around the sheath. “I don’t want it dead,” he rasped, his voice choked with hate. “Not by a simple wish. I will kill the monster myself, drive my sword into its black heart to avenge my clan, my family, my wife.” His voice quavered, and the knuckles wrapped around his sword turned white. “But when it dies, I don’t want its spirit to return to Jigoku. I want to trap it here, in this realm. To know pain and rage and helplessness. To understand there is no relief, no way for it to return as the demon it was.” The warrior bared his teeth. “I want it to suffer. For eternity. That is my wish.”

  Overhead, the Great Kami peered down through the storm, lightning flashing off its blue-black scales. “Once spoken,” it rumbled, its voice as impassive as ever, “there is no going back.” It tilted its head, those endlessly long whiskers fluttering in the wind. “Are you certain this is your heart’s desire, mortal?”

  “Yes.”

  Thunder growled, and the wind intensified, shrieking as it beat against the warrior and
the rock. The Dragon seemed to fade into the storm until only its eyes and a glimmering gem shone through the darkness. Then they, too, disappeared into the black, as the clouds swirled faster, faster, until they resembled a great whirlpool in the sky.

  A blinding streak of white descended from above, striking the center of the rock, mere feet from where the warrior knelt. The samurai flinched and shielded his face as stone shards flew everywhere, cutting his flesh where they hit. When the brightness faded, he peered up and squinted painfully as blood and water ran into his eyes. For a moment, he could make out only a thin, bright shimmer against the darkness. Then his eyes widened, and he stared in awe at what the lightning bolt had left behind.

  A sword stood upright in a smoking crater, the point jammed into the stone, its blade gleaming against the darkness. An almost hungry power pulsed from the sword, as if it were alive.

  His wounds forgotten, the Kage samurai rose and walked on shaky legs to the weapon, which glowed faintly against the black, as if fed by its own inner light.

  “It is done.” The booming statement held the finality of death, of a sword cutting the life from a body. Though the mighty serpent had nearly faded once more into legend, its voice echoed through the storm. “Let it be known, the Wish of this era has been spoken, and the winds of change have shifted their path. Let no mortal call upon the power of the scroll for another thousand years. If this realm survives what is to come.”

  “Wait! Great Kami, what should I call it?” The warrior reached out and touched the sword hilt, feeling a tremor race up his arm. “Does it have a name?”

  The warrior felt the Dragon slide from the world like an eel slipping through a net, returning to its kingdom deep below the waves. One last rumble of thunder rolled out to sea, and on the echo of the wind, he heard the kami’s final word.

  “Kamigoroshi.”

  Kage Hirotaka stood alone on the bleak platform of rock, wind and spray still whipping around him, and felt a savage smile cross his face. Kamigoroshi.

  Godslayer.

  2

  THE DEMON OF THE KAGE

  Yumeko

  Silence fell as Master Jiro finished his tale.

  “That demon,” I said, as the priest reached for a wooden pipe sitting next to the firepit. “The one that killed Hirotaka’s family. Was it…”

  Master Jiro nodded and stuck the end of the pipe into his mouth. “Hakaimono.”

  I shivered, and around the campfire, the rest of the party looked solemn. We had taken shelter beside a trickling brook, surrounded by shaggy pines and towering redwoods, and the air was tinged with sap and the slight hint of frost, as we were still very close to the mountains that bordered Sky Clan territory. Summer was ending, and the days were growing cool as autumn took its place.

  Okame sat against a mossy redwood, gazing into the shadows with his back against the trunk and one foot planted on a root. Firelight washed over him, accenting his lean, lanky form, reddish-brown hair pulled into a tail and narrow face uncharacteristically grim. The normally cheerful, outspoken ronin was quiet as he stared over the riverbed, his eyes dark.

  “So, Kamigoroshi came into existence through the Dragon’s Wish,” Taiyo Daisuke mused. The Sun Clan noble sat cross-legged against a log and wore an expression of stoic serenity. Across the fire, Reika shot him an exasperated look. The noble’s arms were wrapped in bandages, and strips of bloody cloth peeked from under his robe, mementos from our last terrible battle. He should not be up, Reika had scolded earlier this evening. He should be lying down, resting, before he tore open the wounds she had spent the night stitching closed. But Daisuke insisted he was fine. Even with his once beautiful kimono torn and filthy, his skin pale and his long, silvery-white hair hanging limply down his back, he emanated poise and elegance.

  “Yes,” Master Jiro confirmed. “Because Hirotaka wanted revenge against the oni that killed his family and the woman he loved. A way not only to destroy the demon but to make it suffer, to know pain and rage and helplessness. He got his wish. Not long after summoning the Dragon, Kage Hirotaka faced Hakaimono on the field of battle and, after a terrible struggle that nearly wiped out a village, managed to slay the demon. But instead of banishing the oni back to Jigoku, Kamigoroshi sealed the oni’s soul within the blade, trapping it for eternity.

  “Unfortunately,” Master Jiro went on, “that was the beginning of the Kage’s downfall. The demon drove Hirotaka mad. It did not possess him—perhaps its influence was still too weak, or perhaps it did not know it could do such a thing yet. But, little by little, it broke down Hirotaka’s resolve, using his lingering rage and grief to overwhelm him. Until, one night, when Hirotaka finally lost himself and changed the course of the Kage forever.”

  Daisuke stirred, realization crossing his face. “The massacre at Hakumei castle,” he said, looking at the priest. “The interrupted treaty between the Hino and the Kage.”

  “A scholar of history.” Master Jiro nodded in approval. “Yes, Taiyo-san, you are correct. The following spring, there was a meeting between leaders of the Fire Clan and the Shadow Clan, to discuss a marriage between the two families. The rivalry between the Hino and the Kage was growing out of control, and war was imminent if an accord could not be reached. The treaty never happened. In a room full of unarmed diplomats and courtiers, with a typhoon howling outside, Kage Hirotaka appeared and slaughtered every member of the Fire Clan. Not a single Hino survived that night.”

  “That was the beginning of the second Great War,” Daisuke stated. “After the massacre at Hakumei castle, the Hino vowed to wipe the Kage from existence, and they rallied the Earth Clan and the Wind Clan to their cause. The Kage turned to the Water, Sky and Moon Clans for aid, and the resulting war lasted nearly two hundred years.”

  “Nearly destroying the Kage in the process.” Master Jiro nodded again. “Because one man made a wish on the Dragon scroll with hate in his heart and unknowingly invited a demon into his soul.

  “That is the story of Kamigoroshi and the Dragon’s prayer.” Master Jiro blew out a long curl of smoke that writhed away over my head. “Now you know how the sword was created, and how the Dragon’s Wish, well intended as it might be, brought ruin and disaster to the empire.”

  “That’s why the scroll was split into pieces,” Reika added. The shrine maiden was also sitting on the ground with her legs crossed, the billowy white sleeves of her haori folded to her chest. Chu and Ko, a pair of small dogs that were really komainu shrine guardians, lay curled up in her lap, dozing on the red hakama trousers. “No one knows the exact details, but it’s said that as the war raged on, a council of kami, yokai and an order of monks came together to discuss what should become of the Dragon’s prayer. They made the decision to separate the scroll and hide the pieces throughout Iwagoto so that something like the last wish could never happen again.” Reika’s lips thinned. “It was the right choice. The scroll holds far too much power for a single person to be trusted with it. Look at the chaos and destruction it’s caused this era already, and the Dragon hasn’t even been summoned yet.”

  Across the fire, Okame snorted. “So, if the scroll is so dangerous, why don’t we destroy it?” he asked with a shrug. “Sounds like an easy solution to me. Toss the thing in the fire right now and let’s be done with it.”

  “It is not that easy,” Reika said. “And it has been tried before. But the Dragon’s prayer is a sacred artifact, a gift—or curse if you wish to look at it that way—from the Harbinger of Change himself. Much like Kamigoroshi, if you destroy the Dragon’s prayer, it will simply reappear in the world again. Always in a place where it will not only be discovered, but to a person who will unfailingly summon the Dragon and make a wish.” The miko’s eyes narrowed. “The scroll wants to be found, Okame-san. That’s why it’s so dangerous. If we destroy it now, it could reappear in the hands of the very people we are trying to keep it away from.”

  Okame grunted. “This is why I don’t trust magic,” he muttered, leaning back against the tre
e. “Inanimate objects like swords and scrolls should not want to be found. They should not want anything. How annoying would it be if my sandals decided they didn’t want to carry me anymore and wandered off into the woods?” His sharp black eyes flicked to me. “Don’t get any ideas, Yumeko-chan.”

  I giggled at the image, but sobered quickly. “What happened to Hirotaka?” I wondered, looking at Master Jiro. “Did he ever regain control of Hakaimono?”

  The priest shook his head. “Kage Hirotaka was captured and executed by his clan, long before the end of the war,” he replied. “By then, he was far too gone, and his crimes too great, to have any hope of redemption. Kamigoroshi, or the Cursed Blade of the Kage, as it would come to be known, was sealed away and vanished from history for six centuries. But such artifacts of evil cannot stay hidden forever. Four hundred years ago, it reemerged alongside the coming of Genno, the Master of Demons, when Hakaimono escaped the sword to possess its bearer. It is unclear whether Genno orchestrated the demon’s release, or if Hakaimono simply took advantage of the chaos that came with the uprising, but Kamigoroshi once again carved a bloody path through history until the blood mage and his rebellion were put down.

  “After Genno’s death,” Master Jiro continued, “his army of demons and yokai scattered to the wind, and the land was left in chaos. Kamigoroshi disappeared again for a time, but then, the first Kage demonslayer emerged, able to wield the Cursed Blade without immediately falling victim to Hakaimono.” He shook his head, puffing out a cloud of white smoke. “How the Shadow Clan trained their demonslayers to guard their souls against the demon’s influence is unknown, but the Kage have always walked the very edge of darkness, knowing they flirt with disaster. And now they have fallen to it once more. Hakaimono has been released, and the land will not be safe until Kage Tatsumi is killed and the demon returned to the sword.”

  I straightened, my stomach twisting as I stared at him over the fire. “Killed?” I repeated, as the priest’s sad gaze met mine. “But…what about Tatsumi-san? I know he must be fighting this. Is there no way to save him, to bring him back?”