A VISION OF BEAUTY

CHAPTER 1

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I

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After midnight, the wind grew stronger. The clouds rumbled as they rolled along. In accordance with the moon’s dips into that cover, the night alternated between glowing with white light and sinking into pitch blackness. Somewhere out there, something howled. A cry unlike anything she’d ever heard, it made the girl by the window grow stiff.

“Nothing to be scared about,” said the master of the lodging house, wiping his mouth after another in a long line of drinks of cheap booze. The unlabeled bottle of what seemed to be home brew had been nearly empty of liquid, and was filled instead by a dark green surprise: a frog. In these parts, various species of back-leaping frogs were used to bring a full-bodied taste to the liquor. But even though this lodging house was near the northernmost extreme of the Frontier, it was still difficult for travelers to ignore the local practice. “That right there’s the sound of beast weeds blooming. We don’t get many dangerous critters in these parts.”

Perhaps put at ease by this, the young woman turned from the window and smiled. It was a lonely little smile that suited the seedy lodging house, although the seventeen-year-old brimmed with a beauty that saved her from seeming too gloomy. Even the dreariness of her shirt and slacks, waterproofed with animal fat, seemed unable to counter the charm lent to her by the silver comb stuck in her red hair.

Out of the collection of five rest houses that made up this unbelievably small community, this was by far the most squalid. There was no one in the brick hall save the innkeeper and three patrons, including the girl. But add two more people, and the room would’ve been completely packed.

“How far you going anyway, miss?” the innkeeper asked as he turned his liquor bottle upside down and shook it.

“To Cronenberg,” the girl replied.

“Now, I don’t know where you hail from, but it’s a hell of a thing for a lady like you to choose this of all roads. If you were to take the main road instead, you’d get there a whole lot sooner.”

“It’d be a whole lot more dangerous, too. Wouldn’t it?” the girl said, covering the leather pouch attached to her belt with the palm of her hand. “The road from the Belhistan region to Cronenberg, in particular, is swarming with monsters. I’d rather not run into any mecha beasts or mazers or any of those types, thank you.” Though her tone was colored with loathing, there was no fear in it.

While the back roads that branched off from the main thorough-fares had less danger from monsters, they were beset by natural disasters such as landslides, quicksand, and impasses, as well as plenty of human monsters—thieves and bandits of all sorts. Traveling alone, especially for a girl at her tender age, wasn’t something to be undertaken unless you were quite fearless and well-skilled in the use of weapons. And though the girl’s facial features still shone with the innocence of youth, one could catch a glimpse of a resolute will in them as well.

“Well, if you’ve come this far, there’s just a bit further to go—you should be there by tomorrow evening. Get yourself a good night’s rest. Fortunately, summer’s almost here. The road’s pretty rocky, but I suppose the season will make it a touch nicer.”

At the innkeeper’s appropriately slurred words, the girl got a faraway look in her eye. “Yes, summer,” she muttered. “At last.”

At that moment, someone beside the reinforced lacquer door said in a hoarse voice, “Florence.”

The girl spun around. Surprise tinged her eyes.

“Yes, I thought as much,” the voice said with apparent satisfaction.

The girl noticed then that the speaker sat with the electric lantern on his tilting wooden table turned off, melding with the darkness. Despite the fact they were in a house that was all closed-up, the man wore a wide-brimmed hat as well as a woolen cloak. Although the gray hair and beard that hid nearly all of his face testified to his age, the eyes with which he watched the girl brimmed with an uncommon vitality.

“There’s no reason to pull such a face,” the old man told her. “It’s a simple deduction, actually. You have the smell of salt and fish about you, and the comb in your hair is made from the bones of a lion fish, is it not? That’s a local specialty. If you grew up in Florence, I’d warrant you have all the pluck you’d need to travel on your own. If you’ll pardon my asking, just what manner of business sends you to Cronenberg?”

The old man’s eyes gave off a light that seemed to draw her in, and the girl had to turn away.

“Aw, look what you went and did. Now the little lady’s all pissed off,” the final voice in the room said, rising from another window directly across from the girl. The speaker was a young man, and he’d been the very last to come down from one of the rooms upstairs. Though his look of fearless determination fit his muscular physique, the pale line running diagonally across his right cheek couldn’t help but lend another impression—a less than reputable one.

All present took in the young man’s face, but their eyes quickly shifted to his hands. Perhaps the sight of them had stimulated their hearing, for they now heard the sound of the little things sparkling between the fingers of his meaty hands. Squinting her eyes, the girl realized that it was a pair of thin metal rings.

“Care to give it a try?” the man asked, grinning as he held out his right hand to her. The rings were shaking. To the man by the door he said, “You don’t ask anyone where they’re from or where they’re headed—that’s the rule of the road. For starters, you haven’t even given us your name. I guess as people grow older, they get all inquisitive and such, do they?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the old man said, shrugging his shoulders. “But I suppose it was impolite of me not to introduce myself. You may call me Professor Krolock. It’s not an official title, mind you.”

“I’m Wu-Lin,” the girl said with a bow. It was an ingrained reaction.

“I’m Toto. Anyway, how about a little wager, missy?” the young man suggested. “It’s a simple game, really. All you need to do is separate these two rings. Like so.”

Reaching for the loose end with his other hand, the man—Toto—pulled in either direction. The rings came apart without any resistance at all, but no matter how closely Wu-Lin scrutinized where she thought she’d seen them separate, she couldn’t find any opening or break. Toto quickly put his hands together again. And the rings were back the way they’d been.

“You get three minutes. The bet is for one gold kraken coin.”

Wu-Lin’s eyes bulged in their sockets. “Those are worth five times their face value on the Frontier,” she said in disbelief. “There’s no way I’d be carrying that sort of money.”

“Good enough. For something else then,” Toto said, his smile strangely affable. “What that pretty little hand of yours has been safeguarding the last few minutes.”

Startled, Wu-Lin twisted her body to put her waist out of Toto’s view, but at the same time two more pairs of eyes concentrated on her from another direction. They were focused on her pouch.

“You’re looking awfully pale . . . it must be rather important to you. If it’s not cash, I’d say it’s jewels . . . or maybe a youth elixir?” And with that, Toto suddenly got a serious look in his eye again. “Well, if it’s all that precious to you, I won’t twist your arm. What-ever money you’ve got will be fine. I’ll still put up one kraken coin. And I’m a man of my word.”

Wu-Lin’s expression shifted. Judging from her wardrobe and her current accommodations, she wasn’t exactly traveling in luxury. Kraken coins were produced in extremely limited quantities and were quite valuable. That one coin would be enough for her to hire an armed escort and pay for a carriage all the way to the Capital.

“Relax,” the young man said. “Even if I clean you out, I’ll at least buy you some breakfast tomorrow morning. Once you’ve eaten your fill, you’ll make it to Cronenberg somehow or other.”

His smiling face and equally affable objections served to strengthen Wu-Lin’s resolve. “I paid for my room in advance, but that only leaves me with four coppers,” the girl confessed.

“Well, that’ll do,” Toto said, spinning the silvery rings around his fingertip. “Okay, here’s mine.”

His left palm went down on the table, and then came away again. The glitter of gold was reflected in all three pairs of eyes.

Taking a seat in the chair across from him, Wu-Lin lifted the lid of her pouch and thrust her right hand into it. Her left hand kept it covered so no one could see inside. The faces of the four copper coins she produced were covered with a patina.

“That’s the spirit!” Toto said. “You get exactly three minutes.” Handing the two rings to the girl, he gazed at the magnetic watch around his wrist. “Ready—Go!”

As he gave the signal, Wu-Lin focused her entire being on the rings in her hands. On closer inspection, one of them did have a break in it. But while it had an opening, the gap wasn’t half as wide as the other ring was thick—it was as thin as a thread. But Toto had got them apart. Relying on her memories of what she’d seen, Wu-Lin tried every possible movement with her hands, but the rings remained hopelessly linked.

“Three minutes—time’s up!”

As Toto spoke, the girl’s shoulders—which were quite solid for a girl her age—fell in disappointment. Setting the rings down on the table, she let out a deep sign.

“I like you, missy,” the young man said. “You’re not gonna raise a stink and call me a cheat, are you?”

“If I did, would you give me my money back?”

Toto broke into a broad grin. “Sure, why not? I’m not about to give you my coin, but you could walk away with your own. All you’d have to do is give me one little bitty peek at what you got in that pouch.”

This seemed to be quite a generous offer, and after furrowing her brow for a moment, Wu-Lin soon nodded her agreement. She probably figured since he already knew she was carrying something precious, there was really no point in hiding it. Hers was a rather decisive temperament.

“Hey, you guys better not look. This is just us gamblers squaring away a debt,” Toto coldly told the other two men as he watched Wu-Lin’s hand disappear into the pouch.

Her hand came right back out. In it was a wad of black velvet. Brusquely setting it down on the table, Wu-Lin pulled the shiny black cloth to either side without pretension.

“I see,” Toto said, pursing his lips. Rather than being impressed, he seemed a bit suspicious—and more than a tad disappointed.

There lay a semitransparent bead that Wu-Lin could’ve easily concealed in the palm of her hand. Essentially a sphere, it was marked in places by faint distortions. While the material from which it was crafted was unclear, judging by its dull silver glow, it didn’t appear to be any sort of jewel or other precious stone.

“Satisfied?”

“What the hell is it?” Toto asked.

As he reached out with one hand, Wu-Lin quickly jerked the bead away. Carefully rewrapping it, she said, “It’s a kind of pearl.”

“It came out of the sea, did it? So, I guess you came all this way to sell it, then. I hate to break it to you, but that thing—”

“It’s no concern of yours,” Wu-Lin said flatly. Quickly picking up her coppers and putting them and the velvet wad back into her pouch, the girl returned to her seat by the window—back to the sound of the wind, and the ever-changing hues of the darkness.

At that moment, there was a dull sound off in the distance—the thunder of hoofbeats. They were drawing closer.

The innkeeper set down the glass he was holding. “No one passes this way at this hour,” he said. His voice was stiff.

“It’s a traveler,” Professor Krolock said, his eyes still shut.

Toto stopped toying with his rings and muttered, “In the dead of night? They’d have to be funny in the head.”

No sooner had he spoken than a beastly howl drifted eerily from the opposite direction of the hoofbeats.

“They’re out?!” the innkeeper practically screamed as he got to his feet. “It’s those damn bronze hounds! They run in packs of ten or so. Can’t do squat to them with a sword or spear.”

“We’ve got to let whoever it is in!” Wu-Lin said, dashing toward the door, but the innkeeper raced over like the wind and grabbed her tightly.

“Oh no you don’t,” the innkeeper said. “It’s too late for that. If those accursed hounds get a whiff of humans, they’ll be in here, too!”

“But—” Wu-Lin started to protest, but she caught herself.

The cramped room was filled with the sort of silence that made the flesh crawl. The sound of the hoofbeats continued to steadily grow louder, and then they seemed to pull aside in front of the door, even though the rider had surely heard the hounds.

A different sound arose from the end of the road: the clatter of countless paws scampering closer.

“We have to help that person!” Wu-Lin swung her foot forcefully, and the innkeeper grabbed his crotch. The girl ran to the door.

“Don’t do it!” Toto shouted from behind her, but even as he did, she was reaching for the doorknob.

A split second later, the girl turned right around with her hand still extended and dashed back across the room. Stopping in front of the counter that served as both the bar and the front desk, Wu-Lin was frozen stiff in amazement, but the rest of the group didn’t get to see it. For at that very instant on the other side of the door—right in front of the lodging house—two kinds of footsteps collided, and the night was filled with the howling of beasts.

Wild dogs with hides like blue steel made straight for the poor traveler and his horse. A bladed weapon swung down at the beasts, only to bounce off them in vain. Flesh-rending fangs and blood-spattered muzzles—it was a tragic scene any of them could easily imagine, but a second later it was over. The howls of the bloodthirsty beasts were suddenly cut short, and the thud of one heavy body after another hitting the street echoed out—and then silence . . . or almost silence. There was only a hard, faint sound steadily fading in the distance. The sound of hoofbeats.

No one moved, or even said a word.

After a little while, Toto got up and quickly walked over to the door.

“Hey!” the innkeeper called out in a voice that was tiny and hoarse. He could only imagine what had transpired outside.

Toto roughly threw the door open. The warm nocturnal air was heavy with the scent of aromatic night grasses. The wind struck Toto in the eyes but couldn’t tarry there, and the young man caught another of the night’s scents.

The moon was out. On the road, the scenery was a stark contrast of black and white—but black seemed to be the stronger of the two.

The smell was coming from a number of pools of blood. The heads and torsos of the bronze-covered wild dogs had already ceased twitching.

“One, two, three—” Toto said, extending a finger with each number. “Exactly ten of the beasts! And all of them put down in less than two seconds—”

Leaping out into the road, Toto gazed in the direction the hoof-beats had gone. The howls of the night wind made his well-trimmed hair and the hem of his coat billow in the same direction.

“It might’ve been him . . .” the others in the doorway heard Toto mutter as he faced the darkness that swallowed the end of the road. “He can travel by night. And all alone.”

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II

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Early the next morning, Wu-Lin left the lodging house; she didn’t even bother to eat. The innkeeper and the other guests were still asleep, and the eastern sky was just beginning to shine with a watery light. Dressed in the same clothes as the night before, she was shouldering a vinyl backpack.

After walking for three minutes, the girl reached the edge of town. Beyond the fence, a cedar so huge it would take three men to get their arms around it stretched up to the blue sky. In this region, it was customary to grow enormous trees on either side of the main road through town. It was hoped that doing so would bring the community some of the same mysterious vitality the trees possessed. Further past that massive tree, the rows of cedars continued.

Opening the gate and then shutting it again behind herself, the girl was just about to walk off when someone appeared from behind the trees.

“Professor Krolock?” Wu-Lin said.

A gray-haired head bobbed at the receiving end of her tense gaze.

“Good morning, young lady. Off to an early start, I see.” Placing one hand on his chest, the professor bowed elegantly.

“So are you,” Wu-Lin replied. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be out before me.”

“Actually, I couldn’t get much sleep. At any rate, if it pleases you, would you accompany me to Cronenberg?”

“Are you headed there too, Professor?”

“Actually,” the old man said, “I am. My carriage is parked behind yonder tree.”

“You sure I wouldn’t be intruding?” Wu-Lin said, staring intently at him in his scarlet cloak.

“Whatever could you possibly mean?”

“Why ask me way out here?” the girl inquired.

“I might’ve suggested it back at the lodging house, but there was a certain boisterous individual around.”

“And you wanted me all to yourself?” asked Wu-Lin.

“Precisely,” the old man replied, a smile forming on his lips. “Approaching you in town was going to be troublesome, so I simply waited out here. I wouldn’t be so cruel as to say I don’t care what happens to a young lady like yourself. Please, join me. All I ask in payment is that bead you have in your possession.”

“I thought as much. I guess it’s a good thing I showed it off so no one got too curious and slit my throat while I slept.” Wu-Lin then asked the old man, “Do you know what it’s worth?”

“Probably better than that rabble last night,” the professor said, closing his eyes and nodding to himself. “But, as yet, I don’t have a good idea of its true value. To really ascertain as much, I’d need you to hand it over to me.”

“Sorry. I’ll travel alone.” As if in jest, the girl bowed exactly as the professor had, and then a second later she sprinted off like the wind.

Not bothering to chase after the girl as she swiftly dwindled in the distance, the professor muttered, “Such a tempestuous child,” and thrust both hands into his cloak. What they came out with were very strange items indeed. His right hand held a quill pen; his left hand held a brownish scrap of paper—a dried piece of animal hide.

Returning to the tree and leaning against it, he raised his right hand. Without seeming to particularly conceal himself for the task, he took the sharp tip of the pen and stabbed it into his left wrist. Not even glancing at the gore that spread across his skin when he pulled it out again, he took the blood-dipped pen and began to draw something on the surface of the parchment—what looked to be a human face. After about ten seconds, the pen’s movements ceased. Running his eyes over his handiwork at length and nodding with satisfaction, the professor then embarked on an even stranger course of action. Lovingly bringing his face closer to the portrait of darkening red, he began to whisper something in a low voice.

Having already run more than a hundred yards, the girl suddenly found her feet getting heavier. A hue of bewilderment rose in her face. While she didn’t stop, she had noticed a rather odd phenomenon—her legs seemed to be gradually losing their strength, to the point where she couldn’t run any longer.

“I—why is this happening . . .?” With those weary words, Wu-Lin squatted down right then and there.

Less than a minute later, a wagon drawn by a pair of cyborg horses rumbled along with a sound that hardly suited a road at daybreak, stopping right behind the girl as she crouched down, cradling her knees. It went without saying that the man who sat in the driver’s seat holding a whip was Professor Krolock. The grotesque parchment was rolled up in his left hand.

From his lofty perch, the professor said, “You mustn’t keep these problems to yourself. I’ll be happy to hear them. Won’t you climb into my carriage so the two of us might mull over your dilemma? Come.”

All exaggeration aside, the old man’s tone truly swam with affection. At the sound of his voice, Wu-Lin got up and began to walk toward the wagon without the slightest hesitation.

And then something equally bizarre occurred. The professor’s right hand abruptly shot out, and with a sharp crack from his whip, the wagon made a wide turn toward town—back the way they’d come. Odd as it may seem, the professor who’d taken the trouble to follow Wu-Lin there then cracked the whip again and, scattering fragments of the dawn’s light like dust and ice, started off in the opposite direction in a great hurry.

As the old man and his wagon vanished down the road, another figure stepped out from behind the trees that towered by the roadside. He was leading a horse as he came into Wu-Lin’s paralyzed view. His right hand was clearly toying with a pair of gold rings that kept clinking together.

Waving his left hand before the eyes of the mesmerized Wu-Lin, the mysterious young traveler—Toto—made a wry face. “He calls himself a man of learning, and then he goes and puts some weird spell on a girl like you—that’s really tempting the wrath of heaven. That said, I must confess I’m after the same thing myself. Don’t take it too hard,” he told the girl. “Looks like I was right when I guessed that bead was really something after all. Allow me to be of some assistance.”

Wu-Lin seemed to have had the very soul drained out of her, and at this point a baby probably could’ve taken what it wanted from her. He tapped her pale cheek with his right hand as if humoring her. The man was reaching for her pouch with his left hand when something hot whizzed right by the end of his nose.

“There she is!”

“Don’t let her get away!”

Not only could a cacophony of shouts and hoofbeats be heard coming from the direction of town, but the sharp whistles that came from the figures closing on the pair soon became steel arrows in flight.

“Just as I thought—we’ve got company! And here that old innkeeper was trying to come off so friendly and all. The world’s a nasty place. Sorry, but this is where I make my exit,” Toto said.

But as the young man’s hand reached once more for the pouch, it was caught by Wu-Lin’s. Just as the shock was altering Toto’s com-plexion, his wrist was expertly twisted back against the joint and he was physically thrown a good ten feet down the road. And yet, the way he executed a skillful one-hundred-eighty-degree roll and landed lightly on his feet was certainly an eye-opening display of acrobatics.

“Hey! Wait just a second!” Toto shouted, but just as he was about to charge back to the girl, a number of arrows flew over his head. As he hit the ground despite himself, the sound of iron-shod hooves and excited shouts reached his ears.

A shadowy form leapt over his head. Needless to say, the rider holding the reins of Toto’s cyborg horse was none other than Wu-Lin.

“Thanks for the horse. See you!” With that brief shout, the girl—who’d escaped from the professor’s spell before Toto even realized it—slammed her right heel into the mount’s flank and galloped away as fast as she could.

Riding for a full hour at breakneck speed, Wu-Lin was a few miles from an intersection with the main road when she finally let her horse rest its legs. It was an area still lit with the cold, clear rays of dawn. At any rate, she considered herself safe for the moment. She never would’ve thought those two men would be lying in wait for her, and it’d certainly been a mistake to fall under that mysterious spell, but since she’d managed to extricate herself from the situation, none of that mattered anymore. Having acquired a horse in the bargain, it was likely she’d reach Cronenberg at just past noon instead of in the evening.

Recalling the stunned look on Toto’s face as she’d thrown him, Wu-Lin smiled innocently, but it took less than two seconds for that smile to freeze. The sound of hoofbeats was growing nearer.

She thought it might be the “professor,” but there was no squeak of wagon wheels. What she saw were a number of horses—and racers, at that. They wouldn’t be out delivering mail at this hour. Was it the last group that’d shown up as she was leaving?

Just as Wu-Lin was about to give a kick to her mount’s flanks, something whistled through the air as it dropped toward her. Sparks shot up on the right half of the road about ten feet ahead of her, and a fierce shockwave knocked both horse and rider down on their respective sides. It was the work of a portable firebomb launcher. An expert could hit a target the size of a brick from more than two hundred yards away, but if they were only trying to blow something up, all they had to do was increase the amount of gunpowder.

Wu-Lin immediately got up. For the time being, her foes were only trying to slow her down. Fortunately for her, they seemed to be concerned about damaging the bead and they had adjusted the amount of gunpowder accordingly. As a result, the girl hadn’t been fatally wounded, or even broken a single bone.

As Wu-Lin tried to get her horse back on its feet, she coughed and felt the urge to vomit building within her. In truth, she’d taken a blow to the stomach when she fell. Jamming a finger down her throat, she retched immediately. As she vomited, she realized her horse was a lost cause—its neck was twisted grotesquely. If it had been one of the models cherished by the Nobility, it would’ve continued to run even if the entire head had been torn off, but this one was intended for humans. Wiping her lips, Wu-Lin shouldered her bag and looked all around. The woods were thick to either side. Behind her, the silhouettes of riders formed hazily in the white light. She couldn’t afford to hesitate.

Wu-Lin ran to the right—the woods might serve to restrict the movements of horses. The trees and bushes would probably provide her with some cover from the explosives as well.

Just when she thought she’d melted into the grove of the trees, an impact slammed into her from behind, and a sharp pain shot through her back—probably a branch, or a small stone. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the ground. Putting her strength into her limbs, she tried to get up.

Right behind her she heard a familiar voice say, “Give up already. We’ll make it quick for you.” It was the innkeeper.

Wu-Lin got to her feet without looking in his direction. About five yards ahead of her was a thick grove. How many seconds would it take me to get there? she wondered.

“We don’t wanna blow that doodad of yours to kingdom come, you know. So we won’t finish you with the mortar. What do you fancy, a sword or an arrow? Or would you prefer we garrote you?”

More voices than she could count laughed in unison.

Wu-Lin started to make a break for it, and then stopped. At the same time, the laughter ended as well.

Why is everyone always popping out from behind trees? Wu-Lin wondered.

The newest arrival was a dashing figure. He wore a wide-brimmed traveler’s hat and a long black coat that sheathed his tall form elegantly. The longsword on his back had a graceful curve to it. For a second, Wu-Lin had to wonder whether it wasn’t a moonlit night after all. But the reason she and the men behind her froze there was because unconsciously they knew that an aura of extreme danger lingered around the gorgeous stranger.

“Who the hell are you?!” someone asked, his voice quavering.

Wu-Lin swiftly circled around behind the figure’s back. “Help me!” she cried. “They’re bandits!”

The stranger didn’t move.

“Out of the way, pretty boy,” the innkeeper said.

There were half-a-dozen men on horseback—with the innkeeper leading the pack—and all of them wore vicious scowls. Surely their racket consisted of finding travelers with something valuable, then following them when they left and killing them. They were armed with swords and spears, but the man to the far right was the only one with disk-shaped bombs loaded into a crossbow-like launcher that he had pointed at the ground.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” the innkeeper said to the huge fellow to his right. “Now that he’s seen our faces, it’s not like we’re about to let him live. We’ll send him to his reward along with the girl.” To the pair he added, “Just consider this your brief romance, and kiss each other goodbye!”

As she listened to his cruel words, Wu-Lin clung tightly to the back of the shadowy figure. But something suddenly became apparent. The man in black wasn’t looking at the other men. At the end of his gaze was a grove of trees and sparkling green leaves. Between him and the other men faint beams of light swayed—sunlight peeking through the trees. Wu-Lin looked up at his profile; there wasn’t a hint of sadness on his face. It put Wu-Lin’s heart at ease.

Broadswords and spears glittered in the men’s hands. With wild shouts, they charged the stranger.

Still, Wu-Lin remained entranced, enchanted by the beauty of this strange young man.

Hammering the earth beneath them, a pair of riders raced by the stranger, one on either side, and they kept right on riding with blood streaming out behind them. From the waist up, the riders no longer existed. Before the rest of the killers realized what had happened, the upper bodies of their compatriots were lying at the shadowy figure’s feet. Bloody mists tinged the white sunlight.

When the startled man with the launcher readied his weapon, the figure kicked off the ground without a sound. The hem of his coat flickered like a dream.

A head flew. The innkeeper’s torso fell in two distinct pieces.

Seeing what looked like the figure’s chest being penetrated by spears thrust from either side, Wu-Lin cried out. But the shadowy figure was in midair now. What the murderous implements had pierced was merely his afterimage.

A circular flash slashed through the necks of the last two men. When the figure landed on the ground again, there was one more flash of light as he flung the gore from his blade onto the green grass, and then the weapon disappeared back into the sheath on his back. A head landed on the ground far off, and the rest of the body dropped off at the horse’s feet.

The massacre had unfolded in the time it took to blink.

Dazed, Wu-Lin rubbed her eyes. The image she observed wasn’t the least bit ghastly. The sunlit scene of carnage was like some shadow-puppet show.

It’s his fault, she thought fuzzily. He’s so beautiful; he even makes death look good.

The shadowy figure returned. His footsteps made no sound at all—he could walk across water without making a ripple. He was a young man. That was all she knew. The cool mood the tall man in black seemed to generate didn’t allow the girl to return to her senses until he was in the middle of putting a saddle onto a cyborg horse that was tethered to a tree not far away.

Wu-Lin ran over to the stranger in spite of herself and bowed. “Thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”

As the young man loaded what looked to be a sleeping bag behind his saddle, he asked, “Are you traveling by foot?”

Perhaps any other information about the girl and the circum-stances surrounding that deadly battle didn’t matter to the young man. They had attacked him, and he cut them down. Brutal as it was, that was a perfectly natural way to live on the Frontier.

“Yes,” the girl replied.

“Use one of their horses.”

“Um—” Wu-Lin stammered. Before she could say anything more, the man in black was on his mount. “Are you going with me?” she finally managed to say, but her words struck the stranger’s broad back as he’d already ridden a few paces.

“I’m looking for somewhere to get some sleep.”

Wu-Lin didn’t understand his reply at all. The world was swimming in light.

“At least tell me your name. I’m Wu-Lin,” the girl called out, her shouts blocked by the grove.

And then a reply came from the very same stand of trees: “D.”

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III

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Cronenberg was a town that stretched across the plains one hundred and twenty miles north of the center of the Frontier. Although this small city, with its population of thirty thousand, was a far cry from the scale of the Capital, it was a place where goods were collected from all over the Frontier and thus kept the roads well-repaired; the community also maintained a decent level of activity year-round. There was cold storage for seafood shipped from the coast, vast processing plants for livestock that’d grazed on the plains, drying houses for vegetables and grains—and for the rest and relaxation of those involved in the transportation of all these things, and the guards that kept them safe from bandits and beasts, there were saloons, hotels, casinos, and women.

The chatter of men and women persisted all day long in the area where the drinking establishments could be found, but once dusk settled like a thin wash of ink, the multicolored lights grew brighter, and the strides of people on the streets got lighter. Because the number of monsters and supernatural beasts in this plains region was comparatively low, the streets were full of people from evening until the wee hours of the morning.

And it was at twilight that Wu-Lin arrived at the town. The cyborg horse she rode was one that’d belonged to the thugs D had killed in the woods. Asking one of the guards about a certain shop as he opened the gate for her, Wu-Lin then proceeded to the center of town.

While it was common for a woman to travel alone, it still came as little surprise that the remarkably untamed beauty of the girl’s face and body drew the eyes of men on the street.

In front of a tiny little shop Wu-Lin dismounted. The sign had the words “Cyrus Curio Shop” painted in letters that were now almost completely blurred. Tethering her horse’s reins to a pole outside, Wu-Lin went into the shop.

The dusty odor of old furniture reached her nose. Old-fashioned tables and chairs, paintings, sculptures, antique mirrors—the merchandise that rested in the murky light—differed little from what would be found in any such shop, but Wu-Lin wasn’t there for the furniture. When she struck the call bell that sat on the counter in the back, a door that looked to be something of an antique itself opened, and a middle-aged man who was little more than skin and bones appeared.

“Welcome,” the man said as he ran his eyes over Wu-Lin.

“There’s something I’d like you to have a look at,” Wu-Lin said, covering her pouch with one hand.

“Well, that’s the line of work I’m in, so I guess I’ll take a gander,” the man replied in a less-than-amiable tone. “But unless it’s something really spectacular, you won’t get much for it from me. Especially not for curios—”

“It’s not old.”

“No?” the man remarked. “So you want an appraisal, then?”

“Yes.”

Dubiously eyeing the package Wu-Lin opened in her hand, the man picked up the sphere. “What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”

Shrugging his shoulders, the man then held the sphere up to his eye. “Where did you come by it?”

“Near my house . . . on the beach there.”

The man’s eyes shifted for a second to Wu-Lin. “From the sea?” he muttered. “You know, I can’t tell much without really looking into it. Would it be okay if I kept it?”

“How long?”

“Let me see—till noon tomorrow.”

“Could you write me up a receipt for it?” asked the girl.

“Sure.”

Taking a form imprinted with the proper information from behind the counter, the man hastily signed it and handed it to Wu-Lin.

“Whereabouts are you staying?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” the girl replied. “I’ll be back again at noon.”

Pointing down the street, the man said, “Take a right down at the corner and you’ll find a hotel. Quarters are cramped, but it’s cheap and the service is good.”

“Thank you,” Wu-Lin said with a smile as she turned to leave.

Making sure she’d gone, the man went into the back room and set the sphere on the desk he used for appraising antiques. Taking a seat, he didn’t use any of the electronic lenses or microscopes around him, but rather rolled the sphere around in his hand. Suddenly seeming to recall something, he looked up and smacked his fist to his forehead. Several minutes passed before the following words spilled from his lips: “So that’s it . . . I remember now! I’m sure it was in that book . . . This is a Noble’s . . .”

As the blood drained from his already corpse-like countenance, the man grabbed his jacket from the back of another chair, stashed the sphere in his pocket, and headed for the door with lengthy strides. What the man didn’t notice as he reached for the doorknob was that his body had turned in entirely the opposite direction. With the same tense expression as ever on his face, he walked toward the window on the far side of the room with a much gentler gait.

The door opened behind him. And who should step in but Toto, cautiously surveying the room as he entered. Judging from the way he quickly walked over to the man and fished the sphere out of his pocket, he must’ve seen everything the shopkeeper had done since entering the back room. Giving a light tap on the shoulder of the man who thought he was still facing the door, the mysterious young man bounced the bead from his right hand and the pair of rings from his left in the palm of his hand. “Sorry,” he told the shopkeeper, “but I’ll be taking this. Kindly give my regards to the little lady. See you!”

With those words, Toto took off like a gust of wind. But even after he was gone, the owner of the curio shop just kept plodding slowly toward the window—although in his own mind, he thought he was hurrying toward the door.

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About an hour later, several men went into a saloon. It was the one with the gaudiest neon sign of all of the drinking estab-lishments that lined that bustling thoroughfare. Their fierce expressions and powerful bodies made it quite evident they were in a dangerous line of work. Heading straight to the counter in the back, one of them said something to the bartender, who then used the hand that’d been wiping out glasses to indicate a door far to the right.

“That little bastard—you’ve gotta be joking me,” spat the man who’d spoken to the bartender, curses rolling from him like an incantation. When he tossed his jaw in the direction of the door, the other men started across the room with a brutal wind in their wake. A pair of muscular men who looked like bodyguards stood by the door, one on either side, but they let the group pass without saying a word.

Just beyond the door lay a hallway. There was a row of lewd pink doors on the green wall. Though no voices or other sounds could be heard, the men knew what was going on behind the bright pink planks, and it seemed like they could almost see the hot, dense fog rising from each and every door. After all, it wasn’t at all rare out on the Frontier for saloons to double as whorehouses.

Stopping for a second, they checked the number plate above one of the doors, and then the whole group headed down the hall to the right. The door down by the first corner was their destination.

When they were a few steps shy of their goal, they all heard a woman’s voice shout, “What are you doing?! I told you I’m not going for that, you lousy pervert!” At the same time, the door swung open from the inside. Along with the sweet smell of spices, something pale flew from the room. It was a half-naked woman, clutching her clothes to the front of her body.

“You bastard!” the woman shouted. Her sensuous face twisted into a demonic phiz, and she swung her right hand. Something shot back into the room, there was a dull thud, and then a cry of pain.

“Take that, you fucking deviant!” the woman roared before she growled to the group, “Out of my way!”

Watching the woman stalk away indignantly, the men were grinning at each other when they heard someone say, “Damn, that hurt! Where’d you run off to, bitch?!”

Spewing curses and groans all the while, a powerful form appeared, clad only in a pair of briefs. His right hand was pressed against his forehead, and he had a high-heeled shoe dangling loosely from his left. A pendant of two interlocked rings swayed against his hairy, muscular chest.

“I paid you a good chunk of change. The least you could do is indulge me a little. I’ll grab your sorry ass and—” At that point, he noticed the men and said, “What the hell do you want?”

“Been a long time, hasn’t it, Toto?” the man who’d spoken with the bartender said with nostalgia . . . only his eyes weren’t smiling.

Staring intently at his face, Toto broke into a nostalgic grin, too. “Well, spank my ass, if it ain’t Peres! This is some coincidence. Are you still doing the roving bodyguard routine?”

“Looks like neither of us has changed,” Peres replied. “When I heard about what happened at the antique store, I knew it was you. Seems you’re as good as ever with that trick of yours.”

Toto was playing down his abilities as he reached for his chest, but his pendant jolted away right before his hand.

Staring thoughtfully at the rings he’d torn free, Peres forcefully suggested, “Let’s talk inside.”

Still rubbing the back of his neck, Toto replied, “First, I have to get that bitch and—”

But as he attempted to go out into the hall, there was a dull thud against his solar plexus. Doubling over with a groan, he was shoved roughly back inside by the man who’d just punched him.

As he fell in the center of the medium-sized room, Toto groaned, “What the hell . . . was that about?” His Adam’s apple bobbed madly as he tried to take a breath.

“Check his clothes,” Peres ordered one of his compatriots as he bent over Toto.

The room had no decorations, save a bed and an end table—the latter of which had Toto’s clothes strewn on top of it. The glass window above the bed reflected the neon lights outside.

“You stuck your nose in a hell of a place this time,” Peres said in a sinister tone. His eyes were laughing. “Though I don’t figure you ever dreamed things would go like this. Without me around, Mr. Gilligan wouldn’t have ever known about you, or the fact that you like this place more than three hots and a cot. Too bad, eh?”

“Who the hell is that?” Toto asked in a tone that was somehow calm, suggesting that his pain had subsided.

“Why, he’s the big boss who runs everything here in town. That was a serious mistake, making a move on a curio shop he’s connected to. I hear there’s something unbelievable all tied into this. The boss went completely nuts and had us grab not just you, but the girl who brought it here to have it looked at, too. Hey, now,” Peres cautioned Toto, “don’t try and slip away. I know all your tricks. I know how tough you are, too, but these guys do this for a living. You don’t want them taking you apart alive, I bet.”

Having said his piece, Peres then turned toward the end table.

“It’s not here,” said the man searching through Toto’s clothes.

“Where’d you stash it? Your hotel?”

“Yeah,” Toto replied with a pained nod.

“All right, then. We’ll all go get it. But I’m warning you—if I find out you’re jerking us off to buy some time . . .” Peres said, lifting the corner of his coat. A sheath with a broadsword hung against his leg. They were convenient items, and depending on what your needs were, they could be used for anything from butchering a fire dragon to skinning a man alive.

“Do whatever you like,” Toto said as he stood up.

“Give him back his clothes,” Peres told him compatriot, adding, “But only after you’ve torn all the pockets out.”

A few seconds later Toto’s garments were thrown back to him, and he quickly put them on. “What happened to the girl?” he asked.

“You worried about her?”

“Yeah . . . I know what a scumbag you are and how you like to get your kicks. You don’t exactly take it easy on women or children, do you?”

“You’ll just have to wait until we’re in Mr. Gilligan’s basement to see about that, I guess.”

“Fine with me,” Toto said, his body sinking.

Catching a vicious shoulder attack in the stomach, Peres flew toward the table.

“You little bastard!” the other men snarled, although the reason they all charged Toto immediately must’ve been because they knew he was unarmed. Perhaps that was all they had in mind as they attacked.

A metallic clink sound rang out.

Peres watched in a daze as his compatriots completely ignored their forward momentum and turned around sharply a mere foot shy of Toto.

“Where the hell did you have ‘em ?!” he shouted as his right hand raced to his broadsword. Then suddenly his eyes went wide with a second surprise.

“Right here!”

The flash of silver that shot forth with Toto’s words answered both of Peres’s questions simultaneously.

Hacking half-way through the man’s neck with his own blade, Toto spit something out of his mouth for the other man to see as his old acquaintance fell to the floor gushing blood: a pair of metal rings.

“Never showed you that before, did I? Don’t go thinking things never change,” Toto lectured Peres, whose head flopped to one side. He then dashed over to the window, threw it open, and leapt out.

He landed on the street along the left side of the saloon. The moon was now out. He crouched down momentarily when he hit the ground and then started running. To the rear there was a concentration of eateries. Avoiding them, he quickly turned right instead. The alley was full of shadows. He knew if he kept going straight, he’d come out at the grain storehouses.

As he began to put his strength into his legs, a crisp sound reverberated behind him. It was whistling. Toto became a statue. It had that sort of ring to it. Nevertheless, Toto managed to slowly turn around.

At the entrance to the alley he’d just gone into, a figure in blue stood illuminated by the moonlight. He was tall and wore a cape. A sword hung from his left hip, and the handle and sheath were both covered with exquisitely intricate carvings. Both hands wore leather gloves, and they hung naturally by his sides. And yet it was perfectly clear that they would flash into action in response to any possible movement. It was infrequent to encounter people like this. Perhaps he was one of the men after Toto, waiting outside as a precaution.

“What do you want with me?” Toto called out, his voice sur-prisingly calm. Surely he hadn’t exactly led a normal, peaceful existence, either. “Are you with them?”

“Come with me,” a gorgeous voice said. It was as clear and fresh as the moonlight.

“What for?”

“Because you’re the suspicious character I saw break open a window and run away. I’m taking you to the sheriff’s office.”

“Spare me. C’mon, pal. From the looks of you, you’re no more than a step or two removed from my world yourself. Just let me go, okay? As a favor to another guy.”

His reply: a whistle.

A certain feeling suddenly filled Toto’s heart. It was that sort of melody. And the instant it completely filled his ears a flash of white mowed through Toto’s abdomen, and his body was blasted by a lust for killing.

Toto somehow managed to jump. However, as he hung in the air, blood spread from him like smoke. When he landed fifteen feet away, a grotesque mass of intestines spilled from his belly with a gush of blackish blood.

Toto couldn’t believe it. The distance between him and the man with the drawn blade in his right hand was at least fifteen feet. Now, there was less than six feet between them. How had his opponent closed the other nine feet?

Something hot welled up within him. No longer able to bear it, he began coughing. More than just gore splashed out in the alley. Even covered with dark blood, the sphere retained its dull shine as it bounced once on the ground and then gingerly rolled across the alley.

Just behind the bead, Toto finally noticed another alley to his right that lay wide open. However, he never had time to see this new path as an escape route. Pinning him to the ground with the sheer ferocity of his will to kill, the gorgeous man calmly drew closer with his naked blade. There was no doubt in Toto’s mind that any movement now would only invite a deadly blow. With desperate eyes, he gazed down at the puddle of blood at his feet—the pair of interlocked rings was in there somewhere. He heard whistling. When it stopped, the moment of fate would come. The melody flowed on . . . and then faded away. The blood seemed to drain from every inch of Toto. And then there was nothing left.

Toto looked up at his foe, but his opponent wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was concentrated on another alley.

Following the other man’s eyes, Toto found it was now his turn to be astonished. There was a man’s face so gorgeous it could make even someone caught in hellish agony lose himself. He saw some-thing darker than any ordinary darkness—a darkness given human form that hovered at the entrance to the alley. It was a vision of beauty. That was the only way he could describe it. The face beneath the traveler’s hat melded with the darkness, but had he been able to actually see it, the sight might’ve left him breathless with sheer envy. He wondered if perhaps it was some spell that the night put on him that caused these two gorgeous men to appear before him in that narrow alley.

The second figure bent over and picked up the bead. He left himself so wide open to attack that it looked like a mere child could cut him down. Gazing at the bead, he asked, “Is this yours?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say,” Toto replied. And as he spoke, he took the intestines lying in the road and began stuffing them back into his abdominal cavity. “See, someone gave it to me. You know, I hate to do this, but I have a favor to ask of you. I have to be running along now, but I was hoping you could help out the bead’s owner. And I’ll let you keep that as payment. Seems it’s really worth a hell of a lot. Although I do have to warn you, I’ll be along later to take it back from you. You’ll find her in the basement of the house that belongs to a scumbag by the name of Gilligan. I’m counting on you, pal.”

And saying that, Toto leapt away to the rear. While it wasn’t clear exactly what the secret of his physiology was, his strength was unbelievable. The whistling figure didn’t follow him.

“What will you do?” he said. It sounded as if the moon had asked the question.

There was no reply.

“You plan on going?”

“We’ll see,” the new arrival said, responding for the first time.

The whistling figure continued, “You’re even better looking than I am—and I’ve never met a man like that before. What’s more, I believe I know your name: Vampire Hunter D. I may as well introduce myself. The name is Glen. I’m a seeker of knowledge.”

He received no reply.

“Once again, I’d like to know if you intend to go or not.”

D’s outline melted into the darkness.

Glen looked up at the sky. Dark clouds were blindfolding the moon. When they cleared, there was no sign of D.

“I guess you went,” Glen muttered in a low voice.

After a while, the melancholy whistling faded off into the moonlit distance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel Demon City Shinjuku in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has authored numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, writing novels in the tradition of occidental horror authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. As of 2004, there were seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many live action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based on Kikuchi’s novels.

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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime artist and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the U.S. as G-Force and Battle of the Planets). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel Sandman: The Dream Hunters with Neil Gaiman and Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer with best-selling author Greg Rucka.