ANNJA CAME BACK TO HERSELF to find Dr. Laurent sitting in her chair nearby, watching her closely, a tight expression on her face.

“How are you doing, Annja?” she asked when she saw that her patient had emerged from the trance.

I feel good, was Annja’s first thought, and she truly did. She felt rested in a way she hadn’t for a long time, as if she’d laid down for a quick nap and had awoken a dozen hours later instead. Her physical and emotional batteries felt recharged and ready for whatever was to come next.

“Is it over?” she asked, glancing around for a clock. Just how long was I out, anyway? she wondered.

“Yes, it’s over,” Dr. Laurent said. Realizing what Annja was looking for, she answered her unspoken question. “You’ve been in a trance for just about an hour, give or take a few minutes.”

“And did it work?”

“I believe so.” The doctor picked up the sketch pad off her lap and handed it Annja. “Does this look familiar?”

While the drawing wouldn’t win any awards for its artistic merits, it was immediately clear what it was she had drawn—the face of the swordsman she’d encountered at Roux’s. The figure in the picture stared out at her from behind the concealment of a hood and face mask, but she would recognize the look of superiority in those eyes anywhere. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she stared at the image and had the eerie sense that the image was looking back at her at the same time.

“Yes, that’s the man from my dreams,” she said in reply to Dr. Laurent’s question, and gave herself a quick shake to dispel the lingering sense of disquiet the image was giving her.

“That’s what I thought. How about what’s on the next page?”

Annja flipped the page and found the image of a katana.But it was the two images she’d sketched onto the blade itself, just above the tsabo,or hilt guard, that really caught her attention. The first was a set of Japanese characters that she couldn’t read so she had no idea what they said. The second was easily recognizable, however; it was an elegantly drawn image of a dragon straight out of Japanese mythology. The beast had been rendered standing on its hind legs, its wings outstretched to their full extent and its long whiskers drooping past an open mouth full of teeth.

Annja was surprised, as the drawing was not only well done but extremely detailed. It was considerably better than the first one, as if she had tapped into some long-forgotten well of artistic talent deep in her soul. “I did this?” she asked.

“You did that,” the doctor replied. “Perhaps you have a second career as an artist.”

“Yeah, maybe so.” As she stared at it, Annja realized the etching had been on the sword that the Dragon had wielded, the one that had almost taken her head off. Her unconscious mind had seen and made note of the details even in the midst of the fight that her conscious mind and body was trying frantically not to lose.

Annja also knew that just as artisans today signed their creations, so, too, did the ancient swordsmiths, etching small sets of kanji characters into their blades to show evidence of their craftsmanship. You could tell the provenance of a blade from those tiny images, and once you knew what type of blade it was, you had a shot at tracking it down as the ownership and heritage was often carefully cataloged.

For the first time since her search started, she’d found a solid lead.

Dr. Laurent asked her something, but Annja missed it.

“I’m sorry. What was that?” she said, looking up from the drawing.

The doctor’s eyes were filled with sorrow.

“I asked if you were ever injured in a fire.”

No sooner had the words left the doctor’s mouth than the sense of fear and danger that had reared its head at the start of the session came sweeping back in like a tsunami. Cold fingers scurried up her spine and her breath caught in her throat. It was as if her entire system had been shocked into immobility; she couldn’t have responded to Dr. Laurent even if her life had depended on it.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling passed and she could breathe again.

“No,” she managed to whisper back in answer to the question.

“Lose a loved one to a fire, then? Maybe when you were younger?”

“No,” she said, more firmly this time. “I was raised at an orphanage in New Orleans. I never knew any of my family.” The doctor hadn’t asked if she’d ever had nightmares about dying in a fire, so Annja had no intention of mentioning them. Besides, she’d outgrown that long ago.

Dr. Laurent leaned forward in her chair and said, very gently, “Turn the page, Annja.”

As she did as she was asked, Annja said, “I don’t know what this—”

The rest of the sentence died. She stared at the page in complete shock.

She’d drawn an executioner’s fire straight from the history books—a central pole surrounded by a heaping pile of bound hay and wood that burned out of control, the flames reaching for the edges of the page as if hungry for more. A great cloud of smoke and ash filled the space around the image and Annja had the sense of figures standing there, watching the spectacle as if enjoying an afternoon at the movies.

But what made her heart pound and her thoughts freeze like ice was the suggestion of a figure at the center of the image, the thin slender shape of a woman, just the whisper of a ghost at the heart of the inferno.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed.

Frantic, she flipped the page, only to find the exact same image on the next sheet in the pad.

Dr. Laurent was speaking to her, but Annja’s head was filled with a great roaring noise, a curtain of sound that blotted out everything else, and she didn’t hear anything that was said. All she could do was stare at the pages in front of her, astounded at what had come bubbling up from her subconscious like some ancient beast waiting to devour the unwary.

Page after page, the sketches were the same, until she came to the very last page of the drawing pad. Maybe her subconscious mind had recognized that this was it, there were no more pages to draw upon, for a small detail had been added to this image that was not present in any of the others.

In the right-hand corner of the page, almost lost in the swirling cloud of ash and smoke that covered the area, the image of a dove had been added to the scene, wings spread as it soared toward the heavens.

It was too much for Annja. With the pad clutched to her chest, she mumbled her apologies and got out of there as fast as she could.

15

Thailand 1996

“No!” old man Toshiro barked. “Feel the pattern, do not think it.”

Shizu nodded at her instructor and returned to the starting position, ready to run through the kata again from the beginning, all two hundred specific moves, despite her exhaustion and pain. She’d been at it for two straight days and the lack of food and drink was starting to take its toll on her concentration and on her fifteen-year-old body. And Toshiro would brook no error; if she made a mistake, she would start again from the beginning, just as she was now. A single complaint or groan of pain would only prolong the session; Toshiro had once kept her going for five straight days, when she’d voiced an argument over why she shouldn’t have to practice the basics with such fervor and repetition, until she’d finally passed out from exhaustion.