Title: Ibuki
Author: Kathryn Sommerlot
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: January 29, 2018
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Female/Female
Length: 26000
Genre: Fantasy, LGBT, lesbian, fantasy, cleric/priestess, magic users, abduction, royalty
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Synopsis
Ibuki: the gift of healing through
breath. Chiasa has possessed the ability since childhood and shares it with her
father as they care for their Inuru community. Chiasa has never doubted the
stability of her simple life. That is, until Namika, a water-gifted priestess,
shows up outside the Ibuki shrine gates with information promising Chiasa’s
doom.
With Namika’s help, Chiasa is determined
to find the secrets behind the ritual that will claim her life, but her growing
feelings toward the other woman reach beyond her control, adding to the
confusion. Time is rapidly running out, and Chiasa can’t seem to sort out the
lies woven through the magic of Inuru and its emperor.
Caught in a tangled web of immortality,
betrayal, and desire, Chiasa must find the right people to trust if she hopes
to stop the ritual—or she will pay the consequences.
Excerpt
Ibuki
Kathryn Sommerlot © 2018
All Rights Reserved
When Chiasa first saw the young woman
standing outside the shrine, her throat seized in fear around a single thought:
the emperor is dead. A moment later, she realized the woman appeared far more
nervous than grief-stricken, and she relaxed, only to wonder why a seseragi
priestess would be on her doorstep before the sun had fully risen.
The woman was unmistakably one of the
water-chosen. Her hands were fidgeting and pressing tiny creases into the
telltale blue of her silk robe, its pale folds hanging uneven above her
shell-lined sandals, and above the short collar, a silver clip in the shape of
an ocean wave held her hair in two overlapping plaits. She glanced down either
side of the empty road, shoulders bowed, before starting up the stairs.
Chiasa hung back to observe.
It took the woman a minute or so to
climb the steps that led to the small fountain, and with the shrine deserted,
her footsteps echoed through the grounds. Her hair seemed to have been hastily
done as an afterthought—long strands had come free and hung down her back like
splatters of black ink across parchment.
She did manage a jerky half bow when she
reached the slotted board holding the wooden ladle, though most of the water
she then tried to pour over her hands ended up splashing onto the front of the
blue silk, a testament to the shaking in her arms. Chiasa let her continue
without interruption until she reached the top of the stairs and clapped her
hands together before the silver bell. Any farther, and the seseragi priestess
would make her way inside the sanctuary, to where the ibuki power-stone was
held, and the thought was unsettling enough to push Chiasa forward.
“If I can help you with something,”
Chiasa began, slipping out from her hiding spot between the side of the
sanctuary and the hall of worship where she spent many hours praying in
solitude.
The young woman started, nearly tripping
on the hem of her robe. One hand went to her mouth as she stared far longer
than was comfortable, and then she bowed again, the force of the action
throwing the loose tendrils of hair over her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t send
word, and…well, I know it’s strange for me to be here, but I must speak with an
ibuki priest, please.”
Chiasa took a step back, one corner of
the hall’s intersecting wall panels jabbing between her shoulders.
“My father is the head priest, but he’s
not here. He’s out with the herbalist to tend the sick. If you wish, I can
leave him a message for when he returns—”
“It’s urgent,” the other woman
whispered. “Please.”
At a loss, Chiasa looked around the
shrine grounds she knew by heart. There was no one else to summon. Her father
wouldn’t be back until much later, perhaps even after midnight, and old Isao
was seldom of much use anymore, relegated to menial groundskeeping tasks and
selling talismans. As the morning breeze broke through the tree line and nipped
at the exposed skin of her cheek, she felt acutely alone.
Chiasa tried to imagine what her father
might do were he present as the young woman, still bent in an awkward bow,
began to shake with the exertion of it. Chiasa, afraid she would topple over
entirely, sprang forward and dropped the broom she was holding, the tool
clattering noisily across the pathway.
“He’s not here,” Chiasa repeated, though
she wanted to help the woman when she was in such a state. “But please don’t
panic, I will not send you away. If you’d like, I could make you some tea?”
“Yes,” the woman said. Her hands went to
her face, cupping cheeks that were tinged with an uneven smattering of powder.
As Chiasa watched, her gaze seemed to get lost in nothing, until she finally
blinked and focused once again, settling on Chiasa’s face. Again, there was
something sparking in her eyes that Chiasa couldn’t entirely read. The woman
lowered her hands and nodded. “Yes, I would appreciate it. I’m sorry to
intrude.”
Chiasa thought briefly of disagreeing,
but it felt best to avoid lying. Instead, she led the seseragi priestess into
the hall of worship and through to the small back room where they kept a low,
small table and supplies unrelated to the shrine itself. There was a heavy iron
kettle, which was so old that one side of it was slightly lower than the other,
making the whole thing lopsided. Chiasa placed it onto the small fire in the
center of the room with care and waved the smoke up into the open flume built
into the roof’s small, soot-blackened bricks. Her strange guest knelt at the table,
smoothing her silks beneath her knees.
“I don’t know when my father will
return,” Chiasa apologized as she waited for the water to bubble. The other
woman deflated somewhat, her shoulders curving in and over on themselves as she
ran a finger over the grain of the table.
“Is there no one else?” she asked. Then,
a half second too late, her eyes snapped up, wide and frightened. “I didn’t
mean… I meant no offense. I’m sure you are quite capable at the breath—”
Chiasa waved her apology away. “I’m not
offended. But I am afraid there is no one else. It’s only my father, myself,
and old Isao.”
“Then, your father is part of the
emperor’s circle?” the woman asked. The expression on her features changed from
nervous to suspicious, and Chiasa couldn’t follow the reasoning behind it. Her
guest tapped her fingers against the tabletop as she pursed her lips together,
and her gaze shifted away from Chiasa and the teakettle. “Perhaps it was unwise
to come here. I thought there were more in the ibuki shrine.”
The kettle whistled its completion, and
as she poured the fragrant hibiscus blend, Chiasa frowned, puzzled by the
transformation in both the conversation and the woman’s demeanor.
“My father is not advising the emperor
today,” she said, again, in case it had been missed, as she handed the other
woman the small teacup of hollowed bone. Her guest held the cup between her
fingers, but didn’t sip from it. Her gaze seemed lost again, her eyes focused
on something far beyond the table and the crackling fire pit, in a place Chiasa
could neither see nor touch.
After quite some time, the woman raised
her head once more. “My name is Namika. I suppose with your father too close to
the source I should not have asked for him at all. You are the youngest within
the shrine?”
“Yes,” Chiasa answered, though she
regretted doing so in the next heartbeat when the oddness of the question fully
registered.
Namika’s brow furrowed as her fingers
knit together around the bone cup. “Then I must tell you of my discovery.”
“Discovery?” Chiasa repeated.
“I’m afraid it’s not good news,” Namika
said and grimaced. “I was tasked with sorting through our cellar, where many of
the old texts and records are kept. The majority of them are simply logs of
visitors to the shrine and the actions our priests performed at the emperor’s
command. But within the piles, I discovered what seemed to be a set of entries
detailing the truth behind the emperor’s longevity.”
“The gods have seen fit to bless him
with immortality,” Chiasa said, but she felt suddenly very cold, crossing her
arms over her chest and running her hands over her sleeves. The small room
seemed to constrict even further around them, squeezing the air from Chiasa’s
lungs until she was gasping for it. They should not even be discussing the emperor.
They were far too young and unimportant to think they had more wisdom than a
man who had been ruling Inuru for nearly three hundred years, and despite their
solitude within the shrine, Chiasa got the distinct feeling someone, somewhere,
could hear them. The sensation sent toe-curling shivers down her back.
“No,” Namika said. She leaned forward,
like she, too, was reacting to the sudden chill permeating the air. “It’s
unnatural, his lifespan— He is stealing it, all of it; he is stealing his
life.”
“That’s impossible,” Chiasa snapped. “No
magic could grant a mortal so much time.”
Namika shook her head and set the cup of
tea down, still just as full as when Chiasa had handed it to her. “He is
stealing it through blood. He’s drinking blood to absorb the life within it and
add it to his own.”
Chiasa stood so suddenly that the table
shook, splashing tea across the surface. The scent of steeped flowers and herbs
grew even stronger.
“You’re lying,” she said through
clenched teeth, hands curled into fists at her side. The flash of indignation
that flared up beneath her skin came from a source she couldn’t identify, but
she knew from years of practiced obedience that it was necessary. “My father is
on the emperor’s circle, and he would never allow such a thing, even if it were
possible.”
“But that is why I had to come!” Namika
exclaimed. “It’s written in the documents, by the seseragi high priest himself.
I swear to you I did not come here with a lie!”
Chiasa wove her hands through her hair,
tugging bits of it free from the tortoiseshell clasp holding the twist snug at
the nape of her neck. Her father couldn’t possibly be implicated in such a
monstrosity—and beyond that, the insult to the emperor weighed like a stone
within her gut. The emperor protected them all. The emperor loved them all.
“It’s impossible,” Chiasa said, letting
her hands fall back down to her sides. “What blood could possibly grant such—”
“Those with the breath!” Namika cried
out and then sat back on her heels, cheeks flushed and pink. As Chiasa stared
at her across the table, the unwanted and uninvited woman with the
poison-tipped tongue of lies inhaled deeply and then pushed the air back out,
slowly, through red lips.
“He is drinking your order,” she said.
Her voice was far quieter, filled with something that sounded an awful lot like
sympathy. “He is drinking the blood of ibuki priests.”
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Meet the Author
Kathryn Sommerlot is a coffee addict and craft beer enthusiast with a detailed zombie apocalypse plan. Originally from the cornfields of the American Midwest, she got her master’s degree and moved across the ocean to become a high school teacher in Japan. When she isn’t wrangling teenage brains into critical thinking, she spends her time writing, crocheting, and hiking with her husband. She enjoys LGBTQ fiction, but she is particularly interested in genre fiction that just happens to have LGBTQ protagonists. You can find Kathryn on her Website.Giveaway
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