The Cedar Shroud

The dynasty drowned in fire and mud, leaving only the Osumi-Toride to carry its dead across the holy marshes. But the sacred waters have dried to cracked silt, stranding the three-tiered cedar barge in a cemetery of stagnant reeds. Aboard, four keepers tend the linen-wrapped corpses of princes and commoners alike, burning bitter resin to soothe the passing ghosts. Yet the perfume of burial has called up horrors from the deep swamp mud: boneless, chattering burrowers that gnaw through the keel to feast upon the preserved dead. With the drums wearing thin and the hull splintering beneath their feet, the crew must choose which ancestors to burn, which companions to save, and how to outlive a kingdom already turned to bone.