“The Princess is unwell,” they said.
She pleaded with Dong Fang Suo to convince the Emperor to let her continue her lessons. He was successful. Imperial ministers took over the job of teaching Ping to read and write. Without the Princess, it was not such an enjoyable experience. She’d been very patient, going over each character again and again, explaining the meaning of the components of each character and making up stories to help her remember them. But Ping and the Princess had talked about other things besides characters and books. Princess Yangxin spoke of her childhood and the bond she’d had with her brother ever since he was born. Ping had enjoyed hearing about the young Liu Che and his devotion to his sister. As they drank tea, Lady An had taught her how to tie up her hair in a neat knot. The lessons had lasted for entire afternoons.
Now a minister came each morning and wrote Ping’s new characters on her calfskin. It was a different minister each day. He told her what each character meant. Ping recited the characters back to him and then he went away. Ping practised the characters by herself, in the garden if it wasn’t raining or in her chamber if the weather was bad. In the afternoon, the minister returned to test her. If her characters weren’t well formed, he made her write them again and again until she got them right.
Now that she understood the different components of the characters, it didn’t take Ping long each day to learn six characters. Even when she persuaded the ministers to increase the daily number of new characters to ten-and-two, and she practised every character she knew, it still only took a few hours. She supervised Kai as he swam in the ponds. She tried to teach him not to trample the flowers. His attendants took care of most of his needs. Though the Emperor was always too busy with the Longevity Council to spend time with Ping, he still found time to be with Kai.
Ping missed the Princess’s company. She walked every path in the garden until she knew each tree and rock. She watched ducks in their arrowhead formation fly away to warmer lands for the winter. She felt as lonely as she had at Huangling.
Ping went to visit Hua. She had managed to ensure that his cage only had a latch, so that Hua could use his dexterous claws to free himself every night. Ping felt bad that he had to spend so much time confined. He would have been better off if he’d stayed on the Isle of the Blest.
“It’s not fair, Hua,” she told the rat. “Kai can get away with all sorts of bad behaviour, and no one minds. Just breathing is enough to get you into trouble.”
Ping didn’t like going back to the cages. She didn’t want to be reminded of the time she’d been imprisoned. The monkeys and the black cat were no longer there. They had been freed to roam the Tiger Forest. She hoped that one day she would get a chance to wander in the wild forest.
• chapter fifteen •
HEAVEN’S ANGER
“Kai!” she called out, her heart gripped with fear.
“Where are you?”
Ping couldn’t sleep. Hailstones were battering the roofs. It sounded like the Immortals were pelting the lodge with rocks. An angry wind rattled shutters and lifted tiles off the roof above her chamber. Kai was curled up next to her. His bed consisted of a large feather mattress on a brick platform that was heated from beneath by hot coals. Most nights it was empty, while Ping and Kai were squashed together on Ping’s straw mattress. She had suggested that she might sleep in the big bed where there would be more room, but Saggypants wouldn’t hear of it. The bed was for the imperial dragon only. Ping would have brought the matter up with the Emperor but he was so busy she didn’t want to bother him with such a trivial matter.
The sound of the wind whispering and whistling through the rafters frightened the little dragon. He had wriggled and whimpered for more than an hour. Ping had told him stories until he was finally asleep—curled up in a knot, taking up three-quarters of the bed and snoring softly. A flash of light lit up the room briefly. It was followed half a minute later by a deep rumble. Then the night was as black as a crow’s wing again. She could hear a rustling sound. It was Hua rearranging some of the bedding straw to suit his own ratty purposes.
Storms had never kept Ping awake before. She was thinking about the books on dragons and their keepers.
“Those books are only to be read by members of the Longevity Council,” Dong Fang Suo had said when Ping had asked if she could look at them. Even though she still didn’t know enough characters to be able to read them, his stubbornness annoyed her. If there were books on dragons and their care, why shouldn’t the Imperial Dragonkeeper read them?
Ping lay on her side and then on her back, but she couldn’t get comfortable. She got up and rearranged the blanket, which was all on Kai’s side of the bed. She tried lying with her head at the bottom of the bed and her feet near Kai’s nose. She had been in bed for hours, but still felt no closer to sleep. Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t felt hungry at the evening meal and had left her favourite dish (green goose with ginger sauce) untouched.
“I’m hungry now, though,” she whispered to Hua. “Let’s see if we can find something to eat in the kitchens.”
It was so dark, Ping had to feel her way to the door. She checked that Kai was still snoring and then went out into the corridor. Small wicker baskets containing oil lamps were placed on the floor at intervals. It was at least two hours past midnight. Many of the lamps had burned up their supply of oil or had been blown out by gusts of wind. Only a few were still alight.
The corridors and halls were eerily empty. Through the shutters, she glimpsed one or two guards standing miserably under eaves with rain dripping off their caps, but no one was awake inside. Hua was enjoying this freedom. He darted around inspecting what was behind wall hangings and beneath holes in the floorboards. It reminded Ping of the times they had explored Huangling Palace together at night. The memory left her smiling, which was strange, since she had been a hungry, ill-treated slave back then.
Though she had intended to go to the kitchens, that wasn’t where her feet were taking her. The lodge was not a neat symmetrical building like the palace at Huangling. It had been built to fit the contours of the hillside. It straggled crookedly across a slope and then abruptly turned uphill. The corridors changed direction unexpectedly and suddenly turned into stairs, sometimes leading up, sometimes down. Some chambers were completely separate, joined to the main building by enclosed passageways that zigzagged up and down the hillside.
Ping found herself in the walkway that led to the Hall of Peaceful Retreat where the Longevity Council worked on their potions and elixirs. She only ever saw the strange members of the council at the evening banquet. The rest of the day (and for all she knew the night as well), they studied and experimented. She had never been to the hall. Guards had barred her way whenever she tried to approach it.
During the day the walkway gave pleasant glimpses of hidden gardens and pools full of large goldfish. Now the shutters were all closed. Only two lamps were still burning in the passageway. Ping bent down to lift one from its wicker basket, shielding the flame with her hand as it flickered in a sudden gust of wind. A shutter blew open with a bang. Her heart pounded like a hammer beating metal. Through the open window she saw the wet garden lit up by a flash of lightning. It looked unnatural and frightening. Silvery shapes of twisted rocks loomed like ghosts. The branches of a weeping cherry tree were blown horizontal by the fierce wind. Then it was dark again.
Ping felt the floor slope down beneath her feet as she continued along the passageway. The wail of the wind died for a moment and she could hear the gentle pattering of Hua’s feet on the polished floorboards. Then she heard another sound—heavy flat-footed steps. It sounded as if two or three guards were blundering clumsily down the passage behind her. There was a crash. Ping spun round. The first wicker basket had been knocked over, its oil spilled out. The flame from the wick licked greedily along the trail of oil. The wicker basket started to burn.
“Fire,” said a voice in Ping’s head.
By the light of the flames Ping could see
that the culprit wasn’t a band of clumsy guards, just one small dragon.
Ping rushed back and stamped out the fire.
“Kai, you could have burnt down the whole lodge,” Ping snapped. “What are you doing here? You should be asleep.”
“Lonely,” said Kai. “Frightened.”
The dragon’s green eyes blinked in the lamplight. At any other time of the day, she might have been pleased with the improvement in his speech, which for the last week had consisted of nothing but bad words he’d learned from the imperial guards.
“Well, if you’re coming with me, you have to be very, very quiet. Do you understand?”
Kai nodded. “Quiet.”
There was no guard outside the Hall of Peaceful Retreat. Ping pushed the door open a chink, half expecting the strange Longevity Council members to be still at their work, but no light leaked out. She went into the hall. Her lamp spread only a small circle of light. She could see jars and bowls, a mortar and pestle on a bench. There was an unpleasant smell, sharp and sour, like vinegar and urine mixed together. It was a familiar smell, but Ping couldn’t place it. The rumble in her stomach had become an ache. Hua jumped up onto the bench and sniffed the contents of the bowls.
Kai made a high-pitched noise.
“Sssh, Kai. Remember what I said?”
“Quiet.”
Ping held up her lamp. Bamboo books were stacked on a shelf above the bench. They were neatly rolled, tied with thin ribbon and each had a tag hanging from it. One was spread open on a bench. Ping held the lamp close. She recognised the characters for long and life. She examined the tags on the other books. She found two that had the character for dragon written on them. She opened out one of these books. There were many characters that she could understand—heart, eye, blood. She couldn’t make out the meaning of the sentences, but she had an unpleasant feeling that it was a list of uses for dragon parts. She pulled the other dragon book from the shelf. The neat stack of books collapsed with a thud.
“Sssh,” said Kai sternly. “Quiet.”
Ping ran her finger down the columns of characters. The dragon character was repeated many times. She sighed with frustration. Though she knew many of the characters, she still couldn’t make sense of it.
A noise startled Ping. She held up her lamp. A curtained doorway led off the hall to an inner chamber. The wind had died, the hail had stopped and there was just the patter of rain. She heard the noise again. Someone was on the other side of the curtain. The ache in Ping’s stomach had turned to a sharp pain. But it wasn’t hunger that had made her stomach hurt. It was the sense of dread that she felt when enemies were near.
Ping pinched the lamp wick between her finger and thumb. The room was black as an ink block. She crouched in a corner, holding Kai close to her, with her hand clamped around his mouth in case he made a noise. She heard the swish of the curtain as it was pulled back, and the slap of slippers across the floor. There was the smell of sweat and stale wine, the sound of fingernails scratching dry skin. Fingers fumbled with a catch. A shutter opened. A flash of lightning lit the room for a second. In the brief silver light, Ping saw the back of a man’s head as he stood at the window. Thunder cracked the silence, booming and rumbling. There was another flash. The man spat out of the window and then turned towards Ping. She gasped, but the sound was drowned by another peel of thunder. She only saw his face for a moment, but the image burned in her mind. The man had a dark mark on one side of his face and a patch over his right eye. She would have known that face anywhere. It was the necromancer.
Ping covered her mouth with her hand to stop herself from crying out. The thunder died away and the high-pitched shriek of a tin whistle took its place. She had let go of the dragon’s jaws.
“Bad man!” Kai screeched.
Ping felt the necromancer turn towards her in the darkness. The feeling of dread forced her to her knees. The foreboding had been diluted before, like watery soup. It hadn’t reached its full strength until the necromancer was almost breathing in her face.
Lightning lit the room again. Ping tried to move, but couldn’t.
“You thought you’d seen the last of me, didn’t you?” He smiled. “I believed you’d drowned, but then I heard villagers talking about a sorceress who’d been arrested. There were rumours about a devilish rat. I knew it was you.” His hands reached out towards Kai. “That dragon whelp is mine.” The tips of his long black fingernails scraped the little dragon’s scales.
Hua leapt at him. Then the room was black again. The necromancer cried out in pain. Ping’s legs finally obeyed her. She was out of the door, Kai clutched to her, before the necromancer had time to draw another breath. She ran up the passageway. There were no lamps but it didn’t matter. Her feet retraced her steps as surely as if the corridor was lit by ten-and-two torches.
“Guards!” Ping yelled.
Ping burst out of the door at the end of the passageway and into the dark and wet. There were no guards at the door. As she opened her mouth to shout for help, the sky lit up as if it were daylight. A heartbeat later there was a clap of thunder.
“Guards!” she yelled. “Quick, there’s an intruder.”
No guards came. Kai was strangely silent in her arms. He was terrified. Ping stood in the pouring rain wondering what she should do. She had to get Kai to safety, but the lodge no longer seemed secure. Kai suddenly came to life. He thrust out with his strong paws. Ping couldn’t hold him. He jumped down and ran off into the darkness. The lightning was now so frequent that the garden was more often lit than in darkness. The thunder was a constant rumble. The Hall of Peaceful Retreat loomed black behind her, crouched on the hillside like an animal ready to attack. The garden seemed safer. This time her second sight didn’t fail her. Even though she couldn’t see him, Ping knew that Kai was running up the hill towards the Garden of Secluded Harmony. She ran after him.
Ping could hear the sound of the bells on the Touching Heaven Tower jangling frantically in the strong wind. Kai finally came to a halt at the foot of the tower. A bolt of brilliant light zigzagged across the sky and hit the finger of one of the gold statue’s up-stretched hands with a shower of sparks. At the exact same time there was a deafening crack as if Heaven itself had been split in half. The upper part of the tower burst into flames. The statue of the Immortal glowed in the light of the fire and then tilted to one side. It fell end over end. Ping was halfway across the bridge that led to the tower. She felt it shake beneath her as the statue hit the bridge. Then one of the cornerstones splashed into the surrounding lake.
“Kai!” she called out, her heart gripped with fear. “Where are you?”
Lightning pulsed across the sky again and again. The thunder was a continual roar. Rain poured from the sky like a waterfall. A stone block fell from the tower, then another, crushing the bridge in front of her. Ping was frozen in indecision. She couldn’t turn and save herself until she had found Kai. She tried to focus her second sight to find the invisible thread that led to the little dragon. She felt the rush of air as another stone fell just in front of her. Sharp claws dug into her skin as the dragon leapt into her arms. Ping held him close then turned and ran.
The wind carried the sound of anxious, frightened voices. Guttering torches were making their way up the hill. The light of the flames revealed spears, shields and red leather tunics. The lightning strike had roused the guards at last. Captains shouted orders. Their words were sharp and harsh, but with tremors of fear and confusion.
Liu Che appeared on the edge of the lake, his hair hanging in wet strings, a padded coat thrown roughly over his shoulders. He was still in his nightshirt. Servants tried to shelter him from the rain with a silk umbrella, but the wind tore the fragile fabric to tatters. Ping tried to go to him but the guards pushed her back. Dong Fang Suo came puffing up behind the Emperor. It was the first time Ping had seen him without his ministerial cap. He had a round bald patch on the top of his head.
The stones had stopped falling. The lightning w
as becoming less frequent. The thunderclaps lagged behind. Finally the lightning stopped and the angry roar of the thunder faded to an irritable rumble.
The Touching Heaven Tower no longer reached up to Heaven. Where the lofty tower had stood, there was nothing but a pile of stones and smouldering rafters. The golden statue of the Immortal lay face down in the rubble. The jade dish was smashed to pieces.
A pale light beneath the heavy clouds faintly outlined the eastern horizon. It was almost dawn. There would be no star dew for the Emperor to drink that morning.
• chapter sixteen •
THE BAMBOO BOOKS
“You have exceptional freedom here at Ming
Yang Lodge, Ping. But it seems you are determined
to try my patience by sneaking into the few places
you are forbidden to enter.”
Ping waited outside the door of the Chamber of Spreading Clouds. At last she had been summoned by the Emperor and could tell him about the necromancer. Guards stood stiff and stern-faced on either side of the door. Inside the chamber, the Emperor was meeting with his shaman and seers. They had been shut in there for hours. As far as Ping could see, Liu Che didn’t need seers to explain the fall of the tower. There was only one way to account for it. Heaven was not happy with the Emperor. He had built a tower to reach up to the dwelling place of the Immortals and they had used their heavenly power to smash it down. How could it be anything but a bad omen?
To make matters worse, Kai was unwell. Ping thought this was the result of eating ten-and-four roast swallows at the banquet the night before, but she didn’t trust her second sight anymore. It had let her down. Perhaps the storm had weakened it, but she couldn’t be sure. The fact remained that for the first time Kai hadn’t eaten his breakfast and he had refused to get out of bed. A sick dragon was another bad omen for the Emperor.