The Emperor’s voice was growing impatient.
“Kai isn’t just a spoilt pet to amuse the imperial household. His purpose is to serve the Emperor. If you were really the Imperial Dragonkeeper, Ping, you would have realised long ago that dragons’ blood is the key ingredient in the elixir of immortality. Kai will be revered as the last imperial dragon. He will live in luxury for a thousand years or more in my service and give his blood to me. That is his duty as imperial dragon.”
“You can’t,” said Ping feebly. “It’s not right.”
He waved his hand as if brushing away a fly. “I don’t have to justify my actions to a slave girl. The necromancer says that, to ensure that Heaven forgives me for my error in appointing you as Dragonkeeper, you must be sacrificed.”
Liu Che’s eyes were shining with a sort of madness. Ping could no longer see any trace of her friend. The ribbon of friendship between them had always been a fragile thing. It had frayed before and been mended, but Ping realised now that nothing she could say would heal the rift between them. The Emperor was willing to risk Kai’s life, to make him suffer centuries of pain in his foolish pursuit of immortality. She could never be his friend.
Dong Fang Suo was looking at her, moving his caterpillar eyebrows up and down alternately. His mouth moved. Ping had no idea what he could possibly want to say to her. If he was trying to apologise, it was too late. A guard brought a spear down across his back.
The sound of several trumpets repeating the same short refrain came from the river bank. No one on board seemed surprised to hear it. The music stopped and was replaced by the sound of horses’ hooves. Six men wearing blue and gold tunics came riding down the north road on black horses. Each man held a trumpet to his lips. They sounded the refrain again. Soldiers on foot followed behind them. Blue and gold pennants fluttered from the butts of their spears. Behind them were dark, foreign men leading strange creatures which were bigger than horses and had long, curved necks and two humps on their backs. They were ugly beasts that made unpleasant grunting noises. Ping had never seen anything like them before. The soldiers on the river bank parted to make way for another man on horseback. He was about six-times-ten years and his winged headdress was similar to those worn by imperial ministers. His horse wore a blue plume on its head. The man looked up at the Emperor with an unsmiling face. He got down from his horse, dusted off his tunic and strode up the gangplank.
The Emperor stood up. “Welcome, Duke of Yan.”
“Your Imperial Majesty,” the Duke said without bowing.
The Emperor ignored this discourtesy and turned to Minister Ji. “Tell Princess Yangxin that the Duke has arrived.”
The minister bowed and went below decks. Ping realised that the baskets and chests on the dock were those that she had seen in the Princess’s chambers. Princess Yangxin herself appeared. Her gown was made of fine hemp, the same shade of blue as the Duke’s soldiers’ tunics and trimmed with gold. Over it she wore a padded coat. A head scarf covered her lovely hair. Lady An and her other ladies-in-waiting were dressed in a similar way.
“I am ready to return to my husband and beg his forgiveness,” the Princess said in a calm voice as she bowed before the Duke.
She didn’t look at Ping.
“If you can forgive my mistakes, my Lord,” she said, “I will be an obedient wife.”
The Duke’s stern face softened as he looked down at the top of Princess Yangxin’s head.
“Do you have the treaty documents?” the Duke asked the Emperor.
Minister Ji sent a servant to get a table. He produced a scroll from his sleeve. The Duke read the document and held up the seal that was hanging around his waist. Minister Ji produced a pot of seal ink from his other sleeve. The Duke dipped his seal into the ink and pressed it onto the scroll. The Emperor and the Duke bowed stiffly to each other. Minister Ji shouted an order and servants brought tables up from below decks and set them ready for a banquet. The Emperor gestured for the Duke to sit on one side of him, the necromancer to sit on the other.
Guards dragged Ping below deck to a hold stacked with sacks of grain and jars of wine. They bound her hands and feet and left her.
The Emperor’s words echoed in Ping’s head. The old Emperor had died soon after he ate the dragon pickle that she had helped to make. Danzi had not been happy at Huangling, but after she helped him escape he became so sick and injured that he had to leave the Empire and fly to the Isle of the Blest. The Touching Heaven Tower had fallen on the very night she was snooping around against the Emperor’s wishes.
She tried to think of what she could have done that would have made things turn out differently. Should she have tried to sail after Danzi? Should she have stayed on Tai Shan? Should she have drunk the star dew so she could live for a thousand years?
The sounds of music and voices came from the deck above. The smells of the banquet found their way to the hold. No one brought her food or water. Time crept by with the slow steps of a tortoise. The banquet lasted until the light faded. The sacks and jars grew indistinct and then disappeared into blackness. The sounds of movement on the deck above her gradually stopped. More time passed and a bar of silvery moonlight crept down into the depths of the hull.
Ping heard the quick, scratchy scurrying of a rat. She was aware that Hua was no longer in the folds of her gown.
“Is that you, Hua?”
There were more ratty footsteps. The moonlight provided enough light for Ping to see that there were several rats—the ordinary-sized ones that lived in the small, dark places between the barge’s timbers. None of them were Hua.
The band of moonlight made its unhurried way towards her as if determined to illuminate her in all her misery. When the light reached her torn and stained gown, she could see the faintest glow coming from her pouch. She could just reach in it with her stiff, bound hands. She pulled something from the inner pocket of her pouch. It was the size of a large leaf, but thicker and with a rough, scratchy surface. In the moonlight it glowed a soft green. She brought her hands up to her face so that she could smell it. It had the faintest aroma of overripe plums and fish brine. It was the dragon’s scale.
Her arm was throbbing from the knife wound. There was a searing pain in her chest. It felt as if someone were jabbing her cramped legs all over with sewing needles. What would Danzi think if he could see her now? She had failed completely to care for his son. She felt sleep come for her. Shouldn’t she be trying to get free? Shouldn’t she be thinking of a plan to rescue Kai? She just didn’t know anymore.
• chapter twenty-seven •
THE POWER OF FIVE
The necromancer raised the knife above her.
The blade shone in the moonlight.
The dragon was standing in a circle of moonlight. He was glowing, full of the moon’s brightness. He turned towards her. His red lips smiled.
“Danzi, you told me I was the true Dragonkeeper and I’m not.”
Are.
“But everything’s gone wrong and now I have no one.”
Not alone.
“Yes I am, I’m totally alone. Even Hua has left me.”
The dragon’s head moved slowly from side to side.
The world is made up of five elements—earth, water, fire, metal, wood—there are five directions, five colours. There is power and strength in five.
Ping reached out to touch the dragon. She felt his scales beneath her fingers. Despite their moon-brightness, they were still hard and rough to touch, but she loved the feel of them. They were as comforting as a sheepskin rug. She climbed onto the dragon’s back easily, even though her hands were bound. He waited until she was safely seated and holding on tightly to one of his horns before he opened his wings and took off.
The air rushed past, making her hair rustle like leaves in the wind. She could see nothing but dark star-sprinkled sky. So many stars, it would be impossible to count them. The glowing dragon was beneath her. She didn’t have to hold on. She felt calm.
“
It’s so peaceful up here, Danzi,” Ping said. “I want to drift through the night sky forever. With you.”
Heaven decides the time to live and die.
The black sky turned the colour of a storm cloud, but there were no spots of rain, there was no rumbling thunder. The stars were growing dim. The sky was now the colour of doves’ wings. There were no stars. It was dawn. She looked beneath her. The moonlight dragon was fading.
The sun rose above the horizon. Ping had to shade her eyes from its glare. Now there was nothing solid beneath her. Nothing but sunlit air. The dragon had disappeared. But Ping didn’t fall. She smiled to herself, as she continued to fly through the sky. On her own.
Light seeped through her eyelids. She opened her eyes. It wasn’t sunlight—it was light from a lamp. The necromancer was leaning over her. She could smell wine, garlic and the stench of decay.
“Get up, slave girl.”
Ping couldn’t feel her legs. Even if her ankles weren’t bound, she couldn’t have moved. The necromancer picked her up impatiently by the back of her gown, threw her over his shoulder and hauled her up the ladder onto the deck.
It was still night. Guards were on duty, but they took no notice as the necromancer carried her ashore. Tents had been erected on the river bank to house the Duke and his men. Flags fluttered in the freezing night air. Some of the Duke’s soldiers were gathered around a fire. They weren’t interested in the plight of an insignificant girl either.
The necromancer soon tired of carrying her. He dropped Ping on the ground and then dragged her by the collar. She couldn’t make any part of her body work. She could only look up at the patches of starlit sky between the clouds and allow herself to be bumped along the ground like a sack of grain. The necromancer dragged her into a bamboo grove, zigzagging through the canes. Ping’s body banged against the bamboo canes. The sharp young shoots speared her flesh.
He stopped where the bamboo canes reached up into the cloudy night sky in a perfect circle around a clearing. He hammered two stakes into the ground. The full moon appeared in a gap in the clouds. In the moonlight the necromancer’s skin was a sickly grey. It etched dark lines on his forehead and around his nose. He looked like a living corpse. He tied her hands above her head to one of the stakes, her feet to the other. She was stretched out like a pig ready for slaughter.
The necromancer let his cape fall from his shoulders, revealing the jade vest underneath. Then he unlaced the vest and removed that as well. He gave off a smell like rotten meat. He stood before Ping, wearing only loose trousers. She shuddered at the sight of his bare, grey skin.
He held his knife in both hands so that it pointed towards the sky. He closed his eyes and muttered words in a strange language. It was a spell or it might have been a prayer—not to the eight Immortals in Heaven, Ping was sure of that, but to some demon in the worst regions of hell.
Ping remembered Saggypants, the poor dead Dragon Attendant, and the horrible cavity hacked in his belly. She knew what the necromancer was about to do. He was going to cut out her liver too. It must have been a ritual that was part of one of his enchantments. Strangely Ping wasn’t afraid. The dream of Danzi had left her calm. The feeling was returning to her arms and legs, but she didn’t strain against the ropes.
She could make out four marks on the necromancer’s stomach—straight lines, radiating out like dark rays from his navel. They were evenly spaced and all the same length. At first she thought they were tattoos like the marks on his face, but the skin around them was puckered. She realised they were wounds cut into his flesh, arranged with care and precision. One was healed to a scar. Two others were not well healed, but swollen and bruised, as if some poison beneath was trying to find its way out. The fourth was a raw wound with fresh blood still drying around it. The edges of this wound were held together with silk thread. Ping remembered the needle and thread that the necromancer had held in his hand back in the lodge. Just as she had mended the rip in Danzi’s wing with a needle and thread, the necromancer had mended a cut in his own flesh. There was space on his belly for one more scar to complete a five-pointed pattern.
The dragon’s dream words came back to her. Heaven decides the time to live and die. If this was her time to die, she was ready. Danzi had also said something about the power of five. She didn’t understand what he’d meant by that, but the old dragon’s words were often a mystery to her.
At least she wouldn’t give the necromancer the satisfaction of watching her die in agony. She had to increase her qi power so that she could suffer the pain without screaming. The full moon appeared between the clouds again. She breathed in the moonlight. It had low levels of qi compared to sunlight, but it was better than nothing. She thought of Kai. The little dragon was the one creature she couldn’t bear to leave. Jun would try to fill the role of Dragonkeeper, but he had never known Danzi. He didn’t have the knowledge the old dragon had given her. She started counting the silvery bamboo leaves that surrounded her.
The necromancer turned the knife in his hands so the tip was pointing down at her, still muttering his spells. Ping pictured all the beautiful and wonderful things she had seen in her life—Danzi in flight in the moonlight, Tai Shan, Kai when he was new-born, the Garden of the Purple Dragon before it was ruined, the smiling face of her little brother. Her life had been short, but it had been exceptional. She had no desire to exchange it for the life of someone who would live to old age without experiencing those things.
The necromancer raised the knife above her. The blade shone in the moonlight. Then the silence of the night was broken by shouting voices, the clashing of metal and a high-pitched tuneless whistle, like someone blowing hard on a flute without placing their fingers over the holes. Lowering his knife, the necromancer turned to see where the noise was coming from. Flashes of light appeared among the bamboo. Bright orange balls of flame arched high over the clearing. In another direction, an eerie purple glow moved through the bamboo. The necromancer peered into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” he called.
There was no answer and the racket continued. A white mist was drifting from the bamboo. The mist cloud grew quickly until it filled the clearing. The noise stopped. There was silence for a moment and then whooping and yelling, screeching and squawking. Dark shapes rushed out of the bamboo, attacking the necromancer from behind and from both sides. The ground seemed to be seething with small black shapes. Through the mist, Ping saw the point of a spear, a sword, balls of flame. She heard the necromancer scream.
Hope filled Ping’s heart. Someone had come to her rescue. She felt her strength return.
But the necromancer blocked the spear with his arm, he met the sword blade with his knife, the fireballs fell short of their mark. The necromancer passed his hand through the air and the mist evaporated. He laughed when his attackers were revealed. Dong Fang Suo and Jun were sprawled on the ground, half of Hua’s tail was missing. Kai was crouched among the bamboo canes, looking small and frightened, a wisp of mist trailing from his mouth.
Ping’s hope had evaporated as quickly as the mist. So this was Danzi’s power of five—a girl with her hands tied, an old man, a boy, a rat and a small dragon. The old dragon had had no idea how powerful the necromancer had become.
Dong Fang Suo stood up.
“Take my liver instead,” he said.
“Why would I want your feeble old liver,” the necromancer sneered, “when I can have the liver of a young Dragonkeeper?”
Ping could hear small movements around her head. Fur and whiskers brushed against her bound hands. The ropes around her wrists began to loosen. Rats were nibbling through them. The last wisps of mist hid them from the necromancer, but Ping could see them. They were ordinary-sized rats, like the ones she’d seen on the barge.
“She doesn’t deserve to die,” Dong Fang Suo said.
“Yes she does.” There was bitter hatred in the necromancer’s voice. “She stole the dragon stone from me. She humiliated me at Wucheng.”
&
nbsp; “This power that you get from the livers of the dead,” Dong Fang Suo said, “it is only short-lived.”
The rats were now gnawing through the ropes that tied Ping’s ankles.
“There are plenty more livers in the Empire,” the necromancer snarled. “Leave, old man. Your day is over.”
“I know the source of your power,” Dong Fang Suo said. “The liver is the house of the eternal soul—the soul that flies to Heaven when someone dies.”
The old magician wasn’t just stalling so that the rats could free her, Ping realised he was trying to tell her something.
“When you cut the livers from living men and sew them into your own body …
“I’ve heard enough of your prattle,” the necromancer said.
He turned abruptly, raised his knife again and plunged it toward Ping. She rolled out of the way and the blade dug deep into the earth.
Jun had the mirror in his hand. He angled it so that a beam of bright, white moonlight shone in the necromancer’s eye. He turned to attack the boy, but Dong Fang Suo tripped him with the shaft of the spear. Hua ran up the necromancer’s back. The necromancer let out a scream. He dropped the knife and tried to pull the rat off. Hua jumped down with the man’s ear lobe between his sharp yellow teeth. The necromancer grabbed what remained of his ear, blood pouring through his fingers.
The necromancer turned with fury in his one eye and glared at Jun. The boy was transfixed by his stare, unable to move. The necromancer raised his hand and blasted Dong Fang Suo into the air like a leaf. The old man crashed back down to earth like a sack of bones. The necromancer was stronger than the power of five. Ping knew that she would have to face him alone, but she needed something to shield her from his awesome power. The jade vest was lying at her feet. She picked it up and slipped it on.
The necromancer turned to face Ping.
“Cut him,” Dong Fang Suo gasped, struggling to his knees. “Cut the scars.”
Ping dived for the knife, grasped it in her hand. She understood what she had to do. The necromancer focused his gaze on the knife in Ping’s hand. It turned red hot and she was forced to drop it.