“My vision said nothing about bats. And where are the glowing embers?”
“We can seek another cave if this one does not suit you.”
“No. No. That’s not what I meant. This is a wonderful cave.” He touched the dry rock. “I thought I was getting better at interpreting my visions, but it didn’t help me find the cave at all.”
Tao heard a sound like tinkling wind chimes, the sound Kai made when he was happy.
“Fu,” the dragon said. “Fu is also the name of these creatures.” He pointed at the bats swooping into the cave then disappearing into its depths. “Bats do not usually go out during the day, but the sudden darkness must have confused them.”
Tao covered his mouth and his nose. “It smells awful in here.”
“It is the bats. The smell of their urine and droppings.”
“The stench is worse than any bats I’ve smelled before.”
Tao was annoyed with himself for thinking the cave would have a character carved above it. He should have known that his visions were never that straightforward.
“But it wasn’t the character for ‘bat’ that I saw, it was the character for ‘good luck’.”
“It is like a word puzzle,” Kai said. “Danzi, my father, once wrote directions for Ping so that we could find a place where many dragons lived.” He made the sad sound of a cracked bell tolling as he remembered that time. “He did not want anyone else to know where it was, so he wrote the instructions in a secret code. He used characters that were pronounced the same, but had different meanings. Your vision did help.”
“Yes, but it was you who worked it out, not me. And there are no embers here.”
“Patience. Second sight for dragonkeepers is never easily acquired.”
The cave was not as comfortable as Tao had hoped. Rocks and roots made the cave floor uneven, and there was the awful smell, but at least they were out of the foul weather. There was no dry fuel for a fire, so he couldn’t cook the grain from the village. He found a dried persimmon at the bottom of his bag. Kai produced a dead mouse from behind one of his reverse scales. He had cooked it days before and kept it for an emergency. Tao watched in fascinated horror as the dragon crunched the blackened rodent.
“I think there might be swallows in this cave as well as bats,” Kai said. “In the morning, I will hunt swallows.”
The storm lasted into the evening. Finally, it died down and the bats were able to follow their natural instincts and go out into the night to find food.
“I think my vision brought us here, not only for shelter, but also to enable us to test the next ingredient of Sha’s potion.” Tao scraped some of the bat droppings off the cave floor with a stick and pushed a small pile towards Kai.
The dragon refused. “I will not eat bat droppings!”
“Just a morsel. It can’t taste any worse than a week-old dead mouse.”
“It might make me sick again. I need dragon food.”
“You must make do with the mouse and the wolfberries behind your reverse scales.”
“I already ate them.”
“All of them?”
Kai nodded.
Tao pointed to the bat droppings. “Please. This could be the ingredient that cures the iron problem.”
The dragon reluctantly scraped up a small amount of the bat droppings, no bigger than a rice grain, on the tip of a talon. He put it on his tongue and swallowed. Then he dug himself a shallow hole, scattering rocks and roots as he did. He turned around three times before he settled himself into it.
Tao found the least rocky patch and spread out his thin blanket.
“Kai is cold,” the dragon said plaintively. “Lend me your blanket.”
Chapter Four
BONES
The sound of returning bats woke Tao before dawn. They chittered and screeched as they flew over him, hundreds of them. He had been exhausted the night before, but he’d still found it difficult to get to sleep because of all the stones and roots sticking into him. The terrible smell in the cave, along with the sound of a snoring dragon echoing around the walls, hadn’t helped. Also he couldn’t stop worrying that the creature that Kai had disturbed in the forest would find them and kill them as they slept. When he did finally drift off, his sleep was haunted by a terrible dream. He heard voices calling to him for help, but he couldn’t find the people because he was blind. He stumbled forwards and felt cold breath on his face. He knew it was the creature from the forest, about to attack him. He’d woken with a hammering heart. It was a long time before he’d been able to get back to sleep.
The sky was starting to lighten. In the pale first light, he could see the stragglers flying to the back of the shallow cave, but he couldn’t see where they were roosting. Then Tao realised that he couldn’t hear snoring. Not even breathing.
“Kai, where are you?”
“Sssh.” The sound of tinkling wind chimes came from the back of the cave. “I am hunting swallows for breakfast.”
“How can you see them in the dark?”
“The bat droppings did not stop the iron pain. I took out the nail while you were sleeping. But eating the droppings has been beneficial. My eyesight is better than usual. My eyes can penetrate the darkness. I can see where the swallows have nested and hunt them while they sleep.”
Tao didn’t consider that sneaking up on sleeping birds could be called hunting, but he kept that thought to himself. Kai was a beast, not a monk, and he needed to eat.
Something hard was sticking into Tao’s back. He knew that he wouldn’t get back to sleep so there was no point in lying there. He remembered the mushrooms he had found the previous day. A morning meal seemed like an excellent idea. One thing that he did like about his current life was being in charge of his own food.
Outside the cave, Tao was glad to find that the air was still and the usual temperature for that time of year. The sky was still overcast, but the black cloud had gone. He filled his lungs with fresh air, free of the horrible smell in the cave. A small drift of melting snow and a scatter of fallen branches confirmed that the snowstorm and the ferocious wind had been real, not one of his nightmares.
The sun appeared in the narrow band of clear sky between the horizon and the clouds. The rays warmed his face. It was a good omen. He collected some twigs and was about to light a fire when an anguished cry came from the cave – it sounded like someone banging copper bowls together.
Tao ran into the cave. “What’s wrong, Kai?”
“Can you not see?”
All Tao could see was the after image of the sun rising. His eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of light in the cave, but he still couldn’t see much. The dragon was turning in a slow circle, staring at the floor of the cave in horror.
“The round objects half-buried in the earth,” Kai said. “They are not stones.”
A ray of dawn light had crept into the cave, and Tao could see the lumps and bumps on the cave floor that had made the night so uncomfortable. He peered at the round rock closest to his foot. There were tufts of hair attached to it. Kai was right. The round objects were not rocks. They were skulls. Human skulls. Tao shuddered. He picked up the twig that he had used to scrape up bat droppings. It was paler than wood and harder. It wasn’t a twig. It was a bone. A human leg bone. He let out a yell and dropped it. He looked around the cave. The hollow that Kai had dug wasn’t full of roots and rocks, it was full of bones. Now that it was a little lighter, Tao could see the cave floor was littered with half-buried human remains. There were three arched ribs; a skull with black eye sockets; finger bones reaching up, as if a skeleton was trying to escape from an underground prison. He took a step back and stumbled over a small jawbone with two tiny front teeth. Scraps of cloth, the remains of clothing, poked out of the earth among the bones. He could see a half-buried shoe.
“They are corpses,” Tao whispered. “We spent the night on a grave pit.”
He realised the smell in the cave hadn’t come from the bats. It was death. He clamped his h
and over his mouth and nose, but he had to breathe. Death and decay were entering him with every tainted breath, seeping up through the soles of his feet. He wanted to run out of the cave, but his legs wouldn’t move.
The bodies had been thrown into a large shallow hole without care. They lay strewn in all directions. Some earth had been carelessly scattered over them, but not enough to cover them completely. There were the remains of at least twenty people. It was hard to know how long the bodies had been there. Most of the flesh had decomposed, but fragments of rotting black stuff still clung to the bones in places.
“There are so many.” Kai was as horrified as Tao.
“It’s the villagers,” Tao said. “Someone buried them here, someone in a hurry.”
Tao thought it was his turn to be sick. He managed to get his legs moving. He staggered out of the cave, sucking in gulps of mountain air as he leaned against a large rock for support.
Kai followed him.
“I have seen the aftermath of nomad attacks before,” the dragon said. “They do not take the trouble to bury the dead, even in this careless manner.”
“Then who was it?”
Kai had no answer.
Tao didn’t believe in ghosts, but he sensed a presence, unearthly, deadly. “We have to get away from this awful place. I never want to see it again.”
Kai didn’t argue.
They walked away as fast as they could, but they hadn’t travelled more than two or three li before Tao had to stop.
“I feel dizzy.”
“You need to eat,” Kai said. “You have not had a good meal in days. And I do not want to waste these.”
He held up two dead swallows. Eating was the last thought on Tao’s mind, but his legs were weak, whether from fear or lack of food he didn’t know.
They walked a little further until they came to a stream and a small clearing. Kai fetched water while Tao collected some wood and lit a fire using his firesticks. The damp twigs he’d collected smoked, but no flames emerged. He used the edge of his blanket to fan the few glowing embers. Kai leaned closer to inspect Tao.
“A bat scratched your face last night, and your hands are cut from holding on to my tail.”
Tao glanced at his hands. They were covered in small cuts and scratches. Kai reached behind one of his reverse scales and pulled out a folded leaf. He opened it and handed it to Tao. It contained a dollop of something slimy and red. Tao guessed that the substance was chewed red cloud herb. He scooped up a little of the healing ointment and rubbed it into his cuts. It stung.
“I collected it when we were at Yinmi and you were busy bathing,” Kai said.
That seemed like a very long time ago.
A small flame licked up from the smoking twigs. Kai was impatient for his breakfast. He threw wet leafy twigs on the fire, making it smoke even more.
“You should wait for the fire to burn down to embers,” Tao said, “if you want the birds to roast nicely.”
Kai couldn’t wait. He skewered the birds on a twig and threw them on the fire. The smell of burning feathers filled the air. He barely left the birds long enough to sear before he pulled them from the fire.
“Smoked swallow is also good.”
He produced some bat droppings from another reverse scale and sprinkled them on his food.
“I thought you didn’t like bat droppings.”
“I have changed my mind. They taste quite good as a garnish for meat.”
Kai ate one of the swallows whole, crunching the bones and making appreciative noises. Then he stuffed the other bird in his mouth. Tao concentrated on cooking his grain and toasting his mushrooms to avoid seeing the blood running into the dragon’s beard. He felt sick at the thought of eating, but he knew he had to. He ate slowly, one small mouthful at a time. It was the best meal he’d had for several days, but there was no enjoyment in eating it.
To take his mind off the horrors of the cave, Tao thought about his iron experiment.
“If my theory is correct and one of the ingredients in Sha’s tiger-blood brew stopped her reacting to iron, then it has to be cinnabar. I don’t know what it looks like. Do you?”
“I have seen cinnabar. It is a mineral in the form of red crystals. Humans dig for it in mines.”
“How will we find some?”
“I do not know,” the dragon said. “Perhaps we can purchase some. Herbalists use cinnabar, and magicians.”
“It is most unlikely that we’ll run into a herbalist … or a magician, but if we do, we don’t have gold or anything to barter with.”
Tao felt better after he had eaten. His vision had served more than one purpose. It had led them to shelter, showed them where to find the next item on Tao’s list, and provided food for Kai as well. But he couldn’t shake off the feeling of uneasiness.
He recited a sutra to help calm his mind, but before he was halfway through, his thoughts wandered back to Yinmi. At that time of day, the novices would all be in the Meditation Hall listening to their abbot instruct them on the meaning of one of the sutras.
“You are thinking about your monastery,” Kai said.
“How do you know?”
“Sometimes your thoughts leak through to me.”
Tao sighed. Not even his thoughts were his own.
“Do you wish to return to your monkish life?”
Tao allowed himself to imagine living at the monastery again – the peaceful rhythm of each day with a simple monastic routine, a complete lack of surprises and no decisions to be made. Part of him yearned for that safety and certainty.
“I couldn’t bear to be in the same monastery as Fo Tu Deng.”
Tao realised that the monastery he had been imagining no longer existed. Now that Fo Tu Deng was there, it would not be the same. He’d probably made himself abbot by now. The monk from Tianzhu had fooled Tao at first, convincing him that he was a venerable and holy man. But he was a fraud, a selfish man using the words of Buddha to benefit himself. In order to save his own skin, he had been happy to side with the nomads. He didn’t deserve to be called a monk.
“You could find another monastery.”
“No. That is not my destiny,” Tao said. “I don’t think I met you merely to share breakfast on a mountain. I have to face my future and be your dragonkeeper.”
The boy and the dragon finally left their camp and walked in silence for some time. Clouds covered the sky again. It was not a cold day, but Tao felt chilly. He couldn’t erase the images of the corpses in the cave, the bits of clothing still hanging on the bones. And his dreams hadn’t entirely left him – the cries of the terrified villagers lingered in the corners of his mind.
“We swore a blood oath. We are bonded as brothers,” Kai said suddenly. “But you are not yet my dragonkeeper.”
Tao stopped walking. Now that Tao had left everything he knew and loved behind, had the dragon changed his mind?
“You cannot be until I hand you the dragonkeeper’s mirror.” Kai clapped Tao on the back with his forepaw. “There is no need to be melancholy. In the meantime, I will oversee your training.”
Tao turned to the dragon. “What training?”
“A dragonkeeper needs many skills, and you have not yet mastered your qi power.”
“Qi power? What’s qi power?” Kai had never mentioned training before. “Did you make that up?”
“I did not! As you know, qi is the spiritual energy that exists in all creatures. Dragonkeepers, and dragons, learn how to increase their store of qi and then to harness it.”
Kai had told Tao about the second sight that all dragonkeepers had, but he hadn’t mentioned other powers.
“Dragons have unusual skills – you have your shape-changing and mirage skill,” Tao said. “But I didn’t know dragonkeepers also had powers. How do they use this qi power?”
“In many ways. Usually it manifests in strength. I have heard of a dragonkeeper who could throw with deadly accuracy and speed, and one who could leap long distances. Your ancestor Ping had
powerful qi.”
Kai often spoke about the young girl who had been his first and only dragonkeeper. She had cared for him since the moment he hatched, and she had been like a mother to the orphaned dragonling. Tao knew he could never live up to Ping’s memory, but as well as his own qi, he also had his brother’s. As he was dying, he had poured his qi into Tao’s body. And Wei had been a very special person. His qi was powerful too, Tao was sure of that.
“What was Ping’s qi power?” Tao asked.
“She was able to focus it and defend herself from blows and weapons.”
“I have my staff for that.”
“Once she killed a man with a bolt of qi.”
“I won’t be using Wei’s qi to hurt anybody.”
Kai was quick to defend Ping. “She was protecting Danzi. That was her job.”
“Are you sure I have qi power?”
“All dragonkeepers do,” Kai said. “Some have potent powers as Ping did. Others have powers that are less … significant. One could boil water by holding the pot in his hands, so I heard.”
Tao thought that sounded like a useful skill.
“How can I find out what my qi power is?”
“Perhaps it is some small skill you already have, that you can enhance,” Kai said. “What can you do?”
Tao thought hard. “I can memorise sutras.”
“I suppose you could bore our enemies to death.”
“I can whistle.” That was the one thing he’d been able to do better than the other novices.
“Your qi power might be an ear-splitting whistle that will make people’s ears bleed.”
Tao was horrified at the thought of doing something so cruel. “I can light fires.”
“All humans can do that. But perhaps you will develop the ability to light fires spontaneously.”
Tao didn’t mention his skill at finding worms. He wasn’t in the mood for more dragonish jokes at his expense.
When Ping unexpectedly became a dragonkeeper, Kai’s father, an old and wise dragon, had trained her. In dragon terms Kai was young, and he had spent more than four hundred years living in the confines of the dragon haven. As far as Tao knew, Ping was the only dragonkeeper Kai had known, so his knowledge of them was scant.