“Your qi power may take another form,” Kai was saying. “It may need a little time to develop.”
“I suppose when you say ‘a little time’ you’re talking in dragon terms and that means ten or twenty years.”
“Perhaps fifty.”
Wei had given his qi to Tao for a purpose. What purpose, he didn’t know. He owed it to his brother to find out.
“But I can’t feel my qi. How can I access it?”
“Your qi is dormant. You will need to do some exercises to help wake it.”
Kai demonstrated some qi concentration exercises – focusing on an ant crawling across a rock, counting the leaves on a tree. Tao tried them. After years of meditation, those things were not difficult for him.
“After you have located your qi, you must learn to harness it, to bring it forth when you need it.”
Tao sat on a rock and stared at the distant mountains. “How far is it to the dragon haven?”
Kai thought for several minutes, as if composing a long answer, but when he eventually spoke, his reply was short. He pointed to high mountains in the distance.
“It is many li from here.”
The mountains were a long way away.
“But we’re closer to it than when we left Yinmi, aren’t we?”
“Much closer,” Kai said. “But we cannot travel through the mountains in the winter. I could do it, but you would not survive.”
Tao wriggled his toes. His straw sandals were already coming apart and they weren’t suitable for a winter journey.
“We have plenty of time for a quest,” Kai said.
The dragon continued along the path, snuffing the earth like a dog following a scent, and then he stopped to scrape up the wet earth with his talons.
Tao knew Wei’s qi was inside him, but he couldn’t find it, couldn’t feel the beginnings of any sort of power. When Kai wandered off the path to examine some leaves, Tao repeated the concentration exercises Kai had shown him. Then he picked up a stone to test his throwing skills, hurling it as far as he could. The stone flew lazily into the air and then plummeted down almost immediately.
He heard a sound like small bells ringing. “You throw like a girl.” Tao hadn’t realised that Kai was watching him.
Apart from his sister Meiling, there was the only one other girl Tao had ever been friendly with – the nomad, Pema. She had a good throwing arm. He wished he could throw as well as she did.
Tao’s shoulders sagged. “Throwing isn’t something you learn in a monastery.”
“Do not concern yourself. You will harness your qi and find your qi power … eventually.”
“I don’t want a power that will hurt anyone,” Tao said.
“What sort of qi power would you like to have?”
Tao thought for a moment. “I’d like to have the power to bring peace to Huaxia.”
“A dragonkeeper’s qi power must benefit dragons.”
Tao hadn’t considered that.
“Kai, we must stop dawdling. We’ve hardly made any progress since breakfast.”
The dragon blew a stream of mist through his nostrils. That usually meant he was annoyed.
“You’ve eaten well today. Now isn’t the time to be hunting.”
Kai was still sniffing the path.
“I am not hunting, I am tracking.”
Fear suddenly gripped Tao. “Tracking what? Not that creature we heard in the forest yesterday?”
Kai didn’t answer.
“We shouldn’t be following it! We should be getting far away from it.”
“The only thing I am following is the path, but I keep finding unusual paw prints.” Kai pointed to a mark in the earth.
“That could’ve been made by any number of animals.”
“No other creature has such big paws.”
“Well, it’s yours then, isn’t it?”
Kai pushed one of his paws into the earth. “This is my paw print.”
Tao looked at the marks left by the pads of Kai’s paw, surrounded by the imprints of his four toes and talons. The other paw print was longer and narrower than Kai’s, and it had three toes, the middle one the longest.
Kai poked through a pile of leaves and picked up a brown sphere about the size of a plum.
“There is also dung.”
“Dung?”
He held it out for Tao to examine, but Tao didn’t want to touch it. It was hard and brown. Tao realised that what he had seen Kai pick up earlier wasn’t stones at all. They were animal droppings.
“I’m not interested in animal tracks … or dung. Can we please get going again? We’re still not far enough away from that awful cave.”
Kai continued along the path, reciting a poem about his tracking skills.
“No one can evade me,
Not man nor beast nor bird.
However clever my quarry,
I will track it undeterred.”
“We need to walk faster,” Tao said.
Tiny midges started swarming in the air in front of Tao. More and more joined them until thousands of the insects formed a black cloud barring his way. Tao was trying to wave away the midges without harming them, when Kai suddenly stopped in his tracks.
“What’s wrong?” Tao asked.
“I feel …”
“Feel what?”
“Unwell.”
“Is it the bat droppings? Are you going to be sick again?”
Kai was rubbing his eyes with a paw. “My eyes are sore.”
Tao got down onto his hands and knees so he could crawl under the cloud of insects. He caught up with Kai.
“Did you hear that?” Tao said. “I thought I heard something. It sounded like …”
The forest suddenly ended and they found themselves in a clearing. Tao felt exposed without the shelter of surrounding trees. The sun broke through the clouds and Tao was dazzled by bright light. He squinted. The sunlight reflected off metal objects – all sharp, shiny and pointed in their direction. There in front of them was a band of mounted nomads, at least twenty-five of them. They were armed with swords, spears and arrow tips all made of iron. Their saddle blankets bore the rearing horse emblem of the nomad tribe called the Zhao. They blocked the path, staring at Kai who hadn’t had time to shape-change.
“We have found them,” one of the men called over his shoulder. “A boy and a dragon.”
The leader of the nomads broke through the line of horses. He was a small, skinny man who looked like a child astride a horse, except that he had wrinkly, leathery skin. All the happiness dropped out of Tao. The man was dressed in the saffron robes of a monk, but he wore a fur hat and fine leather shoes as well. He was also wearing a broad grin. It was Fo Tu Deng.
“Ha!” he said cheerfully. “We’ve found you at last!”
The monk was high on the list of people Tao never wanted to see again. Questions crowded Tao’s mind. Why was the monk searching for them? What was he doing with the nomads? And why wasn’t he back at Yinmi?
Tao and Kai glanced at each other.
There was only one thought in Kai’s head. “Flee!”
Chapter Five
BLACK
Tao turned and ran back the way they had come. Kai was on his heels. An arrow flew past Tao’s ear.
“Don’t harm the boy, you idiot!” Fo Tu Deng’s voice rang out. “I need him captured alive. The dragon too. And remember, he might not be in the shape of a dragon. Capture anything that moves.”
Tao could hear whinnying, stamping hoofs, and riders berating their mounts as the horses jostled for a place on the narrow path. Nomad horses were used to galloping on open plains, not creeping along cramped mountain paths hardly wide enough for a goat. The confusion gave Tao and Kai a head start. Tao allowed himself to believe that they would lose their pursuers, but the sound of a horse behind them soon burst that small bubble of hope. One nomad had got control of his mount and won the contest to be first after them. Over his shoulder, Tao saw Kai swipe the man with his tail, knocking h
im from his saddle.
They kept running. When another nomad came up behind them, Kai pulled back a branch and let it go again, startling the horse. They left the path and ran into the trees, zigzagging to lose any other nomads who might be behind them. Tao had to stop to catch his breath.
“Get onto my back,” Kai said.
Tao did as the dragon said. He clung on to Kai’s mane as the dragon ran through the forest, weaving between trees, leaping over rocks.
They broke out of the trees and onto another path. Tao hadn’t thought about where they were going, but somehow they had wound their way back to the same path. They were at the mouth of the cave. It was the last place Tao wanted to be. He jumped off Kai’s back as he was about to run into the cave.
Kai was making his agitated scraping knives sound. “Into the cave!”
Tao didn’t move. “We’ll be like birds in a snare.”
Kai pushed Tao into the black cave. Tao covered his mouth and nose, trying not to breathe in the fetid smell. He couldn’t believe he was back in this dreadful place, after vowing he would never go near it again.
Kai pulled an arrow from his tail.
“Are you all right, Kai? Let me put some red cloud herb on the wound.”
“No need. My tail is tough.”
The nomads gathered outside, their horses snorting and stamping.
“Go on then!” Fo Tu Deng shouted. “Go after them!”
“In there? But it’s dark and cramped,” one of the nomads said. He sounded terrified. “It’s the horses. They won’t go in.”
“It’s not the horses I want to go in, you imbecile. Get off your horse and use your legs!”
Tao could see one of the nomads dismounting. Kai pulled Tao to the rear of the cave. The nomad stepped inside the cave and sniffed the putrid air as his eyes adjusted to the light. Then he saw the bones and he backed out of the cave.
“It is an evil place of the dead!” he said.
There was a murmur of panic.
“The dead won’t harm you!” Fo Tu Deng shouted. “They’re just bones. I will report your cowardice to Jilong.”
Tao tried to make sense of all this. Kai had already worked it out. “Fo Tu Deng is working for the Zhao,” he said. “He must still be claiming the visions you had were his own.”
Tao understood now why Fo Tu Deng wanted to capture them. The monk had pretended he could work miracles and see visions given to him by Buddha, but he had no second sight, no visionary powers of his own. When they were imprisioned by the leader of the Zhao, Shi Le, the monk had passed off Tao’s visions as his own in order to impress the nomads. Now it seemed Fo Tu Deng was in the service of Shi Le’s cruel nephew, Jilong.
“He needs you,” Kai said. “How can he pretend he can see into the future without your visions?”
The nomads were still refusing to enter the cave.
“You are more cowardly than the boy and his beast!” Fo Tu Deng shouted.
“We’ll wait,” one of the nomads said. “They’ll have to come out or starve to death.”
“He’s right, Kai. We can’t hide in here forever.” Tao could make out the mud nests of the swallows on the cave walls. “You can eat the swallows, but I can’t. And even if I was driven by hunger to eat the birds, there isn’t any water.”
“When I was hunting for swallows, I noticed an opening at the back of the cave that leads to a narrow passage. Can you see it?”
“No.”
“The bat dung I ate this morning has started to take effect. I can see it clearly,” Kai said. “The bats do not roost in this cave, they go deeper into the mountain, through that opening.”
Tao didn’t want to go into the dark passage, but he could hear Fo Tu Deng ordering the nomads to set up camp outside.
Kai grunted and puffed as he squeezed himself into the hole. “There may be another way out.”
He appeared to make himself longer and thinner. Tao could hear the dragon’s muffled voice. “Come.”
Tao took a deep breath and crawled in through the hole. He was expecting the narrow passage to open out into a cavern on the other side, but it didn’t. It was only just wide enough for him to scramble through on his hands and knees. Crawling was difficult, as he had his bag over his shoulder and his staff in one hand. He could hear the dragon in front of him, his scales scraping along the sides of the passage as he threaded himself through the tight space. It was pitch black. Panic overwhelmed him at the thought of the dragon getting stuck in the passage, unable to back out. Tao’s instinct was to stand up, turn around and run, but all he did was bang his head on the rock ceiling. His heart was hammering. Sweat ran off his body. The stench of the cave was being replaced by the less unpleasant smell of bats. His breath came in ragged gasps, as if he were still running. He reached out for Kai but his groping hands couldn’t find the dragon’s tail. Then his lungs refused to work at all. Sparks of light appeared in front of his eyes. His ears started ringing. He was about to lose consciousness, when the dragon’s tail hit him hard in the face.
Tao heard the dragon’s voice in his head. “This is not a time for fear.”
Tao gasped and sucked in a mouthful of foul air. Kai wrapped his tail around Tao’s staff and Tao felt himself being pulled along. The smell of the bats grew stronger, but at least it wasn’t mingled with the odour of death. He tried to picture something pleasant, but his mind was filled with darkness. And he was cold. His elbows and knees scraped against the rock. He was glad that he could feel the pain, smell the bats and hear the dragon’s grunting. He couldn’t see, but at least his other senses were working.
Panic no longer filled Tao’s heart, but there was no hope either. He stopped crawling, resigned to being stuck in the dark until he starved to death. He felt for the shard in his bag. Its smooth rounded surface gave him courage. A little speck of something entered the darkness. It wasn’t light, it was nothing he could see or hear. It was a sensation. In his blank mind he saw the faintest image of his brother’s face, his slow, dribbly smile. Tao made his hands and knees move again.
Then he could feel space around him. The tunnel had ended. He cautiously got to his feet. They were in a cavern, but it was still pitch black.
“Kai, where are you?”
“I am here.” A dragon paw touched Tao on his shoulder.
“I can’t see anything.”
“I can see a little, thanks to the bat droppings. It is as if it is a dark night with only a slender moon,” Kai said. “This is a wider passage. I can feel a draught of air.”
Tao tried to guess how big the cave was from the way the dragon’s sounds echoed off the walls and the ceiling. He could smell the bats and hear their screeching. He felt his scalp creep. The bats were hanging not far above their heads.
Kai’s talons hooked into Tao’s jacket. “Walk alongside me.”
Tao was shivering. The sweat on his body turned icy as the cold penetrated his bones. He had spent years living on a mountain wearing threadbare robes throughout winter. He should be used to the cold. Why was he suddenly chilled to the bone?
Kai kept walking. The passage was wide enough for them to walk side by side. Tao stumbled along, tripping on the uneven ground, banging into the rock walls. His teeth were chattering from cold and fear. And then he felt icy fingers brush his arm and cold breath on his face. It smelled like death.
“I want to go back,” Tao whispered.
“Into the arms of Fo Tu Deng?”
“There’s something else here with us.”
“There is nothing else here. How could there be?”
Tao still didn’t move. “I felt something touch me.”
“The darkness is confusing you.” Kai said. “I can see, remember? There is no one here but you and me.”
“No one alive.”
“Hold on to my mane. Let me lead the way. I am not scared of the dark.”
Tao grasped a tuft of the dragon’s mane in each hand. “You are not in utter darkness like me.”
He looked back, hoping to see a trace of daylight behind them, but there was none.
“We should go back while we can still find the way, or we will roam in the darkness until we die of starvation.”
The dragon kept moving forwards. “I can feel a faint breath of air. I am sure there is another way out.”
The blackness overwhelmed Tao. It wasn’t like the dark of a moonless night, when faint shapes and the stars above could be seen, and the touch of familiar things gave assurance the world was still as it should be. He longed to see a grey sky again.
The cold penetrated Tao’s thin jacket and trousers like freezing wind.
He could see nothing, he could hear nothing. He felt icy fingers touch the back of his neck. He spun round, waving his staff to fend off whoever, whatever was there. He foolishly let go of Kai’s mane. He reached out again, this time searching for the dragon. He wanted to call out to Kai, but his jaw was clenched shut. He couldn’t utter a sound. He tried to transmit words from his mind, but they froze half-formed. One thought entered his head. The ghosts of the dead from the cave had followed them. They wanted to punish him, even though their deaths were no fault of his.
Tao banged his head on something. He reached up to feel what it was. A huge icicle pierced the blackness above. He moved away from it, but tripped over another icicle protruding from the cave floor. Tao didn’t know how icicles could grow upwards. Whichever way he turned he ran into another. They were like teeth. This wasn’t a cave; it was the giant mouth, the living entrance to the underworld. The frozen, prodding fingers of the ghosts had driven him into its gaping jaws. Soon the teeth would close behind him and he would never be able to get out.
The sharp fingers gripped him on both arms. They turned him to his left and propelled him forwards with unexpected force. The ground disappeared from under his feet, and the fingers let go. He fell, tumbling down a steep slope. Cruel, jagged points of rock dug into his body, first his arm, then his back, then his knees. What little breath he had was knocked out of him. He crashed into hard rock. He had reached the bottom of a pit. The black had swallowed him completely. He knew he should try to find Kai again but he had lost the will to move. He tried to call out, but no words came out of the dry hole that had once been his mouth. He tried to stand, but he had not escaped the cold fingers. They had hold of him again. They clutched at his body, dug into his flesh so that the cold entered his stomach, his liver, his heart. He wanted to weep with despair, but his blank eyes couldn’t make tears. In this world of rock, he felt as if he were turning to stone himself. He knew where he was now. He had entered the realms of hell.