His lungs were about to burst when Tao felt four points of pain in his back. He knew exactly what was causing them. It was dragon talons digging into his flesh. Sha had found him. Her dragon eyes had been watching from the shelter of her cave, just as he had imagined. She had waited until the last moment, letting him suffer, before she flew down to pluck him up when he was about to die. She didn’t want him dead. Not yet. He expected to be swept up high into the air, but he was lifted no further than the riverbank. He heard a voice.
“Humans are as fragile as butterflies, unable to survive even a slight wind.”
The talons released him and dumped him on the path.
“Kai? Is that you?” Tao reached into the darkness and felt scales beneath his fingers. He hugged the dragon even though he was hard and spiky. “It’s so good to hear your voice. I thought it was Sha come to kill me.”
“I have come to save you even though there is the promise of a storm.”
“The promise of a storm! Isn’t this a storm?”
“It will get worse.”
“Do you have shelter somewhere?”
“I do.”
“Is it far?”
“It is a long way for a butterfly. Not far for a dragon. Climb on my back. I will carry you.”
Tao pulled himself onto the dragon’s back. He grasped Kai’s horns. The scaly body beneath him undulated as Kai began to run. Tao felt the reassuring bump of the bamboo cylinder against his back. He thanked the dragon over and over again for saving him, even though he didn’t think Kai heard him. The wind whipped away his spoken words and he didn’t have enough energy to transmit his thoughts with his mind.
The dragon ran without stopping. It wasn’t like riding a horse where every footfall jarred the body. Kai’s paws touched the ground lightly and he moved with a gentle rocking motion. Tao wasn’t jolted at all. The only thing he had to do was stay awake and hold on, and that was difficult enough.
The wind grew stronger. Twigs stripped from trees flew through the air, and then something larger – a tree branch or a piece of wood from an abandoned house – was hurled by the storm. Tao couldn’t see it in the pitch dark, but he felt it rush past him no more than a finger-width away. It was Kai who was in danger from such flying debris, not Tao. He buried his face in the dragon’s mane, protected from the worst of the wind.
The wind died.
Kai stopped to catch his breath. Within two heartbeats the gale was only a memory. There was an eerie stillness, an unnatural quiet, as if the world had stopped breathing. Tao stopped breathing too, in case his own breath somehow unbalanced the suddenly silent world. It began to rain. Not just a smattering of raindrops, not the warm drizzle that had persisted through most of the summer months, but heavy rain, as if a trapdoor had opened in the sky and a celestial river was pouring through it.
Kai ran again. Tao was drenched but the rain didn’t seem to bother him; it just streamed off his scales. He loped along for another hour before Tao felt him begin to climb. Finally, when Tao was sure he couldn’t hang on for another moment, Kai stopped. Tao could just make out some crumbling brickwork in the slanting rain.
“Where are we?”
“This is one of the houses of the dead in the foothills of Mang Shan, to the north of Luoyang.”
“Oh.”
“Does that trouble you?”
“The dead don’t trouble me, but I find no pleasure in being back near Luoyang again.”
The tombs had been built long ago, in the time of the Han, when the old religion still flourished and people buried their dead in tombs. Rumours had spread that angry ghosts haunted the tombs, because no descendants came to bring them food or to sweep their graves. No one went near them. Tao didn’t fear ghosts. He climbed down from Kai’s back. He saw a faint rectangular glow in the darkness. He moved towards it, so stiff he could hardly walk.
Tao followed Kai down a flight of steps and ducked through a low doorway into the tomb. The smell of wood-smoke and cooked grain met him. Though the roof had collapsed in one corner, the part that was built into the hill was undamaged. A fire, burned down to glowing embers, had been carefully placed to one side of the hole in the roof. The smoke found its way out, but the rain didn’t put out the fire. There was a pot beneath the hole to catch the rainwater.
The dragon and the boy looked at each other in the glow of the embers. They had hardly spoken since the bitter words at the Zhao contest. Tao wanted to apologise for what he had said, but his mind was numb with exhaustion and he couldn’t translate his feelings into words. Kai was hot and panting, but Tao was shivering with cold. Tao took off his boots to warm his feet next to the embers. As he struggled to pull them off, something fell out. It was the shard of dragon stone.
They both stared at the purple stone in silence. There were things that needed to be said, but neither of them was willing to start that conversation.
Tao unhooked the bamboo cylinder from his shoulder.
“You have found the sutras again,” Kai said.
“Yes, I have.” Tao smiled. “Sha had them. She must have been the one who took them from the ginkgo tree. Though how she could have known they were there, I don’t know.”
“Smell,” Kai said. “Yellow dragons have the most powerful sense of smell. She would have picked up my scent if she passed close to the tree.”
Tao noticed a length of sapling propped in a corner. He went over to it.
“That’s my staff!” he said. “The one I used to fend off the nomads’ arrows.”
“I found it useful when I had to fight my way from the arena,” Kai said. “I did not want to kill the nomads, so I did not use my talons and horns. Ping taught me to value life and the Xiong Nu treated us well when we were in need.”
Tao could see bloodstains on one end of his staff. Kai might not have killed anyone with it, but it looked as if he had caused some serious injuries.
Someone entered the room. Tao thought he was imagining it at first, that it was a trick of the firelight on his weary brain.
“Hello, Holy Boy.”
“Pema!” Tao said. The rush of emotions made him dizzy. Relief washed over him like summer rain. “You’re safe.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks to you.”
She put more wood on the fire. Flames flared up. Tao could see her clearly. She was wearing an unfamiliar gown and her hair was tied back in a plait. Her face was clean and she had a scar on her cheek where the nomad sword had sliced her. Her face was flushed, and Tao wondered if that was from the heat of the fire, or his arrival.
Now that his eyes had adjusted to the light, he could see that there were other things in the room besides the fire – blankets, a pot of cooked grain, a folded gown – and behind them, in the shadows, the heavy wooden coffins of the dead.
“I see we are not alone,” Tao said. He peered at some characters on the tomb. “We are the guests of Mr and Mrs Wang.”
“Mrs Wang had elegant taste,” Pema said, smoothing the fabric of her gown.
“Are your wounds healed?” Tao asked.
She pushed up her sleeves to show the scars. “Kai found some leaves that helped heal them.”
Tao showed her his arms. “I also had a dragon who healed me – a different one.”
Pema handed the folded gown to Tao. He held it for a moment, aware that it belonged to a dead man. But he knew that Mr Wang would have lived several lives since he was buried there, and would no longer be in need of the clothes. He stood in the shadows and took off the smelly nomad vest and trousers. Monks were only supposed to wear robes made of old, threadbare cloth. This gown was made of sheep’s wool and looked like it had never been worn before, but he wrapped it gratefully around himself. Pema pulled some taro roots from among the embers. She peeled them, cut them up and added the pieces to the grain. Then she sat the heavy three-legged bronze pot in front of the three of them.
“We must eat nomad style,” she said. “It is after midnight, Tao, a new day, so you can eat your fill.”
They each in turn dipped fingers or talons into the pot. The food tasted good. It had been some while since Tao had felt something warm in his stomach.
“What about the jujubes?” Kai said. “Can we eat them now?”
Pema smiled and pulled a knotted cloth from her belt. She untied the knot and revealed about a dozen jujubes.
“You can have no more than six,” she said. “Tao and I will share the rest.”
Kai gleefully put all six in his mouth at once. “She would not let me eat them until I returned with you.”
As they ate, Tao and Pema recounted how they had passed the days since they were last together in the arena during Jilong’s deadly game. Tao told Kai and Pema of his time with Sha and his escape. Pema explained how they had eluded Jilong’s men thanks to the dragon’s mirage skill. Then Kai had taken her to her old home in Luoyang, where everything was as she had left it. He had returned to confront Sha, but when she flew off with Tao, Kai went back to Pema’s cellar to make sure that her wounds healed. Communication between them had been even more difficult, since Pema couldn’t read or write, but somehow they had managed with signs and drawings. Kai had tried to find a thread of connection with Tao using his piece of the dragon stone, but he had found no trace.
“As soon as I could, I went out to get news,” Pema said. “I heard a peasant talking about the yellow dragon flying along the Yi River.”
“We travelled to the river,” Kai continued. “It was only then that I felt the connection with you. I would not have found you without Pema’s help.”
Tao turned to Pema; there was one more thing he wanted to know.
“How did you come to be with the nomads, to be …”
“To be with Jilong?”
Tao nodded.
“When you left your family home, I was not only at the gate to say goodbye to you,” Pema said. “I was ready to leave myself. As soon as I saw Shi Le at the stream, I planned to return to Luoyang and kill him. I thought it would take a long time to get close to him, but it was easier than I expected. I came across Jilong and his men on the road. He’d been out hunting and his dragon had escaped. His pride was wounded. It was easy to flatter him and gain his confidence.”
Tao was relieved to hear that Pema had been feigning her affection for Jilong.
The rain fell heavily again and the noise was so loud that Tao couldn’t ask any more questions. They sat staring at the embers, each thinking their own thoughts, taking it in turns to get up and empty the pot when it filled with rainwater. They were watched by the mingqi, small statues of servants, about twenty of them, that relatives had left to serve the Wangs in their afterlife. Tao felt more content than he had since he left Yinmi. He was warm and fed, and his friends had returned to him. The only thing that troubled him was that he might be dreaming, and he would wake up to find himself still captive in Sha’s nest or facedown in the mud by the riverbank.
The rain slackened, but did not stop. Pema put a little more wood on the fire.
“I found these among the food offerings left for Mr and Mrs Wang,” Pema said.
She held out a pottery jar and a small lacquered box.
Tao took the lid off the box. It contained faded yellow safflower. He removed the stopper from the jar and sniffed it. He recognised the smell of sesame oil.
“They are too old to use for cooking, but I thought you might find another use for them.”
Pema settled down to sleep on a mat from Mrs Wang’s coffin.
“I had one faint vision just after you left,” Tao told Kai. “It told me to break Sha’s jar of tigers’ blood.”
The dragon nodded. “Will you try again?”
Tao mixed a little oil and safflower in the lid of the lacquer box. He rubbed it into his hands, let his eyes relax and his vision blur. A faint image appeared in his cupped hands. When it focused, he thought at first that he had failed; all he could see were his own hands, palms up, but they were not smeared with yellow oil. He looked for other clues. There was just a glimpse of a silk cuff decorated with yellow diamonds filled with red. The vision faded and was gone.
“What did you see?” Kai asked eagerly.
Tao sighed and smiled. “Nothing that I can decipher. And it was very faint. I thought the visions might be stronger now that I am back with you.”
“You need to bond with Wei again,” the dragon said.
He looked disappointed, but Tao was not.
“I will be able to bond with Wei when I return to my family home in a few weeks. I am learning how to read my visions. I hope that eventually, this one will make sense.”
Kai spent some time digging himself a shallow hole and settling himself into it.
Tao followed Pema’s example and borrowed a mat from the dead. The rain was still falling heavily and the wind had picked up again. He thanked the Wangs for their hospitality and pitied anyone who was caught out in the storm. But surely no one would venture outside on such a night.
Chapter Thirty
RAINDROPS
Tao couldn’t sleep. Though his body was tired, his mind would not relax. He got up to empty the pot that was catching the rainwater. The rain had almost stopped. Kai was awake too, warming his paws by the fire.
“Thank you for looking for me, for finding me,” Tao said as he joined the dragon. “You didn’t have to.”
Kai threw another branch on the fire.
“Sha took you to spite me. I was concerned that she would …”
“I smashed the jar of tigers’ blood and her blood lust was almost spent by the time she reached her nest.”
“You managed to escape from her.”
Tao could hear the admiration in Kai’s voice. He smiled to himself, remembering his flawed escape plan. “I was lucky.”
“You succeeded.”
After a long silence, Tao spoke again. “Our paths may not lie together, Kai, but we have been through a lot since we met. I think it’s time you told me the truth.”
The dragon nodded. “The truth is not always easy to speak.”
“Try. I know you didn’t leave the dragon haven because the other dragons set you a quest.”
Kai sighed a long dragonish sigh. “The haven dragons have not flourished, and it is my fault.”
Tao waited for him to elaborate.
“The dragons had become fearful. They decided long ago to live in hiding at the dragon haven, which is on a plateau high on a mountain, a long way from any human settlement. It is pleasant enough, with pools of water warmed from beneath the earth, but it is a small area. There is not much to amuse a dragonling. When I was young, there were no other young dragons for me to play with, no companions as I grew. All the other dragons had wings and could fly away whenever they wanted. The mountain slopes were too steep for me to climb down and there were deadly traps set to catch intruders. Even if I had managed to get down, it would have been even harder to climb back up again. To me it was not a haven. It was a prison. Hei Lei, a big black dragon, and the white dragons went hunting, and were sometimes away for days at a time. My job was to catch rabbits and birds. I grew fat and lazy.”
Tao looked at Kai’s slender body. “Fat?”
“I lost all my fat on the journey from dragon haven.”
Tao waited, listening to the crackling fire until Kai was ready to continue.
“I grew tired of endless moon gatherings and discussions that went on for days about how long I was allowed to swim in the yellow pool and whose turn it was to bury the bones.”
“So you decided to leave the dragon haven?”
“Not straight away.”
Kai lapsed into another silence, reluctant to talk about his years at the dragon haven. Tao had to coax his story from him.
“But you did leave, didn’t you?”
“Dragons must have a leader. The one meant to lead was not yet ready to lead.”
“Which dragon was that?”
“I was that dragon.”
“But you said you are the yo
ungest; why did they choose you as leader?”
“Because of my colours.”
“Green dragons become leaders?”
Kai shook his head. “Not green dragons, dragons of five colours.”
“But you’re just one colour – green.”
“The five colours only show at certain times. I displayed the five colours at a very young age. I fought the only contender for leadership. The fight took place in a deep pool. And I won.”
This story seemed even more unlikely than the first one Kai had recounted about his quest to find the dragon hunter, and yet Tao believed he was telling the truth.
“It was an exceptional situation. I was young even by human measurement. No one was sure how to proceed. It was decided that someone would assist me and become my advisor until my horns grew.”
It was a long time since Tao had heard the stories of the little purple dragon from his great-grandfather. Now he would hear more. He moved closer to the dragon so that he didn’t miss a word.
“There were two males who each thought they should be chosen as my regent – Hei Lei, the black, and Tun, a smaller yellow. Hei Lei was the one I had fought for leadership. He seemed to accept the arrangement, but I did not trust him. Tun had always been friendly to me ever since I arrived as little more than a baby. I was pleased when the council decided that Tun would be my regent.”