Kai made a screeching sound, the scraping blades sound he made when he was afraid, only this time it was so loud and sharp it made Tao’s teeth hurt. The yellow dragon swerved in the air when it heard the sound. It swooped down, searching for the source of that other dragon voice. The rider had to lower his bow and cling to the dragon’s mane, shouting curses at the beast. It flew low enough for Tao to see the rider clearly for the first time. He was a handsome young man of the Five Tribes. He wore a plumed helmet and armour made of metal scales. He almost seemed to be a part of the dragon. The yellow dragon made a deafening roar and its frenzied eyes, unable to find Kai, caught sight of Tao. It dived at him, lashing out with its great tail and knocking him to the ground.
The dragon rider beat his dragon’s ears with his whip to get it back under control. Then he raised his bow again. Tao was expecting the rider to aim at him, but instead he aimed his arrow at the nomad who still had his axe raised above Pema, frozen in fear and amazement as he gazed up at the lethal creature above him. An arrow flew through the air and lodged in the nomad’s throat. He fell to the ground.
Pema was staring up at the young man astride the dragon who had just saved her life. He smiled at her, touched his helmet, struck the dragon’s flank with his whip, and the yellow dragon flew off.
Pema picked up her knife and wiped it on the dead nomad’s tunic.
Tao tried to get to his feet, but fell down again – the yellow dragon’s tail had hit him hard. He waited for his eyes to focus, his lungs to fill with air again. He felt someone hoist him up under his arms. It was Pema. She had collected her possessions and repinned her jacket with the jewelled pin. Pema didn’t want to encounter any more nomads, so she changed direction. She supported Tao and, avoiding the Heavenly Purple Palace Gate, led them to a hole in the wall.
“I’m sorry, Pema,” Tao said. He was ashamed that he’d been unable to help her, but he’d had no choice. “I have taken a vow not to harm any living creature. I –”
“I don’t need anyone to help me. I can manage on my own.”
Tao wasn’t convinced. If the dragon rider hadn’t come to her aid, Pema would be lying with her head split open. He regretted the harsh things he’d said to her earlier. This was what her life was like – living in constant danger.
Pema stepped through the hole in the wall. As Tao clambered over the broken bricks, he tripped and fell. Kai just managed to squeeze through. He helped Tao to his feet.
They hurried on past the dark shape of the White Horse Temple. Tao hoped the monks there had escaped the violence.
When they were at a safe distance from the city walls, they stopped to catch their breath.
“I’m very glad you talked me into leaving my cellar, Holy Boy,” Pema said. “It’s much safer outside.”
“My escape plan wasn’t perfect, but at least we didn’t burn to death.”
Away from the fires, Kai’s calm had returned.
“I didn’t know dragons could be so vicious and cruel,” Tao said. “Did you know the yellow dragon?”
Kai didn’t respond. He took on his monk shape again. Pema watched, fascinated, even though Tao knew it must have made her feel sick.
“I never thought I’d see one dragon,” Pema said, “and now I’ve seen two in a single day.”
Tao felt for the strap over his shoulder. “Where are the sutras?”
“I don’t know,” Pema said. “I was too busy trying to stay alive to be worried about them.”
“The strap must have broken again. We have to go back for them.”
Even as he spoke the words Tao knew it wasn’t possible. He looked back at the burning city. The flames were dying, but he couldn’t risk returning. It had been his responsibility to save the holy words of Buddha. He had held the ancient scrolls in his hands. But he had lost them.
Chapter Ten
REUNION
Tao couldn’t go back for the sutras, but there was one thing he could do, and that was lead his friends to safety.
“Where are we going?” Pema asked.
“To my family home.”
When Tao eventually became a monk, his abbot would give him a new Buddhist name. He would break all ties with his family and no longer use the family name – Huan. As a novice he was expected to visit his home regularly and he had done so twice a year – once at New Year and again at mid-Autumn Festival – since he had joined the monastery. In the daylight, he knew the road well, but in the dark it wasn’t as familiar. He hoped he wouldn’t lead Kai and Pema astray.
After an hour of stumbling along the road in pitch darkness, the moon rose and lit their way.
“At least we don’t have to worry about losing the dragon,” Pema said.
Kai was glowing a pale shade of green, though there were dark patches where his scorched scales didn’t absorb the moonlight. It hardly seemed possible that the wide-eyed girl staring at the dragon was the same one who, just an hour before, had calmly stabbed a man. Sometimes Pema seemed old, with knowledge and experience far beyond her years. The next moment, she was like an innocent child of five. She reached out to touch Kai’s glowing scales.
“Don’t!” Tao shouted. He was about to pull Pema back, but then he remembered that Buddha’s rules forbade monks from touching females.
Pema laughed. Instead of a robed arm, her fingers felt a scaly leg.
“A man touched him in Luoyang and collapsed,” Tao said. “Why didn’t you?”
Pema shrugged. “I knew what to expect, I suppose.”
Kai made his wind-chime sound.
Tao was glad of the moonlight. As the road climbed through the Longevity Hills, he could see familiar landmarks – a twisted cypress tree, an abandoned village, a small lake – that enabled him to find his way. They met no one on the road.
A thought at the back of Tao’s mind wouldn’t go away. This visit to his home would be different. He didn’t know how. He tried to focus on the thought, as he did when trying to remember a Sanskrit word, but the more he concentrated, the more it faded.
Tao had hoped to reach his home in a single march, but they were all weary, and he didn’t want to wake the household in the middle of the night. When they passed a dilapidated farmhouse, Tao suggested they rest there, and neither Kai nor Pema objected. Even though the farmhouse had no roof, the broken walls gave the illusion of protection.
The smell of smoke woke Tao and for a moment he thought he was still in burning Luoyang. He leaped to his feet. There was a fire: just a tiny one that Pema had made, hemmed in by stones. She and Kai were leaning over it. Kai was holding three dead birds that were hanging from a thin thread of silk.
Tao looked horrified.
Pema’s grave face was lit briefly by a smile. “The dragon was up early. He caught some breakfast!”
She skewered the dead birds on sticks. Her fire had just the right amount of fuel to make it blaze for the exact length of time needed to roast the birds. Tao felt sick at the smell of burning feathers and flesh, even though his traitorous mouth was watering. Pema offered him a bird.
“I don’t eat meat,” he said.
Pema bit into her bird, making approving noises as the juice dribbled down her chin.
“You’ll receive bad karma for killing a living creature,” Tao said.
She picked the bones clean.
Kai ate his bird in one mouthful, crunching the bones. Tao sat apart from them, closed his eyes and silently recited a sutra. At least he tried to, but he couldn’t remember past the fifth line. He opened his eyes again. The two of them were smiling and tinkling like old friends, convivially sharing the third bird that Kai had ripped in two.
“Why are you travelling with a dragon, Holy Boy?” Pema asked when they resumed their journey. “Does your abbot want to parade him in front of stupid people so that they’ll give money for your monastery, like that skinny old man and his magic tricks in Luoyang?”
“No!” Tao couldn’t decide what offended him most, the insult to the great monk Fo Tu De
ng or to his abbot. “The dragon appeared at the monastery one night, and he has been following me ever since. Not that I mind travelling with him. He’s quite good company.”
Pema laughed. “Only you would think a creature who never speaks is good company.” She had a child’s laugh.
Tao glanced at the girl striding alongside him. It was the first time he’d seen her in daylight. Once he’d looked at her, it was hard to drag his eyes away. Her long dark hair swung around her shoulders as she easily kept pace with him. Her skin was smooth and the colour of potter’s clay. Her mouth was still unsmiling, her blue eyes fierce, her brow creased. The breeze carried the smell of her to him. He didn’t know what it was, some sort of oil that she combed through her hair. It was sweet and spicy, like apples flavoured with cinnamon.
“So why is the dragon following you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. He seems to expect me to do something or to say something important. I don’t know what, but I can see him watching me sometimes. And he makes a strange noise and waits, as if I should understand him and answer.”
“How can you know this? He doesn’t speak.”
“He’s disappointed in me. I can tell. And I think I know why. He’s got the wrong person. I think it’s really my brother he seeks. He’s cleverer than I am. Perhaps he’ll make sense of Kai’s sounds.”
Tao felt his mouth widen into a smile at the mention of his brother. He turned to Kai.
“You’ll like my brother. He doesn’t read or write, but he’s very intelligent.”
“You are lucky to have a family,” Pema said.
“My brother and I were born at the same time. We look the same. My mother says that we should have been one, but something happened before we were born and we became two.”
“I have never heard of such a thing,” Pema said. “How strange to look at another person and see yourself.”
“It isn’t strange to me. It’s what I’ve known since my earliest memories. I can’t imagine my life without him. Even though I only see him twice a year, he’s always in my heart.”
The road continued its winding way through the Longevity Hills. Their gentle slopes and rounded peaks had been terraced to make fields to produce enough food for the many thousands of people who had once lived in Luoyang. The farms had been abandoned long ago and the terraces had disappeared beneath rank grass and brambles.
A cluster of buildings came into view midmorning. They were squashed on top of the tallest hill and surrounded by a high earth wall. Wooden stakes sharpened to vicious points had been driven in along the top. It was the only place they had seen since they left Luoyang that was inhabited. The building on the top of the hill was Tao’s family home. The Huan house had been built in more peaceful times, placed where its inhabitants could enjoy views of the surrounding countryside in all directions. It had been a summer house, a place to go for holidays, but now it was valued as a vantage point from where attackers could be seen long before they arrived. Simpler dwellings crowded like sheep around a shepherd on the slopes below the house. The poor farmers who couldn’t afford to move south had formed a community around the Huan house, about fifty families. Next they had built the wall around themselves. With its watchtowers, which were manned day and night, it was like a fortress.
“Soon you will meet my brother,” Tao said to Kai. “Wei is a very special person. I have always known he has hidden skills, and I just have this feeling that they will be revealed once he is in the presence of a dragon.”
Kai made impatient sounds, like someone striking a small gong. Tao’s heart was thumping in his chest and Pema had to lengthen her stride to keep up with them.
A huge wooden gate was the only break in the wall around the fortress, but it was solid and impenetrable. Two guards in a watchtower raised bows to their shoulders when they saw the three figures approach. Tao wasn’t due to visit again for another two months. The guards didn’t recognise him at first.
“It is Huan Tao,” Tao shouted up to the guards. “I have come to visit my family.”
The guards lowered their weapons and called out a greeting. The gate opened a crack and another guard armed with a sword came out. He approached Kai, who made a sound like scraping metal.
“My friends have no weapons,” Tao said.
But the guard still reached out to search Kai. A surprised expression crossed the man’s face as his hands disappeared into the illusory sleeves. He fell to the ground and lay there unconscious. Kai made unhappy sounds like a cracked bell tolling.
Armed men rushed towards Kai, their swords pointed at him.
“Don’t touch the silent monk!” Pema shouted. “He is so holy that if anyone with impure thoughts touches him, they fall down senseless.”
The other men who were about to grab Kai pulled back their hands.
“We can let you in, Master Huan,” one of them said, “but we can’t let strangers in without the mistress’s approval.”
Tao’s father, mother and sister were waiting for him inside the house. They sat on three chairs, like ministers receiving envoys from another land. The household servants were assembled behind them. Tao stood awkwardly in front of this welcoming committee and made a slight bow.
“It is good to see you,” he said, though it didn’t sound like he was enjoying the experience.
“Why are you here, Tao?” his mother asked. “You aren’t due to visit for another two months.”
“Last night I escaped from the city as it was being attacked by the Zhao.”
“The Zhao?”
“They are a new nomad band that has split from the New Han. The city is destroyed again, burned to the ground once more.”
An anxious murmur passed through the people of the household.
“Are the New Han defeated?” Mrs Huan asked.
“I don’t know. We barely escaped with our lives. The invaders are encamped on the eastern plain. I couldn’t get back to my monastery. I brought my friends here instead, until it’s safe to travel.”
“What were you doing in Luoyang anyway?”
“My abbot sent me there to collect alms.”
The guards brought in the unconscious man and laid him in front of the Huans. They gave a garbled account of what had happened. Mrs Huan got up and poked him with the toe of her shoe. “Will this man recover from his senseless state?”
“He will,” Tao said, “in seven days.”
Mrs Huan gave permission for Kai and Pema to enter the fortress. The guards, swords at the ready, brought them in, keeping a close watch on Kai.
“How did you think up that story about Kai so quickly?” Tao whispered to Pema. “I couldn’t think of anything to explain it.”
Pema shrugged. “I have spent most of my life thinking up lies.”
Tao admired her cleverness and felt sorry for her, both at the same time.
“Introduce your companions, Tao,” his sister, Meiling said.
“This is Kai. He is a wandering monk who has taken a vow of silence. He is a most holy man.” Tao listened to the lies falling from his mouth as if he were hearing a stranger speak. “He has been in the presence of holy items touched by the Buddha himself. This has given him powers beyond normal men.”
“And the young woman?”
“Pema was living alone in the city. Her family was killed in the Fall of Luoyang. She had nowhere else to go.”
“I will return to Luoyang as soon as it is safe,” Pema assured them.
“Who were your family?” Mrs Huan asked. “What did your father do? We were acquainted with most of the families of influence in Luoyang.”
“Not mine,” Pema said. “My father was a Di merchant.”
Mrs Huan looked her up and down. “We did not associate with people from the Five Tribes.”
Throughout the interview, Tao’s father didn’t say a word.
“You are dirty, Tao. You must bathe and give your robes to the servants for washing and mending.” Mrs Huan stood up. Tao’s welcome was over.
br /> “Thank you, Mother, but first I must see Wei. Where is he?”
“He is in the peony pavilion, of course.”
“Come with me,” Tao said to Pema and Kai. “I want you both to meet my brother.”
Tao hurried through the house and out into the garden. Pema and Kai had trouble keeping up. It had been months since he’d seen his brother. He’d learned to manage without him in the monastery, but he always missed him. A path made from coloured pebbles arranged into a pattern led to a pavilion with an elegant double roof. The pavilion was open on three sides providing views of a flower garden, a bamboo grove and a fish pond. Tao couldn’t stop himself from breaking into a run.
“Wei!” he shouted. “I’m here. It’s good to see you.”
Pema and Kai entered the pavilion and both stared at Tao’s brother. Wei had the same eyes as Tao, the same mouth that curled into the same smile and his nose was exactly the same shape. His head was even shaved like Tao’s. But that was where the similarities ended. Pema looked at Kai, as if checking that she wasn’t imagining what she saw. Kai made soft, sad sounds. Wei was lying on a couch. A thin trail of drool ran from the corner of his mouth. He made a wordless sound. He slowly lifted a hand, his left hand, which was as stiff and inflexible as a claw. He could raise it no more than an inch or two from the bed. No other part of his body moved.
Tao was smiling so wide, he thought his face would crack open like an egg. He clasped his brother’s hand, leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.
“It’s so good to see you, Wei,” he said. Tears spilled down his face, but they weren’t tears of sadness, they were tears of joy.
Chapter Eleven
WILLOW
“Wei-Wei, these are my friends. This is Pema. She’s very brave. She rescued us from the fire in Luoyang. And this is Kai.” He turned to the dragon. “You can show my brother your true shape.”