Contents
Cover
Blurb
Logo
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Glossary
Pronunciation Guide
Acknowledgments
About The Author
Copyright
Dedication
Other Books by Carole Wilkinson
Praise For The Dragonkeeper Series
Other Titles
Ancient China, Han Dynasty.
Ping and Kai have travelled far, but their journey is not yet over. Danger stalks them. Ping must find Kai a safe home. But how? When a hidden message from Danzi makes the way clear, Ping knows that once again the journey of a thousand li begins with a single step.
Lines and characters on the reverse of the silk square
• chapter one •
ATTACK
“It’s too dangerous,”
the servant said, clinging
to Ping’s sleeve.
It was raining hard, but the sky was cloudless. And it wasn’t raindrops that were falling on Beibai Palace, but arrows. They pelted down, bouncing off flagstones and walls. The inner courtyards of the palace were usually quiet, peaceful places, but today the wind brought sounds of war—the battle cries of soldiers, the rumbling of drums, the clash of weapons. People were shouting. Hurried footsteps echoed around the courtyard as a squad of the Duke of Yan’s soldiers ran across the flagstones, trying to buckle their blue and gold tunics with one hand as they held shields over their heads with the other. Arrows fell around them. Just one managed to hit a target, digging deep into the thigh of a soldier. He fell to his knees clutching his leg.
Ping watched from a doorway as a crossbow bolt tipped with flaming pitch soared across the square of blue sky above the courtyard and struck a watchtower. Flames sprouted from the wooden tower.
It was her fault. She should have left Beibai Palace months ago. Ping tried to run out into the courtyard, but Tinglan held her back.
“It’s too dangerous,” the servant said, clinging to Ping’s sleeve.
An arrow ricocheted off the flagstone in front of them and bounced through the doorway. Tinglan flinched. Ping yanked herself free and ran out into the courtyard. An arrow pierced the hem of her gown.
“Please, Madam,” begged Tinglan. “Come back inside.”
Ping ignored her. She flattened herself against the wall and crept around the edge of the courtyard. She didn’t even glance at the wounded soldier as his companions dragged him into the shelter of the palace. She wasn’t rushing to help them. She moved as fast as she could, inching crabwise along the wall, protected from the rain of arrows by the overhanging eaves.
The flames were spreading. The roof of the dining hall had caught alight. Ping knew how quickly fire could spread through a wooden building. She wished she could see how the battle was progressing, but the only place where it was possible to see outside the palace was from the top of the walls.
The shouts of the Duke’s soldiers had woken Ping early that morning. She’d thought it was a dream until Tinglan rushed in, tears streaming down her face, babbling about sentries dead on the ramparts.
“Is it the barbarians?” Ping had asked.
“No,” Tinglan had sobbed. “Imperial soldiers are attacking us!”
Ping didn’t believe her, but frightened kitchen hands and ladies-in-waiting soon confirmed it. Imperial troops were attacking Beibai Palace. The Duke of Yan had recently made peace with the Emperor’s enemies, the Xiong Nu who lived beyond the Great Wall. He had set up trade directly with them, making it easier and more profitable for the barbarians than trading with the Emperor. But that wasn’t what had provoked the attack. Imperial spies had infiltrated the palace and informed the Emperor about the dragon living there that was bringing great good fortune to the Duke. An envoy had arrived two weeks earlier, with a message saying that the dragon was an imperial dragon—and the Emperor wanted him back. The Duke had replied that he would not give up the dragon. Ping imagined the Emperor’s fury when he received the reply. Imperial troops had attacked at first light. The fact that his sister Princess Yangxin was married to the Duke and lived in the palace hadn’t stopped the Emperor.
The battle wasn’t going well. The Duke’s men were outnumbered ten to one. To celebrate the recent peace with the Xiong Nu, the Duke had given most of his soldiers leave to spend the winter with their families. The remaining soldiers had been taken by surprise.
It was too dangerous to climb up to the ramparts to see what was happening, but everyone had seen the dead and the wounded in the Peony Hall. Rumours spread as the palace inhabitants imagined the worst.
“Thousands of soldiers are gathered outside the walls,” Tinglan said. “Whole companies of them, so one of the stable boys said.”
The Emperor had been unpopular with the people of Yan even before the attack. They didn’t like paying higher taxes to fund his expeditions to foreign lands to look for the fungus of immortality and the water of life.
“What sort of person puts his own sister at risk because of one small dragon?” Tinglan said.
“The Emperor will lay siege to the palace,” one of the cooks predicted. “He’ll slowly starve us to death.”
Tinglan shook her head. “The luck of the dragon will protect us.”
Ping knew the Emperor wouldn’t have the patience for a siege. His attack would be swift and deadly.
“Liu Che wouldn’t do this,” Princess Yangxin had protested as Lady An, her head lady-in-waiting, coaxed her towards the safest part of the palace. “My brother wouldn’t risk harming me.”
The Emperor had recently sent his sister a gift—a gilt statue of a horse almost two feet high. The Princess was convinced this was a sign of his love for her. She was sure that the attack was the work of a rebel general. The passage of time had made her forget how her brother had ill-treated her—sending her away from her home to be the Duke’s wife in order to keep the peace with Yan. But Ping hadn’t forgotten. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to her either. He had imprisoned her and sentenced her to death. Yet that wasn’t his worst offence. She didn’t believe he’d suddenly changed.
Ping knew she should have been helping care for the wounded, but she had another priority. She finally arrived at the doorway on the opposite side of the courtyard and ducked inside. The sharp smell of dried fish mingled with the aroma of honey. Baskets of vegetables were piled high alongside sacks of grain. But Ping hadn’t come to check on the state of the palace stores either.
In the centre of the storeroom there was a well about four feet wide, the one well in the palace that didn’t freeze in winter. She leaned over the low wall that surrounded it, peering into the water even though there wasn’t enough light in the storeroom to allow her to see below the surface. She took a mirror from the sleeve of her gown. One side was polished bronze, the other had an etched image of a dragon circling a raised sphere that served as a handle. Ping angled the mirror so that it collected the rays of morning light that reached inside the doorway, and reflected a beam of pale light into the well.
The water began to ripple. The ripples became waves. A paw broke the sur
face and then another, each armed with four sharp talons. The paws felt around the edge of the well until they found a grip. Two sturdy legs clambered up. A head emerged, covered in dark purple scales. It had a long snout, drooping ears and brown eyes that blinked away the water. A purple body with a row of spines down its back followed, and was heaved out of the well onto the storeroom floor with the aid of two powerful hind legs. Water ran off the creature, splashing Ping’s gown and soaking her silk slippers. She touched the dragon’s purple head, and heard a sound like tinkling bells.
“Is it spring?” said a voice in Ping’s mind.
“Almost,” she replied.
The dragon shook himself. Now Ping was wet from head to foot.
He looked around the storeroom. “Did Ping bring birds?”
Ping laughed and scratched the dragon around the bumps on his head where, one day, his horns would grow.
“No, Kai, I didn’t bring you anything to eat.”
The dragon’s brow creased.
“Why did Ping wake Kai?”
Her smile faded and she put an arm protectively around his scaly shoulders.
“The palace is being attacked. It’s Liu Che. He’s found out that we’re here.”
“Does Ping’s second sight warn of danger?”
Ping shook her head. “No, but the palace is on fire. We must get to safety.”
It was more than two weeks since Ping had last seen the dragon. He stretched to his full height. He’d grown. His head came up to her waist. She tried to pick him up. He was now about the size of a goat—a rather fat goat. She couldn’t lift him.
Angry shouts came from outside the palace walls.
“Quick, Kai.”
She tried to push him towards the doorway.
“Dragons don’t have good hearing,” he said, refusing to move. “But Kai knows those aren’t the cries of imperial soldiers.”
Ping went to the doorway. The shower of arrows had stopped. Kai was right. The shouts were in a language Ping didn’t understand. Men were clambering onto the roof with buckets of water to put out the blaze. The flames died down as she watched, until a few plumes of smoke were all that remained of the fire. Other voices rang out from within the palace. It was the Duke’s soldiers cheering. Ping ventured out into the courtyard, keeping close to the walls in case another volley of arrows rained down. Lady An ran towards Ping, her face beaming.
“The Xiong Nu have come to our aid,” she said. “The imperial troops are retreating!”
“Can we trust the barbarians?” asked Ping.
“They’re better friends to us than the Emperor,” Lady An replied. Ping had never heard her speak so sharply.
Ping wanted to see for herself. She climbed up a flight of steps that led to the ramparts on top of the outer palace wall. Kai followed her. Others had had the same idea. Ping pushed to the front of a crowd of cheering people. A band of perhaps a hundred barbarians was gathered outside the palace, together with the Duke’s foot soldiers. The barbarians were dark, rough-looking men wearing clothes made of leather and fur, but the Duke’s men were mingling with them, raising their spears and bows, and shouting in triumph. To the west, a cloud of dust was all that could be seen of the retreating imperial army. Several men on horseback rode out of the palace gates towards the soldiers. One was the Duke.
Kai looked at Ping, his eye-ridges wrinkling in a frown.
“Did Ping sense that Kai was in danger?”
“No, I had no sense of foreboding. I just wanted you to be safe.”
“Kai was safe.” The dragon’s voice was stern. “The well was the safest place.”
Ping lowered her eyes so that she didn’t have to meet the dragon’s gaze. He was right. She’d panicked. The well would have hidden him from imperial soldiers and protected him from fire. If there had been a real threat, she would only have led him into danger.
“Is it dinner time?” Kai asked.
• chapter two •
SEVEN CUNNING PIECES
All the time Ping had been at Beibai
Palace, the high walls had made her
feel protected and safe. Now she felt
confined, like a bird in a cage.
Ping spent the rest of the day tending the wounded soldiers with Lady An. The following day, under the direction of Princess Yangxin, she helped pack chests of food, silks and wine that the Duke was sending to the Xiong Nu as a gift of thanks.
Two days after the attack, Beibai Palace had returned to its usual calm rhythms. Except for the banging of hammers and the smell of damp, burnt wood in the air, it was as if nothing had happened. Ping spent the day in the Hall of True Delight, the Princess’s private recreation room, where the Princess and her ladies were busy weaving, embroidering, and spinning silk thread. Despite more than a year of daily encouragement from the Princess, Ping had no interest in these pastimes. The only time she sat sewing with the other women was if there was a hole in one of her socks or a tear in an undergarment. She preferred to spend her spare time reading.
All of the Princess’s ladies wore fine silk gowns with embroidered edges. Since Ping wouldn’t embroider a gown of her own, the Princess had insisted on giving her several that the other ladies had discarded. They had deep sleeves and were made of dyed silk. A long sash was tied in a bow around the waist. Ping thought they were far too impractical, but she didn’t want to be impolite.
Kai hadn’t returned to the well after the attack. He was playing a game of hide-and-seek with the children. He had grown so much during his hibernation that it was now difficult for him to find a hiding place. The Princess’s chair and the wood box no longer concealed him.
Today Ping was neither reading nor sewing. The recent events had jolted her out of her winter idleness. She sat on a rug staring at a silk square spread out on a cushion. It was a small piece of undyed, unhemmed fabric just a few inches across.
Ping examined the silk square for the first time in many months. On one side it was marked with faded, scratchy lines and squiggles drawn in what Ping believed was blood. It was a rough map of the Empire sent to her by Kai’s father, Danzi. A solid line represented the Great Wall, the northern boundary of the Empire, built to keep out the barbarians. To the east was Ocean. To the west was a number of jagged points, like arrowheads. These represented the Kun-lun Mountains. A winding line indicated the course of the Yellow River as it snaked across the whole Empire from its source in the western mountains, northward to almost touch the Great Wall before it turned south and then meandered eastward to Ocean. The southern border of the Empire must have been beyond Danzi’s knowledge because it wasn’t marked.
There had been characters on the map naming rivers and mountains. Most had faded away. Only nine characters remained. Ping was sure this was what Danzi had intended. These were the only characters she needed to make their journey. They were the names of three places—Long Dao Xi, Qu Long Xiang, Ye Long Gu—Dragon’s Lament Creek, Quiet Dragon Ridge and Blazing Dragon Valley. But there was no route to follow, no clue as to what she might find if she went to any of these places. Ping had asked the Duke and his advisers if they knew of the three places, but no one had heard of them.
At first Ping hadn’t noticed that there was anything on the other side of the square, but when she had been examining it in bright sunlight one day, she’d discovered several faint intersecting lines and small characters written as if they had been thrown down on the silk like dice. The jumble of characters made no sense.
She called Kai over from where he was unsuccessfully hiding behind a pot plant.
“Are you sure you don’t know what Danzi’s map means?” she asked.
She had taught Kai to read some characters before he had begun his hibernation.
“No. Kai has told Ping many times.”
“I know, but I thought after your sleep it might … look different.”
The silk square had been delivered by Ping’s pet rat a year and a half ago. Hua had been badly injured when Danzi was att
acked by the dragon hunter Diao on the sacred mountain Tai Shan. The old dragon was injured as well. He had taken the rat with him to the Isle of the Blest so that they could both be healed by the water of life that flowed there. Ping had never seen Danzi again, but the rat returned unexpectedly one day, carried on the back of a red phoenix.
Ping could now read as well as an imperial scholar, but even though she understood the characters, the map was still a mystery to her. When she had been with Danzi she’d often been unable to understand his pronouncements. Nothing had changed. His message made no sense at all.
Ping hadn’t thought of the old, green dragon for weeks. He had spent more than 40 years in captivity on Huangling Mountain. Ping shivered as she remembered her childhood in that cold, lonely place. She had been an ignorant slave girl without even a name. She had expected her future to be nothing more than an endless repetition of her past, spent serving the lazy Master Lan and feeding the creatures that kept them alive in the rundown imperial palace on that bleak mountain. Lan was supposed to care for the imperial dragons, but his neglect had led to them dying one by one, until only Danzi had remained. Ping and the old dragon had escaped together. She smiled to herself. That wasn’t really true.
Ping, frightened of the world, had been reluctant to leave. Danzi had kidnapped her, snatching her up in his talons as he took wing. He had revealed her name to her. She touched the bamboo square hanging from a silk cord around her neck. It had been given to her by her parents when she was a small child. There was a single character written on it in faded ink—Ping.
A gong sounded to announce that the midday meal was about to be served. As the dining hall was still being repaired after the fire, the servants brought the food to Princess Yangxin and her ladies-in-waiting in the Hall of True Delight.
Kai sat on embroidered silk cushions next to Ping. A servant brought in a low table set with a bowl, spoon and chopsticks for Ping and a large dish for Kai.
The first course was golden thread mushroom soup. Kai’s meal was different. His dish was piled with 15 stuffed quails and 30 turtle eggs. While everyone else was quietly sipping their soup, Kai hungrily stuffed the birds and eggs into his mouth, eating everything—including the bones and the egg shells. Ping didn’t eat much.