When the city fell to the first nomad invaders, many thousands of people had been slaughtered, including the last Jin Emperor. The imperial family, the ministers and the wealthier survivors had fled and taken refuge in the city of Chang’an. Those with no means had survived as best they could among the smouldering ruins, and had taken great pleasure in using any broken remains of the palace in the construction of their new homes. Since then, the Five Tribes had fought over the ruins. The latest conqueror, a Xiong Nu tribal leader, claimed he was descended from an insignificant Han princess, sent off to marry a barbarian in some long-forgotten and soon-broken peace treaty. He had dared to call his tribe the New Han.
The children melted away into the deepening shadows. Tao didn’t know where he and Kai would spend the night. There were no inns, and no one offered them shelter in their homes as villagers would have. His feet carried him down a smaller street that led off Bronze Camel Street to a square of ash-coloured earth scattered with fragments of broken marble.
“This was my family’s home,” he told Kai. “I was three when the nomads attacked the first time. I only have dim memories of that time and before, but my mother never tires of describing the house that we built here, just a few chang from the imperial palace.” Tao stood in the grey space and tried to reconstruct in his mind the grand house that had once been his home. “It had three storeys and ten rooms, each with a marble floor.”
It was too late for alms gathering, that pointless task would have to wait until morning.
“We may as well sleep here,” Tao said, looking up at the sky that for once didn’t threaten rain. “I hope the people know that monks have nothing and don’t try to rob us.”
Tao cleared a space of rubble, pulled his mat from his bag and spread it on the ground. No one was around, so Kai resumed his true shape and with his sharp talons dug a shallow hole in which to sleep. As he dug, he unearthed a rusty iron cooking spoon. He shrank back from it as if burned.
“What’s wrong?” Tao said.
Kai scratched a character in the ashy earth.
“Hurts? Do you mean iron hurts you?”
The dragon nodded his head. Tao picked up the rusty spoon and threw it as far away as he could. He was learning many things about dragons.
“Let me look at your wounds,” he said.
The dragon allowed Tao to examine the wounds on his chest. The red cloud herb was doing its work. The gashes had stopped oozing and the sores were almost healed. Kai pulled a folded leaf from behind one of his reverse scales and opened it out. It contained a small amount of chewed red cloud herb. Tao applied the ointment to the dragon’s wounds.
“My family was fortunate. We were at our country house when the nomads invaded. That’s where my family lives now. Many people fled to Chang’an, but my mother refused to abandon all our property.”
It had turned out to be a good decision, as Chang’an had fallen to the nomads two years later. Many of its inhabitants had then headed south, out of reach of the nomads.
Tao regretfully watched the sun disappear. The walls glowed orange for a brief time but were soon dark and ominous. There were long hours of darkness ahead when they would be unprotected. He had half hoped that Kai would sit up and keep watch through the night, but the dragon crawled into his hole and was soon asleep, snoring so loudly, Tao was certain it would attract attention.
He needn’t have worried. No one bothered them.
A shaft of sunlight woke Tao long before the inhabitants of Luoyang had risen. Kai crawled out of his hole and surveyed the dismal scene. He made the cracked-bell sound.
“Some breakfast would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Tao said. “I don’t think there is much chance of us getting alms here.”
Tao still had to do as his abbot had asked, no matter how pointless the task.
They found a well nearby, and Tao hauled up some grey water in a leaky bucket. He poured the water through his straining cloth, and though it was most unlikely that anything was living in the murky water, it did remove other things that were floating in it – rotting leaves, a snail shell, a fragment of blackened wood. He washed his face and hands, then hauled up a little more of the dirty water. He drank two mouthfuls and offered the rest to Kai. The dragon was still in his true shape. He drank the water and shuddered.
“Tastes like mouldy cabbage, doesn’t it?” Tao said.
He straightened his robes, retied his belt and took out his alms bowl. Kai changed to his monk shape. Tao looked away just in time.
Tao knocked on the crooked door of the first house he came to. One of the doorjambs was burned black at the bottom, but the top was carved with flowers and a few flakes of red and green paint still clung to it. It had once been a part of a much grander building.
“Alms for the reverend brothers in the mountains,” Tao called out. “Give so you will be blessed by the Buddha.”
No one responded.
The next house didn’t have a door, just a ragged piece of cloth hanging in a doorway. A sleepy voice from inside shouted at them to go away.
The sun shone on the damp city out of a cloudless sky, and steam rose from the houses as they started to dry out. The inhabitants brought out their worn and grubby bedding to air. It was the first time Tao hadn’t felt damp for weeks.
Silent, sullen people stared at the two monks from their dismal homes and then shut their doors on them. The people of Luoyang trusted no one, not even each other. Hungry children dressed in rags with runny noses and sores on their faces followed them, chanting insults. It was the same wherever they went.
Tao noticed that Kai was staring at the people of Luoyang, listening to the variety of accents. He was starting to imagine that he could interpret the dragon’s mood and thought he looked perplexed.
“The inhabitants of Luoyang are a mix of people – the original inhabitants who were too poor to move south, and members of the Five Tribes, the nomadic people who once lived beyond the Great Wall. Over the years they crossed to this side – some as invaders, some invited to join the imperial army against one of the other tribes. The tribes grew strong, took land that had once belonged to the empire, murdered the Emperor. And then there wasn’t an empire any more.”
Tao looked at the dragon, who was listening carefully to him. It was hard to believe that he had been alive before the fall of the empire.
“No one knew what to call themselves without an imperial dynasty to name them. At first people referred to themselves as Han, since they liked to remember a time when the empire had been strong and stable, but since this band of nomads took up the name, we call our homeland Huaxia, which means Most Cultivated Land. But it could also mean Flowery Summer Land. There’s no one left alive who remembers the empire. I think everyone imagines it was a lovely place, forever summery and prosperous. Or perhaps it’s just that since the nomads took over, the countryside has run wild. It is pretty at this time of year at least, with the plain dotted with flowers.”
The people of Huaxia had found that it was wiser to be more polite to their invaders and had stopped calling them barbarians – at least to their faces. Though many of them now stayed in one place, people still called them nomads.
Whether the inhabitants of Luoyang were Huaxia or members of the Five Tribes, they were all poor and they had no intention of sharing what little food they had with strange monks.
New Han soldiers passed from time to time, patrolling the city. They looked well fed as they cheerfully went about their business of making the inhabitants’ lives even more miserable. They were the only ones who looked happy to be in Luoyang.
By midday, Tao and Kai had worked their way to the north of the city, where nomad soldiers had taken over a fortified area called Little Luoyang and made it their barracks. The walls had been rebuilt and the roofs shingled, though many of the soldiers preferred to live in the tents they had seen to the west of the city. Soldiers leaned against walls in the sunshine or lounged around small fires, heating up kumiss, a drink made of fermented
mares’ milk that nomads were fond of. Tao had heard it tasted foul. Guards stood outside a tower, three storeys high, where their general lived. The nomad army had no ranks, but the Huaxia called anyone who appeared to have authority “general” as a mark of respect. Although the nomad soldiers didn’t wear uniforms, it was easy to pick them out. They were the ones with all the weapons, the ones who didn’t look hungry. Tao walked past them, eyes downcast, and didn’t ask for alms.
They passed the imperial ancestral temple and the old altars of soil and grain, which were long abandoned and ruined. In the north east of the city, where the imperial gardens had once been, people had constructed rickety hovels from scraps of wood salvaged from the ruins. In the empty space that had once been a garden full of exotic plants, they were growing grain and vegetables. Men with sharpened sticks and clubs watched over the struggling plants day and night. There were a few goats tethered to posts, one or two pigs and some scrawny chickens pecking at the barren earth. The children were dressed in tattered rags and just as grimy as children in the rest of the city, but they weren’t as thin and they had the energy to play.
“Alms for my reverend brothers,” Tao said half-heartedly, thinking of the journey back to Yinmi Monastery without any food in his stomach. “Those who have generosity of heart will earn the blessings of Buddha.”
A man came out of one of the houses. “We already gave what we could to the other monks.”
Tao wondered if the monks from the White Horse Temple had recently been asking for alms.
“Can you do magic?” one of the children asked.
Tao didn’t think that it was fair to expect the people to give and get nothing in return. He had to offer them something.
“No, but I will tell you a story of the Blessed One in a previous life,” Tao said. “Do you know why you can see a rabbit in the moon?”
He began to recite the story of the wise rabbit that was willing to sacrifice himself for others. As a reward, the lord of the devas had drawn the rabbit’s image on the moon. A few children listened for a while, before wandering off. When Tao had finished, one woman came forward.
“This is all I can spare.”
She put no more than a spoonful of grain into Tao’s alms bowl.
“Thank you,” he said, trying not to sound disappointed. “Your path to nirvana will be less long.”
Tao and Kai walked around the outskirts of the city, collecting meagre alms from the people of Luoyang – a little more grain, some sunflower seeds, three dried plums. Not enough to sustain the two of them for a single day. Each time they stopped, Tao told another Buddha story, but no one listened.
Every now and again Kai let out a snort and mist issued from his nostrils, which immediately disappeared in the warm sunlight. Fortunately, no one thought this was strange behaviour for a monk.
“You may not approve of collecting alms from such poor people,” Tao said, not sure whether he had interpreted the dragon’s mood or just his own secret thoughts, “but they will benefit from their generosity. They will walk further along the path to perfect peace and a time when they can leave behind the suffering of life.”
It took most of the day to make a slow circuit of the city. When the sun hung low in the sky, Tao’s alms bowl was still less than half full.
“I was hoping we would be on our way back to the monastery by now,” Tao said. “I don’t want to spend another night here, but I don’t want to sleep out on the plain either.”
He wanted to be back within the walls of his monastery. It was the only place he felt safe.
Tao felt dragon talons clasping his wrist, yet when he looked it was a human hand that had hold of his arm. It was a strange sensation. With his other illusory hand, Kai pointed at a knot of people in the shadow of the city’s eastern wall. The dragon’s eyesight was much better than Tao’s; they had to move closer before he could make out what Kai was pointing out.
There, rising out of the dark ruins, was a six-sided pagoda made of new wood, properly sawn and planed smooth. Tao stared at it in wonder. He had never seen a building so new and well built. The most amazing thing was its height. It had seven storeys, each one a little narrower than the one below it, giving it a pleasing tapering shape. The overhanging eaves were carved with lotus flowers. Men were painting the carvings blue and green, and hanging bells from the corners of the roofs. It was as if it had descended from another realm of existence, sent by the Buddha himself. Close by, builders with hammers, saws and a ladder were working on the framework for a larger, rectangular structure. Piles of freshly sawn wood, covered with oiled cloth to keep it dry, stood ready to be formed into other buildings.
“What is happening here?” Tao asked one of the builders.
“The magical monk from a far-off land has chosen this place to build a temple,” the man said. “My uncle and I follow the ways of the Buddha and we are honoured to help him build it.”
Tao could see a monk peering up at the roof beams of the new building, in conversation with another builder. His bright yellow robes could only have been dyed with precious saffron. Tao looked down at his own drab brown robes, dyed with tree bark.
“Who is this monk?” Tao asked. He had not heard of a new temple being built in his lifetime.
“His name is Fo Tu Deng,” the builder said.
Tao gasped. “Fo Tu Deng? Are you certain?”
“Yes, Reverend Sir.”
Tao stared at the monk, his eyes nearly as wide as his mouth.
“He is most holy,” the builder said. “He has powers beyond those of mortal men.”
“He can call up the spirits, heal the sick and bring back the dead,” the builder’s uncle said. “We have witnessed his miracles. He usually does some of his Buddha magic about this time of day.”
Tao stumbled over a plank of wood in his haste to meet the famous monk, and fell to his knees at the feet of the holy man.
Chapter Six
A BLUE LOTUS
“It is an honour to meet Your Holiness.” Tao bowed so low, his nose was resting on the ashy earth. “My abbot has spoken of your great journey from Tianzhu and the wonders you have achieved in our humble land.”
Kai did not bow.
Fo Tu Deng was a short wiry man, with a flap of skin beneath his chin. He looked down at Tao as if he had just discovered a toad or a spider.
“If you have come to be one of my disciples, you must make a donation to the temple fund.”
“I can’t join your disciples, Your Holiness,” Tao said. “And I have nothing to donate to your temple. I am from Yinmi Monastery.” He pointed towards the distant mountains, their peaks hidden in cloud.
Fo Tu Deng looked in the direction of Tao’s pointing finger. “I didn’t know there was a monastery there.”
“It’s about halfway up the second slope, hidden in a crease of the mountain and invisible unless you know where to look. The path is concealed by a juniper tree, just to the left of a large rock that resembles a turtle. It’s a humble place, home to just a few monks.”
Kai made an irritated noise.
Tao bowed again, staring at the holy man’s feet, which he was surprised to see were encased in leather sandals.
“Will this be your temple’s Meditation Hall, Your Holiness?” Tao indicated the framework of a building.
“That? No, that will be my quarters. I will be the abbot.” The building was twice the size of the Meditation Hall at Yinmi. “This will be the Meditation Hall.” He paced around a huge rectangle marked in the earth with pegs at each corner. “My temple will be magnificent.”
“Like the White Horse Temple?”
Fo Tu Deng snorted. “That temple will seem like a village hall compared to mine,” he said.
Tao could see now that there were marks on the ground where other buildings would be built.
Fo Tu Deng surveyed the site. “The wooden roof on the pagoda is just temporary. Eventually it will have a dome of gold to represent an upturned alms bowl. Above that will be a vas
e carved with lotus petals, a golden parasol topped with a crescent moon, and a jewel.”
“We stopped at the White Horse Temple yesterday. Someone has stolen their ancient sutras.”
“How terrible.” The monk shook his head.
“I don’t know who could have done such an evil thing,” Tao said. “Those sutras may have been touched by Buddha himself.”
“I am not surprised. It is the sort of thing to be expected of the worthless inhabitants of this dreadful place.”
Tao wasn’t so sure. The sutras would have had no value to the poor of Luoyang.
“Will your pagoda house precious sutras?” he asked.
“Yes. I have sutras, and copies of all those that I have translated myself – over a hundred. More precious still will be a tooth of Buddha, which my monks are at this moment bringing back from Tianzhu.”
The monk was smiling into the distance as if he could already see his golden-roofed temple.
“Beyond the temple buildings there will be a garden.” He waved his hand in the direction of a jumble of miserable houses. “There will be trees, a lake and paths where monks will conduct their walking meditation.”
He sighed and his smile faded when he saw Tao still kneeling at his feet.
“Why are you here if you have not come to join me?”
“My abbot sent me … us to collect alms.”
“A waste of a journey, no doubt.”
Tao looked down at his half-full alms bowl. “The people have shared with us what they can.”
Fo Tu Deng snorted again. “You may as well ask a herd of goats. These are the worst sort of people – thieves and bandits, all ignorant of the teachings of the Blessed One. Are you returning to your monastery?”
“Yes, Your Holiness.”
The monk waited, as if he expected Tao to get up and leave immediately. He noticed Kai for the first time and peered at him.
“My reverend brother has taken a vow of silence,” Tao explained. “We are searching for shelter. It is too dangerous to travel at night.”
Dragonkeeper 4: Blood Brothers Page 4