The girl took some things from her bag – plums, a dead pigeon, a bowl of grain.
“I recognise that bowl,” Tao exclaimed. It was the bowl the monks had given him the night before. “You stole that food from the poor people of Luoyang – and me!”
The girl shrugged. “How else can I survive?”
She pulled other things from her bag that Tao couldn’t quite see and put them on the shelf. Then he saw her take out a bamboo cylinder. It looked old and had a broken strap. She removed a stopper made of beeswax and shook the contents onto her bed. A number of scrolls tumbled out. The girl examined them briefly and then swept them onto the floor. They were of no interest to her.
Tao gasped and fell to his knees. He picked up one of the scrolls, handling it as if it were as delicate as dragonfly wings. He held it up to the light.
“These …” He couldn’t speak. The scrolls weren’t made of paper; they were made of curls of birch bark. The Sanskrit words were faded, and he couldn’t make them out in the dim light. “These are the ancient scrolls that were stolen from the White Horse Temple.”
His hands trembled. He couldn’t believe he was holding them. “The Blessed One might have touched these.”
“You can have them. They’re no use to me.”
“You’ll get bad karma for stealing such holy things.”
She didn’t sound at all offended at being accused of theft.
“I didn’t steal them. The foreign monk dropped the cylinder when he fled. I found it. Finders keepers is the rule in this town.” She fingered the cylinder’s broken strap.
Tao carefully slid the delicate scrolls back into their bamboo cylinder and refitted the stopper. “I won’t let them out of my sight until I can return them to the White Horse Temple.”
She leaned back against the cushions. Tao was sitting cross-legged, his back straight.
“My name is Pema,” the girl said, “since it doesn’t seem like you’re going to ask.”
“I am Tao and this is –”
“Kai,” the girl said.
“How long have you lived here?” Tao said.
“All my life.”
Tao waited for her to continue, but she didn’t offer any more information. To avoid looking at the girl, he surveyed her possessions. The bowls glinted like silver. Everything looked well made and expensive, though the brocade on Pema’s bed was faded, the threads on the embroidered cushions worn away.
“Do you think it’s safe for us to go outside now?” Tao asked.
“Not yet. These raids don’t last long. The New Han soldiers of the garrison will soon drive the attackers off. Sometimes they last for hours, sometimes a day or two.”
“I can’t stay for a day or two! I have to return to my monastery. I have transcription work to do.”
“I didn’t invite you to stay,” Pema said.
Tao got up, flustered. Invited or not, he shouldn’t have been in a room with a girl. “We’ll leave immediately.”
“That’s not a good idea, unless you’re ready for your next life.”
Tao sat down again. What the girl meant wasn’t clear from her words alone. He couldn’t resist looking at her, to see if he could read from her face if she was angry, or making fun of him.
Kai made a rumbling noise. Pema flinched and shuffled further away from the dragon.
“I think he’s tired of listening to us bicker,” Tao said. “We will stay until things quieten down out there, if you would be kind enough to allow it. Just an hour or two.”
The sounds of the attack were already dying down.
Pema couldn’t hide her curiosity.
“Has your dragon been with you for a long time?”
Tao smiled. “He doesn’t belong to me. I didn’t choose to have a dragon as my companion. He just turned up at my monastery a few days ago.”
“I thought you had been together for years.”
“No, less than a week, though it feels much longer.”
“Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know,” Tao said.
“I thought you could understand him.”
“It’s as if he expects me to understand him, but I can’t. Only when he writes.”
Pema’s eyes widened. “The dragon can write?”
“A little, yes.” Tao felt a little twinge of pride, which not only transgressed one of Buddha’s rules, but was also ridiculous, as he wasn’t in any way responsible for Kai acquiring the skill of writing.
To avoid looking at the girl, Tao followed the progress of a spider across the stone floor.
“How did you come to live here?” he asked.
“This was the cellar of my family’s home,” Pema said. There was pride in her voice as well. “Above here, we had a great house with many rooms and servants. The barbarians destroyed it when they attacked the city the first time.”
“My family lived in Luoyang before the attack,” Tao said, moving his foot so that the spider didn’t have to navigate its way around it. “We also had a big house which was destroyed. My family moved to the country. Where is your family?”
“They were killed in the attack. Mother, sister, brothers. All dead.”
“And you’ve lived here since the attack?”
Pema nodded. “Since I was five.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes.”
Now there was something to be proud of. Tao couldn’t help staring at the girl in admiration. Tao tried to imagine five-year-old Pema finding food, clearing the rubble, salvaging what she could. The images in his head got worse as he realised she must have witnessed the murder of her family members. And then faced a life filled with nothing but loneliness.
“But you’re just a b …”
“A barbarian?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I am a barbarian,” she said proudly, “but not Xiong Nu.” She spat out the words as if they were poison. “My family were Di people; my father was a merchant.”
“Surely some other family would have taken you in. You were so young.”
Tao remembered when he was five, the certainty that his mother and father would provide food, shelter and safety.
“I hid from people. I didn’t want to live with Xiong Nu.”
“There are Huaxia people here as well.”
“I didn’t want to live with them either. I could take care of myself.”
Pema wasn’t a grubby urchin. Her hair was combed, her face clean, and she smelled of something sweet. She was wearing a skirt that looked as if it had been made from a wall hanging, and a jacket with ragged cuffs that was too small for her, clasped with a jewelled pin. Tao could see her shoes more clearly now. They were made of silk with frayed embroidery and pearls sewn onto them in the shape of a flower. But it was her eyes that were astounding. Tao had never seen anyone with blue eyes before. They were beautiful yet cold, like the sky lit by winter sun. She stared at him without any shyness, her small mouth held firm and unsmiling. She would have been very pretty if she smiled.
Tao looked away quickly. He focused on the things around the room instead. Pema had a lot of things in the cellar that had been her home for twelve years, more bowls and cooking pots than one person needed. There were other items that were purely decorative, which must have belonged to her family – a glazed vase, a painting of mountains, a small jade statue of a dancer. Tao realised that many of Pema’s belongings were probably stolen.
Kai was looking at the things she had just taken out of her bag and something caught his eye. He picked it up and held it out on his paw. It was a piece of purple gemstone, its edges rounded from much handling, a white vein snaking through it. Tao couldn’t believe his eyes. He took the stone and turned it over in his hands, feeling each curve and irregularity with his fingers. He held it up to the light coming through the slats. It was his piece. He would have recognised it just by touch.
“This is mine,” Tao said softly. “My great-grandfather gave it to me.”
“No it isn’t!” Pema looked right into Tao’s eyes. “I’ve had it for years.”
“You stole it from me during the night, with the food we’d collected from the people of Luoyang.”
Pema shrugged. “I thought it looked pretty, but you can have it back.”
Kai growled deep in his throat. Pema looked at him nervously.
The spider had made its way across the room and stopped at the hem of Pema’s skirt as if considering crawling onto it. Pema slipped off one of her embroidered slippers and slammed it down onto the spider, squashing it flat.
Tao gasped. “I only met you a few minutes ago and in that time you’ve broken three of the Five Precepts!”
“What are precepts?”
“Rules, laws decreed by Buddha. You have stolen, lied and killed a living creature.”
“Those are your rules, Holy Boy, not mine. I have my own ‘precepts’. Just three of them – to survive, to find the barbarian who murdered my family, and to kill him.”
She glared at Tao, daring him to argue with her. The pretty girl he had admired a few minutes earlier had become a grim-faced young woman with hatred in her eyes. Tao could easily believe that she was capable of killing more than a spider.
They sat in silence. Kai snoozed. Tao meditated. Pema mended the broken strap on the bamboo cylinder, weaving a length of blue ribbon with the bamboo strands that had broken. She made some food on a small brazier. Kai moved away, making unhappy sounds.
“Doesn’t he want to eat?” Pema said.
“He wants to eat. He’s always hungry. It’s the pot and brazier that he doesn’t like. Iron hurts him.”
Tao wouldn’t eat, as it was well past noon. Kai ate Tao’s share as well as his own.
“You were right,” Pema said. “He definitely wanted to eat.”
The fighting was getting louder again. Pema’s brow creased as she listened. There were shouts, children crying, the clatter of horses’ hooves. She was reading the sounds like Tao did when Lao Chen spoke Sanskrit, trying to find the ones that made sense, interpreting those that were unfamiliar.
Smoke was seeping into the cellar. Tao wanted to get out into the air, even if it was thick with smoke. He wanted to get away from Luoyang and return to Yinmi and his simple life. He needed to get back to his transcription, to his brush and ink stone.
“Usually a group of rival nomads raids the stores or the stables. They test their skills against the New Han to show how brave they are,” Pema said. “This sounds like more than a raid.”
The smoke was thicker. Kai was making anxious noises. He paced up and down in the cellar like a caged tiger. Tao didn’t know where the dragon wanted to go, but he knew how he felt. He would rather have been somewhere else too.
Through the slats they could see feet and hear sounds of fighting – ugly barbarian words, swords clashing, then the awful sound of a blade entering flesh and the agonised cry of a dying man. The fighting was right outside. Something fell hard against the slats, and they were plunged into darkness.
Tao held his breath, half expecting someone to burst through the doorway. But the sounds of violence moved away.
“What are they fighting for?”
“The city.”
“Why? There’s nothing here worth having.”
“There is a new faction who have broken away from the New Han. That’s what I heard. They call themselves the Zhao. They want to be able to say they captured Luoyang. It was once the capital of an empire, so even though it is a ruin, these stupid barbarians still feel proud to conquer it.”
“We have to leave this place,” Tao said.
“Go then.”
“You must come too. It’s too dangerous here.”
“I’m not leaving. This is my home. The city has changed hands before. It has never affected my life.”
“Your belongings are safely hidden here. You can come back when things have settled down. Should the nomads discover this hiding place, they will take what they want whether you are here or not. You might think you are tough, but you can’t fight off an invading army. If we are going to survive, we have to get out of this ruin until the battle is over.”
“What do you care about me?”
“I have vowed to preserve the life of all living things. Even spiders,” Tao looked at Pema. “Even a thief.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“We could go back to my monastery.”
Kai shook his head.
“Where is it?” Pema asked.
“On Song Shan.”
“The dragon is right,” Pema said. “The invaders came from the east. They’re probably camped out on the eastern plain. It would be too dangerous to go in that direction.”
Tao thought for a moment. “I know a place where we can go. It will take about four hours to walk there. We should wait until nightfall.”
Chapter Nine
ABOVE
Tao was surprised there was anything left in Luoyang to burn, but whichever way they turned there were flames. It had become clear that Kai was terrified of fire; it left him frozen with fear and unable to change his shape or create a mirage to blend in with his surroundings. Tao led him through the chaos, coaxing him with gentle words.
Pema was familiar with the city’s layout, and had no trouble finding her way in the darkness. Night-time was when she usually came out to steal food from the people of Luoyang. The glow of the fires lit the way and she navigated through the dark ruins with ease towards the Heavenly Purple Palace Gate on the western side of the city. It should have been difficult to conceal a dragon, but Pema led them through narrow alleys in sparsely inhabited sections of the city where there was no fighting. She moved like a wary animal, her head cocked, listening, stopping when she heard someone approach and disappearing into the shadows as they passed, as if she had the skills of a dragon.
The bag over Pema’s shoulder rattled and chinked as she walked.
“You should have left your trinkets behind,” Tao said. “They won’t be of any use to you while we’re travelling. If anyone guesses that you are carrying valuables, it will make us a target for attack.”
Tao had the bamboo cylinder’s strap looped over his shoulder and was clutching the sutras to his chest.
“You have your precious things,” Pema said. “I have mine.”
In the north of the city, the barracks which Tao and Kai had passed just the day before were in flames. Whoever had attacked the city knew where the New Han soldiers were garrisoned and had targeted them.
A company of retreating soldiers burst out of the darkness, chased by another band of soldiers. Pema pulled Tao into the shadows. Kai hid on the other side of the street as the pursuing soldiers surrounded their enemies and attacked them with a clash of weapons. None of the soldiers wore any emblems and Tao didn’t know how they could tell each other apart. The only difference was that the invaders’ vests and trousers were stained with sweat and dirt. It looked as if they had ridden a long way before they attacked the city. However, they were overcoming the New Han.
One man escaped from the melee. He ran into the shadows and collided with Pema. Her bag fell to the ground and its contents spilled out. The soldier was about to keep running, but the light from the flames glinted on silver and gemstones. Pema kneeled down to pick up her precious things. The nomad glanced back to the knot of men preoccupied with slaughtering each other. No one had noticed he’d slipped away, so he reached for the shiny things lying on the ground. Pema leaped on him. He was a strong man, but it took him a few moments to get Pema off his back and pull her round where he could see her. He raised his bloodied axe. Tao attempted to grab the man’s arm and the nomad turned on him instead. He hit Tao with the blunt end of the axe and Tao stumbled and fell. Pema tried to wriggle out of the nomad’s grip, but he twisted her arm behind her back, making her cry out in pain. Tao was dizzy; he felt blood running down his face. He looked to Kai, hoping the dragon would help him, but he was hidden in the shadows, sti
ll transfixed by fear of the tongues of orange flame that were surrounding them. The nomad tried to undo Pema’s jewelled pin with one hand.
“Don’t hurt me.” The pleading voice was hardly recognisable as Pema’s. “I’ll give you whatever you want. I have gold.”
Pema reached into her bag. Then she had a knife in her hand and she slashed the nomad, cutting deep into his upper arm. He yelped and knocked the knife from her grasp with his other hand. He pushed her onto the ground, holding her down with his knee on her neck. He examined his wound and raised his axe again.
Pema’s eyes were on Tao, asking for help. The knife was on the ground. Tao could have snatched it up and stabbed the man, but he had taken a vow not to harm anyone. Is that what Buddha intended? For monks to stand by and watch people get hurt? The precepts had always seemed straightforward to him before. Tao closed his eyes. He didn’t want to witness what was about to happen.
A wind blew up – a strange wind that came not from east or west, but from above. Tao opened his eyes and looked up. So did the nomad. There was something above them – a large shape with flapping wings. The creature made a deep rumbling sound, like Kai when he was angry.
Tao could just make out the shape in the firelight. “It’s another dragon!”
This dragon was smaller than Kai, yet it had wings, and its eyes were red and glazed over. Tao couldn’t believe how different a dragon was when it was in the air. It moved with ease and grace, like a dancer, and yet it had such power. An earthbound dragon seemed a heavy plodding thing compared to this soaring, swooping creature. A nomad sat astride the beast. His knees clamped around the dragon’s yellowish body, enabling him to ride with his hands free to fit an arrow to his bow. But the dragon wasn’t only a means of getting into the air, it was also a weapon. The rider goaded the beast, whipping it with a strip of leather, and it swooped down on the soldiers who had all stopped fighting to stare up at the dragon. The beast was furious. It dived on the men, backing them into a corner where they couldn’t escape. Then it raked their flesh with its talons, gored them with its horns, snatched them up in its jaws. It didn’t discriminate, attacking soldiers from both sides. The dragon rider, who must have belonged to one side or the other, didn’t seem to care. It was the most horrible sight Tao had ever seen.
Dragonkeeper 4: Blood Brothers Page 6