Dragonkeeper 4: Blood Brothers

by Carole Wilkinson

  Fo Tu Deng was not given a stool. He sat on the ground and looked like a skinny child alongside Shi Le. He accepted a cup of kumiss and sipped it.

  Tao spoke silently to Kai. “Many people died tonight because of my vision.”

  “If the New Han had attacked,” the voice in Tao’s head said, “just as many people would have died – and we might well be among the dead.”

  “Nothing in my life is as simple as it used to be.”

  They remained on their knees.

  “This Buddha of yours is from a foreign land, just like me,” Shi Le was saying to Fo Tu Deng.

  “Yes, Chanyu. That is true.”

  “I never had any time for the beliefs of the Huaxia, all that honouring your parents and so forth. But these beliefs from another land seem fitting for nomads.”

  “Indeed, Chanyu,” Fo Tu Deng said. “You are most wise to realise that. In the eyes of Buddha, all those who follow him are equal. He makes no distinction between slave and emperor. Nomad and Huaxia are the same to the Blessed One, as long as they follow his teachings.”

  “I don’t have to read, do I?” Shi Le looked daunted by this thought.

  “No, Chanyu. If you would like to hear the words of Buddha, my novice can recite them for you anytime you wish. You could perhaps meditate.”

  Shi Le’s brow crinkled. “Meditate?”

  “Allow me to demonstrate.” Fo Tu Deng rested his wrists on his crossed knees and transformed his face into a picture of holiness.

  He waited for the nomad to follow his example.

  “I’ve just been in the saddle for many hours,” Shi Le said. “Can’t I do it sitting on a stool?”

  “Of course you can, Chanyu,” Fo Tu Deng said. “Just think about Buddha.”

  Shi Le still didn’t seem convinced.

  Tao was beginning to see the point of his vision now. They could influence Shi Le. Teach him the ways of Buddha. Stop him from killing more people.

  “The Blessed One only requires his followers to abide by the Five Precepts,” Tao told the nomad general enthusiastically.

  Fo Tu Deng opened one eye and glared at Tao. Kai made a soft sound like a cracked bell tolling in the distance.

  Shi Le cocked his head to one side. “Why does the other monk make that strange sound?”

  “It is the only way silent monks are permitted to express themselves,” Tao said. “It takes many years to perfect the sound. I believe he is encouraging you to follow the precepts.”

  “What are these precepts?”

  “Five simple rules,” Tao said.

  Fo Tu Deng had both eyes open now. He lifted his hands from his knees and flapped them urgently. Tao thought he had cramps.

  Tao recited the Five Precepts. “You must not kill, or steal or think impure thoughts about women. You must not tell lies or drink strong liquor.”

  Shi Le turned to Fo Tu Deng with a look of disbelief.

  “Is this true?” he said, taking a large bite from the roasted pig’s leg his servant had handed him and washing it down with kumiss. “How am I supposed to live?”

  “Shi Le believes it is his right as Chanyu to do all five!” Kai’s voice echoed in Tao’s head.

  Too late, Tao realised his mistake.

  Shi Le was most concerned with the first precept.

  “Are you saying that if I follow this Buddha, I must not kill anyone?” He made it sound like he was being asked to stop breathing.

  Tao nodded.

  “It is not possible. I am a warrior.”

  Fo Tu Deng forgot about meditating and patted the nomad leader’s knee encouragingly.

  “Buddha’s teachings forbid the taking of life, but of course, emperors must rule over their people. They cannot let criminals go unpunished or stand back and let their enemies defeat them. You will soon rule all Huaxia. You will be an emperor. The first precept requires only that you do not kill the innocent. Obviously, evil people who threaten the stability of your empire must be put to death.”

  Tao could hardly believe his ears.

  Shi Le nodded and smiled. “I like this Buddha. He understands the ways of nomads.”

  “The Blessed One will watch over you,” Fo Tu Deng said.

  The thought of having a deity protecting him put Shi Le in a very good mood.

  “What would an emperor do to celebrate a victory over his enemies?”

  “He would have a banquet, Chanyu.”

  “Then I will have a banquet!” he announced. “To celebrate the capture of the city of Luoyang.”

  Tao opened his mouth to point out that a banquet involving eating a lot of meat and drinking a great deal of wine would obviously be breaking the first and the fifth precepts, but he didn’t get a chance.

  “What else do I need to do to become a Buddhist?” Shi Le asked.

  “You must take part in a solemn ceremony, Chanyu.”

  Tao knew there was no ceremony for ordinary people to become Buddhists; Fo Tu Deng was just humouring the Zhao leader.

  “Perhaps the day after your banquet,” Fo Tu Deng suggested.

  “Will it take long? I won’t have to spend hours on my knees, will I, reciting sutras and so forth?”

  “It is a simple ceremony. First you must cleanse yourself.”

  “Cleanse? Do you mean I have to have a bath?”

  “Just your feet, Chanyu. I will burn some incense, recite a short sutra, place a garland of flowers around your neck. Then you will be a Buddhist.”

  “Good,” Shi Le said. “Now I must sleep.”

  He threw his ham bone on the ground, drained his cup of kumiss and went into his tent without another word.

  Tao, Kai and the monk were still under guard, but they were moved to the building that had been the abbot’s quarters. Kai stretched himself out on a straw bed in his true form with a sigh.

  “This is a better prison.”

  “But we can’t rest,” Tao said. “We have to think of a way to escape.”

  Fo Tu Deng had different ideas. “No. We must stay here. If we prove that we can be useful to Shi Le, we will be safe. With your visions you can predict which battles he will win, what his enemy’s weaknesses are. It will be easy to become indispensable to him.”

  Kai was happy to rest and regain his strength, now that he was away from the iron.

  “But I don’t have control over my visions. They don’t answer questions or predict the future. They just show me something that is happening. Somewhere. And I can’t control what that is. As to the meaning, I made up most of what I said. It was very fortunate that it happened to be close to the truth. I still don’t understand the meaning of my first vision. And I don’t know when the next will come or if it will come at all.”

  “Have faith in your visions,” Kai said. “And yourself. I told you that second sight is never easy. Your visions need interpreting, and you did this correctly.”

  Tao wasn’t convinced.

  “The Blessed One has given you this gift to use for his purposes,” Fo Tu Deng said.

  Kai snorted. “It is a dragon gift!”

  Fo Tu Deng moved a little further away from Kai. Tao could tell he was still not comfortable being so close to a dragon.

  “From what I have overheard, Shi Le is planning an attack on his enemy’s stronghold at Pingyang,” the monk continued. “He is a ruthless man, and everyone says his nephew, Jilong, is even more murderous. Thousands of people will die. But if we can control his actions with visions, real or otherwise, convince him it’s the will of the Buddha, we can save the lives of those people – thousands of them.”

  Tao wanted to do that more than anything.

  “And if you refuse or try to escape,” the monk added, “I will tell Shi Le that you are a traitor who plans to kill him and he will split you in two.”

  Tao knew it wasn’t worth arguing.

  “I have more experience with the ways of the world than you,” Fo Tu Deng continued. “It will be better if I am the one who delivers the visions to him.”r />
  “He means he is more skilled at lying than you are,” Kai said. “The old goat is not concerned about saving the lives of others, just saving his own hide. Let him invent his own visions.”

  Tao didn’t want to argue with Kai either. Fo Tu Deng was right about one thing – the Buddha had sent the dragon to him so that he could acquire the gift of receiving visions. Though the meaning of his first vision was still a mystery, the purpose of his second vision was clear. It had enabled them to win Shi Le’s confidence and another attack on Luoyang had been avoided.

  “Let’s wait and see if we can stop Shi Le from slaughtering his enemies. Then we can make our escape,” Tao whispered to Kai.

  Fo Tu Deng was trying to make Kai give him the bed and sleep on the floor, speaking to the dragon as if he were a large and potentially savage dog that he was trying to train. Tao left them to it, laid his mat on the floor and wrapped his outer robe around him.

  His mind was whirling. His life had been thrown into disorder over the last week and, like a leaf carried by a fast-flowing river, he’d had no control over it. But the visions had come to him because of Kai. How the dragon fitted into this, he didn’t know. He could only hope that eventually everything would be made clear. He prayed to be given another chance to do Buddha’s work and went to sleep with his mind at rest.

  Chapter Nineteen

  EMPTY

  The ancient walls of the White Horse Temple had never witnessed such sights. Two oxen and six deer were roasting over fires in the courtyard. The nomads had slept late, but now men were busily erecting coloured tents on the plain outside the temple’s western walls. A large area had been marked out with a burned branch. This was the arena, where courses for horseriding competitions and weapons contests were being set up.

  The nomads, who had little skill at building, had erected a rickety dais. Chairs had been found and put in a row for the important guests. Shi Le looked at the chair dubiously and got one of his men to steady him as he lowered himself onto it. Fo Tu Deng sat next to the nomad general. The novices’ precepts forbad Tao from sitting on a raised chair, but Fo Tu Deng pulled him onto the seat next to him.

  “Just do as the Chanyu says.”

  Nomad soldiers were assembling for some sort of horseback game. Fo Tu Deng was feigning great interest in the proceedings. The monk had insisted Tao and Kai watch the competitions too.

  The game began. The skills of the nomad riders were impressive, but Tao had no interest in watching a lot of men careering around on horses and fighting over a stuffed pig-bladder. He didn’t want to have to sit and listen to Fo Tu Deng flatter Shi Le either, and he could see Kai’s monk shape starting to shimmer. He was still too weak to remain shape-changed for long. After two hours, the game showed no sign of finishing.

  “I have to go and relieve myself, Your Holiness,” Tao said.

  Fo Tu Deng was listening to Shi Le recount his last battle, and he couldn’t object. Tao walked over to sit under a ginkgo tree on the edge of the overgrown wilderness that had once been the temple’s vegetable gardens. Kai followed him.

  “We should sit over there, behind that larger tree,” Kai said. “This one is too close to the arena.”

  “It’s better if we appear to be watching the proceedings. Anyway, I like this tree and if you sit in its shadow, you could rest in your true shape for a while.”

  The outer wall of the monastery must have originally passed just behind the tree, but over the centuries the tree had continued to grow and had become part of the wall itself. Its trunk had moulded to fit against the irregular surface of the earthen wall. Its branches had pushed through it in places.

  “We should escape now!” Kai said. He was still in his monk shape.

  “You’re not yet at your full strength. You must eat and then at nightfall we will escape.”

  He didn’t know why the dragon was suddenly impatient to go.

  “The monks told me that this tree is even older than the temple, perhaps a thousand years old.” Tao ran his hands down the tree’s deeply furrowed bark and smiled at Kai. “Even older than you.”

  He leaned back and looked up at the tree. The leaves of the ginkgo tree were like no other, small for such a large tree and fan-shaped. For most of the year, they were a soft green, but in autumn they turned lemon yellow. They rustled above him like a cloud of tiny butterflies.

  A fight between a number of the players brought the game to an end and the individual competitions began. There were bow contests, riding contests, stone-hurling contests. The competitors disputed decisions, and fought with each other as if their lives depended on the outcome, like a pack of overgrown and deadly children.

  A gust of wind disturbed the tree’s branches and a small shower of yellow leaves settled on Tao’s robes and Kai’s nose. It was the first sign that autumn had arrived. Tao was about to brush the leaves from his sleeves, but instead, he picked one up by its slender stem and brought it up close to his eyes.

  “This is what I saw!” he said.

  Kai didn’t seem to hear him.

  “Kai, look. The ginkgo leaves are like tiny yellow fans. That’s what I saw in my first vision, only I saw them close up, so they seemed bigger.”

  Tao looked up at the tree. High up its trunk he could see a hollow surrounded by a paler ring, the scar from where a branch had been sawn off long ago. He jumped to his feet and looked for a foothold in the tree’s bark.

  “This is it! This is what I saw in my first vision – a dark hole surrounded by a paler circle. Something must be inside it. Something important. Help me up.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Why not?”

  “I will need to shape-change.”

  “No, you don’t. Stay as you are. I just need to get up on your shoulders. No one will see. They’re all watching the competitions.”

  The dragon made anxious noises, and bent down to allow Tao to straddle his shoulders. Once in that position, Tao could just reach the lowest branch. It was a strange sensation, seeing a monk’s shoulders, but feeling the dragon’s scales beneath him. He grasped the branch and slowly got to his feet. He still wasn’t high enough to see inside the hole. Tao felt around with the toe of his sandal for a higher foothold and lifted himself up further.

  “You are standing on my head!” Kai complained.

  “Only for a moment,” Tao said as he clambered up onto a strong branch.

  Tao could now see exactly what his first vision had shown him – a dark brown hole surrounded by yellow fans, which were actually the ginkgo leaves up close and blurry. He reached into the hollow. There was nothing inside except for the remains of a bird’s nest.

  “It’s empty,” he called down.

  “Are you sure?” Kai sounded surprised.

  Before Tao had time to answer, Kai had climbed up the tree and was peering into the hole, then reaching into it.

  “It must have been a different ginkgo tree I saw,” Tao said. “Or perhaps it wasn’t a ginkgo tree at all.”

  Just for a moment, he had thought he was beginning to master his visions.

  He sighed and leaned back against the tree trunk. There was something snagged on a twig just above his head. He reached up and pulled it down.

  “Look.” It was the strap from the bamboo cylinder, with Pema’s ribbon rewoven in it, but broken again as someone had tried to pull it off the twig. “The bamboo cylinder containing the holy sutras was here! That’s what my vision meant. I was too slow. Someone else has taken it.”

  Tao was delighted he had finally interpreted his first vision, but frustrated that he hadn’t done it in time.

  A murmur went through the crowd as someone rode up, accompanied by an entourage of twenty men. Tao recognised him immediately.

  “It’s the man who was riding the yellow dragon,” Tao said. “The one who saved Pema.”

  As soon as they caught sight of him, the crowd started cheering. The competitions stopped and everyone shouted the young man’s name.

  “J
ilong! Jilong!” they chanted as if he were a hero.

  “That is Shi Le’s nephew,” Kai said.

  The young man was even more elegantly dressed than the first time they had seen him. He wore a splendid blue brocade jacket over trousers made of black silk. On his head was a white fur hat and his boots were made of red leather. He was riding a more conventional steed this time – a magnificent black horse hung with weapons as if they were about to go into battle, rather than take part in a friendly competition. The horse’s bridle and breast harness were decorated with jewels and plumes. The beast looked just as elegant and arrogant as its rider. The young general had only come from Luoyang, not half a li away. He could have walked, but he wanted to make an entrance.

  Tao and Kai watched from their perch as Jilong leaped down from his horse in one easy motion and walked over to his uncle. Shi Le said a few sharp words, admonishing his nephew for leaving Luoyang unguarded. Jilong made a short swift bow. That seemed to be enough contrition for the Chanyu, who clapped his nephew on the back and gave him a cup of kumiss.

  Following behind Jilong’s men was a covered carriage. The driver got down and led the horses over to the patch of shade beneath the ginkgo tree where Tao and Kai were hidden among the yellow foliage. Jilong sauntered over to the carriage and opened the door. Now that he was closer, Tao could see that Jilong’s quiver and bow case were made of black leather decorated with gold stars and a crescent moon. But what most amazed him was that the toe of each of his red boots was decorated with a curling scorpion’s tail.

  Six ladies climbed down from the carriage, each one dressed in a lovely gown. They were not female nomads; the soldiers’ wives, sisters and mothers were back in Linzhang, the town that the Zhao used as headquarters. These were young girls from Luoyang who Jilong had taken a fancy to, poor girls who he had dressed up in finery such as they had never seen before, let alone worn.

  The last young lady to step down was the most elegant. Jilong seemed to favour her more than the others. He helped her down from the carriage and she slipped her arm through his. Her brocade gown was the same shade of blue as Jilong’s jacket. Silver necklaces hung around her neck. Her hair was tied in loops on the top of her head and stuck with a jade hair comb in the shape of a butterfly. Spots of rouge coloured her cheeks and when she lowered her eyelids, Tao could see they had been painted blue. Her lips were as red as wolfberries. Her shoes had once been elegant, but were now worn.