Dragonkeeper 4: Blood Brothers

by Carole Wilkinson

  “Why? Why did you do that?”

  “The sutras were distracting you.”

  “Distracting me from what? Being your servant? That’s what you want, isn’t it, someone to attend you like a servant?”

  Tao began to think that the dragon really would hit him.

  “Ping was a child and a girl, yet she was a thousand times braver than you. She had such courage. You have none!”

  “What about you! You think you’re such a great dragon, but you run away from your problems, your enemies, even your friends. You wouldn’t face the female dragon. You’re terrified whenever you see fire. You’re even frightened of centipedes! You’re the coward.”

  The dragon reared up on his hind legs. Tao flinched, thinking he was about to attack him. He wasn’t. He was making himself look as large and intimidating as he could.

  “You have failed the test,” Kai said. “You are no dragonkeeper.”

  Even though Tao had never wanted to be a dragonkeeper, the rejection stung.

  “You’re old in human terms, but for a dragon you’re still young, no older than me. I bet you didn’t leave your haven for any sort of quest.”

  Kai didn’t respond.

  Tao smiled maliciously. “You’ve just run away from home! Like a spoilt child.”

  “I do not need a dragonkeeper. I have not pledged myself to you. I am free to go.”

  “Then go.”

  The dragon looked at the sky, now scattered with stars. Fortunately the moon was covered by cloud, or he would be glowing for all to see. Tao knew he would have given anything to be able to take wing. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even shape-change; he was too angry. All he could do was stalk off into the growing darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ESCAPE

  Escape was easy. Tao walked off into the night just as Kai had done, only in a different direction. The nomads were too busy celebrating to notice. Fo Tu Deng was occupied trying to be Shi Le’s best friend, and from the way he was waving his arms around, Tao suspected he’d had more than one cup of kumiss. Pema had disappeared with Jilong and his followers. And Kai? Tao had no idea where the dragon had gone.

  Tao walked east, towards his monastery. He was not going to run away from his responsibilities any longer. He’d never intended to do that. He wondered if anyone at Yinmi had noticed that he hadn’t returned, if his abbot was anxious for his safety.

  Tao walked for an hour or more without stopping. As he walked he recited a sutra. He wanted to forget everything that had happened. He wanted to regain the mental peace that used to be his natural state. He yearned for his old life, which didn’t involve making decisions and facing danger daily. The sutra he was reciting was the one his abbot had instructed them on before he left, about the Four Noble Truths, about not desiring things that you couldn’t have. Like friends. Monks didn’t have friends. Their brother monks were their only companions. The holy words formed in his head like a string of beads, but they were empty of meaning. He couldn’t prevent a corner of his mind going over and over the events of the past week.

  Since Tao had left Yinmi, he had experienced unfamiliar emotions: anger, jealousy and another he wasn’t ready to name. He couldn’t decide who had hurt him more, Kai or Pema. They had both turned away from his friendship. He hadn’t needed either of them before. Why did it hurt so much now? As if his heart really had been wounded, cut somehow without leaving a mark on the outside, but inside lacerated and bleeding.

  The truth was he had no skill at having relationships with people. He never had, even before he began the meditative life of a monk. He didn’t have a close bond with his parents. As a child in Luoyang, he’d had no playmates. When he went to Yinmi, he had formed no friendships with the other novices. In the last week he had met new companions. He had thought they were his friends and that his friendship meant something to them, as theirs did to him. They had both abandoned him.

  Tao walked off the road and lay down in the tall grass. Sleep would be more effective than sutras in keeping such thoughts out of his mind.

  There was no sun. The cloudy sky had allowed Tao to sleep into the morning. His stomach growled. It was early enough for him to eat – except he didn’t have any food. He searched an abandoned field nearby and found two gnarled and woody carrots, but the few drops of bitter juice he managed to extract from them with much chewing only made him more hungry.

  Sleep hadn’t entirely blocked thoughts of the past weeks from his mind. He had dreamed of Wei and of the lost sutras. Wei was telling him to pick up the scrolls, not with words from his mouth, but with a voice in his head like Kai’s. In the dream, the wind was blowing the delicate birch-bark scrolls along the ground. Every time Tao leaned down to pick one up, another gust would blow it out of his reach.

  The previous night, Tao’s head had been full of thoughts of Kai and Pema. He had been so busy feeling sorry for himself, he hadn’t thought of the one person in the world who loved him unconditionally – his brother Wei. He desperately wanted to turn around and go back to his brother. He longed to tell him everything that had happened. Wei would understand, and somehow, even though he couldn’t speak, he would be able to help Tao undo the knot of emotions inside him.

  His bond with his brother had been constant since their birth, and even before. Wei could have blamed Tao for his condition; he had every reason to hate him, but he didn’t. If anyone in the world had cause to be unhappy, it was Wei, but he never seemed to resent his useless body, never became frustrated, never wept. Even now that Tao saw him infrequently, Wei was still at the centre of his life, the reason that he loved transcribing sutras. The knowledge that he was accumulating karma for his brother made the repetitious work a pleasure. Each character he formed had value beyond its literal meaning.

  Tao wasn’t a whole person without Wei. It was his brother who made him who he was, made him complete. Tao had just had two visions, and they only appeared to him because he had taken strength from Wei. His second vision had been less distinct, briefer. Alone, he had no power to see what was happening afar. He knew he would need to re-bond with his brother often for the visions to continue. Kai was right; he wasn’t a dragonkeeper. Without Wei he couldn’t be, and it wasn’t possible for the dragon to travel the world with the two of them. Tao didn’t know if Wei had the strength for such mental exertions. It didn’t matter. Tao wasn’t going to put his brother through it again. If Kai wanted a dragonkeeper, he would have to find another one.

  Tao felt ashamed that he had continued to allow himself to be distracted by Kai. He had to admit he had enjoyed the adventure. And now that he was being honest with himself, he also had to confess that while transcribing, sometimes he had found himself staring out of the doorway and imagining being free to walk through the forest. He had almost given in to the temptation to abandon his task.

  Tao stopped walking. There was a reason why these events had come about, why he had been chosen by Kai out of all of Ping’s descendants. He had been chosen to do Buddha’s work, to save the sutras.

  At last the chaos that had surrounded him for the past week made sense. A dragon had come into his life. Kai’s presence had somehow allowed him to make a miraculous bond with his brother, and because of that he had been granted visions. The first had shown him where the sutras were hidden, but he hadn’t been clever enough to work it out, and they had slipped through his fingers again. The second vision had saved him from being killed by Shi Le. He had survived so that he could complete a holy task. If he hadn’t allowed Pema to confuse his mind, he might have realised it earlier. He had to find the scrolls and take them to the monastery where Lao Chen would translate them. Tao would then transcribe these holy words. This act would result in a great deal of good karma, many, many times more than if he had just stayed at the monastery transcribing. He could spend the rest of his life helping to spread the Buddha knowledge, and at the same time increasing the store of karma for Wei to ensure that in his next life he would be whole.

&n
bsp; Tao’s path was as clear as if it were marked out with gleaming gems. He would return to the monastery, but he wasn’t going back empty-handed. First, he had to find the lost sutras.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  STRANGE BREW

  Tao retraced his steps to the White Horse Temple. The ginkgo tree outside the temple walls was the last place where he was certain the sutras had been. Who had taken them out of Kai’s hiding place, he didn’t know. There were few people who would value them – Fo Tu Deng, of course, and the abbot of the White Horse Temple. But he couldn’t see either of them clambering up a tree. And how could anyone have known where they were? It might have been a chance event rather than a plan. Perhaps a monk had climbed the tree for some purpose, or a nomad during the preparations for the horse contests. It didn’t matter. They were no longer there, and it was Tao’s job to work out where they had gone. It seemed most likely that someone from the temple had taken the bamboo cylinder, and so the temple was the first place he would search. He felt happy for the first time since he’d left Wei. He had a plan. He was new to making plans, and it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a start.

  Outside the temple gates, the remains of the previous night’s celebrations marred the landscape. The embers of fires smouldered. Wine cups and discarded bones from the feast were scattered everywhere. Horses were wandering around untethered, nibbling at what tufts of grass they could find that hadn’t been trampled. Men were sleeping out in the open wherever they happened to fall when exhaustion or drunkenness overtook them. If Shi Le had set any guards, they had abandoned their posts. No one stopped him when he walked through the open gates of the White Horse Temple.

  Inside the temple courtyard, there were more signs of the sacrilegious events of the night before. Someone had hung a jacket on the head of the white horse statue and vomited over its hooves. Tao was glad that it was still too early for anyone to be stirring. His confidence in his plan faltered when he saw Shi Le’s tent in the middle of the courtyard. What if someone had found the scrolls and taken them to the Chanyu, thinking they were of value? Tao wasn’t prepared to go creeping into the tent while the Zhao general was asleep inside it. A nomad soldier emerged groggily from the monks’ quarters. Tao shrank back into the shadow of the walls, his heart thudding. But the man just paused to pee and then went back inside.

  Tao crept into the Meditation Hall. There were sleeping bodies everywhere. Tao saw that his plan was as threadbare as an old monk’s robe. He would have to search every inch of the temple, but he didn’t have much time. Soon the nomads would be waking, sore-headed and grumpy. He needed just one more vision to give him a clue. He still had the jar of Wei’s oil in his bag. He found a quiet corner in the monks’ garden, sat down and rubbed a little of the oil in his palms. He had realised that the times he had seen visions, his sight had been blurred by smoke or by tears. He looked at his hands and allowed his eyes to lose focus.

  The yellow oil on his palms started to swirl. An image began to form, but it was faint, indistinct as if he were peering through fog. He could just make out some broken pieces of pottery, glazed greyish green. One fragment had something painted on it. Though the image wasn’t whole, he could tell from the horns and the sinuous body that it was a dragon. Another piece had part of a monster face with a ring held in its mouth. Tao searched for other clues as the vision started to fade. The image disappeared completely, and he was just staring at the lines on his hands.

  Tao had received another vision. What it meant he didn’t know. Just like the others, it would need to be interpreted. He needed time to think it through, but nomads were starting to wake up. Once Shi Le awoke, everyone would have to be up and attending to whatever the Chanyu wanted. Tao needed food. He couldn’t come up with plans, solve mysteries and evade nomads if he was weak from hunger.

  In the kitchen, Tao managed to find some lumpy cooked grain and two wrinkled persimmons. While he ate, he thought about his next step. He couldn’t go blundering around Shi Le’s camp dressed in his robes. And if Fo Tu Deng saw him, he would be captured again. He wished he could shape-change like Kai. He needed to look like he was one of Shi Le’s men. He didn’t have the features of a boy of the Five Tribes, but the nomads had recruited many young men from Luoyang into their army, luring them with the promise of full stomachs and adventure. Those who didn’t take the bait were knocked on the head and woke to find themselves in the army anyway. If Tao were dressed in nomad clothing, he wouldn’t look out of place.

  Something moved in a corner by the fireplace. Tao’s first thought was that it was a rat. Then he heard a sneeze and he realised it was something much larger – a boy about the same age as Tao, curled up on a pile of rags. Tao thought about tying the boy up and taking his clothes, but he knew he would lose if the boy decided to put up a fight. He had to think of some other way.

  He poked the boy with his foot. The boy sat up, startled.

  “Today the Chanyu is going to become a Buddhist,” Tao said. “You have been chosen to take part in the ceremony.”

  He was a boy of the Five Tribes. He looked at Tao in bleary confusion.

  “The Chanyu? A Buddhist?”

  “That’s what I said. But first you must cleanse yourself.” Tao was surprised to discover that he was as good at inventing Buddhist ceremonies as Fo Tu Deng.

  The boy looked at Tao as if he had asked him to stand on his head.

  Tao led the boy out to the pond in the kitchen garden.

  “Take off your garments and bathe in the pure water … you must also be pure.”

  The boy looked suspiciously at the pond, which was a greenish colour and had grain husks floating on the surface. It looked far from pure.

  “The Chanyu is also cleansing himself,” Tao added.

  He muttered a few words from a sutra, hoping to convince the boy that he was taking part in an ancient ritual. The boy took off his grubby clothes and well-worn boots and gingerly stepped into the pond. It was a cool morning. He shivered.

  “Immerse yourself,” Tao said.

  The boy didn’t move. Tao didn’t have time for persuasion. He gave the boy a push and he fell into the water with a splash. While he was spluttering and trying to regain his feet, Tao picked up his clothes and was about to run off with them when he realised there was another flaw in his plan. He couldn’t leave a naked boy wandering around the temple. He had to think of something else – quickly. He found an empty sack in the kitchen and with a knife slashed holes for the boy’s head and arms.

  “Here,” Tao said, handing the sack to the dripping boy. “Put this on and run around the outside of the temple walls sixteen times. For penance.”

  “What did I do wrong?”

  “Everyone has done something wrong.”

  Tao led the boy to the temple gate.

  “Sixteen times?” said the boy, looking at his fingers as if wondering how he was going to count to such a number.

  “It must be sixteen,” Tao said. “One for each of the sixteen realms of hell that you could go to if you don’t do as I say. Off you go.”

  The boy started off at a slow trot.

  “Buddha will be watching,” Tao called after him. “He’ll know if you skimp and only make seven circuits.”

  As soon as he was out of sight, Tao grabbed the boy’s clothes and ducked back into the kitchen. He unwound the three rectangles of his robes, folded them neatly and placed them in his bag. He stood naked for a moment and then pulled on the boy’s rough cloth trousers. That was easy enough, but every other item of the boy’s clothing was made from animal hide. Even before he’d joined the monastery, Tao couldn’t remember ever wearing anything made from the skin of what had once been a living creature. He thrust his feet into the dark, sweaty depths of the boy’s boots. They were made of badly cured ox skin and the smell made his stomach turn. The boy’s vest was made of the hide of some other unfortunate creature. This was older and well worn, and smelled only of the boy’s sweat. The boy had also handed Tao the leather thon
g from around his neck with what looked like a wolf’s tooth hanging from it. Perhaps the boy believed it protected him somehow. Tao put the necklace over his head to complete his disguise, even though a novice wasn’t supposed to wear any sort of decoration. He might be in need of protection.

  Tao ran a hand over his scalp. It was covered in spiky stubble. He hadn’t shaved his head for nearly two weeks. Nomads didn’t shave their heads. They left their hair loose on their shoulders, hacking it off with their knives when it got too long. He needed something else to disguise himself, something to hide behind, something to give him the courage to do whatever lay ahead. Nomads wore helmets made of leather or of metal, one of those would have hidden him well, but they were only worn during battle.

  Tao found what he needed on a nomad who was sleeping near the pigsty that had been hastily constructed in the courtyard. It was a sort of hood made of pieces of rabbit skin roughly sewn together. He tugged the hood from the sleeping man and pulled it onto his own head. The touch of the dead animal’s fur against his scalp and neck made him shudder. He could smell the scent of fur, which he’d only ever smelled on live animals – a rabbit he had once freed from a trap, the family cat when they had still lived in Luoyang, the occasional brush of a rat while he was sleeping on his monk’s pallet. This smell was the same, but somehow different, cold and dead. He would have to get used to it.

  Tao looked at his reflection in the pond. He barely recognised himself, so he hoped no one else would either.

  The pagoda stood silently watching over the desecration of its temple, lofty, proud, but unable to do anything to stop it. If a monk had found the scrolls, he would have put them back where they belonged. The door was open, and Tao went in. The altar that had been home to the temple’s precious relics for many years was empty. The robes were gone, and the casket holding the piece of straw from Buddha’s sandal. He searched. The bamboo cylinder was not there either.