Dragonkeeper 4: Blood Brothers

by Carole Wilkinson

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and Kai’s words came more slowly than the drips of rainwater into the pot. In the silences, Tao got up to stoke the fire, to empty the pot of rainwater and to pee. Gradually he learned the story of Kai’s life.

  Sha was Tun’s mate. Though the two yellow dragons had been paired for many years, they had no young. Sha had laid three dragon stones. The dragonlings within each of them died before they were hatched. That was the beginning of her sadness.

  Kai was expecting treachery and assumed it would be Hei Lei who would try to snatch the leadership. Kai spent a lot of his time showing off his skills. The dragons lost interest in his performances. Even the young female Lian, who Kai had believed would one day become his mate. She was patient with him when he was younger, waiting for him to mature, but she grew tired of waiting. Without an audience to admire him, Kai became lazy. He spent most of his time sleeping in a cave. He ate more than his share and didn’t contribute by catching rabbits and birds. The few duties he had as heir to the leadership, he neglected. All the dragons were unhappy with him.

  “My horns came early, about fifty years ago,” Kai continued, “but I did not take up the leadership. I was not interested in being leader. The females decided I should wait until I was five hundred to take up the role. Years passed and my rivals bided their time. When the challenge came, it was not from the black dragon. It was from Tun.”

  Kai sighed and a stream of mist issued from his nostrils.

  “Tun was more clever than I. When he attacked, it was not with talons and teeth. While I was eating and sleeping, Tun wooed Lian, even though he was already paired with Sha. He could not have inflicted a more painful wound. Sweet Sha’s sadness turned to resentment and anger. Tun had his eye on the leadership. He waited. When Hei Lei was away hunting, he made a challenge. I only had two choices. I had to accept his challenge or leave the haven forever. That was the decision my father made six centuries ago. He left the cluster rather than fight Hei Lei for leadership. Though I only saw my father for a brief time, we were together for many years before I was hatched. I loved my father, but I never understood why he left, why he took that path and allowed himself to be seen as a coward. I was not prepared to do the same.”

  Kai had a sudden need to clean the mud from between the toes of his left forepaw. Tao knew from his childhood tales that Kai’s father had died in captivity in an imperial palace. He ate a jujube while he waited for the dragon to take up his story again.

  “I accepted the challenge. I wanted to show Lian that, though I was young and foolish, I was the strongest dragon. I wanted her to regret choosing Tun. It was a formal contest with rules set down by the council. Tun was the one who taught me how to fight, and he was able to anticipate my every move. I was fat and slow, and my attention was more on impressing Lian than winning the contest. I had become arrogant. I expected to win. It was a long fight. In the end I made a mistake, and Tun beat me.”

  “It doesn’t make sense that Sha turned on you. You weren’t the cause of her unhappiness. Tun was the who did the damage.”

  Kai shook his great head.

  “Sha was counting on me to disgrace Tun. I do not know if she hoped that in defeat he would return to her or leave the haven in shame. He did neither. He stayed and took Lian as his mate. After that, Sha was never the same. She had lost her mate as well as her unhatched dragonlings, and she had to live side by side with the treacherous Tun and his new mate. Sha’s gentle heart turned bitter and black. One morning we woke and she was gone.”

  Tao could think of nothing to say, so he put his arm around the dragon’s scaly shoulders.

  “The dragons always treated me as an outsider. They believed that their troubles started when I arrived,” Kai continued. “I am not like them. A dragonling should spend at least fifty years with his mother. I never saw mine. Hei Lei always said that I was tainted because a human raised me, and he was right – except I do not see it as a defect. To me it was a blessing. Ping gave me knowledge that a wild dragon would never have. But also, I am my father’s son. In his own quiet way, he was a rebel. Life in a cluster did not suit him. I am the same. I want to live free, not hemmed in, not cloistered like …”

  “Like a monk?”

  Tao heard Kai’s jingling bell sound. It was pleasing to his ears.

  “It’s funny,” Tao said, though he wasn’t smiling. “They are the wild dragons, but they live in a prison of their own creation. You are the offspring of a captive dragon, raised by a human, and yet you are the one living out in the world.”

  “I did not belong in the haven. I decided that one of the wild dragons would make a better leader.”

  Kai sat up straight and flexed his shoulders.

  “Finally, I did what I should have done when I first refused to lead the dragons. I left. I wandered for a long time, not knowing what to do. Then I hit on the idea of finding a human companion. I started to look for you. I do not know when Sha started following me. She dropped out of the clouds one day and attacked me. We fought, but she has those metal-tipped horns. I was unprepared. She gored me.”

  “I thought Jilong must have put the tips on her horns,” Tao said.

  “This was before Jilong captured her. I do not know how she acquired those weapons.”

  The rain had stopped.

  “Now there are only six dragons in the cluster – Tun, Lian and her two sisters, Hei Lei and the red female named Jiang. I hoped I could find Sha and make her see reason. I hoped that if she knew I was no longer living at the haven, she would go back, perhaps pair with Hei Lei. In time I hoped there would be dragonlings, and the number of haven dragons would grow to nine, a most auspicious number.”

  “How did you get down from the dragon haven, if it was so difficult?”

  It was several minutes before Kai answered.

  “I fell.”

  “You fell? Do you mean you didn’t actually decide to leave?”

  “When I was young, I made myself a slide to play on – a smooth, steep path that I slid down on my rump. It was a dangerous game, as the slide ended at a precipice and I had to jump off before I got there. That was part of the fun. When the female dragons discovered this game, they forbade me to play on my slide.

  “I forgot about it, until I came across it one day when I was much older, much fatter. I thought I would try it again. I was not fit enough to jump off in time, I sailed off the edge and into the air. I bounced down the mountain like a stone in an avalanche. Eventually a large rock stopped me. I was badly bruised, but no bones had broken. I had fallen down the steepest part of the mountain. I had a choice. I could call up and get the other dragons to rescue me, or I could continue down the mountain. Though it was still a long way to the bottom, I managed to descend the rest of the way on my four feet.”

  There was no more rainwater dripping into the bowl. Tao wanted to know about Kai’s time with Ping, and where his path now lay, but he knew that Kai’s drips of story had dried up as well.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  TOGETHER

  The three travellers stood outside the tomb that had given them shelter. They were in the foothills of Mang Shan. The sun was shining and they had an expansive view, but it gave none of them any pleasure. At the very foot of the mountains, just a few li away, sprawled Luoyang. Tao wondered if he would ever get away from the ugly, ruined city. Every time he tried to get away from it, he found himself dragged unwillingly back. Below, he could see the beginning of the road that led to the Song Shan Mountains. It skirted around the northern walls of Luoyang and then headed east away from the city.

  Tao had found his companions again, or at least they had found him. In the sunlight Pema looked lovely, despite the scar on her cheek and her crumpled gown. She had not taken part in their conversation the night before, and Tao had no idea where she thought her future lay. Kai looked happier now that he had finally unburdened himself, though he had not said where he intended to go.

  “You two might be happy admiring the view,” Tao
said. “But I’m going to start walking.”

  Tao was glad he had his staff to lean on. His limping progress may have been slow, but he was the only one who was sure of his path. The other two, with no paths of their own, followed him.

  There were signs of the previous day’s storm everywhere – water was cascading down the hillside, trees had blown over, twigs and leaves carpeted the path.

  When they reached the road, they sank up to their ankles in mud. Tao had been reluctant to put on the nomad boots again, but now he was glad of them. He looked to the eastern horizon. He could see Song Shan. At last he was heading in the right direction.

  When Tao saw the carriage – several chang off the road, mired in deep mud and tipped to one side – his first thought was that he didn’t want to waste time helping people who had been foolish enough to be out in such a storm. Then he shook his head. What had happened to his sense of charity? Buddha taught his followers to help all those in need.

  Tao squelched towards the carriage. Kai made his anxious scraping blades sound. Tao thought that was because he didn’t want to reveal himself. But it wasn’t. As he drew closer, Tao’s stomach lurched as he felt the contents of his intestines turn liquid. He recognised the carriage. It belonged to his family. His mind was trying to come up with a set of circumstances that could explain the appearance of the Huan carriage out on the plain.

  He was surprised to see a woman leaning against the carriage, her hair fallen down around her shoulders, the hem of her skirt caked in mud, and on her face a look of distress and despair. He was even more surprised when the woman called out his name.

  It wasn’t until he was an arm’s length away that he recognised her.

  “Mother,” Tao said, unable to form his thoughts into questions.

  He had never seen his mother looking anything but neat, calm and in control, even in their worst days after the fall of Luoyang.

  Her voice was faint and fearful. “Are you a ghost?”

  Tao smiled to himself. “No, Mother. I’m still in this life.”

  Mrs Huan stumbled towards her son and fell into his arms. It was the first time Tao ever remembered her being pleased to see him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I was going to Fo Tu Deng. The horse got lost in the storm.”

  It seemed impossible that she could have wandered so far from the road to Luoyang.

  “I spoke to him that day at the White Horse Temple, when we took tribute to the Zhao, when you … I told him about Wei. He said he could cure him and he would come to the compound within the week. I waited, but he didn’t come. Yesterday I decided to take Wei to him.”

  “I told you Fo Tu Deng was a charlatan. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  Pema was over by the carriage kneeling in the mud. “Tao, come quickly.”

  The terrible truth was gradually seeping into Tao’s brain. He struggled through the mud. There, lying under the carriage, sheltered by nothing more than a thin blanket shredded to tatters by the wind, was his brother. Wei’s eyes were closed, his face pale, his lips blue. His rain-soaked gown was plastered to his shivering body. His teeth were chattering. When Tao reached out to touch his face, it was as cold as river water in winter.

  “Wei.”

  Tao was relieved that his brother’s eyes opened at the sound of his voice.

  “We have to get him out of the mud. We have to get him into dry clothes. He needs a herbal draft, nourishing food.”

  Pema was still on her knees at Wei’s side. She turned to Mrs Huan. “How could you have brought him out in such weather!”

  Mrs Huan had packed no spare clothing. There was no dry wood for building a fire.

  “I sent the driver off to get help during the storm,” she stammered, “but he didn’t return.”

  Tao couldn’t think what to do. Kai stood still as a stone.

  It was Pema who got them moving.

  “Kai, do you think you can pull the carriage out of the mud?”

  An axle was broken, and one set of wheels was half submerged in mud. The dragon shook his head.

  “Then you will have to carry him back to the compound,” Pema said. “Luoyang’s closer, but there will be no help there.”

  Mrs Huan scanned the empty landscape looking for someone to help them.

  “If it wasn’t for the accursed nomads, this area would be all farmland. There would be farmhouses where we could go for help. If your father hadn’t … if you …”

  “Kai, you must move him,” Tao said. “You are strong.”

  “I would carry Wei across mountains and to the ocean if I thought it would save him. But I can hear his voice. It is faint. He wants to stay where he is.”

  Tao had forgotten that the dragon could hear Wei’s voice. He felt a pang of jealousy. Why couldn’t he hear it?

  Tao kneeled at his brother’s side. “Wei, we are going to take you back to the compound. Kai can carry you there.”

  Wei raised his hands. The sleeves of his gown had cuffs made of silk in a diamond pattern, yellow and red. Tao remembered his vision. He looked at his own hands – calloused, dirty, covered in scars from injuries old and new. The hands in the vision had been clean, smooth and unblemished. The fingers had not been pointing away, but reaching towards him. How stupid of him not to have realised. The hands he had seen weren’t his own; they were Wei’s.

  Tao understood what he had to do. He had to bond with his brother again. He took Wei’s hands in his own. They were icy. He closed his eyes and tried to make his strength and warmth enter Wei’s body. He wasn’t trying to get the force to circulate between them as it had that first time back at the Huan compound. He had a different plan. He wanted to share his life force with his brother. He wanted his qi to flow like a river straight into Wei’s body. He wanted it more than anything he had ever wanted in his life, but he couldn’t get it to shift. It was set like beeswax inside him.

  Tao focused his mind, blocking out everything – the voices of his mother and Pema, Kai’s anxious noises, the bite of the wind, the smatter of raindrops. He was grateful for the many hours he’d spent meditating. Nothing existed outside his mind. Slowly his qi began to move, drip by drip, like thawing ice. Tao concentrated as he never had before. He thought his way into his brother’s inert body, from his freezing fingertips along the unused muscles of his arms, through his bones and his blood, into his liver, his stomach, his heart. Deep within Wei, he found his brother’s core. Tao reached into it ready to give his brother all of his life force.

  Wei’s core of qi was small, but it was strong. All the strength and energy that he would have used during his lifetime, if his body had worked, was stored there within him, unused. It was distilled, concentrated, packed into a small space no bigger than a lychee stone, yet it was so powerful it took Tao’s breath away. He felt it stir and gather. He felt it begin to empty out of its prison, to course through Wei’s body, out through his fingers and into Tao’s own. Tao realised what his brother was doing. He tried to let go of Wei’s hands, but his brother’s rigid fingers gripped Tao’s like a trap. Wei’s qi was flowing into him. All of it. It had such strength that Tao could do nothing to stop it. It flowed into him like a searing hot wind, except this wind was made of images, flashing so quickly they made Tao dizzy; of sounds, every one that Wei had ever heard; of emotions, pleasure and pain, but mostly love, so much love and not a sand grain of hate. Tao was powerless to stop it pouring into him.

  Then he heard a word in his head. It wasn’t Kai. He knew the dragon’s voice and it was always clear. This voice was soft as a breath, fragile as a wren’s egg. It said just one word. Together. The word hung in Tao’s mind for a moment and then burst like a bubble.

  Wei’s fingers relaxed. Tao collapsed to the ground and he was aware of his surroundings again – the mud beneath him, a ray of sunlight slanting through the clouds into his eyes, the voices. Everyone was shouting – Kai, Pema, but especially his mother. She leaned over Wei, put her cheek next to hi
s mouth hoping to feel his breath. She touched his neck to feel the movement of his blood. She let out a scream, an unearthly cry of anguish that echoed over the empty plain. She clasped Wei’s frail body to her. Tears ran down her face. It was the first time Tao had ever seen her cry.

  “You have killed your brother,” she wailed. “You sucked the life from him.”

  Still bathed in his brother’s love, Tao couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

  Pema was at his side. “Are you all right, Tao?” She saw him try and fail to form words, to reach out his hand. “He can’t move,” she said.

  Mrs Huan let out a harsh laugh. “Wei has passed on his infirmity to you,” she rasped, “to punish you for what you did to him at birth.”

  Tao’s lips slowly formed into a smile and managed to utter a few words.

  “No,” he said. “Wei gave me his life force. I couldn’t stop him. He was ready to die.”

  He tried to explain what had happened, but words didn’t have the power to express such an experience.

  Tao didn’t cry. He looked at his brother’s dead body – thin, frail, rigid. Wei wasn’t there any more.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  FUNERAL

  Tao wrapped Wei’s body in the tattered blanket and tied it to Kai’s back. The dragon carried him to the Huan compound. He didn’t worry about shape-changing. Everyone would have heard about the dragons that fought at Luoyang, and there was no one on the road anyway. The guards at the Huan compound saw the strange party approach, and by the time it had climbed the hill to the gate, word had spread and all the inhabitants had gathered to witness a green dragon carrying Master Wei’s body, and Mrs Huan bent and broken with grief, supported by Master Tao and the nomad girl.

  Kai took Wei’s body to his quarters. With the help of some monks from the White Horse Temple who had taken refuge in the Huan compound, Tao washed his brother and dressed him in a clean gown. Meiling wanted Tao to take care of himself – to bathe, to eat, to rest – but Tao had only one thing on his mind and that was his brother’s soul. He laid the body in the peony pavilion by the pool where Wei had spent his happiest hours. Only then would he tend to his own needs. When he had bathed, he kneeled beside his brother, ready to meditate and recite sutras until Wei’s soul had travelled into its next life.