“We must steal the sutras.”
Kai’s tinkling wind-chime sound filled the air.
Chapter Thirty-Six
THEFT
Sha looked healthy at last. Her eyes were a soft brown, her scales the colour of ginkgo leaves in autumn. One of the villagers had sawn off the ends of her horns. It had been the only way to remove the iron tips. And she was willing to assist them with the theft of the sutras.
Tao dared one of the novices to take a flight on the yellow dragon. He didn’t need persuasion. Sha circled above the monastery on air currents that rose from the plain far below. The screams of the novice rang out as Sha flew out into the vastness above the plain more than three hundred chang below. Everyone in the monastery had abandoned his task and come out to watch.
Fo Tu Deng was not living in the monks’ quarters. The abbot had agreed with him that it was more fitting for someone with such a holy office to have a separate dwelling. He was sharing the abbot’s quarters until one could be built for him.
As soon as Tao was sure that Fo Tu Deng was outside, staring up at the yellow dragon with everyone else, he ran up the stone steps and crept towards the abbot’s quarters. He had his staff with him, but it hindered more than helped as he negotiated the steps. He found the bamboo cylinder on the monk’s bed. Tao snatched it up and hurried out. He took the back steps so no one would see him and was surprised to find Shenli panting up the steps.
“What are you doing with the scrolls?” the monk asked.
“The abbot asked me to take them to the shrine,” Tao said, thinking that these days he seemed to break the precepts more often than keep them. “He thinks that will be the best place for them, when you and Fo Tu Deng are not working on them.”
Tao turned towards the shrine. As soon as Shenli was out of sight, he leaped down the remaining steps and took the path to the waterfall where Kai was waiting.
“Shenli saw me! What will we do?”
“We must leave,” Kai said. “Immediately.”
Tao had known that the theft of the sutras would mean he would have to leave Yinmi, but the thought filled him with fear and sadness. He looked at the bamboo cylinder in his hands. As usual, his plan hadn’t been thought through properly. Now he had the sutras, he didn’t know what to do with them.
“We need to find a place where the sutras will be safe. I can’t carry them around for the rest of my life.”
“You must try for another vision.”
Tao remembered his previous vision. Every detail of the mirror had been so sharp, the colours in the seashell so bright, the texture of the flat rock so clear.
Tao looked at Kai. “There was something else in my other vision.”
“What?”
Tao smiled.
“A space. There was room for the bamboo cylinder. It would fit perfectly in the treasure cave without disturbing anything.” Tao’s smile faded. “How far is it to the dragon haven?”
“A long way. It would take many months to walk there.”
Doubts crowded into Tao’s mind again. “Plenty of time for me to lose them again.”
Sha appeared through the clouds above them. The novice was still clinging to her. His face was a frozen mask of fear. Sha landed near the waterfall. The novice scrambled off and ran in the direction of the monastery.
“We don’t have much time,” Tao said.
Kai pulled off a leech that had burrowed between his toes as if he had all the time in the world.
Tao opened the cylinder and looked at the sutras one last time. He read the small scroll with the writer’s brief message.
Tao could hear Fo Tu Deng’s raised voice and the excited hum of many monks. The novice was leading them to the waterfall.
“I will travel with you, Kai. Wei would want me to. It’s why he gave me his qi, why he left this life.” Tao’s eyes filled with tears at the thought of the rest of his life without his brother.
Kai clapped Tao’s shoulder with his paw, nearly knocking him over.
“I cannot offer you the dragonkeeper’s mirror yet, but we must seal the bond between us.” He tapped the scroll with a talon. “Let us write our pledge here.”
“But we have no ink.”
“We don’t need ink.” Kai held up his paw. Blood was flowing from the place where he had pulled off the leech. “We can sign our names in blood.”
“In your blood?”
“I will sign in my blood, but you must sign in yours.”
Tao didn’t have time to find a leech and wait for it to attach itself. He grasped the wolf’s tooth, which he still wore around his neck. He drew the tooth across his thumb. Blood beaded over the cut. He dipped the tooth into his blood and wrote on the scroll.
In a time of war, Kai and Tao, dragon and human, rescued the sutras. They pledge their bond as brothers here.
Kai dipped a talon from his left paw in his blood and wrote his name under Tao’s words. Tao added his own name. The characters were not elegant, but they were strong. Kai’s purple blood pooled in a wrinkle in the scroll. A drop of Tao’s ran down to meet it as if someone had written a flourish to link the two names. Their blood, purple and red, mingled.
“I am your brother now,” Kai said.
Tao put the scrolls back in the bamboo cylinder. At that moment, Fo Tu Deng appeared on the path, followed by a dozen monks and novices. They stopped, afraid to get too close to the dragons.
Kai called to Sha, “Take Tao to the top of the mountain!” Then he shape-changed into a mouse and disappeared.
Tao held up his staff as the monks surrounded him, though he knew he would never use it against them. They would not harm him either, but they could stop him from following Kai, which would cause him more pain than any blows.
Sha grasped Tao’s jacket with her talons and flapped her great wings. Once again, Tao found himself dangling from the dragon’s paw. She flew up into the clouds, and Tao felt the cold and damp surround him.
It only took Sha a few minutes to fly to the top of the mountain. It took Kai a little longer to run there.
“I’ve had an idea,” Tao said. “We don’t have to take the sutras to the dragon haven. Sha can carry them there!”
Kai made his wind-chime sound.
“It is just what she needs – an important task that will take her back to the dragon haven. The scrolls will be there in a week or two.”
The yellow dragon looked too small and thin for such a long journey, but there was determination in her brown eyes that gave Tao confidence that she would succeed. Tao hung the bamboo cylinder around Sha’s neck. She ran a few paces and leaped off the mountain, soaring into the air. Clouds had gathered again. She disappeared in seconds.
Tao sighed with relief. “Finally, I have completed my task.”
“Sha is returning to take her place in the haven again,” Kai said. “Until there is peace in the lands of the Huaxia, the scrolls will be safe there.”
Tao knew that he could never return to Yinmi. The thought no longer saddened him.
“Which way will we go?” he said.
“Hold your staff upright.”
Tao did as the dragon told him.
“Now let it go.”
The staff fell with the tip pointing towards the Chenlo Pass.
“That is the way we will go,” Kai said.
“We haven’t prepared for the journey. We have nothing,” Tao said.
“An excellent way to begin a quest. Do you have your piece of dragon stone?”
Tao pulled the purple stone from his sleeve. “Yes.”
“That is enough.”
Tao set out along the path without hesitation. His heart was happy.
“I’ve made up a riddle,” Tao said as they entered the pass.
“Ears like fans;
A long, long nose;
Body like a small mountain.
I can fell trees easily.”
“It does not rhyme. A riddle must rhyme,” Kai said.
“It’s my first on
e!”
“Let me ponder it.”
“What is our quest?” Tao asked.
“The world will tell us, when it is ready.”
GLOSSARY
ALMS
Food or money given to the poor as charity.
ASURA
In Buddhist belief, the lowest ranked of the supernatural beings.
BUDDHISM
A religion based on the teachings of Buddha, a man who lived in India in 6th Century BCE.
CHANG
A measure of distance equal to about 2.3 metres.
CINNABAR
A bright red mineral whose chemical name is mercuric sulphide.
DEVA
In Buddhist belief, a type of invisible supernatural being.
HAN FOOT
A measure of length equal to about 23 centimetres.
INK STICK AND INK STONE
An ink stick is a solid block of ink usually made from pine soot. An ink stone is a piece of stone with a well in it. To make ink a small amount of water is placed in the well and the ink stick is rubbed against the well so that the ink dissolves into the water. The process continues until the ink is the right thickness.
JATAKA
Ancient Indian stories about the many previous incarnations of Buddha.
JUJUBE
Another name for the fruit called the Chinese date.
KARMA
Buddhist belief. The justice by which deeds done during one lifetime affect a person’s status in a later incarnation.
LI
A measure of distance equal to about half a kilometre.
MINGQI
Small statues of servants, soldiers or animals left in tombs in ancient China for the use of the dead person in their afterlife.
NIRVANA
In Buddhist belief, a state of perfect peace achieved after many lifetimes when a person has rid themselves of all greed, hatred and delusion.
NOVICE
A person who has been accepted for a training period before taking vows to become a member of a religious order.
OSMANTHUS
An evergreen shrub or tree with small, fragrant white flowers.
QI
According to traditional Chinese beliefs, qi is the life energy that flows through us and controls the workings of the body.
REBIRTH
Buddhist belief that after a person dies they are born into another life.
SANSKRIT
A language used in ancient India.
SHU
A measure of weight equal to about half a gram.
SUTRAS
Buddhist teachings.
TIANZHU
What people in early China called India.
VINAYA
Rules set down by Buddha for his followers.
YAKSHA
In Buddhist belief, a nature spirit.
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
All Chinese names and place names are written in pinyin. These words aren’t always pronounced the way you’d expect them to be pronounced. This is a rough guide to the correct pronunciation.
Tao Rhymes with “now”
Kai Rhymes with “buy”
Fo Tu Deng Foe too dung
Shi Le Shir Luh (rhymes with “blur”)
qi chee
Luoyang Lwor-yang
Chang’an Chang-Ann
Tianzhu Tee-en-ju
Yinmi Yin-mee
Song Shan Soong-shan
Linzhang Lin-jang
Pingyang Ping-yang
Jiankang Gee-en-kang
Chengdu Chung-do
Huaxia Hwar-she-a
Xiong Nu Shee-ung Noo
AFTERWORD
I always said there wouldn’t be another book in the Dragonkeeper series. Ping’s story was finished, and I thought she deserved a nice quiet life. But after a while, the urge to get back into the world of dragons overtook me. I realised that as dragons live for up to 3000 years, I had scope for taking up Kai’s story later in his life. I decided I wanted him still to be a young dragon – about four hundred years old. I reached for my Chinese history books to see what dynasty that would put me in, only to discover that there was no dynasty at that time. I had landed myself in the period of Chinese history called the Sixteen Kingdoms, which was a period of chaos and division, a sort of Chinese Dark Ages. This period lasted for over a hundred years. China was divided and redivided into kingdoms of brief duration, often ruled by the so-called barbarian races that had invaded China.
It was a challenging era to research. I have discovered what I can in the limited resources, and imagined the rest. I am as always grateful for the research of historians who have studied the period. Nancy Steinhardt, Albert Dien and Ulrich Theobald were kind enough to respond to my email questions and help me out with the geography of the Luoyang area, and what to call China and India. Howard Wilkinson and Gabrielle Wang explained the art of calligraphy to me, and Steve Clavey helped me describe infected wounds in pre-modern terms.
I’d like to thank my husband John and my daughter Lili for their support (“You always say this one’s worse than the others”). No, really, I couldn’t do it without them. They both read early drafts and made pertinent suggestions. Lili came to my rescue with some crucial plotting brainstorming.
Thanks also to Jess Owen and Suzanne O’Sullivan for their careful and thorough edit. And to Sonia Kretschmar for her fabulous cover illustration and Gayna Murphy for her beautiful design.
Special thanks to Maryann Ballantyne for her calm support, insightful comments and language expertise.
First published in 2012
by
an imprint of Walker Books Australia Pty Ltd
Locked Bag 22, Newtown
NSW 2042 Australia
www.walkerbooks.com.au
This ebook edition published in 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Text © 2012 Carole Wilkinson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Wilkinson, Carole, 1950– author.
Blood Brothers / Carole Wilkinson.
Series: Wilkinson, Carole, 1950– author. Dragonkeeper; 4.
For children.
Subjects: Dragons – China – Juvenile fiction.
A823.4
ISBN: 978-1-922244-06-2 (ePub)
ISBN: 978-1-922244-05-5 (e-PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-922244-07-9 (.PRC)
Cover illustration © 2012 Sonia Kretschmar
Maps by Julian Bruère
Dragonkeeper 4: Blood Brothers Page 24