Dragonkeeper 2: Garden of the Purple Dragon (21 page)

“I expect you have many questions,” he said to the boy, smiling broadly, “about dragons and their ways.”

Jun shook his head and tried to hide behind his fringe.

“About the Emperor and the imperial palace?” the Imperial Magician asked, his smile shrinking.

The boy shook his head again and concentrated on his scroll. Every few minutes he sighed deeply. It seemed he wasn’t as pleased as his parents about the change in his fortunes. Ping saw him wipe his eyes with his sleeve. He missed his family, even though they were poor. He’s lucky to have a family to miss, Ping thought bitterly to herself.

Half an hour later, the Imperial Magician tried again to engage the boy in conversation, but Jun’s head was bowed and he was silent.

Kai was hanging out of the carriage, trying to catch leaves that were falling from trees. Ping held on to his tail, just in case he leaned out too far.

As she watched the wet, empty fields roll past the carriage, Ping had plenty of time to think. She knew now that Mr and Mrs Yu were not her parents. If she was a true Dragonkeeper, it could only mean that the Huans were her family. But Minister Ji had said they were all dead. She would never find her family.

Kai was trying to get Jun to play with him. He hadn’t left his side since the moment he’d first seen him. He had insisted on sleeping at the foot of the boy’s bed—even
though it was just a pile of straw in the shed.

The boy let out a cry of surprise. Ping looked round thinking Kai might have bitten him. But it was Hua who had caused his alarm. The rat had crawled out from under a cushion.

Dong Fang Suo chuckled. “That is Ping’s rat,” he said.
“You
don’t have any unpleasant pets do you? No snakes or spiders under your jacket?”

Ping stroked Hua. She hadn’t realised that the Imperial Magician didn’t like him.

She looked over at the scroll Jun was studying. It was covered with characters—hundreds of them. Ping recognised only a few. He was obviously a much better reader than she was.

Dong Fang Suo was signalling to her, raising one caterpillar eyebrow and jerking his head in Jun’s direction. He wanted her to talk to the boy. Ping didn’t feel like making polite conversation. She didn’t want to put him at his ease. She wished she’d never met him. She had imagined finding an assistant, someone to take her place if she was unwell, someone who would produce a future Dragonkeeper from among his children. She hadn’t expected to find a rival.

Dong Fang Suo was insistent. He kicked her in the shin. Ping couldn’t think of anything to talk about. She looked out of the window for inspiration. They were driving past a village surrounded by fields. Farmers were at their work. She noticed other children, boys and girls,
with short hair like Jun’s. A few were completely bald.

“Is there some reason why you have your hair cut short?” she asked the boy. “Is it a local custom?”

The boy blushed.

Dong Fang Suo cleared his throat. “I think you’ll find, Ping,” he said with a nervous giggle, “that the children have had their hair shaved off to remove an infestation of head lice. Those with short hair, are still waiting for their hair to grow back.”

“Oh,” said Ping. “When I was at Huangling I had lice, but Master Lan made me rub a foul-smelling ointment in my hair.”

Dong Fang Suo glared at Ping. “That would be beyond the means of most peasants.”

Ping had hated the stinging ointment. She hadn’t realised it was a luxury.

Ping didn’t make any other attempts at conversation. She watched the boy’s fingers run quickly down the columns of characters on his scroll. She was glad she had forgotten to bring the calfskin on which she had written the few characters that she had learned. Even though she’d had plenty of free time to study, Ping had found learning to read difficult. This boy had learned to read between his chores in the mulberry orchards.

Kai was excited that Jun was travelling with them.

“Boy, play ball,” he said, dropping his goatskin ball on Jun’s scroll and nudging his arm with his nose.

Jun tried to ignore him, but eventually gave in to
Kai’s persistence. He threw the ball to the dragon, again and again. Kai tossed it back enthusiastically. The boy had much more patience than Ping for playing games, but even he grew tired of it eventually.

“That’s enough for now, Kai,” the Imperial Magician said. “Give Jun a rest.”

The little dragon’s spines drooped. He made low, unhappy sounds.

“Later?”

Jun patted the dragon on the head. “I’ll play with you again later.”

Ping stared at the boy. “Could you understand what Kai said?”

Jun nodded and buried his head in his scroll again.

Ping was shocked. She had been caring for Kai for six months before she could understand his sounds. Jun had been in his presence for less than a day. Her dislike for the boy was growing.

“The Emperor will be very pleased we’ve found you,” Dong Fang Suo said. “If you pass the tests, you will require some training.”

Ping wondered what tests and training he had in mind. She had never undergone any tests and the only training she’d had was from Danzi.

“I’ll play with you, Kai,” Ping said, holding out her hand for the ball.

Kai snatched up the ball and dropped it in Jun’s lap.

“No,” he said firmly. “Kai play with boy … later.”

Ping’s jealousy festered like an unclean cut.

The next day Jun still had his head bent over his scroll.

“What is written on your scroll?” Dong Fang Suo asked.

He held it up for the Imperial Magician to see.

“It’s all the characters I’ve learned,” the boy replied. “Arranged in small poems and stories to help me remember them.” It was the first time he’d said more than five words together.

“You have done well to learn so many characters.”

“Our village elder was a government official when he was younger. He taught me to read and write.”

“Ping has been learning to read, but she doesn’t know half so many characters.”

Ping stared out through the shutters. She didn’t need to be reminded of her ignorance.

Towards the end of the second day, Jun finally ventured a question of his own.

“Are there other dragons in the world, sir?” he asked Dong Fang Suo.

The Imperial Magician seemed very pleased with this question.

“There are occasional reports of dragon sightings on the edges of the Empire far from human settlement,” he replied enthusiastically. “They could be merely tales told by travellers to impress their listeners, but I think there are other dragons … somewhere.”

“Wild dragons?”

“I believe so, living in the wilderness, I don’t know where.” Dong Fang Suo smiled at the boy. “I can see you are already thinking like a Dragonkeeper.”

Ping seethed.

They stayed that night at an inn. Ping was glad to have a room to herself. The previous night they had stopped at a military garrison. Dong Fang Suo had been given a room in the officers’ quarters, but Ping had had to sleep in the stable with Kai, the horse … and Jun. She had been looking forward to a good night’s sleep on a comfortable mattress.

Very late at night, or perhaps very early in the morning, she was wide awake immediately, as if woken by a loud noise. But the only sound was someone talking in a low voice in the courtyard. She couldn’t hear what was being said.

Kai had wriggled around so that his tail and his back feet were against her face. She got up to turn him around again. Then she went to the doorway. Dong Fang Suo was in the courtyard. He was whispering urgently to a messenger who was standing next to a steaming horse. The messenger mounted his horse and rode off. Dong Fang Suo stayed in the courtyard, staring down at his lumpy feet.

“Whatever His Imperial Majesty commands,” Ping heard him say to himself.

She went back to bed, but she couldn’t get back to sleep.

There was something odd about the Imperial Magician the next day that Ping couldn’t put her finger on. He was unusually quiet and made no mention of the messenger in the night. He didn’t try to get Jun to talk again either. Ping didn’t mind the silence. She had quite enough conversation with the dragon’s endless questions.

“Nearly home?” he asked about ten-and-seven times each hour.

“Dinner time?” was his next favourite question.

“What’s that?” he asked every time he saw something he didn’t know the name of.

Ping had to explain everything from piglets to pawlonia trees, from winnowing to weaving looms.

Eventually Kai tired of asking questions and curled up between Ping and the boy—his nose on Jun’s lap— and went to sleep. Dong Fang Suo usually dozed as well, but it seemed he was not sleepy. He stared out of the carriage, absently winding his ribbons of office around his fingers.

For the first day since they had left the Garden of the Purple Dragon, the sky was clear. They had left the snow clouds in the south. The air was still cold but there was no wind. The faint aroma of cinnamon bark filled the carriage as the road left villages behind and
wound its way through a cassia wood. Ping breathed in the fragrant air.

She was startled when Jun suddenly spoke to her.

“Have you lived at the imperial palace all your life?” he asked shyly, looking at her through his fringe.

Ping shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him anything about herself.

“Did you always know that you were a Dragonkeeper?”

She wanted the boy to think that she had been trained to be a Dragonkeeper since birth.

Kai woke from his nap.

“Story,” he said.

The tale of how Ping had become a Dragonkeeper was one of Kai’s favourite stories. He loved to hear about her adventures with his father. She relented. She would tell Kai the story aloud. He still needed to improve his understanding of speech. And Jun would hear it. Then he would know that her life had been harder than his. He would realise that she was the true Dragonkeeper—the one who had travelled with a wise old dragon, the one who had carried the dragon stone across the Empire, the one who had witnessed Kai’s birth.

She told him about Danzi and her years on Huangling Mountain. She explained how Hua had been her only friend. She showed the boy Danzi’s scale and the purple shard, but wouldn’t let him hold them.

“You have had a very exciting life,” Jun said enviously.

Dong Fang Suo, who had hardly said anything all morning, suddenly spoke.

“According to the old spell books, the shell of a dragon egg has many interesting properties,” he said, leaning forward and peering at the shard.

Ping felt a sudden possessiveness. She took it back from Jun, slipped it into her silk pouch with the dragon scale and continued her story.

She had got to the part where Danzi gave her the Dragonkeeper mirror.

“Each of Danzi’s true Dragonkeepers has carried this mirror,” she said proudly. “It is hundreds of years old.” She polished the mirror and held it out to Jun. “You can hold it if you’re very careful.”

She was telling the boy about how she’d defeated Diao and outwitted the necromancer when the carriage stopped. Ping had been so engrossed in telling her story that she hadn’t noticed the change in the countryside. They were returning to Ming Yang Lodge by a different route. The cassia wood had disappeared and the road was winding through a narrow valley. Steep cliffs of rock the colour of unpolished iron rose up on either side. The valley was just wide enough for a single carriage to pass through. Dong Fang Suo put his head out of the window to see what was happening.

The Imperial Magician seemed nervous—as if he
couldn’t bear any delay. Ping didn’t see that there was any need to hurry. They had plenty of time to get back to Ming Yang before the Emperor’s festival. One of the guards came and explained that there was a rock in their path.

“We are harnessing the horses to it, so that it can be hauled out of the way,” the guard explained. “There will be time for you to get out and stretch your legs.”

He opened the carriage door.

“Where are we?” Ping asked.

“This is Twisting Snake Ravine,” Dong Fang Suo said.

The Imperial Magician stood up, changed his mind and sat down again.

Ping peered ahead at the rock that had stopped their progress. It didn’t look so big.

Kai suddenly said. “Pee.”

“Can’t you wait half an hour until we get out of this ravine?” Ping asked.

“No,” said the little dragon.

Ping knew it was not a good idea to argue with Kai on the subject. The last thing she wanted was the smell of dragon urine in the carriage.

The Imperial Magician suddenly grabbed hold of her sleeve.

“No, don’t get out, Ping.”

He looked like he had more to say, but the words appeared to get stuck in his throat.

“Pee now,” said Kai more urgently and hopped down from the carriage.

Ping shook Dong Fang Suo’s hand from her arm. “I have to keep an eye on Kai, so he doesn’t wander off.”

There was barely room between the rock face and the carriage for her to climb down.

Dark rock towered above them on both sides, so smooth and steep it looked as if it had been cut with a knife. A band of blue was all that could be seen of the sky. Ping had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched.

Kai sniffed around behind the carriage. It always took the dragon some time to find the right place to pee. He preferred a tree, but there were none. Several tufts of grass had forced their way between rocks. One spindly bush had managed to find a patch of earth to grow in. A few frail, pale flowers were struggling to stay alive. Kai sniffed at one rock after another.

“Hurry up, Kai,” said Ping impatiently.

Ping’s stomach ached. She remembered the last time her stomach hurt. She scanned the rock surfaces, but there was no ledge wide enough for anyone to conceal themselves on the cliffs. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the narrow space was eerily silent.

Jun jumped down from the carriage. He kicked a stone around.

Finally the little dragon decided that the bush met his requirements. He lifted his leg. A pool of dark green
liquid spread over the dry earth. Ping stood at a distance to avoid the smell, thinking that the bush would be dead before nightfall. She waited. It always amazed her just how much urine one little dragon could hold. He finished at last, but then he started sniffing around the rocks.