Dragon Moon (2 page)

“The Xiong Nu have come to our aid,” she said. “The imperial troops are retreating!”

“Can we trust the barbarians?” asked Ping.

“They’re better friends to us than the Emperor,” Lady An replied. Ping had never heard her speak so sharply.

Ping wanted to see for herself. She climbed up a flight of steps that led to the ramparts on top of the outer palace wall. Kai followed her. Others had had the same idea. Ping pushed to the front of a crowd of cheering people. A band of perhaps a hundred barbarians was gathered outside the palace, together with the Duke’s foot soldiers. The barbarians were dark, rough-looking men wearing clothes made of leather and fur, but the Duke’s men were mingling with them, raising their spears and bows, and shouting in triumph. To the west, a cloud of dust was all that could be seen of the retreating imperial army. Several men on horseback rode out of the palace gates towards the soldiers. One was the Duke.

Kai looked at Ping, his eye-ridges wrinkling in a frown.

“Did Ping sense that Kai was in danger?”

“No, I had no sense of foreboding. I just wanted you to be safe.”

“Kai
was
safe.” The dragon’s voice was stern. “The well was the safest place.”

Ping lowered her eyes so that she didn’t have to meet the dragon’s gaze. He was right. She’d panicked. The well would have hidden him from imperial soldiers and protected him from fire. If there had been a real threat, she would only have led him into danger.

“Is it dinner time?” Kai asked.

Ping spent the rest of the day tending the wounded soldiers with Lady An. The following day, under the direction of Princess Yangxin, she helped pack chests of food, silks and wine that the Duke was sending to the Xiong Nu as a gift of thanks.

Two days after the attack, Beibai Palace had returned to its usual calm rhythms. Except for the banging of hammers and the smell of damp, burnt wood in the air, it was as if nothing had happened. Ping spent the day in the Hall of True Delight, the Princess’s private
recreation room, where the Princess and her ladies were busy weaving, embroidering, and spinning silk thread. Despite more than a year of daily encouragement from the Princess, Ping had no interest in these pastimes. The only time she sat sewing with the other women was if there was a hole in one of her socks or a tear in an undergarment. She preferred to spend her spare time reading.

All of the Princess’s ladies wore fine silk gowns with embroidered edges. Since Ping wouldn’t embroider a gown of her own, the Princess had insisted on giving her several that the other ladies had discarded. They had deep sleeves and were made of dyed silk. A long sash was tied in a bow around the waist. Ping thought they were far too impractical, but she didn’t want to be impolite.

Kai hadn’t returned to the well after the attack. He was playing a game of hide-and-seek with the children. He had grown so much during his hibernation that it was now difficult for him to find a hiding place. The Princess’s chair and the wood box no longer concealed him.

Today Ping was neither reading nor sewing. The recent events had jolted her out of her winter idleness. She sat on a rug staring at a silk square spread out on a cushion. It was a small piece of undyed, unhemmed fabric just a few inches across.

Ping examined the silk square for the first time in many months. On one side it was marked with faded,
scratchy lines and squiggles drawn in what Ping believed was blood. It was a rough map of the Empire sent to her by Kai’s father, Danzi. A solid line represented the Great Wall, the northern boundary of the Empire, built to keep out the barbarians. To the east was Ocean. To the west was a number of jagged points, like arrowheads. These represented the Kun-lun Mountains. A winding line indicated the course of the Yellow River as it snaked across the whole Empire from its source in the western mountains, northward to almost touch the Great Wall before it turned south and then meandered eastward to Ocean. The southern border of the Empire must have been beyond Danzi’s knowledge because it wasn’t marked.

There had been characters on the map naming rivers and mountains. Most had faded away. Only nine characters remained. Ping was sure this was what Danzi had intended. These were the only characters she needed to make their journey. They were the names of three places—Long Dao Xi, Qu Long Xiang, Ye Long Gu—Dragon’s Lament Creek, Quiet Dragon Ridge and Blazing Dragon Valley. But there was no route to follow, no clue as to what she might find if she went to any of these places. Ping had asked the Duke and his advisers if they knew of the three places, but no one had heard of them.

At first Ping hadn’t noticed that there was anything on the other side of the square, but when she had been
examining it in bright sunlight one day, she’d discovered several faint intersecting lines and small characters written as if they had been thrown down on the silk like dice. The jumble of characters made no sense.

She called Kai over from where he was unsuccessfully hiding behind a pot plant.

“Are you sure you don’t know what Danzi’s map means?” she asked.

She had taught Kai to read some characters before he had begun his hibernation.

“No. Kai has told Ping many times.”

“I know, but I thought after your sleep it might … look different.”

The silk square had been delivered by Ping’s pet rat a year and a half ago. Hua had been badly injured when Danzi was attacked by the dragon hunter Diao on the sacred mountain Tai Shan. The old dragon was injured as well. He had taken the rat with him to the Isle of the Blest so that they could both be healed by the water of life that flowed there. Ping had never seen Danzi again, but the rat returned unexpectedly one day, carried on the back of a red phoenix.

Ping could now read as well as an imperial scholar, but even though she understood the characters, the map was still a mystery to her. When she had been with Danzi she’d often been unable to understand his pronouncements. Nothing had changed. His message made no sense at all.

Ping hadn’t thought of the old, green dragon for weeks. He had spent more than 40 years in captivity on Huangling Mountain. Ping shivered as she remembered her childhood in that cold, lonely place. She had been an ignorant slave girl without even a name. She had expected her future to be nothing more than an endless repetition of her past, spent serving the lazy Master Lan and feeding the creatures that kept them alive in the rundown imperial palace on that bleak mountain. Lan was supposed to care for the imperial dragons, but his neglect had led to them dying one by one, until only Danzi had remained. Ping and the old dragon had escaped together. She smiled to herself. That wasn’t really true.

Ping, frightened of the world, had been reluctant to leave. Danzi had kidnapped her, snatching her up in his talons as he took wing. He had revealed her name to her. She touched the bamboo square hanging from a silk cord around her neck. It had been given to her by her parents when she was a small child. There was a single character written on it in faded ink—Ping.

A gong sounded to announce that the midday meal was about to be served. As the dining hall was still being repaired after the fire, the servants brought the food to Princess Yangxin and her ladies-in-waiting in the Hall of True Delight.

Kai sat on embroidered silk cushions next to Ping. A servant brought in a low table set with a bowl, spoon
and chopsticks for Ping and a large dish for Kai.

The first course was golden thread mushroom soup. Kai’s meal was different. His dish was piled with 15 stuffed quails and 30 turtle eggs. While everyone else was quietly sipping their soup, Kai hungrily stuffed the birds and eggs into his mouth, eating everything—including the bones and the egg shells. Ping didn’t eat much.

“Doesn’t Ping want her soup?” Kai asked.

Ping shook her head, so Kai drank her soup. Servants brought in the second course, which was baked deer in hot sauce. For Kai there was a large bowl of warm ewe’s milk sweetened with honey which he slurped up happily. Since Ping didn’t seem to be interested in the baked deer, Kai helped himself to that as well. The serving girl returned, and Kai looked at her expectantly. His spines drooped when he realised that the meal was over and she was only clearing away the dishes.

“Any worms?” he asked Ping.

“I thought you would’ve grown out of eating worms and insects by now,” Ping said. “I’ll mention it to the cook.”

After the tables and dishes had been removed, Ping studied the silk square again.

“Those shapes look like Lady An’s game of Seven Cunning Pieces,” Kai said.

Ping traced a fingertip over the faint intersecting lines. They formed four triangles, a square and a misshapen diamond.

“May I borrow your Seven Cunning Pieces?” Ping asked Lady An, who was sitting nearby marking a design on a piece of dark blue silk.

“Of course,” she said. “They’re in the box with the chessboard and other games.”

Ping went over to the box and pulled out a little bag. She brought it back to the rug and emptied out the contents. There were seven shapes made of ebony wood, carved with patterns of plum blossom and bamboo. The shapes were the same triangles, square and diamond that were marked on the silk.

Ping had watched Lady An play this game. It involved rearranging the pieces to make shapes—a rabbit, a running man, a bird in flight. Ping didn’t mind playing chess, which improved the player’s skills at strategy, but she had never seen the point of playing Seven Cunning Pieces.

“Can I borrow your chalk, please?” she asked.

Lady An handed her the piece of chalky rock that she was using to mark lines on her sewing.

Ping formed the seven pieces into a square, as they were arranged on the back of the silk square. She marked the characters on the black pieces, exactly as they were on the silk.

Ping turned the shapes this way and that on the rug. She arranged them to make patterns and shapes—a jug, a boat and a dish. It was amusing for a few minutes, but she soon grew bored. The characters were still a senseless
jumble. She studied the silk square again. There was no clue as to what she should do with the pieces.

Lady An came over to see what Ping was doing. She was fond of the game.

“Which shape do you want to make?” she asked.

“I don’t know, that’s the problem. Danzi didn’t say.”

“A dragon,” said Kai.

“You’re right, of course. It has to be a dragon.” Ping was the only one who could understand Kai. His dragon sounds translated into words in her mind. She had gotten into the habit of speaking aloud to Kai whenever they were in company. It seemed polite.

Ping rearranged the pieces.

She made a passable fox and a rabbit. She created a dog, a goose and a bat.

She sighed impatiently. “It’s impossible. There aren’t enough pieces. Do you know how to make a dragon, Lady An?”

“I have never heard of a dragon shape,” Lady An said, “but there is a dragon’s head shape.”

“I don’t know how to make that.”

“That’s the whole point of the game, Ping,” Lady An laughed, “to work out how to make the shapes.”

“You show me,” Ping said.

Lady An rearranged the pieces. With a few moves she made a dragon’s head.

“There,” she said.

Four of the characters now lined up in a vertical row. Ping read them out from top to bottom.

“Hui dao mi jia.”
Ping frowned. “Return to the secret home. I don’t understand what that means.”

“Perhaps Father means Ping’s family home,” Kai suggested.

“No, there’s nothing secret about where my family lives.”

“Must mean Father’s home.”

“But he never mentioned any home to me. When he spoke to you in your dreams, did he say anything to you about his home?”

Kai shook his head.

Ping looked at the silk square again. She read out the names of the places Danzi had marked on the map—Dragon’s Lament Creek, Quiet Dragon Ridge, Blazing Dragon Valley.

“These places all have good dragon names,” Kai said.

Danzi’s meaning was suddenly clear to Ping.

“He means a secret dragon home. He wants me to take you to a place where you could live safely. A secret place where no one who means you harm can ever find you. A place where you can be free, just as Danzi was when he was a young dragon. A dragon haven.”

“Father didn’t want anyone else to read the message,” Kai said.

Ping nodded. The square might have fallen into other hands
, so Danzi had written a coded message, just for her.

“There are three places marked on the map,” she said. “How do I know which one we should go to?”

“Perhaps you can choose any one of the three,” Lady An suggested.

“Yes!” Ping exclaimed. “There’s a choice. There were once many dragons in the world. There would be more than one place where they sought refuge. Danzi didn’t know where I would be when I discovered the silk square.”

Dragon’s Lament Creek was closest to Yan. It was difficult to tell from the rough map, but it looked like it couldn’t be more than 300
li
to the west.

“It sounds like a rather sad place,” Lady An said.

“I know,” Ping replied. “But I have to trust Danzi.”

Ping didn’t know what she would find at Dragon’s Lament Creek, but she knew she must follow the old dragon’s advice. He had lived in the wild for over a thousand years before he was captured for the Emperor, alone at first, then with Dragonkeeper companions. Who else would know better where Kai would be safe?

Lady An went off to arrange the menu for the evening meal.

“It’s time for us to start our journey,” Ping said to Kai. She felt like leaping up and leaving immediately.

Kai’s eyes sparkled. “Yes,” he said. “Time to follow Father’s silk.”

Ping smiled at him. Over the winter months, he hadn’t only grown in size, he had matured as well. His speech had improved, though no one knew that but her. Other people could hear the metallic sounds he made, but in her mind these sounds were translated into words. His eyes had changed from the green of an infant, to the brown of a mature dragon. He wasn’t a dragonling anymore. He was aware that they had to leave the comfort of the palace. He knew from experience that the world of men wasn’t a safe place for dragons.