The Book of Bones (23 page)

“We can't leave them. They'll be sucked down in the bog.”

“Follow quick,” Yin replied, over her shoulder. “Now.”

“It's not right.”

“They will not die here. The mud in this rock is not deep enough. In an hour, maybe less, the rest of the army will save them.”

Without a second glance she was gone. I followed in her wake, hoping she was right. If Yin was wrong the fate that awaited the soldiers was horrible. Their screams followed us as we went down the narrow path through the bog. At the fork where we had taken the detour to the boulder, we turned left, walking away from the forest. I couldn't begin to understand Yin. Just as I couldn't understand China. I had never before encountered such calm, almost detached, ferocity.

It was a sop to my weak English soul that just as we were out of sight of the soldiers—traversing the plain—Yin suddenly froze.

“Have no fear, Kit,” she murmured. “The soldiers are rescued. The army is here.”

I could see black dots moving through the landscape of sedge, bush and bog, coming from the direction of the forest. Was that a cry I heard magnified by the wind? I couldn't be sure, but relief lightened my step. Then I stiffened.

“That means they'll find us again.” I said. “It was all for nothing.”

“Maybe,” Yin replied. “We must ride fast to your aunt. I pray that without the tracker the army will be blind.”

It was too much for me. The soldiers, the bog, the savagery of the Kung Fu fight. I could smell the blood, hot in the marshy air. Bile rose in the back of my throat. I was going to be sick.

“I wish I'd never come,” the words were out of my mouth before I had time to bite them back.

Yin turned to look at me, surprised. “If you were not here, I would be dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“You gave me back my stick. You saved my life.”

China is full of wonderful surprises. Delicate bridges that seem to defy the laws of gravity, porcelain pagodas like lotuses in the sky. Here was another: a rock. This boulder, carved into a wonderful dragon shape, was so white it was almost translucent. We saw it from far off in the forest and my heart did a somersault. I understood now that I had never been ready to say goodbye. I had no desire to be a human sacrifice. Somehow we would
all
get through this. But as we neared our rendezvous, there was no sign of my friends. No grumpy, stocky aunt. No glowering Waldo, fatigued Rachel or irritated Isaac.

“They will come,” Yin dismounted from her pony and walking over to Orchid patted her flank. “Take sleep while we wait.”

I was grateful for her advice. My head was light, spinning from the Kung Fu. Along with the nausea that dogged me night and day, there was the taste of blood in the back of my throat. I kept seeing the crimson spurt on the tracker's tunic.

I must have fallen into a deep sleep nestled against the hard shoulder of the dragon rock. When I woke up Aunt Hilda was glaring at me, red-faced.

“Sick or not, this is no time for forty winks,” she boomed as I opened bleary eyes. “What with a whole regiment of the Chinese army on our tail.”

Waldo, Rachel and Isaac were clustered behind her, weighed down by saddlebags and baskets. They were dust-stained, their clothes ripped by thorns, but very much flesh and blood. As my aunt's hectoring voice went on and on I stood up and threw my arms around her, squeezing her ferociously. She hugged me back, her eyes looking suspiciously tearful.

“We should never have let you go,” she grunted.

“You didn't
let
me go.”

“Obviously she didn't need our permission,” Waldo muttered, as I tried to struggle out of my aunt's grip. She would not release me. “Kit is bloody-minded enough to tackle the entire army.”

“We must put all our bags on horses,” Yin said, relieving Rachel of a cotton bag and loading it onto Orchid. “Come. We must waste no time.”

I could see my friends looked gloomy. I didn't know if they had eaten or rested—it was after lunchtime. But somehow Yin was now in command and no one, not even my aunt, had the nerve to contradict her orders.
We trekked down the mountain and toward a plain. The countryside was wild, with a raging snow-melt river, which had fed the bog, and sedge, bracken and fern dotted with stunted trees. Some distance from the mountain we saw black smoke rising into the sky and with a cry of alarm Yin urged us forward.

As we came closer we understood, wordlessly, the source of her distress. A graceful set of buildings with arched terracotta eaves nestled in the lap of the mountain. The buildings unfurled like many-petaled lotus flowers. Two mighty stone lions stood by a flight of stone steps leading to a brick gable and stone entrance. This was the famous Shaolin temple we had heard so much about. This was where Yin had been raised by nuns, where she had learned Kung Fu.

It took but one glance to see that something was dreadfully wrong. The thick ropes of gray smoke. The drunken gate, smashed and pulled off its hinges.

We entered the monastery, sick with apprehension. Yin led the way, swaying from side to side. As we emerged into the huge courtyard she cried out and fell. I just managed to catch her before her body hit the flagstones.

It was scene of utter devastation. In front of us were four rows of stelae, ancient stone tablets, wrought with fine inscriptions. Many were engraved with delicate calligraphy. I saw one tablet bearing the image of a fat
monk in a flowing robe. I had heard of these treasures. Some were said to have been decorated by Ming and Tang emperors in centuries gone by. Many of the tablets had been toppled and smashed. Worse, the building itself had been set on fire. The magnificent wooden eaves had been destroyed and were now a smoldering heap.

Yin rose out of my arms, babbling in Mandarin, and walked in a trance. We came to a hall, room after room, with fabulous painted eaves. They were all smashed and burned with a savage indifference to their beauty. In one such hall there were statues of two monk warriors with snarling faces and bulging biceps. One of the statues had been so thoroughly destroyed that all I could see was a remnant of its blue cheeks. The other, bizarrely, had been left intact by the vandals.

There was no sense to the destruction. It was just savagery. We wandered through the temple—dining rooms, training halls, shrines. The kitchens had been thoroughly demolished, ovens battered, metal pots cracked, porcelain bowls smashed to smithereens. It was a ghostly place. Not a single monk, nun or warrior remained. In the kitchen I saw a foot poking out of the huge oven. For a moment I didn't understand. Then I realized that it was the body of a monk, perhaps one of the cooks who had stayed behind when the others fled. One of the invaders had stuffed him into the oven. I
hurriedly urged Yin away from the sight. We emerged from the kitchens into the fresh air with huge relief. Bad enough was the destruction. Yin's anguish, shown only in her mute, strained face, was heartbreaking. This was her home. The Shaolin temple had meant more to her than anywhere else in the world.

“They'll rebuild it,” Aunt Hilda muttered, once we were out.

“At least the monks got away,” Waldo added.

“Most of them,” I said, before I could stop myself. Luckily no one seemed to hear.

We scurried after Yin. She strode through the grounds, avoiding our sympathy and our foolish talk. We followed her as she skirted the Pagoda Forest, with tiered stone tablets reaching to the sky. Some were elaborately carved, some simple—but all were graves. I knew that many of the monastery's abbots were buried here. We tramped after our friend, not really knowing what comfort we could offer. I couldn't rid myself of the nightmare sight of the monk's body thoughtlessly stuffed into the oven.

Out here in the gardens, soothed by birdsong, lulled by the backdrop of ice-tipped mountains, the violence seemed far away. The invaders had not destroyed trees, thank goodness. They had left the ancient sycamores, the sun-dappled willows, the regiments of pines marching straight-backed toward the hills. We passed a gate into
the peony garden. An explosion of crimson, scarlet and orange with here and there the deepest velvety aquamarine. The flowers turned their petal-draped faces toward the sun, and I longed to sink to the ground among them, to forget that such destruction happened in this world for no good reason at all.

My friend was sitting on a stone bench staring at a bed of peonies. Her eyes were clouded again, wearing that look she had when we first rescued her from the Baker Brothers' doctor. Isaac, Waldo and my aunt were hovering about her. It was Rachel, with her gift for empathy, who sat down next to Yin and took her hand. It took some bravery to do this, as Yin looked so remote. But she didn't pull her hand away.

“Who did this?” Rachel asked.

Yin shrugged.

“How evil, in such a holy place,” Rachel murmured. “I can't tell—”

“It is more than that,” Yin interrupted—looking up at us clustering around the bench. “
We
did this.”

Her words shocked us into silence. But of course they made sense. It seemed likely that the soldiers had ransacked the temple as they looked for us. Then I stopped. We had outwitted the soldiers, left them behind as we diverted the tracker. How had they got here before us?

“But,” I said, “the soldiers are stuck halfway down the mountain.”

“The Empress has many soldiers. Another regiment came here. I think many days ago,” Yin said. “They look for the Book of Bones.”

“The Book of Bones,” I echoed.

Aunt Hilda was rigid, suddenly very alert.

“Imperial family, soldiers, merchants, foreigners …” Yin shrugged. “All seek the power in the Book. They think the Book will make them strong, powerful. They think with it they will rule the world.”

“Why now?” I burst out. “I mean, the Book of Bones has been in the monastery for years.”

“This is what I say. I think it is from
us
,” Yin answered. “Maybe the Empress find about Book from Mandarin Chao.”

“But he didn't know about it,” I replied. Then fell silent. Perhaps he had overheard our talk or one of his spies had. I felt guilty thinking of that gracious, hospitable nobleman. His brave son. They had saved our lives. I hoped that their reward had not been disgrace. Had he confessed our secrets under torture?

Musing on this, my eyes followed a hummingbird which hovered above Yin, tame as a pet canary. It was a tiny thing, no bigger than the span of my hand, wearing an iridescent purple jacket. For a moment I thought it
was going to land on her arm, but then it swooped away, spinning above a patch of plants. We watched its beating wings, moving so fast they were a shimmering blur. It dived down, dipping its long beak into the flowers. When I lifted my eyes, a nun had materialized in front of us.

At least I think it was a woman. She was so old, so very, very old, that she was almost beyond the difference between man and woman. She was gray all over, from her spider-web robe to her hair. She was an apparition. She must be. The ghost of a nun which had appeared to us. Nothing about her looked quite real. The shining dome of skull, the cheeks covered with wrinkles as fine as calligraphy, the slender, stooping back. Marbled eyes peered through shaggy eyebrows. She could have been a thousand-year-old sculpture come to life. All things were possible in China, this ancient land with its history running back to the dawn of man.

Yin had leaped up and was kowtowing to the ground. She turned to us, her face alight.

“Gray Eyebrows,” she explained.

I fell to the ground, kowtowing. Memories of what Yin had told us about her mentor, Gray Eyebrows, flashed through my mind. She had looked after Yin when she was brought to the monastery. The others followed my example, all except Aunt Hilda, who bowed her neck rather stiffly.

“Gray Eyebrows taught me everything. Kung Fu, meditation, English,” Yin explained. I could not take my eyes off the nun. There was something uncanny about her—so thin, pale and insubstantial that she appeared to float several inches off the ground. She didn't even look like a Chinese ghost.

“You must be so proud of your pupil,” Waldo blurted out. “Kit tells me she is a great fighter. She destroyed soldiers of the Imperial army without any sweat.”

I blushed at Waldo's remark. From what I knew of the Buddhist teachings they followed in this monastery, pride was not an emotion to be proud of—so to speak. The monks and nuns here strove to be humble. Fighting was also something to be avoided. Though the warrior monks practiced Kung Fu till they were highly skilled at it, they were meant to use their only art in self-defense. Never to attack others, or use it for evil. I feared the nun, Gray Eyebrows, would give us a lecture, but she merely smiled. Then she turned and her eyes locked into mine. They bored into me, bright points of fire that scorched. The smile had disappeared. A high voice issued from her, though her mouth didn't move. Like a ventriloquist's dummy, as if someone else was speaking through her.

“I must speak the prophecy.”

“What prophecy?” Aunt Hilda butted in.

The voice continued, ignoring the interruption:

The shrill voice ceased abruptly, leaving us all silent. I was chilled by the tone and by the sound of the words, though I could make no sense of them. I could see the same fear on my aunt's face, all of us shocked and uncomprehending. I sneaked a look at Yin, but her eyes told me nothing. Abruptly the nun's head jerked and her eyes refocused.

The nun gestured to Yin to come with her and the two of them walked away. We watched until the two tiny figures disappeared into the bamboo grove. I think all of us were unsure how to react—and what the appearance of this nun meant for our mission.