The Dragons of Heaven (14 page)

Not much easier, with him looking back at me with that eternal gaze. I poked at my rice and greens. Guess I was going to be eating healthy while I was here.

“Why did you call them demons?” I asked when I couldn't take the silence any longer. Jian Huo took a slow sip of his tea, then another.

“It is what they are.” He set the cup down, folded his hands in his sleeves. He settled in as if he could sit there for all eternity.

“Is everything in the Shadow Realms a demon?” I asked, thinking of Templeton and the few other denizens I'd met who didn't scare me silly.

Jian Huo pursed his lips, eyes narrowing. “What did your grandfather tell you of your gifts?”

I didn't know the Cantonese word for “bupkiss”, so I used the American version and got another raised brow for my efforts. The corner of his mouth twitched whenever he did that. I was going to start collecting those raised brows. They made him not quite so intimidating. How many had he given me so far? Three? Four? Hell, I'd have to start my count with this one.

“That was poorly done of him.”

“He didn't know I'd inherit his powers,” I said, surprising myself more than the dragon across from me. I never stood up for Mitchell.

“Didn't he?” His tone suggested that my grandfather had known very well. Right. That was why I didn't make a practice of defending the man. He had been a secretive bastard.

“It falls to me, then,” Jian Huo said. The silence that followed those words stretched on until I realized it wasn't just a pause for dramatic effect.

“OK,” I prodded, but Jian Huo gave a minute shake of his head, unfolded his hands, and stood.

“You are not ready to understand. Finish your meal. Find me in the library when you are through. Your Cantonese is atrocious. We will improve it.”

“But… what about cleaning up the shadows?” Hadn't he said they were wreaking havoc? I didn't want to be responsible for any more havoc than I'd already caused.

Another eyebrow lift. I had no clue what I'd said to earn that one.

“You are not ready for that, either.” He pulled his robes close and swept past me, sandalwood-scented hair trailing behind him.

Well… peachy.

“‘
T
he Tao
that can be told is not the eternal Tao',” I recited. Months of constant study, of digging into every text Jian Huo put before me, comprehending, analyzing, critiquing, contextualizing, and discussing until late in the evenings, had honed my Cantonese beyond passable. My Mandarin was coming along, and I had even started to pick up some of the other major regional dialects. The mountaintop temple had become my home. I'd befriended most of the servants, and once they were comfortable with me, they reverted to their natural, amorphous forms with relief. And Jian Huo no longer intimidated me. Mostly, he annoyed the shit out of me.

Like now, because, despite all my progress, we kept returning to this first book, this first line. His response was always the same.

“No. You do not yet have it.”

My jaw set. I would get this. I
would
. I tried again. “The Tao that–”

“Repeating your mistake brings you no closer to rectifying it.”

“What mistake?” I shoved the scroll aside. He allowed me to read from a modern translation rather than the original he'd first handed me. It was only better in that I could be a bit more careless with the materials. Struggling through Classical Chinese was kind of like struggling through Chaucer.

We'd spent a week on Chaucer.

He repeated the line in rich, rolling tones. I couldn't hear any difference from what I'd just said, except my voice didn't have that echo of eternity in it.

I sat back on my heels, rubbing my face. “I'm just not getting it.”

“That is obvious.”

“I mean, I'm not even getting what to get.”

“As you might say, ‘Again with the obvious'.”

I peeked through my fingers to glare at him. A smile threatened to break through, but no eyebrow lift, so it didn't count for my collection. “I'm a bad influence on you.”

“I believe I will survive the ordeal.”

“I might not,” I muttered.

He inclined his head. Jian Huo hadn't said as much, but I suspected we weren't going to start hunting shadows until I broke this puzzle. I was antsy to get started.

“Is this like a Karate Kid thing, where the answer is different than what I think it is?”

“I know little of karate, but I believe it is clear that the answer is not what you think it is, or you would have succeeded in one of your ten-thousand attempts.”

“There haven't been that many,” I grumbled.

“As you say.” He rose, his coil of hair tumbling out of his lap. I breathed deeply of the sandalwood that washed over me.
That
earned me the eyebrow twitch I'd been gunning for. Shit. I'd been caught. Usually I managed to be more subtle.

“Set it aside for now. Walk the gardens. Drink tea. Practice your hanfu.” I grimaced at this last. The issue of how I dressed was a constant struggle. I kept going for the unadorned robes at the back of my wardrobe, much to Jian Huo's chagrin. But he never pressed the issue. Maybe because he dressed fancy enough for the both of us.

Those rich robes rustled as he left the room. He paused at the doorway, regarding me with eyes of endless black. “It will come to you in time. You are a good student.”

He left me gaping in a wake of sandalwood. Jian Huo was a patient teacher, but not an effusive one. A compliment like that from him was as precious as a pearl.

I hopped up and all but skipped my way down to the gardens.

When I'd first come to the mountaintop temple, I'd thought it was a lonely place, deserted by all save Lung Huang and a few spirit servants. I couldn't have been more wrong. Nobody else lived here, but the through traffic was constant. Supplicants came to ask the Guardian of the East for aid: minor spirits, the occasional monk, the even more occasional farmer or businessman. Sometimes the greater spirits dropped by. Feng Huang, the Phoenix Guardian of the South, came on a weekly basis to play
wei-qi
with Jian Huo. She'd deigned to play me once. The game lasted less than five minutes. Jian Huo observed that this was another subject to be added to the growing list of things I needed to learn.

Don't ask me what
wei-qi
had to do with hunting down shadows or taking up my grandfather's legacy. We hadn't gotten that far yet.

Sometimes, our visitors were messengers. My steps slowed, the skip faltering, as I spied a familiar flash of russet. It could be that it was a different fox each time, but the way she watched me, with mocking amber eyes, made me doubt it.

Besides, how many foxes had four tails?

Those tails flicked as I approached. I bowed in return on the off chance that she meant it as a greeting. Jian Huo had taken a lot of care to beat some manners into my skull, so it was a good chance to practice.

“
Huxian
. It is a pleasure to see you again. Lung Huang is above. I do not believe he is occupied.”

“Thank you,
Miqian
, but I am not here to see Lung Huang. I am here to see
Lung Xue
.”

Another thing I'd learned here: spirits have many names and titles, and what they call each other – or in the case of powerful spirits like Jian Huo, what they
allowed
you to call them – said a lot about your standing in the world.
Huxian
had taken to calling me “silk purse”, and I couldn't decide if she meant it as an insult or a backhanded compliment.

“There aren't any other dragons here.” I was still shaky on the ancient dialect that the spirits used for their honorifics, but Lung was a word I knew.

Huxian
laughed, mocking and merry.

“That's you, idiot. You're
Lung Xue
, his student.”

Oh. “And you're here to see me?” I was busy boggling over having a title. It made it all seem so… official. “Why?”

She half-turned toward the gardens, tails flicking. This gesture I could guess. She wanted me to walk with her. I did.

She led me out of the gardens, down toward the mountain path that led back into the valley. I paused at the gates, reluctant to follow the fox past them. It was cold down here, much colder than the gardens and house above. That change in temperature told me that stepping past that threshold was more than just a matter of a few steps.

The fox paused, turned, and cocked her head at me. “Well? Come along.”

“Why can't we talk here?”

“Because I wish to speak in private. It is only a few more steps.”

The saccharine tone decided me. I took a step back. “I'm not allowed to leave. Anything you have to say, you can say here.”

She sighed and settled on her haunches. “My, he
does
have you on a short leash. Very well,
Miqian
. But I meant no harm. It is truth, that I only wished to speak in private. Lung Huang
is
his realm. He knows all that passes within.”

I didn't believe one word that came out of her smiling muzzle. I crossed my arms, folding my hands into my sleeves, as much because it was cold down here as because I was not happy that she'd almost tricked me.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“There are demons plaguing the valley. Lung Huang knows this, and I believe you do as well.”

She had been there when I called the shadows. She knew I knew. I did my best imitation of Jian Huo's skeptical eyebrow. “And?”

“We have been forbidden from dealing with them ourselves.”

That got me. My hands dropped to my sides and I gaped at her. “Why would he do that?”

“You wish me to guess at the motivation of dragons?” She laughed. “Perhaps it is that the longer we are troubled by these demons, the more we will be in your debt when you stop them. Perhaps it is that they are your responsibility. Or perhaps it is because the eyes of Heaven have fallen upon you.”

“Wh-huh?” And I thought she'd flummoxed me before.

“Lung Huang has taken another student. That has stirred curiosity in the gardens of Shambhala, but those visitors who come here have no interest in speaking of you, or else no impetus to do so, or else nothing useful to report.”

“Who's interested?” I prodded.

“His siblings, the Nine Guardians. Well… eight, for Lung Huang is exiled here.” Her ears flattened. “Well, seven, for who knows where the prodigal has gone to ground.”

“Why do they care about me?” Jian Huo's siblings were gods, for all intents and purposes. So was Jian Huo, but I tried not to think about that. It was too daunting, and it made my schoolgirl crush feel blasphemous, which was a different magnitude of wrong than the squick that it went to when I recalled he'd been my grandfather's lover.

But that connection to my grandfather explained why Jian Huo might take an interest in me. The other guardians? It made my shoulders twitch.

Huxian
agreed with my confusion, if her malicious little grin was anything to go by. “Lung Huang suffered exile the last time he took a student. A
laowai
. He still suffers it. But that at least could be explained. Lung Huang had a duty to train his Champion. A man already proven.”

“And I'm not?”

“That is what they wish to determine, and perhaps why Lung Huang wishes you to be the one to defeat the demons you unleashed.”

“So this is all some kind of a test?”

She yipped a laugh. “
This
is a conversation. And a warning. You have brought the eyes of Heaven down upon you, and the valley suffers while you struggle with the first line of the Tao.” The look she gave me might almost be called sympathetic. “It cannot be a comfortable prospect, to be under such scrutiny.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I was not feeling in charity with her. “Thanks for the warning.”

“It is only polite.” As if that was her reason for telling me. She turned and trotted down the mountain path. I watched her go until she disappeared around a bend with a flick of white and russet.

I found Jian Huo in the pagoda, sipping tea and looking down on the valley. It was clouded over most days, but today the sun shone mellow gold, dappling the snowy hillside and sparkling off the aqua and viridian pools that wended along the valley's length. I could just make out the rear temple, nestled at the foot of the glacial crevasse and the head of the valley. I couldn't see the tour buses from here.

Jian Huo didn't acknowledge me. I could never decide if I was meant to speak right off, or if this was some game of Jian Huo's to see how long I could wait him out before I broke. From the little smile I sometimes caught on his face, I suspected the latter.

I didn't give him long this time. “I'm going down into the valley tomorrow.”

He turned. Set down his cup. Gestured for me to sit. “How was your meeting with the
huxian
?”

Oh, he could be infuriating. “Didn't you hear what I just said?”

“I did. Your mistake is in assuming I have been keeping you from doing so.”

I choked on the beginnings of several curse words before managing a coherent sentence. “You said I wasn't ready!”

“People suffer, and you are the author of that. Will you make them wait until you are ready?”

“But Sun Tzu says… And there's the Tao… and… aren't I supposed to be learning about right reasons and practicing ‘not-doing'.”

“Is that what you call your current inaction?”

I almost hit him, right then. Would have, but for the twitch of his eyebrow. Something about
this
was amusing him?

Hell if I could tell what.

“Fine. Then tomorrow I'm heading down into the valley,” I snapped.

He lifted his cup and took another sip of his tea. “Dress warmly.”

I left before I did something stupid, like dump the teapot over his head.