Dragon Moon (27 page)

“What’s happened to Kai’s scales?” Ping asked Jiang.

“He is a dragon of five colours.” Her voice was full of awe. “I have never seen one before.”

Hei Lei tried to reach Kai with a back leg, like a dog scratching its ear. Kai swung his weight from side to side to put him off balance, so that Hei Lei was forced to put his paw down to steady himself.

“What does it mean?” Ping asked

“Kai is born to lead,” Jiang replied. “If a dragon of five colours claims the leadership of a cluster, no one can challenge him.”

Kai was gloating over having got the better of Hei Lei, despite the blood pouring from his wounds. Ping was horrified by the blood lust she saw in his eyes. What the seer had said when he’d written out the final line of the divination flashed into her mind. “Read it only when you are faced with your greatest difficulty, when you experience your worst moment.” She’d thought her worst moment was when Tun had taken Kai away from Long Gao Yuan, but it wasn’t. This was it. Things couldn’t get any worse. Only if Kai died. And that
could happen at any moment. Ping ran to her cave. She pulled everything out of the saddlebag. She found the calfskin crumpled at the bottom and opened it out with fumbling fingers. The six readings were on one side. She turned over the calfskin and read the single line of characters again. The ink strokes had faded over the months and she could barely make them out in the moonlight.
A cluster of dragons without heads. Great good fortune
. Ping angled the calfskin this way and that. The words still made no sense.

Kai could hurt Hei Lei but he couldn’t kill him. In the black dragon’s fury he might kill Kai and the other dragons. He might tear off their heads in his rage. But how could that be deemed good fortune? Ping remembered the terrible pile of bones at Long Gao Yuan. If Hei Lei killed them all, there would be no more dragons in the world. Surely that wouldn’t bring good fortune. She didn’t have time to ponder the details. It didn’t matter what the
Yi Jing
said, she couldn’t bear the thought of a world without dragons.

The other dragons were standing like statues on the rocks, watching the combat, but not daring to try and stop it. Ping ran towards the fighting dragons. Hei Lei was shaking his great head from side to side, roaring and raging, bashing his head against the rocks in an attempt to dislodge Kai.

Kai reached his front paws around in front of Hei Lei’s face. The little dragon’s sharpened talons glittered in
the moonlight, his iridescent scales gleamed. Ping gasped in horror. She felt Kai’s pleasure as he dug his talons around Hei Lei’s eye sockets. Hei Lei cried out in pain and terror. Kai was about to rip out the black dragon’s eyes.

“Stop!” shouted Ping.

She stood in front of Hei Lei. The black dragon couldn’t see because Kai’s paws were covering his eyes. He reached out, feeling for Ping. She moved closer, within his reach. The black dragon grasped hold of her, digging his talons into her flesh. She cried out in pain.

“Ping.” She heard Kai’s voice in her head for the first time since the combat began.

“A dragon leader needs wisdom, not the ability to kill,” she said. “Get down, Kai. Hei Lei will release me if you stand aside.”

Hei Lei loosened his talons.

“But the challenge, I have to defend Father.”

“Forget the challenge. I would rather Hei Lei kill me than see another dragon die. You are so few. Every dragon is precious. Don’t do it for my sake. Do it for the Dead Ones. They wouldn’t want any more dragons to die.”

Kai unhooked his talons from Hei Lei’s face and climbed down the black dragon’s back.

Hei Lei put Ping down.

Ping turned to Kai, expecting him to be angry that she had prevented him from making his first kill, but
the battle anger had drained from him. Weak from blood loss, he collapsed into the pool.

Ping waded into the water. Whether the pool was sacred or poisonous she didn’t know or care. She had to get to Kai. The young dragon floated on the surface of the yellow water. His scales had lost their iridescence. She took him in her arms.

Hei Lei’s huge body had sagged. The ring of puncture wounds around his eyes were bleeding. It looked like he was weeping tears of blood.

Ping could still see into the black dragon’s mind. She saw him killing his Dragonkeeper with one blow, so the young man died instantly. But there was something that he was still shielding—something even more terrible. Something he didn’t want anyone to know about.

Holding the dragon-stone shard, Ping saw through Hei Lei’s final shield to his innermost thoughts, a dark place full of despair. Killing his Dragonkeeper hadn’t been enough. Before he died, Hei Lei’s young Dragonkeeper had taken the woman up to Long Gao Yuan. He had shown her the hidden way up to the plateau behind the Serpent’s Tail falls. She had kept the secret for many years, but in her old age she had told a dragon hunter where many dragons could be found, in exchange for three pieces of gold.

The hunter hadn’t rushed up to Long Gao Yuan. He had laid his plan carefully. He sent messages to other dragon hunters he knew. They were rivals before, but
with the prize of so many dragons in their sights, they agreed to band together.

Ping looked into Hei Lei’s eyes. The red glow had faded. The black dragon met her gaze. He knew that she had read his secret thoughts and bowed his head in acknowledgement.

“You are indeed a true Dragonkeeper. An exceptional one.”

His anger had been replaced by sadness. He had been so proud of his mischievous young Dragonkeeper. The only other Dragonkeepers he’d known were old and dull. He had loved his cheerful attitude, his playful pranks. The massacre at Long Gao Yuan was the fault of his Dragonkeeper. And he had chosen the man.

Tears filled Ping’s eyes, and they weren’t for Kai. She knew he was strong enough to survive his wounds. They were for Hei Lei.

Ping tried to lift Kai out of the water, but couldn’t. The other dragons gathered around. Tun came forward and pulled Kai out.

“Kai can walk,” the little dragon said.

Ping helped him to his feet. The dragon moon had disappeared from the sky. The day was dawning with a blood-red stain on the horizon. Slowly Kai limped along, his broken leg dragging behind him. He looked small and weary and wounded. His scales weren’t gleaming with the five colours now, they were dull. He didn’t look like a leader of a dragon cluster. Instead
of returning to his bed in the main dragon cavern, he limped to Ping’s cave.

The other dragons wouldn’t enter. There was barely room for one of them anyway. They quietly brought things to the cave mouth for Kai—straw for a bed, animal skins, meat. Sha brought two of the jade healing stones from the treasure cave and Ping placed one at his head and one at his tail, just as the yellow dragon instructed.

“I’m going to light a fire,” Ping said. “I need to make a herbal remedy for him.”

None of the dragons objected. Ping lit a small fire and made staunchweed tea. She bathed Kai’s wounds with water from the healing pool. They were not as bad as she had expected. The yellow water had already stopped the bleeding and cleansed the wounds. Ping took out the remains of her nightgown, washed it in the yellow pool and tore it into broad strips. Then she bound them around Kai’s wounds. The one where Hei Lei had gouged a chunk out of his right flank would leave a nasty scar, but the other wounds would heal well enough. Then she set the broken bone in his hind leg and asked Sha to find a good straight stick to use as a splint. The young dragon understood her. Ping could speak to all the dragons with her mind now.

When the herbal tea was ready, she started preparing some broth with the meat that the dragons had brought,
adding more medicinal herbs that she had picked on the plateau.

Ping sat at Kai’s side, spooning the herbal tea into his mouth. Sha poked her big yellow head into the cave.

“I would like to learn about human ways of healing,” she said. “I can see why dragons allowed humans to be their keepers long ago. Your hands are dextrous and you have useful knowledge of the world.”

Ping smiled at the shy dragon.

After Kai had eaten a little of the broth, he slept. Ping went outside and breathed the morning air. The sky was pink now. The other dragons had all gone to their caverns, except for Tun.

“Do you believe that Kai is your true leader?” she asked. It was the first time she’d spoken to him.

He nodded his great yellow head. “He is a dragon of five colours. No one can dispute it.”

“But he is too young.”

“He will not take on full leadership until he is 500 years old. Until then, the council will help him make decisions. Gu Hong will advise him. But his opinion will still carry the most weight.”

It was a great responsibility for such a small dragon.

Ping went back into her cave and lay down next to Kai. Her mind was swirling with thoughts. Kai had been arrogant, but he had survived. Why did the
Yi Jing
reading say there would be cause for regret? Kai had been revealed as the dragons’ true leader. Hei Lei
had released the secret that had been poisoning him for so long. Kai’s arrogance had actually led to good things happening. Ping thought that her buzzing mind would prevent her from sleeping, but the terror of the night and the strain of reading the dragons’ thoughts had exhausted her.

When Ping woke, the morning was well advanced. Kai was still sleeping. It wasn’t until she had eaten a little food and made herself some ginger tea that she looked again at the crumpled calfskin. She could read the characters clearly now. She hadn’t made a mistake. In the daylight, the six characters were as she had seen them in the pale moonlight the night before. She sipped her tea. What a night it had been. Now she knew why it was so important for Kai to have come to the dragon haven. He was their leader, their future. Overnight, he had transformed from a juvenile green dragon to a dragon of five colours, the leader of the last cluster of dragons in the world.

Ping looked at the calfskin again. She hadn’t misread the characters, but she had misinterpreted their meaning. A character could have more than one meaning.
Wu shou
could mean ‘without heads’. It could also mean ‘without a leader’.
A cluster of dragons appears without a leader. Great good fortune
.

The cluster had struggled without a leader for many years. They had become weak and purposeless.
Now they had a future leader. That was good fortune.

Jiang was the only dragon who had emerged from the cavern.

“Where’s Hei Lei?” Ping asked. “I’ll tend to his wounds as well.”

“He has gone,” Jiang replied.

“Gone where?”

“He failed to defeat Kai. He also broke the rules of the combat. He has flown away to live alone. He’s too proud to live under Kai’s leadership.”

Ping found that this news didn’t give her any pleasure.

“Now we are eight again,” said Jiang.

Eight was a very inauspicious number.

For three days Ping cared for Kai in her cave. She made food and herbal remedies for him. She tended his wounds. She told him stories as she had done when he was a dragonling. The dragons visited one by one, sitting outside the cave mouth and speaking to Kai with their strange chinking sounds. Ping was relieved that she had employment again. On more than one occasion, she had to stop herself from feeling glad that Kai had been injured.

Ping hoped that the dragons would realise that she could be useful and allow her to have a role in the dragon haven. Perhaps they would accept her as
a member of the cluster. She could communicate with all the dragons now. No other Dragonkeeper had achieved that. She liked the idea of having eight dragons to care for. As far as she knew, no other true Dragonkeeper had cared for more than one dragon. She would complete the nine.

On the fourth day, Kai got up and limped outside. The females chattered like starlings as he emerged. They each reached out to touch him. He went to the purple pool to wash. Then he spent the rest of the day moving from the yellow healing pool to the white rejuvenating pool.

Tun and Shuang had to take Hei Lei’s place and hunt for food. Neither was as big or as strong as Hei Lei, but they hoped that together they could provide for the cluster. The long flights exhausted Tun and the prey they brought back was smaller. There was enough to eat, but rarely any left over to dry for winter.

Ping spent long hours searching the plateau for mushrooms and edible roots, but her additions to the winter store were only small. She wanted one of the winged dragons to take her further afield to find fruit, nuts and green vegetables that could be dried for storage, but they refused as they didn’t want to risk being seen by other humans.

When he was well enough, Kai joined the dragons for a moon gathering. The meeting didn’t last long, but Jiang told Ping that the council had agreed that
Kai was their leader. There was no debate. He was the first dragon of five colours for three generations. But because of his youth, it was decided that the female council would continue to make decisions for the cluster until Kai’s horns grew.

“Did Danzi know that Kai is a dragon of five colours?” Ping asked Jiang after the gathering.

“He couldn’t have. It is the blood of first battle flowing through Kai’s scales that has made them show their true colours for the first time. But Danzi’s father was a dragon of five colours. Though he didn’t inherit the trait himself, he would have known there was a chance that Kai would.”

“Kai should take a new name now that he is leader,” Gu Hong said.

“Kai doesn’t want a new name.” He had overheard. “Kai wants to keep the name that Father gave.”

“All dragon leaders take a new name,” Jiang said.

“I’ve got an idea, Kai,” Ping said, picking up the stick that she’d used to write messages to Gu Hong in the clay. “You can still call yourself Kai, but you can write it differently.”