Dragonkeeper 2: Garden of the Purple Dragon (7 page)

Ping hit the water. She sank under the surface, reaching with her feet to touch the bottom. She couldn’t find it. The well was deep. She heard a muffled scream of pain. She peered up through the greenish water and could see the dark shape of the necromancer and flashes of flame. Ping paddled her arms, trying to stop herself from sinking. She had to get back to the surface and save Kai. Her arms were as heavy as iron bars. Her gown billowed up around her head.

Then something hit the surface of the water and plunged towards her in a cloud of bubbles. When the bubbles cleared, Ping saw that it was a cooking pot. The pot was twisting and distorting. Kai was finally changing back into his dragon shape. His hard little body slammed into her. Ping was running out of air. Panic gave her strength and she kicked her legs and paddled her arms. She slowly started to rise again. Ping resurfaced and just had time to gulp a mouthful of air before she felt something pull her beneath the water again. She turned to see the little dragon with the hem of her gown in his mouth. He was dragging her down. In the water he was stronger than she was. She struggled against him, but she’d used up all her reserves of energy. He kept pulling her down, down, down. The well was deeper than she had ever imagined. Kai dragged her into its depths, until
there wasn’t enough light to see him through the dark green water.

“Don’t, Kai.” She shouted the words in her mind, even though there was no way he could hear them. “I can’t stay underwater like you.” Her voice in her head sounded hopeless. “Kai, I’m drowning.”

Ping had to have air. Immediately. Kai was above her now, pushing her down with his large paws. She used her last
shu
of strength to try and resist him. Her feeble efforts were useless. She gave herself up to the waters. She opened her mouth and breathed in the dark water. At least Kai could hide in the depths. He might be saved from the necromancer. The thought calmed her. Then she heard a faint voice in her head.

“Ping.”

Someone was calling her name.

“Ping.”

It wasn’t a voice she had ever heard before. She thought it might be her ancestors calling her up to Heaven, but the voice sounded high and excited, like a child’s. Kai pushed her sideways with his big paws. She banged her head on a rock archway.

Then she was coughing up water and breathing air again.

It was pitch dark. Ping struggled to make sense of what had happened. Her body was still floating in cold water, but her head was in air. She sucked in the air gratefully. It was dank and stale. She reached out into
the darkness. Something nipped her fingers. It was Kai. Ping felt around. He was on a rock shelf. She hauled herself up onto it. It was like lifting a sack of stones.

A sound like high notes played on a silver flute echoed on rock surfaces.

“Ping,” said the voice in her mind. “Ping.”

Her fumbling hands found a small dragon shape. She hugged it to her even though the talons and the spines stuck into her skin. She didn’t mind. A few minutes ago she had been convinced she would die and Kai would be left to fend for himself. Just the fact that they were both together and alive was a miracle. Kai nibbled her ear. She heard the tinkling flute notes again. They were coming from the dragon.

“Ping,” the voice in her mind repeated.

Her body was numb with cold, but her brain was starting to work again. A realisation hit her like a slap on the face. The voice in her head. It was Kai’s.

“You saved me, Kai,” she said.

“Ping.”

She felt around her. The underwater cavern was small, narrow enough so that she could reach both sides with outstretched arms, not even high enough for her to stand up in. Kai must have found this underwater pocket of air when he dived earlier. He had jumped into the water to push her down to the safety of the underwater cave. He had said his first word and it was her name.

Sitting in the damp darkness, everything became clear to her, like a spider’s web hung with dew in the morning sun. It wasn’t Kai’s fault that she hadn’t heard his voice. It was her fault. She had never spoken to him with her mind before. All these months she had been chatting and chiding with her mouth, she hadn’t once thought of speaking to him with her mind. Not until she thought she was drowning, when she couldn’t open her mouth because she was surrounded by water. Not until she was forced to, had she spoken to him with her mind as she’d done with Danzi. She had somehow been expecting Kai to start the communication, not realising that she needed to teach him. How stupid she’d been! Babies didn’t wake up one day and know how to speak. Their mothers talked to them every day, teaching them language slowly, word by word. Ping was ashamed of herself. Her concern had been all for herself—her loneliness, the weight of her responsibilities, the sacrifices she’d made to care for the dragon. It wasn’t until she thought she was dying and leaving the little dragon alone in the world that she had cared enough to speak to Kai with her heart.

She had always thought of her relationship with the baby dragon as a one-way thing. She’d had to do all the work with no reward. Kai didn’t teach her the way Danzi had. She had been too slow-witted to realise the truth. She was the most important thing in the world for Kai. And equally, he was the most important thing
in the world for her. He was her reason for living, her life’s work. If he died, she would have no reason to go on. Why had she never realised this before? Caring for him wasn’t a burden. It was a pleasure, a privilege. And it certainly wasn’t a one-way relationship. Kai was very young, but he had already saved her life. He had rescued her from the necromancer. The little dragon nipped her fingers.

Even though it was pitch dark, she closed her eyes. It helped her concentrate. The necromancer would assume she had drowned. He would search the shepherd’s hut for Kai but when he didn’t find him, he would leave.

“We’ll wait,” she told Kai without opening her mouth. “We’ll wait here until he’s gone.”

“Ping,” the little dragon said, and he curled up on the ledge beside her with his head in her lap.

In the damp darkness it was impossible to measure time. Ping couldn’t tell whether minutes or hours had passed, but she felt stronger. She closed her ears and eyes and turned off her bodily senses one by one, until her second sight was the only thing that linked her to the world. There was no hard mass in her stomach. The necromancer had gone, she was sure of it.

“Come on, Kai,” she said, sounding the words in her head. “We’re going back up, but I can’t do it without you. You’ll have to lead the way.”

Ping couldn’t see Kai, but she heard him plop into the water. It was as if she’d been previously speaking to
him in a barbarian language and had only just started speaking his native tongue. She lowered herself in the water.

She felt Kai place his tail in the palm of her hand. She held onto it and took a deep breath.

“Swim, Kai,” she said, though she didn’t say the words aloud.

“Ping,” said the voice in her head.

She felt the water around her move. She kept her eyes closed, concentrating on not breathing, on kicking as hard as she could. The journey up through the well seemed long, much longer than the journey down. Her lungs felt like they would burst. She opened her eyes. The water still stretched above her, but it had changed from black to dark green. Kai was moving through the water as sleek as a fish.

Finally Ping broke through the surface, gasping in the sunlit air that filled her hungry lungs, but blinded her eyes. She pulled herself out of the well, still breathing hard. She leapt to her feet, bracing herself for an attack, summoning her
qi
power. Her eyes grew accustomed to the light. It was late afternoon and there was no sign of the necromancer, no trace of his contaminating presence. Kai climbed out of the well and shook himself like a wet dog. Hua appeared with drops of blood around his mouth.

Ping picked up Hua and went straight to the hut. The necromancer had been inside—the sheepskins
were thrown on the floor, the food chest upended—but the mess looked like frustrated anger rather than a proper search. Still, Ping had to be very careful—the necromancer was a shape-changer. But she had one advantage over him. Her second sight. She would have to pay much more attention to it.

Ping shivered. “It will soon be dark enough to light a fire and have some supper,” she said.

Kai made a tinkling flute sound.

As Ping sat by the fire and ate a hot meal, she was grateful for these simple comforts. She would never take her good fortune for granted again. There was one thing she had to do, though, before winter set in. Kai needed a daily supply of milk. She had to find another goat. She decided to go down the mountain to the nearest village the next day and buy one. She resolved to start collecting nuts and berries for her winter store. She would practise her
qi
exercises every day without fail. She now spoke to Kai in her mind, but when it was bedtime she told him stories. She repeated important words aloud, so that he would gradually come to understand spoken words better. It would be important for him to be able to know what people were saying when they were out in the world. He liked her simple stories about shepherds tending sheep, about a clever rat, and about a slave girl who lived on a lonely mountain.

When Kai was asleep, Ping sat by the fire and thought
of ways she could repay the shepherd for the use of his hut. She would carve a bowl for him. She would mend his summer trousers and tunic, which were full of holes. She would wash his sheepskin rugs that smelt like they were still attached to sheep. When they left in spring, she would leave the little hut spotless.

She got up at dawn ready to make the journey down the mountain. Before she set out, she did her
qi
exercises on the grassy slope outside the hut, breathing in the
qi
from the rising sun, feeling it warm her skin. Kai kept interrupting her.

“Ping, Ping.”

He was excited about the trip down the mountainside.

“Sssh, Kai,” she said. “We’ll be leaving soon.”

Ping closed her eyes so that she could concentrate and block out any other interruptions.

“Ping. Ping! PING!”

“Kai, I told you to wait.”

Ping opened her eyes. The golden sunlight was reflecting on metal. There were swords and spears— many of them. There were also red leather caps and vests, and wooden shields. It took her mind a few moments to make sense of these unfamiliar things. It was a section of imperial guards, ten of them. They had crept up the hillside without making a sound. Kai had taken the shape of a rock. The guards formed a ring
around her, their spears all pointed in her direction. Ping couldn’t understand why her second sight hadn’t warned her.

“It is a serious crime to trespass on the sacred slopes of Tai Shan,” the captain said.

One of the soldiers peered at Ping. “I know who this is,” he said. “It’s the sorceress from Huangling.”

“The one who escaped with the imperial dragon?” the captain asked.

The guard nodded and looked around nervously, as if he expected a dragon to jump out and attack them. The captain stood up straight.

“In the name of the Great Emperor, Son of Heaven, Commander of the Armies, Wisest Among Us, I arrest you for the crimes of deserting an imperial post, stealing the last imperial dragon and trespassing on the sacred slopes of Tai Shan,” he said. “Before the eight Immortals, between the five sacred mountains, under the sun and moon, I arrest you and take you to bow down before your Emperor, and confess your crimes.”

A blur of blue fur attached itself to the nearest man. The guard yelped as Hua bit his arm, and blood poured from it. Another guard lunged at Hua, hitting him with the hilt of his sword. Hua let go of the guard’s arm and slumped to the ground.

“No,” Ping shouted. “Don’t kill him! He’s a special rat, a sorceress’s rat. The Emperor will want to examine him.”

Ping looked around anxiously for Kai. The rock had disappeared. All she could see was a spade leaning against the hut wall. Her mind wasn’t working as fast as it should be. She thought the spade was around the other side of the hut. She heard a short, sharp flute note over and over again. It was Kai. He was afraid.

“Ping,” said a frightened voice in her head.

The spade turned into a soup ladle. The guards were all staring at Ping, so they didn’t see the shape-change. Two of them moved towards her. She thrust out her arm, sending out a bolt of
qi
power. The invisible force knocked the nearest guard off his feet. The guards raised their shields. Ping sent out another
qi
bolt, but the soldiers’ shields deflected it. Two guards grabbed Ping by the arms.

They brought Ping’s belongings outside and studied them. The captain looked at the two identical soup ladles with a puzzled frown. He reached out to pick one up. Ping held her breath and waited for a small dragon to appear. The air around the ladle shifted slightly as the captain tried to grasp it. His hand turned rigid. The colour drained from his face. His eyes glazed over. He opened his mouth to say something. The words remained unspoken. He fell to the ground with a heavy thud and lay as stiff as a spear. The guards stared at their leader’s inert body, unsure what to do. One of them bent close to his chest.

“He’s still breathing,” he said.

The guards all turned fearfully to Ping. She felt nine spears digging into her through her gown. She could hear an anxious “Ping, Ping, Ping” in her head. There were so many iron weapons. Though they weren’t close to Kai, they were still causing him pain.

“Don’t try any more sorcery or we’ll stick you,” one of the guards said.

He waved his spear towards her things. “Pick them up.”

Ping collected up her cooking bowls and the other ladle, and put them in her bag. She turned her back on the guards as she picked up the ladle that was Kai, shielding him from the iron. As she reached out to the ladle her hands grasped a dragon-shape. The sensation of seeing one thing and feeling something completely different made her feel dizzy. Specks of light drifted in front of her eyes and there was a ringing in her ears. She glanced at the unconscious captain. It obviously had a more drastic effect on other people. Kai wrapped his tail around her arm. To the guards it looked as if she had a ladle hooked over her arm.