Shadow Sister (30 page)

Sunila was almost spent. He didn’t have the strength to shape-change or to create a storm. All he could do was breath mist. Zhao arrows had grazed his wings, but they had not been pierced, so he took off. A few Zhao had weapons left, but they were weary and their arrows fell back to the ground, unable to reach him. As the
naga
swooped above them, he exhaled again and again, and the cold mist sank to the ground, covering the battlefield with a white fog. The Zhao stumbled around, unable to see where they were going. Sunila retreated into his own mist.

Tao was sure his allies were all defeated, but the moon came out from behind the clouds and Baoyu reappeared. She was the only one who could not be harmed by the weapons of men. She swept over to the nomads, showing her decaying ghost face and leaving cold fear inside every man. She spooked Jilong’s horse. It reared, threw the warlord off, and galloped away.

Tao managed to get to his feet. The wound in his shoulder was so painful that he thought he was going to pass out, but he gathered his remaining strength and searched for Pema. He found her bound together with some of her bandits. He cut them free with his wolf tooth.

Pema grasped his hand. “I thought you were dead.”

“Not yet.”

The sky to the east had turned pale grey. The sun would soon be rising.

The Zhao were reduced from more than fifty men to less than ten. Baoyu was continuing to terrify them, allowing the surviving Black Camel Bandits to escape. The battlefield was strewn with bodies ripped open by awful wounds or bearing the puncture marks of a
naga
bite. Riderless horses with wild eyes fled from the battleground. The wounded were crying out. This place was more like one of the realms of hell than anything Tao had experienced when he was trapped underground. And he couldn’t imagine that hell itself could be any worse.

He smiled at Pema. She held her broken arm against her body. They were both injured, but they had survived.

An arc of brilliant sunlight appeared over the walls of Luoyang. Baoyu faded to nothing.

Jilong walked out of the shreds of mist, which were all that remained of Sunila’s fog. The chest wounds the
naga
had inflicted had weakened him, but he was determined to finish off his two worst enemies.

Tao didn’t have the strength to fight even a wounded Jilong. Instead, he gently put his arms around Pema, partly so that he could protect her from the warlord’s blade, mostly because if he was going to die, he could think of no better way to depart this life than with her in his arms.

Jilong unsheathed his sword as he approached. “There’s no escaping this time. A seer is no use if he’s a traitor as well.”

Two of Jilong’s guards grabbed Pema and pulled her away from Tao.

The warlord examined Tao as if he was a freshly cooked haunch and he was thinking about the best way to carve it. Tao’s
qi
was depleted. His allies were exhausted, wounded or dispersed by the sun. Dead
wuji
littered the battlefield, their short lives sacrificed for Tao’s cause. Jilong smiled as he raised his sword.

And then a dragon leaped out of nowhere. Green, strong and proud, he looked bigger than he really was. With his tail, he knocked the sword from Jilong’s hand. Kai had used his mirage skill to hide himself until he was almost upon them. He held Tao’s staff in one paw and he threw it to Tao who caught it easily. The Zhao quailed when they saw yet another unnatural foe.

“Don’t worry about the dragon,” Jilong said. “He may seem fierce but it’s an illusion. He is weak from being chained, and your iron swords will render him as fragile as a newborn foal.”

The soldiers held back, unconvinced. As they turned to run, Kai attacked them, raking their flesh with his talons. The sight of the dragon, fresh and strong, despite having run all the way from the Huan compound, gave Tao new hope. This was why his vision had told him to leave Kai behind! He was needed at the end of the battle when all Tao’s allies were spent. Kai collided with Jilong, knocking him over. The Zhao leader was soon on his feet again with his sword drawn. But he had little strength left. And Kai was angry. Jilong’s guard were reduced to six men. Pema took care of two of them.Tao could hold only one of them at bay, blocking his sword with his staff. The dragon head on the staff glowed in the dawn light, making it seem like more than a piece of wood.

The other four guards ran towards Kai, but the dragon swept them over with one stroke of his tail, as if they were pieces on a board game. They got to their feet, looking around for the dragon, but Kai had disappeared. He couldn’t make himself invisible like Sunila could, but he could shape-change into something small that they didn’t notice. Tao saw a mouse scamper behind Jilong and turn into a tiger. Kai’s roar didn’t sound like a tiger’s roar, but it terrified the surviving Zhao soldiers. Kai turned into a monkey and then a vase of flowers. He was ready to have some fun with them, but Jilong didn’t have a sense of humour. He took two steps forwards and ran his sword through the vase. Tao gasped. The dragon took on his true shape, purple blood seeping from a wound in his flank. The point of the sword had managed to slip between two scales. Kai groaned and staggered as if he was about to collapse. The guards moved to finish him off.

“Leave the dragon,” Jilong said. “I wounded him with an iron weapon. He will soon die. Get the seer.”

The sight of the dragon’s blood reawakened the captain of the guard’s lost courage. He strode over to Tao, who held up his staff, but even the thought of immediate death couldn’t raise another
shu
of energy from his battered body.

Pema tried to come to Tao’s rescue but she was still fending off one of the guards. The other lay at her feet. The captain aimed his sword at Tao’s heart. Kai leapt at him. The cinnabar, Tao thought, Kai had remembered to eat more. He’d pretended the wound was serious. The iron sword had done little harm. Tao saw the dragon’s eyes change from brown to red. Kai lowered his horns. The Zhao soldier tried to run, but Kai was at full strength and he could have outrun a galloping horse. It wasn’t a fair contest, but at that point Kai had no interest in fairness. He was a beast, a wild animal intent on his prey. He reached for the nomad with the talons of his left paw and grasped him as easily as a tiger catching a rabbit. He tilted his head to one side, cold and calculating, and aimed his horns at the gap between the front and back panels of the captain’s armour. Tao wanted to cry out to stop him, but his voice wouldn’t come. The dragon’s horns sunk deep into flesh. The captain was surprised to see his own blood pooling on the ground in the dawn light. But Kai hadn’t finished. He thrust his horns in deeper so that they found the heart, lungs and liver. The soldier’s legs crumpled as if he was made of nothing more substantial than paper. Kai pulled out his horns. The captain was dead before he reached the ground, a gaping hole in his side.

Kai turned on Jilong, blood dripping from his horns. He loped towards the warlord. This was no instinctive attack brought on by a rush of anger or fear. Tao could hear Kai’s thoughts as he decided where to land a lethal blow. Jilong saw the dragon’s red eyes. He whistled to his horse, which returned to his master, despite the fact that there was a dragon about to attack. Jilong swung up onto the horse as it passed.

“Death to all dragons!” he shouted before he galloped away with his three remaining guards. Kai didn’t chase them.

Tao, Kai and Pema stood together. They had suceeded against all odds. Tao couldn’t help smiling. His visions hadn’t betrayed him. It was his own mind that had misled him. His visions had only ever told him the truth.

Tao and his allies limped back to the Huan compound, and allowed themselves just one night to rest, one day to heal. All the wounds, dragon and human, were cleaned, stitched and treated with red cloud herb. Pema’s broken arm was bound and strapped to her. Throughout that day and night Sunila and Kai took turns to pace the top of the wall, their dragon eyes piercing the surrounding countryside for any sign of a Zhao attack.

Darkness had fallen. Baoyu was drifting around the courtyard, her ghost gown billowing around her.

“I’m grateful that you are staying here to guard my family’s home,” Tao said to her. “You aren’t my true sister, but you are my shadow sister. And now it is your home too.”

Wuji
circled Baoyu’s head like a crown and crawled beneath her like a moving carpet. With them to keep her company, she wouldn’t be lonely. Sparks of moonlight twinkled among the tendrils of her hair. Tao knew she was happy. And so was he. He had achieved everything he’d wished for. His friends were safe. All of them.

The ghost girl had begun her work before she left to assist them in the battle. She had thoroughly terrified Lady Wang. Judging by all the cockroaches, scorpions, ants and huntsman spiders they found in Wei’s room, the
wuji
had also done their part in ridding the compound of the nomad woman. By the time Tao and his friends returned from the battlefield, wounded and weary, Lady Wang and her entourage had gone.

The goat pen was empty when they returned. Tao didn’t know what had happened to Fo Tu Deng. He guessed that he had escaped to find a new place to taint, new people to exploit to his own advantage.

Tao had told the surviving Black Camel Bandits that they were welcome to make the compound their headquarters, but they had chosen to take off their masks and black clothing and melt back into life in Luoyang. They hadn’t given up their resistance to Zhao oppression, but before they could defeat the Zhao, they needed to increase their ranks. Tao was relieved that Pema didn’t go with them. She was too recognisable.

Tao said goodbye to Baoyu. They’d decided to follow the bandits’ example and travel only at night. It was no longer safe for them to stay at the Huan compound. Jilong and his men knew where they’d be.

They waited outside the gate while Sunila dropped the bar in place and then flew over the wall to join them. Then they set off into the night, heading west. Tao was still too weak from blood loss to walk. He was sitting in the cushioned wheelbarrow once used to transport Wei. Kai was pulling it. If anyone had seen them, they would have seemed a strange travelling party – two dragons, a blue-eyed girl and a boy in a barrow. No one would have guessed that they were victors in a battle. But no one saw them.

Though their futures didn’t lie in the same direction, they all wanted to get far away from Luoyang and the Zhao. Tao shivered as he recalled Jilong’s parting threat. Tao had no doubt he would seek revenge for his humiliating defeat.

Despite the worsening weather, Tao wasn’t cold. Lady Wang, in her haste to leave, had abandoned several boxes of clothing. Pema had gone through them and found fur-lined boots and coats made of squirrel and fox pelts for herself and Tao. He knew he would need them to survive the winter, so he’d said a prayer of thanks to the animals who had been sacrificed to help him.

Kai was leading them away from Zhao territory. Their first task was to escort Pema safely to Chengdu. Tao was looking forward to this journey. As soon as he was strong enough, he would walk at Pema’s side, talking to her day after day. They would have to say goodbye eventually, but for now they had time together.

“I hope I will never see Luoyang again,” he said.

He knew in his heart he wouldn’t. That filled him with relief and anxiety in equal measure.

“It is a big decision to leave behind all human contact,” Pema said. As happened so often, she had read his thoughts. “Are you ready to spend the rest of your life in the wilderness with dragons and no human companionship?”

“Yes.” It was time to be honest. “There is only one human I will miss. And that’s you.”

It was a clear night. The moon lit Pema’s face. Tao could see that she was troubled.

“I told those boys they would succeed against the Zhao and take back Luoyang,” she said. “They trusted me. It was a foolish plan.”

Five of the young bandits had died in the battle.

Tao reached out and took her hand.

“You didn’t force them to join you. It was their decision.”

“I have finished with revenge. It only brings more sorrow,” Pema said. “I am beginning to understand your reluctance to end the lives of any creatures.”

Sunila flapped down out of the darkness. He had been scouting ahead. The
naga
would stay with Tao and Kai for part of their journey, but he could not go with them to the dragon haven. He would struggle to survive in the cold mountains. Now he had wings, it would be easier for him to find food and, with luck, other
nagas
. But while his wings were still growing, he had decided to travel with them until they got to the northern borders of Tianzhu.

After that, Tao and Kai would leave the world of men behind. They would head north to the mountains where the dragon haven was hidden.

Sunila took a turn at pulling the wheelbarrow, and Pema kept him company. Kai dropped back to walk alongside Tao.

“I will lead us through valleys as far as I can,” the dragon said. “But sooner or later we must climb to the snowy peaks. It will not be easy.”

“I’d rather face any hardship that nature has to offer, than the suffering humans can devise.”

“The conflicts of men are behind us.”

“Jilong still lives,” Tao said. “All I have done is turn him against all dragons.”

“We have achieved many things. Firstly, none of us is a captive of the Zhao.”

“I suppose so. And now I think Pema really has let go of her wish for revenge.”

“You have unleashed your
qi
power. And your visions, though sometimes hard to understand, have never let us down.”

Tao smiled at a dragonfly that was hovering over his head. His was a strange
qi
power, but it had proved useful. And his visions had all combined to give them success, to enable Tao to face his destiny.

“How long will it take to reach the dragon haven?”

“A long time.”

“Is that a long time in dragon or human terms?”

“It will be months, but not years.”