The Clockwork Dragon

by James R. Hannibal

  The others followed, with Sadie riding Biyu and Liu Fai on Meilin. Xiaoquan passed over and around them, carried in the trio’s draft like a balloon in the wind. They had started slow, but Jack had quickly developed an eye for the cut of the mountain path—the gaps and depressions it caused in the green canopy.

  An hour later they saw a large rock formation breaking through the trees.

  “That’s it,” Liu Fai called, fishtailing on Meilin as he tried to bring her alongside Laohu. Liu Fai’s flying was not as smooth, but he did not have the benefit of a thought connection. He pointed for half a second, then clutched at her flank to avoid sliding off. “Put down over there, in that clearing. Hermits are reclusive by nature. No need to make things worse by landing on the cave’s doorstep with a squadron of dragons.”

  After a graceful touchdown, which Jack had nothing to do with, Jack slid off Laohu and laid a hand on his neck. “Thank you.”

  Boy fat.

  Lose weight.

  “I . . . What?” Jack caught a hint of mirth behind Laohu’s platinum eyes. His shock melted into a smile. “Hilarious.”

  “What’s hilarious?” Liu Fai removed a canteen from his pack.

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  The emissary shrugged and brought the canteen to his lips. He coughed. “It’s warm.”

  “I think that’s because you’ve been riding on a fire-breathing dragon.”

  Liu Fai gave him an I-was-just-about-to-get-there look, then waggled the canteen at Jack, covering it in frost.

  Xiaoquan floated over, drawn perhaps by the motion. He listed to one side in random balloon fashion, rear end rising toward the vertical, sniffed the canteen, and then playfully snapped his jaws.

  Jack recognized the behavior. “He did the same thing during the fight. He wanted fire.”

  “You want fire?” Liu Fai pointed at Jack. “Talk to him. I can’t help you.”

  “That’s not it,” said Sadie. She pointed at the canteen. “I think he likes the frost. Try giving him some ice.”

  Liu Fai looked skeptical, but he pressed his hands together to form an ice ball and tossed it at the dragon.

  Xiaoquan snatched the little sphere out of the air, but there wasn’t much to it. He brought his tail end back to the horizontal and let out an exasperated belch, smacking his lips.

  Jack stifled a laugh. “Try again, something more substantial.”

  On the next attempt, Liu Fai produced a ball large enough to fool an umpire at Yankee Stadium. The steam dragon gulped it down.

  Xiaoquan’s balloonish form narrowed. The pallor of his light blue scales darkened.

  “Whoa,” said Jack, walking over. “Hit him again.”

  Liu Fai tossed three more in quick succession, and Xiaoquan snapped them all up. A gurgle rumbled deep inside the dragon’s belly. A moment later, he spewed out a flood of cold water, straight into Jack’s face.

  “H-hey! Watch it!” Jack rubbed the water out of his eyes, and drew a breath at what he saw.

  Xiaoquan had deflated to his small, serpentine self, royal blue and rolling through the air in triumph.

  Sadie grabbed the hem of her brother’s shirt and pulled it away from his chest, wringing it out. “Liu Fai’s ice doused his fire.”

  Biyu and the tree dragon lined up next, like kids at an ice-cream truck.

  Jack liked the tree dragon’s transformation the best. Meilin only needed a single ice ball. The orange glow behind her charred black scales dimmed, and her flanks returned to a rich, dark bronze. She curled up in the low branches of a nearby oak, and as her eyelids drooped to closed, green scales sprouted all over her spine and legs, making her nearly invisible. Biyu, scales lightening to their original color, nestled in among a pile of boulders, disappearing as well.

  Laohu, however, turned up his golden nose. He looked Jack’s way.

  Fire.

  Mine.

  “All right,” said Jack, raising his hands. “Keep your fire.” He would have said, Chill out, but he did not think Laohu would find it amusing. The treasure dragon shot up through the canopy.

  “They need you, Liu Fai,” observed Sadie, watching the leaves fall in Laohu’s wake.

  The frost faded from Liu Fai’s fingers. “I would not go that far.”

  “No,” said Jack. “She’s right. The dragos and the long wushi are both obsessed with fire, and they both act as little more than dogcatchers for dragons, even if they go about it in different ways.” He fixed his gaze on Liu Fai. “But look what you and I have accomplished in a couple of days. Maybe the relationship between man and dragon works best with fire and ice. Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be.”

  Liu Fai snorted. “Tell that to my father.”

  Jack answered with a single nod. “I will.”

  A short hike up the trail brought them to a narrow rock crevice, unadorned and unimpressive. But once they squeezed through, they found a cavernous chamber of stone and moss filled with the drip, drip of mountain runoff.

  And that was only the foyer.

  A stone bridge took them within inches of a waterfall, pouring down from high above and evaporating far below, then out into open air. There, the bridge became wood, a seamless joining into the roots and limbs of gnarled trees growing at steep angles in a cylindrical chasm.

  Jack found it all quite beautiful, but he could not suppress a growing sense of unease. The place might have been empty for years. An arch carved into the chasm wall brought them into yet another cave, with thick columns of tangled roots descending from the ceiling. Shelves, benches, and tables were carved from the rock walls and floor. This one, at least, was furnished. But there were still no signs of recent activity.

  Jack rapped Liu Fai on the arm. “There is an actual mountain hermit in your mountain hermit cave, right?”

  “I made no guarantees.” Hands clasped behind him, Liu Fai bent to examine a dusty line of glass containers on a stone table that surrounded one of the root columns. “The hermit lives in the mountain, but she is no prisoner. Perhaps she is out.”

  “She?” Jack could not mask his surprise.

  “Yes. She,” said a soft voice. A woman in a long silk robe appeared on the other side of the chamber, holding a watering can as if her guests had caught her tending to her plants.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “YOU COME SEEKING WISDOM.” The woman tilted the can, letting water spill down a bundle of vines. White flowers bloomed wherever the droplets came to rest. “And in your mind, wisdom is an old man with drooping whiskers and a long wispy beard, rather than a woman. Is that why your eyes did not find me?”

  Sadie turned on her brother. “Yeah, Jack. Is that why?”

  “I . . . Uh . . . I mean . . .” He couldn’t finish.

  Their host set the can on a shelf carved from the rock, among beakers, texts, and scrolls. “Be at ease. I am not offended. Your arrival brings good fortune.” She looked past Jack, toward the entrance, and he followed her gaze in time to see Xiaoquan poke his blue nose into view. The little dragon had followed them. From the water beading on his scales, Jack guessed he had stopped along the way to play in the waterfall. The woman stretched out a hand. “Come in, please, and show yourself, if that is what you desire.”

  Xiaoquan needed no other invitation. He zipped into the room, did a figure eight around two of the root columns, and spiraled around the hermit from her ankles up to her neck, finally wrapping his tail around her waist and settling his chin on her shoulder.

  “He likes you,” said Sadie.

  The hermit nodded, earning a mirroring nod from Xiaoquan. “I believe he does. You may call me Dailan. I am pleased to meet you.” She gestured at a circle of small boulders surrounding a cold fire pit. “Please. Sit down. Let us share some tea.”

  It took the hermit only a moment to size up Jack and Liu Fai, with the dragon at her shoulder matching her discerning smile, tail scratching his chin. She motioned to Jack, and he knew what she wanted, but without the adrenaline of an attackin
g thief or monster, he struggled to produce fire. After a few embarrassing sparks, he struck a flame, igniting the coals.

  Dailan raised a kettle up to Xiaoquan. “If you wouldn’t mind?” He obliged her with a long stream of water, and she hung the kettle over the fire. “Very good. You have spared me a walk.”

  “Um . . . ,” said Jack, eyeing the kettle of dragon spit. Sadie bumped his knee to shut him up.

  “Now.” Dailan balanced a tray of bowls and pitchers on the edge of the fire pit. “Tell me your tale.”

  Jack held nothing back. And all the while, Dailan brewed the tea, a graceful shell game of pouring, collecting, and re-pouring with the many bowls and pitchers. “So this Gall of yours seeks immortality?” she asked. “An ancient quest, to be sure, and perhaps the most selfish.”

  “Selfish?” Sadie’s eyes tracked the hermit’s every elegant move.

  “Oh yes. As many quests are.” Dailan passed around the smallest of the bowls. “Each life begins as a pitcher of the finest tea, sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet, with many bowls to fill.” She set the last bowl beside her own knee and tipped the largest pitcher, pouring out the glittering tea. “If we pour too much into our own quests”—the tea began to overflow, sizzling and spitting on the coals—“how much will remain for those we love?”

  Much to Jack’s chagrin, the hermit saved enough for them all to have a full bowl. Sadie pinched the back of his calf and he forced a smile, raising his bowl of brewed dragon spit. “You said the search for immortality is selfish, but aren’t you . . .” Jack let the question trail off as he took a sip. He could taste hibiscus, jasmine, and fish—maybe salamander.

  “Immortal?” Dailan’s eyes laughed, much like Xiaoquan’s. “The men and women of my family are long-lived, some surviving for two centuries or more. This has given rise to a legend, but rest assured, I am as mortal as you. We must all leave this sphere eventually.”

  “The First Emperor did not believe so,” argued Liu Fai, sipping his dragon-spit-hibiscus-salamander tea. “And neither does Gall.”

  Dailan set her bowl down and sighed, and Xiaoquan sighed with her, chin flopping on her shoulder. “In that folly, he has killed one of your friends, and taken another.”

  At the mention of Gwen, Jack pushed his tea aside. No more delays. No more discussion. “You can help us get her back. You can ‘guide our eyes.’ ”

  “How your father discerned this, I cannot tell.” Dailan said something in Chinese and Xiaoquan left her shoulder, curling up on a long boulder beside the fire. She crossed to the shelf where she had set the water can. “But he was right. I can help. When you are lost, it is best to go back to the beginning. In this case, the beginning is the first stolen artifact.”

  “The journal of the Qin grand astronomer,” said Liu Fai.

  Dailan ran a finger along her books and scrolls. “Yes. Shi Lu. My ancestor. In his long years, he served both the Qin and Han dynasties, under multiple names and titles.” Her finger came to rest on a hefty scroll made of long wooden rods with triangular cross sections. She drew it from the shelf, glancing at Liu Fai. “You may remember him as Sima Qian, the famous historian.”

  Jack left the fire to get a closer look. “How can you be sure Shi Lu’s text, out of all the stolen artifacts, is so important to locating Gwen?”

  “The answer you seek lies within the question. Shi Lu’s text is the only stolen artifact that refers to a specific location. His many titles included royal architect, and he is famous for two incredible structures. The original Great Wall”—Dailan let the scroll fall open, and the flat sides of the triangular rods aligned into an etching of an underground palace—“and the First Emperor’s tomb.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  JACK KNELT TO EXAMINE the etching. Shi Lu had drawn a cavern with rays of light shining down from the ceiling. The sprawling open palace below reminded him of China’s Forbidden City. He let his fingers graze the ancient scroll. “You think the clockwork dragon took Gwen here?”

  “All the clues you described point to the emperor’s tomb.”

  The mountain hermit guides your eyes. His dad’s poem had been tragically accurate so far. If it advised Jack to trust the hermit, he would not argue. And there was something else, another piece of the puzzle poem they had not solved. The etching rotated in Jack’s vision, changing perspective. The narrow rays of light shining down on the palace became a constellation of stars. But the palace was underground, so they couldn’t be real stars, and fake stars wouldn’t move with the Earth’s rotation.

  Beneath the stars that never wheel. He almost spoke the line out loud.

  With a little effort, Jack mentally reversed the etching, taking a bird’s-eye view of the miniature peaks and valleys surrounding the palace plateau. “Are those rivers?”

  “Of pure mercury,” said Dailan.

  Above the rivers made of steel. The etching in his mind’s eye fell back into place on the wood. “That’s it. We know where Gall is holding Gwen. Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” said Dailan. “There is more.” With agonizingly slow and deliberate grace, she returned the tea set to its table and laid the scroll on the edge of the pit. She passed a hand along the slats, turning them all to display a new picture—rows of rigid soldiers, armed with crossbows. “There are good reasons that the emperor’s tomb has never been unsealed.”

  With a rhythmic clickety-clack that poked at Jack’s impatience, she turned the slats again. In the new etching, a stern-faced man raised a scepter over scores of bedraggled laborers. “A force of seven hundred thousand toiled for thirty-eight years to build the emperor’s necropolis. Shi Lu picked the most ingenious among them to help him devise diabolical traps.”

  “If the complex is so dangerous,” asked Liu Fai, “then how do you suppose Gall got in?”

  “That, I suspect, is why he stole the book.” Dailan scratched Xiaoquan behind the horns. “There are hundreds of bodies under that mound—concubines, ministers, engineers, and more. All were betrayed to keep the emperor’s secrets, Shi Lu as well. But he designed a hidden escape route and recorded its secrets in a coded section of the text Gall stole.”

  “Why go to all that trouble?” asked Sadie, scooting closer so she could scratch the water dragon too. “What’s down there that’s so important?”

  Dailan guided her hand to just the right spot, and Xiaoquan’s back leg thumped the stone. “It is not what lies within the tomb that is so important. It is the tomb itself.” With Sadie having taken over the job of pleasing Xiaoquan, Dailan was free to pass her fingers over the triangular slats one final time, returning them to the palace etching. But the etching had changed. A cutout view exposed a mass of pumps, gears, and pulleys beneath the palace plateau.

  Jack glanced at the other two. Neither Sadie nor Liu Fai seemed surprised that the three-sided slats had managed to produce a fourth image.

  “Qin Shi Huang never intended to die,” said Dailan. “Thus, the tomb was never meant to be a tomb. Under the emperor’s guidance, Shi Lu and his laborers created a massive engine of clockwork and mercury, designed to imbue the one sitting on its jade throne with the gift of eternal life.” She rolled up the scroll. “At least, that is what the emperor believed. And now this Gall of yours has inherited his madness.”

  “He is not our Gall.” Obeying a gesture from the hermit, Jack returned the scroll to the shelf. “But we will bring him down. Without Shi Lu’s secret passage, how do we get into the tomb?”

  With none of the effort that age often requires, Dailan moved the dragon’s head from her lap and stood from her place at the fire. She reached and drew a flat piece of black jade about the size of Jack’s palm from the folds of her robe and presented it to him with a bow. “If you intend to brave the dangers of the tomb, you will need this.”

  Jack accepted the object with a hesitant bow of his own and held it closer to the fire’s glow. The jade, smoothed by time, had been carved into the silhouette of a rearing horse.

  “This black
horse belonged to Shi Lu,” said Dailan. “It is my family’s most precious heirloom. Use it well.”

  Jack cast her a sideways glance, not wanting to be rude, but not knowing how else to ask. “For what?”

  “You will know when the time comes.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  DAILAN GUIDED JACK, SADIE, and Liu Fai back to the mountain trail, and once the other two had started down the path, she offered Jack a final word of advice. “Qin Shi Huang was mad, for certain, but he was also a genius who experimented with animating the inanimate—a key piece of his quest for immortality.” She paused to whisper something to Xiaoquan, sending him curling and somersaulting up into the trees, then returned her gaze to Jack. “In addition to Shi Lu’s traps, there may be creatures in the necropolis the likes of which you have never encountered. And they may be quite difficult to dispatch.”

  By dispatch, Jack supposed she meant kill—if you could kill something that had never been alive in the first place. He answered with far more confidence than he felt. “We can handle whatever Gall and the tomb throw at us. We’ll have to.”

  Laohu had returned at Sadie’s call, and after firing up Biyu and Meilin, the three set off to find the tomb. Xiaoquan did not accept a fireball, preferring to remain in his sleeker form so that he could weave and loop in and out of the formation. They had not gone far before Jack steered Laohu into a turn. “Did you hear that?”

  Liu Fai shook his head, although staying mounted on his dragon seemed to absorb his entire focus.

  Sadie pointed to the forest canopy. “Down there.”

  A sniffle. A whimper. Jack recognized the voice—the shape of it, the hint of bitter yellow in its color. The trees became translucent in his mental vision and there she was, walking no discernible trail. “Ghost.”

  “No,” said Liu Fai, anticipating what came next. “Absolutely not.”

  Sadie pleaded with her eyes. A thought pulsated in Jack’s brain. You can’t leave her. And before he had made any conscious decision, Laohu had brought him down through the trees.