Contents
Cover
Blurb
Logo
Maps
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Glossary
Pronunciation Guide
Afterword
Copyright
Other Books by Carole Wilkinson
The year is 325.
The powerful Han Dynasty is a distant memory and tribes of barbarian soldiers fight over what was once the Empire.
It is a dangerous time.
Kai is 465 years old – a teenager in dragon years.
He is searching for the person predestined to be his dragonkeeper.
Kai’s search has led him to a Buddhist novice named Tao.
But Tao is certain he is not the one; he has no interest in caring for a difficult dragon. He believes his path lies in another direction.
But Tao must learn to listen to the voice within himself and that no journey ever reveals its true purpose until it is over.
• Map of Luoyang Region •
• Map of China in the Sixteen Kingdoms Period •
• Luoyang 325 CE •
Chapter One
BRUSH AND INK
An oil lamp cast its pool of light on a blank piece of paper. A hand entered the pale circle – a left hand gently holding a brush exactly perpendicular. In the top right-hand corner, the wolf-hair bristles touched the paper, the black ink soaked in. Fingers, wrist and brush moved as one, leaving behind a column of strong, neat characters, each one perfectly formed. The bottom corner of the paper was held down with an irregular piece of gemstone, deep purple in the dim light. The hand moved to the left and started another column. It gently waved away a moth to save it from flying into the flame, then the brush disappeared for a few moments before returning, recharged with ink. The night crept past and the page slowly filled with columns of characters. Towards the end of the last column on the page, the hand slowed, loosened its grip. The brush became horizontal. A shaved head sank towards the paper.
Tao woke with a start. He heard a sound like wind chimes tinkling in a breeze. The sound faded and he could hear nothing but the steady patter of raindrops. He slid the lamp to the bottom of the page. Fortunately, his brush had been almost empty of ink when he had fallen asleep while writing the third brushstroke of a nine-stroke character. What should have been a firm vertical line was skewed to the right. He dipped just the tip of the brush in the pool of ink on his ink stone. He finished the character, managing to cover the wayward line with the remaining strokes. The character was ill-formed, but it could have been much worse. At least his night’s work wasn’t ruined.
Yinmi Monastery had a single scroll in its library. On it was written a translation of the Vinaya, the rules and disciplines that Buddha had set down for his followers, passed on by word of mouth for centuries before someone wrote them down. Lao Chen, Yinmi’s oldest monk, had brought the Vinaya back with him when he returned from his journey to Tianzhu, the home of the Buddha, many years before. He was the only one at the monastery who understood Sanskrit, and he had translated the words for the other monks to read. This was fortunate, as the original scroll was destroyed in a fire. Only a small, scorched fragment of that scroll survived and it was kept in a scented rosewood box in the monastery’s shrine. Tao was making a copy of the translation.
The rain had stopped. The clouds parted, allowing an almost full moon to dust the needles of the pine trees with pale silver light. Tao blew out the lamp flame to conserve oil. He could hardly keep his eyes open as he rolled up the scroll and put it away on a high shelf, out of sight of the other novices, along with his writing implements. He picked up the purple stone to place it next to them, but reconsidered. There was a thought at the back of his mind that wouldn’t quite form. The more he tried to get hold of it, the further it slipped away, like something almost forgotten. He was too tired to think.
As he picked up the water jar to refill it, he thought he heard the wind-chime sound again. The silver moonlight was replaced by a different light – greenish and unnatural. He turned and dropped the water jar. It shattered on the stone floor. A great four-footed animal stood in the doorway, glowing like a huge piece of polished jade. There were wild animals in the forest, some of them dangerous, but nothing as big as this, and none of them glowed in the moonlight. This creature’s body was covered with glimmering green scales. Long branched horns ending in sharp points protruded from its head. It had a hairy mane and, on each side of its mouth, long whiskers. Large teeth glistened in the eerie light. Curled around its huge front paws was a thick tail that ended in a fan of green spikes.
Tao’s eyes were wide. A terrified whimper escaped from his gaping mouth. Standing in front of him was a dragon.
The creature observed the boy with unblinking eyes, and took a step towards him. Convinced that the dragon was about to attack, Tao turned to run, hoping he could climb out a window. Fear gave him speed, but the dragon was faster. It reached out a paw and grabbed him. Four curved talons, as long and sharp as knife blades, wrapped around his upper arm like a shackle, but didn’t sink into his flesh. Tao cried out for help, even though he knew no one would hear him; the sleeping quarters were too far away. With its other paw, the dragon took the purple stone from Tao’s hand, peering at it as he turned it over so that the moonlight revealed a milky white vein and fine maroon threads. The stone was worn smooth by centuries of constant handling, though Tao thought it would have once had sharp edges.
The dragon pulled the boy closer. The creature had a sharp, tart odour, which Tao didn’t find unpleasant. Two deep parallel wounds on its chest oozed dark purple blood. The dragon made the tinkling wind-chime sounds that Tao had heard before and then looked at him as if it expected him to understand their meaning. The dragon’s tone changed, sounding more like the tolling of a cracked bell. It loosened its grip. The green glow of its scales faded as clouds covered the moon. The dragon turned and disappeared into the darkness.
Tao ran to raise the alarm. It was raining again. He tripped and fell on the steep, slippery steps that led to the abbot’s quarters. He was about to hammer on the door and call to his reverend master that the monastery was in danger, but something stopped him. The dripping trees and the moist, warm air seemed so ordinary, and there was no evidence of the unusual intruder. How would he explain what he was doing up hours after all novices were supposed to be in bed? Tao began to doubt his own senses. He was overtired after working late into the night. Surely he had imagined it. He returned to the Meditation Hall and, weak from exhaustion, swept up the broken pieces of his water jar. Tao stumbled to the novices’ quarters in pitch dark. He took off his robes and sank onto his straw bed.
Chapter Two
TROUBLE
Tao lay with his eyes closed, trying to remember
a dream. His dreams usually slid away when he tried to recall them, but this one stayed clear. He’d dreamed about a dragon. He opened his eyes. It was full daylight. The other novices’ beds were empty, their straw mattresses turned back to air, their blankets folded. Tao leaped to his feet. He’d slept late, not even waking when the other boys had risen, no doubt as noisily as ever.
His robes were on the floor in a damp, tangled heap. He shook out the three rectangles of worn and mended cloth, wrapped the under-robe around his waist, and draped the upper piece around his chest and over his left shoulder. He threw the outer robe over his shoulders and secured the robes by tying a frayed cloth belt around his waist and ran outside.
He was so late that the other novices had already finished the morning chores. They had swept the Recitation Hall, beaten the floor mats and filled the water casks from the well. The kitchen was empty. He’d missed the daily meal entirely. It was raining steadily, as it had for most of the summer. Tao pulled his outer robe up over his head as he hurried to the Meditation Hall where all the monks and novices were sitting cross-legged on their mats, listening to the abbot instruct them on the Four Noble Truths. The abbot glared at Tao as he slipped into the back of the hall.
“Life is filled with sorrow and suffering,” the abbot said. “The cause of all this suffering is desire – a constant wish to possess what we do not have. To escape from the unending cycle of suffering that is life, death and rebirth, you must let go of desire and live a life of discipline and meditation as a monk. These are the words of the Buddha.”
The abbot told them to meditate on the Four Noble Truths. Though the sutras didn’t always make sense to Tao, he understood the Four Noble Truths perfectly. His fellow novices were always talking about how much they missed their homes, how they wished they could eat meat, how they would love to be able to play games. Tao knew his own family home had luxuries that the other boys had never experienced – silk-floss quilts, four-course meals and plenty of leisure time – yet he had found it easy to let those comforts go. He was happy to be at the monastery. He had a purpose and a goal.
Unlike the other shuffling, wriggling novices, Tao normally had no difficulty maintaining control over his body and his mind, but that morning he had control over neither. His empty stomach kept rumbling, making the other novices giggle. Instead of focusing on his meditations, his thoughts wandered to the events of the previous night. It must have been a dream, he told himself. Dragons had existed in the world long ago; they were mentioned in the Jataka, the stories of Buddha’s previous lives. Dragons had even sat at the feet of the Blessed One, alongside other celestial beings – devas and yakshas and asuras. But, though there were rumours of dragon sightings from time to time, most people believed they had left the world generations ago. Tao tried to concentrate on the Four Noble Truths, yet his mind kept returning to the fact that his piece of purple gemstone was missing.
The stone had been a gift from his great-grandfather when Tao had left home to join the monastery, a child of just seven years. A novice wasn’t permitted to own anything other than the Five Possessions – his robes, his alms bowl, his mat, a water strainer and a razor to shave his head – but Tao had convinced the monks that the purple stone was just a writing tool, a paperweight which was available for all the monks to use when they needed to stop a corner of a scroll from curling up. Tao was always losing things. Even though he didn’t have much to lose, at any time he had usually misplaced one of his Five Possessions. He was annoyed with himself. This was the first time he had lost the purple stone. He couldn’t lament its loss though. It wasn’t his to lose.
After meditation, as the monks and the other novices filed out of the hall, Tao went to get his writing implements from the shelf, so that he could continue with his transcription. One of the monks approached him. It was Shenli, who was also supposed to transcribe their sutra, but he preferred to spend his time drawing elaborate images to be placed at the beginning of each transcription.
“Since you were unable to perform your morning chores,” Shenli said, “you will, I’m sure, want to make amends for this omission.”
Tao ducked his head, trying to avoid the monk’s eyes.
“Yes, Venerable Brother.”
“You can help the kitchen staff.”
“Yes, Venerable Brother.”
The other novices dawdling in the drizzle outside had overheard.
“The golden boy has to get his hands dirty,” one of them jeered.
Another boy imitated the rumbling of Tao’s stomach. The novices all laughed – not loudly, that was not permitted; instead they sniggered behind their hands.
Tao ignored them and made his way to the kitchen with downcast eyes, as a modest monk should. Actually, he was looking for his lost stone.
Tao’s stomach would be rumbling for some time. Monks were only allowed to eat one meal each day. After noon, no eating was permitted. The food – grain, tofu, vegetables – was cooked each morning by people from the villages who did this holy work in order to accumulate good karma so that they would be reborn as someone who was more spiritually aware. Tao knew how poor the villagers were, and he wondered if they were really hoping to be reborn in less poverty. The followers of Buddha knew that if they committed wrongdoings in this life, in their next life they would be reborn as a criminal or a wild animal or even an insect.
Yinmi Monastery clung to the western face of the Song Shan Mountains, shrouded in mist until noon most days. When the mist cleared, the monastery was still hidden by thick forest. Yinmi was not as big as the old monasteries in Luoyang had been, each housing hundreds of monks. There were only six monks at Yinmi and fifteen novices. Tao was the only novice who was not a local boy. The others all came from villages nearby. War and hunger were everywhere, and the villagers were struggling to feed their families. Some were so poor they had decided one less mouth to feed would ease their burden. If that had the added benefit of bringing Buddha’s blessing and good karma to their household, all the better.
The monastery was constructed of wood cut from the cypress forest. It was well built and finished with carvings of lotuses, but unpainted, weathered to a dark brown and tinged with green moss. Most of the buildings were roofed with wooden shingles. Only the small shrine had a tiled roof. Larger monasteries had many halls; Yinmi made do with two. Steep flights of steps, cut into the rock of the mountain, linked the halls and led to the sleeping quarters. The monks slept in a separate building divided into simple cells. The novices were crammed together in one makeshift hut.
Tao entered the kitchen, which was where the monks and novices ate their morning meal. There was no refectory at Yinmi. Two men and an old woman were scrubbing out cooking pots and sweeping the floor. The abbot would have preferred not to have a woman within the monastery’s walls, but experience had taught him that the village men had no cooking skills. They managed to burn the vegetables, overcook the grain, and they were not particular when it came to cleanliness.
The abbot had been pleased when he found an old woman living within an hour’s walk who was willing to come every morning to oversee the preparation of the meal. She was stooped, her hair was greying and her face wrinkled like a raisin. There was no risk of the monks thinking impure thoughts about her. Tao asked the old woman what he could do to help. She told him to rake out the ashes from the stove and bring in wood ready for the following morning. As Tao stacked logs near the fireplace, carefully collecting up any spiders and beetles living among them and putting them in a jar, she heard his stomach rumbling.
“Did you not eat this morning, young sir?”
“No. I was up till after midnight transcribing, and I slept late.”
The old woman clicked her tongue. The two men who helped her had shared between them the leftover food from the morning meal to take back to their own families. The woman made them each give Tao a spoonful. As they placed their reluctant donation into his alms bowl, Tao bowed his head and offered blessings he didn’t think he was fi
t to give. His bowl was less than half full, but he was grateful for their gift. He humbled himself by sitting on the kitchen floor and eating in front of them.
Tao had no difficulty keeping the Five Precepts that Buddha had set down for all his followers to adhere to – he did not take the life of any living creature, he did not steal, nor did he think impure thoughts about women, tell lies or drink alcohol. He had no trouble abiding by the additional five precepts laid down for novices. Tao never ate after noon; on the rare occasions that he came across travelling musicians, he didn’t stop to listen; he wore no adornment; he never sat on a high seat; and he had never accepted gold or silver, not that anyone had ever offered him any.
“You should go to bed earlier,” the old woman said as Tao left.
Out in the garden, Tao freed the captive insects and then walked back to the Meditation Hall. The woman was right. If he was having disturbing dreams and was too weary to do his daily work properly, he would have to make sure that he got more sleep.
It was the Buddha’s wish that monks did not grow their own food. While digging the soil, they risked breaking the first precept by killing worms and slaters. Instead, the Blessed One had decreed that the monks live on alms. Begging for their food had the added benefit of making them humble.
Yinmi Monastery was too remote for the monks to be able to survive on alms alone. There were only two small villages within a day’s walk, and villagers there lived mainly on goat meat and taro root. The monks did not eat meat, and the villagers’ fields were shallow pockets of earth in among the rocks. They could barely grow enough taros for themselves, so the monks only went to the villages once a month to ask for alms. The novices grew the rest of their food in the temple garden.
Tao didn’t have to collect alms or help in the garden. His calligraphy was excellent and the number of characters he knew was far greater than the other novices. Two years ago, he had asked to be allowed to make copies of their one scroll, to distribute to other monasteries. The abbot permitted Tao to do this instead of his other chores. It was a very long scroll. He had completed five copies.
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