by P J Tierney
Dedication
Leonie, this one’s for you
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
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
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by P.J. Tierney
Copyright
Prologue
There is a pavilion in the clouds where everything is known and everything is written. Within its ancient walls, the Great Guide sits warm in the glow from a carved dragon lantern. He holds a large calligraphy brush in his hand and draws a sweeping arc across the page in front of him. The ink swells then congeals into glossy dots that dart across the page, joining together to form characters, then words, and finally entire lives. As the dots reveal their story the Great Guide draws back, his eyebrows arched high.
The dots have formed a picture. It shows twelve-year-old Jamie Reign, captured in the moment he was lifted above the village of Sai Chun and declared the Spirit Warrior. The picture is plastered across all the newspapers in the territory, beneath headlines that scream in bold font that the Spirit Warrior has returned.
The Great Guide runs his fingers across the surface of the page, brushing gently at Jamie’s cheek. His touch seems to trigger new pixels from deep within the parchment. They appear first as tiny glossy pinpricks that swell and join together to obscure Jamie’s features. When the ink settles, there is a most unwelcome addition: a fighting blade lodged squarely between Jamie’s eyes. The wet ink glints on the knife’s edge and slowly drips down the page, as if Jamie himself is bleeding.
The Great Guide reels. He slams the book shut and rushes to the steps of the pavilion. He looks out beyond the clouds to warn his Spirit Warrior.
If only he could get that boy to listen.
Chapter 1
Jamie woke abruptly, as if someone had shouted his name. He sat bolt upright and wide-eyed, his breath caught in his throat. He strained his ears to hear what had startled him. He heard the familiar rustling of the bamboo in the breeze, the faint scratching of a cockroach scurrying across the stone floor, and the deep, rhythmical breathing of Wing in the bunk below. Jamie lay back down and pulled the covers up to his chin. One thing was certain: the only screaming in the dark dormitory room that night was inside his head.
Jamie tossed and turned until finally the grey light of dawn slipped beneath the door. He nudged his little black rhesus monkey, who was snuggled in beside him, his tail wound tightly around Jamie’s forearm. ‘Come on, Jet,’ he said. ‘May as well get this over and done with.’ Jamie looked towards the window and to the brightening sky beyond. He took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s Wednesday.’
In the two weeks Jamie had been at Chia Wu, any reference to what they had to do for Wednesday morning’s training session had been made in an ominous tone and with a nod in his direction. After the mountain run on Fridays, which ended with them scaling headfirst on their hands and feet down seven hundred and seventy-two stairs, Jamie really wasn’t keen to find out what new torment today held.
The Warriors of the Way met on top of the thick wall that encircled Chia Wu. It was an impenetrable barrier of grey granite with a walkway between the parapets. On one side of the wall was Master Wu’s training ground for the young Warriors, and on the other was the South China Sea. The wall wound around the pavilions and training fields, a forest of bamboo, a series of tiered lakes, an ordered garden, a banana grove and, at the very back of the grounds, Shaowu Mountain. The wall snaked up the mountain spurs and plunged deep into its gullies. It was a very long wall and had clearly been modelled on the Great Wall of China. Jamie hoped that its defensive battlements and watch houses were just a copy of the original and not because they feared attack.
Jade stretched her leg by putting it up on the wall and leaning into it; it looked like she was doing the splits. Cheng sneered a lot, made a gross noise in the back of his throat, then spat.
‘So all we have to do is run along the wall?’ Jamie asked, not quite believing it could be that easy.
‘It’s a long wall though,’ Wing said. ‘It’s got to be ten kilometres and there’s about a thousand stairs in it as well.’
‘Stairs?’ Jamie said, his mind flashing back to the mountain run, his wrists and shoulders sore from just the thought of it. ‘And how are we supposed to go down them?’
Wing chuckled and patted Jamie on the back. ‘The normal way,’ he said.
The grin on Wing’s face was quick to fade, though, as his gaze followed the long line the wall cut through the terrain. Wing was sick. Jamie knew it was a lot worse than Wing let on; he’d smelled the foul scent of decay when Wing had changed the dressing on his shoulder. It made Jamie ill, not the smell but knowing he was the cause of Wing’s suffering. The Charged Summons that the evil warlord, Zheng, had thrown at them wasn’t supposed to hit Wing at all — it had been meant for him.
Jamie leaned in closely. ‘You should go back, Wing. You’ve got nothing to prove.’
Wing managed a cheeky grin. ‘Not like you,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘There’s a record,’ Wing said, ‘and it’s lasted a generation.’ He paused and grinned till Jamie could wait no longer.
‘And?’ Jamie prompted.
‘And before that the record lasted for just as long.’
‘Okay,’ Jamie said, gesturing with his hand for Wing to go on.
‘And both times the record was set then broken by the same person.’ He waited, Jamie prompted him again and Wing eventually said, ‘By the Spirit Warrior.’
‘So that means …?’ Jamie said.
Wing nodded. ‘It means you’ve got to win. And to do that …’ He slowly turned till he was looking at the biggest of the young Warriors of the Way. This Warrior wasn’t only large, he was also mean. He was the most senior of the students and as such was permitted some authority over the rest of them — it was a role he both cherished and abused.
Jamie’s heart sank. ‘I have to beat Cheng?’
‘He’s only seconds off your record,’ Wing whispered.
The words ‘your record’ seemed wrong to Jamie. It wasn’t really he who had been the Spirit Warrior before; it was his spirit. But if he wasn’t his spirit, then who was he? His head hurt to think about it. Master Wu had told him that he ‘embodied the knowledge of lifetimes past’, yet up until a few weeks ago Jamie couldn’t even read, which proved he didn’t have a well of ancient knowledge inside him. Still, there was one thing he was absolutely sure of. If he wasn’t the Spirit Warrior, it certainly wasn’t Cheng either. Cheng was vicious, and if the hopes of a generation lay with him, then they were in big trouble.
Jamie limbered up while Cheng glared at him.
Wing leaned in close to Jamie and said, ‘I’d watch him if I were you.’
Jamie nodded. ‘Believe me, that’s all I ever do.’
Jade set the timer on the start line and they were off. Jamie’s feet pounded the stone walkway and his footsteps rang out in the thin mountain air. Five Warriors of the Way were behind him and one big, mean one was already a long way out in front. He set his eyes on Cheng’s back as he rounded a corner. He was determined to run him down. He sucked in a deep breath and
ran even faster.
Jet kept pace, leaping from battlement to battlement and screeching as if it was a great game. He jumped down onto the path to scurry through each watch house, then back up to the battlements again.
Jamie glanced back to check on Wing. He could hear his laboured breathing not far behind and recognised the pain in every sharp intake.
Jamie let his friend catch up. ‘Here,’ he said, holding his palm towards Wing’s wound. ‘This’ll get you through.’
Jamie screwed up his eyes and forced his mind to concentrate on his palms, willing the energy inside him to at least dull the pain in Wing’s shoulder. He’d tried to heal it enough times for him to know that dulling the pain was the best he could do for Wing. But just as his skin was beginning to heat up, his hand was knocked away. It was Lucy, Jamie’s and Wing’s friend, and the younger of the two female Warriors of the Way. She was red-faced and wearing a ridiculous fluffy hat shaped like a panda’s head.
‘Run!’ she screamed at him.
‘In a second,’ Jamie said, but Wing pulled away from him.
‘Go,’ he said. Jamie shot him a questioning look and Wing nodded reassuringly. ‘I’m okay, really. You need to hurry up and catch Cheng.’
He shoved at Jamie to get him going. Jamie hesitated, not wanting to abandon his sick friend but also conscious of how much distance he was losing.
Lucy jumped up and down. ‘Go!’ she shouted.
Jamie ran. Jet scurried along beside him, screeching with excitement.
‘Come on, boy.’ Jamie’s hot breath shot streams of white vapour into the air. ‘We can catch him.’
Branches and debris were strewn across the path from the recent typhoon. The dew and cold made everything slippery and Jamie’s task even more difficult. Cheng had the advantage: he knew every twist and turn of this snaking, undulating wall. Jamie could see him up ahead, rounding the corners in a skidding slide and taking the stairs at least four at a time. Jamie tried to catch up, but he didn’t know which way the path went or what he’d face once he rounded a bend. He had to slow down for each one. He lost precious time.
Even though Cheng was big, he was fast. He was also a kung fu prodigy. For the first few years of his life, everyone thought he was the Spirit Warrior. That was until a Ki-Lin, the king of all mythical beasts, appeared to announce the Spirit Warrior’s birth and negated any claim Cheng thought he had. The Ki-Lin had appeared the very day Jamie was born, but it had taken Master Wu and Mr Fan twelve whole years to find him. Twelve years for Cheng to hope that maybe the Ki-Lin had got it wrong.
Jamie charged along the wall and leaped down entire flights of stairs, landing cat-like on the slippery stone, then powering on. But Cheng was out of sight again.
‘Go ahead — see how far away he is,’ Jamie panted to his monkey.
Jet stopped and cocked his head.
‘Don’t stop,’ Jamie cried. ‘Go find Cheng!’
But Jet just stood there.
‘Useless monkey,’ Jamie said, and ran on.
Jet caught up quickly, making Jamie’s frantic pace look easy.
‘Go,’ Jamie tried again. ‘Find Cheng.’
Jet shrieked, then charged ahead, and for a second Jamie thought he’d got it. But it turned out Jet wasn’t following his instruction. They were nearing the southernmost point of Chia Wu, in the shadow of Shaowu Mountain, where the jungle grew higher than the parapets. The thick canopy offered a tantalising feast of buds and fruits to a greedy monkey. Jet leaped from the wall and into the thicket, grabbing at the tiny wild orchid blossoms and bright red wolfberries and shoving them in his mouth.
‘Thanks,’ Jamie huffed as his monkey disappeared into the dense foliage.
He was alone on the shadowy path now, the sound of his footsteps and rasping breath bouncing back at him from the hard stone walls. He quickened his pace, but the path angled down and Jamie found himself running faster and faster until he was careening out of control. There was a bend coming up and he couldn’t stop.
He turned slightly, braced his legs in an angled horse stance and slid into the corner. The wall was coming up too fast. He dropped his right knee to the ground and dragged his hand along the stones, but their slimy, mossy surface offered little resistance. He slid into the wall feet first, absorbed as much of the impact with his legs as he could, then bounced off. He ricocheted into the opposite wall and slid around the bend. He was still sliding when he heard Jet give an ear-piercing shriek. Jamie clenched every muscle in his body. Jet was more than a pet; he was a talisman — Jamie’s sixth sense. When Jet screeched like that, it meant Jamie was in trouble.
When he saw what was coming, a chill washed through him. There was a massive hole in the path and he was sliding right towards it.
Jamie flipped onto his belly and clawed the ground to stop himself sliding over the crumbling edge and onto the jagged sea-sprayed rocks. He dug his fingernails into the stone and felt the rough surface grind them away, all the way down to the flesh. He dug in his toes as well and reached for the wall to one side, but raising his arm lessened his resistance and he sped faster towards the hole. He looked for Jet, for a vine, for anything to grab onto that would stop him from going over.
He pulled his legs up under his chest. A stone gouged his knee and he cried out. Through his fear and pain it registered — the stone was sticking up! It was something he could hold onto. He flicked his wrist to form the eagle claw — his palm flat, with the top joint of his fingers locked at ninety degrees — and grabbed for the stone. He held on tight, his eyes screwed up, his jaw clenched tight.
In the fraction of a second between snagging the stone and his body being yanked to a stop, Jamie envisaged himself tumbling into the hole and falling to his death over and over again. When he opened his eyes, his feet were extended out beyond the deadly drop but the rest of his body was flat out on the path.
Jamie lay his forehead against the cool stone and let out his pent-up breath. He tasted blood from where he’d bitten down on his lip. He mumbled his thanks to his monkey, then very slowly and very carefully, his fingers still clamped to that precious, sticking-up stone, he crawled away from the hole. His movement dislodged some loose stones and it was a long time before he heard them clatter onto the rocks below.
Then he heard a measured voice say, ‘Careful, boy.’
Startled, Jamie looked around. Cheng was balanced precariously on a narrow beam halfway across the deep hole. The hole was at least ten metres across and the drop was twice that. The sloping earth beneath the ancient wall must have become waterlogged in the typhoon and it had slid away, taking the outer wall and walkway with it. Only the foundations of the inner wall remained, with one jagged battlement sticking up halfway along the gap.
Cheng reached out for the battlement, steadied himself, then continued on, testing his weight with every step and holding his arms out wide.
Jamie swallowed and watched Cheng’s every step. The beam was narrow and bent under the older boy’s weight, but it was the only way across. Climbing was too risky; it was too far to jump; and only an idiot, or a monkey, would attempt to swing across using the thin vines that hung from the jungle canopy. If Jamie wanted to catch up to Cheng, he had to cross the beam, or give up and go back the way he’d come. And he wasn’t about to give up.
Jamie gnawed on his lip and wiped the sweat from his brow as he prepared to step out onto the beam.
Then Jet shrieked again and Jamie heard footsteps — the others were coming up fast. He wheeled around and charged back along the path to head them off. He took the corner at full pelt, and next thing he knew he was bouncing off Lucy and into the stone wall. She squealed in agony and clutched her jaw; Jamie felt a pain in his skull so sharp he thought it had split open.
Before he could clear his head to think, there were more footsteps. He called out a warning, but it was too late. There was a cry of surprise as Wing tripped over Lucy and landed on Jamie. Jamie clutched his head and kept very still. Even breathing hurt. He
slowly opened his eyes to a tangle of limbs.
Lucy disentangled herself from the boys, slapping at her dirty knees and at Jamie too. ‘What are you doing?’ she shouted at him. Then she saw the hole where the path should have been and stopped mid-slap. ‘Oh,’ she said.
She stepped gingerly to the edge and peered over, then turned back to Jamie with her mouth hanging open. ‘That’s a long way down,’ she said.
Cheng was only metres from the far side now. Lucy’s eyes darted from Cheng, to the beam, then to the jungle canopy. Jamie thought she’d come to the same conclusion as he had, but to his surprise she said, ‘I suppose we should go back.’
She looked pointedly at Jamie and very subtly tilted her head towards Wing.
Jamie watched how Wing wobbled as he got to his feet. He was trembling with fever and his eyes had a vacant, glassy look. Jamie knew Lucy was right, and if he was a good friend he would have said yes straight away. But he also knew that if he crossed that beam, he’d have a real chance of catching Cheng, and by beating him he’d shut Cheng up once and for all.
Jamie’s eyes lingered on the beam for a fraction of a second too long and Lucy elbowed him. She glared and jerked her head towards Wing. Jamie acknowledged with a sigh that Wing could barely stand, let alone balance on a beam. Reluctantly, he gave Lucy a nod and turned away from the hole. If they were going back the way they’d come, they needed to get started: it was at least seven and a half kilometres, compared with the two and a half left if they’d kept going.
From beyond the bend there came the drumming of more footsteps. The rest of the Warriors of the Way were approaching. Jamie rushed to intercept them. Edwin, small and blond, was in the lead.
‘Whoa,’ Jamie called, holding his arms out wide to catch Edwin before he barrelled into him.
Bruce was next. He was panting and looked relieved when Jamie made him stop. Bruce was brilliant at kung fu, but a bit too big to be any good at long-distance running. Jogging behind them, barely raising a sweat, was Jade. Jamie’s stomach did a little flip-flop when he saw her.
