Dragon Call (The Throne of the Dragon Queen Book 2)

by Clare Smith

  Twistirian nodded. “I would be pleased to do so.” He was too, the boy reminded him of himself at that age.

  “Good, then you will leave here as soon as you are able.”

  *

  As he walked along the city streets chanting the simple mantra he’d been taught, he wondered if the monks from the different temples ever fought each other like the brotherhoods did. After all, there were over three hundred temples in Chang’an, so there must have been some rivalry and competition for support from the rich and powerful. He knew that some of the largest temples, like the Wild Goose, were supported by the Emperor, but the others would have to find different patrons which, with so many temples, couldn’t be easy.

  The thought of the peaceful Buddhist monks fighting seemed ridiculous but some of the monks from the half dozen or so other religions which thrived in the city were definitely not pacifists. He knew of at least one order where the monks worshiped Guan Yu, the god of war, and practiced with swords every day as their way of praying to their god. If all such religious orders gathered together, they would make a formidable army capable of challenging the Emperor himself.

  That thought made him smile, and next to him Li Ang dug him in the ribs to remind him that chanting a mantra on the streets of Chang’an was a serious affair, and no real monk would be seen laughing whilst he was doing it. The boy was right of course, small discrepancies were enough to betray their carefully prepared disguises. It would be a pity to die now through his own stupidity when he was so close to the safety of his home compound.

  He was well protected from view by the thirty chanting monks around him and, with his shaven head and saffron robes, it was hard to tell him apart from the others. That should keep him safe, but he knew there would be Ban Long spies watching them and waiting to act. All they needed was the slightest indication that he was about to escape their clutches, and they would be onto him.

  The fact that he’d reached this far and was still alive was all down to Xuanzang, who had been true to his word and the monks had sewn him up, fed him and let him rest for half a day before arranging his departure. In return he’d explained to the boy that he would have to give up the freedom he’d known on the streets and his friends in the temple to join the Brotherhood. He’d been honest with him, and had even told him about all the petty rules he would have to follow and all the restrictions and obedience that would entail.

  He’d thought that Li Ang might have objected to having his future decided for him, but the boy had been overjoyed at the prospect of becoming an assassin. The boy had hugged him so enthusiastically that it had nearly burst his stitched shoulder open again. Now Li Ang walked at his side, occasionally looking up in admiration and for the first time in his life he knew what it was like to have someone for whom he cared.

  Up ahead he could see the high walls of the compound and suddenly wondered how easy it would be for an assassin to climb over and reach his own master. Certainly he’d done that when he was just Li Ang’s age, but the walls hadn’t been so high then or so well guarded. Now even the lower part by the city wall had been completed but perhaps, when he was back in his Master’s favour again, he should try it to see if it could be done.

  For now there were more pressing matters, as they had reached the compounds heavily guarded gates, and for some inexplicable reason he was feeling as nervous as an apprentice at his final testing. He looked down at Li Ang, who looked even more nervous than he did, and gave the boy a smile of encouragement.

  “It will be all right, I promise.”

  He would have liked to have said more, but at that moment one of the compound’s double doors opened. In front of him the file of monks parted and those behind hurried him forwards and through the gates. He’d thought it would have been more difficult for him to get into the compound, but within moments he was standing in its safety with the doors closed firmly behind him.

  It should have been a moment of triumph, returning after successfully completing a difficult and dangerous assignment, but by the look on the guards’ faces, there was something seriously wrong. There were six of them there, unusually all of them full brothers, and they didn’t seem pleased to see him at all. The most senior of them, Zangwu, with whom he’d trained from time to time, stepped forward with his sword drawn and looked him up and down with contempt.

  “You are a fool, Twistirian, coming back here wearing those robes and thinking that they will protect you after what you have done.”

  Twistirian blinked in confusion, not certain what was going on. He would have asked what it was that he was supposed to have done that they should be so hostile, but he was distracted by shouting and more of the brothers running towards him with their swords drawn.

  “Even if you were the great Buddha himself,” continued Zangwu, “your life would still be forfeit. My only wish is that it will be the cut of my shuriken that ends your miserable life at dawn when you die like the dog you are.” Zangwu waived the other brothers forward so they completely surrounded him. “Take him and his accomplice away, and make sure their last hours are not pleasant ones.”

  “No! Wait!” Twistirian shouted from within the crowd of angry brothers who surrounded him. “Please tell me what it is that I am meant to have done.” No one answered but just glared at him.

  It struck him then that perhaps he had only been a decoy, and he wasn’t the one who was meant to kill the Ban Long master. By disobeying his order he might have inadvertently caused the death of more experienced brothers who had been assigned the task.

  “Then at least let me talk to the Master and explain.”

  Zangwu’s eyes narrowed with anger and he hit Twistirian so hard that he sent him staggering backwards into the waiting guards. “Our Master is dead, Cheum is our lord now.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Promises

  Fire Mountain and Chang’an

  Poddorrin woke with a start, his heart pounding in his chest and every muscle as tense as sword maker’s steel. He’d been dreaming about being trapped at the bottom of a well where it was cold and damp and the only light which penetrated the darkness was four stars which shone high in the sky above the well’s entrance. In his dream he’d tried to climb up the smooth, slick stone and had almost made it to the top when the four stars exploded into brilliant light, dazzling his eyes and making him lose his grip.

  It wasn’t that which had woken him though, or even the fall to the bottom of the well. Being trapped, almost escaping and falling back into darkness was a reoccurring theme in his dreams these days, and no longer had the ability to wake him from an exhausted sleep. This was something much different and much more alarming than falling out of control and having his body broken on the ground below. What had woken him was an echo of violence to which his body had responded.

  Wearily he crawled off his bed and propped himself up against the wall, whilst his heart raced and his limbs shook. It helped to sit upright and concentrate on who he was, whilst the feeling that something within him was trying to free itself from his body slowly subsided. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt like this, which gave him the comfort of knowing that his heart would slow and he would regain control of his limbs.

  He wondered if he’d contracted some malady from spending too much time in this cave searching through ancient parchments instead of being in the fresh air with the sun to warm him through. On the other hand his present situation could have nothing to do with it, and it was probably all down to the life he’d led and the abuse he’d taken that had weakened his heart. If Todden had been here he could have asked him, as the man knew something about healing but, like the others, Todden had left and he was on his own.

  With a sigh he pushed himself onto his feet and stood swaying for a few moments. His heart had settled back into its normal rhythm, and his arms and legs felt as if they belonged to him again, but when he took a step forward, he had the strangest sensation of being someone else. It only lasted for a moment,
but it was strong enough for him to take a step back to the wall to steady himself.

  He waited until it had passed and then carefully made his way to the table and the wooden bench where he spent most of his time. The remains of his last meal, such as it was, was still on his plate, and the water jug he’d filled the previous morning was empty and needed to be refilled. They would both have to be dealt with, but for now he just pushed them to one side and pulled the parchment he’d been reading towards him.

  It was an accounting of dragons which had once lived in the Fire Mountain and had been written by a dragon watcher many centuries before. The list was similar to others he’d found in the archives, except that the author had added comments about which dragons had been called to undertake a service for Assimus. His favourite was where a dozen dragons had been called to destroy a pirate fleet and had returned carrying the pirates gold.

  In a way it was what he was trying to do, except he was trying to return with dragons instead of the pirate’s gold, but he was having far less success. He had to keep trying though as he was certain that somewhere amongst all the scrolls and ancient records would be the answers he sought. With a sigh he pulled another, newer parchment towards him and stared down at the words.

  This was an account of a single dragon flight written in a script which was so tiny it made his eyes ache. Not only that, but the words covered the entire parchment from top to bottom and edge to edge making it almost impossible to read. The Dragon Watcher who had written it must have had a lot of time on his hands because, not only had he described the dragon down to the last detail, but had then gone on to describe what he’d done after the dragon had flown away.

  The scroll was part of a series and one of the most boring things he’d ever read, but fortunately he hadn’t been able to locate the other twenty scrolls which followed this one. So far he’d reached the part where the Dragon Watcher had tended the bees, weeded the herb garden and swept the Dragon Watch inside and out. After that he was going to fetch the ceremonial robes from the cupboard to check that they hadn’t been eaten by moths.

  He stopped there and frowned, trying to recall if there had been any other references to some special robes, but he didn’t think there had been and he was certain there was nothing about a cupboard. Intrigued, he read on, but reached the end of the parchment before the annoying man had divulged where the cupboard was. There was no doubt about it though, if the Dragon Watcher had written about some robes and a cupboard, they had to be here inside the cave. The question was where?

  By now he had searched the Dragon Watch thoroughly and had found nothing new but, there again, he’d thought he’d known every inch of the cave before he’d discovered the archives. It made sense then that if there was a cupboard inside the Dragon Watch, it was likely to be as well hidden as the archives had been. He’d stumbled on those using the dragon’s tooth, so perhaps he could do the same with the cupboard.

  Feeling more excited than he had done for days, he took the chain with the dragon tooth attached to it from around his neck and held it out in front of him. When he’d been searching for the archives he’d tested the side walls of the cave and had found nothing, so it was pointless searching there again. However he’d been so excited at finding the scrolls that he hadn’t gone on to search the area around them, so that was where he would start.

  As there were only two spaces which were not covered in the clay pipes that held the parchments he began there, pressing the dragon tooth to the stone wall and willing it to open. He was rewarded on his second pass when the wall in front of him shimmered and disappeared revealing a small alcove. With a shout of triumph he looked inside, but then his excitement evaporated as he realised it was empty, except for the small scraps of cloth, which was all that was left of the ceremonial robes and several large, dead moths. It seemed that not even stone could keep the pests out forever.

  Disappointed, he pushed the scraps to one side with the toe of his boot, watching as they disintegrated into dust and then stopped as his toe turned over a small red pebble. He bent down, picked it up and rubbed the dust off it with his thumb, surprised to find that it wasn’t a pebble at all but a red stone with a stylised dragon etched into it. The dragon was curved and wingless, and looked more like a large snake than a dragon, except that it breathed fire.

  At one time it must have been a pendant, as there was a hole in the top, but the chain must have rusted away. It was a curious thing and seemed out of place in the cave, and he could only think that it had been part of the ceremonial robes he’d been looking for. Disappointed that he hadn’t found them, he flicked the stone up into the air in irritation and watched it spin around before he caught it again.

  For a moment, as the stone was spinning, he thought he caught a glimpse of a tall building with overlapping roofs and a man swaddled in yellow cloth sitting on a bench with his head in his hands. The figure wavered as if it wasn’t absolutely solid, and then the fleeting image disappeared leaving him slightly disorientated. He shook his head to clear his mind and then shrugged away his disappointment as he came to the conclusion that finding the robes wouldn’t have helped him very much in any case.

  With a sigh of resignation he returned to his desk absently putting the stone in his pocket, and pulled the parchment with the tiny writing towards him. He hadn’t quite finished translating it, and he needed to do that in case there was something else of importance in the tedious writings, but his heart wasn’t really in it. Instead he thought about the things he’d used so far to call the dragon spirits to him.

  There was the Moonstone Blade, which had been the most successful, and the smooth spear shaft that Collia had found amongst the rocks, which had given him a brief glimpse into another time and place but very little else. Then there was the rusted dagger which Tingallent had retrieved from the broken corpse on the mountainside which looked ancient but could have been any age and had no effect at all. He’d tried every single one of them at one time or another, but despite all his efforts, not one of those who hosted a dragon spirit had materialised.

  Despondently he pulled another parchment towards him leaving the scroll with the tiny writing for another day. This scroll was much older and he’d been working on it for some time, but hadn’t found out anything new. Now he wondered if his translation of the archaic writing was absolutely correct, or if he’d passed over something important.

  He was certain that the reason he was unable to call the dragons to him was because there was something missing, and he’d been searching for a clue as to what that could be. However, it seemed to him that he’d been searching forever for something that probably didn’t exist. He couldn’t give in though, too many lives depended on him finding the answer.

  *

  Twistirian shivered with the cold and moved his cramped muscles as far as he could in the close confines of the pit in the ground which was his cell. Above him, a miserable drizzle fell through the bars which covered the hole, adding to his discomfort. He’d tried to console himself with the thought that things could be worse and that it could be snowing, but his situation was so desperate that it was no consolation at all. In fact he was beginning to wish that it was snowing so the ice would freeze him and take his life before his brothers came for him.

  He unwound his arms from around his knees, raised his arms as far as he could and pushed upwards. It was a futile effort as he knew it would be. The grid above him was firmly locked and was likely to remain that way until he was pulled out, stripped to the skin and hung to a cross beam by his ankles.

  In a way it was ironic, as that is how he should have died years ago, but then he’d deserved it for breaking into the Master’s pagoda, whilst now he was innocent and didn’t deserve such a dishonourable end. If he thought his sentence was unjust, then it was even worse for the boy. Li Ang had done nothing except to help him escape the Ban Long, and yet he too had been condemned to death without him being given a chance to say a word in the boy’s defence.

&nb
sp; He’d hoped that Li Ang would have been held in the same cell as him, so that he could give him some support, but the boy had been dropped into another prison hole. The only comfort he’d been able to offer him before he’d been taken away was a hasty reminder of the promise he’d made to protect him. It seemed such a hollow promise now as he waited for death, crouching in a hole in the ground barely big enough to hold him.

  The injustice made him angry enough to curse out loud and reach up again to rattle the grid above his head. Somehow the grating noise, reverberating around the courtyard, broke through the despair that had settled over him and revived his fighting spirit. He wasn’t just going to give in, so he rattled the grid again, raising it the few inches it would lift and banging it down again with as much strength as he could muster.

  The effort made his arms ache, but doing something made him feel more in control, so he started shouting out the names of the senior brothers and demanding that he be heard as was his right. He doubted if it would do much good, but after a few minutes two figures appeared above him. From his position all he could see were the men’s boots and legs, so he had no idea who they were, but from their attire he guessed they were his brothers.

  The heavier of the two leaned forward and glared down at him. “Silence, dog. You have forfeited any right to a trial.”

  Now he’d heard the man’s voice he recognised Zangwu and his heart dropped, his brother had already expressed his feelings about what should happen to the Master’s assassin. However, if Zangwu was there then the slighter man had to be his younger partner, Lin Po who had a reputation for being a philosopher and was related to Kingquin in some way. If he could get Lin Po on his side, he might persuade someone to at least listen to his story.

  “Lin Po, what do the philosophies say about the nature of justice and those who refuse a man’s right to be heard?” There was silence above him which he took as a good sign so he tried again. “What will happen, Lin Po if the right to justice is suppressed?”