“Then because you were afraid of retribution, I fear that you shall suffer retribution,” Chong Deming said. “If I were you, I’d run from here as fast as I could. The last caravan of the season passed the fortress only two days ago. There was a wizard traveling with it. He might be able to protect you. You can catch them if you hurry—but you should leave now. Battarsaikhan will be reeling from rage, and his spells can reach far. . . .”
“I am sorry,” Huang Fa said. “I . . .” he got an idea. The traders paid tolls every year, and among the barbarians, it was said that the life of a man was worth little. “Can we send a gift to this sorcerer? A peace-offering?”
“Do you think anything in the world will be enough to assuage his wrath?” the monk asked.
There was little in Huang Fa’s saddlebags that might be worth the life of an only son. The silver was a soft metal, of less value than bronze to the barbarians. The spices . . . were questionable. Huang Fa answered, “I have a dragon’s tooth that was dug from out of the stone in Persia. It is worth the price of many horses.”
He went to his saddle packs and pulled out the tooth—eight inches long, serrated, and curved like a dagger. Huang Fa had seen the giant dragon skull encased in stone that it had been pulled from. It had been polished by its previous owner, so that the ancient bone glowed like amber.
“Perhaps,” Chong Deming said thoughtfully, “it will please. Perhaps to a sorcerer it will be worth enough.”
#
For four days, Huang Fa traveled with the monk and led his mare, skirting the grasslands at the edge of the desert, chasing the wizard’s caravan. Here there had once been wild asses, giant wild bulls, and red deer in abundance, and cheetahs to hunt them. But over the past twenty years the rising number of caravans had driven many herds away, and the plague of anthrax had killed most other animals. Some said that the caravans themselves spread the disease. It was well known that one could catch it from handling the skins of animals that had died from the plague.
Now, the red plains seemed barren, almost lifeless. In two days Huang Fa saw only a few wild ostriches and a couple of giant elephants that the emperor’s men sometimes harnessed and trained for war. Such beasts were difficult for the barbarians to hunt, he knew. The swift ostriches were a temptation, forever running just out of the bow’s range. The elephants, masters of the plains, were four times the weight of the smaller Indus elephants, and had rust-colored tusks that could grow to over twelve feet in length. The bull elephants sometimes became mad and attacked even caravans.
For Huang to travel past such a herd in a caravan was a bold deed. To creep past them with only a monk at his side, pulling his mare on a rope, was terrifying. Yet to his surprise, the larger bulls only sniffed the air with their trunks and flapped their ears in agitation. They did not stomp the grass or throw hay in the air. They did not charge.
Still, the young men kept a respectful distance, and traveled as long as they could. Such was Huang Fa’s urgency to find the caravan, to get home to Yan, that he did not want to camp until well after dark.
The monk spoke little as they traveled. He plodded along, staring ahead evenly, whispering poems that he composed in his head.
Huang Fa was bumbling along, eyes growing heavy, imagining what it would be like to take Yan into his arms at last when he dreamed of the feral children.
There were dozens of them, circling a campfire in a large cavern. They were thin creatures with protruding bellies and skin clinging tightly over their ribs. Their bare backs had been tattooed with images of snake-headed lizards. Their gaunt faces were just flesh-colored bones, and their teeth had all been filed.
There were children of all ages in the group, from toddlers to the ages of ten or eleven. They were practically naked, all bare flesh.
Now, a couple of the nearest turned, peered at him hungrily, and jostled their neighbors. They too turned to search for him, but many of the children seemed unable to spot him, as if he were far away.
Suddenly, in the midst of the bonfire, a sorcerer appeared, as if bursting up from the flames. He wore a mask of red jade, a demon’s face, and he wore a cloak made of tiger hide. He danced among the flames, hopping among the coals without apparent harm. He carried a huge rattle made from a giant cobra’s skull in his right hand, and held the dragon’s tooth in his left. He sang as he danced, his voice rising and falling in the quavering manner of one who grieves.
The children around the fire chanted words that Huang Fa could not quite understand. They pounded their right fists into their left hands, and one by one it seemed that all of the children became more aware of him. They began turning and peering at him with greater eagerness. Huang Fa spotted saliva dripping down the chin of one starving girl toddler, drooling down from a mouth full of fangs.
Suddenly the sorcerer snarled a curse, almost spitting his words, and hurled the dragon tooth through the darkness. Huang Fa jerked, as one sometimes will in his sleep, as he tried to dodge. The fang slapped Huang Fa in the chest.
His eyes sprang open.
He stood, heart pounding in fear at the terrible dream. It is just my guilt that haunts me, he reassured himself. Someday I will forget it.
The sun cast
