City of Death (36 page)

Laughing with relief, Bayang began to dig with both paws until she had freed Scirye's shoulders and arms. Seizing the hatchling's wrist, the dragon hauled her out of the hole. “Up you go.”

A very bedraggled griffin clung to her back. He let go, falling with a plop on the ground.

As she hugged the hatchling, Bayang reminded herself that despite having just heroically slain a gigantic monster, Scirye was still a human with fragile bones.

Even though Bayang tried to be as gentle as she could, the hatchling laughed. “Ouch. Not so hard.”

Tenderly, Bayang lifted Kles in her paw and repeated his battle cry in a soft, loving voice. “Tarkär, friend. Well done.”

Tucking the arrow into her belt, Scirye had tried to pick up the cup in one hand and almost dropped it. It was only then that Bayang noticed her fingers were so raw and bleeding from scraping against rocks that she had difficulty holding anything. Gripping the cup clumsily in both her hands, the hatchling drank thirstily, then lowered it.

“Here, Kles. I saved you half,” she said.

As the dragon held the griffin, Scirye lifted the cup to the griffin's beak.

As Kles settled back against Bayang's paw, he croaked, “For our next adventure, could we read a book? Preferably something boring—like how to grow carrots.”

Scirye had turned her face up toward the sun, letting it warm her cheeks. “I thought you liked all this excitement.”

“Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing,” Kles said, and sighed.

By then the others had stumbled over the uncertain footing of the slope toward them, and there was another round of hugs with some tears mixed in.

When everyone had had a turn with Scirye and Kles, they sat down. “Did you just burrow through a whole mountain?” Kat asked, staring at the hole.

Lord Tsirauñe scratched his cheek. “I don't recall anyone in the family being part gopher.”

Kles was sitting up now, but leaning against his mistress for support. “I think it was the arrow's doing, my lord.”

Scirye held up it up. “The arrow just began knifing through the dirt. I'm just glad I was able to hold on.”

“So are we,” Lady Sudarshane said, smiling as she began to cry again.

 

71

Scirye

Scirye was taken to Roland's camp where she was comfortably installed in a tent with a portable stove. Kles had coiled himself about her neck and shoulders and was chirruping in a low voice that was his equivalent of a cat's purr.

As he sat with his friends, Koko gave a deep sigh. “So it's finally over.”

Scirye glanced at her hand. The mark was fading, the outlines of the “3” hard to see. Suddenly she felt sad, realizing that the end of the adventure meant that her friends would now be going their separate ways. “I suppose you'll be heading home to San Francisco with Primo,” she said to Leech and Koko. A new thought hit her and she looked at Bayang. “But what will you do?”

The dragon lifted her head with all of her old dignity. “I'll go home and ask for a meeting with all the representatives of the different clans. Since I did kill Badik, they'll have to honor my request and come. Then I'll try to convince them that Leech is no threat. After all, he did help save the world.”

“Will they believe you?” Leech said, worried.

Bayang shrugged and winced at the pain in her injured wing. “Probably not. We dragons can be a pretty hardheaded lot.”

Leech looked distracted for a moment, as if he were listening to someone, and then he asked, “What'll they do to you?”

Bayang looked away from Leech and twisted her head to check the scars on her wing. “The dragons will put me to death for disobeying their orders.”

Leech paused as if he were listening to someone and then he said, “Even Lee No Cha would say that's wrong.”

“And if he were here,” Bayang said carefully, “I would thank him, because he would now be my friend and not my enemy.”

“You could stay with us and Primo,” Leech offered.

Bayang shook her head. “Primo and I could never feel comfortable with each other.”

Koko gave a cough. “Scirye, couldn't you ask the princess to work out a deal with the dragons?”

Bayang folded her wings again. “Even a princess of a vast empire is still a mere human to the dragons. My people will only listen to one of their own kind.”

Scirye pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders as she glared at the dragon. “I never thought I'd see the day when you would break a vow.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bayang said stiffly.

“Didn't we promise to return the staff to Uncle Resak and the string to Pele,” Scirye demanded, indicating the bow in one corner.

The dragon scratched the tip of her snout. “Hmm, we did do that, didn't we?”

“And you don't want to break an oath to a goddess,” Leech chimed in eagerly. “So you can't go back to your clan just yet.”

“They'll just have to wait.” And Bayang laughed.

“And while we're traveling, we'll figure out some way to convince your clan to forgive you,” Scirye suggested. It seemed like a remote hope but then so had been stopping Roland.

“Sure,” Koko said. “We're bound to save the world a few more times on the way to Hawaii. Do that enough times and even dragons will have to forgive and forget.”

“What about Primo?” Scirye asked Leech.

Leech shrugged. “He'll just have to understand that you're my family too.”

It was Kles who played the spoilsport. “How do we leave though? We don't have the straw wing anymore.”

Leech waved a paw at the tent around them. “We can build a wing out of canvas and poles.”

“But how do we launch it?” Kles asked. “Bayang can't fly yet.”

They all lapsed into silence, trying to figure out how to make that happen. Suddenly, Scirye felt a warmth wrap itself around her as if Nanaia were with her again.

“What are you smiling about?” Leech asked her curiously.

All of Scirye's doubts and worries vanished mysteriously. “I don't know.” Scirye shrugged. “I just feel like it.”

Then a familiar voice boomed from above them. “Ho, lumplings!”

They heard a puzzled Kat shout. “Who's that talking? I can't see you. And no one calls me a lump of anything.”

The tent boomed and the ropes creaked as a stray draft from Naue tried to tear it free. “Have you seen my friends?” he asked, cheerfully ignoring Kat's questions. “They look odder than you and they're much more entertaining.”

 

72

Leech

Mounting the discs, Leech rose through the air as all eyes in the camp watched him. The Voice did not speak but he could feel his elation added to Leech's own.

Below him, Scirye, Bayang, and Koko were waving their hands to get Naue's attention. Flapping his arms as he rocketed upward, Leech shouted, “Naue, here we are.”

Leech felt a thin gust of air circle around his waist as if Naue had extended an invisible tendril. Playfully, the wind spun him around and around as if he were a top. “Oh, such great joy! Such rapture! You're alive, half-lumpling. Naue feels like singing. And he will.”

Before Naue could begin one of his long hymns of praise to himself, Leech said quickly, “And we're glad to see you managed to pull yourself back together.”

“How can lightning destroy Naue the Invincible?” Naue demanded as he stopped twirling Leech.

“How did you find us?” Leech asked.

“One of Naue's many admirers whispered in his ear.” Naue paused as if confused. “Or did Naue dream he should come here?”

Leech wondered if Nanaia had guided the wind to them.

In the meantime, though, Naue shook off his momentary confusion and began to swirl around Leech. “No matter. Isn't it always so much fun when Naue is with you lumplings? What game shall we play next?”

As Leech fought to keep his balance, he managed to say, “We have to build another wing somehow.”

“Naue is generous,” the wind declared. “He will wait for your signal. You know the one?”

Leech remembered seeing flares in Roland's camp. “We'll put flowers in the sky,” Leech said. That was what Naue called fireworks.

But Naue was too impressed by his own kindliness to pay attention to the boy. “Lovely is the friendship of Naue, Great Naue!” the wind sang in a booming voice. “Grateful are the lumplings, for who else is so kind, so gracious, so understanding?”

He was still singing as his voice faded into the distance.

If he had legs,
the Voice observed,
he'd be strutting right now.

 

73

Scirye

When Leech brought them the news, Scirye was sure that the goddess had done her one last favor. Or was it some last bit of M
ā
ka still in Her? Was the memory of being human part of Her now?

Thank you,
she said silently to the goddess and her friend, for she would never be able to think about the one without the other.

Bayang was busy using charcoal from the brazier to draw a crude diagram of the wing on one end of a wooden table. And on the other end, Leech was busy making up a list of what they will need.

“We'll need supplies too,” Koko said, serious for once. “Lots of them.”

Scirye looked at the excited faces of their friends. “This is the way it should be,” she murmured to Kles who had coiled himself around her neck.

“Yes,” the little griffin agreed, “the five of us racing to a new adventure together.”

As she felt his warm body vibrate as the griffin began to chirrup contently, Scirye was ready to purr with him.

 

Afterword

This series began when my editor, Susan Chang, told me she was interested in the Caucasian mummies that had been found along the Silk Road, some of which dated back 3,800 years. The dry climate had preserved their bodies so it was possible to see that they had red hair and Caucasian features and had been buried in cloth with a weave distinctive to the Celts of Europe.

I'd been just as fascinated by the mummies and how they came to be in what is now China. DNA tests showed that they were of both Near Eastern and Asian ancestry, suggesting that people were already traveling back and forth upon the trade routes we call the Silk Road.

It was more than people and jewels; spices and other goods also moved back and forth across continents, and ideas as well. The goddess Nanaia was a combination of the Mesopotamian goddess Anahita and the Greek goddess Demeter, with some overtones of Indian deities as well.

Many authorities believe that the descendants of these mummies became the Kushans, whose empire sat astride the Silk Road for several centuries. They were a flexible people who were adept at blending ideas and concepts, including commissioning the Buddhist statues of Gandhara. Buddhist themes were sculpted in classical Greek style to create a haunting and serene beauty.

When I began the series, I had no idea that the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco was going to bring in an exhibit that featured Kushan art and jewelry, and I had a chance to see it twice. If you are curious about these treasures, you might want to look at the exhibit's catalog,
Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul.

The Old Tongue in this series is Tocharian, and I'm embarrassed to say that I found I had mispronounced some of the names of the Kushan characters, so I've corrected it in the guide.

Finally, I want to thank the readers for following the adventures of Scirye and her companions. I hope they had as much fun on this journey as I did and that, by the end, they could also smell a hint of spices carried on the dry wind.

These are some of the sources consulted for this book:

Adams, Douglas Q.
A Dictionary of Tocharian B.
Amsterdam: Rodolpi Bv, 1999.

Asarpay, G. “Nana, the Sumero-Akkadian Goddess of Transoxiana,”
Journal of the American Oriental Society
96, no. 4 (October-December 1976): 536–542.

Ball, Warwick.
The Monuments of Afghanistan: History, Archaeology and Architecture.
London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008.

Cribb, Joe, and Georgina Herrman, eds.
After Alexander: Central Asia before Islam.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

de la Vaissière, Étienne.
Sogdian Traders: A History
. Translated by James Ward. Leiden: Brill, 2005.

Ghose, Madhuvanti. “Nana: The ‘Original' Goddess on the Lion,”
Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology
1 (2006): 97–112.

Hiebert, Fredrik, and Pierre Cambon, eds.
Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul.
Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2008. Note the original French edition has more material on the actual excavations.

Juliano, Annette L., Judith A. Lerner, and Michael Alram.
Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China.
New York: Abrams, 2001.

Mair, Victor.
Secrets of the Silk Road: An Exhibition of Discoveries from the Xinjang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China.
Santa Ana, Calif.: Bowers Museum, 2010.

Mani, Buddha Rashmi.
The Kushan Civilization: Studies in Urban Development and Material Culture.
Dehli: B. R. Publishing, 1987.

Michell, George, Marika Vicziany, and Tsui Yen Hu.
Kashgar: Oasis City on China's Old Silk Road.
London: Francis Lincoln, 2008.

Rosenfield, John M.
The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Thakur, Dr. Manoj K.
India in the Age of Kanishka
. 2nd rev. ed. Dehli: Worldview Publication, 1999.

Video:

Lost Treasures of Afghanistan
, National Geographic, DVD, 2006.