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misfortune.
    The carriage headed west, passing through bare orchards and the drab, empty fields where ploughs pulled by oxen were preparing the ground for spring planting. Beyond that were tussocky grasslands where the battle between the Xiong Nu and the imperial soldiers had taken place only a few days earlier. The road was littered with weapons, boxes of food and occasionally a dead body, dropped by the imperial army to lighten their loads so they could gain more speed as they retreated. A group of the Duke’s men were still busy with the grisly task of collecting the dead for burial, piling the broken and bloody bodies of imperial and Yan soldiers onto a wagon. A smashed war chariot lay on its side with one wheel in the air. A dead horse lay rigid, the fatal arrow still sticking out of its chest. Patches of dark dried blood stained the winter-pale grass. Ping wondered how many men had died because of this latest imperial folly.
    After an hour, they left the signs of battle behind and the road wound its way through the bleak hills of Yan. The driver had been uneasy when they departed. There was no dot or cross on the map to indicate precisely where Dragon’s Lament Creek was. He was used to knowing his exact destination. Ping felt no fear of this journey. She was the Dragonkeeper and she meant todo her job properly. With Danzi’s map and the
Yi Jing
reading to guide her, she was sure she would find her way to wherever it was they had to go. She had her second sight to warn her of danger. She could summon her
qi
power to protect herself. Whatever difficulties they faced, she was confident that she would be able to overcome them.
    Ping stared out of the carriage window. The spring rains were overdue and the hills were dry and yellow. After so many months of seeing nothing but the inside of courtyards and halls, even these bleak hills seemed beautiful.
    When Danzi had first told Ping that she was the true Dragonkeeper, she hadn’t believed him. Even though she had all the characteristics—left-handedness, second sight and the ability to hear dragon speech in her head—it still didn’t seem possible. She was such an insignificant person. How could she be so important? Others had also doubted that she was the true Dragonkeeper. She was, after all, a girl. No other Dragonkeeper in the hundreds of years of imperial history had ever been female.
    At first Ping had been very hesitant and unsure about becoming a Dragonkeeper, but she had grown more confident over time and had finally come to believe that it was her true role.
    At first the responsibility of being a Dragonkeeper had been a burden, now it was what Ping wanted to domore than anything in the world. It had been easier than she’d expected to leave behind friends and comfort. She had a job to do, a purpose, a destiny. No amount of fine clothes and good food could replace that.
    The first task Danzi had given her as Dragonkeeper was to carry his precious dragon stone to Ocean. He wouldn’t tell her why. Their journey across the Empire had been difficult and dangerous. They had been tracked by a dragon hunter who wanted to capture the old dragon for his body parts, which were worth a great deal of gold because of their medicinal and magical properties. Then a shape-changing necromancer had pursued them. Both of these powerful men had tried to take the dragon stone from her. Neither had succeeded. Ping had confronted the dragon hunter, and he had fallen to his death from a peak on Tai Shan.
    When they reached Ocean, Ping had finally learned the secret of the purple stone when it cracked open and, to her amazement, a tiny purple dragon slipped out of it. By that time, Danzi was badly wounded and weary of the world of men. Though his wings were in tatters, he flew off across Ocean to the Isle of the Blest to be healed, leaving her to care for the newborn dragon. Since then she had dreamt of him, and those dreams had helped her find her path alone, but she had never seen