the laughing face of the archer froze when he saw Joru point to the sky to call down lightning, which he took in his hand and transformed into a bow. The crackle sent the man tumbling off his tower, dead when he hit the ground. His followers stampeded northward, fleeing for their lives.
The men of the caravans offered rare treasures to Joru, to thank him for saving them. But Joru refused them.
‘We must do something for you,’ they said. Though the merchants spoke different languages, Joru understood.
‘If you wish to help, load rocks onto your pack animals and each of you carry a rock to pile at the bend in the Yellow river.’
‘Dear warrior, you have such powerful magic, what could you need the rocks for?’
‘I wish to build a magnificent fortress.’
‘But you have the power to move an entire mountain – why do you need us?’
‘Your work will be the tax you pay for the profits you have made here.’
The merchants were beside themselves with joy. They had been to many countries, but this was the first time they had been asked to pay taxes by moving a few rocks to the bend in a river. And so strange legends spread about the tiny nation with a very young king who had great powers but acted in unusual ways. Ambitious kings sent messengers and caravans to search for the nation of gold and jade and for potions that conferred immortality.
When Rongtsa Khragan, the old Glingkar steward, heard the tales, he realised that Joru might truly be a son of the deities, using extraordinary means to demonstrate his powers.
‘I feel tremendous guilt when I listen to these stories,’ he confessed to Gyatsa Zhakar.
Gyatsa Zhakar dreamed often of his brother, and in each dream he had spoken to Joru: ‘Gling is your country and the people of Glingkar will one day be your subjects. Do not forsake them because they exiled you.’
*
Soon it was autumn, with its frequent winds and shorter days; snow fell. Gazing at the desolate landscape, Joru’s mother said she missed Glingkar, and her words aroused a strange malady in Joru. He had been told that he came from a celestial kingdom, but could not remember what it looked like; when he longed for his homeland, the sights of Glingkar appeared before him.
In a dream that night his brother seemed troubled.
‘Brother, why are you distressed?’ Joru asked.
‘My aged mother is ill.’
‘Have the doctors given her medicines? Have the warlocks used their magic?’
Gyatsa Zhakar shook his head. ‘Mother yearns for her homeland, but it is ten thousand snowcapped mountains and hundreds of rivers distant.’
‘Is there nothing that can ease her suffering?’
‘Yes, but it has not helped.’
‘What is it?’
‘Metog Lhartse, your mother, knows.’
When Joru awoke the following morning, he told his mother about his dream. Metog Lhartse recalled how, at Senglon’s fortress, a bird no one had seen before flew over one day and landed at the window of Gyatsa Zhakar’s mother’s sickroom. She cried, because she heard the accent of her homeland in the bird’s chirping. The bird left a branch on the windowsill before it flew away. It had many emerald green leaves. The Han doctor told her servant to pick a leaf and cook it in water. Within an hour, the woman had left her bed to stand on the highest point of the fortress to look east, the direction of her homeland. The medicine, the green branch with emerald leaves, which had come from her country, was called ‘cha’.
‘Cha?’ Joru said.
‘Yes.’
‘What a strange sound!’ He laughed.
‘You would consider it pleasing to the ear if you knew how to use it,’ Metog Lhartse said.
‘Oh?’
‘Many sick people recover after steeping it in water, then drinking it. Your brother probably sent you the message in a dream because the Han consort has used all her cha leaves.’
‘I’ll find some cha for the Han consort,’ Joru said, and summoned a peregrine falcon. All the bird brought back was a leafless branch. He showed it to a caravan from the east. ‘Bring me as much of this as you can find.’
‘Tea?’ They used the foreign word.
‘Cha!’ He used the local word.
The leader of the caravan said, ‘News will travel to my country even before I get there. When I am ready to return, the tea leaves will be on their way here. The first shipment will be a gift for you, but after that, when your people cannot live without it, you will have to pay for it with the good things from your land.’
‘What do you need?’
‘If you could tame them . . .’ The leader pointed to wild horses galloping on the grassland.
‘Of course.’
Then the leader turned to gaze at the torrential mountain streams, under which precious gold was buried in silt.
‘Gold.’
The leader now looked towards the rare flowers and herbs on the grassland, all useful medicines for illness.
Joru was displeased. ‘Enough! I asked for only one thing, but you are greedy.’
The merchant laughed. ‘Everyone says that of us, but as time goes by, the people in the world find it harder to live without us. So you may refuse our demands, but if you do, we will not give you what we have.’
‘I want what you have.’
‘The road you opened did not attract only the greedy. Many destitute and homeless people have also come to be your subjects, Great King.’
‘I am not a king.’
‘One day you will be the king of a nation, unless you seal the passes between the snowcapped mountains, then burn the vine bridges and ferry boats on the river.’ Joru knew he could not do that now, and felt regret. When he had opened the roads, he had brought peace and wealth to a deserted, barbaric land. He had been powerful. But now he felt that he was under the control of something even more powerful, not demons, nothing he could see or kill, yet it drew closer and closer.
‘Have some tea.’ The merchant handed him a jade cup filled with a clear brown liquid.
‘Isn’t it a leaf?’ Joru asked.
‘This liquid is brewed from the magical leaves.’
He took a sip and found it bitter, but then his mouth filled with a lingering aroma. He was suddenly refreshed. The merchant gave him a bag of dried leaves from the magical tree, and Joru sent the roaming peregrine with the bag to Glingkar.
Now, Khrothung had lately fashioned a vulture out of a light wood and daily rode it haughtily across the sky, to demonstrate his powers to all of Glingkar. When he saw the soaring peregrine, he yelled, ‘Dog of the sky, where are you going?’
‘I am following Joru’s command to fly to his elder brother, Gyatsa Zhakar,’ the peregrine replied.
‘What is that in your bill? Let me see.’
‘You are not Gyatsa Zhakar,’ the peregrine said.
Khrothung recited a spell to incite his vulture to snatch the bag. But Gyatsa Zhakar had witnessed this scene: he fitted arrow to bow to shoot down his uncle’s wooden vulture. The peregrine landed on his shoulder and cried, ‘Tea! Tea!’ then flapped its wings and flew away.
Gyatsa Zhakar looked into the bag. It was not fresh cha from a green branch, so he said nothing when he returned to the fortress. Yet when the Han consort smelt the wondrous aroma her headache all but vanished. ‘How lucky I am to smell the fragrance