appeared before him. With his white beard quivering, the old man said, ‘Stop running, and don’t be afraid.’ At these words, Jigmed felt the grey clouds of sorrow and the mist of misery that were following him break apart, revealing a clear sky with downy white clouds. Yet worry knitted the old steward’s brow. ‘Did he frighten you?’
Jigmed nodded, and then questions erupted: ‘How did he become like that? Why don’t he and his mother live in the palace?’
The old man gave him a long stare and shook his head. ‘I had a dream that told me you could receive news from the celestial realm. It said you could tell me why.’
‘My dream isn’t finished yet. I reached the gate but did not see the faces of the deities.’
‘That is what I thought. I saw no celestial light in your eyes.’
With those words, the old man vanished, and Jigmed awoke. To his surprise, there before him was precisely what he had seen in his dream: the hills, the lake and the river. At dusk, as he took his flock back to the village, he was still puzzling over the dream. Why was it different from what he’d heard in the old stories?
That evening by the fire, after a simple dinner, he was dozing when the crisp sounds of a lute woke him, reminding him of the storyteller he’d met that morning. The old man had no sooner donned a long satin robe of the kind worn by actors than the people sitting below urged him to begin. But he kept his head lowered, running his fingers over the strings. It was only when Jigmed appeared that he jumped to his feet and began to sing in a loud, clear voice.
‘Lu-ah-la-la mu-ah-la, lu-ta-la-la mu-ta-la!
The fated one has come.
Ignorant shepherd, which part do you wish to hear?’
Jigmed answered anxiously, ‘The son of the deities is not yet five years old, but he has lost his celestial nature.’
The people, who were familiar with the story, heard these words and raised a loud protest. Waving his hand, the old man quieted them.
In the silence, there was the sound of the lute, like moonlight brightening the ground.
The Story Exile
Shortly after the son of the deities was born, he went to live on the Ashug grassland between the Yalong and Jinsha rivers, where a sparkling glacier ran down to the edge of a lake.
The people had witnessed Joru’s magical powers; they had also seen how he had used the powers bestowed on him by Heaven in a frenzy of senseless killing. But they failed to understand that most of the lives he took were those of demons and apparitions. And they could not have seen him vanquish the many shapeless demons and evil spirits on the land between the water and the mountains. His uncle, Khrothung, was the only one who could have seen Joru’s good deeds, but his heart had been occupied by demons so he kept quiet when the people voiced their disappointment in the boy who was rumoured to be the son of the deities. ‘Is it possible that Heaven is merely toying with us?’ they wondered.
Only the son of the deities knew what was going to happen: Master Lotus had told him in his dream that the long, narrow strip of land currently occupied by the Gling tribe was too small. For the nation to be strong, it must expand to the west and north from the Jinsha river to occupy the far broader grassland on the upper reaches of the Yellow river. They had to go all the way north until they reached a land that oozed salt, where, in the dry weather, sparks flew off camels’ hoofs when they ran. The future flocks of Gling needed all the tender grass they could find, and the warriors of Gling needed vast stretches of land on which to gallop their warhorses.
Joru, who was only five years old at the time, was already as tall as a twenty-year-old and enjoyed stealing glances at the prettiest girl of the Gling tribe, Brugmo, who chose to play with warriors of her own age; she liked to etch a subtle pain into men’s hearts.
When he uttered her name in his sleep, his mother was concerned.
‘My son, the girl for you may just have arrived in this world.’
The moonlight flickered on the lake. The night was cold, like water, and the constellations revolved slowly in the sky. Joru’s mother, she of noble birth, could not stop crying. She wanted to wake her son, to sob against his chest, but Master Lotus, who had entered Joru’s dream, blew a puff of air on her, and she curled up under her blankets and sank into a dreamless sleep, her breath turning to frost at the edge of the coverlet.
Above the rocky levees along the river there was a soaring fortress, lights ablaze. Glingkar had been bathed in the light of peace since the birth of the son of the deities: the finest grain was turned into spirits; the finest milk made into cheese. Gone from the wind were the inauspicious sounds made by the dark cloaks of demons on their nocturnal journeys. Now, in the evening light, poets savoured rhymes, and artisans fine-tuned their skills. Hardly anyone thought of offering sacrifices for the fire that turned clay into pottery, or rocks into copper and iron. Even Senglon forgot his son, and his wife of noble Dragon lineage, who lived, cold and hungry, on the grassy plain. At that moment, his body was aflame with drink and women. With a wave of his arm, he ordered his servants to sing louder.
Only Gyatsa Zhakar missed his beloved younger brother. When his longing for the boy became unbearable, he leaped onto his horse and rode out of the fortress to see him, but when his cloak began to flap in the night wind, Master Lotus, who had entered Joru’s dream, felt the vibration in the air. ‘Tonight does not belong to you two brothers,’ he said, and threw up an invisible black wall. It gave way when Gyatsa Zhakar attacked it with his sword, but quietly closed again. He was left with no choice but to turn his horse and go back. He met the old steward on the hilltop, looking to where the land dipped on the far side of the river bend until not even moonlight reached it.
‘I miss my brother,’ Gyatsa Zhakar said.
‘I fear for Glingkar,’ the old steward said, ‘but your brother has made it impossible to see what Heaven has in store for us.’
Joru slept on. In his dream he asked Master Lotus, ‘Shall I be king?’
The Master shook his head. ‘Not yet – you must suffer more.’
‘If I am not to be king, I wish to return to Heaven.’
The Master sighed. ‘I may still be here when you return to Heaven.’
‘You are not a deity?’
‘I am a future deity.’
‘Then leave my tent.’
The Master stood up and smiled. ‘Son of the deities, I am leaving your dream.’
When Joru awoke, the rising sun had already melted the frost on the grass. He mounted the magic walking stick he had taken from his uncle, and told his mother, who was weaving, that he wished to go back to the fortress. She begged him to promise that he would stop his killing – and avoid making the people angry. Believing that he had eliminated the demons, and recalling, with a pang of loneliness, how his powerful brother, Gyatsa Zhakar, had effortlessly pulled him up onto the back of his horse and how the eyes of the old steward, filled with expectation, always lingered on him, he promised.
‘Go back and apologise to your father and the old steward,’ his mother said. ‘Tell them what you have told me. They will forgive you.’
Meanwhile, the stick beneath him began to make a grating noise, which meant that demons were nearby. He abandoned it, and continued on his way towards the fortress. Two figures, gazing in his direction, were visible at the top – the old steward and his brother, Gyatsa Zhakar. They wanted him to return obedient and cleansed, which would allow the people to forgive him. He kept walking.
This time, though, there was something in the water. Two monsters, half dragon, half snake, crawled onto the bank. They were dripping wet, yet flames shot from their mouths. With a heavy sigh, he cast a quick glance at the fortress, went back to retrieve his stick, and rushed at the water monsters, which appeared to everyone else in Gling, including his mother, as two pretty girls out walking by the crystal gate of the Dragon