The Dragon and the Lotus (Chimera #1) Read Online Free Page B

ways, it’s like any other city. Huge, crowded, and dirty. But Kathmandu is the crossroads of the gods. Every street corner in the city has a shrine, monument, statue, monastery, pagoda, stupa, or temple to someone’s god. Brahma, Lakshmi, Buddha, Shiva, Ganesh, Ahura Mazda, and on and on.
    “My father was a goldsmith who served the house of the king, as well as the wealthy temples, by making jewelry and golden inlays for statues and furniture. We were not wealthy ourselves, but my father was well-known and respected and we lived better than our neighbors. I had three brothers, and my mother’s sister also lived with us. I remember that we ate very well.”
    The nun nodded. The sounds of dripping water echoed all around them.
    “One day, a strange little man came to visit my father. He said he was a doctor from the Ming Empire who had come to pay his respects to the king of Yen and to see our kingdom. He claimed to speak a hundred languages, to know the secrets of the dead and the living, and to possess a cure for leprosy. My father, of course, was not interested in the man’s stories. My father was an artist who cared only for his tools and his work and his reputation. Eventually, the doctor came to the point. He commissioned my father to create a ring made of gold, silver, and iron, three bands intertwined with a strange design carved into its face, almost like a signet. My father was not happy about having to work with silver and iron, but the doctor offered to pay any price and that overcame my father’s objections. By the end of the month, the ring was ready.”
    “Did you see it? Was it beautiful?”
    “No, it was hideous,” Asha said. “But it was exactly what the doctor wanted. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want such a thing, so I followed my father when he delivered it to the doctor, and after my father left, I stayed to watch through a window. And that’s when I first saw it.”
    “What?”
    “A dragon. A real dragon.” Asha gazed out over the black waters. “The doctor had a chest, and in the chest was a cage, and in the cage was a golden dragon no larger than a songbird. At first I thought it was a snake, but then I saw the tiny claws, the tall scales on its spine, and the long curling white whiskers around its mouth. The doctor slipped my father’s ring around the dragon’s neck and twisted the rings to tighten it about its throat. It was a collar to keep the dragon from eating too much and growing too large.”
    “How terrible.” Priya lowered her head.
    “I suppose it was,” Asha said. “At the time, though, I just stared at the dragon through the window and wondered what else was out there in the world. I went to the doctor’s door and asked to the see the dragon. He refused at first. But when I described it to him, he knew that I already knew his secret and he let me in. He placed the cage on the table and let me stand there and stare at it. After a while, I began asking him questions. Where did he get it? Why did he have it? How old was it? Were there more? Could I have one?” She smiled in the dark. “How arrogant was I then? To own a dragon?”
    “You were a child.”
    “I suppose.” Asha sighed. “I stayed at the doctor’s house all evening looking at the relics and creatures in his jars and boxes, but they were all common enough animals and plants. I came back to the dragon again and again to watch it pace around its cage. When it looked at me, I could swear it was about to speak, but it never did. The doctor practically had to throw me out that night, and I came back every day after that to stare at the dragon and hear the doctor’s stories about his travels all over the world.
    “For a month, I spent my evenings in the doctor’s house, pestering him with questions and learning what you can do with a tiger’s whiskers and the bones of an eagle, the bark of the birch tree, or the skin of an eel. And all the while I stared at the dragon, pacing and pacing in