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 Palace.
They fought with him on the shore, then dived into a pool where the Yalong river merged with a roiling tributary, and where every eddy seemed to carry enough power to suck the world dry. The bottom of the eddy was like the waist of an hourglass. He slipped through the tiny opening to see another world appear before his eyes. Moving freely, the monsters flew out of the water into the clouds when they saw that he was stuck in an eddy. The sound of their laughter cleared Joru’s head. Holding the stick sideways, he stopped the flow of water in the eddy.
The monsters and Joru battled their way to the glacier, the rivers’ source. Their final resort was an old trick: they conjured up many lovely living things, all running towards him, all of which died under his stick. To everyone in Glingkar he seemed cruel beyond words. When he struck down the water monsters’ illusions, the corpses dammed the clear water upstream, and the smell of blood was so strong that even the flowers on the riverbanks closed and spun around to show the backs of their calyxes to the river. Yet when he struck down the monsters, their corpses floated, polluting only a small area of water. The instant the demons were killed, the piles of bodies disappeared and the river returned to its pristine state. The flowers bloomed again.
Though he had proved to the people that he had battled the demons’ transforming magic, they refused to forgive him. Indeed, one clever person said that the magic had created an illusion, but that the malevolence and cruelty were no less real. Furthermore, he said, when the people had given him a chance to repent, the boy had shown no inclination to do so. That man’s words brought cheers from the yet unschooled people of Glingkar. Even the brave and intelligent Gyatsa Zhakar could not find the right words to refute this view, although he knew it traduced his brother. Neither could the old steward. Who had spoken those words? It was Joru’s uncle, Khrothung.
As the crowd watched, a section of ice sheared off the glacier with a thunderous crack and Joru’s body was swallowed up in white sleet. The crowd cheered even louder.
But Joru’s mother, Metog Lhartse, who had been sewing a fur robe in the opening of the tent, doubled over and clapped a hand over her heart as if it had been pierced.
When the clouds dispersed and the sun shone bright and clear, Joru rose up from the scattered shards of ice and landed in front of the crowd. The glacier had cracked into pieces when it met the magic that protected him. He told the people that the demons that had been trapped underground had opened a passageway in the water, but that he had sealed it beneath the glacier.
Khrothung spat at him. ‘Liar.’
Other voices chorused, ‘Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar!’
‘My dear nephew,’ Khrothung sneered, ‘do not try to deceive us with your illusions.’
From the hills to the valleys, the people cried in perfect unison, ‘Illusions! Illusions!’
The angry shouts were invincible, and the handsome face of the son of the deities turned ugly. Even his imposing stature diminished, until Joru was a wretched creature at the mercy of the crowd: they had won, they had forced an impostor to show his true colours. Now they shouted, ‘Truth! Truth!’
This marked the sixth year after the son of the deities had descended to the human world.
Joru’s mother, Metog Lhartse, looked into the hollow blue of the sky, beneath which emerald green hills extended to the horizon. She wanted to call out, but the sound rose up from her belly and stuck in her throat. It was not a sound she coughed out, but a blood clot. She dug into the ground, pushing the grass away, and buried it deep under the turf. She did not want anyone, not even Heaven, to see a mother’s grief for her son.
The people were now shouting, ‘Killer! Killer!’
‘So what shall we do with him?’ Khrothung wished to kill him, but he knew that no one could do so. In the awkward silence of the crowd, he spoke: ‘He is just a child, so we must teach him to repent by banishing him to a barbaric and barren place.’
Banishment. Exile.
The boy would live or die alone in the wilderness. That way, no one would bear responsibility for his death. Greatly relieved, the people shouted again, and this time the word that brought the sky low in sadness was: ‘Banish!’
‘Banish?’ Gyatsa Zhakar asked.
The wise old steward repeated his question: ‘Banish?’
Echoes bounced off the rocky cliffs: ‘Banish!’
All the old steward could do was summon the Glingkar noblemen to seek divination from Heaven. Gathered at his fortress, the noblemen listened eagerly to the prediction.
The precious pearl on the head of the poisonous snake is now in the hands of the poor, but how will they recognise its value if the right moment has not yet arrived?
Heaven had asked the people of Glingkar a question that most had not considered and were unwilling to do so.
‘Does that mean Glingkar does not deserve the son of the deities?’ The old steward was not sure what to do.
Khrothung had an answer: ‘Send him north along the Yellow river, alone. Then we will see what magic the boy can manifest.’
The noblemen nodded their agreement, so the steward stayed silent.
‘I should like to go into exile with my brother,’ Gyatsa Zhakar said.
‘What nonsense is that? You are the commander of Glingkar warriors. What would happen to Glingkar and its people if the demons rose up again or an enemy attacked?’
Gyatsa Zhakar sighed. ‘Then I will inform him of the decision.’
But Danma, one of the Glingkar warriors, was sad that Gyatsa Zhakar must bid his younger brother a final farewell. ‘Noble Gyatsa Zhakar, please stay in your golden seat. I will do that for you.’ He spurred his horse and galloped towards Joru’s camp.
Banned by his mother from returning to his father’s fortress after his terrible battle with the demons, Joru in his anger had pitched a tent made of human skin. Intestines, set straight and rigid, served as the supporting poles, and human bones formed a gruesome fence. More bones were piled high beyond it. Disgusted as he was, Danma understood that Joru could never have collected so many bones, even if he had killed every human in Glingkar. The
