Motherheart Dragon Priest

Chapter 10a - Isle of Wytches

Motherheart Priest — Chapter 10

Dao is eternal,

the cycles of yin and yang

are the cycles of eternity.

San dao Jing

_________

The ochre-clad figure stood silently on the right hand prow of the seagoing twin hull. Behind him, on the platform built across the two hulls, the beat of a drum kept the rowers in rhythmic unity. The dip, splash and lift of the great paddles was like the beat of the heart for the sleek boat.

As long as they moved in unison the boat seemed an effortless hunter of the ocean. The crew were mostly Jomon, those canny seamen who have traded these eastern oceans of the great sphere of the world since the dreaming–the wuji, the nothing from which all things arose.

To wile away the hours during the voyage, the old Jomon captain had told the ochre figure of the many warrior priests he had taken to their new “Temples”. This was not quite a new Temple nor a new assignment for this warrior priest. He had been sent to train two acolytes who had strayed from the path and who threatened to become poisoned dragons.

The Dao flowed strongly in the old Jomon captain and his travels were legendary. He told of his first journeys in single hulled square rigged boats to the far north into the ice sea of the White Bear and here he gained his name–all called him White Bear now.

Later he had sailed across the eastern ocean in the great tri hulls, each carrying two hundred men and wimyn, to the vast and strange Sunrise Land of the Atlatyl and their stepped temples. It was a land full of giant elephants, long horned bison and wild men that lived on horse back and fought with the Atlatyl.

He told of how the Law was strong in the wild horsemen of this great Sunrise Land and how the Atlatyl could not conquer them. Of how even during the worst of droughts and pestilence they would not enter their taboo lands as decreed by their priests.

For it was from these taboo lands that the animals would come to the people to feed them in the people’s times of need. That there would be no animals to feed and clothe the people if the taboo was broken was well understood.

Yes, there the Law was great and just and all of the Mother’s children were protected by it. All the Mother’s children were fecund and the world was rich and full of life. The old captain told of other lands where he would not trade for the people did not live the Law and they had destroyed the great children of the Mother and so they lived as dogs who ate the mice of the field and the sparrows of the out houses.

This was now the way of the grey figured people, the Han, for they now lay as slaves to the Monqhul who had swept over their Great Wall and whose Qhan now sat as their Emperor. Only in the south did the Soong still resist the ferocity of the Monqhul due to the presence and advice of Temple warrior priests who trained the armies; guided the generals; and tamed the horses, elephants and indricoths that carried the Soong into battle with sword, bow and fire.

In this way they guarded their southern homelands and, with the most powerful navy in the world, traded wherever profits lay, be they material or political.

The fog was clearing and before the ochre clothed figure lay the harbour of Dragon Island as the Katithans called it. He had seen the great sea dragon beasts for which the island was named, many, many times and knew them well. The length of three or four men, they would attack smaller boats of fishermen tipping the crews into the water.