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heard in the forest yesterday?”
    Kai didn’t answer.
    “We shouldn’t be following it! We should be getting far away from it.”
    “The only thing I am following is the path, but I keep finding unusual paw prints.” Kai pointed to a mark in the earth.
    “That could’ve been made by any number of animals.”
    “No other creature has such big paws.”
    “Well, it’s yours then, isn’t it?”
    Kai pushed one of his paws into the earth. “This is my paw print.”
    Tao looked at the marks left by the pads of Kai’s paw, surrounded by the imprints of his four toes and talons. The other paw print was longer and narrower than Kai’s, and it had three toes, the middle one the longest.
    Kai poked through a pile of leaves and picked up a brown sphere about the size of a plum.
    “There is also dung.”
    “Dung?”
    He held it out for Tao to examine, but Tao didn’t want to touch it. It was hard and brown. Tao realised that what he had seen Kai pick up earlier wasn’t stones at all. They were animal droppings.
    “I’m not interested in animal tracks … or dung. Can we please get going again? We’re still not far enough away from that awful cave.”
    Kai continued along the path, reciting a poem about his tracking skills.
    “No one can evade me
,
    Not man nor beast nor bird
.
    However clever my quarry
,
    I will track it undeterred.”
    “We need to walk faster,” Tao said.
    Tiny midges started swarming in the air in front of Tao. More and more joined them until thousands of the insects formed a black cloud barring his way. Tao was trying to wave away the midges without harming them, when Kai suddenly stopped in his tracks.
    “What’s wrong?” Tao asked.
    “I feel …”
    “Feel what?”
    “Unwell.”
    “Is it the bat droppings? Are you going to be sick again?”
    Kai was rubbing his eyes with a paw. “My eyes are sore.”
    Tao got down onto his hands and knees so he could crawl under the cloud of insects. He caught up with Kai.
    “Did you hear that?” Tao said. “I thought I heard something. It sounded like …”
    The forest suddenly ended and they found themselves in a clearing. Tao felt exposed without the shelter of surrounding trees. The sun broke through the clouds and Tao was dazzled by bright light. He squinted. The sunlight reflected off metal objects – all sharp, shiny and pointed in their direction. There in front of them was a band of mounted nomads, at least twenty-five of them. They were armed with swords, spears and arrow tips all made of iron. Their saddle blankets bore the rearing horse emblem of the nomad tribe called the Zhao. They blocked the path, staring at Kai who hadn’t had time to shape-change.
    “We have found them,” one of the men called over his shoulder. “A boy and a dragon.”
    The leader of the nomads broke through the line of horses. He was a small, skinny man who looked like a child astride a horse, except that he had wrinkly, leathery skin. All the happiness dropped out of Tao. The man was dressed in the saffron robes of a monk, but he wore a fur hat and fine leather shoes as well. He was also wearing a broad grin. It was Fo Tu Deng.
    “Ha!” he said cheerfully. “We’ve found you at last!”
    The monk was high on the list of people Tao never wanted to see again. Questions crowded Tao’s mind. Why was the monk searching for them? What was he doing with the nomads? And why wasn’t he back at Yinmi?
    Tao and Kai glanced at each other.
    There was only one thought in Kai’s head. “Flee!”

Chapter Five
B LACK
    Tao turned and ran back the way they had come. Kai was on his heels. An arrow flew past Tao’s ear.
    “Don’t harm the boy, you idiot!” Fo Tu Deng’s voice rang out. “I need him captured alive. The dragon too. And remember, he might not be in the shape of a dragon. Capture anything that moves.”
    Tao could hear whinnying, stamping hoofs, and riders berating their mounts as the horses jostled for a place on the narrow path. Nomad horses were