Motherheart Dragon Priest

Chapter 9a - Father Sun and Mother Earth

Motherheart Priest — Chapter 9

Of the cycles of birth and death,

only those that live the dao 

understand that 

each begets the other.

San dao Jing

__________________

Grand master Stillness Desert stood next to his old friend, his hands on the great beasts left shoulder and felt the steady dragons purr of his restful breathing. He was healthy, alive and now cared for by a band of young men from the local clan who kept a camp nearby. They were more protective than Desert had anticipated and helped the King to fight off the axetooth and shearbeaks who came to taunt him. Desert was quite amazed the old king had stayed alive this long.

Perhaps he had listened when Desert had told him stories of the Temple acolytes learning their self cultivation. Perhaps he had learnt some form of breath skill for dragons. Perhaps he was just very strong, and even more so, perhaps the attentions of Desert Stillness over the years had given him an advantage. Whatever the reasons the old King seemed content to lie in the sun and when hungry find some axetooth kill and drive them off.

Desert lay his head on the rough scales of the shoulder and let the memories of the many rides flow through his mind. His hand wandered to this scar or that as he remembered so action they’d taken or a fall in the steeper parts when desert had turned him too quickly. There had been a few near disasters, but they were both alive to tell tales about their rides.

The young warriors would sit quietly around the camp fire and wait for their uncle to reminisce about some deed from the past. Like the time he had been asked to come and settle a feud between two mountain clans, but had had to ride the King into the middle of a pay back fight to stop the feud from escalating. What a sight that had been. Warriors running everywhere, wymin and children screaming. Desert had the warriors in uproars of laughter as he described how he had chased the warriors that refused to agree to his resolution. Chased them down till they had dropped and then he had stood the King over them till they agreed with his terms.

Stillness Desert had walked for three days into the mountains that time to find the King and ask his help, then ridden for two days to reach the clans territory. The King had needed extra Dragonwort as a reward for that effort.

The favourite story of the warriors was about the times when a Dragondance had been held at Forrestpool Temple and how those that wanted to become priests of the temple could attempt to climb onto a dancing dragon. If they held on long enough they could enter the Temple and work toward becoming priests. Most of these warriors would have seen this happen maybe only once in their young lives. Perhaps they secretly hoped that by tending to the King they would be accepted by Stillness Desert. Perhaps he would take them on as his own acolytes.

Some of course had taken that approach in the past. Making such a nuisance of themselves with one of the Masters, that the Master took them on out of pity. If they survived twelve months of cleaning up dragon shit in the stables, they could move onto meditation and herbal medicine and become acolytes.

Their proficiency in these skills would be their qualification for self cultivation training - the ultimate of the Temples disciplines and entry into priesthood. Only then would they be permitted to learn to ride the Temples dragons and then ultimately of course, a wild dragon.

Not many made it that far and then travelled across the seas as journeyman priest. Taking the Law to the lands where the name of Temple was known but where the people needed tuition to return to or cleave to the Law.