54 pages • 1-hour read
Dragonkeeper
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Chapters 15-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of death and animal cruelty.
Chapter 15 Summary: “In The Shadow of the Fire Mountain”
As time passes, Ping grows to love sailing on the river. As Jiang Bing teaches her about the world, Ping begins to fantasize about Jiang Bing becoming like a mother to her and being her caretaker when Danzi reaches the ocean. Jiang Bing always feeds them the same meal, which is flavored with a specific but unknown herb. Despite the voyage’s many pleasures, Ping still feels uncomfortable around the orange cat.
One day, Jiang Bing reveals that they will stop at Wucheng. This alarms Ping, who recognizes Wucheng as the city of sorcerers and necromancers who covet dragon parts. Danzi, however, reveals that this stop was always part of his plan, since the dragon stone is likely in Wucheng. The city is built beside an active volcano, and the area is dark and ugly. Nothing growing, and the city has many secrets to hide.
Ping is upset about leaving Jiang Bing and entering Wucheng, but she pays the boatwoman and goes into town with Danzi. She doesn’t know which way to go, but Danzi tells her to use her abilities and qi to sense the stone’s presence. She obeys but cannot sense Diao’s presence. Even so, Danzi insists that they find an inn and wait. In the dark, the city comes alive, and when Ping pays a suspicious, rough-looking innkeeper for a room, she is surprised to see that he uses the same herb that Jiang Bing did. She and Danzi go out again at night to hunt for the stone. They see many strange people, but Danzi assures her that none of them are dangerous, except for the necromancers. Ping decides not to trust anyone, since she cannot tell which people are necromancers.
The stalls in Wucheng sell strange ingredients for potions and even offer live animals. One seller identifies Ping as a seer and tries to sell her an animal familiar, but Ping shows him Hua, which satisfies him. She notices a strange man watching her and tries to slip away. As she fruitlessly searches for the stone, she begins to hear a frantic whimpering in her head, which she ignores. They return to the inn, and Ping is surprised that the normally determined Danzi now seems so tired and disoriented. After Danzi falls asleep, Ping goes to fetch water, dwelling on the fact that her anger connects her to her qi. She channels her anger and feels the stone’s urgent cry, then follows the thread of the qi to a man’s house. The man sleeping on the floor is the same man who had been watching her.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Lost and Found”
The man’s house is filled with cruel and odious objects, including a dissected baby goat and a mirror that makes Ping look like an old woman. Ping approaches the man and senses that he is holding the stone close to his chest. Drawing on her experience of taking things from Lan, she uses a feather to tickle the man’s nose, and he releases the stone in his sleep. She uses the ladle as a replacement for the stone and slips away, but she is alarmed to see that the stone has sickened considerably.
Danzi, still a bit disoriented, tells Ping to get dressed, saying that they must go quickly to the ocean. Outside, Ping sees six strange ghostly figures hovering above the ground, and Danzi identifies them as sentries who will tell the necromancer what has happened. As they struggle to leave the town, the necromancer charges, throwing discs and using magic to subdue Danzi. Ping channels her anger to use qi and throws him back, enabling Danzi to slash him with his claws. Ping climbs onto Danzi’s back, and Danzi climbs over the city’s jagged walls. One of the necromancer’s crows punctures Ping’s arm. Danzi kills one crow, and Hua leaps onto the other, distracting it.
Danzi and Ping run to Jiang Bing, who allows them onto her boat and leaves quickly. Hua and the cat also leap onto the boat at the last minute. To Ping’s alarm, Jiang Bing is staring grimly at Danzi’s dragon form. The boatwoman announces that she wants the dragon stone as payment, since it belongs to her master. Suddenly, the cat takes the form of the necromancer. Determined to protect the stone, Ping leaps into the river, and Jiang Bing leaps after her. Ping kicks her in the nose, and Jiang Bing is swept away out of sight. Ping makes it to the riverbank with the stone intact but realizes that she left Danzi and Hua behind in the necromancer’s grip.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Strength and Weakness”
Ping struggles between her love for her friends and her loyalty to the dragon stone and decides that she simply must figure out how to save everyone. She watches from the riverbank as the necromancer sails by. Danzi is splayed out and tied to the boat, and he is looking for the stone. She calls out, and the boat sails closer and charges onto the bank toward her. She draws her knife, making the necromancer laugh. He draws his sword and advances on her. Sensing that he is weak from expending so much energy, Ping runs and ducks out of the way as Hua suddenly leaps on the necromancer and attacks him viciously. Ping runs up onto the boat, casting off just before the necromancer can reach her. Hua leaps into the water after her, and Danzi uses his tail to get the rat aboard. Ping sails the boat alone, unable even to take the time to untie Danzi as she struggles to gets as far away from the necromancer as she can.
After many hours, Ping, who is in pain and can barely keep herself awake, manages to tie the boat to a broken-down jetty so that she and Danzi can rest. She cannot ascertain whether the stone is healthy, but Danzi reassures her that it is. As she makes a meal from Jiang Bing’s stores, Danzi stops her from adding the woman’s mysterious herb, telling her that these are chinaberry leaves, which are toxic to dragons and make humans nauseous. Ping is horrified to learn that Jiang Bing had betrayed them from the start; she decides to trust people far less easily in the future.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Chance Meeting”
Danzi recovers his strength, and Ping rests after steering the boat all by herself. She claims some of the necromancer and Jiang Bing’s belongings for herself and tends to the dragon stone with the ointment. Danzi refuses to tell her why the necromancer would have wanted the stone, and Ping notices that the stone itself is bigger and seems to be speaking in her mind with soft sounds. As they sail, Danzi gives Ping some new qi exercises to help her focus on positive emotions.
Over time, she can make her hands tingle with controlled qi. When she questions why she can do this, Danzi tells her that she is special, although she doesn’t understand why. He explains that she must come from the line of Dragon Keepers; she has all the qualities that are required of one, even though there has never been a girl Dragon Keeper before. He explains that even Wang Cao is not a real Dragon Keeper, since only Ping has the second sight that allows her to sense intentions and even divine the future. He offers her a dragon’s mirror, which will bind her to him and to his heirs as the official Dragon Keeper. However, before she can accept it, the boat crashes into a gigantic boat and begins to sink.
Ping grabs what she can and jumps out. Strangers haul her ashore, but she realizes that they are soldiers, and they identify her as the “sorceress” of Huangling. They capture Danzi and move to kill him, but Ping shouts that killing the last imperial dragon is a crime. She declares herself the Imperial Dragon Keeper and moves to subdue Danzi, who plays along. Suddenly, a young boy approaches, and Ping is bewildered by the guards’ deference to him. She refuses to bow, but when the guard forces her to do so, she finally realizes that the garment the boy is wearing matches that of the emperor she met. The young boy, Liu Che, is the new emperor of China.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Another Imperial Banquet”
Several ministers—including the former emperor’s grand counselor, Tian Fen—come to see Ping. Tian Fen confirms that she is the girl from Huangling. They are horrified when Ping frankly states that she assumed all emperors were old and fat, but her remarks only amuse the young emperor, who tells her that she doesn’t seem much like a Dragon Keeper. He also questions why his father never said anything about the dragons’ existence. Tian Fen insists that both the dragon and Ping must be executed, but the emperor declares that Ping and Danzi belong to him. He orders the counselors to prepare Ping to attend a dinner with him.
Ping is astonished by the beauty of the emperor’s hunting palace by the river. The counselors put Danzi in the stables, insisting on extremely specific rules for his care and treatment. She hides the stone with Danzi; no one has seen or remarked upon it. The servants prepare her a fragrant bath and fine silk clothes, and she goes to dinner and pays the proper respects to the emperor this time. To her surprise, she gets her own table next to the emperor’s. While she enjoys the delicious food, she questions him about his presence in the countryside, and he explains that he is going to the sacred mountain of Tai Shan to “ask Heaven to bless [his] reign” (260). He is glad to have someone his own age to talk to instead of stuffy old men, and he reveals that alchemists and other learned men are coming to join him to produce a potion of eternal youth so that he will never become like his father.
Ping returns to Danzi, who is displeased by her enjoyment of the fine treatment at the palace. He insults her gown, but she pacifies him by promising that they can escape the next day. Ping then goes to bed and experiences true comfort for the first time in her entire life.
Chapters 15-19 Analysis
Ping’s daring rescue of the egg, the boat, Hua, and Danzi emphasizes her newfound ability to act independently and save the day, illustrating her growing willingness to focus on The Complexities of Responsibility and Coming of Age. In this section, she is completely without Danzi’s guidance and must summon the strength and courage to prevail without anyone else’s help. This feat proves that she is an inherently decisive and capable person, as her trials up to this point have encouraged her to pursue seemingly daunting goals with little hesitation. Additionally, this section shows that her greatest motivations are her love for Danzi and her wish to keep him safe. Ping’s consistent refusal to take the “easy” route in life speaks well of her moral character, especially when she resolves to find a way to save everyone from the threat of the necromancer. By achieving this goal, she proves that she is no longer the scared child she once was.
As Ping’s determination deepens, her understanding of morality also becomes more sophisticated. Her previous view of ethics was limited to a very simplistic grasp of “good” versus “evil” individuals and behavior, but when she is confronted with the paradox of Jiang Bing’s kindness and subsequent betrayal, she must learn to judge people with a greater degree of nuance. Her experiences in Wucheng further complicate this issue, given that the city is a confusing, ominous place, and even the author’s descriptions are tainted by suggestive imagery that imbues the entire area with an evil aura. The people are strange, magic and sorcery are real, and everything is threatening to them both, down to their drugged food and the magicians’ desire for dragon body parts.
By contrast, Jiang Bing’s boat initially seems like a welcome refuge from the dangers of the city, but in the face of the woman’s betrayal Ping must once again learn that appearances can be deceiving. While Wucheng is not necessarily safe, Jiang Bing’s boat is even less so, with the necromancer’s claws puppeteering her every move. Later, when Ping considers Jiang Bing’s dishonest behavior, she laments “how willing she’d been to trust the boatwoman” and resolves to “be much more cautious in the future,” deciding to “guard her trust very closely” (235).
Although Ping gleans an important life lesson from this escapade by realizing that even benevolent appearances can hide malevolent intentions, it is clear that the young emperor, Liu Che, has not yet learned this lesson. The young emperor is naïvely certain that if he can preserve his youth, he will maintain his “goodness” as an emperor indefinitely, and he also attributes his father’s failures to the man’s advancing age rather than to his poor character. Ping’s harsh life lessons of Wucheng show that Liu Che currently holds a very childish perspective on the world, even though the protagonist is not free to point this out to him. Even Ping’s first few encounters with the boy show that Liu Che puts stock in the appearance he projects rather than in his methods of governance. At this point, he is far too enamored of the image he projects and does not yet have the maturity to focus on the ripple effects of his actions. At the same time, Liu Che’s benevolent demeanor suggests that he is at least trying to be a good person. His kindness and patience with Ping shows that he is not like his father, and the narrative suggests that if he continues to follow this kinder path, he will be a fine emperor who will outshine the more dubious legacy of his father.
Finally, issues of morality appear in this section through Ping’s thorough enjoyment of the many pleasures of the imperial hunting palace. Danzi’s displeasure suggests his belief that Ping is becoming corrupted by her enjoyment of luxuries that she has never before experienced. While Danzi is often the moral center of the novel, the narrative’s gentler treatment of Ping as an abused, suffering child complicates this issue. Ping’s foremost duty is indeed to Danzi, but her temporary enjoyment of the emperor’s luxurious lifestyle is a natural response, not a sign of moral corruption.
Similarly, Wilkinson does not position Liu Che as a bad person, only as a misinformed one. At this early point in the new emperor’s life, he does not question his culture’s assumption that captivity is a safe and helpful measure to take with dragons, and he does not understand that Danzi sees his imprisonment as a continuation of a long string of systemic abuses. Although Danzi’s position is warranted, Ping’s ambiguous response to this development stems not from any indifference to her draconic friend but from her enjoyment of Liu Che’s company and offerings.
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