Chapter 17

Tsepak was already there when I appeared at our meeting place. He seemed nervous.

“The Chinese and Tibetan officials are going crazy. The high-ranking ones are threatening to bring in the Army by implementing martial law. They are all over at the Chengguan District offices planning what to do. Most of the lower-level government employees just consider this a day off. Why did you attack both government buildings last night?” he asked in a worried voice.

“If I had been thinking, I would have waited until they were all at work to quarantine those buildings,” I told him with a smile.

“The wards around those buildings will last until tomorrow. Then they will discover that all of their computers and electronic equipment are burned out,” I added before I began to smile again.

“You said that all or most of the high ranking government officials are over at the district offices, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Yes, no one can get near there. The place is surrounded by the police. They are three deep,” he told me.

“I think I’ll walk over there and see what it looks like. Go with me,” I told him. That was when he realized that Jorani was missing.

“Where is your wife?” he asked, as we had always been together.

“She is having ladies problems,” I told him, not wishing to go into it. However, he was having second thoughts about going with me.

“I don’t want to be recognized, and you can’t get near there. No one can,” he insisted.

“Oh, you won’t be recognized. They won’t be able to see us. We’ll be invisible,” I told him.

“What are you planning?” he asked in a worried voice.

“Come along and see,” I told him. He reluctantly went with me. Since we were in a back street at the Barkhor, it wasn’t all that far to the District Government’s building. It was only a couple of blocks.

As we neared it, we could see the police cars and the men surrounding the building. Their lines started about ten meters (32 feet) out from the building. After casting the invisibility spell around us in a secluded location, we walked right through the police lines and past their cars. I had cautioned Tsepak not to say anything. Arriving near the building, which was smaller than the others had been but still quite large, I cast a silence spell around us.

“First, I’m going to cast my Mother’s improved property wards around the entire area. About 15 meters (50 feet) should be enough,” I told Tsepak before casting the spell.

“I don’t see anything,” he whispered when I had finished.

“Of course not and the police can’t see them either, but no one will be able to get past them to leave. Next is the spell for the improved house ward. It goes around the building to keep everyone inside,” I told him and cast the ward.

“Now, we cast the spell to cut off the electricity,” I told him before casting that spell. This got an immediate reaction as the lights went out. I had also cast a junk spell that used a lot of Magic to burn out all of their computers and electronic equipment.

“Time to leave,” I told Tsepak as the panic started when the officials discovered they couldn’t get out of the building. On casting the transfer spell, we appeared back in the Barkhor where we had met. We were still invisible, and I checked to be sure that no one was around before canceling the spells.

“By all that’s holy, that was the most amazing thing that I have ever seen,” Tsepak said in amazement after we reappeared. “I didn’t realize that you could do it so quickly,” he added.

“How long will they be trapped in there?” he asked after a few seconds.

“I set the spells for three days. They’ll be good and hungry by then,” I told him. He whistled on hearing that, but remembered something else that he needed to tell me.

“I just remembered; you need to increase the amount of rice on each delivery. People are starting to stock up for the winter, and we are running out of rice quickly. It will keep where vegetables won’t,” he told me

“That’s not a problem. Would two bags at a time be enough,” I asked.

“Yes, for now. I don’t know about later,” he added.

“Let’s go look at the Department of Communications,” I told him following that. It wasn’t that far away. We decided to walk as there weren’t any convenient places to transfer to near there during the daytime, and we could do some reconnaissance on the way.

Their building is located on Norbulingka Street, a block or so west of the Potala Palace and a block south of Beijing Street. There were many antennas and microwave dishes on the roof of the building. It would be easy to transfer here from the corridors. I left a marker spell near the building.

“Previously, the Army guarded this building along with a couple of police,” Tsepak told me as we walked past it. There were no soldiers or police in evidence today. In fact, we had seen few police patrols on our way here. Naturally, I presumed that they were busy elsewhere.

On finishing, Tsepak left to take care of whatever he did each day, and I walked up Linkuo Road to the back area of Red Mountain where I moved into the shrubbery and transferred up to the corridors. After checking the remaining food, I made sure the deliveries for tomorrow were ready and added a second bag of rice to each before returning to the Nest to see how Jorani was doing.

I found her still in her Dragon form in the nest that we were using. It appeared that she was in deep discussion with the Queens of Old, as she didn’t notice me for more than an hour after I had returned. She slipped out of whatever kind of trance she had been in then and smiled at me ... well as much as a Dragon can.

“How did things go?” she asked in as quiet a voice as Dragons can manage.

“It was all right. We visited the Autonomous Region’s building,” I told her before going into what we had seen there. I also told her about quarantining the District Government’s building with all of the high-government officials in it. She found that quite amusing.

“Perhaps we should have done that with the other buildings,” she suggested.

“My thoughts exactly. We can save it for the next time,” I told her before going on to tell her what was planned for tonight. I finished with, “We are going to need to visit the government food warehouse again tonight.” This was followed by an explanation of why.

Late that morning, the Colonel from the Intelligence and Security Department met with General Wang to discuss recent developments.

“There are problems in Lhasa,” he told him.

“Yes, I heard those who had arrived here. What has happened now?” the General asked in a tired voice.

“Last night, the buildings of the Autonomous Region Government and the Municipal Government were attacked. Their power was cut off. The personnel on duty are unable to leave the building, and no one can enter it. Those on guard duty are also prevented from leaving the area around the building and no one can enter it either.

“This morning most of the senior officials of both organizations were at the District Government’s building when it was similarly attacked in broad daylight, no less. Again, no one saw anything, just like last night. The situation is so dire that the acting chief of police sent a car and a representative out here to ask for help. When he was finally admitted, the shock on his face was indication enough that he realized that they would get no help from us,” the Colonel told him.

“They’ll just have to get by on their own for a while,” the General agreed. Neither he nor any of his officers had gotten a lot of sleep since the attack on the camp.

Both Jorani and I slept through most of the afternoon and early evening. She changed back to her Human form to make dinner for us, and we hugged and kissed for a time after eating but stopped short of having sex. We had a busy night ahead of us.

Later in the corridors, we selected the rooms that we would be transferring the new shipment of food to before transforming into our Dragon form, and I transferred us to the marker spell near the Department of Communications building. The lights were on in there as apparently they were operational 24 hours a day. There were still no guards or police in evidence outside of the building. There may have been some inside it.

I cast the ward around the building to keep those there inside and prevent anyone from entering it. Both of us cast the spell used to keep power from entering the building. It required a considerable amount of Magic, as the equipment in the building used a lot of electricity. I was sure that we had wiped out some of their equipment but not all of it. A lot of their equipment used high voltage electricity, their transmitters for instance, which resisted being destroyed by Magic like low voltage equipment was. We left before any of those inside reached the doors to try to get out of the building. I transferred us to the marker near the food warehouse.

The lights on the exterior of the building were still on, but there were only two policemen present on guard, and they were sitting in a police car next to the building. It was a very cold night.

“So few guards,” Jorani said on seeing this.

“Perhaps there are some inside,” I suggested. “Should I check?” I asked.

“No, let’s just transfer inside. We have our wards around us. I’m sure the sight of two Dragons will frighten anyone in there enough that we will have time to freeze them in place,” she told me in a confident voice.

We transferred inside to find the warehouse dark but no guards present. I did, however, detect the new surveillance cameras that had been installed. We were both carrying the spelled disks, so the cameras would record nothing but electronic snow while we were here.

Since we were in our Dragon forms and were much stronger than when in our Human forms, we double stacked the rice pallets we would be taking. They now held 24 sacks of rice and weighed 2640 pounds (1200 kg). The pallet jacks could easily move that. After setting up two temporary portals to the new storage rooms, we moved 12 double stacked pallets of rice, a dozen double stacked pallets of fruit and vegetables, plus 4 pallets of nuts, herbs and other seasoning to the new store rooms. Finally, we added 4 well loaded pallets of delicacies to send to the corridors and to finish our work for the night. This should be enough to take care of those in need for some time.

After turning out the lights, we stepped through the temporary portals to the new storage rooms and canceled them. We were sure those in charge of the warehouse would be upset in the morning.

Jorani spent most of the following three days in her Dragon form. She no longer had a problem with morning sickness after that. I kept busy with the deliveries and rearranging what we had moved to the corridors, plus checking that everything had a good preservation spell on it to keep it fresh.

I also met with Tsepak every other day to learn what was occurring in the city. Things had quieted down once the wards and electric spells had expired releasing those trapped in and around the buildings. The senior officials were very upset and frustrated on learning that all of their computers and other electronic equipment and their backup records were stone cold dead. They had lost all of their records except what was actually preserved on paper.

They had also been distraught on learning that the Department of Communications had been rendered useless as their equipment had also been affected by our Magic. They needed to send people to other major government centers to request help from Beijing. That help was slow in arriving, as those in Beijing doubted their claims. Eventually, representatives of the Central Committee arrived to investigate. They were shocked by what they found. They demanded answers ... answers that no one had. It wasn’t until representatives of the Guoanbu arrived that the reason for their trouble became apparent. The senior officials still found this difficult to believe. But all of this happened several weeks down the road following their release.

The Army had similar problems, but they were already aware of the possible existence of Dragons, and that they had interfered with their operations. They still had a lot of questions to answer about how so much of their equipment had been destroyed.

All of the investigators eventually left. They still didn’t have answers to their most important questions, and were very unhappy, but there was little that they could do, as no one had actually seen us or knew where we were. It was some time later before the replacement equipment arrived for the various civilian government organizations. The replacement equipment for the Army arrived somewhat quicker.

I had met with Tsepak the day following the arrival of the Guoanbu agents. He was very nervous.

“Those from the spy agency arrived yesterday. They knew about you and are asking a lot of questions. It would be best to remain inactive while they are here,” he told me, while trying to look in all directions at once, as if he expected to find spies behind every door or around every corner.

“And if they don’t leave?” I asked with a smile.

“If they don’t learn anything, they will leave. No one knows where you stay or how you did the things that caused all of the trouble, so they won’t learn anything,” he told me trying to convince himself.