Kingdom of the Golden Dragon by Isabel Allende Page B

Specialist. If that iconcould predict the future, as he had been assured, he could fulfill his ultimate dream: to become the richest man in the world, to become Number One.
    Dil Bahadur was the youngest son of the monarch of the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, and the chosen heir to the throne. He lived with his master in his “home” in the mountains. The entrance to their grotto was camouflaged by a natural screen of rocks and bushes and located on a kind of terrace or balcony on the side of the mountain. The monk chose it because it was nearly inaccessible on three sides, and because no one could find it unless he was very familiar with the area.
    Tensing had lived for several years as a hermit in that cave, in silence and solitude, until the king and queen of the Forbidden Kingdom delivered their son to his care. Tensing was to tutor the lad, who would be with him until he was twenty. During that time he would shape him into a perfect ruler by following a program so rigorous that few humans would survive it. All the training in the world, however, would not achieve the desired results unless Dil Bahadur proved to have superior intelligence and a spotless heart. Tensing was content; his disciple had exceeded his hopes in regard to those attributes.
    The prince had been with the monk twelve years now, sleeping on rock, his only shelter the skin of a yak, eating a strictly vegetarian diet, dedicated totally to religious practice, study, and physical exercise. And he was happy. He would not change his life for any other, and it was with regret that he saw the day approaching when he must rejoin the world. He remembered very well, nonetheless, how terrified and lonely he had felt when at the age of six he had found himself in a hermit’s cave in the mountains alongside agigantic stranger who let him cry for three days; cry until he had no more tears to shed. He never wept again. Beginning with that day, the giant had replaced his mother, his father, and the rest of his family; he became his best friend, his master, his Tao-shu instructor, his spiritual guide. From Tensing he learned nearly everything he knew.
    Tensing led the prince step by step along the path of Buddhism, tutored him in history and philosophy, introduced him to nature, animals, and the curative powers of plants, developed the youth’s intuition and imagination, and taught him the skills of war while teaching him the value of peace. He initiated Dil Bahadur into the secrets of the lamas and helped him discover the mental and physical equilibrium he would need in order to govern. One of the exercises the prince had to practice was shooting his bow while standing on tiptoe with raw eggs beneath his heels, or crouched with eggs tucked behind his knees.
    “Hitting the target with your arrow is not enough, Dil Bahadur; you must also develop strength, stability, and muscle control,” the lama repeated patiently.
    “Perhaps it would be more productive for us to eat the eggs, honorable master,” the prince would sigh when he broke them.
    Dil Bahadur’s spiritual apprenticeship was even more intense. When he was ten, the boy could enter a state of trance and rise to a higher level of consciousness; at eleven he could communicate telepathically and move objects without touching them; at thirteen, he made astral journeys. On his fourteenth birthday his master opened an orifice in his forehead to enable him to see auras. The operation actually perforated the bone and left a circular scar the size of a pea.
    “All organic matter radiates energy, or an aura, a halo of light invisible to the human eye except in the case of certain persons with psychicpowers. You may learn many things from the color and shape of an aura,” Tensing explained.
    During three consecutive summers, the lama traveled with the boy to cities in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, to train him in reading the auras of the people and animals he saw there. He did not, however, take him to the beautiful