Master Li - Bridge Of Birds Part 13

He climbed up and I started down the tunnel. It continued to slope upward, and in an hour the song of the bells faded away. (If any of my readers happen to be in the vicinity, I urge them to visit the Cavern of Bells, because the music truly comes from Heaven and was simply put to evil use by evil men who are no longer with us.) The beautiful song had just dwindled into silence when I turned a corner in the tunnel, and the light from the torch in Li Kao's hand reached out to touch a familiar figure. The little monk in the crimson robe was standing in front of us with a smirk on his face.

"Stop, you idiot! Have you learned nothing from the death of Miser Shen?" Master Li yelled as I leaped forward.

I tried to pull up, but it was too late. My hands were outstretched to strangle the monk and my weight was forward, and I took one more step and landed upon a reed mat that had been cleverly painted to resemble rock. I fell through it as though it were water, and tumbled down head over heels and landed with a crash that knocked the breath from my body. The torch fell with us, and when I had recovered enough to look around I saw that we had fallen into a pit that was about eight feet wide and fifteen feet deep, with walls made from large stone slabs fitted tightly together. I heard a grating metallic sound and looked up, and my heart nearly stopped beating.

The little monk was pulling a heavy chain with all his might, and an iron lid was slowly sliding across the top of the pit.

Li Kao's hand was c.o.c.ked behind his right ear. "A present from Miser Shen!" he yelled, and torchlight glinted upon the blade of his knife as it flashed through the air. The monk dropped the chain. He clutched at his throat and clawed at the hilt that was buried there, and his eyes rolled to the top of his head and blood spurted, and he gurgled horribly and toppled over the edge of the pit.

I lifted my hands to catch him, but he never landed. His legs became entangled in the chain and he jerked to a halt in midair, and I gasped as I saw that his weight was pulling the iron lid farther and farther across the opening of the pit, and then it slammed shut with a harsh metallic clang. In an instant I had grabbed the chain and had climbed up over the dangling monk. I shoved at the lid with all my might, but it was wasted effort. That sheet of iron had slid into grooves in solid rock, and I had no leverage at all.

"Master Li, I can't budge it!" I panted.

I dropped back to the floor, which was solid stone. Our torch was burning yellow, but soon it would burn orange, and then blue, and then it wouldn't burn at all. The last thing that we would see before we suffocated would be the blackness of the tomb.

I have a horror of small closed places. "Saparah, tarata, mita, prajna, para -" I mumbled hoa.r.s.ely.

"Oh, stop that mumbo-jumbo and get to work," Master Li said testily. "I have no objection to Buddhism, but at least you can babble in a civilized language - either that or learn something about the one that you're ma.s.sacring."

He picked up a couple of rocks and handed me one. Li Kao worked carefully around the circ.u.mference of the pit, tapping the slabs in the walls, while I climbed the chain and tapped the slabs higher up. On his second tour around the walls Li Kao heard a faint hollow echo as he rapped with his rock. He peered closely and saw that the slab had not been perfectly cut and joined, and that a tiny strip of mortar ran around the edges.

I jumped down, and he turned and bowed politely to the dangling corpse. "Many thanks for returning my knife to me," he said, and he jerked the knife from the monk's throat, which produced quite a mess on the floor. Half an hour later the mortar was gone and the slab was loose, but how were we supposed to work it out of the hole? My large clumsy fingers couldn't possibly fit into those narrow cracks, and even Li Kao's fingers were too large. When he tried to s.h.i.+ft the slab with his knife, the only result was that the blade snapped in half. We were no better off than before, and that d.a.m.ned dangling monk was grinning at us. I growled and slapped the silly smile on his face, and as the corpse swung back and forth the creaking chain produced a sound like mocking laughter.

Li Kao watched the monk with narrowed eyes. "Ox, smack him again," he commanded.

I smacked the corpse again, and the chain laughed even louder as it creaked back and forth.

"Got it," said Master Li. "Something about our dear friend was trying to speak to me when I watched him swing around. Unless I'm greatly mistaken, he was born for the job of pulling stones from walls."

I shoved the little monk over to the slab, and his tiny fingers easily slid into the cracks. I forced the fingers in as far as possible and pressed his thumbs around the edges and held them tight. How long I squeezed the cold corpse hands I cannot say, but it seemed several eternities before the body turned rigid. It was our last chance. The flickering flame of the torch was turning blue when I gently pulled the monk backward. His fingers clutched that slab with the rigid grasp of death, and the slab slid out with no effort at all and crashed to the floor.

We did not rejoice. No fresh air had come out of the hole with the slab, and when Master Li inserted the torch, we saw a long low tunnel with many pa.s.sageways branching out on both sides.

"It's another labyrinth, but my old lungs won't last much longer," Li Kao panted, and I could believe it because his face was nearly as blue as the torchlight. "Ox, tie me to your back with the cord from the monk's robe. We'll have to extinguish the torch, so you must follow the dragon by feel."

I tied him to my back, and we barely fit through the hole in the wall, and when Li Kao extinguished the torch my throat constricted so tightly that I nearly suffocated then and there. Blackness was pressing down upon me like a heavy shroud as I began to crawl, and what little air was left was foul. My fingers traced the path of the green jade dragon as it wound through the holes in the red coral pendant, while I groped for openings in the walls with the other hand. Third left... First left... Fourth right... Li Kao was almost unconscious, and the words that he muttered faintly in my ear made no sense.

"Ox... not a tiger but a little boy... games... rules of games..."

Then he sighed, and his body lay limply upon my back, and I could scarcely sense a heartbeat. There was nothing to do but crawl ahead, and my own consciousness was slipping away with every gasp of my aching lungs, and death was beckoning me to join my parents in the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth. Second right... Second left...

"Master Li, the dragon can lead us no farther!" I panted.

There was no answer. The ancient sage was out cold, if not dead, and now everything depended upon the slow wits of Number Ten Ox, but what was I to do? The last direction of the dragon had led me against the stone wall of a dead end, and the dragon had wound all the way to the bottom of the pendant. It went no farther, so how could I? To turn back would be suicide, and I frantically felt around in the darkness. There was nothing but smooth unbroken stone, although my fingers found one small crack in the floor that might have been big enough for a mouse. Nothing else. No slab with mortar around the edges, no lever to pull, no keyhole. I lowered my head and wept.

It was some time before I was able to think about the strange words that Master Li had muttered in my ear, and even longer before I remembered how he had muttered in his sleep while we flew on the Bamboo Dragonfly. "Why not on the island, waiting at the end of the bridge?" he had muttered. "Games. A little boy?" Was he saying that the duke was not the Tiger of Ch'in but a child, and that the Hand That No One Sees had not been waiting for victims at the end of the narrow bridge on the oasis because the victims would have no chance, and that would ruin a game?

My head seemed to be packed with wool, and my ears were ringing. In my mind I saw the dying face of Miser Shen as he prayed to his little girl. "You played at guessing games.... You played at guessing games.... Guessing games... Guessing games..."

What was the name of the game that we were playing with the Duke of Ch'in? Follow the Dragon, that's what, and what is the rule that a child must learn when playing a follow game? Keep following. Never a.s.sume and never give up. You can continue to follow, if only you try hard enough. The dragon had stopped, but was it possible that it could still go somewhere, and somehow I would be able to follow?

My fingers crawled across the floor to that one tiny crack in the stone. It was a couple of inches long and irregularly oval. Lack of air had turned me into a small child, and I actually giggled as I removed the red coral pendant from the chain around my neck. It was a couple of inches long and irregularly oval, and it fit precisely into the crack.

"Follow the dragon," I giggled, and I released the pendant.

The dragon dropped down. I waited for the sound when it landed, and waited and waited, and finally, far below, I heard a click as though it had landed like a key in a lock, and then I heard a second click, as though tumblers had turned.

The stone floor tilted beneath me. I slid toward a side wall, and as the floor tilted more steeply a hole opened, and then I followed the dragon, with Master Li tied to my back, shooting out and down into moonlight and starlight and air. My lungs felt as though they were touched with fire as I gulped and gasped, and Master Li moaned softly, and I felt his lungs begin to heave. We tumbled down the side of a steep hill and landed upon something that glittered.

Moonlight shone down upon a tiny glade, sunken way down in the center of Stone Bell Mountain, and upon an immense mountain of treasure. Instinctively my eyes lifted to the top of the pile to a shadow where no shadow should be. Then the third girl from that painting was gazing at me beseechingly, and blood stained her dress where a blade had pierced her heart.

"Take pity upon a faithless handmaiden," she whispered. Ghost tears trickled slowly down her cheeks. "Is not a thousand years enough?" she sobbed. "I swear that I did not know what I had done! Oh, take pity, and exchange this for the feather. The birds must fly."

Then she was gone.

I crawled up a slope of diamonds and ripped the lid from the small jade casket that the ghost had cradled in her hands. Ginseng aroma stung my nostrils, but it was not the Heart of the Great Root of Power. It was the Head, and beside it lay a tiny bronze bell.

My head sank wearily and I closed my eyes, and sleep cradled me like a baby. I did not dream at all.

Part Three - THE PRINCESS OF BIRDS

22. The Dream of the White Chamber

Night rain is falling on the village of Ku-fu, glinting through moonbeams that slide through thin clouds, and the soft splas.h.i.+ng sound outside my window blends with the drip of ink from the mouse-whiskered tip of my writing brush. I have been trying as hard as I can, but I am unable to express my emotions when the Arms and the Head of Power brought the children back from death's doorstep, and then failed to complete the cure.

Once more they awoke, but into the strange world of the Hopping Hide and Seek Game, and once more they smiled and laughed and chanted the nonsense rhyme from Dragon's Pillow. Then once more they yawned, and their eyes closed, and they sank back upon their beds. Once more they dropped into the depths of their trances.

People with nothing else to turn to must revert to the superst.i.tions of their ancestors, and grandparents began to tie mirrors to the children's foreheads so that the demons of sickness would see the reflections of their own ugly faces and flee in terror. Fathers shouted their children's names while they waved favorite toys tied to long poles, hoping to entice the wandering souls, and mothers stood tensely at the bedsides with cords that would tie the souls to the bodies should they return. I turned and ran into the abbot's study and slammed the door.

Nothing but the Heart of the Great Root of Power could save the children of my village. I was sick with fear, and my eyes lifted to a framed quotation from The Study of the Ancients:

All things have a root and a top, All events an end and a beginning; Whoever understands correctly What comes first and what follows Draws nearer to Tao.

I was a long way from drawing nearer to Tao, and children's games and nonsense rhymes and ginseng roots and birds and feathers and flutes and b.a.l.l.s and bells and agonized ghosts and terrible monsters and the Duke of Ch'in whirled round and round in my brain without making any sense at all.

The door opened and Li Kao walked into the study. He drank three cups of wine, one after another, and then he sat down across from me and took the little bronze bell from his belt and gently rang it.

We listened to the beat of a drum, and then the beautifully trained voice of a young woman began to chant and sing the story of the great courtesan who grew old, and who was forced into the indignity of marrying a businessman. A second ring of the bell produced a lively tempo, and the hilariously p.o.r.nographic tale of Golden Lotus. A third ring brought sarcasm and suppressed rage, and the story of Pi Kan, who was put to death because an idiot emperor wanted to see if it was true that the heart of a wise man is pierced by seven openings.

We had a flute that told fairy tales, a ball that showed funny pictures, and a bell that sang Flower Drum Songs. And we were supposed to exchange them for feathers.

Li Kao sighed. He replaced the bell in his belt and poured another cup of wine.

"I am going to complete this task if I have to unscrew the roots of the sacred mountains, hoist a sail on top of Taishan, and steer the world across the Great River of Stars to the Gates of the Great Void," he said grimly. "Ox, the slight flaw in my character has proved to be a G.o.dsend. When I run into something that is really foul, I can counter with the potential for foulness that resides in the depths of my soul, and that is why I can go into a place like the Cavern of Bells and come out of it with a song on my lips. You, on the other hand, suffer from an incurable case of purity of heart."

He paused to consider his words carefully, but I was ahead of him.

"Master Li, it would take twenty tons of Fire Drug to pry me loose from the quest," I said as firmly as I could, which was not very firmly. "Besides, we'll have to try to get to the Key Rabbit, and that means Lotus Cloud, and I will happily battle a tiger for the honor of hopping into her bed."

To my astonishment I discovered that what I had said was true. It was amazing what a tonic the thought of Lotus Cloud was, and I stared in wonder at hands that were no longer shaking.

"I will battle a regiment of tigers," I said with real conviction.

Li Kao looked at me curiously. We sat in silence while the sound of two fighting cats drifted into the room, and then the sound of Auntie Hua going after them with a broom. Li Kao shrugged and reached out and pressed a finger to my forehead, and quoted Lao-tzu.

"Blessed are the idiots, for they are the happiest people on earth. Very well, both of us will commit suicide, but it's Ching Ming and you must honor your dead. We'll leave in the morning," he said.

I bowed and left him to his thoughts. I took some food and wine from the bonzes' pantry and went out into the bright suns.h.i.+ne, and I borrowed a hoe and a rake and a broom from the tool-shed. It was the most perfect spring imaginable, glorious weather for the Festival of Tombs, and I made my way to my parents' graves. I raked and pruned and swept until their resting place was spotless, and then I made an offering of food and wine. I had saved the ta.s.sels and ornaments from the fine hat that I had worn during our visit to the Ancestress, and the silver belt with the jade trim and the gold-spattered fan. I placed the ta.s.sels and ornaments and belt in the bowl that I used for special offerings. Then I knelt to pray. I asked my mother and father to send me courage so that I would not disgrace my ancestors, and I felt much better when I had finished. Then I got to my feet and ran toward the eastern hills.

Centuries ago the great family of the Lius had ruled our valley. The estate still stood at the crest of the largest hill, although the house was seldom visited by the owners now, and gardeners still maintained the famous park that had been lovingly described by such writers as Tsao Hsueh Chin and Kao Ngoh. I knew it like the back of my hand, and I crawled through my secret tunnel in the high wall into a gardener's paradise. The ground was s.h.i.+mmering with yellow chrysanthemums, and the hills were thick with silver poplars and nodding aspens. A stream arched down the side of a cliff in a foaming waterfall that splashed into a bright blue lake. The banks were lined with flowering peach, and chiching trees with violet flowers growing directly from the trunks and branches, and behind them was a shady bamboo grove, and then the pear trees, and then a thousand apricot trees that were flaming with a million scarlet blossoms.

I followed the path around the moon terraces, and then turned off to a rough trail that led down through deep gorges with creepers and moss-covered great gray rocks. The trail dropped sharply down to the darkness of a cypress grove, where a quiet stream rippled past the Sandbank Harbor of Blossoming Purity, and I crawled beneath some low bushes and untied a small boat. I climbed in and pushed off, and drifted down a long winding gorge where willows bent their branches to brush the water, and spirit creepers wound over rocks, and cl.u.s.ters of fruit like red coral peeped beneath frost-blue foliage.

When I had tied the boat to a tree trunk and picked up the trail again, it climbed toward bright clearings where winding brooks sparkled in green meadows, and always I reached hills or rocks that blocked the view and then opened to even more beautiful vistas on the other side. The path climbed steeply through ma.s.ses of boulders toward a great glorious rock that reached to the clouds, and on the other side was another gorge that was spanned by a narrow wooden bridge. Then the path climbed again, and suddenly leveled to a small ridge where orchids grew, and orioles sang, and gra.s.shoppers chirped in the bright suns.h.i.+ne. Far below I could see my village, spread out like a picture from a book.

At the end of the ridge was a willow grove. I slipped inside to a small green glade where a single grave lay among the wildflowers.

The head gardener's daughter was buried there. Her name had been Scented Hairpin, but since she had been a shy, quiet girl, who was timid with strangers, everyone had called her Mouse. She had the most beautiful eyes that I had ever seen, and she had not been timid when we played the Hopping Hide and Seek Game. Mouse almost always lasted longest and became the queen, and she had also not been timid when she decided that some day we would be man and wife. She had fallen ill when she was thirteen. Her parents had let me hold her hand on her deathbed, and she had whispered the last words of Mei Fei: "I came from the land of Fragrance; to the Land of Fragrance I now return."

I knelt at the grave. "Mouse, it is Number Ten Ox, and I have something for you," I said.

I placed the gold-spattered Szech'uen fan in her offering bowl, and I prayed, and then I sat on the gra.s.s in the golden sunlight that filtered through the leaves and told her my story. I could not explain it, but somehow I knew that Mouse wouldn't mind the fact that I was in love with Lotus Cloud. I poured out my heart and felt it grow lighter, and the sun was setting as I finished. The breeze always picked up at the approach of evening, and I stayed to watch the willows.

Mouse's heartbroken father had used his art to honor his daughter. The wind sighed through the trees, and the willows began to bend, and then one branch after another reached out and gently swept the young girl's grave.

That night I had a very strange dream. At first it was a tangle of images: Henpecked Ho weeping with a silver comb in his hands, and Bright Star dancing down the path toward a door that always closed, and Miser Shen praying to his daughter, and the Hand of h.e.l.l and the Cavern of Bells. Again and again I fled from a great golden tiger mask, and then I ran through a door into a world of whiteness, milky and soft and glowing, and I felt comfortable and safe. Something was forming in the whiteness. I smiled happily, because Mouse had come to see me. She carried the Szech'uen fan, and her beautiful young eyes looked fondly at me.

"How happy I am," she said softly. "Ever since we held hands and recited the Orphan's Song, I knew that you would fall in love with Lotus Cloud."

"Mouse, I love you too," I said.

"You must trust your heart," she said gravely. "Ox, you have grown very strong. Now you must use all of your strength to touch the queen before the count reaches forty-nine. It must not reach forty-nine, which can mean for ever and ever and ever." Mouse was fading back into the milky whiteness. "Is not a thousand years enough?" she said faintly, as though from very far away. "The birds must fly.... The birds must fly.... The birds must fly...."

Mouse was gone, and for some reason I knew that it was important for me to understand the glowing whiteness around me. Suddenly I understood that the world was white because I was inside a giant pearl, and with awareness came awakening, and I sat up and blinked in the morning sunlight.

23. Doctor Death

"The extraordinary effect of the tendrils of the Great Root leads to a basic a.s.sumption, and that is that the Heart of Power is indeed the ultimate healing agent in the whole world," said Master Li. "The Duke of Ch'in would never hide such a thing in a treasure trove where he might have to cross all China to get to it. He would keep it with him, right next to his loathsome skin, and you and I are going to have to murder the b.a.s.t.a.r.d and take the root from his corpse."

We were pa.s.sing once more through the shadow of Dragon's Pillow, where crows gathered to watch us and make rude comments.

"Master Li, how are we going to murder a man who laughs at axes?" I asked.

"We are going to experiment, dear boy. Our first order of business will be to find a deranged alchemist, which should not be very difficult. China," said Master Li, "is overstocked with deranged alchemists."

In the city of Pingtu, Li Kao examined the faces of street vendors until he found an old lady with gossip written all over her.

"A thousand pardons, Adoptive Daughter, but this humble one seeks an eminent scientist who may be living nearby," he said politely. "He is a devout Taoist, somewhat seedy in appearance and rather wild of eye, and there is an excellent chance that his house is placed halfway between a cemetery and a slaughterhouse."

"You seek Doctor Death!" the old lady gasped, fearfully glancing toward a ramshackle house that teetered at the top of a hill. "None but the criminally insane dare climb the path to his House of Horrors, and few ever return!"

He thanked her for the warning and started briskly up the path.

"Almost certainly a gross slander," Master Li said calmly. "Ox, Taoists are guided by a rather peculiar blend of mysticisms. On the one hand they exalt sages like Chuang Tzu, who taught that death and life, end and start are no more disconcerting than the pa.s.sage of night and day, but on the other hand they engage in frantic quests for personal immortality. When a scientific genius becomes involved in the mystical mumbo-jumbo, the result is likely to be a lunatic whose quest for eternal life ma.s.sacres everything in sight, but such poor souls wouldn't willingly harm a fly. Besides," he added, "it's a perfect day for a visit to a House of Horrors."

There I could agree with him. Trees in the cemetery sighed in the wind like a moan of mourners, and behind the slaughterhouse a dog howled horribly. Black clouds muttered dark spells above the mountains, and sulphurous lightning streaked the sky, and the ramshackle house upon the hill creaked and groaned in a rising gale that dripped with a thin, weeping rain. We walked through the open door into a room that was littered with carca.s.ses, and where a little old man with a bloodstained beard was attempting to install a pig's heart into a man's cadaver, while cauldrons burped and kettles bubbled and seething vials emitted green and yellow vapors.

Doctor Death sprinkled the heart with purple powder and made mystical gestures with his hands. "Beat!" he commanded. Nothing happened, so he tried yellow powder. "Beat, beat, beat!" He tried blue powder. "Ten thousand curses, why won't you beat?" he yelled, and then he turned around. "Who you?" asked Doctor Death.

"My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character, and this is my esteemed client, Number Ten Ox," Master Li said with a polite bow.

"Well, my surname is Lo and my personal name is Chan, and I am rapidly losing patience with a corpse that absolutely refuses to be resurrected!" Doctor Death yelled, and then his face and voice softened until he looked to be as gentle as a snowflake and as innocent as a banana. "If I cannot resurrect a stubborn corpse, how can I hope to resurrect my beloved wife?" he said softly.

He turned toward a coffin that had been set up as a shrine, and tears trickled down his cheeks.

"She was not pretty, but she was the most wonderful wife in the world," he whispered. "Her name was Chiang-chao, and we were very poor, but she could make the most delicious meals from a handful of rice and the herbs that she picked in the woods. She sang beautiful songs to cheer me when I was depressed, and she sewed dresses for wealthy ladies to help pay for my studies. We were very happy together, and I know that we will be happy together again. Don't worry, my love, I'll have you out of that coffin in no time!" he yelled.

He turned back to us.

"It's simply a matter of finding the purest ingredients, because I already have an infallible formula," he explained. "You use ten pounds of peach fuzz -"

"Ten pounds of tortoise hairs," said Master Li.

"Ten pounds of plum skins -"

"Ten pounds of rabbit horns -"

"Ten pounds of membranes of living chickens -"

"One large spoonful of mercury -"

"One large spoonful of oleander juice -"

"Two large spoonfuls of a.r.s.enic oxide -"