Master Li - Bridge Of Birds Part 9

He strode forward, ignoring the side tunnels. The main pa.s.sageway led on and on through the dank dripping rock, and finally I saw something gleam ahead of us. As we came closer, I saw that it was a huge copy of the tiger mask, perhaps ten feet tall, and it was set into a wall that formed a dead end. The mouth gaped wide, and the glittering teeth were solid steel, and behind them was a black hole. Li Kao moved the torch over a curious network of metal baffles that surrounded the tiger's mouth.

"Sound effects," he finally said. "The tide, or part of it, pours through this hole and shoots through the baffles, and as the tide increases, the noise gets louder. I would imagine that it is the scream of a raging tiger, and we had better find another exit before we hear it."

He started back, studying the rock walls for smooth worn surfaces that would indicate the pa.s.sage of the water, and then he turned and darted into a side tunnel. The torchlight flickered over more bones, and the ceiling was so low that I had to duck not to strike my head against a corpse that was plastered above me in a crack. The reek of rotting flesh was indescribable. Li Kao turned into another low tunnel, and then another, and we twisted and turned until I had lost all sense of direction. He strode confidently ahead, however, following minute signs that indicated water rus.h.i.+ng toward an exit, and finally he grunted in satisfaction.

The low tunnel was widening and rising, and ahead of us loomed a large black archway. Master Li trotted through it and stopped dead in his tracks, and I stared in horror at a large cavern and a pool of water that was about fifty feet in circ.u.mference. In the ceiling high above that pool was the trapdoor that led to the throne room of the Duke of Ch'in. We were right back where we had started, and the hair lifted upon my head as I heard a faint snarling growl in the darkness behind us. Slim dark shapes were sliding across the stone floor like snakes. It was water, and the tide was coming in.

Li Kao stood quite still, with his forehead wrinkled in thought. "Ox, what did Lotus Cloud say to you when she gave you that dragon pendant?" he asked quietly.

I repeated the fragmentary words that I had heard, and they still didn't make any sense to me. The water was rising with terrible swiftness, lapping my ankles, and the tiger at the end of the tunnel was beginning to roar.

"The Duke of Ch'in lives only for money," Master Li said slowly, thinking out loud. "He piles the stuff in treasure troves, and who beside the duke must have access to them? The man who has to collect the loot and count it, that's who, and Lotus Cloud happens to be married to him. Apparently he made an indiscreet remark about the pendant, and it might explain why the Key Rabbit was allowed to keep something so valuable. Ox, bend over."

I bent over and he climbed upon my back. With one hand he held the torch and with the other he lifted the dragon pendant.

"Lotus Cloud said that if the duke was playful you should follow the dragon, and when the duke dropped us into his labyrinth he said that we would play a game. Since we have no other hope, we will a.s.sume that the Key Rabbit indiscreetly told his wife that the locket enabled him to get to the duke's treasure troves."

He held the torch close.

"The dragon skips the first two holes in the coral and winds through the third hole on the left," Master Li said grimly. "Start through the archway, take the third tunnel to the left, and run like h.e.l.l."

I ran as fast as I could, but the water was almost up to my knees. I darted into the third tunnel on the left, and Li Kao held the flickering torch close to the pendant. "Take the second tunnel on the right!" he yelled. The tide was rus.h.i.+ng in so swiftly that shattered bones were flying across the boiling surface, and the tiger was roaring so loudly that I could barely hear Master Li. "Third left!... First right!... Second right!... Fourth left!"

The tiger was screaming in lunatic rage. The water was rising over my chest as I squeezed through another narrow opening, and then I collided with a blank wall. "Master Li, we must have made a wrong turn!" I shouted. I tried to turn and go back, but it was hopeless. Water had reached my chin, and the tide shoved like a giant hand and plastered me against the wall. Flying bones were smas.h.i.+ng around my head, and one of them knocked the torch from Li Kao's hand. Now we were in total darkness, and the boiling water lifted over my mouth.

Li Kao's fingers found what his eyes had not. "Ox, the dragon goes straight up!" he yelled in my ear. "Don't fight the tide. Let it carry you to the ceiling!"

The tide sc.r.a.ped me against the wall as I lifted with it, and Li Kao's hands reached high and groped for an opening. He found it. A narrow chimney wound up from the ceiling through solid rock, and I barely managed to squeeze into it. I braced my feet against the sides and started to climb, but the tide was climbing faster than I was, boiling up over my head while my shoulders tried to wriggle through narrow openings, and my lungs were bursting. I had nearly lost consciousness when the tide reached its peak and my head broke through the water. I gulped air and climbed, and it seemed that hours had pa.s.sed when the first faint light appeared in the pitch-blackness. A small glowing circle appeared high above us, and I used the last of my strength to reach it and to climb over the edge of the opening to the floor of a small cave.

The sun had set and the light came from the rising moon. A small opening looked out over the sea, and as the moon lifted higher, its pale rays reached farther and farther back into the blackness of the cave, and something began to glitter.

"Great Buddha, how Lotus Cloud would love this place!" I yelped.

She would not have been interested in the gold, or the diamonds and emeralds and rubies that were heaped in mounds, but most of all there were pearls and jade. Tons of them, and I do mean tons. As the moon lifted even higher and the whole incredible ma.s.s of loot appeared I decided that no single duke could possibly have piled up so much wealth. This had to be the collective effort of all the Dukes of Ch'in, right back to the first one, and they had not been sn.o.bbish when it came to money.

Cheap copper coins rubbed cheeks with gold, and semiprecious stones were piled with the choicest gems. A broken wooden doll was gazing with tiny turquoise eyes at a sceptre that would have bankrupted most kingdoms, and beside a huge jeweled crown was a set of false teeth carved in ivory. Li Kao was gazing at that incredible monument to greed with narrowed eyes, and he reached out and squeezed my shoulder.

"I would hate to think how many corpses this stuff cost, and I rather believe that one of them wants to say something about it," he whispered.

I followed the direction of his eyes, and finally I saw it. At the top of the pile was a shadow where no shadow should be. Li Kao continued to hold my shoulder.

"Ox, don't move so much as an inch until we see what lies behind the ghost shadow. It may be a very important warning," he whispered.

I tried to calm the beating of my heart. I closed my mind to everything except a nice warm comfortable blanket, and then I reached out gently with my mind and drew it over my head. What happened then was very strange.

I was gazing at a girl who had almost certainly been murdered, because blood stained her dress where a blade had pierced her heart. Her clothes were in the style of a thousand years ago, and I sensed with every nerve in my body that she was making a terrible effort to appear before us. Her gaze was beseeching, and when she parted her lips I felt a hot searing wave of agony.

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

And then she was gone. Li Kao relaxed his grip on my shoulder. I could not possibly have heard correctly, and I sat up and tilted my head and pounded water from my left ear.

"Exchange something for a feather?"

"Oddly enough, I heard the same thing," said Master Li. "Also something about birds that must fly, which doesn't make much sense unless she was referring to travelers' tall tales about flightless birds, such as penguins and ostriches and other mythological beasts."

"I think that she was cupping something in her hands," I said.

I climbed to the top of the pile, slipping and sliding over sapphires, and slid back down with a tiny jade casket in my hands. Li Kao took it and turned it this way and that in the moonlight, and when he opened the lid I cried out in joy. A powerful fragrance of ginseng reached my nostrils, but Li Kao's exclamation was not joyful. He tilted the casket and two tiny tendrils with rather familiar shapes fell into the palm of his hand.

"Legs, bent at the knees," he sighed. "According to Henpecked Ho, these would be the Legs of Power, and we must pray they will be strong enough to carry the children to safety. I a.s.sume that the duke broke up the Great Root, and that pieces are hidden in treasure troves all over China."

He turned the casket upside down and one other object fell into his hand. It was a miniature tin flute, not much bigger than his thumbnail.

"What did she want us to exchange for a feather, the root or the flute?" I asked.

"How would I know? Ox, did the Duke of Ch'in really read your mind?"

"Yes, sir," I said firmly.

"I don't like this at all," Master Li said thoughtfully. He stared at the place where the ghost had been. Nearly a minute pa.s.sed in silence. "Perhaps we'll figure it out in two or three hundred years," he finally said. "Let's get out of here."

It was easier said than done. It would be suicide to go back into the labyrinth, and the only other exit was the small mouth of the cave. We stood there and gazed down a hundred feet of sheer cliff that could not possibly be negotiated without ropes and grappling hooks at an angry sea where waves smashed against jagged rocks that lifted through the foam like teeth. There was one small calm pool almost directly beneath us, but for all I knew it was six inches deep. The moon was reflected in it, and I gazed from the moon to Master Li and back again.

"My life has been rather hectic, and I could use a long rest," he sighed. "When I get to h.e.l.l to be judged, I intend to ask the Yama Kings to let me be reborn as a three-toed sloth. Do you have any preference?"

"I thought about it. "A cloud," I said shyly.

He was wearing a smuggler's belt that was studded with fake seash.e.l.ls, and he snapped one of them open and put the Legs of Power inside. On second thought he took the tiny flute as well, and I filled my pockets with pearls and jade on the odd chance that I might live long enough to give them to Lotus Cloud. Li Kao climbed up upon my back and wrapped his arms around my neck, and I discovered that I was beginning to feel undressed unless I wore my ancient sage like a raincoat. I perched on the edge and took aim.

"Farewell, sloth."

"Farewell, cloud."

I held my nose and jumped. The wind whistled around our ears as we plunged toward the pool, and toward a jagged rock that we hadn't noticed.

"Left! Left!" Master Li yelled, pulling on my pendant chain like the reins of a bridle.

I frantically flapped my arms, like a large awkward bird, and the reflected moon grew larger and larger, and then so huge that I almost expected to see Chang-o and the White Rabbit stick their heads out and shake their fists at us. We missed the rock by six inches. The moon appeared to smile, and the warm waters of the Yellow Sea opened to embrace us like long-lost friends.

16. Children's Games

The monastery was hushed and the tension was such that the warm air crackled as though touched by invisible lightning. The color of the liquid in the alchemist's vial had changed from saffron to black, and the essence was almost ready.

Li Kao lifted the vial from the pan of boiling water and removed the stopper, and when he and the abbot emerged from the cloud of steam they both appeared to have been reborn, with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, and the ginseng aroma was so strong that my heart began to pound furiously. I remembered that even the most skeptical physicians admitted that ginseng could have an astonis.h.i.+ng effect upon the cardiovascular system, and my eyes were wide with hope as the abbot and Master Li moved down the line of beds. Three drops upon each tongue, repeated three times. The parents held their breaths.

The effect of the Legs of the Great Root of Power was quite extraordinary. The pale faces of the children flushed, and the heartbeats strengthened, and the covers lifted with deep easy breathing, and then the parents cried out in joy as child after child sat up and opened his eyes! They began to laugh and giggle, and then all the boys began to shake their shoulders up and down and make quick s.n.a.t.c.hing gestures. When the girls began to make swooping pulling gestures I realized with a sudden shock of recognition that I was watching a ritual that I had performed at least a hundred times myself.

Li Kao strode up to Bone Helmet and waved a hand in front of her face. Her wide bright eyes never moved. He snarled and s.n.a.t.c.hed a candle from a holder and lit it, but when he thrust it forward so that it was almost touching her nose the pupils of her eyes did not constrict. The abbot grabbed a boy called Monkey and shook him vigorously and got no reaction whatsoever. The children of Ku-fu continued to laugh and giggle and swoop and shake and s.n.a.t.c.h, completely unaware of their surroundings. They had awakened, but into a world of their own.

Bone Helmet suddenly stopped her swooping pulling gestures and sat silently, with the happy smile still on her face. Girl after girl, and a few boys, followed her example. Finally only Fang's Fawn continued her gestures, and the boys redoubled their efforts, and at last Fawn stopped and sat still. The children made a m.u.f.fled sound that might have been a cheer, and then all of them except Fawn and Little Hong closed their eyes tightly. Little Hong's lips began to move, slowly and rhythmically, and the others started giggling again and began feeling the air with their fingers, with their eyes still closed. Only Fawn sat as before, completely still and silent.

I said that I recognized the ritual, but what happened next was totally unexpected. All the children suddenly stopped feeling the air, and all the heads jerked to the east. They were still and intent, and I sensed that they were listening to a sound that only they could hear. Bone Helmet parted her lips. When her small thin voice lifted through the hush of the monastery every one of us, including Master Li, who was an authority on the folklore of every corner of China, jerked our heads toward the windows and stared with wide eyes at the distant looming outline of Dragon's Pillow.

"Jade... plate..." she whispered.

"Six... eight..." whispered Little Hong.

"Fire that burns hot..." Monkey whispered.

"Night that is not..." whispered w.a.n.g Number Three.

"Fire that burns cold!" all the boys said together.

"First silver, then gold!" all the girls said together.

Little Hong turned back and resumed moving his lips rhythmically, and the animation returned tenfold as the others resumed groping through the air with their fingers. Only Fang's Fawn continued to sit silently. The giggles and laughter grew louder, and they chanted happily, over and over: "Jade plate, six, eight, fire that burns hot, night that is not, fire that burns cold, first silver, then gold!" Monkey lifted his right arm and began to swing it back and forth through the air. One of his fingers touched Fawn's forehead, and instantly Little Hong stopped moving his lips. The others opened their eyes and began to cheer, and a wide happy smile spread over Fawn's face. She yawned drowsily. Her eyes closed. Fawn sank back upon her bed, and child after child followed her example, and the weeping of parents again filled the monastery of Ku-fu as the children once more lay as still as death.

The Legs of Power had almost done it, but those two tiny tendrils could not carry the children to safety. The abbot took the arms of Li Kao and myself and led us into his study and slammed the door upon the sounds of grief. His wrinkles and worries had returned, and his hands were shaking, and he took a deep breath and turned to Master Li.

"Will you continue?" he asked quietly.

"Well, I don't seem to have anything else to do at the moment," Master Li said with a shrug of his shoulders. Then he smiled wryly. "No, the truth is that I'm becoming fascinated with this weird case, and if somebody tries to pull me off it, I will scream like a baby who has been robbed of a bright s.h.i.+ny new toy. It would help if I could figure out what those children were doing in there."

"They were playing the Hopping Hide and Seek Game," I said.

"The what?"

"The Hopping Hide and Seek Game," said the abbot.

The monastery supported itself by manufacturing a very good brand of wine, although the abbot and the bonzes were forbidden to touch it themselves, and he poured cups for Li Kao and me.

"It's a s.e.x and courts.h.i.+p game, and it's been played by the children of Ku-fu for as long as anyone can remember," the abbot explained. "The object is to get possession of the girls' red hair ribbons. A large circle is drawn upon the ground, or perhaps natural barriers are used. The boys try to s.n.a.t.c.h the ribbons from the girls, but they must hop on one leg, which is what they were doing when their shoulders shook up and down. The girls try to trip the boys with the ribbons, thus the swooping pulling gestures. A boy who is tripped becomes the girl's prisoner and drops out of the game, and a girl who loses her red ribbon becomes the boy's prisoner and drops out of the game."

Li Kao was far more interested than I would have expected. "Considering the boys' one-legged handicap, the girls should win easily," he said.

"They should, except that they instinctively know that the best way to begin a long campaign in the battle of the s.e.xes is to surrender, and the real point of the game is that there is a great deal of giggling and grappling and feeling of bodies," the abbot said drily. "Thus its longevity. Eventually only one girl will be left, and when she is captured she becomes the queen, and the boy who gets her ribbon becomes the king. In this case it was Fang's Fawn and Little Hong. The other children put on blindfolds. The king hides the queen somewhere inside the circle, and the others must try to find her by touch. This leads to more giggling and grappling and feeling of bodies, but there is a time limit. When Little Hong moved his lips, he was slowly counting to forty-nine."

"Is the count ever changed?" Master Li asked.

"No, sir," I said.

"Do they have formal t.i.tles, such as King of X and Queen of Y?"

"No, sir," I said.

"The peculiar thing," said the abbot, "was that suddenly they broke off and listened, and then they repeated that ancient nonsense rhyme that is said to have come from Dragon's Pillow. That is not part of the Hopping Hide and Seek Game."

Li Kao helped himself to more wine, and then he walked to the window and gazed out at the strange stretch of wall where the ghost of Wan was said to keep watch.

"Yet when they repeated that rhyme, they were able to find the queen," he said thoughtfully.

"Yes, sir," I said. "Monkey touched Fawn before the count reached forty-nine, and she smiled because she had won the game."

Li Kao swallowed his wine at a gulp and turned back to the room.

"Those children were completely unconscious. Then they had one tiny taste of the Great Root, and how did they react? Every single one of them instantly started playing the Hopping Hide and Seek Game, and every single one of them recited a nonsense rhyme that children from this village had first heard many centuries ago at Dragon's Pillow. I am beginning to suspect that the simple quest for a ginseng root is wrapped in more riddles than that Mysterious Mountain Cavern of Winds, where the White Serpent crushes heroes in the cold coils of enigmas, and while I am probably hallucinating, I am willing to bet that the ghost of a murdered maiden fits in here somewhere."

He turned to the abbot. "Reverend Sir, in your studies of myth and folklore, have you ever encountered a ghostly handmaiden who pleads that birds must fly?"

The abbot shook his head negatively.

"Or ghosts who beg people to exchange things for feathers? Possibly things like this?"

He took the tiny flute from his smuggler's belt. The abbot studied it with interest but without recognition, and Li Kao sighed and lifted it to his lips and blew gently into the mouthpiece. Then he hurled the flute to the floor, and all three of us jumped back and stared at it as one might view a cobra.

No flute sound came from that incredible thing. Instead we heard an old woman whose voice was so rich and warm that she might have been the grandmother of the entire human race.

"Aiieeee! Aiieeee! Come closer, my children! Spread ears like elephants, and I will tell you the tale of a girl named Beauty, and of her wicked stepmother and her good fairy G.o.dmother, and of the magic fishbone and the carriage and the little slipper that fell from Beauty's foot and led her to a handsome prince!"

Li Kao lunged. He grabbed the flute and covered the first of four tiny fingerholes and the voice stopped abruptly. He covered the second fingerhole and blew lightly into the mouthpiece.

"Aiieeee! Aiieeee! Come closer, my children! Spread ears like elephants, and I will tell you the tale of the old woman and her little boy, and of the cow and the corn and the peddler, and of the beanstalk that grew to the clouds, and what happened when the little boy climbed it into a world of wonders!"

Li Kao tried the other fingerholes, and each one produced a tale that had been delighting Chinese children for at least two thousand years, and which have even spread to the barbarian tribes. He stopped the last tale and glowered at the marvelous thing.

"Master Li, we could exchange that flute for ten thousand tons of feathers," I whispered.

"With the island of Taiwan tossed in for good measure," the abbot said shakily.

Master Li looked from the flute to the infirmary where the children lay, and back to the flute.

"That does it!" he snarled. "Ox, we have an evil duke who reads minds and laughs at axes, treasure troves that are hidden in labyrinths that are supposedly guarded by monsters, flutes that tell fairy tales, an incomprehensible ghost who might have come from one, an ancient children's game, and a ghostly message from Dragon's Pillow. If you're wondering about the wicked stepmother, just wait, because she's bound to turn up."

He replaced the flute in his belt, and shook a finger in front of my nose.

"Nothing on the face of this earth - and I do mean nothing - is half so dangerous as a children's story that happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac. Mark my words!" he shouted angrily. "If the Key Rabbit can slip us into another one of the duke's treasure troves, we will most certainly shake hands with a two-hundred-foot armor-plated winged water moccasin that can hit the eye of a gnat with a spit of venom from twenty miles away, and that can only be slain by a hero who was born inside a knitting needle during a total eclipse of the moon on the thirty-first day of February."

I flushed, and looked down at my toes.

"If it's all right with you, I'd rather worry about real heads splas.h.i.+ng into real basins filled with real blood," I said meekly.

"You have a point." He sighed.

Master Li looked wryly at the abbot and shrugged his shoulders.