| THE Castle of the Labyrinth lies in ruins now, a vast pile of stone slabs scattered across a cliff overlooking the Yellow Sea. There the tide is the strongest in China, and the cliff shudders with the force of the waves. Vines have covered the fallen stones, lizards with rainbow bellies and turquoise eyes cling to the shattered walls, spiders scuttle through the eternal shadows cast by banana and bamboo. The spiders that currently occupy the Castle of the Labyrinth are huge, hairy, and harmless. The previous occupants were not so harmless. |
1 |
| I remember the castle as I first saw it: vast, turreted, moated, and impregnable. I remembered being marched through a pair of monstrous iron gates that made men look like ants, and across a drawbridge that could have held fifty horsemen riding abreast. An enormous pair of bronze doors creaked open, and we entered the inner fortress where towers rose a hundred feet into the air and a thousand crossbows pointed through slits carved in massive stone blacks. I remember the heavy tread of marching feet, and the clash of weapons, and the harsh commands. We were herded down a long tunnel past checkpoints where soldiers demanded passwords and secret signs. A pair of huge golden doors swung silently open and our footsteps echoed across a vast floor of lapis lazuli toward a massive gold throne. |
2 |
| The Duke of Ch'in was huge. I could not tell his exact size because he was sitting down, but his shoulders matched the bulk of the huge and terrifying golden tiger mask that concealed his face. He wore a long cloak of feathers. The chopping block and a stone basin to catch the blood and severed heads were placed directly in front of the throne. The executioner - a massive fellow stripped to the waist - carried an axe almost as big as he was. Rows of dignitaries flanked the throne, and a regiment of soldiers lined the walls. |
3 |
| From my point of view the ceremony proceeded with unseemly haste. The soldiers removed the yoke and neck chain of the first prisoner in line, dragged him forward, kicked his legs out from under him, and stretched his neck across the chopping block. The executioner spat on his hands and raised his axe. There was a flash of steel, a dull thud, a spurt of blood, the sound of the first severed head plopping into the basin, some snickers from the soldiers, a polite patter of applause from the dignitaries, and a little whinny of delight from the Duke of Ch'in. |
4 |
| "You metal-masked freak, you murdered my parents," I thought. "I cannot possibly get out of here alive, but I am certainly going to try to take you with me!" |
5 |
| Then I fainted. The idea was to reach down to my left sandal. I always keep a selection of lock picks in the hollow heel of my left sandal, and the lock on the chain that bound my wrists behind my back was easily accessible. I was jerked back to my feet and held upright before I could select the right pick, however, and I had to work with one that was slightly too small. It took too much time, and I was still working on that look when they dragged me forward and kicked my legs out from under me. Then the strangest thing happened. |
6 |
| As the executioner lifted his axe I had a vision that was almost blinding in its clarity. I saw another executioner lifting another axe, and I saw the victim turn scornful eyes toward a gray gauze-covered litter. He wore a tall Confucian hat and an old-fashioned robe with sleeves wide enough to hold a couple of barrels of wine, and he opened his mouth - and before I knew what I was doing I had turned my eyes toward the Duke of Ch'in, and I found myself yelling: |
7 |
| "I hope I splatter blood all over you, you son of a sow!" |
8 |
| I was really quite surprised when the words burst out. I was a good deal more surprised when a sudden silence fell upon the throne room, and the executioner lowered his axe. Then the Duke of Ch'in lifted a finger. |
9 |
| The soldiers jerked me to my feet and dragged me up to the throne. They shoved my face forward until I was almost touching the terrible golden mask. I saw a tiny trickle of saliva dribble from the corner of the tiger mouth, and the voice that filtered through the mask was a voice of metal. |
10 |
| "For five hundred years it has been forbidden to mention the name of Chang Heng in the presence of the Duke's of Ch'in, yet you dare to quote his last words," the duke whispered. "Let us see what sort of fool attempts such insolence." |
11 |
| I could feel the concealed eyes boring into mine, reaching right into my brain. I could also feel the lock pick concealed in the palm of my hand press against the lever, and I could feel the lever sliding back. |
12 |
| "I see nothing," the duke whispered. "I see no understanding. You quote Chang Heng, yet you know nothing. But there is something deep inside you which I do not understand. Something savage. Perhaps you might be dangerous after all." |
13 |
| "More dangerous than you think," I said sweetly. |
14 |
| I jerked the look open and swung my arms backward, lashing the soldiers' faces with the chain. With practically the same motion I jerked a sword from a scabbard and struck the Duke of Ch'in with all my might. The sword bounced off his cloak of feathers as though it had struck the hardest steel! I roared with rage and struck again, and this time the sword entered his body. I felt a slight metallic scrape and then it plunged through, right through his evil heart, up to the hilt. |
15 |
| "Mother! Father! You are avenged!" I yelled, and then I turned and folded my arms and prepared to die nobly. What I saw made me doubt my sanity. |
16 |
| The soldiers were laughing. The dignitaries were laughing. Even the executioner was laughing. I whirled around and the Duke of Ch'in was laughing - he sat upon his throne with a sword rammed clean through his heart, and he was laughing! |
17 |
| "Little one, forgive me for thinking that you might be dangerous," he chortled. "You are only a boy, fit for nothing but bouncing balls and playing games. Very well, we will play a little game." |
18 |
| His fingers closed around an ornament on the arm of his throne. "You might even win. Five hundred years ago, someone did," he snickered, and then the floor dropped out from under me. |
19 |
| I toppled down into blackness, head over heels, and just as I thought I would fall forever I landed with a mighty splash in a pool of icy water. I plunged to the bottom, scraped against stone, and popped back to the surface gasping and choking. Far above me I heard faint laughter. Then the trap door I had fallen through slowly swung shut, and I heard the sound of a heavy bolt sliding through metal brackets and a sharp click as it fastened. |
20 |
| There was a faint flickering light. I swam to the edge of the pool - about forty or fifty feet, and climbed out and made my way to a single torch that burned in a bracket on the wall. I picked it up and swung it around. I was in a cavern carved from black stone. Ahead of me was an archway, and on the other side I saw an infinity of tunnels that twisted crazily in all directions. When I stepped through the archway I discovered that I was walking upon human bones. I saw skulls that had been crushed and mangled, and heavy thighbones splintered like bamboo twigs. I remembered the tales of the monster that stalked the duke's labyrinth devouring everything in its path, and above me in a throne room sat the duke himself, laughing his head off with a sword rammed through his heart. |
21 |
| I am not ashamed to admit that I lost my head completely. I raced in blind panic through that maze until I ran into a blank wall. Then I ran back until my flickering torch showed another tunnel opening and I turned into that. Again and again I reached dead ends, and in a few minutes I lost all sense of direction. I was fleeing from a monster whose imagined shape grew more terrible with every minute, and I did not come to my senses until I crashed into another blank wall and fell to my knees. As usual I was looking down at human bones, but there was a terrible odor of rotting flesh and I thought: "Where are the bodies?" Bones but no bodies, so what was causing that smell? |
22 |
| Something dripped upon my hand. I watched my fingers gradually turn red. Then I jumped up and lifted my torch as high as I could and I saw them. The bodies were wedged in cracks in the ceiling; half of a face stared down at me; a dangling leg dripped blood - and something else. |
23 |
| "Seaweed!" I said out loud. "Li Kao, the monster that stalks this labyrinth is nothing but the tide, and if the tide can get out so can you!" |
24 |
| Now I started off with a purpose. I held my torch to every tunnel opening, looking for the slightest flicker in the flame that would indicate air blowing in from the sea. I searched for a pattern in the way the rocks were worn, trying to find the direction the tide took. |
25 |
| My cautious cleverness brought me back right where I had started, and I gazed with a sinking heart at the pool and the inaccessible trap door high above. Black snakes slid across the floor and licked at my feet - water. The tide was coming in. |
26 |
| "Think!" I said to myself. "Use your stupid head!" |
27 |
| I thought until my head hurt, but the only thing that happened as |
28 |
| I concentrated was that I became aware of a tiny sound: very faint, very far away, yet strangely compelling. I stopped breathing entirely and strained with every nerve, and then I heard it. It was a voice that was vaguely familiar, like a voice from a half-remembered dream. |
29 |
| "Follow the dragon, Li Kao," the voice said quietly. "Follow the dragon." |
30 |
| The voice faded, and then it was gone. I walked back to the archway and gazed at the maze of tunnel openings. Water rose around my ankles, and I heard the tide begin to rumble through the labyrinth. I took a chain from my neck and gazed at a green jade dragon that wound through holes in red coral. The dragon passed the first three holes on the left and turned into the fourth hole on the right. |
31 |
| "Li Kao, you have most certainly lost your mind," I said, and then I began to run. |
32 |
| The rumbling sound became a roaring sound and then a screaming sound. "Fourth right...first left...fifth left…second right," I panted as I raced through the labyrinth. The water was trying to knock my legs out from under me, and bones were rattling against the walls. "Third right...first right...sixth left..." Water was up to my shoulders. I was bleeding from the impact of hurtling bones. "Third left..." |
33 |
| What a fool I had been to dream that the dragon locket would lead me to safety! I had run into a blank wall, a complete dead end, and when I turned around the tide struck me like an avalanche. Flying bones smashed against the wall all around me; the torch was ripped from my hand. I stood terrified in total blackness, clutching a useless locket, and my fingers told me what my eyes had not. The dragon entered that last hole and then turned up. Straight up. |
34 |
| I still didn't believe it, but there was nothing to do but surrender to the tide and let it carry me to the ceiling. My fingers frantically felt for an opening. The water was over my head, smashing me against the rocks, and my lungs were bursting. I felt an opening! It was a small chimney climbing through the stone, and I barely managed to squeeze through. I braced my legs against the sides and began to climb; my head broke water and I gulped air; my fingers reached over the edge of the chimney. I made one last effort and managed to pull myself up and over, and then I was lying on the floor of a small cave overlooking the Yellow Sea, and the sun was shining, and birds were chirping, and a fisherman far below was singing a song as he headed back to shore with his catch. |
35 |
| I lay there like a log, gazing numbly at a locket where a green jade dragon wound through holes in red coral. Images spun round and round in my mind: a laughing figure with a grotesque tiger mask and a sword through his heart, Bright Star dancing like a goddess in the moonlight, Fainting Maid's limp fingers dropping an object into my hand, a branch turning into a man with a tall Confucian hat and an old-fashioned robe who told me to follow a dragon. |
36 |
| "Chang Heng?" I whispered. |
37 |
Then I passed out.
|
38 |