| THE Duke of Ch'in was terrified. |
1 |
| Once more the soldiers held my face close to his; once more the eyes behind the mask gazed deep into mine. The metallic voice quivered with fear. "The crystal ball!" he gasped. "The bronze bell! The silver flute! And still I see something deeper…something strange and savage which I do not understand..." |
2 |
| But he began to see something more reassuring. |
3 |
| "But you do not understand," he whispered. "There is no understanding at all in your eyes. You are a fool who has found important things without knowing why they are important. You have followed a path that cannot be followed, defeated guardians who cannot be defeated, escaped from places where escape was impossible, and yet you have not had the slightest idea where you were going or what you were looking for or why. You have been a very lucky fool and you have annoyed me. With every scream you utter you will pay for annoying the Duke of Ch'in." |
4 |
| The glittering mask lifted to the soldiers. |
5 |
| "Take him to the Shirt of Iron," the duke whispered. |
6 |
| Miser Shen had been right. Once more my ignorance had saved me from instant decapitation, but I cannot honestly say that I felt like rejoicing. The Shirt of Iron is a tunic made from iron mesh that can be uniformly tightened by means of a screw in back. It is tightened to the point where small patches of the victim's flesh bulge through the holes in the mesh. Then the torturer picks up something rough - a rock will do - and slowly scrapes the mesh until there are no bulges. He carefully stops the flow of blood, and the next day the procedure is repeated. And the next and the next. A competent torturer can keep a victim screaming in the Shirt of Iron for a month, and the only hope the victim has is that he will go mad fairly early in the game. |
7 |
| Unfortunately I was not in a position to argue with the duke. They had loaded me with so many chains that I could barely breathe, much less move, and the soldiers puffed and panted and predicted horrible hernias as they carried me down to the lowest dungeon. I counted twenty-two flights of stairs, and soldiers stood guard on every landing. The torture chamber at the bottom was not reassuring - blood and entrails all over the place - and the torturer did not view me with friendly eyes. He had a bright red nose, a bald skull, four yellow teeth, and a grievance. |
8 |
| "Work work work!" he snarled as he bustled around me with a tape measure. "Do you realize that every single Shirt of Iron must be individually tailored for the victim? Do you realize how long it takes? It takes two full days, but the duke wants yours ready in two hours! And then I have to put it on you and give you your first scraping, and that takes another two hours! And there is another prisoner in the Death Cell who has to be drawn and quartered, and a first class job of drawing and quartering takes three and one-half hours! When am I to rest, I ask you?" whined the torturer. "Is there no concern for the welfare of the working man?" |
9 |
| The soldiers were highly indignant. |
10 |
| "What about our welfare?" they yelled. "The duke tells us that we have to stand guard in this slimy hole until the poor bastard dies, and it may take a month! Look at those cockroaches! Look at those leeches! Look at that slimy water dripping from the rocks! There is fever down here as sure as you're born, and even if we live to get back to our wives what good will it do us? The duke orders us to load this poor bastard with so many chains that he can't move, and then he orders us to carry him down twenty-two flights of stairs, and now we're all eunuchs with quadruple hernias!" |
11 |
| It was a day for grievances. Feet pattered down the stairs and an old acquaintance trotted into the torture chamber. |
12 |
| "Woe! Woe! Woe!" wailed the Key Rabbit. "The most terrible thing has happened! The duke has ordered me to be present during the torture sessions of Lord Li of Kao, and to return with a full report of his sufferings! How can the duke do this do me?" the little fellow sobbed. "I become violently ill in butcher shops. I faint when I cut my finger. I threw up all over a very distinguished nobleman when he introduced me to his blood brother. I disgraced myself at a state banquet when I was informed that I was eating blood pudding. And now I must watch the most generous protector my dear wife has ever had die by inches in the bloodiest way known to man. Woe!" wailed the Key Rabbit. "Woe! Woe! Woe!" |
13 |
| When the torturer finished with his measurements they carried me into the Death Cell and dropped me on the floor in a crash of chains. Ten thousand sickly white cockroaches scuttled out of the way and the door slammed behind me. I shifted in my chains as best I could to see what grievance my fellow prisoner had on his mind. |
14 |
| "Great Buddha, what are you doing here?" I cried. |
15 |
| "At the moment I am eating my last supper," said Henpecked Ho. "Good afternoon, Li Kao. It is a great pleasure to see you again although one regrets, of course, the circumstances. Would you care for some rice? They have even allowed me a small jar of wine. Very decent of them, don't you think?" |
16 |
| "Wine, by all means," I said. |
17 |
| Apparently the duke did not consider Henpecked Ho to be very dangerous because he was only attached to the wall by a leg chain, which was long enough to allow him to reach me and pour some wine down my throat. Wu-fan. Some people prize it highly but I am not among them. It is jet black and so thick that it tastes like molasses flavored with engraving acid. |
18 |
| "Did I hear that fellow say that you were to be drawn and quartered?" I said when I stopped coughing. |
19 |
| "Yes indeed. It is a rather distressing story," he sighed. "By any chance do you remember that I was trying to fit the fragments of some ancient clay tablets together?" |
20 |
| "Some kind of fairy tale, wasn't it?" |
21 |
| "Precisely, and I had labored on it for sixteen years. But one day soon after you left I figured out the key to the problem, and I could not believe how quickly the pieces began to fall Into place. I was so excited that I almost felt young again. Then one night I entered my workshop and It was gone, every single piece was gone. I ran around weeping and walling and tearing my hair until my dear wife told me to stop making a spectacle of myself. She had taken the tablets." |
22 |
| "Your wife had taken them?" |
23 |
| "Taken them and thrown them In the river. The Ancestress had remarked that fitting fragments of clay together was a frivolous hobby, so my wife ordered her servants to throw my tablets into the river." |
24 |
| "I would have slit her miserable throat!" I snarled. |
25 |
| "Indeed you would have, dear boy!" said Henpecked Ho. "I thought about you a great deal. I remembered that you had advised using an axe, so I stole an axe and went after my dear wife." |
26 |
| "Did you get her?" |
27 |
| "I chopped her to pieces. Then I chopped her seven fat sisters to pieces. It was a delightful experience. Then I came here in pursuit of the Ancestress, and my only regret is that the soldiers got to me before I could get to her. But I suppose one can't have everything," said Henpecked Ho. |
28 |
| "Ho, you did splendidly!" I cried. |
29 |
| "Well, I suppose that most civilized people would consider my behavior rather gross," he said dubiously. "But what maddened me beyond bearing was the fact that I had only been able to piece together half of the tablets, and it was a very interesting story, and now I shall never know how it came out. It was particularly interesting to me because it involved a god and a goddess who I had never heard of, and part of my chin-shih training consisted of memorizing the entire Heavenly pantheon." |
30 |
| "Tell me, Ho, is a deity called the Peddler part of the pantheon?" I said. I had been thinking of the painting in the Cavern of Bells that had been a trap, and of the fact that Miser Shen was still unavenged, but I regretted that question the moment it escaped my lips. Scholarship can be a terrible curse. I saw the gleam In Henpecked Ho's eyes and braced myself. |
31 |
| "The Peddler is not one of the six hundred named gods, but of course the named gods barely scratch the surface of the pantheon," said Henpecked Ho. "We must also consider the gods of the ten directions, the secondary officials of the ten directions, the stars or the five directions, the secondary stars of the five directions, the fairy warriors and sages, the ten extreme god kings, the gods of the sun and the moon and the nine principal stars, the gods who guard the four Heavenly gates, the thirty-six thunder gods who guard Heaven itself, the twenty-eight principal stars of the zodiac, the gods for subjugating evil ghosts, the god king of Flying Heaven, the god of the great long life of Buddha, the gods of Tien Kan and To Tze, the great sages of the trigrams and Nine Stars, the gate gods and the kitchen gods, the godly generals in charge of the year and the month and the day and the hour, the gods and spirits in charge of the four seas and the nine rivers and the five mountains and the four corners, the gods in charge of the wells and the springs and the ditches and the creeks and the hills and the woods and the lakes and the rivers and the twelve river sources, chang huangs and their inferiors, the local patron gods, the gods of minor local officials, the gods of the roads and bridges, the gods of trees and lumber, the spiritual officers and soldiers under the command of priests, and all spirits in charge of protecting the taboos, commands, scriptures, and the right way of religion." |
32 |
| Henpecked Ho took a deep breath. |
33 |
| "The Peddler," he said, "is not one of those either." |
34 |
| "Ho," I moaned. |
35 |
| "But our knowledge of the pantheon must necessarily be incomplete because of the first Duke of Ch'in." said Henpecked Ho. "He not merely burned the books of China, but also destroyed the temples and priests and worshippers of religious cults that annoyed him. Perhaps the Peddler is one of the deities whose worshippers perished, and who is now forgotten by mankind. I am morally certain that the first duke destroyed the cult of the two deities mentioned in my clay tablets. Not even the peasants remember them today, yet it is impossible that the peasants would simply forget a tale that involved the most beautiful girl in the world and the handsomest god in Heaven." |
36 |
| "Impossible," I agreed. |
37 |
| "Not to mention the beautiful Bridge of Birds," said Henpecked Ro. |
38 |
| "What!" |
39 |
| "The beautiful Bridge of Birds," said Henpecked Ho. |
40 |
| Five hundred years ago the great Chang Heng had vowed that he would never give up. "I swear by all that is holy that the sky will fill with falling stars when we see the beautiful Bridge of Birds!" he had yelled to a startled bonze upon a mountain path. And he has not given up. |
41 |
| "It is really quite a pretty story. Would you care to hear it?" said Henpecked Ho. "I was not able to finish it, but I can remember the part that I pieced together almost word for word." |
42 |
| "I cannot think of a better time and place to listen to a pretty little fairy tale," I sighed, and so I lay there almost crushed beneath the weight of my chains, while sickly white cockroaches crawled over me, and slimy green water dripped from the black stone walls, and curses and hammering drifted from the next room as the torturer tailored my Shirt of Iron, and the gentle voice of Henpecked Ho recited a very pretty tale indeed. |
43 |
| "During the rainy season in Heaven when the Great River of Stars is filled with raging water," said Henpecked Ho, "the Star Shepherd must stride through the waves day and night, guiding the frightened stars to safety with his long shepherd's crook, but during the dry season when the Great River is calm he is free to travel as he pleases. One day the Star Shepherd decided to visit earth. He floated down from Heaven and landed outside a tiny peasant village, and wandered around for an hour or two admiring the sights. Eventually he came to a small grove of bamboo. It was the loveliest place for miles around, but the peasants avoided it like the plague because a strange sound had been heard there one midnight a thousand years before, and the story of the strange sound had passed from old crone to old crone down the centuries, and the old crones had added horrifying details, which is the proper occupation of old crones. |
44 |
| "'The place is haunted!' they screeched. 'The pool in the center of the bamboo grove is filled with water demons, who wait to snatch little children and drag them to the depths! Shan hsiao, the terrible woodmen ghosts with the bodies of men and the claws of vultures, lurk in every tree!' |
45 |
| "Almost everybody said that the old crones were right. The exception was a brave and high-spirited girl named Jade Pearl, and what Jade Pearl said was 'Nonsense!' She could not believe that so lovely a place could be haunted, particularly when there was a beautiful pool of blue water in the center, where tiny fish of crimson and gold swam without a care in the world. So Jade Pearl often went to the bamboo grove to bathe in the pool, while the old crones muttered spells against evil spirits, and predicted terrible things. |
46 |
| "The Star Shepherd found a path and walked into the cool shadows of the bamboo grove. In the center he found a clearing where wildflowers of many colors bloomed among the green grass, and in the center of the clearing was a beautiful blue pool, and in the center of the pool was Jade Pearl, who was the most beautiful girl in the whole world, although she did not know it. Her skin was like ivory brushed with honey, and her eyes were like almonds of ebony flecked with gold, and her hair was like a cloud of soft swirling smoke, and her lips were full and bursting with sweetness, like plums. There were many other items of interest about Jade Pearl and you may be sure that the Star Shepherd did not miss any of them. |
47 |
| "Jade Pearl saw a figure reflected in the water. 'Oh!' she cried, and when she turned around the most beautiful girl in the world gazed straight at the handsomest god in Heaven, and one thing led to another as it usually does. |
48 |
| "Time had wings, and one day an old retainer who had been granted the right to fish in the Great River of Stars came panting into the palace of the Emperor of Heaven, the August Personage of Jade, and demanded an audience. 'Your Heavenly Majesty, the rainy season is upon us but the Star Shepherd has not returned from earth!' he wailed. 'The Great River is filled with terrified stars careening upon the wild waves and crashing against the great black rocks! Many stars have been badly damaged, and some have even sunk!' |
49 |
| "The August Personage of Jade could not believe that his favorite nephew would so neglect his duties, but he knew that the old retainer was a pillar of honesty who had never told a lie in his life, so he rushed out to see for himself. When he discovered that it was just as the old fellow had said, if not worse, he uttered a great roar of rage and flew down to earth and landed in the center of the bamboo grove with a terrible clap of thunder. |
50 |
| "'Back to your duties, you Insolent puppy!' he screamed. 'I swear upon the sacred name of my predecessor, the Heavenly Master of the First Origin, that never again shall you be allowed to visit earth!' |
51 |
| "The emperor grabbed the Star Shepherd by the hair and swung him round and round like a toy on the end of a string, and pitched him clear up to the constellation Aquilla. Then he turned his rage toward Jade Pearl. 'On your knees, strumpet! Face the wrath of Heaven!' he yelled. So Jade Pearl knelt before the August Personage of Jade and clasped her hands together. 'Your Heavenly Majesty, there is no need to punish poor Jade Pearl,' she sobbed. 'I have given my heart to the Star Shepherd, and if I am never to see him again I shall die.' |
52 |
| "The emperor looked at Jade Pearl, and found himself remembering that he too had once been young. He took a second look, and remembered that only -recently he had insisted that the Star Shepherd had more common sense in his little finger than the rest of his nephews had in their whole bodies. He took a third look, and began to think deep thoughts about his beloved wife, the queen Mother Wang, who used more makeup with less effect than any woman he had ever known. He took a fourth look and muttered, 'Ten thousand curses!' and then he sat down beside the pool and patted the grass with his hand. 'Come sit here beside me, my child,' he said. |
53 |
| "So the peasant girl sat down beside the Emperor of Heaven, and they dangled their feet in the water and watched the little fish swim between their toes like brightly painted snowflakes, and after a long silence the emperor said: 'Jade Pearl, I have sworn a mighty oath that the Star Shepherd shall never again be allowed to visit earth, and so it must be.' |
54 |
| "Jade Pearl began to cry. 'You should have seen what that boy did to the Great River of Stars!' the emperor yelled, but Jade Pearl continued to cry. The August Personage of Jade watched the tears trickle down her cheeks for several minutes, and then he sighed and muttered: 'I am going to regret this. I feel it in my bones.' |
55 |
| Then the Emperor of Heaven reached into his right sleeve and took out a small golden crown. He reached into his left sleeve and took out three small white feathers. 'Jade Pearl,' he said, 'since the Star Shepherd cannot visit you on earth I am going to allow you to visit him in Heaven.' |
56 |
| "'Your Majesty honors me beyond my worth!' cried jade Pearl. |
57 |
| "'That is precisely true, and I dread to think what will happen when my beloved wife, the Queen Mother Wang, finds out about it. However, you have at least confirmed my suspicion that the Star Shepherd is the most sensible of my nephews, and Heaven could use a little brightening up.' The August Personage of Jade placed the three small white feathers around the rim of the golden crown. 'These are the three feathers of the Kings of Birds, and so long as you wear these feathers you will be Princess of Birds, and all the birds of China will be your loving subjects,' he said. 'Today is the seventh day of the seventh moon. On this day and on this day forever after you will summon the birds, and they will build a bridge so that you may climb to Heaven and rejoin the Star Shepherd.' |
58 |
| "The emperor waggled his finger in front of Jade Pearl's nose to emphasize the seriousness of what he was saying. |
59 |
| "'But it is Illegal for one who has not completed the full cycle around the Great Wheel of Transmigrations to spend a full year in Heaven,' said the emperor. 'On the first day of the first moon you must call the birds again, and they will return you to earth. On the seventh day of the seventh moon you may once again climb the bridge to Heaven, and thus the cycle shall continue throughout eternity, for if the Star Shepherd does not give you the Peach of Immortality he is a greater fool than I think he is. Jade Pearl, do not forget the seventh day of the seventh moon!' the emperor said sternly. 'If on that day you fail to return to the Star Shepherd you will pass from the protection of Heaven. Then none but a mortal could restore you to your lover, and the odds against a mortal pulling off a trick like that are, conservatively speaking, one in ten trillion.' |
60 |
| "Your Majesty, I hear and obey,' Jade Pearl whispered. |
61 |
| So the Emperor of Heaven rose to his feet and Jade Pearl knelt before him, and he placed the little crown upon her head. 'Arise, Princess of Birds!' he cried. 'Call your subjects!' |
62 |
| "When Jade Pearl stood up she was astonished to see that she shone with a divine light. She called to the birds of China, and then she cried out with wonder and delight as a great song arose, and the bamboo trees swayed in a wind or wings. All the birds of China came flying toward her with green twigs and branches held in their beaks, and with these they built a bridge that reached to the stars. Jade Pearl climbed to Heaven upon the beautiful Bridge of Birds and fell into the arms of her lover, and the Star Shepherd married the Princess of Birds and gave her the Peach of Immortality. True to her word they parted with many tears on the first day of the first moon, and the birds returned Jade Pearl to earth. |
63 |
| "Heaven saw to it that her little village lacked for nothing, so that the Princess of Birds could pass her time on earth singing songs and weaving daisy chains. Still she thought that the seventh day of the seventh moon would never come, but she had a goat and a cat and a little dog and three handmaidens from her own village named Snowgoose, Little Ping, and Autumn Moon, and they helped her to pass the time. Then the great day arrived, and all the peasants stood outside and cried out with wonder as the beautiful Bridge of Birds climbed to the stars. Once more the Princess of Birds fell into the arms of the Star Shepherd, and they lived..." |
64 |
| Henpecked Ho paused. |
65 |
| "Happily ever after? You see that is as far as I had gone when my dear wife threw the tablets in the river," he said. "But if they lived happily ever after, I do not understand why fully half the tale remained to be told. What do you think, Li Kao?" |
66 |
| "Almost anything is possible in China," I said gloomily, "but it is not possible that the Star Shepherd and the Princess of Birds lived happily ever after. Ho, now I know too much and I know too little, and I will never survive another interview with the Duke of Ch'in. We must escape from this place at once!" |
67 |
"I think that is a splendid idea," said Henpecked Ho.
|
68 |