mysterious symbols around it, and the townspeople who approached the message board turned pale and backed away hurriedly, muttering spells to protect themselves from evil. I had no idea what was going on.
That evening the most alarming bunch of thugs that I had ever seen in my life paused at the message board, studied the coin and the symbols, and began trickling by twos and threes into the inn. Li Kao had set out jars of the strongest wine, which they swilled like hogs, growling and snarling and glaring at me with their hands on the hilts of their daggers. The animal noises stopped abruptly when Li Kao entered and climbed up upon a table.
It was as if hands had been clapped over their filthy mouths. Their eyes bulged, and sweat poured down their greasy faces. The leader of the thugs turned quite gray with terror, and I thought that he was going to faint.
Master Li was wearing a red robe that was covered with cosmological symbols, and a red headband with five loops. His right trouser leg was rolled up, and his left trouser leg was rolled down, and he wore a shoe on his right foot and a sandal on his left. He laid his left hand across his chest with the little and middle fingers extended, and he slid his right hand back inside the sleeve of his robe. The sleeve began to flutter in peculiar patterns as he wriggled the concealed fingers.
Four of the thugs grabbed their leader and forced him forward. Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang was shaking so hard that he could barely stand, but he managed to slide his own right hand inside his sleeve, and the sleeve began to flutter in response. Master Li's sleeve moved faster and faster, Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang replied in the same silent fashion, and so it went for many minutes. At last Li Kao extracted his hand from the sleeve and gestured dismissal, and to my astonishment the thugs and their leader backed out of the room on their knees, humbly banging their heads against the floor.
Li Kao smiled and opened a jar of better wine and motioned for me to join him at a table.
“The lower the criminal, the more impressed he is with the childlike mumbo-jumbo of the Secret Societies,” he said complacently. “For some reason Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang is under the impression that I am a great grand master of the Triads, and that I intend to cut his gang in for a share of the loot when I make my move against the Ancestress. In the latter respect,” said Master Li, “he is absolutely right.”
Two days later some aristocratic ladies who were returning to the estate of the Ancestress were ambushed by villains whose appearance was so terrifying that the guards fled and left the ladies to their fate. Things were looking very bad for them until two intrepid noblemen rode to the rescue.
“On your knees, dogs, for you face the rage of Lord Li of Kao!” Master Li yelled.
“Cower, knaves, before the fury of Lord Lu of Yu!” I shouted.
Unfortunately, our lead horse slipped in some mud, and our carriage crashed into the ladies’ carriage, and we were pitched on top of half-naked females who were screaming their heads off. We gazed groggily at a pretty jade pendant that was dangling between a pair of pretty pink-tipped breasts, and it took a moment for us to remember what we were doing there. Then we jumped down to engage the ruffians.
Li Kao stabbed right and left with his sword, and I swung away with both hands—he was missing, of course, and I was pulling my punches short—and the thugs remembered that they weren't actually supposed to rob and rape anybody and began to do a very good job of acting. Once, when my foot slipped in the mud, a punch accidentally landed and sent the leader of the bandits sprawling. I forgot about the accident, and soon the bandits fled in terror and we turned to accept the gratitude of the rescued ladies.
Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang had already lost his nose and both of his ears in back-alley battles, and he did not appreciate losing several teeth as well. He crept up behind me with a log in his hands.
“A present for Lord Lu of Yu!” he yelled, and he swung with all his might, and I saw a glorious burst of orange and purple stars, and then everything turned black.
I awoke in a very expensive bed surrounded by very expensive women who were battling for the honor of bathing the bump on my skull.
“He wakes!” they shrieked at the tops of their lungs. “Lord Lu of Yu opens his divine eyes!”
I had been brought up to be courteous, but there are limits.
“If you don't stop that infernal racket, Lord Lu of Yu will strangle you with his divine hands,” I groaned.
They paid no attention to me, and the ear-splitting babble continued, and gradually I began to make some sense out of it. Our miraculous intervention had saved them all from rape and ruin, and the esteem in which we were held was not diminished by our fine tasseled hats, green silk tunics, jade-bordered silver girdles, Szech'uen fans, and money belts that bulged with Miser Shen's gold coins. This was all according to plan, but I was rather puzzled by repeated references to “the bridegroom,” and I was trying to get up enough strength to ask a few questions when I began to realize that my wounds were far more serious than I had thought.
I was sick enough to imagine that the floor was shaking, and that my bed was starting to bounce up and down. The hallucination was accompanied by a dull, rhythmic, pounding noise that gradually increased in volume, and the ladies suddenly stopped babbling. They turned pale and tiptoed quietly from the room through a side door, and I began to smell a revolting odor of rotting flesh.
The bedroom door crashed open, and the woman who marched inside weighed approximately five hundred pounds. The floor shook as she marched toward my bed. The coldest eyes that I had ever seen, even in nightmares, glittered between puffy rolls of sagging gray flesh, and a massive swollen hand shot out and grabbed my chin. The icy eyes moved over my face.
“Satisfactory,” she grunted.
She grabbed my right arm and probed the biceps.
“Satisfactory,” she grunted.
She jerked the covers down and squeezed my chest.
“Satisfactory,” she grunted.
She ripped the covers all the way down and prodded my private parts.
“Satisfactory,” she grunted.
Then the creature stepped back and I stared pop-eyed at a leveled finger that resembled a gangrened sausage.
“They call you Lord Lu of Yu,” she growled. “I know Yu well, and there is no Lord Lu. They call your antiquated companion Lord Li of Kao, and the province of Kao does not exist. You are frauds and fortune hunters, and your criminal activities do not interest me in the least.”
She slapped her hands to her hips and glared at me.
“My granddaughter has taken a fancy to you, and I want great-grandchildren,” she snarled. “The wedding will take place as soon as your wounds have healed. You will present me with seven great-grandchildren, and they will be boys. I intend to overthrow the T'ang Dynasty and restore the Sui, and boys are more suitable for the purpose. In the meantime you will not annoy me by showing your silly face any more than is absolutely necessary, and you will not speak unless spoken to. Insolence in my household is punishable by immediate decaptiation.”
The monster turned and plodded from the room, and the door slammed viciously behind her. For a moment I lay there paralyzed, and then I jumped from the bed and ran across the floor and started to climb out of the window. The view made me stop. That immense estate boasted no less than seven pleasure gardens, and one of them, in the tradition of great houses, was a pretty artificial peasant village. I gazed at simple thatched roofs, and crude water wheels, and green fields, and pigs and cows and chickens and water buffaloes. I felt tears well in my eyes and trickle down my cheeks.
My village was praying for a ginseng root.
I made my way back to the bed, and I lay there wrapped in misery and terror.
7. A Great House
When I had recovered enough to take stock of my surroundings it gradually dawned on me that the monster had decided upon seven great-grandchildren some time ago, and that her granddaughter would be ordered to see to it that they were twelve years old at birth. I was lying in the dormitory of the boys who were going to aid in overthrowing the T'ang Dynasty, and I will confess that I wept when I considered the life that my poor children were to lead.
Seven small beds were aligned side by side with geometric precision. Seven small desks were placed
