axe.
“Chop-chop!” he chanted happily. “Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”
The mist swallowed him up, and I swung down the other side to Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang and his scum of the earth. It had been twenty years since they had enjoyed a windfall like the funeral of Fainting Maid, and they begged Master Li to stay as their leader. We had other things to do. I was off like the wind, racing across the hills toward the village of Ku-fu, while Master Li rode upon my back clutching the Root of Power.
11. A Tale I Will Thee Tell
It was early afternoon, and dust danced in the sunlight that filtered into the monastery. The only sounds came from Li Kao and the abbot as they prepared the essence, and from bird songs that drifted with the breeze through the windows. The children had not moved so much as an eyelash since we had left, and the bonzes had been able to do no more for them than to bathe them and move them to different positions at regular intervals. It was hard to believe that the small pale bodies could still show faint vital signs, and the parents were as silent as the children.
An alchemist's stove burned beneath a bubbling vial of sugared water, in which Master Li had placed the Root of Power. The water began to turn orange, and the ginseng root took on a copperish-orange color that was almost translucent, like amber. Master Li moved the root to a fresh vial that was filled with mild rice wine. The abbot heated the liquid, and as it slowly bubbled down Master Li replaced it with the orange liquid from the first vial. Then the level of the liquid lowered until the root was barely covered, and the liquid turned saffron, and Master Li sealed the vial and placed it in a pan of boiling water. Both the liquid and the root began to turn orange-black, and then jet-black. Only a small puddle of liquid remained, and Master Li removed the vial from the pan and opened the seal. An incredible fresh and pungent aroma filled the room, like a whole forest of mountain herbs just after a rain.
“That's all there is to it, and now we will see what we will see,” he said calmly.
The abbot and Li Kao walked from bed to bed. The abbot parted the children's lips and Li Kao dipped the blackened root into the liquid and carefully applied three drops to each tongue. Three times the treatment was repeated, and there was just enough of the ginseng essence to go around.
We waited while the sounds of chickens and cows and water buffaloes drifted upon the breeze, and willows brushed their branches against the gray stone walls, and a woodpecker hammered in the garden.
Color was returning to the pale faces. The bedcovers began to lift and fall with strong regular breathing, and warmth flushed the cold limbs. Fang's Fawn sighed, and a wide smile spread across the face of Bone Helmet. All the children began to smile happily, and with a sense of humble awe I realized that I had witnessed a medical miracle. Parents wept for joy as they embraced their sons and daughters, and the grandparents danced, and the bonzes ran to the ropes and swung lustily up and down as they rang every bell in the monastery. The abbot was dancing a jig while he bellowed, “Namo Kuanshiyin Bodhisattva Mahasattva!” which is how good Buddhists say “hallelujah.”
Only Li Kao remained unmoved. He walked from bed to bed, examining each child with analytical coldness, and then he signaled for me to pry Big Hong loose from his son. He bent over the boy and began testing his pulse: first the left wrist for the functions of the heart, liver, kidneys, small intestine, gall bladder, and ureter; then the right wrist for the lungs, stomach, parta ulta, large intestine, spleen, and vital parts. He beckoned for the abbot to come and repeat the same process and compare results.
The abbot's face turned puzzled, and then anxious, and then desperate. He ran for his pins and began testing acupuncture and pain points, with no reaction whatsoever from the children. Little Hong's color remained high, and his pulse remained strong, and the happy smile remained on his lips, but when Master Li lifted one of his arms and released it, the arm remained suspended in air. He moved the arm to different positions, and it stayed precisely where he placed it. The abbot grabbed Fawn and shook her violently, and she did not even register a change in her pulse.
Li Kao straightened up and slowly walked back to the table and stared blankly down at the empty alchemist's vial. All eyes were fixed on him. He was immeasurably weary, and I could tell that in his tiredness he was struggling to think of words that would soften the fact that there is no such thing as an almost miracle. The Root of Power had almost done it, but it simply wasn't strong enough.
I couldn't bear it if his eyes turned to mine. I knew that he had only one thing to tell me, and the words of the ancient Tibetan text echoed in my mind. “Only one treatment is effective, and this will succeed only if the physician has access to the rarest and mightiest of all healing agents, the Great Root of Power.” I saw the terrified face of Pawnbroker Fang as he swore that only one Great Root existed in all the world, and I heard him scream, “The Duke of Ch'in! It's hidden in his labyrinth!” Even an ignorant country boy knew that the Duke of Ch'in was ten thousand times more dangerous than the Ancestress, and that copper coins do not purchase suicide. If I went after the Great Root, it would be on my own, and never in history had anyone returned alive from the duke's labyrinth.
I turned and walked rapidly out the door and down the maze of corridors that I knew like the back of my hand, and then I jumped from a low window to the grass below and began running across the hills.
I had no goal or purpose whatsoever, or perhaps I did in that I was subconsciously saying farewell to the village of Ku-fu. All I knew was that when I am depressed or frightened, I must do something physical, which is all I am good at, and if I keep at it long enough, I can usually forget my cares. I ran for hours through the hills and fields and forest, and lonely dogs began to follow me. I had quite a pack of them at my heels when my feet took me up a tiny winding path to a dense clump of shrubbery on a hillside, and I got down on my knees and wriggled through a tunnel into a small cave. The dogs squeezed in after me, and we sat down upon piles of bones.
They were called dragon bones, because it had once been believed that dragons periodically shed their bones as snakes shed their skins, but they actually were the shoulder bones of domestic animals that had been used for prophecy. Scapulimancy is very ancient, and the abbot had told me that the oracle bones of An-yang are the only solid proof that the semi-mythological Shang Dynasty had actually existed.
Do other people revert to childhood when they are frightened? I know that I did. The cave had been headquarters for youthful desperadoes when I was a small boy, and we had brought all important questions to the infallible dragon bones. Now I lit a fire in the old brazier and placed the poker in it. The dogs crowded around me and watched with interest while I searched for a bone with a smooth unmarked side. I wrote Yes on the left and No on the right, and I cleared my throat.
“O Dragon, will I find the Great Root of Power in the labyrinth of the Duke of Ch'in and get out of there alive?” I whispered hoarsely.
I wrapped my hand in an old piece of horsehide and picked up the hot poker. The point sizzled as it bored into the bone, and the crack started slowly, lifting toward the answer. Then it split neatly in half, and the left crack shot up and speared Yes while the right half impaled No. I stared at the message. I would find the root, but wouldn't live to tell the tale? I would live to tell the tale, but wouldn't find the root? I was quite upset until it occurred to me that I was no longer ten years old, and I blushed bright red.
“Idiot,” I muttered.
The sun had set. Moonbeams reached into the cave and touched my left hand, and the small scar on my wrist gleamed like silver. I threw back my head and laughed. The childhood friends who had passed the knife around the circle as we became blood brothers would have died from envy had they known that the skeleton of Number Ten Ox was destined to rattle in the duke's mysterious labyrinth, and I hugged a few dogs as I solemnly chanted the sacred vow of the Seven Bloody Bandits of the Dragon Bones Cave.
“Bat shit, rat shit, three-toed-sloth shit, bones and blades and bloody oath writ—”
“Now that has real merit,” a voice said approvingly. “It beats the scholar's oath by a mile and a half.”
The dogs barked excitedly as Master Li crawled into the cave. He sat down and looked around.
“Scapulimancy was a racket,” he observed. “With a little practice a soothsayer could make a bone crack any way he wanted to, or jump through a hoop, for that matter. Did you ever cheat when you were a boy?”
“It would have spoiled our games,” I mumbled.
“Very wise,” he said. “The abbot, who is also very wise, told me that I would find you here, and if not, I
