“What was he so interested in?”
I had almost forgotten it, but now I lifted the thing that Lotus Cloud had tossed around my neck. It was a silver chain with a large piece of coral at the end of it. The coral was a beautiful deep-red, and a cleverly carved green jade dragon was winding through the holes. I wondered how the Key Rabbit had managed to acquire such a beautiful pendant, because it must be very expensive. I searched for some sort of a message that might be written on it, but there wasn't one.
Li Kao shrugged. “Well, at any rate we've arrived in the labyrinth, which is what we intended all along. Getting out may be a bit of a problem, however, and I suggest that we start immediately.”
He strode forward, ignoring the side tunnels. The main passageway 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 passage 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 rushing 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 circumference. 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 assume 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 hell.”
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 rushing 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 smashing 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 scraped 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 passed 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 mass 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 snobbish 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
