some unimaginable force, and when we nervously crossed the moat and passed through the gates a terrible sight met our eyes. Steam hissed like the breath of angry dragons through great gaping holes in the earth, and pools of murderous lava heaved and bubbled, and it seemed to me that the harsh wind that howled through the ruins was wailing death, death, death. A lunatic tangle of side streets branched from both sides of a central avenue—if one could call them streets, since not one building remained standing—and in the distance we saw a great mass of tumbled stones. It had probably been the palace of the king, and we decided to climb to the top of it to try to find the green oasis that we had glimpsed from a distance.
It had certainly been a palace. We climbed over smashed statues and beautiful stone friezes, and then we stopped dead in our tracks and stared. Ahead of us was a wall about thirty feet high and perhaps five times as long, and the three of us had the same thought at once.
“That wall could not possibly have survived the catastrophe!” I cried. “It must have been built afterward, from the toppled stones.”
“I would not like to meet whatever it was that knocked a hole in it,” Master Li said thoughtfully.
Nor would I. Some incredible force had jerked out enormous stone slabs and tossed them aside like pebbles. A great gaping hole confronted us like a screaming mouth, and when we cautiously stepped through it we stared at great piles of human bones. Miser Shen turned quite pale.
“I swear that those poor souls were chewed!” he gasped.
He was right. Nothing but monstrous grinding teeth could have shredded bones like that, and not only bones. Armor had been pulverized as well, and Miser Shen and I were greatly relieved when Li Kao examined it with critical eyes and said:
“This armor is in the style of five hundred years ago, or more. Perhaps a thousand years would be closer. Whatever the creature was, it has been dust for centuries.”
He bent over and examined the mangled skeletons.
“You know, I recall a monster that could have done this to armed warriors,” he said thoughtfully. “It was discovered frozen in the ice of a Mongolian glacier. Half mammal, half lizard, one hundred feet from head to tail, and equipped with teeth like steel doorposts. The sages wanted to preserve it for scientific study, but we had an exceptionally idiotic emperor at the time, and I regret to say that the imperial dolt had the beast cut up and boiled for a state banquet. The fact that it smelled like two thousand old unopened rooms and tasted like diseased whale blubber didn't bother the Son of Heaven one bit. He happily awarded himself the medal ‘Heroic Slayer of Inedible Monstrosities,’ which he wore on all state occasions.”
I was staring at a large toppled slab.
“Master Li, I think this is covered with writing, but the script is so ancient that I can't make any sense of it,” I said.
He examined the slab with interest, and brushed a layer of salt from it. Time and the wind had made much of the writing illegible, but enough remained to make my hair stand up on my head.
“It begins with a prayer to the gods,” he said. “Then some words are missing, and then it says: ‘… punished for our sins, and the earth opened with a great roar and flames engulfed us. Fiery black rock sprayed up like water, and for eight days the earth heaved and shuddered, and on the ninth day the earth vomited forth the Hand That No One Sees, from the very depths of Hell.’ ”
“The what?” Miser Shen asked.
“The Hand That No One Sees, but don't ask me what it means,” said Master Li. “More words are missing, and then it says: ‘… sixth day of our doom, and we labor on the wall but we are faint of heart. We pray and sacrifice, but the gods remain implacable. The queen and her ladies have chosen the more merciful death, and have jumped into the lake of fiery molten rock. We did not try to stop them. The Hand moves closer. Our spears are hurled at nothingness and bounce away from nothingness. The wall is beginning to shake. The Hand…’ ”
Li Kao straightened up. “That's all there is,” he said quietly.
“Whoof!” Miser Shen gasped. “I don't care how many centuries ago that happened. I want to get out of here.”
So did I. I scrambled up to the top of the wall and peered around.
“I see the oasis!” I cried. “There's a lake of lava covering the back of the palace, so we'll have to try to reach the oasis through the side streets.”
That wasn't as simple as it sounded. Time and again we came to dead ends where scalding steam or bubbling lava blocked the way, and we were not the only ones who had reached dead ends. Skeletons, chewed to pieces in their useless armor, littered almost every side street.
“Whatever that thing was, it certainly ate well,” Miser Shen said nervously.
We tried street after street with no success, and finally we were almost back where we had entered the city. Li Kao looked at the huge bronze gates and the narrow span of bridge and shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps we had better go back across the moat and see if there is another bridge on the side where the oasis is,” he said.
We started forward, and then we stopped and gaped with eyes that nearly popped from the sockets. Those gates weighed tons. Nothing was touching them, but they were creaking shut! They came together with a terrible crash of metal, and a mark appeared in the layer of salt upon the ground. It took several moments for my brain to believe what my eyes were showing me. I was staring at the print of an enormous thumb, and four huge fingerprints followed, and then an immense sliding mark. An enormous invisible hand was crawling toward us, dragging the palm and heel behind the terrible fingers!
Miser Shen and I stood rooted to the spot in horror, but Master Li whirled around and gazed back at the tangle of the side streets. Then he yelled, “Ox, pick us up!”
I scooped up Master Li in one arm and Miser Shen in the other, and Master Li grabbed the dragon pendant that dangled from the chain around my neck. His fingers found the place where the dragon had stopped after leading us to the treasure trove.
“I should have realized at once that this place was another labyrinth,” he said grimly. “Turn into the second street on the right, and I would advise you to hurry.”
Even though I was carrying the two of them I doubt that my record for the course will be surpassed until a Tibetan snow leopard tries it, but the Hand That No One Sees was almost as fast. Those great invisible fingers were stretching out twenty or thirty feet, and salt was billowing up behind the sliding palm. “First left!” Master Li yelled. “Second left!… Fourth right!… Third left!… First right!… ” I panted through the maze, leaping over lava and darting around geysers of steam, and at last I saw the tops of green trees and realized that the dragon was leading us to the oasis. Then I skidded to a halt.
“May Buddha have mercy on our souls!” howled Miser Shen.
There was the beautiful green oasis, right in front of us, but it was encircled by a moat of bubbling lava. A narrow stone bridge led safely across the fiery rock, but the Hand That No One Sees had taken a shortcut. The bridge was far too narrow for the monster to cross, but that would do us no good unless we were on the other side, and I stared in horror at the salt on the ground in front of the bridge. Great invisible fingers pawed, and salt billowed, and then the Hand from Hell began crawling toward us, blocking any path to the oasis.
At the edge of the moat was the only upright building that we had seen, a watchtower, probably, tall and narrow and teetering upon cracked stone slabs. I unceremoniously dumped Li Kao and Miser Shen and raced up and put my shoulder to the thing. I heaved with everything that I had, and the tower began to tilt. Then I heaved with more than I had, and when I heard a snapping sound I assumed that my spine had split in half. Instead it was one of the supporting slabs that had split, and the tall tower dissolved into a shower of stones that toppled down into the moat.
The lava was nearly as dense as the stones, and they sank very slowly. I ran back and scooped up Li Kao and Miser Shen, and then I raced to the edge of the moat and jumped. My feet touched the first stone and I vaulted to the second. My sandals were smoking and my lungs were raw from bubbling sulphur as I hopped from stone to stone, and the last one had nearly sunk out of sight. I sent a prayer to the August Personage of Jade and leaped, and my toes touched the searing surface and I leaped again, and perhaps the August Personage of Jade gave me a helpful shove because I landed with my face buried in green grass.
I was dimly aware that Master Li and Miser Shen were shouting in my ears and pounding my back, but the world was spinning before my eyes, and I felt as though I were falling down a hole that had no end. Then a cool, peaceful blackness closed around me.
