We raised reverent eves to the House of Horrors.
“Genius!” we cried, and the thin rain wept softly, and an old, cracked, crazy voice drifted upon the cold wind:
I decided that the oceans had been formed from tears, and when I thought of the tears that had been shed and the hearts that had been broken to serve the greed of the Duke of Ch'in, I was delighted that we were going after him with mayhem on our minds.
We caught up with the duke in Tsingtao, where he was staying at the palace of an enormously wealthy woman whose oldest son served as the duke's provincial governor, and with lavish bribes Li Kao arranged for us to slip past the guards one night. My heart was in my mouth as I grabbed the vines and began to climb, but then the breeze shifted, and an unmistakable fragrance reached my nostrils. I quivered all over.
“Lotus Cloud!” I panted. “Master Li, my heart will break if I don't see her!”
Under the circumstances there was little that he could do except swear and box my ears as I swung rapidly across the vines. When I lifted my head over the windowsill I saw that Lotus Cloud was all alone, but then my joy turned to ashes.
“What's wrong with you?” Master Li whispered.
“I forgot to bring my pearls and jade,” I said miserably.
Li Kao sighed and fished in his pockets. At first he found only diamonds and emeralds, which didn't interest Lotus Cloud at all, but finally he came up with a pearl that he had saved because of its rarity: jet-black, with one small white flaw in the shape of a star. I would have preferred a ton of the stuff, but it was the symbol that mattered, so I leaned over and rolled the pearl across the floor toward my beloved's feet. Soon she will see it, I thought. She will look up and grin and yell, “Boopsie!” and all my cares will vanish.
She looked up all right, but not at me.
“Fear not, my turtledove!” some lout bellowed. “Your beloved Pooh-Pooh approaches with yet another hundred pounds of pearls and jade!”
The door crashed open and the provincial governor staggered inside with an armload of loot, which he dumped upon my black pearl. I sighed and sadly climbed back down the vines.
“Pooh-Pooh?” said Master Li. “Pooh-Pooh? Ox, it may be none of my business, but I must strongly advise you against getting involved with women who call their lovers Boopsie, Woofie, and Pooh-Pooh.”
“She likes to keep pets,” I explained.
“So I have noticed,” he said. “Thank Heaven she doesn't keep all of you in the same kennel. The noise at feeding time would be deafening. And now, if you have no objection, I suggest that we return to the matter of disposing of the duke and getting that ginseng root.”
I climbed rapidly to the duke's window and cautiously raised my eyes above the sill. The Duke of Ch'in was all alone in the room, seated upon a stool in front of a desk. Candlelight glinted upon his great golden tiger mask, and the feathers in his cloak shimmered like silver, but his gold mesh gloves lay upon the desk and his surprisingly small hands were bare as he added up on an abacus the amount of treasure that his tax trip had accumulated. Li Kao's eyes glistened as he looked at the duke's bare fingers.
“He lives for money, so he can die for money,” he whispered.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the most valuable of his diamonds. The moon was very bright. Part of the vines were wild rose, which I had been careful to avoid because of the thorns, and he found a sharp cluster just below the windowsill. Li Kao placed the diamond in the center, and turned it this way and that until the moonbeams caused it to explode with blue-white brilliance, and then he doused the thorns with the vial of the Elixir of Life.
I slid back until we were concealed behind vines, and Li Kao began scratching the stone wall with his dagger—a very annoying sound. For some time we heard only the click of the beads as they slid rapidly over the strings of the abacus, but then a table scraped against the floor as it slid back, and heavy footsteps approached the window. I held my breath.
The terrible tiger mask leaned out and peered down, and the diamond was sparkling like cold fire. The bare fingers hovered like a hawk, and then they pounced. I could clearly see punctures. At a modest estimate the Duke of Ch'in had received enough Elixir of Life to assassinate all of China and half of Korea and Japan, and I waited for him to topple over and turn blue. Instead he lifted the gem to the eye-slits in the mask and turned it appreciatively, and the metal voice that oozed through the mouthpiece held a definite note of pleasure.
“Cold!” whispered the Duke of Ch'in. “Cold… cold… cold…”
I was so stunned that I forgot to hold on to the vines, and we plunged forty feet before I managed to grab them again and break our fall. Unfortunately we were then dangling about ten feet above the heads of some soldiers who were leaning against the wall swapping war lies.
“Wait for a cloud,” Master Li whispered.
It seemed forever, but eventually a black cloud covered the moon, and I swung over the vines to the nearest window and crawled into a room that was pitch-black. The darkness vibrated with heavy snores. Li Kao slipped off my back and tiptoed across the floor and cracked the door open. He closed it hurriedly.
“Soldiers guarding the halls,” he whispered.
We started back toward the window and froze. That damned cloud decided to move away from the moon, and we were pinned in bright yellow beams, and the snores stopped suddenly, and a grotesque figure sat up in bed and leveled a gangrened finger.
“What have you done with that ginseng root?” roared the Ancestress.
24. There Are No Accidents in the Great Way of Tao
Soldiers dragged me across the floor toward the throne upon which sat the Duke of Ch'in, and thrust my face forward so that it practically touched the terrible mask. A hissing sound came from the mouthpiece as the clammy mind crawled over mine, and then the golden tiger jerked back.
The great and powerful Duke of Ch'in was terrified. Saliva trickled from the mouthpiece, and the gold- meshed gloves trembled upon the arms of the throne, and an acrid stench of fear stung my nostrils.
“I see the three handmaidens!” the metal voice whispered. “I see the ball and the bell and the flute! I see the Legs and the Arms and the Head of Power!”
The duke was trembling so hard that his cloak of feathers fluttered as if for flight, but he finally forced himself to lean forward once more. The slimy brain moved fearfully over mine, and then I sensed relief and growing joy.
