“But I do not see the birds, or the feathers, or anything else of importance,” he said wonderingly. “I see only those useless children, and the right quest for the wrong reason. You and your antiquated companion have followed paths that cannot be followed, defeated guardians that cannot be defeated, escaped from places where escape was impossible, and you have not had the slightest idea of what you were really doing, or where you were really going, or why!”
Now the metal voice held a cruel gloating pleasure.
“You have managed to annoy me, and you shall discover what it means to annoy the Duke of Ch'in.” The mask moved to the soldiers. “Take the old man and the boy to the torture chambers. They shall die by inches in the Shirts of Iron,” he commanded.
Only the duke could have ordered such an execution, and I hasten to point out that in every other part of China the Shirts of Iron had long been relegated to museums that displayed the ghastly aberrations of the Dark Ages. Actually they aren't made from iron at all, but from steel mesh that can be uniformly tightened by means of a neck loop or a screw in back. The shirts are tightened around the victim's bare torso until flesh bulges through the holes in the mesh, and then the executioner picks up something hard and rough, a rock will do, and slowly scrapes across the shirt until there are no bulges. The flow of blood is carefully stopped, and the next day the shirt is shifted slightly and the process is repeated—and the next day and the next. A competent executioner can keep a victim alive for months, and the only hope the victim has is that he will go stark staring mad fairly early in the game.
Li Kao and I had been wrapped in so many chains that we couldn't move a finger, and the soldiers groaned under the weight as they carried us down a seemingly endless flight of stone steps. I counted eleven landings, each one guarded by more soldiers. The air grew thicker and fouler, and slimy green water dripped from the black stone walls. Finally we reached the bottommost dungeons. Brass-bound doors crashed open, and the panting soldiers carried us into a torture chamber that was decorated with blood and entrails. The executioner did not view us with friendly eyes. He was a fat fellow with a bald gray skull, a bright red nose, four yellow teeth, and a grievance.
“Work, work, work!” he snarled as he bustled around us with a tape measure. “Do you realize that each Shirt of Iron must be individually tailored for the victim? Do you realize that it takes two full days to make a decent one? Do you realize that the duke has ordered me to finish your shirts in two hours? And then I have to give you your first scraping, and do you realize that a decent job of scraping takes another two hours?”
He stepped back and leveled an indignant finger.
“Look at those chains!” he snarled. “Do you realize that it will take another hour just to unlock, unwrap, rewrap, and relock those things? And do you realize that the Ancestress has ordered me to draw and quarter another prisoner? And do you realize that a decent job of drawing and quartering takes another two hours? When am I to rest, I ask you? Is there no pity? Is there no concern for the welfare of the working man?”
He was not the only one with a grievance.
“How about us?” the soldiers yelled. “We have to stand guard in this slimy hole until the prisoners die, and if you're halfway decent at your job, that will take months! And that crud of a master sergeant refused to issue earplugs, and we'll be stone deaf from the screams inside of a week! Look at those cockroaches! Look at those leeches! Look at that slimy dripping water! There's fever down here as sure as you're born, and even if we live to return to our wives, what good will it do us? The duke made us wrap these poor bastards in so many chains that they can't move, and carry them down eleven flights of stairs, and quadruple hernias have made eunuchs of us all!”
It appeared to be a day of grievances.
“Woe!” somebody howled as feet pattered down the stairs. “Woe! Woe! Woe!” wailed the Key Rabbit as he trotted into the torture chamber. “The duke has ordered me to be present at the torture of my dearest friend and the most generous protector that my dear wife has ever had, and to make a full report of their sufferings! Good evening, Lord Li of Kao. Good evening, Lord Lu of Yu. It is delightful to see you again, but how can the duke do this to me?”
The little fellow posed dramatically, one forearm across his brow and the other hand outflung.
“I become violently ill in butcher shops!” he howled. “I faint when I cut my finger! Crimson sunsets make me dive beneath my bed! Bloodhounds drive me into screaming fits! I once threw up all over a very distinguished nobleman who introduced me to his blood brother! I disgraced myself at a state banquet when I was informed that I was eating blood pudding! And now I must witness the bloodiest execution ever invented by man! Woe!” wailed the Key Rabbit. “Woe! Woe! Woe!”
“Damn it, get out of the way and let a man work,” the executioner snarled.
He began to bang furiously on strips of steel mesh, and the soldiers panted and groaned as they carried us into an adjoining dungeon and dumped us upon the floor. They staggered out, clutching their hernias, and slammed the door, and we stared at the fellow who was to be drawn and quartered. He was attached to the wall with a leg chain, and he was eating a bowl of rice.
“What are you doing here?” Master Li asked.
“At the moment I am eating my last supper,” said Henpecked Ho. “Good evening, Li Kao. Good evening, Number Ten Ox. It is a great pleasure to see you again, although one rather regrets the circumstances. May I offer you some rice? They have even given me a small jar of wine. Quite decent of them, don't you think?”
“Wine, by all means,” said Li Kao.
Henpecked Ho's leg chain was just long enough for him to reach us and pour wine down our throats. They really were treating him with consideration because it was very expensive wine: Wu-fan, which is jet-black and so sweet that it tastes like molasses flavored with engraving acid.
“Have you really been sentenced to be drawn and quartered?” I asked.
“It's a very distressing story.” He sighed. “Do you remember that I had spent sixteen years trying to decipher fragments of clay tablets?”
“A very ancient ginseng fairy tale,” said Master Li.
“Precisely, and do you remember that those grave robbers dug up a very large clay tablet? Well, it turned out to be the key to the whole thing. I could scarcely believe how quickly the pieces fell into place, and the story that emerged was so interesting that I could scarcely wait to see what came next. Then one day I entered my workshop and discovered that every clay fragment was gone, and I ran around weeping and tearing my hair until my dear wife told me to stop making a fool of myself. The Ancestress had remarked that fiddling with clay tablets was a frivolous hobby for a grown man, so my dear wife had ordered the servants to dump the tablets into the river, where, of course, they dissolved into mud.”
“I would have slit her miserable throat,” Master Li growled.
“Indeed you would have, and I thought about you a great deal,” said Henpecked Ho. “You had advised me to use an axe, so I stole an axe and went after my dear wife.”
“Did you get her?” I asked.
“I chopped her to pieces, and then I chopped her seven fat sisters to pieces. It was delightful,” said Henpecked Ho. “Then I came here to try to chop the Ancestress to pieces, but her soldiers caught me first. Oh well, I suppose that one can't have everything.”
“Ho, you did splendidly!” Master Li said.
“Do you really think so? Some people might consider my behaviour rather gross,” Henpecked Ho said dubiously. “I was maddened beyond endurance because now I will never know how the story came out, and it concerned two delightful deities that I had never heard of, even though I am familiar with the entire Heavenly Pantheon.”
Li Kao thoughtfully chewed a wisp of his scraggly beard, which was about all the movement that he could manage.
“Ho, as a matter of rather academic curiosity, have you ever encountered a deity called the Peddler? He wears a robe covered with Heavenly or supernatural symbols, he leans upon a crutch, and he carries a flute and a ball and a bell.”
“The Peddler is not one of the six hundred named gods, but our knowledge of the Pantheon is incomplete,” Ho said thoughtfully. “It must be remembered that the first Duke of Ch'in destroyed the temples and priests and worshippers of any cult that annoyed him, and knowledge of many minor deities disappeared from the face of the earth. The Peddler might have been among them, and I am morally certain that the two delightful deities in the story on the tablet also suffered the duke's displeasure. After all, peasants treasure ginseng fairy tales, and they would never willingly abandon a story about the handsomest god in Heaven and the most beautiful girl in the world
