he had me go back to the beginning.
“We must hope he's used the Chinese system. If he's used a barbarian one we can expect a twenty-ton spike-studded iron plate to fall on our heads,” Master Li said matter-of-factly. “The organ associated with Mercury is the spleen.”
I closed my eyes. Master Li reached out and punched the spleen symbol. Nothing happened, so I timidly made my way down the line of shields while Master Li punched symbols.
The taste associated with Mercury is salt…
The color is black…
The element is water…
The parent element is metal…
The child element is wood…
The friend element is fire…
The enemy is earth…
The earthly analogue is a stream…
The celestial analogue is a bear…
As he punched the ninth symbol, the iron door slid open. We stepped through the opening to the other side, and Master Li reached out to another shield.
“And the musical note of Mercury is sixth on the scale,” he said complacently, and the iron door slid shut behind us.
“Education is a wonderful thing,” Moon Boy said admiringly. “I should have paid more attention in school.”
“Master Li knows everything,” I said proudly.
Even Master Li was baffled when we reached the next row of shields. The tunnel was sloping up to an exit outside the walls, and another iron door confronted us. I could see no pattern at all to the symbols, and Master Li was clearly puzzled.
“Strange,” he muttered. “All but three of the emblems are symbolic of nature, and those three form no pattern at all: a sandal, a fan made of feathers, and an incense burner.”
We could be of no use to him. He had me walk back and forth along the shields. “This passage is his war route,” the old man muttered. “Logically he would use symbols that would concentrate his mind on battle, but what is militant about symbols for rain and sunlight and a variety of animals?” He muttered to himself for a while. “Visualize him,” he muttered. “Shin Hu, King of Chao, riding in his war chariot upon a revolving couch with his Golden Girls behind him.”
He suddenly let out a whoop. “Ox, back to the beginning,” he said happily. I trotted back to the first shield. “I should have seen it at once,” said Master Li. “Shih Hu is remarkable in that his bulk requires him to fight while seated upon a couch, and has there ever been a mighty warrior before him who did the same thing? Yes, one. Shih Hu's idol is the great Chuko Liang, the legendary Sleeping Dragon of the wars of the Three Kingdoms, who charged the enemy while reposing upon a couch in a carriage. And how did he array his men? In the Eight Trigrams Battle Formation, which he signaled by languidly waving his white feather fan.”
Master Li punched the fan symbol. No gaping pit opened beneath our feet, so I started up the line of shields.
The first trigram is Heaven…
The second trigram is earth…
The third trigram is wind…
The fourth trigram is cloud…
The fifth trigram is dragon…
The sixth trigram is tiger…
The seventh trigram is bird…
As he punched the seventh shield the door slid open. We stepped through and Master Li reached for another shield.
“And the eighth trigram is snake,” he said, and the door slid shut behind us.
Moonlight had greeted us, and after a few more feet we were out on a hillside beneath the stars. Master Li gazed back at the huge walls of the castle.
“The grooms and guards will creep back to the stables and find nothing but indignant toads,” he said thoughtfully. “If they do anything it will be to round up and spank the bottoms of any small boys who happen to be handy, and they certainly will not interrupt a banquet to tell their king that they deserted their post because they were attacked by awful amphibians. In the morning Shih Hu should have a royal hangover. I doubt that any of us will be missed until afternoon at the earliest, and then they'll search the palace and the grounds. Night will intervene, and not until the following morning should they realize we're gone. We should have nearly two days’ head start, and we'll need every minute of it.”
I started out at a fast pace. We couldn't use the horse stations of the postal service until we reached Loshan, and the rugged country was familiar to the king but not to us. I remembered the display of severed heads on pikes and lengthened my stride.
It was slow going, because no amount of effort can speed you through mountainous terrain when you don't know the shortcuts. The distant landmarks Master Li checked seemed to grow no closer, and on the morning of the third day we noticed some monks who were watching us from a hillside. The monks turned and vanished. A few hours later we reached a place where we could see the distant rooftop of the monastery. I thought I saw something lift from the roof and streak through the sky back toward Chao, but I couldn't be sure. Grief of Dawn's eyes was almost as sharp as Moon Boy's ears, and she had no doubt about it.
“Pigeons,” she said softly. “Probably the king has sent messages to all the monasteries under his protection, and I think he's getting a reply.”
I seemed to hear galloping hooves and the rumble of chariot wheels, and I picked up the pace even more, but it was still a long way to Loshan. The following morning we stood on the crest of a hill and looked down at a river that was very peculiar. Half of the water was blue, and the other half was yellow.
“The Min,” said Master Li. “Yellow clay washes into it from the banks, and farther down it will be totally yellow. That's when it joins the Yangtze, just above Five Misery Rapids. Past the rapids is Loshan and the horse stations of the postal service.”
His face was grim and remained grim as he told me to get to the nearest village. There we bought a boat and a great deal of wine, and I noticed that the peasant who sold us the boat was acting rather peculiar when we climbed in and pushed off. He was smiling and bowing at first, but then the smile faded as we went out farther and farther toward the strong current in the center of the stream. Then he began to shout and wave his arms, and he tried to run after us as we reached the current and started rapidly downstream. The last I saw of him, he was on his knees making shamanistic gestures to release him from guilt.
“The perils of Five Misery Rapids are greatly overrated,” Master Li said calmly. “At least when you compare them to the perils of an angry Shih Hu and his Golden Girls. We shall, however, take a few precautions, and this is the first.”
With that he tossed the oars overboard. I yelped in dismay, and he tossed the pole overboard.
“Temptation,” Master Li said. “If we had poles or oars, we'd be tempted to use them, which would be suicidal. The second precaution is to get stinking drunk, and that, my children, is an order.”
Master Li opened wine jars. Moon Boy hoisted his enthusiastically, and Grief of Dawn and I did so dutifully. The water helped. Blue and yellow were blending in dizzying patterns, and in no time my head was spinning. Master Li and Moon Boy were quite mellow when we heard the sound, and Grief of Dawn and I were reeling. The sound was the roar of the Yangtze. Our little boat shot out into the great river and hit a current like a brick wall and spun around and began to race downstream. It was bouncing up and down like a bucking pony, and I was drunk enough to giggle at first. Then I saw what was coming at us and I stopped giggling and gaped in horror.
The water strikes Yenyu Rocks with enough force to send spray like a woman's hair flying sixty feet into the air. I discovered that my empty hands were frantically rowing imaginary oars, and Grief of Dawn was shoving with a nonexistent pole. I watched a log float out to the safe water we were trying to reach. Then the current caught the log full force and drove it into jagged rocks just beneath the surface, and two splintered pieces shot out and flew through the air and smashed ten feet up a sheer cliff at the bank. Our little boat, meanwhile, dashed straight
