They stared at each other. Finally Wolf said, “I am called Wolf, and my father was Li Tan the artificer. I never knew him, and he left me this bow and a ring.”
“I am called Fire Girl, and my mother was Crown of Fire the witch,” the girl said. I never knew her, and she left me this arrow.”
“They say that my father and your mother tried to kill the Laughing Prince,” Wolf said. “Is that barbarian trader really your uncle? He said you stole something, but I don't believe him.”
“Stole something?” The girl turned and spat furiously. “He is called Brushbeard the Barbarian, and he was taking me to sell as a concubine to the Laughing Prince, just as he once sold my mother, and when I get a chance, I'm going to kill him.”
As they talked, the glowing letters on the bow and arrow faded away, but now a third glowing light had appeared. It came from the ring on Wolfs finger, and he slipped it off. No writing had appeared, but the strange lines and marks on the inside were shining brightly. Wolf examined the markings closely, and saw that not all of the lines were glowing. The shining lines were running between parallel rows of dark ones, twisting and turning through openings.
“Could it be a map through a maze?” Fire Girl whispered.
Wolf turned the ring to display more scratchy lines on the front. “Look, these lines start at the wolf head and run to the edge, and then around and inside the ring, like going into a hole or a tunnel, and the shining lines twist through all these little openings to a circular mark, and stop there.”
The girl grabbed his arm. “There's a statue farther on that has a wolf head just like this one!” she said excitedly.
Without another word they slid back down to the riverbank and ran until they came to the huge stone wolf statue. They looked for some mark or sign but found nothing. The eyes of the wolf head were fixed on a shadowed section of the stone wall, and when they followed the direction of the eyes they found a tiny side tunnel that was almost invisible. Wolf and Fire Girl managed to squeeze through the opening.
The ring was shining even brighter, and the eyes of the wolf were like small lanterns. There were many side passages, but Wolf followed the pattern of the lines inside the ring, and to be on the safe side they used their knives to scratch marks at the entrances when they turned into different passages. They twisted and turned through a maze, and ahead of them was a light, and finally they stepped into a small round cave. The light came from a natural chimney that ran up through stone to a patch of blue sky and a shaft of sunbeams.
The cave had a table and two benches. On the floor was a stack of torches, and across from them were two sleeping pallets. Between the pallets was a natural stone shelf. On the shelf were three bronze caskets, and the same legend was carved in the stone above the two end ones. The caskets had sliding lids carved in fish shapes, and Fire Girl studied the legends above the end ones and read:
The casket in the center had two lids that folded together, with the yin symbol on the left and the yang symbol on the right, and above it on the wall were the four ideographs tung ling pao-yu.
“Stone of penetrating spiritual power,” Fire Girl read.
Wolf opened the center casket. Inside was a piece of stone. It was small and slim and as sharp as a razor, and it was shaped like the head of an arrow. Fire Girl picked it up. On each side were two written lines, and after much scratching and nose wrinkling, she read the four lines together:
“Fire Girl, Liu Sheng is the name of the Laughing Prince,” Wolf said.
When Fire Girl held up the tip of the arrow her mother had left her he realized it had no head. There was a groove for one. She slowly took the stone and slid it into the groove, and it stuck there as though it had been bound with rawhide. She lifted the arrow and placed the center of the shaft on her finger. It was perfectly balanced.
“What do you think we should do?” she asked quietly.
Wolf looked around. The chimney that ran up to the surface was against a wall, and he walked over and found foot and handholds. He jumped and grabbed, and began to climb. It was a long way up, but the holds were good, and finally he stuck his head from the hole and saw that he had come up at the bottom of a deep gorge. Across from the hole he saw a good landmark—strange red and emerald-colored rocks in the side of the cliff—and he began climbing back down.
“You can climb that,” he said, panting. “If we have to, we can get out quick. Fire Girl, I think that my father and your mother wanted us to try to kill the Laughing Prince if they failed, but I don't know anything about him. Why should he be killed?”
She shook her head. “I don't know, but I think we had better find out,” she said.
They held hands and began retracing their steps through the maze to see what they could see.
(Here I will summarize, since the details were not important to Master Li. They discover the terrible destruction of the Valley of Sorrows, and the awful torture chamber in the grotto. They also discover that the instruments of torture are made by Ah the Artificer, and that the girls who please the Laughing Prince before being sent to the grotto are sold to him by Brushbeard the Barbarian. They are chased by soldiers, and find out from a cricket how to steal food. The wolf head statue can talk a few words and warns them of a geyser of poisonous steam. It also tries to warn them about bats, but “bats” can mean forty other things unless pronounced with the proper inflection, and since the statue can't move its lips, they don't understand the warning. Each is captured and saved by the other and they discover the throne room that the Laughing Prince has built in the cavern. They make traps by placing sharpened stakes in pits and covering the tops with mats that look like rock, and digging beneath boulders high on the slopes of rock piles. They agree that the Laughing Prince must be killed, and the only chance is when he holds court in the cavern. They crawl up a tunnel that overlooks the throne room, and discover that both Ah the Artificer and Brushbeard the Barbarian are among the dignitaries. The Laughing Prince appears and sits on his throne.)
“Can you reach him?” Wolf whispered.
Fire Girl shook her head and handed the bow and arrow to Wolf. The Laughing Prince wore a monk's robe, like the Monks of Mirth who flanked the throne, except that his robe was not motley. His face was in the shadows of the cowl, but evil glittering eyes pierced through the shadows like pinpoints of cold fire. He reached back and fed what might have been human liver to the seven black bats that perched upon the back of the throne, and he laughed with the sound of icicles breaking.
Wolf notched the arrow and slowly drew it back. His muscles strained to hold the feathers steady beside his right ear. Carefully he lifted the bow to the best elevation for a long shot. The sharp stone tip glittered in torchlight, and the seven bats flapped up into the air, the high shrieking squeals echoed through the cavern.
The glittering eyes of the Laughing Prince swept over the cavern. Icicles seemed to rush into the tunnel. Wolf tried to release the arrow, but his fingers were frozen. His arm was frozen. He felt ice enter his body and crawl toward his heart.
