Another tassel lay just inside the entrance, but Master Li brought us to a halt. His eyes were bleak as he examined the tunnel. Ancient wooden supports and scaffolding were everywhere, and the floor was littered with rocks that had fallen from the ceiling. It was a death trap, and the prince wouldn't conceivably have entered it unless he was being carried. Master Li lowered his voice.
“Moon Boy, this is your department,” he whispered. “Rather nasty gentlemen may be back in there, and I'd like them to hear us enter without us actually entering.”
Moon Boy nodded. He sat down at the entrance and took off his sandals and placed his spear so he could scrape it against the wall with his shoulder.
“Sssshh, quiet!” Master Li whispered—except it wasn't Master Li, but Moon Boy pitching his voice into the tunnel. The sandals in his hands moved rapidly and lightly, and four pairs of feet seemed to move into the tunnel.
“I don't see anything,” my voice whispered.
“I don't either,” Grief of Dawn's voice whispered.
“All clear this way,” Moon Boy whispered in his own voice.
The sandals were gradually hitting the floor harder, as though the people wearing them were coming closer. Moon Boy moved his shoulder and produced a metallic scrape from the spear, followed by a muffled curse in the voice of Master Li.
“Is that another tassel?” my voice whispered, louder.
Deep in the darkness of the tunnel was a sharp snapping sound, followed by the screech of splintering wood. We heard a great crash. The floor shook and waves rippled across the river, and dust and wood splinters billowed from the tunnel mouth. Crash followed crash as though the entire ceiling was collapsing, and it was a long time before the noise stopped and the echoes faded away.
“Good,” Master Li said quietly. “Officially we're dead, pulverized like corn beneath a grindstone, and they won't be looking for us when we pay them a call. Fortunately, they shouldn't be hard to find.”
23
Master Li rode on my back. The staircase was very steep, with innumerable landings, and I was ready to stop and catch my breath when we reached a large cave that had other side passages branching from it. Master Li climbed off and wandered around the cave while Moon Boy and Grief of Dawn and I sat down and rested. Suddenly he made a sharp exclamation, and we got up and ran over to him.
He had accidentally pushed against a part of the wall that moved. A doorway had opened into another room. All of us had been there before, and we walked inside and looked around at the paymaster's office and the pit where the two dead gardeners lay. The arrows were still stuck in every available piece of wood, and Grief of Dawn bent down and looked closely at one. Her eyes were puzzled when she lifted them.
“I know, I saw it before,” Master Li said. “Those aren't ancient arrows but relatively modern ones, yet it would have been absolutely impossible for a local boy or girl to have found this place and played here without somebody finding, out about it. No youngster could keep such a secret, unless he had been born with the secret. Happy home life with the Monks of Mirth?”
He walked over and looked gloomily down into the darkness of the pit in front of the paymaster's desk.
“I wonder,” he said as though talking to himself. “Were you paid to carry a boy or a girl up steep steps as Ox just carried me? Did you stop at this level to rest, and did the boy or girl pause to play around with a bow and arrows? Did you then carry him up the rest of the way, and did he take another wonderful ride down that slide to the river? And then up for more archery, and up farther for another slide, and so forth? Did you hear or see more than you should, and then stand in front of the desk to receive your pay?”
The pit was silent. Master Li shrugged and led the way back to the cavern. He got on my back and I began to climb again, and the final steps up from the fourth landing brought us back into the tunnel where we had begun, right beside the passage with the pit and the marvelous stone slide. I had a sudden clear vision of a gardener setting down a laughing child, who ran to the slide and vanished down into darkness.
Master Li walked rapidly back down the tunnel and out to the little anteroom. One more door remained, and beside it stood the last of the sons of Horus.
“Imstey, who alone bears a human head,” Master Li said grimly. “We're looking for humans, very unpleasant ones, and we have to hope they didn't leave the prince tied up in that tunnel when they sprang the trap to crush us.”
He lifted the last jar, and the door swung open. This time we didn't need torches, because a long row of them was already burning in brackets spaced along a tunnel wall. The air was fresh and foul at the same time, and Moon Boy grimaced disgustedly and said something about the virtues of bathing at least every seven years.
The tunnel sloped sharply downward. Again I took the lead with my axe, and Master Li followed with his throwing knives, and Moon Boy held a spear in one hand and Grief of Dawn's belt with the other, and Grief of Dawn walked backward swinging her bow to cover our rear. We tried to be quieter than mice. The tunnel kept going downward, and gradually the air grew moister as though we were again approaching the river, and I saw two small rocks lying on the tunnel floor. I remembered the rock fall that had supposedly killed us, and glanced nervously at the ceiling. I couldn't see any serious cracks, but a few feet farther on there was a sign that this passage had at least shaken when the other one collapsed. Dust covered the floor, and Master Li grunted with satisfaction. Recent sandal prints were marked in the dust.
We moved faster. I had to smother a yelp, and I grabbed Master Li's arm and pointed. A crimson tassel lay on the floor. Moon Boy whispered to Grief of Dawn, and she turned and looked and her eyes lit up.
“He's alive,” Master Li whispered. “The prince is a lot tougher than he looks, and when he runs out of tassels, he'll find a way to cut himself and leave a trail of blood.”
Moon Boy began to hear sounds we couldn't. He whispered that people were laughing somewhere in the distance, and finally we came close enough for the rest of us to hear it; coarse and merry, with other sounds of celebration.
“A good sign,” Master Li whispered. “They're celebrating our demise, and if they were in the process of sacrificing the prince to the stone—or whatever they do—the ritual would have a somber religious sound.”
Ahead of us was light, and we passed a number of empty side passages. The laughter was right in front of us when we came to a passage that wasn't empty. It was a dressing room, with a row of monkish robes in motley hanging upon pegs, and at the end of it there seemed to be a ledge looking down over the area where the light came from. We slipped inside and dropped to our stomachs and crawled to the ledge and cautiously peered over it.
The cavern below reminded me of the courtyard of a large monastery. It was illuminated by a thousand blazing torches in brackets on the walls. The scene was very strange: Monks in motley laughed uproariously as they danced with stiff awkward movements in concentric circles. They were capering around a throne upon which sat a monk who wore a smiling paper mask with a curling beard. A large urn stood beside the throne, and a monk who appeared to be some kind of dignitary stood about ten feet away. There was no sign of the prince.
Master Li signaled for us to slide back. “Its an ancient ceremony called the Festival of Laughter,” he whispered. “The one on the throne is the leader, wearing the mask of Fu-hsing, God of Happiness. The monks will dance up to the throne and embrace the leader and take a paper scroll from the urn, which they will bring to the assistant, and he will open it and read aloud a comical wish for happiness. When everyone has his wish, the assistant will cry, ‘Tien-kuan-ssu-tu,’ beginning the festival, and they'll release flocks of bats, since both bat and happiness are pronounced Hi. The leader will be carried on the annual tour of inspection, and that should lead us right to the prince, and then they'll get stinking drunk at a banquet.”
Master Li crawled back and selected a robe that fit him. He helped us hide our weapons on our backs, beneath robes, and the huge cowls neatly covered our faces.
“Aesthetically the ceremony leaves much to be desired, but it's marvelous for murder,” Master Li said grimly. “I'm not going to wait for the tour of inspection. Too risky. That fellow and his happy friends tried to kill us, and it's time to return the favor, if we can get right in the middle of them and they're suddenly without a leader we should have an easy time of it, but don't forget to leave one or two alive to tell us where the prince is.”
