The walls appeared to be squeezing together as we bounded up the stairs, and it wasn't my imagination. The sound was indescribable. We finally reached the marble landing and the doors, and the statues still stood, and Master Li reached out and lifted the jar from the hawk-headed deity. The framework was beginning to twist and the door screeched in protest, but it opened enough for us to squeeze through. The tunnel was choked with dust and fallen rocks, and I had to feel to find a side passage.
The only passages we knew were the slide and stairs that led back down to the river, which would have been suicide, but if Master Li was right about the hawk symbolism, a number of side passages should lead out to the valley where monks in motley could hunt peasants. Luck was with us. I tripped over a staircase and began to climb, but then I ran smack into the stone wall of a dead end.
Master Li hopped off my back and began probing the wall, and then the side walls, and he pulled something and a crack of light appeared. I saw a patch of blue and a bright sun and white clouds, and we toppled out upon green grass. Dust was billowing behind us and I managed to shut the door, which was perfectly disguised in the face of a cliff. The thundering sounds faded, but the ground continued to heave beneath our feet. We were on Dragon's Right Horn, looking across the deep gorge to the matching peak and cliff and the estate of Prince Liu Pao.
The entire range of hills was shuddering, and muffled roaring sounds came from the bowels of the earth. The tomb of the Laughing Prince was like a cancer eating at the insides, but then the hills took charge. A billion tiny cracks appeared across the Valley of Sorrows as the earth squeezed down and pressed empty spaces together. Caverns and caves and tunnels were crushed out of existence, and great spouts of dust whistled up from holes and spread across the sky. The earth gave one last shudder and then was still.
Moon Boy straightened Grief of Dawn's body upon the grass and gently combed her hair with his fingers, and I sat down beside her and wept. Master Li lifted his eyes and watched tiny puffs of dust form a pattern on the matching cliff across the gorge, and then a door burst open and a small figure tumbled out. Dust covered everything. When it cleared I saw a robe of motley, and a cowl that revealed a glimpse of bright red hair. The head turned toward us.
“Oh!”
“Somehow I knew you'd make it,” Master Li said.
The girl sat up and smacked billows of dust from her robe. I'm so glad you're safe,” she said in her beautiful off-center voice. “I'm afraid for my friend, though, and his monks, even though I don't like the monks very much. Did you find your friend with the funny hair?”
Master Li snorted and reached for his wine flask. His eyes and voice were cold and angry.
“We will just as soon as you pull that wig from your silly head and take your lips away from the stone. Prince, the time for games has ended. You and I are going to have a serious talk.”
25
Moon Boy and I stared. I suppose that the pupils of our eyes were swimming around the whites like drunken dolphins when a red wig lifted and a feather duster mop of black hair appeared. The cowl fell back and Prince Liu Pao winked at us. In his hands was a piece of stone, round and concave like a bowl. “Yang,” he said in a deep masculine voice. He moved his lips to the other side of the stone. “Yin,” he said in the sweet feminine voice of the girl. “Needless to say, the sound from the center is quite extraordinary,” he said cheerfully in his own voice. “I didn't dare use it underground because of the vibration, which shows how ill-equipped I was to take on the great Master Li. You didn't hesitate to bring the whole works down, and you very nearly squashed me like a bug.”
The prince bowed deeply. Master Li grunted and emptied the contents of his purse upon the grass. The lining was waterproof, and he filled it with wine and sealed it. He still had plenty of spring in his right arm, and the purse sailed across the gorge to the prince. They toasted each other politely, and drank thirstily.
“As a matter of minor curiosity, how old were you when you first discovered the entrance in the gorge?” Master Li asked.
“Twelve,” the prince replied. “I was thirteen when I learned how to open the doors and enter the burial chamber, and your reconstruction of the tragic affair with the gardeners was so accurate it chilled my blood.” He heaved a melancholy sigh. “I hated to kill them. They were my friends, but as you yourself have pointed out, I was faced with the possibility of having every greedy bureaucrat and bandit in the empire at my doorstep. How could I trust those fellows to keep such a secret?”
“How indeed?” said Master Li.
I can't speak for Moon Boy, but I was convinced I was hallucinating, in fact, I was wondering where and when I had eaten some weird mushrooms.
“The manuscript of Ssu-ma Ch'ien posed a similar problem,” the prince said. “I thought the secret would last as long as I would, but Brother Squint-Eyes came to me with a sample page. The idiot thought it was genuine. I knew it was forged, but two days later it dawned on me that the idiot was right. It had to be in code, and how could I be sure Brother Squint-Eyes wasn't playing stupid? For all I knew, he could even have deciphered it, but not yet put two and two together. I had to send my abominable ancestor to deal with him.”
The prince flushed angrily. “I was being forced to take actions that made me ill,” he said. “You revealed there might be a copy, and I had to try to get it, and that other idiotic monk had to stick his head into the library and commit suicide.”
The two of them sipped wine and moodily watched butterflies dance through sunlight that was beginning to filter through a golden haze. The breeze carried a faint smell of rain, and black clouds were gathering in the distance. Far below us the Valley of Shadows was wrapped in deep purple shadows.
“In the tomb I always used the softest possible sound from the stone to control my ancestor,” the prince said. “When I sent him and his merry companions to the monastery he wanted to linger and strangle a few more people. I had to make a loud sound to bring him back, and it was exactly like the emperor and the tangerines. The incredible ch'i of the stone overpowered weaker ones in its path, and when I pulled my ancestor back, I also pulled the life force from parts of Princes’ Path. I was absolutely appalled! in fact, I felt like a character in a fairy tale who waves a magic wand to cure his wife's one blemish, and does so, except she's now a flawless yak. What had been so simple was becoming terrifyingly complex, and the immediate result was that the abbot was so frightened he rushed off to Peking to seek the legendary Li Kao. Even then I was idiotic enough to think you would weary of reaching dead ends and give up.”
Master Li spat disgustedly. “The legendary Li Kao had better buy a bucket of worms and start practicing his goo-goo-goos,” he said sourly. “It was the sheer simplicity of it that baffled me. If I hadn't been enchanted by complexity, I might have realized what was going on the moment I saw your studio.”
“Oh, but you were magnificent!” the prince protested. “I simply couldn't believe it when you worked through one blind alley after another, knocking walls down if necessary, and you never really went off course. You were moving like doom itself straight toward the truth, and finally I had no choice but to try to kill you.”
He threw his head back and laughed with all the old warmth and charm.
“I should have known that a man who would dare a mind trip to Hell would be harder to kill than the Stone Monkey.” He inclined his head in my direction. “You too, Ox. You were a dead man the moment I led you to my unspeakable ancestor, and instead you will most certainly earn a place in the annals of P'u Sung-ling, the Recorder of Things Strange.”
“Speaking of the Laughing Prince, how did he acquire his happy companions?” Master Li asked.
“My fault entirely.” The prince grimaced and fined himself a slap on the cheek. “I may have been slightly precocious when I found my ancestor, but I was still a boy. One day I forgot to lock him back inside the burial chamber, and to make matters worse, I went off on a long trip. When I returned I discovered he had taken the opportunity to creep through the moonlight strangling wayfarers, and now he had companions to share his merriment. Ox, I'm deeply indebted to you for finishing him off. I was going to have to do so, but I wasn't at all sure of how to go about it.”
I decided that Prince Liu Pao had been the most eerily precocious boy in history. Thirteen years old, killing two gardener friends when they opened a coffin for him and found a priceless suit of jade, carefully removing jade plates to gaze at a mummy, and gazing instead at the half-decomposed face of a monster that still breathed,
