Bridge Of Birds (15 page)

“Ox, we can't possibly escape from here,” he whispered. “I'm afraid that we can do nothing
for the children of your village, but one of the Dukes of Ch'in killed my parents, and if
you have no objection, we will try to slit this bastard's throat.”

I had no objection, but the lockpick was a bit too small and it was very difficult to work
with it while my hands were manacled behind my back. Again and again the great axe flashed
through the air, and the applause of the dignitaries was nearly continuous, and the line
of condemned men was steadily moving toward the throne. The duke was laughing as the heads
splashed into the basin, and the soldiers joked with the sergeant at arms as they carried
the carcasses away. Sometimes the legs were still twitching, and spurts of blood from the
severed necks caused sticky red puddles to slide across the floor, joined by dark trickles
from the overflowing basin. The feathers at the bottom of the duke's robe were dripping
with scarlet. Then only one prisoner stood between me and the axe. He was a middle-aged
man, slim and slightly stooped, and he had been viewing the massacre with an air of ironic
calm.

“Chin Shengt'an, who dared to protest the peasant taxes imposed by the Duke of Ch'in. The
sentence is death!” roared the sergeant at arms.

That must have taken incredible courage. I was later to learn that Chin Shengt'an was one
of the greatest writers and critics in the empire, and that his name meant “Sigh of the
Sage,” because when he was born a deep sigh was heard from the Temple of Confucius. His
feet were kicked out from under him. His neck lay on the block, and the bonze mumbled a
prayer, and the sergeant at arms asked if he had any last words. The ironic eyes lifted.

“Eat pickled turnips with yellow beans,” he said politely. “It gives the taste of walnut.”

I deeply regret that I never had the opportunity to know him. The axe flashed through the
air, and the head of the man who had dared to protest an unfair tax joined the others in
the basin. The soldiers shoved me forward.

“Lord Lu of Yu, who failed to pay his fine for disturbing the peace. The sentence is
death!” roared the sergeant at arms.

My feet were kicked from under me and my neck landed neatly upon the block. The ironic
eyes of Shengt'an looked up at me from the basin, and while the bonze mumbled the prayer I
tried to think of an exit line that would be worthy of his.

“Any last words?” asked the sergeant at arms.

I was only Number Ten Ox, so I lifted my head to the Duke of Ch'in.
“I hope I splatter blood all over you, you son of a sow!”
I yelled. Oddly enough I felt much better, and I stopped gagging at the thick sweet smell
of blood.

To my astonishment the duke lifted a hand and stopped the executioner. He beckoned, and
soldiers lifted me and dragged me so close to the throne that my face was almost touching
the tiger mask. Surely the great and powerful Duke of Ch'in could not be interested in
Number Ten Ox! He wasn't. He was interested in whatever it was that Lotus Cloud has tossed
around my neck, and the gold-meshed fingers of his right hand reached out and touched it.
Then he leaned forward, and I felt the eyes behind the slits in the mask boring into mine,
and with a sick sense of terror I realized that he was looking right through my eyes into
my brain! The voice that came through the mouthpiece was a voice of metal.

“So, the wife of my Assessor gave you this,” the duke whispered. “He shall be punished for
his careless words.” I could feel his mind crawling over mine, probing and peering and
searching. “You do not know what it means,” he whispered. “You know nothing of importance.
I see a foolish abbot, and I see children whose deaths will serve to decrease the surplus
population, and I see a ghost who dances with swords, and I see your antiquated companion
dancing and singing songs. I can find no awareness of meaningful things, and although you
seek the right ginseng root, you do so for the wrong reason.” The terrible tiger mask
lifted. “Soldiers, continue with the execution,” ordered the Duke of Ch'in.

My fingers had automatically continued to fumble with the pick, and suddenly I felt it
turn in the lock.

“Master Li!” I yelled, as I jerked my hands apart and lashed out at the soldiers with the
manacles. His hands were already free, and he used the chain of his manacles to trip the
executioner, who toppled toward me. “Get him, Ox!” Master Li roared.

I grabbed the axe and whirled to the throne and struck with all my might, and to my
astonishment that huge blade bounced off the flimsy cloak of feathers as though it had hit
the strongest steel. My hands turned numb with the shock, and I swore and swung again.
This time the duke was not so lucky. The blade plunged right through his chest to his
heart, and I turned to die like a gentlemen at the hands of the soldiers. What I saw made
me doubt my sanity.

The soldiers were laughing. The dignitaries were laughing. The bonze was laughing. The
executioner got to his feet and began laughing. I turned dazedly to the throne, and there
sat the Duke of Ch'in with the huge axe buried in his heart. He was laughing.

“Both the young fool and the old fool are fit for nothing more serious than bouncing balls
and playing games! Very well, we will play a game,” he chortled. His fingers closed around
an ornament on the arm of his throne. The soldiers next to us scrambled hastily away. “You
seek the Great Root of Power? It can indeed be found, so find it.”

The floor suddenly dropped out from under us.

Down, down, down, plunging head over heels into darkness - just when I felt that I might
fall forever, I landed with a shock in icy water, and I popped up to the surface and spat
out a mouthful of brine.

“Master Li!” I cried.

“Right behind you,” he panted.

Li Kao grabbed my belt. A light was flickering in the distance. The pool in which we had
landed was about fifty feet in circumference, and I swam across and climbed up upon a flat
rock ledge. The light was coming from a single torch, and Li Kao lifted it from the
brackets and swung it around.

We were in a large cavern carved from black stone. The air was moist and heavy, and it
reeked of something unpleasant. Ahead of us was an archway, and when Master Li lifted the
torch we saw that the first duke's famous maxim had been chiseled in the stone above the
curve of the arch:

PUNISHMENT PRODUCES FORCE, FORCE PRODUCES STRENGTH,

STRENGTH PRODUCES AWE, AWE PRODUCES VIRTUE;

THUS VIRTUE HAS ITS ORIGIN IN PUNISHMENT.

We stepped through the archway and saw that an infinity of narrow tunnels branched out
from the central path. We were walking upon human bones, and the reek came from decaying
flesh, although I saw no recent bodies. I stared at shattered skulls, and at thigh bones
that had been snapped like bamboo twigs.

“Master Li, the thing that did this had to be stronger than twenty dragons,” I whispered.

“Oh, far stronger than that.” He reached out and touched his finger to the wall, and when
he held it to my nose I smelled seaweed. Then he lifted his torch high above his head, and
when my eyes lifted with it I saw the corpses that were causing the horrible smell. They
were crammed into crevices in the stone ceiling. Half of a face looked down at me, and a
dangling leg dripped blood.

“The monster that stalks the labyrinth is simply the tide,” Master Li said calmly, “and if
the tide can get out of it, so can we. Ox, was that some sort of trick axe, like the fake
swords used in carnivals?”

“No, sir,” I said firmly. “That was a real axe, and it really entered the duke's heart.”

He scratched his head thoughtfully. “Strange,” he muttered. “If we get out of here alive,
we most certainly must take another crack at killing him, purely in the interest of
science.”

“Master Li, the duke can read minds,” I whispered, trembling all over. “He looked through
my eyes, and I could feel his brain crawling over mine. It was wet and clammy, and it was
like being nuzzled by cold, slimy lips.”

“Your powers of description are commendable,” he said, but I could tell that he didn't
believe a word of it. “What was he so interested in?”

I had almost forgotten it, but now I lifted the thing that Lotus Cloud had tossed around
my neck. It was a silver chain with a large piece of coral at the end of it. The coral was
a beautiful deep-red, and a cleverly carved green jade dragon was winding through the
holes. I wondered how the Key Rabbit had managed to acquire such a beautiful pendant,
because it must be very expensive. I searched for some sort of a message that might be
written on it, but there wasn't one.

Li Kao shrugged. “Well, at any rate we've arrived in the labyrinth, which is what we
intended all along. Getting out may be a bit of a problem, however, and I suggest that we
start immediately.”

He strode forward, ignoring the side tunnels. The main passageway led on and on through
the dank dripping rock, and finally I saw something gleam ahead of us. As we came closer,
I saw that it was a huge copy of the tiger mask, perhaps ten feet tall, and it was set
into a wall that formed a dead end. The mouth gaped wide, and the glittering teeth were
solid steel, and behind them was a black hole. Li Kao moved the torch over a curious
network of metal baffles that surrounded the tiger's mouth.

“Sound effects,” he finally said. “The tide, or part of it, pours through this hole and
shoots through the baffles, and as the tide increases, the noise gets louder. I would
imagine that it is the scream of a raging tiger, and we had better find another exit
before we hear it.”

He started back, studying the rock walls for smooth worn surfaces that would indicate the
passage of the water, and then he turned and darted into a side tunnel. The torchlight
flickered over more bones, and the ceiling was so low that I had to duck not to strike my
head against a corpse that was plastered above me in a crack. The reek of rotting flesh
was indescribable. Li Kao turned into another low tunnel, and then another, and we twisted
and turned until I had lost all sense of direction. He strode confidently ahead, however,
following minute signs that indicated water rushing toward an exit, and finally he grunted
in satisfaction.

The low tunnel was widening and rising, and ahead of us loomed a large black archway.
Master Li trotted through it and stopped dead in his tracks, and I stared in horror at a
large cavern and a pool of water that was about fifty feet in circumference. In the
ceiling high above that pool was the trapdoor that led to the throne room of the Duke of
Ch'in. We were right back where we had started, and the hair lifted upon my head as I
heard a faint snarling growl in the darkness behind us. Slim dark shapes were sliding
across the stone floor like snakes. It was water, and the tide was coming in.

Li Kao stood quite still, with his forehead wrinkled in thought. “Ox, what did Lotus Cloud
say to you when she gave you that dragon pendant?” he asked quietly.

I repeated the fragmentary words that I had heard, and they still didn't make any sense to
me. The water was rising with terrible swiftness, lapping my ankles, and the tiger at the
end of the tunnel was beginning to roar.

“The Duke of Ch'in lives only for money,” Master Li said slowly, thinking out loud. “He
piles the stuff in treasure troves, and who beside the duke must have access to them? The
man who has to collect the loot and count it, that's who, and Lotus Cloud happens to be
married to him. Apparently he made an indiscreet remark about the pendant, and it might
explain why the Key Rabbit was allowed to keep something so valuable. Ox, bend over.”

I bent over and he climbed upon my back. With one hand he held the torch and with the
other he lifted the dragon pendant.

“Lotus Cloud said that if the duke was playful you should follow the dragon, and when the
duke dropped us into his labyrinth he said that we would play a game. Since we have no
other hope, we will assume that the Key Rabbit indiscreetly told his wife that the locket
enabled him to get to the duke's treasure troves.”

He held the torch close.

“The dragon skips the first two holes in the coral and winds through the third hole on the
left,” Master Li said grimly. “Start through the archway, take the third tunnel to the
left, and run like hell.”

I ran as fast as I could, but the water was almost up to my knees. I darted into the third
tunnel on the left, and Li Kao held the flickering torch close to the pendant. “Take the
second tunnel on the right!” he yelled. The tide was rushing in so swiftly that shattered
bones were flying across the boiling surface, and the tiger was roaring so loudly that I
could barely hear Master Li. “Third left!... First right!... Second right!... Fourth left!”

The tiger was screaming in lunatic rage. The water was rising over my chest as I squeezed
through another narrow opening, and then I collided with a blank wall. “Master Li, we must
have made a wrong turn!” I shouted. I tried to turn and go back, but it was hopeless.
Water had reached my chin, and the tide shoved like a giant hand and plastered me against
the wall. Flying bones were smashing around my head, and one of them knocked the torch
from Li Kao's hand. Now we were in total darkness, and the boiling water lifted over my
mouth.

Li Kao's fingers found what his eyes had not. “Ox, the dragon goes straight up!” he yelled
in my ear. “Don't fight the tide. Let it carry you to the ceiling!”

The tide scraped me against the wall as I lifted with it, and Li Kao's hands reached high
and groped for an opening. He found it. A narrow chimney wound up from the ceiling through
solid rock, and I barely managed to squeeze into it. I braced my feet against the sides
and started to climb, but the tide was climbing faster than I was, boiling up over my head
while my shoulders tried to wriggle through narrow openings, and my lungs were bursting. I
had nearly lost consciousness when the tide reached its peak and my head broke through the
water. I gulped air and climbed, and it seemed that hours had passed when the first faint
light appeared in the pitch-blackness. A small glowing circle appeared high above us, and
I used the last of my strength to reach it and to climb over the edge of the opening to
the floor of a small cave.