Bridge Of Birds (27 page)

“There is no hurry,” he explained. “The soldiers from the torture chamber will have
collected the soldiers on the landings, and by the time they burst into the palace they
will have become a large screaming mob. Anyone who isn't trampled flat will dash into the
courtyard, where they will collect a couple of divisions from the army of the Ancestress,
and when they hit the wall I doubt that a stone will remain standing. They will then
collect the army of the Duke of Ch'in and bolt hysterically through the city and reduce it
to rubble, and the citizens who survive will follow in their wake. It is quite possible
that we will have to walk to Hangchow before we see another living soul.”

There was a flaw in his reasoning. We climbed the stairs and saw nothing but a few
flattened bodies, but when we stepped through the door to the throne room, we ran right
into a creature who would not have blinked an eye if the South China Sea had suddenly
turned into soy sauce. A bloated figure with a crown on her head leveled a finger like a
sausage.

“There is no such thing as the plague of the ten thousand pestilential putrescences,” the
Ancestress snarled. “Soldiers, chop these dogs to pieces!”

Her bodyguards closed in on all sides, and we would have been killed instantly if it
hadn't been for Henpecked Ho. He whooped with joy and charged straight toward the throne,
and his axe was whirling so swiftly above his head that if he had spurted a little flame
and smoke he would have resembled the Bamboo Dragonfly.

“Chop-chop!” he howled happily. “Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”

Of course he ran right into the spears of the soldiers. We gave him up for dead, but the
distraction allowed us to clear a path. Li Kao filled the air with flying daggers and four
soldiers fell. “Quick, Master Li, climb upon my back!” I yelled. He hopped up and I raced
straight toward the throne, planted the butt of my spear, vaulted over the head of the
Ancestress, and took to my heels.

It was a losing game. The soldiers knew the palace and we did not, and sooner or later we
were going to reach a dead end. I raced up staircases while Li Kao snatched vases from
pedestals and smashed them over the heads of the soldiers below, but there were simply too
many soldiers. I ran down a long hallway and tugged at a pair of massive bronze doors.
They were locked. I turned and started back, and skidded to a halt as the hallway filled
with soldiers. Two columns of men started toward us along the walls, while the captain of
the bodyguards led a double rank down the center. We stared at a solid line of glittering
spears, and I consigned my humble soul to the August Personage of Jade.

Then an elephant charged into the hall and squashed the captain flat. At least I thought
it was an elephant until I realized that it was the Ancestress, and I gaped at an
incredible sight.

“Chop-chop!” yelled Henpecked Ho. “Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”

He had no right to be alive. Blood spurted from twenty wounds with every step that he
took, but he kept right on taking them. “Save me!” the Ancestress howled, and then her
five hundred pounds flattened three more soldiers who might have saved her. It was over in
a few minutes.

The Ancestress ran around in circles and squashed everything in front of her, and
Henpecked Ho swung his axe and whacked everything in sight, and Li Kao slipped through the
carnage slitting throats, and I flailed away with my sword. Toward the end it became
rather messy, because we were slipping and sliding upon pieces of the Ancestress, and
there was a lot of Ancestress to go around. Then we staggered away from the last fallen
soldier and knelt beside Henpecked Ho.

He lay on his back with his axe still clutched in his hands. His life was draining away in
red rivulets, and his face was ashen, and his eyes strained to focus on us.

“Did I get her?” he whispered.

“Ho, you chopped that monster into a hundred pieces,” Master Li said proudly.

“I am so happy,” the gentle scholar whispered. “Now my ancestors will not be ashamed to
greet me when I arrive in Hell to be judged.”

“Bright Star will be waiting for you,” I said.

“Oh no, that would be far too much to ask,” he said seriously. “The most that I dare ask
of the Yama Kings is that I may be reborn as a beautiful flower, so that sometime,
somewhere, a dancing girl might choose to pluck me and wear me in her hair.”

I blinked through my tears, and he patted my hand.

“Do not weep for me, Number Ten Ox. I have grown so weary of this life, and I long to
return to the Great Wheel of Transmigrations.” His voice was very faint, and I leaned down
to hear his last words. “Immortality is only for the gods,” he whispered. “I wonder how
they can stand it.”

His eyes closed, and the axe fell to the floor, and the soul of Henpecked Ho took leave of
his body.

We carried him outside to the garden. It was cold and overcast, and a tiny silver rain
pattered down as I dug the grave. We gently placed the body into the hole and I recovered
it with earth, and then we knelt and clasped our hands.

“Henpecked Ho, great is your joy,” said Master Li. “Now your soul has been released from
the prison of your body, and you are being greeted with great honors in Hell. You have rid
the world of a woman who was an abomination to men and gods alike, and surely the Yama
Kings will allow you to see Bright Star again. When it is time for you to be reborn, your
wish will be granted, and you will become a beautiful flower that a dancing girl will wear
in her hair.”

“Henpecked Ho,” I sniffled through my tears, “I will miss you, but I know that we will
meet again. Master Li will be a three-toed sloth, and Miser Shen will be a tree, and you
will be a flower, and I will be a cloud, and some day we will come together in a beautiful
garden. Probably very soon,” I added.

We said the prayers and sacrificed, and Li Kao stood up and stretched wearily.

“Immortality is only for the gods; I wonder how they can stand it,” he said thoughtfully.
“Ox, the last words of Henpecked Ho may be significant in more ways than one.”

Master Li stood lost in thought for a moment. Then he said:

“If I were to try to count the incredible coincidences of our quest on my fingers, I would
wind up with ten badly sprained digits, and I am far too old to believe in coincidences.
We are being led toward something, and I strongly suspect that Henpecked Ho has also
supplied the question that we must ask before we continue the quest. Only the wisest man
in the world could answer it, and can it be a coincidence that we happen to know where to
find the wisest man in the world?”

I stared at him stupidly.

“Miser Shen,” he explained. “Ox, it was no accident that Miser Shen told us that when he
was trying to bring his little girl back to life, he learned that the wisest man in the
world lives in a cave at the end of Bear's Path, high in the Omei Mountains.”

“Are we going to the Omei Mountains?” I asked.

“We are indeed, and we will begin by looting this palace. The Old Man of the Mountain,”
said Master Li, “does not sell his secrets cheaply.”

Rain still fell, but one corner of the sky was turning blue, and as a final tribute to
Henpecked Ho I shoveled the largest pieces of the Ancestress into a wheelbarrow and
trundled them to the kennels and fed them to the dogs. In the distance a rainbow formed.

Should you decide to travel to the end of Bear's Path, high in the Omei Mountains, you
will eventually reach a small level clearing in front of a cliff. In front of the black
gaping mouth of a cave you will see a stone pillar, upon which hangs a copper gong and an
iron hammer, and carved upon the pillar is a message.

HERE LIVES THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN

RING AND STATE YOUR BUSINESS.

HIS SECRETS ARE NOT SOLD CHEAPLY.

IT IS PERILOUS TO WASTE HIS TIME.

I hope that you will carefully consider that last sentence. The wisest man in the world is
not to be trifled with, not even by those who are so distinguished as are my readers, and
I myself have no intention of ever again traveling to the end of Bear's Path. I am only
Number Ten Ox, who had no business being there in the first place, but it is said that the
great leaders of men have been making that journey for three thousand years and will be
doing so three thousand years from now, and that one only has to look at the state of the
world to prove it.

The panting mules who hauled our cartload of treasure were nearly exhausted when they
plodded around the last bend in the path and arrived at the clearing in front of the cave.
Li Kao read the message on the pillar, and then he lifted a goatskin flask and swallowed
some wine.

“Admirable conciseness,” he said, nodding at the inscription. “Not one wasted word.” Then
he picked up the iron hammer and rang the gong, and when the echoes died away he took a
deep breath and yelled, “Old Man of the Mountain, come forth! I have come to purchase the
Secret of Immortality!”

The echoes shouted immortality, immortality, immortality, and then they faded away into
silence. For many minutes we listened to the tiny sounds of small animals, and the sighing
wind, and the distant scream of an eagle, and finally we heard the faint slap of shuffling
sandals. A voice that sounded like gravel scraping across iron drifted from the blackness
of the cave.

“Why does everyone ask for immortality? I have so many other secrets to sell. Beautiful
secrets, beastly secrets, happy secrets, horrible secrets, lovely secrets, lunatic
secrets, laughing secrets, loathsome secrets...”

The man who shuffled from the cave and blinked in the bright sunlight looked like the
oldest and ugliest monkey in the world. Pieces of filthy straw were tangled in his matted
hair, and his beard and robe were stained with spilled food. His seamed and pitted face
was even older than Li Kao's, but his eyes were jet-black and so piercing that I caught my
breath and instinctively stepped backward. He dismissed me as unimportant, and looked with
interest at Li Kao.

“A sage, I perceive, with a slight flaw in his character,” he said with a little snicker.
“Surely a sage can think of a more interesting secret to buy from the Old Man of the
Mountain? I can teach you how to turn your friends into flowers and your enemies into
cockroaches. I can teach you how to transform yourself or anything else into whatever you
like, or how to steal the spirits of the dead and make them your slaves, or how to control
the creatures that lurk in the black bowels of the earth. I can teach you how to remove
varicose veins or cure pimples, yet you come to me for the Secret of Immortality, which is
so simple that it is scarcely a secret at all.”

“I will give all I have for that one secret,” said Master Li, and he brushed away the
straw that covered the pile of loot in the cart. The Old Man of the Mountain plunged his
hands into the treasure.

“Cold!” he said delightedly. “It has been years since I touched treasure as cold as this!
In fact, this treasure is so cold that I will tell you the secret at once, instead of
toying with you as is my usual custom.”

Li Kao bowed and offered the wine flask, and the Old Man of the Mountain drank and wiped
his lips with his beard.

“You know the seamless robes of the gods? The jade girdles and golden crowns? Any of those
items will do,” he said. “Simply wait until the New Year, when the gods descend to earth
to make their tour of inspection, and steal a robe or a crown. So long as you possess it,
you will never age, but I would advise you to hurry. I myself was well past two hundred
when I stole a jade girdle, and not even the Old Man of the Mountain has learned the
secret of restoring youth.”

Master Li threw back his head and laughed.

“Do you take me for an idiot? What use is it never to age when you can be extinguished in
an instant by the bite of a mosquito or a slip upon the stairs? Immortality is a
meaningless word unless invulnerability goes with it. Old Man of the Mountain, I am
beginning to suspect that you are a fraud.”

The Old Man of the Mountain winked at him, and passed the wine flask.

“You would goad me into indiscretion, my friend with the flaw in his character? Do you
think that I cannot sense that in your pocket you carry a business card with the sign of a
half-closed eye? Or that I would not wonder what an old fox is doing traveling with a
young chicken?” He turned and crooked a finger at me. “Boy, come here,” he commanded.

The jet-black eyes burned a hole in my heart and I had no will of my own. I found myself
walking toward him like a mechanical toy, and his eyes looked into my mind. What the Duke
of Ch'in had done was but a feeble imitation of the Old Man of the Mountain.

“Well, I'll be the Stone Monkey!” he exclaimed. “There are those three handmaidens, and
the flute and the ball and the bell, and the feathers and the crown too, although dimly
perceived. So you hope to steal the Great Root of Power, do you? Boy, you are nothing but
a walking corpse.”

He sniggered and released my mind, and I staggered backward and nearly fell.

“Let the chicken go ahead and get killed,” he said softly to Li Kao. “He couldn't tell a
turd from a turnip, but you appear to have some common sense. Go steal something that
belongs to a god, and then return with ten times this much treasure, and if it is as cold
as this stuff I will sell you the Secret of Invulnerability, which, as you have correctly
pointed out, gives meaning to the word immortality.”

Li Kao tilted the wine flask, and passed it back to the Old Man of the Mountain.

“But is there such a secret?” he wondered. “Anything with a heart can be killed, and
though there are hundreds of peasant stories about men without hearts, I have always
considered them to be allegorical fables. Quite sophisticated fables, at times, but
depicting character rather than actual physiology.”

“Not one in a hundred of such stories is true, but when you hear one that is you may be
sure that the wisest man in the world is involved, for I alone have found the secret,”
said the Old Man of the Mountain. 'You doubt it, my slightly flawed friend? Marvel at the
man who rivals the gods!"