The Story of the Stone

11

About an hour later we were able to report to Master Li that there were two accessible turrets with good views of the castle and walls, and he explained to us that bandit gangs crossed through Chao at this time of the year to reach their mountain hideouts before the rainy season made the roads impassable, and Shih Hu's favorite sport was massacring bandit gangs.

“He leads his troops personally, and he's renowned for being out of his castle and on the attack within minutes,” Master Li explained. “The drawbridges are slow and cumbersome. I want to know whether or not he uses them, and my bet is that he has some other exit.”

We had nothing to do until evening except mingle with the distinguished guests. Master Li huddled with Grief of Dawn and sent her out wearing her dusty travel clothes, with a wicked dagger in her belt and her bow over her shoulder and her hair bound by a leather cord apparently jerked from a broken bridle. Her hair clasp was polished like an emperor's adornment and pinned to the front of her sweat-stained tunic, and if ever there was a wild warrior princess, it was Grief of Dawn. She was besieged by admirers. I got close enough to hear her explain—apparently Master Li's suggestion—that she was searching for her brother, who had been transformed by an evil shaman and was wandering through the woods in the form of a tiger, with his matching clasp around his furry neck. After that I couldn't get within forty feet of her, so I wandered off.

King Shih Hu's special people were all over, and Master Li got into a furious argument with the world's greatest astronomer about the direction of currents in the Great River of Stars during the rainy season: “neo-Chang Hengian epicycles” and “Phalguni asterisms” and “reverse ch'i concentrations”—I couldn't understand a word of it. I fled to the company of the most beautiful woman in the world and had a very interesting conversation.

She had blond hair and green eyes and said she was a Greek from Bactria. She also said she was sick and tired of being kidnapped by one king after another ever since she had been ten years old, and she would insist upon being buried standing up because she never wanted to see another bed throughout eternity. I liked her very much, although there was a certain tightness at the corners of her eyes and mouth that argued against a close relationship.

I wandered off again and talked with an old man who had a very interesting story to tell, because he had once urinated over the statue of a local Place God when he was drunk, and apparently the God of Walls and Ditches had been passing by, because the next thing he knew, he was encased in bronze and standing on a pedestal as a T'u-ti himself, and there was a terrible drought and the peasants demanded that he bring rain to the fields, and when no rain came, they brought out the ceremonial cudgels and beat him black and blue. He still had some very impressive welts to display. I was pressing him for more details when I heard the drawbridge lower, and then a courier came galloping across it and jumped from his horse and dashed into the palace to report to the king.

Master Li was nodding at me. Grief of Dawn was buried in admirers and couldn't get away, so I made hasty apologies to the former T'u-ti and ran for the stairs. I arrived at my lookout spot just as the king and his Golden Girls came from a side door into a courtyard and entered the stables. I knew that Master Li had been right when I heard the drawbridge raise and slam shut, and several minutes later I blinked at the sight of Shih Hu outside the walls. He was riding on a revolving couch on a great war chariot. He had racks of bows and mountains of arrows within easy reach, and Master Li had told me that he was one of the great archers of the world and would whirl around and around on his couch firing arrows so fast they looked like a waterfall. The Golden Girls rode on horses, and they were followed by foot soldiers jogging in disciplined ranks.

I went back down to report that the king had some kind of exit through the stables. Master Li was delighted.

The afternoon festivities continued with the chamberlain playing host. There were actors and acrobats and Sogdian spin-dance girls who wore crimson pantaloons and performed on top of huge rolling balls. Great mounds of food were brought out. It was half-civilized and half-barbarian. A perfectly traditional dish of ducks’ feet and ham steamed with Peking dates and black tree fungus was followed by an exotic Mongolian stew: venison, rabbit, chicken, fish, figs, apples, peaches, curds, butter, spices, and herbs, all boiled together with mounds of sugar candy. I thought it was quite good, but I noticed that both Master Li and Grief of Dawn spat out the sugar candy.

The king and his bodyguards and soldiers returned just as the sun was setting. They were in high spirits, and the soldiers were carrying a new collection of severed heads mounted upon pikes. When the king and the Golden Girls had bathed and changed, it was time for the high point of the festivities: Moon Boy.

I will admit I was skeptical. A person who looked like Moon Boy could announce, “The song of the lark,” and then go “quack-quack-quack” and get a standing ovation.

We entered a great stone hall. The chamberlain made a great show of rapping walls and floors to show that there was no trickery involved, and then some servants placed a simple wooden table at one corner of the room. More servants brought in two paper fans, a small jar of water, and four cups, which they placed upon the table. Then Moon Boy appeared. He was carrying a simple sounding board like the ones used by girls in my village, and his eyes searched the audience until he found Grief of Dawn. He gave her a wink, and I assumed he was going to perform something especially for her. The servants unfolded a large screen, blocking out the table, and the lanterns were extinguished until the room was almost dark. There was a buzz of conversation while Moon Boy warmed up, and then there were three sharp raps from behind the screen and the room was hushed.

All I know about sound-masters is that the greatest produce sounds that don't actually exist. Somehow they manage to suggest a sound to the ears of the audience, and the minds of the listeners fill in the rest. Master Li, who had heard the great ones for nearly a century, later said that Moon Boy would become a legend that would live ten thousand years, and I had no inclination to argue with him.

I remember hearing a small soft wind blow and looking around to see who had opened a window, and then flushing because I realized it was Moon Boy behind the screen, waving the paper fans. After that I listened with growing wonder and awe as Moon Boy performed a peasant song for Grief of Dawn. I cannot possibly describe something that must be heard, but I made quick notes later on, and I might as well include them here.

Soft breeze carrying night sounds, village sounds… Dog barks loudly, sound seems to be coming in through a window… Man grunts right at my ear, rolls over in bed… Barking fades away, two pairs of sandals passing by window, a laugh and a hiccup… In distance a wine seller calls goodnight and closes his doors… Wind is shifting, blowing from a river… Water sounds, barge poles splashing… Faint laughter, a man begins a bawdy song, words carried away on shifting breeze… Dog begins barking again, right in ears, deafening… Man swears, gets out of bed, stumbles toward window… Sharp yelp and sound of wood scraping across floor as he bangs his knee against a table… Dog even louder… Man fumbling for something, grunts as he throws, barks change into yelps and howls, echoing from cottage walls as dog races away, sound fades… Man yelps as hits table again, crawls back into bed.

Woman sighs and rolls over, whispers to man… Man laughs softly, woman giggles… Find myself blushing as soft lovemaking sounds come from bed… Lovemaking louder, rhythmic… Baby wakes up and begins to cry, man curses, woman groans… Woman gets up and begins nursing baby, man gets up and relieves self in chamber pot… Boy wakes up and says something sleepily, man curses and tells boy to get up and relieve self if needs to… Mixture of sounds: man and boy relieving selves, woman singing softly to baby, baby sucking and cooing, crickets, hoot of owl, breeze through leaves… Boy back to bed, baby back to sleep, man and woman back to bed, woman whispers, man begins to snore.

Fire! Voice shouts outside window, other voices join in, everybody out of bed, baby crying… Man yelps as hits table, shouts out window… Voices say something about a barn… Feet milling around outside, sounds of doors opening and closing, clank of buckets, creak of windlass, man yelps as hits table again… Sandals on, runs outside… Clanks and splashes from bucket brigade, flames hissing and roaring… Incredible confusion of sounds: people shouting, horses neighing, donkeys braying, cattle and oxen lowing, chickens squawking… Gates open and thunder of hooves as animals gallop out… Old man shouting, “My hay! My grain!”… Woman screams about sparks on her roof.

Something very strange. All sounds of the village seem to be lifting slowly into the air… Twisting, turning… As though August Personage of Jade has reached down to China and picked up the village and is turning it this way and that in his hand… A slow, quiet, vast puff of breath as though blowing the fire out… Animal sounds die down, bucket and water and fire sounds die down, shouting and screaming die down… Village settling back down to earth, one sound after another fading away… Boy's sounds fade away, woman's sounds fade away, man's sounds fade away… Baby cooing happily… Baby gradually fades away… Silence.

Three sharp raps. The lanterns are lit, the screen is pulled away. There is nothing but a table and a sounding board and two fans and a jar of water and four cups, and Moon Boy, who clasps his hands together and bows.

Grief of Dawn and I slipped away easily while the audience besieged Moon Boy. I had the sacks and sticks and lanterns ready, and while we caught toads and lanternflies she told me that it was a good thing we were getting Moon Boy out of there because the soft life was causing him to lose his voice, particularly in the high registers, and unless he could find some pretty boys who would give him a good run across the hills he was going to be nothing but the best, as opposed to being supernatural.

“Well, he still seems to have a certain ability,” I said weakly.

She laughed and kicked me in the shins, and we made our way back with our bulging sacks. Master Li was waiting for us at the stables, which was a pity because we couldn't stay and watch the Golden Girls. It was their turn to perform. The great lawn was as bright as day with thousands of lanterns, and they were entertaining the guests with a hair-raising game of polo, which I had never seen before. (It had been the rage at court ever since it had been imported from India, but I was not exactly an ornament of the court.) The Captain of Bodyguards was particularly spectacular, because she thought nothing of crashing her horse into another one at forty miles an hour, and as Grief of Dawn watched them I could see that she was yearning for a sable uniform and a polo mallet. I dragged her away.

We had time to decorate toad faces with a little white paint while we waited for Moon Boy. At last he managed to pry himself away from the adoring mob, and he slipped through the shrubbery carrying a large backpack of clothes and jewels.

The toad, as everybody knows, is one of the five poisonous animals, and is the Beast of Moon and Night, and it spits Vermilion Dust that causes malaria, and is the confidant of the tortoise, the most devious and inscrutable of all living things. When toads have feasted upon Chinese lanternflies their bellies swell to grotesque proportions, and since the lanternflies are swallowed whole they continue to produce greenish flashes of light at twenty-six pulses per minute. The effect is quite startling. The effect is particularly startling when the green pulsing bellies are highlighting white-painted demon-toad faces. If one adds ghastly ghost screeches from Moon Boy, the result can be an experience that will remain with you for life.

One hundred of the hideous things hopped through the doors of the stables, and the screams of the soldiers and grooms were drowned out by the howls from the audience at the polo match. We stepped aside to avoid being trampled to death, and inside of a minute the stables contained nothing but toads and horses. We raced inside.

The exit was easy to find, because it was directly across from the king's war chariot. It was a wide tunnel, sloping downward, and we grabbed torches. Master Li hopped up on my back and we ran down the dark passage. The king would scarcely allow an open path for his enemies, of course, so the problem was going to be getting through the doors. The tunnel leveled as it started to run beneath the moat. Ahead of us was a huge iron door, and Master Li told me to stop. His eyes moved slowly over the walls.

Rows of iron shields hung there. The centers of the shields bore strange emblems, and they protruded from the smooth surfaces. The emblems seemed to concern every subject from agriculture to the zodiac, and Master Li thoughtfully chewed on his beard.

“I suspect sequence locks,” he said. “The king rides down this passage on his couch on the chariot and punches shields that form the code to open the door. It's almost certainly set up so that the wrong code will cause an unfortunate result, which means that the king can remember it even if he's drunk or half-asleep. Probably a personal horoscope, or his lucky stars. Does anyone happen to know when he was born?”

Nobody did, but Grief of Dawn said, “When he picked me up and put me on his lap I noticed the amulet around his neck. It had the planetary symbol of Mercury.”

“Good girl!” Master Li rubbed his hands happily. “If the amulet means enough to him that he wears it permanently, the code may simply be characteristics of his guiding planet. Let's see if they're all here.”

He had me walk up and down the line while he hummed through his nose and studied weird symbols. Then he had me go back to the beginning.

“We must hope he's used the Chinese system. If he's used a barbarian one we can expect a twenty-ton spike-studded iron plate to fall on our heads,” Master Li said matter-of-factly. “The organ associated with Mercury is the spleen.”

I closed my eyes. Master Li reached out and punched the spleen symbol. Nothing happened, so I timidly made my way down the line of shields while Master Li punched symbols.

The taste associated with Mercury is salt…

The color is black…

The element is water…

The parent element is metal…

The child element is wood…

The friend element is fire…

The enemy is earth…

The earthly analogue is a stream…

The celestial analogue is a bear…

As he punched the ninth symbol, the iron door slid open. We stepped through the opening to the other side, and Master Li reached out to another shield.

“And the musical note of Mercury is sixth on the scale,” he said complacently, and the iron door slid shut behind us.

“Education is a wonderful thing,” Moon Boy said admiringly. “I should have paid more attention in school.”

“Master Li knows everything,” I said proudly.

Even Master Li was baffled when we reached the next row of shields. The tunnel was sloping up to an exit outside the walls, and another iron door confronted us. I could see no pattern at all to the symbols, and Master Li was clearly puzzled.

“Strange,” he muttered. “All but three of the emblems are symbolic of nature, and those three form no pattern at all: a sandal, a fan made of feathers, and an incense burner.”

We could be of no use to him. He had me walk back and forth along the shields. “This passage is his war route,” the old man muttered. “Logically he would use symbols that would concentrate his mind on battle, but what is militant about symbols for rain and sunlight and a variety of animals?” He muttered to himself for a while. “Visualize him,” he muttered. “Shin Hu, King of Chao, riding in his war chariot upon a revolving couch with his Golden Girls behind him.”

He suddenly let out a whoop. “Ox, back to the beginning,” he said happily. I trotted back to the first shield. “I should have seen it at once,” said Master Li. “Shih Hu is remarkable in that his bulk requires him to fight while seated upon a couch, and has there ever been a mighty warrior before him who did the same thing? Yes, one. Shih Hu's idol is the great Chuko Liang, the legendary Sleeping Dragon of the wars of the Three Kingdoms, who charged the enemy while reposing upon a couch in a carriage. And how did he array his men? In the Eight Trigrams Battle Formation, which he signaled by languidly waving his white feather fan.”

Master Li punched the fan symbol. No gaping pit opened beneath our feet, so I started up the line of shields.

The first trigram is Heaven…

The second trigram is earth…

The third trigram is wind…

The fourth trigram is cloud…

The fifth trigram is dragon…

The sixth trigram is tiger…

The seventh trigram is bird…

As he punched the seventh shield the door slid open. We stepped through and Master Li reached for another shield.

“And the eighth trigram is snake,” he said, and the door slid shut behind us.

Moonlight had greeted us, and after a few more feet we were out on a hillside beneath the stars. Master Li gazed back at the huge walls of the castle.

“The grooms and guards will creep back to the stables and find nothing but indignant toads,” he said thoughtfully. “If they do anything it will be to round up and spank the bottoms of any small boys who happen to be handy, and they certainly will not interrupt a banquet to tell their king that they deserted their post because they were attacked by awful amphibians. In the morning Shih Hu should have a royal hangover. I doubt that any of us will be missed until afternoon at the earliest, and then they'll search the palace and the grounds. Night will intervene, and not until the following morning should they realize we're gone. We should have nearly two days’ head start, and we'll need every minute of it.”

I started out at a fast pace. We couldn't use the horse stations of the postal service until we reached Loshan, and the rugged country was familiar to the king but not to us. I remembered the display of severed heads on pikes and lengthened my stride.

It was slow going, because no amount of effort can speed you through mountainous terrain when you don't know the shortcuts. The distant landmarks Master Li checked seemed to grow no closer, and on the morning of the third day we noticed some monks who were watching us from a hillside. The monks turned and vanished. A few hours later we reached a place where we could see the distant rooftop of the monastery. I thought I saw something lift from the roof and streak through the sky back toward Chao, but I couldn't be sure. Grief of Dawn's eyes was almost as sharp as Moon Boy's ears, and she had no doubt about it.

“Pigeons,” she said softly. “Probably the king has sent messages to all the monasteries under his protection, and I think he's getting a reply.”

I seemed to hear galloping hooves and the rumble of chariot wheels, and I picked up the pace even more, but it was still a long way to Loshan. The following morning we stood on the crest of a hill and looked down at a river that was very peculiar. Half of the water was blue, and the other half was yellow.

“The Min,” said Master Li. “Yellow clay washes into it from the banks, and farther down it will be totally yellow. That's when it joins the Yangtze, just above Five Misery Rapids. Past the rapids is Loshan and the horse stations of the postal service.”

His face was grim and remained grim as he told me to get to the nearest village. There we bought a boat and a great deal of wine, and I noticed that the peasant who sold us the boat was acting rather peculiar when we climbed in and pushed off. He was smiling and bowing at first, but then the smile faded as we went out farther and farther toward the strong current in the center of the stream. Then he began to shout and wave his arms, and he tried to run after us as we reached the current and started rapidly downstream. The last I saw of him, he was on his knees making shamanistic gestures to release him from guilt.

“The perils of Five Misery Rapids are greatly overrated,” Master Li said calmly. “At least when you compare them to the perils of an angry Shih Hu and his Golden Girls. We shall, however, take a few precautions, and this is the first.”

With that he tossed the oars overboard. I yelped in dismay, and he tossed the pole overboard.

“Temptation,” Master Li said. “If we had poles or oars, we'd be tempted to use them, which would be suicidal. The second precaution is to get stinking drunk, and that, my children, is an order.”

Master Li opened wine jars. Moon Boy hoisted his enthusiastically, and Grief of Dawn and I did so dutifully. The water helped. Blue and yellow were blending in dizzying patterns, and in no time my head was spinning. Master Li and Moon Boy were quite mellow when we heard the sound, and Grief of Dawn and I were reeling. The sound was the roar of the Yangtze. Our little boat shot out into the great river and hit a current like a brick wall and spun around and began to race downstream. It was bouncing up and down like a bucking pony, and I was drunk enough to giggle at first. Then I saw what was coming at us and I stopped giggling and gaped in horror.

The water strikes Yenyu Rocks with enough force to send spray like a woman's hair flying sixty feet into the air. I discovered that my empty hands were frantically rowing imaginary oars, and Grief of Dawn was shoving with a nonexistent pole. I watched a log float out to the safe water we were trying to reach. Then the current caught the log full force and drove it into jagged rocks just beneath the surface, and two splintered pieces shot out and flew through the air and smashed ten feet up a sheer cliff at the bank. Our little boat, meanwhile, dashed straight toward Yenyu, hit the backwash, skidded around the sharp stone corners, and plowed through the woman's-hair spray without suffering a scratch.

Grief of Dawn and I grabbed for fresh wine jars.

The speed was incredible as we raced straight at and then past Fairy Girl Peak, where the rocks are shaped like a nude nymph, and the Frog, where a forty-foot plume of water shoots from a stone bullfrog mouth. We passed through the Shiling and Chutang gorges without incident. Master Li and Moon Boy had their arms around each other's shoulders and were roaring a bawdy song, and I was foolish enough to think the worst of it was over. Then I saw what was coming and nearly fainted. Wu Gorge was looming through the spray.

Day turned into night. We had shot into a gorge so narrow that only at noon could one see the sun in a tiny ribbon of sky at the top of towering cliffs. The narrower the Yangtze became, the faster it ran. The noise was beyond belief. A stinging mist mercifully blocked out the rocks that reached like fangs to tear us to pieces. If our bodies had been rigid with sobriety there wouldn't have been an unbroken bone, but we were as limp as sacks of meal. I would have preferred being unconscious, because Five Misery Rapids was leaping toward us at a hundred miles an hour.

Master Li happily waved his wine flask. “One!” he bellowed, and suddenly we were airborne. The little boat turned completely around twice as we sailed over the falls, and we hit the surface again with a splash that sent spray fifty feet up the sides of the cliffs. I somehow got my stomach back in place just as Master Li bellowed, “Two!” We ascended toward Heaven again, practically grazing one of the walls as we shot through the air. It was a long way down to the level below the second falls, and Grief of Dawn and I clung to each other in terror. No sooner had we landed and scraped ourselves up from the deck than we felt our stomachs say farewell again. “Three!” Master Li yelled, and we sailed out into space. I don't even remember landing. “Four!” Master Li yelled, and I opened my eyes to discover we were headed somewhere in the direction of Venus. The boat spun around as we descended, and we landed backward, which allowed me to notice that we had missed a rock like a fifty-foot saw by two inches. The boat spun around. Now I could see that we were hurtling toward the narrowest part of the gorge, and I stared at a spume of water that was wrapped in rainbows as it shot a hundred feet out into nothingness. We joined the spume. “Five!” Master Li bellowed. I realized that we were flying from Wu Gorge, sailing into a million acres of bright blue sky, and then the spray settled around us and we soared down blindly. Down and down and down, while I prayed we were still right side up. We hit with a shock that nearly drove me through the bottom of the boat.

I think I was stunned, because it took some time for me to get my scrambled senses functioning, and then I wondered what was wrong. The noise had gone. The boat was peacefully floating upon placid water. I had the distinct sensation that I was about to be devoured by an enormous mouth, and I sat up and stared at the serene smile of the Great Stone Buddha of Loshan: three hundred sixty feet high, carved in the side of Yellow Buffalo Mountain at the safe end of Wu Gorge. Five Misery Rapids was behind us, and so was the King of Chao, and the only problems were Master Li and Moon Boy.

They wanted to go back and do it again, but Grief of Dawn and I sat on them until they regained their senses.