The Castle of the Labyrinth lies in ruins now, a great gray mass of shattered slabs and twisted iron scattered across the crest of a cliff overlooking the Yellow Sea. There the tide is the strongest in China, and the tumbled stones shudder with the force of the waves. Vines have covered the splintered steel gates, and lizards with rainbow bellies and turquoise eyes cling to the fragments of walls, and spiders scuttle through the eternal shadows cast by banana and bamboo. The spiders that currently occupy the castle are huge, hairy, and harmless. The previous occupants were equally grotesque but not so harmless, and when I first saw the Castle of the Labyrinth it was standing in all its glory.
The barge that we traveled on was inching through a dense morning fog toward the junction with the Yellow Sea, and harsh commanding voices seemed to be shouting right in my ears. The air vibrated with great metallic crashes and the clash of a thousand weapons, and the heavy tread of marching feet. Then the fog began to lift, and my eyes lifted with it up the side of a sheer cliff to the most powerful fortress in the world; vast, moated, turreted, impregnable. I stared in horror at towers that scraped the clouds, and at immense steel gates that glittered like terrible fangs, and at a central drawbridge that could accommodate four squadrons of cavalry riding abreast. The great stone walls were so thick that the men who patrolled on top on horseback looked like ants riding small spiders, and ironshod hooves dislodged rocks that tumbled down the cliff and splashed in the water around the barge. One of them banged upon the roof of the cabin where Li Kao was sleeping off an overdose of wine, and he stumbled out on deck and gazed up, rubbing his eyes.
“Revolting architecture, isn't it?” he said with a yawn. “The first duke had no aesthetic sense whatsoever. What's the matter, Ox? A slight hangover?”
“Just a mild headache,” I said in a tiny terrified voice.
As the fog continued to fade away, I gazed fearfully toward what must surely be the gloomiest and ghastliest city on earth, and I began to question my sanity when I heard the happy songs of fishermen and sniffed a breeze that was fragrant with a billion blossoms. And then the fog lifted completely and I stared in disbelief at a city so lovely that it might have been the setting of a fairy tale.
“Strange, isn't it?” said Master Li. “Ch'in is beautiful beyond compare, and it is also the safest city in all China. The reason, oddly enough, is greed.”
He took a morning-after sip of wine and belched contentedly.
“Every single one of the first duke's successors has lived only for money, and at first their methods of acquiring it were crude but effective,” he explained. “Once a year the reigning duke would choose a village at random, burn it to the ground, and decapitate the inhabitants. Then the duke and his army would set forth upon the annual tax trip. The severed heads led the way, mounted upon pikes, and the eagerness with which peasants lined up to pay taxes was a source of great gratification to the Dukes of Ch'in. Sooner or later an enlightened duke was bound to appear, however, and it is said that the one who has gone down in history as the Good Duke suddenly jumped to his feet during a council with his ministers, shot a hand into the air, and bellowed, ‘Corpses cannot pay taxes!’ This divine revelation produced a change of tactics.”
Li Kao offered me some wine, but I declined.
“The Good Duke and his successors continued to murder peasants for fun and profit, and the annual tax trip continues to this day, but the wealthy were allowed to fill the dukes’ coffers as a matter of free choice,” he explained. “The Good Duke simply transformed his gloomy coastal town into the greatest and most expensive pleasure city on earth. Ox, every luxury and vice known to man is available at Ch'in at exorbitant prices, and the cost is more than offset by the fact that the dukes will not tolerate crime, which might divert coins from their own pockets. As a result the rich do not have to hire large private armies of guards, and in Ch'in and in Ch'in alone a wealthy man can lead a carefree existence. So long as a man spends freely, he has nothing to fear from the rulers of the Castle of the Labyrinth, and it is only a slight exaggeration to say that you and I are about to enter Paradise on Earth.”
I will describe the city later on, but our first task was to find out who might be able to get us into the labyrinth and out again, and we discovered him inside an hour after we docked.
Every place of business was equipped with an iron chest with the duke's tiger emblem stamped upon it. Half of the coins from every transaction went into the chest and half into the proprietor's cash box, and somebody had to collect the duke's share. The position of Assessor of Ch'in had to rank very high among the most miserable occupations on earth, and the fellow who was stuck with it was universally known as the Key Rabbit—inescapably so, because he was a cringing little man with pink-rimmed eyes and a long pink nose that twitched in permanent terror, and as he pattered through the streets he was festooned with jangling chains of keys.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” the poor fellow whimpered as he trotted into wineshops and brothels and gambling dens. “O dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he wailed as he trotted back out again.
He was followed by a platoon of soldiers and two carts, one to hold the loot and the other to hold the massive scrolls that listed every rule and regulation in the duke's domain. Magistrates could impose sentences, but only the Assessor could impose fines, and it was generally agreed that if the Key Rabbit missed a point of law that cost the duke one penny he would shortly be missing his head.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he whined as he trotted into the Lucky Gambler Cricket Fighting Arena. He searched through his thousands of keys for the right one, unlocked the chest, counted the coins, checked the records to see if the amount was suspiciously low, conferred with spies to confirm that no cheating had taken place, relocked the chest, and pattered down the street to the next place of business. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he whimpered, which was a reasonable comment because if the duke's share was off by a penny, his head would also be off.
As the sun set over the Castle of the Labyrinth the Key Rabbit pattered up the path to the duke's treasure chambers, where clerks counted the coins, and then as often as not he would be forced to spend the night recounting the loot to make sure that the clerks hadn't pocketed a penny. Who had to accompany the Duke of Ch'in on the annual tax trip and determine how much was owed by each village? The Key Rabbit, of course, and it was common knowledge that if he failed to squeeze the final grain of rice from the peasants he would fail to keep his head.
That should have been enough grief for anyone, but not for the Key Rabbit. In a moment of raving insanity, he had married.
“Don't misunderstand me,” said the old lady who was filling our ears with the gossip of the town. “Lotus Cloud is a dear, sweet country girl with the kindest heart in the world, but she was not prepared for the seductions of city life, and she has fallen victim to insatiable greed. Her husband, who has not one penny to call his own, cannot even relax when his wife takes a wealthy lover, because she is sure to bankrupt the fellow in a week. The Key Rabbit has decided that he committed some horrible crime in a previous incarnation, and he is being punished by marriage to the most expensive woman in the whole world.”
For once my ignorant mind was keeping pace with that of Li Kao.
“The key to the labyrinth is the Key Rabbit, and the key to the Key Rabbit is his wife,” said Master Li as we strolled away. “I'd do it myself if I were ninety, but it appears that Lotus Cloud will be your department. You may console yourself with the thought that the most expensive woman in the world is likely to be the most beautiful.”