So did I. I scrambled up to the top of the wall and peered around.
“I see the oasis!” I cried. “There's a lake of lava covering the back of the palace, so we'll have to try to reach the oasis through the side streets.”
That wasn't as simple as it sounded. Time and again we came to dead ends where scalding steam or bubbling lava blocked the way, and we were not the only ones who had reached dead ends. Skeletons, chewed to pieces in their useless armor, littered almost every side street.
“Whatever that thing was, it certainly ate well,” Miser Shen said nervously.
We tried street after street with no success, and finally we were almost back where we had entered the city. Li Kao looked at the huge bronze gates and the narrow span of bridge and shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps we had better go back across the moat and see if there is another bridge on the side where the oasis is,” he said.
We started forward, and then we stopped and gaped with eyes that nearly popped from the sockets. Those gates weighed tons. Nothing was touching them, but they were creaking shut! They came together with a terrible crash of metal, and a mark appeared in the layer of salt upon the ground. It took several moments for my brain to believe what my eyes were showing me. I was staring at the print of an enormous thumb, and four huge fingerprints followed, and then an immense sliding mark. An enormous invisible hand was crawling toward us, dragging the palm and heel behind the terrible fingers!
Miser Shen and I stood rooted to the spot in horror, but Master Li whirled around and gazed back at the tangle of the side streets. Then he yelled, “Ox, pick us up!”
I scooped up Master Li in one arm and Miser Shen in the other, and Master Li grabbed the dragon pendant that dangled from the chain around my neck. His fingers found the place where the dragon had stopped after leading us to the treasure trove.
“I should have realized at once that this place was another labyrinth,” he said grimly. “Turn into the second street on the right, and I would advise you to hurry.”
Even though I was carrying the two of them I doubt that my record for the course will be surpassed until a Tibetan snow leopard tries it, but the Hand That No One Sees was almost as fast. Those great invisible fingers were stretching out twenty or thirty feet, and salt was billowing up behind the sliding palm. “First left!” Master Li yelled. “Second left!… Fourth right!… Third left!… First right!… ” I panted through the maze, leaping over lava and darting around geysers of steam, and at last I saw the tops of green trees and realized that the dragon was leading us to the oasis. Then I skidded to a halt.
“May Buddha have mercy on our souls!” howled Miser Shen.
There was the beautiful green oasis, right in front of us, but it was encircled by a moat of bubbling lava. A narrow stone bridge led safely across the fiery rock, but the Hand That No One Sees had taken a shortcut. The bridge was far too narrow for the monster to cross, but that would do us no good unless we were on the other side, and I stared in horror at the salt on the ground in front of the bridge. Great invisible fingers pawed, and salt billowed, and then the Hand from Hell began crawling toward us, blocking any path to the oasis.
At the edge of the moat was the only upright building that we had seen, a watchtower, probably, tall and narrow and teetering upon cracked stone slabs. I unceremoniously dumped Li Kao and Miser Shen and raced up and put my shoulder to the thing. I heaved with everything that I had, and the tower began to tilt. Then I heaved with more than I had, and when I heard a snapping sound I assumed that my spine had split in half. Instead it was one of the supporting slabs that had split, and the tall tower dissolved into a shower of stones that toppled down into the moat.
The lava was nearly as dense as the stones, and they sank very slowly. I ran back and scooped up Li Kao and Miser Shen, and then I raced to the edge of the moat and jumped. My feet touched the first stone and I vaulted to the second. My sandals were smoking and my lungs were raw from bubbling sulphur as I hopped from stone to stone, and the last one had nearly sunk out of sight. I sent a prayer to the August Personage of Jade and leaped, and my toes touched the searing surface and I leaped again, and perhaps the August Personage of Jade gave me a helpful shove because I landed with my face buried in green grass.
I was dimly aware that Master Li and Miser Shen were shouting in my ears and pounding my back, but the world was spinning before my eyes, and I felt as though I were falling down a hole that had no end. Then a cool, peaceful blackness closed around me.
19. Bamboo Dragonfly
I awoke to see Li Kao smiling down at me, and Miser Shen tilted a gourd filled with delicious spring water to my lips. It revived me as if by magic. Soon I was able to get up and examine the little oasis, which had clearly been used as a pleasure garden.
Trees and shrubs from every corner of the empire had been planted there, and the variety was astonishing. Silver bells had once tinkled in the branches, and paper lanterns had glowed in the night like fireflies, and lovers had walked hand in hand through mazes of moonflowers. Then the horrible eruption, and the Hand That No One Sees. I wondered what terrible crime the city had committed to deserve such a fate, but then I decided that I didn't want to know. I turned around and shuddered as I saw the marks of invisible fingers angrily pawing in the salt at the other end of the narrow bridge. The Hand was waiting.
A clear path led through wildflowers toward the bronze roof of a pagoda that sparkled in the light of the setting sun. We started toward it, and as we drew closer we saw that the pagoda had escaped destruction because it was nearly solid stone. Only the wooden doors had rotted away. The sun sank below the horizon, but the moon had already lifted into the sky, and a pale path of moonbeams reached through the hole where the door had been and touched something that sparkled. Tears began to trickle down Miser Shen's cheeks as he stared at a pile of treasure that was even larger than the one at the Castle of the Labyrinth.
“Cured!” he cried joyfully. “I could not be sure before, but now when I look at this loot, my fingers itch only for the pearls and jade, and that is because I would like to give them to Lotus Cloud.”
Li Kao's eyes met mine, and I nodded. Both of us had instinctively studied the top of the pile of treasure for a ghost shadow, and there it was. I was getting rather good at it, and the shadow blanket lifted easily over my head.
I was looking at the same ghost! No, not the same, but dressed in the same ancient fashion, and with the same streak of blood where a blade had pierced her heart. Again I sensed that she was making a terrible effort to appear before us, and I felt the same searing wave of agony when her lips parted.
“Take pity upon a faithless handmaiden,” she whispered. “Is not a thousand years enough?” Ghost tears like transparent pearls trickled down her cheeks. “I swear that I did not know what I had done!” she sobbed. “Oh, take pity, and exchange this for the feather. The birds must fly.”
Then she was gone.
Miser Shen had seen nothing, and he gazed in wonder at the stunned expressions on our faces. I snarled and scrambled up the pile, and slid back down with an identical jade casket in my hands. I jerked the lid open, and then I cried out in despair.
Inside was not the Heart of Power, which was supposed to be the ultimate, but two more tiny tendrils. They were the Arms of the Great Root, and if the Legs had failed, what more could we expect from the Arms? The ginseng aroma made my eyes water, and I turned the casket upside down. Something else fell to the floor.
Li Kao got down on his knees and carefully examined a tiny crystal ball, about the size of the miniature flute.