“Number Ten Ox, we are witnessing a crime so terrible as to transcend belief,” he said hoarsely. “The Duke of Ch'in murdered those poor girls, and then he bound them with a spell that would force them to defend the heart of their murderer. Since he fully intends to live forever, he has sentenced three innocent girls to eternal damnation.”
He was so angry that he was turning purple.
“Not even the Emperor of Heaven has the right to sentence anyone to eternal damnation!” he said furiously. “There must be a trial, and the accused must be defended, and the Yama Kings must concur in the verdict before such a terrible sentence can be imposed!”
I growled and pulled the casket from the sack at my waist. When I held the icy thing to my ear I heard a faint thump… thump… thump…
“Shall I slice it or squeeze it?” I snarled.
The question was academic. Li Kao went to work with his lockpicks, but he had never encountered a lock like that one. It was the most complicated pressure lock that he had ever seen, and nothing but the proper key could open it. A dagger could not scratch the casket. I smashed it to the stone with all the strength that I had, and I couldn't even dent it. Friction could not produce the slightest trace of warmth upon the icy surface. I hurled the casket down and we sat there and stared at it. Apparently when I had grabbed the casket from the niche I had taken a few jewels as well, and Li Kao slowly reached out and picked them up: a diamond, a ruby, a pearl, and an emerald. He stared at them wonderingly.
“Checkmate,” he said softly. “I told you that the August Personage of Jade was going to tie the two quests into a nice neat knot. There is only one way that we can escape from this tower, and we are going to have to make a sacred vow.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“To find a raindrop in a thunderstorm, or a petal in a field of flowers, or a grain of sand concealed among a billion on a beach,” Master Li whispered. “I am a dolt. My poor brains have turned to butter. Ox, since I can no longer trust what I used to call a mind, do you happen to remember the names of the handmaidens of the Princess of Birds?”
“Snowgoose,” I said slowly. “Little Ping… and Autumn Moon.”
Li Kao put the jewels into a seashell on his smuggler's belt and had me replace the casket in the sack and tie it securely to my waist. Then he painfully got to his feet and faced the poor girls who slowly circled the tower.
“Snowgoose,” he said quietly, “Little Ping, Autumn Moon, listen to me. The quest is almost at an end. We have the flute and the ball and the bell. I know where to find the three feathers of the Kings of Birds. I know where to find the golden crown. Now I know where to find the Princess of Birds. You must let us pass. You must fight as no one has ever fought before, and let us safely reach the shore.”
I stared at him stupidly. He took a deep breath.
“Handmaidens, if you can defeat the spell and let us pass, I swear by all that is holy, and in the sacred name of the August Personage of Jade, that the birds will fly!” Master Li yelled. “On the seventh day of the seventh moon the birds of China will fly!”
I doubt that I can ever again be decently impressed by courage, because I have been privileged to witness courage that passes mortal comprehension. Li Kao's voice echoed back from the spires of the tragic city and faded into silence. Then the bodies of the murdered girls began to spin in the water. At first I thought that they were out of control, but then I realized that they were spinning in order to wrap their hair tightly around their bodies.
I felt a searing wave of pain that nearly knocked me into the water, and while I could not hear the screams of the handmaidens in my ears, I could hear them in my heart. Master Li hopped upon my back and I dived into the water and swam toward the distant shore. A soul-shaking agony surrounded the spinning girls, and scream after scream ripped through my heart, and the water turned choppy from the jerks of their bodies. I passed so close to one of them that I could see her tears and see that she was jerking in agony hard enough to snap her spine. And then I plowed ahead and they faded behind me. The handmaidens did not give up their terrible fight until I crawled up to safety upon the sandy bank.
We faced the maidens and banged our heads against the ground, but Li Kao did not have time to honor them properly.
“Ox, we are bound by a sacred vow, and it's time to find out how much strain those muscles of yours can bear,” he said grimly. “The Castle of the Labyrinth is halfway across China, but we must reach it by the seventh day of the seventh moon. Can you do it?”
“Master Li, get on my back,” I said.
He climbed up and I turned and faced south, and then I set off at a gallop.
In the late afternoon of the seventh day of the seventh moon we stood upon a sandy beach and gazed across the water toward a sheer cliff upon which loomed the great hulking mass of the Castle of the Labyrinth. Sunlight was shining through dark clouds and turning the Yellow Sea into molten gold, but a high wind was whipping the bay into hard choppy waves, and seagulls were sailing like snowflakes across a sky that promised rain. I could not possibly carry Master Li across those waves without killing one or both of us, and I stared at him with stricken eyes.
“I rather think that help is on the way,” he said calmly, pointing toward a small flotilla of boats that was rapidly skimming toward us.
The lead boat was a tiny fishing vessel with a bright red sail, and it was being bombarded by spears and arrows. The wind whipped screams of rage toward our ears. “My purse!… My jade belt buckle!… Grandmother's life savings!… Powdered bat manure does not cure arthritis!… My gold earrings!… There wasn't a pea under any of those shells!… Bring back my false teeth!”
The little boat ran aground practically at our feet, and two gentlemen of low appearance climbed out and shook their fists at the pursuing fleet.
“How dare you accuse us of fraud!” screamed Pawnbroker Fang.
“We shall sue!” howled Ma the Grub.
The howling mob scrambled ashore, and Ma and Fang took to their heels. We climbed into the little fishing boat and shoved off, and the wind obligingly shifted around and caught the sail. We raced across the waves while the sunlight was extinguished, and lightning flickered across the sky, and rain began to fall. The cliff loomed in front of us, and I steered between jagged rocks and found a place where we could land.
The wind was shrieking around us, and the rain was so heavy that I could barely see as I swung a rope around my head and sent a grappling hook flying up the side of the cliff. On the third try I caught a rock that held the hook securely, and Master Li hopped up on my back and I began to climb. The sheer stone was slippery in the rain, but we had to take chances if we were to reach the labyrinth before the tide did.
We just made it. I climbed over the ledge into the little cave where we had found the first of the duke's treasure troves, and I secured a hook and a rope and climbed down the stone chimney into the labyrinth. Li Kao lit a torch and looked around thoughtfully.
“It's a pity that we no longer have the dragon pendant,” he observed mildly. “If ever I could use the ironclad memory of Henpecked Ho, it would be now.”
Master Li's mental processes were as alien to me as the inner thoughts of Buddha. He never wavered, even though he had to retrace every twist and turn and do it backward, and I trotted behind him listening nervously for the first metallic snarl of the tiger. The duke had not been idle since his return from the tax trip. The air reeked with blood and rotting flesh, and fresh corpses stared blindly down at us from crevices in the ceiling. I stared in terror at dark streaks that were sliding across the floor, and back in the blackness a tiger began to growl.