“Oh no!” Lotus Cloud cried.
“Oh yes,” said Master Li. “She had three handmaidens who were as innocent as she was. The slimy fellow bought three marvelous trinkets from the Old Man of the Mountain, as well as three feathers that precisely resembled the feathers of the Kings of Birds. Then he disguised himself as a lame peddler and he approached the handmaidens with some sort of tale—he worshipped the princess from afar, for example, and would give anything to own something that she had touched—and he offered to give the marvelous trinkets to the maidens if they would do him one small favor. Simply substitute the feathers in his hand for the feathers on Jade Pearl's crown, and bring the real ones back to him.”
“They would never do such a thing!” Lotus Cloud said indignantly.
“Did the girls know that the feathers on the crown were important?” the Key Rabbit wondered.
“The Key Rabbit has put his finger on it,” Master Li said approvingly. “The handmaidens didn't know that the feathers were those of the Kings of Birds, and one should remember that this was a thousand years ago, when feathers were used to decorate headgear of all sorts, including crowns. Why should it be a terrible crime to substitute new decorations for old ones? Besides, those trinkets were truly irresistible. But the handmaidens were firm on one point. The peddler must swear a binding oath that if for any reason the princess wanted her old feathers back, he must return them in exchange for the trinkets. Of course he took no chance of that happening. One by one they returned with the feathers, and one by one he handed them the trinkets, and one by one he stabbed them to the heart.”
Lotus Cloud began to cry. “Poor girls,” she sniffled. “Poor faithless handmaidens.”
“And poor Princess of Birds,” said Master Li. “I would imagine that the slimy fellow committed his crimes on the seventh day of the seventh moon, so that Heaven would have no warning. Jade Pearl had been commanded to return to her husband, so she called to the birds of China, but the birds could no longer hear her because she no longer wore the feathers. Poor little princess. Calling birds that did not come, turning around helplessly, gazing up at the Great River where her husband waited—and waited in vain, because the seventh day of the seventh moon had come and gone. A vow had been made, a vow had been broken, and the Princess of Birds passed from the protection of Heaven. Then it was a very easy matter for a sly fellow in a peddler's robe to steal a crown from a simple peasant girl.”
“Tragedies terrify me!” the Key Rabbit wailed.
“I'm afraid that it gets worse,” Master Li sighed. “The slimy fellow returned to the Old Man of the Mountain, who removed his heart. Now he was invulnerable, and so long as he held the crown, he would never age. As the centuries passed he bought many secrets from the Old Man of the Mountain, and his power grew. And you, my dear Key Rabbit, know him better than any of us, because he became the Duke of Ch'in, and he has been sitting upon the throne ever since, concealed behind a golden mask.”
I grabbed the Key Rabbit in mid-fall, and Lotus Cloud waved smelling salts.
“The same duke throughout the centuries!” he gasped when he had recovered. “One thing I beg of you. Do not force me to see the face behind the mask, for it must be the most terrible face in the world!”
“Well, maybe not, because we are talking about a very unusual man,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “He burned the books of China and massacred millions to erase all records of the Princess of Birds, but why did he bother? She had already passed from the protection of Heaven, so millions died for no good reason whatsoever. He built a castle with thirty-six imperial bedrooms to confuse assassins, but the assassins couldn't harm him because he was invulnerable. He lives only for money, but does he guard his hoards with iron vaults and armies? He does not. He guards them with labyrinths and monsters that might have come from children's books, and while the monsters are frightening, they are not very effective. Great Buddha, any half-witted staff sergeant could plan better defenses!”
“Do you think that he is crazy?” Lotus Cloud whispered.
“Oh, not at all,” said Master Li. “This is a fellow who arranged things so that anyone who went after him would have to wander through the landscape of a homicidal fairy tale, which makes no sense if you think of him as a great and powerful ruler, but which makes perfect sense if you think of him as he once was: a cowardly little boy lying in bed at night, staring in terror at every noise and seeing monsters in every shadow. He grew older, but it can scarcely be said that he grew up, because he was so frightened at the thought of death that he was willing to commit any crime, and even to lose his heart if it would keep him from the Great Wheel of Transmigrations. There is one more thing about the Duke of Ch'in that is perhaps the strangest of all.”
Li Kao reached into his belt and pulled out the gems that I had picked up along with the casket: a diamond, a ruby, a pearl, and an emerald. He placed them upon the table.
“Key Rabbit, look at this stuff,” he said. “We have been talking about a little boy who lives only for money, yet he employs you as Assessor of Ch'in. You are forced to impose his fines, and collect his share of every transaction, and accompany him on tax trips and determine what every village owes. Night after night he forces you to stay in his treasure chambers and count every penny of his loot. The mysterious Duke of Ch'in, who lives only for money, has arranged matters so that his Assessor must spend far more time with it than he does. Peculiar, isn't it?”
“Lotus Cloud was right. He's crazy,” I said firmly.
“As a matter of fact, he isn't,” Master Li replied. “You see, everything would fit neatly into place—the money, the monsters, the labyrinths and other trappings of fairy tales, the lack of sensible precautions and the ridiculous precautions where none are needed—if the right kind of face were concealed behind the mask. Suppose that hiding behind a terrible snarl of a tiger…”
Master Li leaned forward. His voice was hypnotic, and his eyes were as cold as a cobra's.
“Was the face of a frightened rabbit,” he whispered.
Li Kao's eyes had warned me to leap, and all I needed to know was where. I smashed the Key Rabbit to the floor, and Li Kao's hands darted out and snatched a chain and jerked a key up over the Key Rabbit's head. We had once become entangled in that chain, and at the end of it was a key that was shaped like a flower, with sixteen tiny points. Li Kao pulled a golden casket from beneath his tunic. A casket that contained the heart of the Duke of Ch'in, and that was secured by a pressure lock shaped like a flower, with sixteen tiny slits. Each point had to fit into each slit with precisely the right amount of pressure, and Li Kao's forehead wrinkled with concentration as he applied the key to the lock.
Lotus Cloud, who was not the screaming type, was screaming her head off, and outside in the garden the dogs were going insane. When I lifted from the floor I was not riding upon the back of a man, but on the back of a snarling, clawing tiger.
I was in the best position that I could manage, with my arms wrapped around the tiger's throat and my teeth buried in the fur on its neck, and we went bounding around the room while Master Li struggled with the lock, and I am alive today because the Duke of Ch'in was unquestionably the stupidest of all the pupils of the Old Man of the Mountain. When he discovered that he was not dislodging me as a tiger he transformed himself into a serpent, and then into a wild boar, and then into an enormous spider, and all the while I was praying: “August Personage of Jade, cleanse this idiot's mind of all memory of scorpions!” I could almost feel the lethal tail whipping around to impale me like a bug. “Wipe his brain of all images of porcupines, cacti, quicksand, and carnivorous plants!” I don't know whether or not the August Personage of Jade had anything to do with it, but certainly the duke wasn't reading my mind at the moment because he obligingly transformed himself into a crocodile. Unfortunately, the lashing tail knocked Li Kao beneath a heavy table that collapsed on top of him, and the casket and the key went spinning across the floor. I spat out a mouthful of tiger fur, boar's bristles, spider hair, and crocodile scales.