The scene I want to describe is very humiliating. I had to warm up the audience without the help of Master Li and Yu Lan, so I pretended to be on the verge of defeat a couple of times, and then pretended I was losing both temper and judgment when I doubled the wager, and the crowd got quite excited. The noise drew distinguished visitors. I looked up to see the Grand Warden of Yen-men sneering at me, with a party of noblemen and one fellow dressed as a commoner.
“Professional wrestler, eh?” the warden said jovially. “Bill yourself as Muck-Muck the Mule, or some such, eh? Buddha, look at all those bulging things! Muck-Muck the Muscle-bound Mule, eh?”
His entourage treated that as the apex of humor, but I happened to notice that the warden’s shifty little eyes didn’t laugh when his mouth did, and there was something cowardly and cruel in his voice when he volunteered to provide a friend of his as my next opponent. The friend turned out to be the commoner, and a minute later I reached two decisions. The first was that the commoner’s familiar manner suggested a relationship with the grand warden that was far more than friendly, and the second was that he wasn’t human.
He was a good deal shorter than I was, but I guessed he was actually heavier. His head seemed to be rammed down on his shoulders without benefit of neck. I’ve been told I look like that too, but this creature also had little in the way of discernible shoulders, waist, hips, or thighs. The bastard was all of a piece, one solid tube of sinuous muscle from his jaw to his knees, and then tapering only slightly from his knees to his feet. As he stripped to his loincloth a bee landed on his left shoulder, and instead of brushing it away he simply shuddered his flesh donkey-style, the entire hide twitching effortlessly, under total muscular control.
“Number Ten Ox,” I said silently, “you are in bad, bad trouble.”
The creature stood surveying me with glittering, expressionless eyes, and when a smooth ripple of muscles sent him gliding to the challenger’s place in the ring I dubbed him the Snake. The warden had claimed the judge’s flag as a prerogative of rank. He suddenly dropped it to catch me off guard, but that’s exactly what I’d expected him to do and I was ready. I decided there wasn’t any point looking for weakness in a snake, so I was airborne the moment the flag started down, twisting in midair to aim a vicious leg whip at the reptile’s ankles. He hadn’t expected it. He simply dropped a hand and slapped my extended foot so hard that I spun around like a cordless kite and crashed to earth in a cloud of dust. I managed a backflip and landed crouched in a defensive position, but he wasn’t bothering to attack me. He was waiting for me to come and entertain him again, and this time he was so contemptuous he didn’t try to stop me when I went for a waist hold. That’s when I discovered the slick shine of his flesh wasn’t an optical illusion. My hands slipped helplessly over oil, and with another effortless donkey shudder he’d sent me spinning harmlessly away.
What kind of creature walks around covered with oil? I didn’t get a chance to think it over. The Snake stepped forward and the next thing I knew I was sailing up toward the clouds, and then I was looking at them upside down, and then I returned to earth with a crash that knocked the breath from my body. He could have finished me then and there, of course, but he was gliding snakelike around the ring as he bowed to the applause of the warden and his entourage. I used the opportunity to dig up handfuls of dirt, and I lunged when his back was turned and managed to smear the stuff around his waist. Now my hands had dirt to cling to, and before it became oily mud I got a full grip and heaved, harder than I ever had in my life, and I managed to get full extension. The Snake was poised in the air above my head as I strutted around the ring, and then I tossed him down at the warden’s feet with everything I had.
I sometimes wonder how I’ve survived this long with a couple of plover’s eggs masquerading as brains. There I was bowing to the bandits, swollen like a blowfish in my conceit, but since when do you incapacitate a reptile by tossing it to the ground? You annoy it, that’s what you do, and when I was able to think again I had a dim impression of having been struck by a cyclone. I flew this way and bounced that way and flipped over and over, and then I was lying flat on my back and the Snake was seated comfortably behind me. He had my arms pulled backward and pinned, and his legs were wrapped around my neck, and slowly, very slowly, he was squeezing them as a constrictor tightens coils around its dinner.
The Grand Warden of Goose Gate was leaning over me, watching. His tongue flicked out and licked his lips, and he was making little snickering sounds as he waited for me to perform a song for him. It was to be the drumming of my heels against the ground as breath left me, faster and faster and then slower and slower, and then silence. I couldn’t hear anything except a muffled gong sound in my ears, but suddenly the pressure lessened and allowed me to breathe a little, and I realized the warden had looked away and up, and then I saw a beautiful and terrible figure looming above me. It was Yu Lan, and she had wrapped the aura of her priesthood around her like shining armor, and her eyes flashed with anger.
“Would you arouse the sickness demons that are attacking the body of your wife?” she said to the warden, snapping each word like the crack of a whip. “You have asked aid of the Mysteries of Wu, and taken vows of purity until a cure is accomplished, and now you dare to kill?” Her hair was actually rising like cat’s fur, and if I hadn’t been in my current position I would have cringed like a whipped dog. “Know you not that you run the risk of angering the Three Corpses and Nine Worms inside your own body, and of visiting upon yourself the very Death Spirit you incite? Release him, and pray to the gods for their forgiveness.”
She made a commanding gesture. The Snake looked to the warden for guidance, and the warden looked at the Snake—very much the gaze of bedmates—and then the warden nodded. The pressure relaxed completely and my arms were freed. I managed to sit up and massage my neck, and the warden and the Snake and the entourage strode away. Yu Lan also turned and walked off through ranks of bandits who nervously jumped aside to let her pass.
Master Li had arrived when Yu Lan did, and in case awe and moral superiority needed some support he’d taken a crossbow from a bandit and had the Snake in the notched sights. Now he bent over and examined my bruises.
“Nothing broken,” he said cheerfully. “The only thing damaged is your pride, and I wouldn’t lose sleep over that if I were you. That fellow simply isn’t human.”
“Soivnzd,” I wheezed, which is as close as I could come to “So I’ve noticed.”
So the stage was set for our arrival in Yen-men, with Master Li and Yu Lan invited to enter the palace walls to treat the grand warden’s sick bride, and Yen Shih automatically welcomed as a puppeteer, with me as assistant, and also arriving would be Li the Cat, and waiting for us would be the Snake, and I had a powerful premonition that the combination was going to be interesting.
9
The palace at Yen-men was a great gloomy place complete with a drawbridge and a moat, built to withstand sieges during the wars of the Three Kingdoms many centuries ago. I was interested to see that Master Li and Yu Lan looked the place over, came to some sort of unspoken agreement, and arranged to see the grand warden’s sick wife immediately. When they emerged from the bedchamber Master Li said “Parasites?” and Yu Lan said, “Almost certainly.” Then they closely questioned the lady’s maids, following which they examined some ornamental ponds that were scattered here and there in the gardens. They prepared a vial of some odorous liquid and made sure that the sick woman drank it, and Master Li said, “That should do it.”