Part 15 (2/2)
It was all up to Henpecked Ho, and his timing couldn't have been better. The executioner turned and fled. Ho jerked his leg chain taut and the executioner tripped and fell to the floor, where he was pounded into jelly by the feet of the fleeing soldiers who dashed back into the torture chamber, scooped up the Key Rabbit, who had just regained his consciousness and his feet, and carried him up the stairs like a minnow riding the quest of a tidal wave. ”Run for your lives!” they screamed. ”It is the plague of the ten thousand pestilential putrescences!” The pounding feet and shrieking voices faded away and Henpecked Ho collected the keys from the flattened form of the executioner. His eyes were worried as he unlocked his leg chain and started to work on ours.
”Do you think that I overdid the saliva?” he asked in a small voice.
”It was perfect,” I said.
”Do you really think so? I was afraid that the final spurt and dribble might appear to be in poor taste.”
”When you do it again, don't change a single spurt or dribble,” Master Li said firmly.
The last chain fell away, and it felt marvelous to stand up and stretch my limbs. We walked into the torture chamber and collected weapons. Li Kao filled his belt with daggers, and I took a sword and a spear. Henpecked Ho had his heart set on the monstrous axe that was used for decapitation, but since he was quite incapable of lifting it, he was forced to settle for a small double-bladed model. Li Kao started leisurely for the stairs.
”There is no hurry,” he explained. ”The soldiers from the torture chamber will have collected the soldiers on the landings, and by the time they burst into the palace they will have become a large screaming mob. Anyone who isn't trampled flat will dash into the courtyard, where they will collect a couple of divisions from the army of the Ancestress, and when they hit the wall I doubt that a stone will remain standing. They will then collect the army of the Duke of Ch'in and bolt hysterically through the city and reduce it to rubble, and the citizens who survive will follow in their wake. It is quite possible that we will have to walk to Hangchow before we see another living soul.”
There was a flaw in his reasoning. We climbed the stairs and saw nothing but a few flattened bodies, but when we stepped through the door to the throne room, we ran right into a creature who would not have blinked an eye if the South China Sea had suddenly turned into soy sauce. A bloated figure with a crown on her head leveled a finger like a sausage.
”There is no such thing as the plague of the ten thousand pestilential putrescences,” the Ancestress snarled. ”Soldiers, chop these dogs to pieces!”
Her bodyguards closed in on all sides, and we would have been killed instantly if it hadn't been for Henpecked Ho. He whooped with joy and charged straight toward the throne, and his axe was whirling so swiftly above his head that if he had spurted a little flame and smoke he would have resembled the Bamboo Dragonfly.
”Chop-chop!” he howled happily. ”Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”
Of course he ran right into the spears of the soldiers. We gave him up for dead, but the distraction allowed us to clear a path. Li Kao filled the air with flying daggers and four soldiers fell. ”Quick, Master Li, climb upon my back!” I yelled. He hopped up and I raced straight toward the throne, planted the b.u.t.t of my spear, vaulted over the head of the Ancestress, and took to my heels.
It was a losing game. The soldiers knew the palace and we did not, and sooner or later we were going to reach a dead end. I raced up staircases while Li Kao s.n.a.t.c.hed vases from pedestals and smashed them over the heads of the soldiers below, but there were simply too many soldiers. I ran down a long hallway and tugged at a pair of ma.s.sive bronze doors. They were locked. I turned and started back, and skidded to a halt as the hallway filled with soldiers. Two columns of men started toward us along the walls, while the captain of the bodyguards led a double rank down the center. We stared at a solid line of glittering spears, and I consigned my humble soul to the August Personage of Jade.
Then an elephant charged into the hall and squashed the captain flat. At least I thought it was an elephant until I realized that it was the Ancestress, and I gaped at an incredible sight.
”Chop-chop!” yelled Henpecked Ho. ”Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”
He had no right to be alive. Blood spurted from twenty wounds with every step that he took, but he kept right on taking them. ”Save me!” the Ancestress howled, and then her five hundred pounds flattened three more soldiers who might have saved her. It was over in a few minutes.
The Ancestress ran around in circles and squashed everything in front of her, and Henpecked Ho swung his axe and whacked everything in sight, and Li Kao slipped through the carnage slitting throats, and I flailed away with my sword. Toward the end it became rather messy, because we were slipping and sliding upon pieces of the Ancestress, and there was a lot of Ancestress to go around. Then we staggered away from the last fallen soldier and knelt beside Henpecked Ho.
He lay on his back with his axe still clutched in his hands. His life was draining away in red rivulets, and his face was ashen, and his eyes strained to focus on us.
”Did I get her?” he whispered.
”Ho, you chopped that monster into a hundred pieces,” Master Li said proudly.
”I am so happy,” the gentle scholar whispered. ”Now my ancestors will not be ashamed to greet me when I arrive in h.e.l.l to be judged.”
”Bright Star will be waiting for you,” I said.
”Oh no, that would be far too much to ask,” he said seriously. ”The most that I dare ask of the Yama Kings is that I may be reborn as a beautiful flower, so that sometime, somewhere, a dancing girl might choose to pluck me and wear me in her hair.”
I blinked through my tears, and he patted my hand.
”Do not weep for me, Number Ten Ox. I have grown so weary of this life, and I long to return to the Great Wheel of Transmigrations.” His voice was very faint, and I leaned down to hear his last words. ”Immortality is only for the G.o.ds,” he whispered. ”I wonder how they can stand it.”
His eyes closed, and the axe fell to the floor, and the soul of Henpecked Ho took leave of his body.
We carried him outside to the garden. It was cold and overcast, and a tiny silver rain pattered down as I dug the grave. We gently placed the body into the hole and I recovered it with earth, and then we knelt and clasped our hands.
”Henpecked Ho, great is your joy,” said Master Li. ”Now your soul has been released from the prison of your body, and you are being greeted with great honors in h.e.l.l. You have rid the world of a woman who was an abomination to men and G.o.ds alike, and surely the Yama Kings will allow you to see Bright Star again. When it is time for you to be reborn, your wish will be granted, and you will become a beautiful flower that a dancing girl will wear in her hair.”
”Henpecked Ho,” I sniffled through my tears, ”I will miss you, but I know that we will meet again. Master Li will be a three-toed sloth, and Miser Shen will be a tree, and you will be a flower, and I will be a cloud, and some day we will come together in a beautiful garden. Probably very soon,” I added.
We said the prayers and sacrificed, and Li Kao stood up and stretched wearily.
”Immortality is only for the G.o.ds; I wonder how they can stand it,” he said thoughtfully. ”Ox, the last words of Henpecked Ho may be significant in more ways than one.”
Master Li stood lost in thought for a moment. Then he said: ”If I were to try to count the incredible coincidences of our quest on my fingers, I would wind up with ten badly sprained digits, and I am far too old to believe in coincidences. We are being led toward something, and I strongly suspect that Henpecked Ho has also supplied the question that we must ask before we continue the quest. Only the wisest man in the world could answer it, and can it be a coincidence that we happen to know where to find the wisest man in the world?”
I stared at him stupidly.
”Miser Shen,” he explained. ”Ox, it was no accident that Miser Shen told us that when he was trying to bring his little girl back to life, he learned that the wisest man in the world lives in a cave at the end of Bear's Path, high in the Omei Mountains.”
”Are we going to the Omei Mountains?” I asked.
”We are indeed, and we will begin by looting this palace. The Old Man of the Mountain,” said Master Li, ”does not sell his secrets cheaply.”
Rain still fell, but one corner of the sky was turning blue, and as a final tribute to Henpecked Ho I shoveled the largest pieces of the Ancestress into a wheelbarrow and trundled them to the kennels and fed them to the dogs. In the distance a rainbow formed.
26. Three Kinds of Wisdom
Should you decide to travel to the end of Bear's Path, high in the Omei Mountains, you will eventually reach a small level clearing in front of a cliff. In front of the black gaping mouth of a cave you will see a stone pillar, upon which hangs a copper gong and an iron hammer, and carved upon the pillar is a message.
HERE LIVES THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.
RING AND STATE YOUR BUSINESS.
HIS SECRETS ARE NOT SOLD CHEAPLY.
IT IS PERILOUS TO WASTE HIS TIME.
I hope that you will carefully consider that last sentence. The wisest man in the world is not to be trifled with, not even by those who are so distinguished as are my readers, and I myself have no intention of ever again traveling to the end of Bear's Path. I am only Number Ten Ox, who had no business being there in the first place, but it is said that the great leaders of men have been making that journey for three thousand years and will be doing so three thousand years from now, and that one only has to look at the state of the world to prove it.
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