In the foreground, meaning the center of the elegant room, stood a man whose face was covered by the hood of a big old-fashioned cloak. He was methodically using a stone striker to bang the most ancient of all instruments, a set of stone chimes. He was standing on one leg because that’s all he had: one single leg, growing squarely from the center of his body. In front of him a man in elegant mandarin dress was dancing to the chime music, but it was a dance of death.
His robes whipped wildly through the air as he leaped and capered across the floor, twisting and jumping with manic energy, kicking his legs high above his head, whipping his feet down to pound the floor as though attempting to drive holes through it. His eyes were quite insane, driven mad by pain, and he would have been howling if he had the breath. I gasped and jumped back instinctively when I saw white splinters of bone thrusting from his silk-covered thighs, and blood dripped down his knees. This mandarin had danced until both thighs shattered, and he was dancing still, and now blood was bubbling from his mouth and nose and I realized his insides had been pounded to jelly. He leaped even higher. His feet struck the floor even harder as the stone chimes thudded monotonously, and the bone splinters thrust out farther and farther, and then a great gush of blood came from his mouth and the light of insane agony died in his eyes.
When the one-legged creature continued to pound on the old stone chimes he was making a corpse dance for him. That mandarin was dead. I knew it as surely as I knew I was still alive, but I also knew the body was dancing like a doll of straw around the room, head lolling and bouncing lifelessly on his shoulders, arms and hands flapping around without guidance, both broken legs bending almost double where they shouldn’t bend, between knee and hip, blood from the gaping mouth spraying around the room in a fine pink mist.
That, mind you, was only the scene in the foreground. Simultaneously my brain was trying to accommodate the background as well, but it was difficult because with an overdose of grotesque images they tend to cancel one another out. Everything was getting blurred, and I shook my head vigorously—the first motion I’d been capable of—and decided I really was looking at another weird creature. It was a man, yet the face was that of a hideous ape with a silver-gray forehead, a scarlet nose, bright blue cheeks, and a yellow chin. I can’t explain why, but I knew in my bones this wasn’t actor’s makeup. This was real, and the man-ape bared strong white teeth in an expression between a grimace and a smile as it looked at Master Li and me, and then in one powerful bound it was at the wall, and with another effortless leap it was out the window and down into the garden and gone, vanished into the night, but not before I’d seen that it was carrying something.
The weird creature had been carrying a cage precisely like the one Master Li had.
Master Li had stepped up beside me, and now he whirled back toward the center of the room just as the stone chimes stopped playing and the dancing corpse collapsed limply to the floor, as though someone had cut the strings operating a puppet. The one-legged hooded figure stood motionless.
“Careful, Ox.”
As if I needed the warning. I moved forward cautiously, scooping up a heavy bronze figurine as a weapon, and Master Li made a flanking movement with his knife cocked beside his right ear. The chimes player still made no motion. I was at an angle where I could look straight at him—or it—and in the dark shadows behind the opening of the hood I thought I saw the gleam of a single eye in the center of a forehead.
Suddenly there was a bright flash that blinded me. I gasped and stepped back, covering my eyes, and gradually the orange haze and black spots cleared, and I stared at the room. So did Master Li, blinking and rubbing his eyes, and there wasn’t any one-legged chimes player. He wasn’t in the room, and he wasn’t in the hall outside, and the wind whipped the curtains away from the window and we gazed out and up at the night sky, where a great white crane was slowly flying away across the face of the moon.
“Well, Kao, have you found anything interesting?” the Celestial Master asked.
“Mildly so,” Master Li replied. “To begin with, another mandarin—I assume you know, or knew, Mao Ou-Hsi?”
“Revolting fellow. Third-greediest man in the empire,” the Celestial Master said disgustedly.
“The fourth-greediest will be interested, because he’s just been promoted,” Master Li said. “Mao bade farewell to the red dust of earth last night in a rather spectacular manner. Ox and I happened to be there at the moment, and the creature who killed Mao then disappeared in a bright blinding flash, and the next thing we saw was a white crane flying away across the moon.”
The Celestial Master paused with a teacup halfway to his lips. Briefly, in an instant in which his eyes sharpened and hardened, I glimpsed the brilliance and sureness of long ago, when he had been considered to be the finest mind in the empire.
“How convenient,” he said dryly. “Did it carry a sign in its beak saying ‘Save the Celestial Master from Mother Meng’s Madhouse?’”
Master Li tossed his head back and laughed. “Believe it or not, this actually happened,” he said. “As soon as we’d looked around and found nothing we summoned the magistrate to take over, and at the moment the gates opened at dawn we entered the Forbidden City and chased the honor guard away from the remains of the late Ma Than Lin, and I had Ox open the coffin. You tell it, Ox.”
I gulped nervously as the bright eyes of the saint flicked toward me
“Most Reverend Sir, the corpse was lying on its back, of course, but I managed to lift it upright—”
“That must have been a hell of a job,” the Celestial Master said, with real concern in his voice.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “The body was covered with Dragon’s Brains (Borneo camphor), which made me choke, and after I scooped it away I started to choke from the smell of the corpse, and there wasn’t any head and it looked horrible.” I started choking again, just at the memory. “The body was stiff as a tree trunk and I almost got a hernia trying to lift it.”
“Ghastly tub of lard, wasn’t he?” the Celestial Master said sympathetically.
“He hadn’t missed much rice,” I said diplomatically. “Master Li had me prop him up so we could examine the back.”
“And?”
“Reverend Sir, it was just as you told us!” I said excitedly. “The entrance mark of the fireball was very small and the folds of robes covered it up, but Master Li cut through the clothes and skin, and just beneath the outer flesh there was a great big hole! Everything inside had been burned to a crisp.”
The saint sipped his tea and put the cup down, and then he leaned back and rubbed his eyes.
“How odd,” he said. “Kao, I’d just discovered what caused me to hallucinate about that old man and his ball of fire, and now you tell me I wasn’t hallucinating.”
He leaned forward, and his eyes were clear and keen. “I’m going to show you what might have stimulated a senile imagination, but first I’m interested in a matter of symmetry. You say Mao Ou-Hsi died spectacularly. Was a monster involved?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
Master Li told what we had seen, simply and clearly, and as he talked I saw wonder and speculation form in the saint’s eyes.
“Well, Kao, I said at the beginning this was your sort of case, but I didn’t know how right I was,” the Celestial Master said. “Before I tell what I know, is there anything else you want to add?”
“Indeed yes. Beginning with this,” said Master Li, and he pulled the cage we’d found from beneath his robes and placed it on the table.
“Pretty, and it looks like the thing Ma was carrying, but what is it?” the Celestial Master asked.
“Damn. I was hoping you could tell me once you got a close look at it,” Master Li said. “It is indeed the cage you saw and we found it where you said it was. The interesting thing is that Ma Tuan Lin had made a rubbing of an old stone carving depicting a cage like this. On the back he indicated he might have found as many as eight of them
. A plausible inference is that he gave cages to partners in some sort of enterprise, and I had traced one to Mao Ou-Hsi, which is why we were there. Simultaneous with the murder the cage was being stolen, and the burglar was another monster. It was a man resembling an ape like the one the emperor takes such pride in at the imperial bestiary: silver-gray fur or skin on the forehead, bright blue cheeks, a crimson nose, and a yellow chin. The eyes are deep and shadowed, and the gaze is highly intelligent.”
The Celestial Master nodded. “A mandrill, if one excepts the intelligence. Why do you say man-ape?”
Master Li shrugged. “So far as I could tell, the body was that of a medium-sized but very powerful and acrobatic man, and both the body motion and eye contact were human.”
The saint nodded and said, “The creature means nothing to me. He got away with Mao’s cage, you say? Another crane?”
“No, he simply leaped out the window to the garden before either of us could move. Speaking of monsters, the vampire ghoul who decapitated Ma Tuan Lin is dead, in case you haven’t heard, and I haven’t the slightest idea what its connection to the rest of it is. I’m trying to track down the owners of the other cages, and until I can find out why monsters would want them I’m at the end of a blank alley.”
Master Li leaned back and the Celestial Master leaned forward, taking a sheaf of papers from a lacquered box lying on the table.
“I can’t tell you why the cages are valuable, but I can give you something to think about concerning monsters,” he said. “When I was a young student—long before you were born, believe it or not—I went through the normal period of fascination with ancient shamanism. That means shamanism of the aborigines who originally inhabited China, of course, practiced by priests of beliefs and rites that to some extent evolved into our own, and I found repeated but maddeningly unspecific references to a small group of shamans who seem to have been greatest of all: Super Shamans, if you will, aloof and mysterious, to be appealed to only as a last resort. I was never able to prove this, Kao, but I became convinced that they’re the mysterious hooded figures depicted on the walls of the Yu.”
“Really?” Master Li appeared to be very interested. “Any specific reason?”
“One specific, one not. The nonspecific is simply the fact that they were spoken of with awe as always being silent, always performing mysterious rituals with mysterious objects beyond the grasp of man—the general atmosphere of the Yu, if you will, and the Yu and the shamans would seem to date from the same period. The specific is that there were eight of them, like the eight Yu figures, and indeed they were known as Pa Neng Chih Shih.”
“‘Eight Skilled Gentlemen,’” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Sounds like they may have practiced alchemy or engineering or astronomy in addition to their priestly and magical duties.”
The Celestial Master shrugged. “I never found a clear reference to their exact function, and I doubt anyone did. There was, however, one extraordinarily interesting fragment concerning them that I put down at the time as primitive myth, but peculiar enough to make notes of.”
The saint picked up the sheaf of papers and shook his head wonderingly as he looked at them.
“So long ago,” he said softly. “It had completely fled what’s left of my mind, and then suddenly, after you’d left for Hortensia Island, I remembered, and at least I keep good files. Long, long ago, the Eight Skilled Gentlemen were said to have enlisted the aid of eight very minor demon-deities, siblings although physically dissimilar. What they wanted them for was no longer known, but a brief description of each was provided. You can see why I planned to show you the origin of a hallucination.”
He slid a paper across the table. It was old and somewhat faded, but still clear, and I caught my breath. Years ago as a young scholar the Celestial Master had sketched a little old man who carried a glowing ball of fire, and beneath it he had written, “Third demon-deity: Pi-fang, kills with something like a tiny comet.”
Master Li whistled sharply.
“Save your whistles,” the Celestial Master said with a smile, and he slid another sheet across the table. This time I uttered a distinct yelp, and then turned bright red as the Celestial Master winked at me.
We were looking at a one-legged creature who was playing something like stone chimes, and beneath it was neatly written, “Fifth demon-deity, K’uei, the Dancing Master. Kills by forcing victims to dance themselves to death.”
Master Li’s eyes were gleaming. He seized an ink stick and a stone and a brush and some paper and went to work, swiftly copying each sketch and brief descriptive comment. Each of the eight creatures was very odd in that it was a killer whose ability to kill was limited to a specialty that couldn’t possibly massacre large numbers of people, such as our modern crossbows and exploding charges of Fire Drug—but then, I had to admit that the very limits and peculiarities made violent death seem real and terrible, like strangling hands around one’s throat as opposed to a random missile that strikes by accident on a battlefield.
“I said there were these eight and they were siblings, but later in a passing reference too insignificant to lead anywhere an anonymous commentator said there was a ninth child, a boy,” the Celestial Master said.
“Could he possibly have had a face like a painted ape?” Master Li asked sharply.
The Celestial Master smiled. “Not a chance, Kao. I said he was a boy, and I meant it. He was human, which implies one of his parents was mortal and one divine, and he was said to possess extraordinary beauty.” The saint shrugged. “That’s why I never tried to follow up on a ninth child. It reeks of a thousand fairy tales.”
“If not a million,” Master Li muttered.
I looked at the sketch he was making. It was of the fourth demon-deity, a huge snake, and it was very strange. Part was terrible: two human heads with fangs, a great crushing constrictor’s body—but it wore two silly little hats and a jacket far too small for it, and somehow it seemed lost and lonely, and beneath it the Celestial Master had written, “The Wei Serpent has known greatness and sorrow. It cannot abide noise, and when a carriage rattles past it raises its heads and hisses.”
Apparently the Celestial Master was reading my expression, and he said, “I know, Ox. There’s something sad about these creatures as well as terrible. They seem ancient to us, but they had to be among the last recognized by the aborigines, and gods—even minor demons like these of a dying race are often creatures of pathos. You must ask Master Li about it sometime.”
Master Li had finished. He folded the papers neatly and put them in his money belt and reclaimed the cage.
“I’ve told all I know. Do you have anything else?” he asked.
“If I did I’ve forgotten it,” the Celestial Master said. “What’s next for you?”
“Ox and I are going to pay our respects to Eight Skilled Gentlemen,” he said. “Meaning I’m going back to Hortensia Island, and I want to show Ox the Yu. After that—well, I have a theory worth testing. I’ll report when I have anything worth talking about.”
The effort to maintain mental clarity had been exhausting. The Celestial Master managed only a wink and a wave as we bowed our way backward and then out the door, but Master Li was as full of energy as he’d been in a year.
“Ha!” he exclaimed as we walked out into the sunlight. “What a delightful development! I take back everything I said about white whales turning into minnows. What kind of case did I originally predict this would be?”
I thought about it.
“The spout reaches toward the stars, and the wake rocks offshore islands as it swims toward us, circumnavigating sacred seas with the awesome authority of an iceberg.”
“Slightly over-alliterative, but not bad,” said Master Li.
We stopped at Master Li’s shack in the alley and changed into comfortable clothes and replaced the old cage in the hiding place beneath the pallets, and I boiled some rice and went out and found a vender of the strong fermented fish sauce we both like. We hadn’t slept
in thirty hours, but the excitement of the case was keeping us wide awake, and a short time later I was at the oars again, rowing back to Hortensia Island.
I’d never seen the Yu. The island is mandarin territory, and the visit I’ve recounted was my first, but before I can describe the Yu I have to explain it.
The history of China is punctuated by more Great Floods than scholars know what to do with, and one of them a couple of thousand years ago left the Peking Plain covered with thirty feet of mud and silt. The city that was to become Peking was built in many stages on the hardened crust, and geomancers decided that in the process too much attention had been paid to male yang influences and too little to the female yin, and the imbalance must be corrected. The fastest way to strengthen yin is through water, so the North, Central, and South lakes were created by digging down through the crust and filling the holes with water drawn by canals from the Hun and Sha rivers. (Actually the lakes are called “seas,” but that’s confusing, so they’ll be lakes on these pages.) The earth from the lake beds was heaped up and tamped down to form Coal Hill, thus creating the world’s costliest pile of dirt, and while digging the bed for North Lake workmen ran into a mass of nearly solid rock, which was left as it was. Water filled up around it, and eventually it was covered with a layer of earth and planted with pretty pink-and-blue-flowering shrubs imported from the Cannibal Coast (Japan), and thus Hortensia Island was born.
One day when the water had risen to a certain level an extraordinary thing happened. A great burst of sound suddenly arose from North Lake: hauntingly beautiful, but without apparent theme or musical form. It was like the sound of a huge horn except it had a husky hollow undertone as it swooped between huang-chung and ying-chung, the low and high notes of the untempered chromatic scale. The eerie sound lasted only a minute or so. Then it died away and wasn’t heard again until six months had passed, at which time excited scholars announced that the sound seemed to be occurring at the precise moment of the winter and summer solstices.
The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Page 58