The Story of the Stone mlanto-2

by Barry Hughart

  “We regret that we will be denied the enlightenment of your wisdom, Li Kao,” the king said softly. “A man who can so easily spirit special people from our castle is worth listening to, but our chariot will hold only Moon Boy and Grief of Dawn.”

  I thought, he's going to kill us. To his way of thinking we're common thieves who have stolen valuable things from his treasury, and he's going to kill us. I decided I had better fall on my knees and do some abject kowtowing, and I had better do it fast.

  “Surely Your Majesty does not claim ownership of people?” Master Li said, in the tone of a gentleman opening an interesting line of conversation. “Moon Boy and Grief of Dawn are not even your subjects, and perhaps they would prefer to make their own decisions.”

  I was on my knees banging my chin against the bamboo pole, the far end of which was gradually sliding toward a rake I had brought with the other tools. Only two more feet, I thought, and I tried another six kowtows.

  “Neo-Confucians, of course, would argue that since Grief of Dawn and Moon Boy come from peasant stock, they should have no legal rights whatsoever,” Master Li said judiciously. “Your Majesty is far too intelligent to be neo anything, and far too just to arbitrarily decide destinies without first hearing the wishes of the people involved.”

  “It is, Li Kao, the ability of a ruler to be arbitrary that determines his hold upon his throne,” said Shih Hu.

  A faint and oddly sad smile was on his lips. His eyes moved to the Golden Girls, who were fixing arrows to their bowstrings. I banged my chin one more time. The pole moved forward, and the handle of the rake slid into the hollow end. The rake was directly in front of the lead chariot horses. I grabbed the pole, lunged forward, and whipped it up. The rake plunged into the tender belly of a horse, and it reared and whinnied and pawed the air. I got the next horse. The plunging horses were in the Golden Girls’ line of fire, and I felt Master Li's hand grab my belt, and I dove forward and crawled between the hooves until I was beneath the chariot. Master Li fell back out of the way. I tried to take the weight on my shoulders and legs as I heaved upward. My spine made nasty cracking noises, but I was trying to lift the chariot from one side, and the great bulk of the king helped to unbalance it. With a crash it toppled over, and the horses fell in a tangle of kicking legs, and I crawled between them while the Golden Girls maneuvered for a clear shot. It was a matter of getting a royal hostage before the girls got me, and Shih Hu was waiting for me. He even managed to keep his natural dignity as he sat on the ground like a great Buddha, and his dagger was in his hand, and he was smiling.

  I heard the sharp click of the coil of rattan inside Master Li's sleeve as it shot the throwing knife from the sheath up to his hand, and a whine was almost simultaneous with the click as the blade shot past my ear. The king swore as the blade sank into his hand, and his dagger fell to the ground. I was on him in an instant, with an arm around his throat and his dagger pressed to the back of his neck.

  The Golden Girls growled like panthers. They maneuvered their horses with perfect discipline, edging around and behind me. The king was paying no more attention to me than to a mildly annoying mosquito. He casually pulled Master Li's knife from the palm of his hand and tossed it away, and then, with one sweep of a massive arm, he sent me flying ten feet backward. He didn't look at me at all. The arrows drew back, pointed at my heart.

  “Stop,” the king said. Authority rumbled beneath the quiet tone, and the arrows lowered. He lumbered to his feet and walked over and knelt beside Moon Boy, who was holding Grief of Dawn in his arms. The shaft of an arrow protruded from her chest.

  The golden shaft was aimed right at her heart, and with a shock that paralyzed emotion, I realized that Grief of Dawn was dead.

  “Who could have done this?” the king whispered. “None of my girls shoots wildly.” His huge head lifted. The Golden Girls bowed before his gaze, all but the captain. Her eagle eyes were defiant, but it was like trying to stare down the sun. Her eyes fell and her lips quivered. A tear slid down her cheek.

  “Meng Chang, were you in so much pain?” the king said gently. “You should have come to us, my child. Jealousy is a terrible emotion. It transforms pinpricks into great gaping wounds, but there was no need for jealousy. That we loved Grief of Dawn did not mean we loved you less.”

  Master Li had knelt beside Grief of Dawn. His head jerked up in astonishment. “I don't believe it, but she's still breathing,” he said.

  My heart jumped like a speckled trout.

  “If she survives this, she'll last until Mount Yun-t'ai falls on her,” Master Li muttered.

  His hand moved to the arrow shaft as though to pull it out. “No,” the king said sharply. For the first time he was looking at me, and for the first time I realized that one of the girls’ arrows had hit the fleshy part of my left thigh. The point was sticking out in the air. It was wide and flaring, and to pull an arrowhead like that back through the body is to kill the wounded person.

  I snapped the head from my arrow and drew out the shaft and tossed it away, and then I ran up to Grief of Dawn and snapped off the feathered end of the arrow in her chest. I held my breath as Master Li slowly pushed the shaft down. My hand was beneath Grief of Dawn's back, and finally I felt the point bulge against the flesh. The head broke through, and I pulled the arrow completely out.

  Grief of Dawn still breathed. Master Li neatly bandaged the wound. I thought Grief of Dawn was making muffled sobbing sounds, but then I realized they were coming from Meng Chang, the Captain of Bodyguards. Grief of Dawn tried to open her eyes, but couldn't.

  “Tai-tai, are you ill?” she whispered. “Shall I sing to you, Tai-tai? Sometimes the pain gets better if I sing.”

  What happened next left all of us stunned and shaken. We had heard Grief of Dawn sing many times, but never as she sang then. She was singing to soothe the pain of the old lady who had taken her in and given her a home and a name, and what came from her lips and her heart was a miracle.

  I can't describe it, other than to say it was like Moon Boy's sound magic mixed into the glorious glowing paintings of Prince Liu Pao. There were no words.

  I heard pure notes climbing into the sky, brushing clouds aside, shooting past the moon, joining and singing with the brilliant glows of the stars in the Great River, and then lifting to Heaven itself to dance among the gods. The last note hovered, subtly changing pitch and color, and then began to descend to earth. The pure voice drifted among the wonders to be found in the raindrops and rippling streams of spring, and the soft drowsy sounds of summer, and the crisp clean noises of fall. Wind howled and snow fell, but Grief of Dawn was singing of a steaming kettle and boiling pot in a safe snug cottage where an old woman lay warm in her bed. The notes drifted down lower and softer, dissolving into whispering lullaby sounds, and then the last note sank into silence.

  “I'm sorry, Tai-tai,” Grief of Dawn whispered. “I can sing no more. It hurts to sing like that, it's beautiful but it's wrong, like stealing.”

  Her head fell back. Her heart was still beating, but she was unconscious.

  We looked at each other in silence. Then the King of Chao got to his feet and walked back to his chariot. His huge hands separated the pawing horses and brought them to their feet, and he calmed them with pats and soft words. The Golden Girls parted to let him pass to the captain.

  Meng Chang was dead. She lay on her face with her hands beneath her and the point of her sword thrusting out through her back. The king pulled the sword out and stopped the blood with his cloak. He picked her up and climbed into his carriage and sat on his couch with the girl's body on his lap. The Golden Girls opened a small chest and took out a white cloth of mourning and draped it over the king's head, and one of them took the reins. King Shin Hu and his Golden Girls rode away without a backward glance, and I never saw them again.

  Grief of Dawn was tougher than the Kehsi steel of Hsingchou. Master Li was able to avert infection by making poultices from nasty-looking tree mold, and she clung ferociousl
y to life, but fever made her hallucinate, and I decided that perhaps she was mixing the story of Wolf into something from her own life. In her private closed world she was running with somebody, and it was a desperate race.

  “Faster… must run faster,” she panted. “Where is the turn?… Past the goat statue… There's the raven and the river… Faster… Faster… This way! Hurry!… Soldiers… Hide until they pass… Now run! Run!”

  She didn't always hallucinate about running for her life, and I remember the startled expression on Master Li's face when she moved restlessly in her bed and said, “Please, Mistress, must I go to Chien's?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “It smells so bad, and the bargemen make rude jokes about ladies, and that old man with one leg always tries to pinch me.”

  “Eh?” said Master Li. He walked over and began wiping the perspiration from her forehead. “Darling, what does your mistress want you to get at Chien's?” he asked gently.

  She wrinkled her nose again. “Rhinoceros hides.”

  “And where is Chien's?” he asked.

  “Halfway between the canal and Little Ch'ing-hu Lake,” said Grief of Dawn.

  Master Li whistled and paced around the room, and then he returned to her bedside.

  “Darling, does your mistress ever send you to Kang Number Eight's?” he asked coaxingly.

  Grief of Dawn smiled. “I like Kang Number Eight's,” she said.

  “Where is it?”

  “On the Street of the Worn Cash-Coin,” she said.

  “What do you buy there?”

  “Hats.”

  “Hats. Yes, of course. And where do you buy your mistress's painted fans?” Master Li asked.

  “The Coal Bridge.”

  “I suppose she also sends you to buy the famous boiled pork at… What's the name of that place?”

  “Wei-the-Big-Knife,” she said.

  “Of course. Do you remember where it is?”

  “Right beside the Cat Bridge,” she replied.

  Master Li took another six laps around the room. When he returned to the bed, he had his hands behind him and the fingers were tightly crossed.

  “Darling, when your mistress plays cards, what kind does she use?” he asked.

  “Peach-blend,” Grief of Dawn said drowsily.

  “And where do her dice come from?”

  “Chuanchu Alley.”

  “And what do you buy from Yao-chih?”

  “Cosmetics.”

  “And where do you get rare herbs?”

  “Tenglai.”

  “What does your mistress get from Chingshan?”

  “Writing brushes.”

  “Of course,” said Master Li. “And what's-his-name personally blends her ink?”

  “Yes. Li Tinghuei.”

  “And that lovely courtesan makes pink paper for her?”

  “Shieh Tao. Yes, she is lovely,” Grief of Dawn said.

  The fever was returning. Grief of Dawn tossed and turned while Moon Boy and the prince tried to soothe her.

  “Faster… faster… Where is the passage? Hurry!… More soldiers… Faster… faster… Hurry, darling!… There's the ibis statue…”

  Master Li walked over to the desk and sat down and pulled out his wine flask and swallowed about a quart.

  “Pink paper from the hands of Shieh Tao,” he snarled when he came up for air. “Painted fans from the Coal Bridge and hats from Kang Number Eight's on the Street of the Worn Cash-Coin. Li Tinghuei personally blends the ink. Moon Boy! Can Grief of Dawn read?”

  “About as well as I do, which is not very well,” he said frankly. “Number Ten Ox reads ten times better than either of us.”

  Master Li swallowed another quart. “I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore,” he muttered. “She'd have to be able to read Flying White shorthand.”

  He jumped to his feet and turned to the prince. “Your Highness, that damned fever will kill her unless we get rid of it, and the only medicine I know of that will do the trick requires the seeds of the Bombay thorn apple. Moon Boy and Ox and I are going out to find one, and in the process we will probably get killed.”

  Moon Boy looked at me, and then at Master Li.

  “What shall we pack?” he asked.

  16

  There is no point in dwelling on my emotions regarding Grief of Dawn, but when I lay awake at night I passed the hours by planning for the day when she would be well and Master Li would take her for his wife. The Mings had quite a large shed at the rear of their house. Would they need it now that Greatgrandfather was dead? We could buy it, and I knew how to lever it up and move it over to the shack, and I could fix it up as quarters for me and any guests—it was a great comfort to work out every last detail of such things, and eventually I would drift off and dream about it.

  We made one stop before reaching Master Li's destination. It was at Unicorn Hall, which is a rather sad commentary upon earthly glory. The proud dignitaries of the Han Dynasty had posed for portraits that were intended to be worshipped throughout eternity, but Unicorn Hall is now in ruins. Weeds grow everywhere. Nobody has bothered to repair the roof for a century, and rain pours in. People have taken the doors and the wooden floor, and the only reason any portraits remain is that nobody can find a use for them.

  Emperor Wu-ti's portrait was still intact, and even a flattering artist couldn't disguise the fact that he looked more like a bull than a man. The Laughing Prince's portrait was like the one at the estate, with the same strangely unfocused eyes. Master Li wasn't interested in the prince, however. He had come to take a close look at the prince's wife, Tou Wan.

  “A friend of mine—dead for at least sixty years—once told me something interesting about Tou Wan,” Master Li said. “He said that she may have been the only aristocrat to wear a hairpin that had a point fashioned from simple stone, in the style of poor peasants, and yet in all other matters she had been a spendthrift of classic proportions.”

  The young lady who gazed from the portrait was very beautiful, although I couldn't tell how much was real and how much was flattery. Her hair was secured by a single long pin, and the tip of it was just visible. Master Li studied it with his nose no more than an inch from the surface.

  “That's what he meant,” he muttered. “It's stone, all right, and the artist wouldn't have dared to toss in a sarcastic touch.”

  He turned and started back down the path. “Remember the words of Ssu-ma Ch'ien? The second blow of the axe broke a small sliver from the stone of the Laughing Prince, and it appears that a small sliver of stone decorated the hairpin of the Laughing Prince's wife. I'll have to remember to ask her about it.”

  We stared at him, but he said no more about it.

  Where Grief of Dawn was concerned, Moon Boy was all business. He didn't once slip away in search of pretty boys, and we made good time. In a few days we stopped at the crest of a hill and gazed down at the roof of a small temple, and Master Li said it was our destination.

  “The Temple of Liu Ling,” he said. “Ever hear of him?”

  We said we hadn't.

  “We were quite a group, I suppose, but Ling was miles ahead of any of us,” Master Li said, smiling at ancient memories. “I can see him now in his cart pulled by two deer, followed by a couple of servants. One carried enough wine to kill Liu Ling, and the other carried a spade to bury him on the spot—so much for Confucian ceremony. When I came to call he'd greet me stark naked, and I can still hear him scream, ‘The universe is my dwelling place and my house is my only clothes! Why are you entering into my pants?’ ”

  Master Li pointed to the temple. “Ling decided that men listen only to lies, so he founded the Temple of Illusion and arranged for the order to continue after his death. Moon Boy, can illusion of and by itself kill a man?”

  Moon Boy shrugged. “My teacher, Lin Tsening, once deafened a bandit by persuading him that he was hearing two monstrous dragons in the next room. There were no dragons. The actual sound was scarcely loud enough to frighten sparrows, but the
bandit was still deaf.”

  “Ox?”

  “Granny Ho once got mad at her son-in-law,” I said. “She put him into some sort of trance, and told him he had fallen downstairs and hurt his left leg. When he woke up he laughed at her, and a day later his left leg turned black and blue and began to swell, and he was so lame he couldn't work for a week.”

  “Excellent,” said Master Li. “My young friends, I need to recall something. Years and years ago on a walking trip I saw a Bombay thorn apple, but I've long forgotten where it was. In addition, I need to take a totally fresh look at things I have seen or guessed at, but not fully understood. In short, I need to take a trip into the inner recesses of my mind, and I want to take you with me. Nothing is more dangerous than a voyage inward. If your mind and senses tell you that a spear has plunged into your heart, does it matter whether the spear is real or imaginary?”

  I thought about it. “It seems to me that either way, you'd be dead,” I said, and Moon Boy nodded agreement.

  “Keep that in mind,” Master Li said grimly. “The Temple of Illusion is Liu Ling's masterpiece, and a great many people who have ridden up to it in carriages have departed in coffins.”

  With those cheering words he started down the hill. The temple was small and bare, and a small courtyard led to a plain room where a priest sat behind a desk reading a scroll. He didn't bother to look up when we entered. Master Li slid quite a lot of money across the desk. “One,” he said. He added another pile. “Two.” He added a third pile. Three,” he said. Still the priest didn't look up, but he rang a bell, and another priest entered and led us to a small room that contained only a row of pallets on the floor and a single plaque on the wall.

  I was rather surprised. I had expected mysterious music and thick incense and all the other trappings of mumbo jumbo, but apparently the illusions of Liu Ling didn't need any embellishment. The plaque was in simple script I could read, and I studied it with interest.