Bridge of Birds

by Barry Hughart

  Li Kao hurriedly greased his body and grabbed his diving equipment.

  "After all, the wisest man in the world could scarcely be pleased with a pupil who chose a vast city as the hiding place for his heart, buried it beneath hundreds of feet of water, and then left a path that would lead straight to the rather peculiar nature of the extracted organ. Ox, lead me to that strange icy current," purred Master Li.

  28. The Coldest Heart in the World

  We drifted down into the eerie greenish glow, and in a minute I found the current. It nearly froze us to death before we learned that we could follow it from a safe distance by watching a tiny trail of bubbles. We followed it for hours, through a tangled maze of streets. I would swim back up to the surface and paddle the raft ahead, and then Master Li would break water and climb on board, and we would rest and replenish our air bladders. We were slowly working our way toward the center of the city, and in late afternoon we paddled the raft toward a copper dome that lifted through the water in the center of four stone towers. A boulder from the fallen cliff had crashed through the dome, and that trail of tiny bubbles was oozing up through the hole.

  We squeezed through the hole and drifted down toward a pile of treasure that was so huge that it was ten times larger than the other hoards added together!

  Above the loot was a large copy of the duke's tiger mask, hanging upon a stone wall. The tiger's mouth was wide open, and behind the teeth was a niche where the choicest gems were piled. I swam closer and saw that the gems were heaped around a golden casket, and my heart leaped joyfully when I saw that the bubbles were trickling out from the keyhole. My hand reached out, but Li Kao grabbed it. He nodded urgently at the mask. I noticed that the tiger's teeth were pointed steel, and I swam to one of the towers and managed to pry a stone slab from the wall. I swam back and shoved it between the terrible jaws.

  The teeth snapped together and began grinding through the stone with a screech that seemed to be magnified by the water, but the stone held long enough for me to reach through the gap and grab the casket. I dropped it into a sack that was tied to my waist, just as the stone dissolved into powder and the teeth snapped shut with a terrible crash. We turned to swim back to the surface, and my heart nearly stopped beating. Three pearly figures were drifting toward us in the greenish glow, and if I had not had the breathing tube in my mouth I would have cried out in pity. They were the three murdered handmaidens of the Princess of Birds, and their bodies were uncorrupted after all the centuries, and the horror in their eyes was blended with a strange helpless pleading. They moved through the water like fish, with small wriggles of their hips and legs, and their long black hair drifted behind them like clouds.

  The hair defied the pressure of the water. It reached out in front of the girls and floated toward us like masses of snakes. The cold wet coils curled around our breathing tubes and jerked them from our mouths, and then the tendrils closed around our faces and clogged our mouths and noses. We turned turtle and dived, and jerked out the second pig bladders and inserted the breathing tubes in our mouths, and then we flipped over and swam back up, thrusting at the girls with our bamboo spears. We were wasting our time. The limp bodies had been lifeless for centuries, and the clouds of hair passed through the spears and reached out again. The second tubes were ripped from our mouths and air bubbled away from the bladders. Again we dived, and we inserted the tubes of our last bladders, but even as I fixed my tube in my mouth I felt heavy coils of writhing wet hair crawl over my shoulders. Then the last tubes were ripped away. I thrust desperately at the handmaidens, and I saw that their pleading eyes appeared to be weeping, but their hair lifted to form an impenetrable cloud. We could not pass.

  I grabbed Master Li and swam to the tower and used my spear to pry out another stone slab. The hole was just big enough, and I shoved Master Li through it and squeezed in after him and wedged the spear in the gap to delay the handmaidens. I jerked rocks from our belts and we began to rise. My lungs were bursting, and my eardrums were exploding, and my eyeballs seared with pain. I was nearly unconscious when our heads broke through the surface of the water into a small air pocket just below the copper roof. I held Li Kao's head above water while I gulped air, and I screamed when it touched my tortured lungs. Finally I could breathe well enough to start thinking again, and I saw that the wall to my left had nearly crumbled into nothingness. A few kicks knocked a hole in it, and I carried Li Kao through the hole and climbed up upon the flat roof.

  Master Li was an inert weight in my arms. I laid him on his face and began to apply artificial respiration. I wept when I thought that it was too late, but I soon heard him cough. I cried out for joy and kept at it while water spurted from his mouth, and finally he began breathing on his own. Then I fell back on the roof and we lay side by side, gasping like beached fish. Finally we were able to sit up and look around, and we saw that we were still in bad trouble. It was more than a mile to the shore, and those handmaidens were swimming around the tower like sharks. Master Li pounded some water from his ears and pointed a quivering finger.

  "Number Ten Ox, we are witnessing a crime so terrible as to transcend belief," he said hoarsely. "The Duke of Ch'in murdered those poor girls, and then he bound them with a spell that would force them to defend the heart of their murderer. Since he fully intends to live forever, he has sentenced three innocent girls to eternal damnation."

  He was so angry that he was turning purple.

  "Not even the Emperor of Heaven has the right to sentence anyone to eternal damnation!" he said furiously. "There must be a trial, and the accused must be defended, and the Yama Kings must concur in the verdict before such a terrible sentence can be imposed!"

  I growled and pulled the casket from the sack at my waist. When I held the icy thing to my ear I heard a faint thump... thump... thump...

  "Shall I slice it or squeeze it?" I snarled.

  The question was academic. Li Kao went to work with his lockpicks, but he had never encountered a lock like that one. It was the most complicated pressure lock that he had ever seen, and nothing but the proper key could open it. A dagger could not scratch the casket. I smashed it to the stone with all the strength that I had, and I couldn't even dent it. Friction could not produce the slightest trace of warmth upon the icy surface. I hurled the casket down and we sat there and stared at it. Apparently when I had grabbed the casket from the niche I had taken a few jewels as well, and Li Kao slowly reached out and picked them up: a diamond, a ruby, a pearl, and an emerald. He stared at them wonderingly.

  "Checkmate," he said softly. "I told you that the August Personage of Jade was going to tie the two quests into a nice neat knot. There is only one way that we can escape from this tower, and we are going to have to make a sacred vow."

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  "To find a raindrop in a thunderstorm, or a petal in a field of flowers, or a grain of sand concealed among a billion on a beach," Master Li whispered. "I am a dolt. My poor brains have turned to butter. Ox, since I can no longer trust what I used to call a mind, do you happen to remember the names of the handmaidens of the Princess of Birds?"

  "Snowgoose," I said slowly. "Little Ping... and Autumn Moon."

  Li Kao put the jewels into a seashell on his smuggler's belt and had me replace the casket in the sack and tie it securely to my waist. Then he painfully got to his feet and faced the poor girls who slowly circled the tower.

  "Snowgoose," he said quietly, "Little Ping, Autumn Moon, listen to me. The quest is almost at an end. We have the flute and the ball and the bell. I know where to find the three feathers of the Kings of Birds. I know where to find the golden crown. Now I know where to find the Princess of Birds. You must let us pass. You must fight as no one has ever fought before, and let us safely reach the shore."

  I stared at him stupidly. He took a deep breath.

  "Handmaidens, if you can defeat the spell and let us pass, I swear by all that is holy, and in the sacred name of the August Personage of Ja
de, that the birds will fly!" Master Li yelled. "On the seventh day of the seventh moon the birds of China will fly!"

  I doubt that I can ever again be decently impressed by courage, because I have been privileged to witness courage that passes mortal comprehension. Li Kao's voice echoed back from the spires of the tragic city and faded into silence. Then the bodies of the murdered girls began to spin in the water. At first I thought that they were out of control, but then I realized that they were spinning in order to wrap their hair tightly around their bodies.

  I felt a searing wave of pain that nearly knocked me into the water, and while I could not hear the screams of the handmaidens in my ears, I could hear them in my heart. Master Li hopped upon my back and I dived into the water and swam toward the distant shore. A soul-shaking agony surrounded the spinning girls, and scream after scream ripped through my heart, and the water turned choppy from the jerks of their bodies. I passed so close to one of them that I could see her tears and see that she was jerking in agony hard enough to snap her spine. And then I plowed ahead and they faded behind me. The handmaidens did not give up their terrible fight until I crawled up to safety upon the sandy bank.

  We faced the maidens and banged our heads against the ground, but Li Kao did not have time to honor them properly.

  "Ox, we are bound by a sacred vow, and it's time to find out how much strain those muscles of yours can bear," he said grimly. "The Castle of the Labyrinth is halfway across China, but we must reach it by the seventh day of the seventh moon. Can you do it?"

  "Master Li, get on my back," I said.

  He climbed up and I turned and faced south, and then I set off at a gallop.

  In the late afternoon of the seventh day of the seventh moon we stood upon a sandy beach and gazed across the water toward a sheer cliff upon which loomed the great hulking mass of the Castle of the Labyrinth. Sunlight was shining through dark clouds and turning the Yellow Sea into molten gold, but a high wind was whipping the bay into hard choppy waves, and seagulls were sailing like snowflakes across a sky that promised rain. I could not possibly carry Master Li across those waves without killing one or both of us, and I stared at him with stricken eyes.

  "I rather think that help is on the way," he said calmly, pointing toward a small flotilla of boats that was rapidly skimming toward us.

  The lead boat was a tiny fishing vessel with a bright red sail, and it was being bombarded by spears and arrows. The wind whipped screams of rage toward our ears. "My purse!... My jade belt buckle!... Grandmother's life savings!... Powdered bat manure does not cure arthritis!... My gold earrings!... There wasn't a pea under any of those shells!... Bring back my false teeth!"

  The little boat ran aground practically at our feet, and two gentlemen of low appearance climbed out and shook their fists at the pursuing fleet.

  "How dare you accuse us of fraud!" screamed Pawnbroker Fang.

  "We shall sue!" howled Ma the Grub.

  The howling mob scrambled ashore, and Ma and Fang took to their heels. We climbed into the little fishing boat and shoved off, and the wind obligingly shifted around and caught the sail. We raced across the waves while the sunlight was extinguished, and lightning flickered across the sky, and rain began to fall. The cliff loomed in front of us, and I steered between jagged rocks and found a place where we could land.

  The wind was shrieking around us, and the rain was so heavy that I could barely see as I swung a rope around my head and sent a grappling hook flying up the side of the cliff. On the third try I caught a rock that held the hook securely, and Master Li hopped up on my back and I began to climb. The sheer stone was slippery in the rain, but we had to take chances if we were to reach the labyrinth before the tide did.

  We just made it. I climbed over the ledge into the little cave where we had found the first of the duke's treasure troves, and I secured a hook and a rope and climbed down the stone chimney into the labyrinth. Li Kao lit a torch and looked around thoughtfully.

  "It's a pity that we no longer have the dragon pendant," he observed mildly. "If ever I could use the ironclad memory of Henpecked Ho, it would be now."

  Master Li's mental processes were as alien to me as the inner thoughts of Buddha. He never wavered, even though he had to retrace every twist and turn and do it backward, and I trotted behind him listening nervously for the first metallic snarl of the tiger. The duke had not been idle since his return from the tax trip. The air reeked with blood and rotting flesh, and fresh corpses stared blindly down at us from crevices in the ceiling. I stared in terror at dark streaks that were sliding across the floor, and back in the blackness a tiger began to growl.

  Li Kao grunted with satisfaction, and trotted through an archway to the cavern where a pool of water lay beneath a trapdoor high overhead. I tied a rope to a jutting rock on one side of the pool, and another rope to another rock on the other side. Then I secured both ends around my waist with a slip knot that I could release with a jerk, and I glanced up fearfully at the darkness where the trapdoor should be. If it didn't work from this side, we were going to join those happy fellows wedged in crevices.

  The water was rushing in faster and faster, climbing around my thighs. I began to float upward, treading water, with Master Li riding on my back. I heard the tiger screaming, and then the full force of the tide struck us. We were buffeted from all sides, but the ropes held firmly and we continued to lift straight up. Master Li got as high as he could on my shoulders and reached up. I could hear him strain and grunt, and then there was a screech of metal as a bolt slid through grooves. He ducked and the falling trapdoor missed his head by an inch, and I jerked the slip knot and released the ropes and climbed through the hole into the throne room of the Duke of Ch'in.

  From a chance comment by the Key Rabbit some time ago, we knew that the throne room was locked at sunset, and nobody but the duke was allowed to enter. Li Kao's torch flickered palely in the darkness, and I heard the clash of weapons and the heavy tread of the soldiers who patrolled outside the golden doors. Then the storm passed as swiftly as it had come, and the wind drew the clouds as though opening curtains in front of the rising moon, and light poured through the windows. I gasped in horror and stopped dead in my tracks.

  The Duke of Ch'in was seated upon his throne, and the terrible mask was glaring straight at us.

  Li Kao continued to trot ahead without a care in the world. "Don't worry, Ox, it's just an empty shell," he said reassuringly, and when I forced my feet to move again I saw that he was right. Moonbeams stretched out like pale gold fingers and reached through the eye-holes in the tiger mask and touched the back of the throne. It was just a mask and a long cloak of feathers, propped upon a light metal framework.

  "Well, Ox, we have a promise to keep before we can worry about ginseng roots," Master Li said. "That means that we have only a few hours to find the feathers of the Kings of Birds, the golden crown, and the Princess of Birds. We'll also need the key to a casket, so let's get started. The first time you hit the duke with that axe, it bounced right off him. Do you remember where the blade struck?"

  I reached out toward three tiny white feathers that were woven into a cloak of feathers.

  "Feathers that stop axes?" I whispered. "Master Li, are these the feathers of the Kings of Birds?"

  "We'll soon find out," he said. "Try to pull them out."

  The feathers could not be pulled, and they could not be cut, and Li Kao's torch couldn't even scorch them. He opened shells in his smuggler's belt and handed me three trinkets. I placed the tiny tin flute upon an arm of the throne with trembling fingers, and I reached out to the cloak.

  "Snowgoose returns the flute in exchange for the feather," I whispered, and the first feather slid from the cloak as smoothly as straw sliding from warm butter. I placed the crystal ball upon the arm of the throne.

  "Little Ping returns the ball in exchange for the feather," I whispered.

  The second feather slid out as easily as the first. I placed the little bronze bell upon
the arm of the throne.

  "Autumn Moon returns the bell in exchange for the feather," I whispered, and the third feather practically jumped into my hand.

  Li Kao put the feathers in his smuggler's belt.

  "The rest of it isn't going to be so easy," he said grimly. "We're going to need help, so let's go find it."

  We waited for the tide to go out. Then we jumped back down into the pool and Li Kao retraced our steps through the labyrinth. The rope and hook had held, and I hauled us up the stone chimney to the cave. Then we used the ropes and hooks to swing back down the side of the cliff to a sea that had calmed enough to allow me to swim across the bay to the city.

  The greatest pleasure city in the world was coming to life. Laughter and oaths and the cheerful sound of smashing wine jars followed us through the streets, and lurching merrymakers swarmed around us, but we shoved them aside and hurried on. We climbed a wall to a small garden. The guard dogs knew us well, and after a few pats they made no objection when we climbed through a window. Sometimes one can find help in the strangest places, such as a modest little house where a meek little man and his gloriously greedy wife were enjoying a rare evening of domestic tranquility.

  "Boopsie!" Lotus Cloud yelled happily, and the Key Rabbit screamed "Ghosts!" and dived beneath the bed.

  29. The View Through a Half-Closed Eye

  It took some time to persuade the Key Rabbit that we had really survived the terrible plague of ten thousand pestilential putrescences, but when we coaxed him out from under the bed, we made quite a happy little family group. He was even inspired to bring jars of wine from his meagre cellar, and we sat around the table sipping wine and nibbling grapes. When the little fellow's long nose had stopped twitching in terror, Li Kao said as gently as possible:

  "Lotus Cloud, will you catch your husband before he hurts himself? You see, Ox and I have decided to assassinate the Duke of Ch'in."