The panting mules who hauled our cartload of treasure were nearly exhausted when they plodded around the last bend in the path and arrived at the clearing in front of the cave. Li Kao read the message on the pillar, and then he lifted a goatskin flask and swallowed some wine.

"Admirable conciseness," he said, nodding at the inscription. "Not one wasted word." Then he picked up the iron hammer and rang the gong, and when the echoes died away he took a deep breath and yelled, "Old Man of the Mountain, come forth! I have come to purchase the Secret of Immortality!"

The echoes shouted immortality, immortality, immortality, and then they faded away into silence. For many minutes we listened to the tiny sounds of small animals, and the sighing wind, and the distant scream of an eagle, and finally we heard the faint slap of shuffling sandals. A voice that sounded like gravel sc.r.a.ping across iron drifted from the blackness of the cave.

"Why does everyone ask for immortality? I have so many other secrets to sell. Beautiful secrets, beastly secrets, happy secrets, horrible secrets, lovely secrets, lunatic secrets, laughing secrets, loathsome secrets..."

The man who shuffled from the cave and blinked in the bright sunlight looked like the oldest and ugliest monkey in the world. Pieces of filthy straw were tangled in his matted hair, and his beard and robe were stained with spilled food. His seamed and pitted face was even older than Li Kao's, but his eyes were jet-black and so piercing that I caught my breath and instinctively stepped backward. He dismissed me as unimportant, and looked with interest at Li Kao.

"A sage, I perceive, with a slight flaw in his character," he said with a little snicker. "Surely a sage can think of a more interesting secret to buy from the Old Man of the Mountain? I can teach you how to turn your friends into flowers and your enemies into c.o.c.kroaches. I can teach you how to transform yourself or anything else into whatever you like, or how to steal the spirits of the dead and make them your slaves, or how to control the creatures that lurk in the black bowels of the earth. I can teach you how to remove varicose veins or cure pimples, yet you come to me for the Secret of Immortality, which is so simple that it is scarcely a secret at all."

"I will give all I have for that one secret," said Master Li, and he brushed away the straw that covered the pile of loot in the cart. The Old Man of the Mountain plunged his hands into the treasure.

"Cold!" he said delightedly. "It has been years since I touched treasure as cold as this! In fact, this treasure is so cold that I will tell you the secret at once, instead of toying with you as is my usual custom."

Li Kao bowed and offered the wine flask, and the Old Man of the Mountain drank and wiped his lips with his beard.

"You know the seamless robes of the G.o.ds? The jade girdles and golden crowns? Any of those items will do," he said. "Simply wait until the New Year, when the G.o.ds descend to earth to make their tour of inspection, and steal a robe or a crown. So long as you possess it, you will never age, but I would advise you to hurry. I myself was well past two hundred when I stole a jade girdle, and not even the Old Man of the Mountain has learned the secret of restoring youth."

Master Li threw back his head and laughed.

"Do you take me for an idiot? What use is it never to age when you can be extinguished in an instant by the bite of a mosquito or a slip upon the stairs? Immortality is a meaningless word unless invulnerability goes with it. Old Man of the Mountain, I am beginning to suspect that you are a fraud."

The Old Man of the Mountain winked at him, and pa.s.sed the wine flask.

"You would goad me into indiscretion, my friend with the flaw in his character? Do you think that I cannot sense that in your pocket you carry a business card with the sign of a half-closed eye? Or that I would not wonder what an old fox is doing traveling with a young chicken?" He turned and crooked a finger at me. "Boy, come here," he commanded.

The jet-black eyes burned a hole in my heart and I had no will of my own. I found myself walking toward him like a mechanical toy, and his eyes looked into my mind. What the Duke of Ch'in had done was but a feeble imitation of the Old Man of the Mountain.

"Well, I'll be the Stone Monkey!" he exclaimed. "There are those three handmaidens, and the flute and the ball and the bell, and the feathers and the crown too, although dimly perceived. So you hope to steal the Great Root of Power, do you? Boy, you are nothing but a walking corpse."

He sn.i.g.g.e.red and released my mind, and I staggered backward and nearly fell.

"Let the chicken go ahead and get killed," he said softly to Li Kao. "He couldn't tell a t.u.r.d from a turnip, but you appear to have some common sense. Go steal something that belongs to a G.o.d, and then return with ten times this much treasure, and if it is as cold as this stuff I will sell you the Secret of Invulnerability, which, as you have correctly pointed out, gives meaning to the word immortality."

Li Kao tilted the wine flask, and pa.s.sed it back to the Old Man of the Mountain.

"But is there such a secret?" he wondered. "Anything with a heart can be killed, and though there are hundreds of peasant stories about men without hearts, I have always considered them to be allegorical fables. Quite sophisticated fables, at times, but depicting character rather than actual physiology."

"Not one in a hundred of such stories is true, but when you hear one that is you may be sure that the wisest man in the world is involved, for I alone have found the secret," said the Old Man of the Mountain. 'You doubt it, my slightly flawed friend? Marvel at the man who rivals the G.o.ds!"

When he opened his robe I nearly fainted, because there was a hole where his heart had been. I could look right through it and see the stone pillar behind, shining in the sunlight, and the gong and the hammer, and the black gaping mouth of the cave.

"Fantastic," Master Li said admiringly. "You are truly the wisest man in the world, and a dolt like myself must bow before your genius."

The Old Man of the Mountain simpered with pleasure and pa.s.sed the wine flask, and Li Kao bowed and drank thirstily.

"It would seem to me that your heart must still be beating somewhere," Master Li said thoughtfully. "Would it be safe to transform it into a pebble or a snowflake? A heart that is transformed is no longer a heart. A simplistic statement, but perhaps intuitively true."

"Almost entirely true," the Old Man of the Mountain said approvingly. "A heart cannot be transformed into a snowflake without killing it unless the entire person is also transformed into a snowflake. But a heart can be hidden. Of course the value of that depends upon how well it has been hidden, and you cannot believe the stupidity of some of the pupils that I've had. Why, one of those dolts was so mindless that he hid his heart inside the body of a lizard that was inside a cage that was on top of the head of a serpent what was on top of a tree that was guarded by lions, tigers, and scorpions! Another cretin, and may Buddha strike me if I lie, concealed his heart inside an egg that was inside a duck that was inside a basket that was inside a chest that was on an island that was in the middle of an uncharted ocean. Needless to say, both of those numbskulls were destroyed by the first half-witted heroes who came along."

He took the flask and drank deeply, and pa.s.sed it back again.

"Now you would not be so stupid," he said. "Try to find treasure that is as cold as this stuff - a man who has no heart likes things cold, and there is nothing colder than treasure - and when you return. I will remove your heart and you will hide it well. So long as it beats, you cannot be killed, and nothing is worse than death."

I suddenly realized that Li Kao was controlling himself with an immense effort. He was clenching and unclenching his hands, and he could no longer keep a trace of revulsion from creeping into his voice.

"Some things are far worse than death," said Master Li.

The Old Man of the Mountain stiffened. I drew back in fear as I saw his eyes burn with cold fire.

"My secrets are not sold cheaply," he said softly.

The Old Man of the Mountain stamped his foot, and a great crack appeared in the earth, and our poor mules brayed in terror as they plunged down into blackness with the cartload of treasure; he waved his hand, and the crack closed as though it had never been.

"It is perilous to waste my time," he whispered.

The wisest man in the world lifted a finger to his lips and blew. The light was blacked out by a dense cloud, and wind howled, and we were scooped up and sent flying into the air, whirling around and around inside a black funnel that was thick with dirt and broken branches and small screaming animals. The cyclone whirled down the mountainside, and I tried to shield Li Kao's frail body with my own as branches buffeted me and shrieking wind deafened me. Down and down and around and around, and then the earth leaped up at us and we landed with a crash that separated me from my senses.

When I regained consciousness I saw that we had landed in soft shrubbery, but if we had been blown another ten feet we would have sailed over the side of a steep cliff. Far below I could see a river shining in the sunset, and a boy standing motionless upon the bank, and a village half-hidden by trees. Birds swooped high and low in the chilly wind that sighed down from snow-capped peaks, and somewhere a woodcutter was singing a slow sad song.

Li Kao had bandaged the b.u.mp on my head. He was sitting cross-legged at the edge of the cliff, cradling his wine flask. When I gazed up at the distant mountain peaks, I seemed to hear faint laughter that was like pebbles rattling in an iron pan.

"Master Li, forgive my impertinence, but if the pursuit of wisdom leads to the Old Man of the Mountain I cannot help but think that men would be better off if they stayed stupid," I said.

"Ah, but there is more than one kind of wisdom," said Master Li. "There is wisdom to take, and there is wisdom to give, and there is the wisdom of Heaven that is inscrutable to man." He tilted his flask to his lips. "In this case, Heaven is becoming scrutable," he said when he came up for air.

To my astonishment I saw that Master Li was as happy as a small boy with a large puppy.

"Henpecked Ho gave us a third of the solution to this weird quest, and now the Old Man of the Mountain has made it two-thirds," he said with satisfaction. He pointed down to the riverbank, where the boy had been joined by his friends. "What are those children doing?"

I gazed down and shrugged. "Playing games," I said.

"Children's games!" Master Li chortled happily. "Rituals, riddles, and nonsense rhymes!" Then, to my astonishment, he jumped to his feet, waved his wine flask toward Heaven, and bellowed, "August Personage of Jade, you have the guts of a first-cla.s.s burglar!"

I nervously awaited a bolt of lightning, but none came.

"Come along, Ox, we must hurry back toward your village to collect the third piece of the puzzle," said Master Li, and he started down the mountainside at a trot.

The Old Man of the Mountain had blown us to the very edge of civilization, and we found ourselves trudging through a very strange landscape. Flat cracked earth stretched toward distant mountains with fantastic shapes, like deformed mushrooms, and a cold wind sighed across twelve hundred miles of empty steppes. Once in a while we would reach a desolate plain where endless mounds of dirt were laid out with almost geometric precision, and on top of each mound a gopher stood on its hind legs and watched us pa.s.s with bright wondering eyes. Once an enormous army of rats raced toward us, but when they swept around and past us, I saw that they were not rats but roots, the famous rolling roots of the peng plant, which were being blown by the wind toward some unimaginable destiny at the outer edge of the world.

Gradually the bare mountains acquired scattered trees, and we reached valleys that had touches of green, and finally the landscape turned into the one I knew so well. Then we climbed a hill and I saw the outline of Dragon's Pillow, hazy in the distance, and I was greatly relieved when Master Li said that it was our destination. I could not have borne the eyes of the parents if we went on to Ku-fu with no ginseng for the children.

We reached the wall as soft purple shadows were creeping like cats across the green valley, and the birds began to sing the last songs of the day while we climbed the ancient stones to the Eye of the Dragon. Li Kao sat down upon the floor of the watchtower and uncovered a bowl of rice that he had bought in the last village. For a few moments he ate in silence, and then he said: "Ox, mysteries cease to be mysteries when they are viewed from the proper angle. In this case we must find the proper angle by recalling a comment that was made by the Duke of Ch'in not once but twice. 'You seek the right root, but for the wrong reason.' Doesn't that suggest that we might have unwittingly wandered into a completely different quest when we started after the Great Root of Power? We can a.s.sume that the duke thought that we might be trying to do something else, and the idea scared him half to death. What sort of a quest could terrify a tyrant as mighty as the Duke of Ch'in?"

He ate some more rice and watched the shadows climb the wall, and he pointed a chopstick at the songbirds.

"Let's begin by a.s.suming that Henpecked Ho's story was factual, in the sense of history that over the centuries has been cloaked in the conventional trappings of myth," said Master Li. "There really was a minor deity called the Princess of Birds, although not necessarily as described in the story, and she really did wear a crown that was decorated with three feathers from the Kings of Birds. We would have to be as blind as neo-Confucians not to guess what happened," he said. "The Duke of Ch'in went to the Old Man of the Mountain for the Secret of Immortality, and he learned that he must begin by stealing something that belonged to a deity. He tricked and murdered Jade Pearl's handmaidens, captured her, and stole her crown. Then the Old Man of the Mountain removed his heart, which is why the jovial fellow laughs at axes and fatal dosages of poison. It's been the same duke all along, of course. The tyrant who burned the books of China has been squatting in the Castle of the Labyrinth ever since, concealed behind the mask of a snarling tiger."

My heart was sick as I thought of the duke and his playmates, such as the Hand That No One Sees. He had paid the wisest man in the world for more than heart surgery. The Duke of Ch'in had also bought the secrets of reading minds and of controlling the creatures who lurk in the dark bowels of the earth. What chance would we have against a pupil of the Old Man of the Mountain?

"Jade Pearl had something that was almost as valuable as her crown," Master Li continued. "She had a G.o.dmother. Surely a fellow as greedy as the duke would not miss the fact that the Queen of Ginseng had to be the most valuable plant on the face of the earth, and with Jade Pearl as his captive, he would probably have been able to capture her G.o.dmother as well. Now I will make one more a.s.sumption: The Great Root of Power is the Queen of Ginseng, and that is why two quests are intertwined."

Li Kao gazed thoughtfully up at Heaven.

"Ox, the Heaven of the Chinese is superior to all others because nothing is absolute except the rule of law. The supreme deity is bound by the rules of the Imperial Book of Etiquette, and if he breaks those rules, he will be abruptly replaced. Thus the Heavenly Master of the First Origin gave way to the August Personage of Jade, and the Heavenly Master of the Dawn of Jade of the Golden Door stands ready in the wings to ascend to the throne the moment the August Personage of Jade gets too big for his sandals. When the emperor's pet G.o.ddess lost her crown and failed to return to the Star Shepherd she pa.s.sed from the protection of Heaven, and the Imperial Book of Etiquette does not allow for excuses. What could the emperor do? Direct intervention would cost him his throne, so if he did anything it would have to be very sneaky indeed."

Master Li bent over and laughed until the tears flowed.

"I can just see his Heavenly Majesty sitting there with that d.a.m.ned nursemaid of a book on his lap!" he chortled. "I can see his eyes scanning the earth, and I can see him sit bolt upright when two splendid fellows named Li Kao and Number Ten Ox set forth to find the Great Root of Power. 'What's wrong with trying to help the poor children of the humble village of Ku-fu?' he says reasonably. 'After all, things like that are the reason for my existence!' So p.a.w.nbroker Fang and Ma the Grub pop up to tell us that the duke has the root - and if they uncover a tablet that tells the story of Jade Pearl? 'Accidents will happen,' sighs the August Personage of Jade. Fang and Ma pop up again to help us escape from a tower, along with Miser Shen - and if Shen tells us about the Old Man of the Mountain? 'Accidents will happen,' sighs the August Personage of Jade. The Bamboo Dragonfly heads straight toward the Cavern of Bells, and after we get a good look at the painting of the Peddler we are reunited with Henpecked Ho, who has deciphered the story of the Princess of Birds. 'Accidents,' the emperor sighs, 'will happen, and after all, I'm only trying to help them find the root that might save the children of Ku-fu.' So far, so good, but now let's take a look at something truly sneaky, which should not be difficult to do because we're sitting on it."

I nervously looked around the wall for something truly sneaky, but the only sneaky thing I saw was a lizard stalking a bug.

"Centuries ago, a general just happened to dream that he had been summoned to Heaven, and when he returned he discovered that his plans had been altered to place Dragon's Pillow in this ludicrous position," said Master Li. "Then a reading of the Trigrams just happened to provide a ghostly watchman named Wan, and a couple of centuries after that some of the local children began playing a game."

Master Li finished his rice and pointed a chopstick at me.

"The Duke of Ch'in very nearly eliminated all trace of the Princess of Birds when he burned the books, destroyed priests and temples and worshippers, and decapitated professional storytellers, but he forgot about a children's game," said Master Li. "Ox, there is such a thing as racial memory, which preserves events long after conventional histories have turned to dust. One of the ways in which this memory is expressed is through the games and songs of children, and when the children came to the wall that day, they began to play the Hopping Hide and Seek Game, which happens to be the history of the Duke of Ch'in and the Princess of Birds."

I stared at him stupidly.

"Jade Pearl was a ginseng child, in the sense that her G.o.dmother was the Queen of Ginseng," said Master Li. "How do you capture a ginseng child?"

"With a red ribbon," I said.

"How did the duke disguise himself when he approached her handmaidens?"

I thought of the painting in the Cavern of Bells. "As a lame peddler who leaned upon a crutch," I said.

Li Kao began to imitate the sick boys in the infirmary at the monastery, shaking his shoulders and s.n.a.t.c.hing at the air. Then he imitated the girls, making swooping pulling gestures.

"The boys are pretending to be lame peddlers who must hop on one leg, although they are not consciously aware of it," he said. "They are trying to get the girls' red ribbons, and while the girls are not aware of it, they are ginseng handmaidens who are being killed. The last girl becomes Jade Pearl, but the Princess of Birds cannot be killed because she has eaten the Peach of Immortality. So the boy who takes her red ribbon hides her. He is now the duke, and the other children become the birds of China, blindfolded because the birds cannot see their princess after she has lost her crown. They try to find and rescue her by touch, but there is a time limit. All right, why does the duke count to forty-nine?"

I am not usually so intelligent, but the answer popped unbidden into my mind.

"Seven times seven," I said. "Jade Pearl could escape if she reached the Star Shepherd before the seventh day of the seventh moon. But, Master Li, why couldn't there be ten or twenty other interpretations of the Hopping Hide and Seek Game?"

"Ginseng," he said promptly. "The moment that the children of your village took the tiniest taste of the Great Root their racial memory was stirred, and instinctively they began to play their ginseng game. A slightly stronger taste dredged up a deeper racial memory, and an understanding that had eluded the conscious minds of the children who had first experienced it. The moment that they began to chant a nonsense rhyme, they were able to find the Princess of Birds. Ox, that was no accident when Monkey reached out and touched Fang's Fawn."

Li Kao began a slow rhythmic beat upon the rim of his rice bowl with his chopsticks.

"The ghost of poor Wan must have been very lonely," he said. "Ghosts also share racial memories, and when he saw the children play the Hopping Hide and Seek Game he realized that the question that the game asks is, 'Where is the Princess of Birds? Where has the lame peddler taken her?' Wan knew the answer. He wanted to join the game, but he was determined to play fair - how many times had he listened to the riddle games of children? - and his impromptu effort was so good that I strongly suspect that he had been far more than a simple soldier.

"Jade plate, Six, eight.

Fire that burns hot, Night that is not.

Fire that burns cold, First silver, then gold."

Master Li tossed the chopsticks into the bowl and winked at me.

"Ever since the standard was set by Yang Wan-li, what has been the common metaphor for the moon?"

"A plate of jade," I said. "Sailing across ten thousand miles of blue-black sky."

"In relation to the moon, what can you make of 'six, eight'?"

"The sixth day of the eighth moon?" I guessed.

"Try it the other way around."

"The eighth day, the sixth moon - why, that is today!" I exclaimed.

"It is indeed. We've begun with the moon, so what about the fire that burns hot?"

"The sun?" I said.

"And the night that is not?"

I scratched my head. "An eclipse?"

"It could be, but I don't recall any eclipse of the sun on the eighth day of the sixth moon. Try something simpler."

"Sunset," I said. "The sun has gone, but the light remains."

"Excellent," said Master Li. "So in their game the children were asking, 'Where is the Princess of Birds?' and Wan told them that if they looked from his watchtower when the sun sank below the horizon on the eighth day of the sixth moon, they would see where the lame peddler had taken Jade Pearl. Specifically, they would see something that looked like cold fire, and that first burned silver and then burned gold. In a few minutes," said Master Li, "that is precisely what we are going to look for."

I felt myself flush, and I said, almost angrily: "Master Li, we are trying to find the Great Root of Power for the children of Ku-fu! We are not trying to find a little G.o.ddess for the Emperor of Heaven!"

"Dear boy, don't you think the emperor realizes that? Be patient for a few minutes more," Master Li said soothingly.

The sun slowly sank behind distant mountain peaks, and the clouds began to glow with the colors of sunset. I saw nothing like cold fire. The light began to fade, and I could see faint stars, and still I saw nothing. It was almost dark, and to tell the truth, I had no faith at all in Master Li's a.n.a.lysis of the nonsense rhyme.

Suddenly the concealed sun sank to an invisible gap in the western mountain range. A brilliant shaft of light shot like an arrow across the valley to the eastern mountains. At no other time in no other day of the year would the angle have been perfect, but now a small circular spot that was concealed among peaks began to glow like cold fire. It shimmered like silver, and then it faded to dull gold, and then it vanished.

Master Li motioned for me to get down on my knees and clasp my hands together.

"Well done, Wan!" he cried. "You have fulfilled the mission for which you were chosen by the Emperor of Heaven, and surely your spirit will be allowed to ascend to the stars. There you will find many children who will ask you to join their games, and the G.o.ddess Nu Kua will be delighted to have such a sentinel to help her guard the Celestial Walls."

We performed the three obeisances and the nine kowtows, and then we got to our feet. Li Kao grinned at me.

"Ox, what do you think that we're being sent to find?"