Barry Hughart - Eight Skilled Gentlemen

Wait… wait… down, shove, up… wait… wait… down, shove, up!

The yang boat was leading by a foot now. The jutting rock flashed past, and as it did I saw people staring up in fear at a tiny pale sun like a fading candle, and they shoved children out from the shelter of caves and had them run around and play with special caps on their heads, just as we still did in my village during the first moon: bright-colored caps shaped like flowers and grasshoppers, vivid against white snow to catch the eyes of gods looking down. Fires were put out to save all heat for the sun. Hard-cooked eggs dyed as bright and cheerful as the flowers of spring were brought out beneath the dark cold sky, and the shells were ceremoniously cracked and the round yellow yolks removed and held up high.

Faster, the scarves and clapping boards signaled, and faster flashed the oars, and the boats bounced over waves with teeth-jarring impact, one right after another, and the sterns swung around as the slim hulls tried to go sideways. I flipped like a rag doll tied to the handle of the steering oar, trying to use air drag as much as possible and water drag as little, but still Kuan was always ahead of me, always anticipating, always balanced and calm and sure. The yang boat’s lead was more than a yard now.

Through sheets of spray I could see blurred images on the banks. There was a village very much like my own, and with a pang in my heart I saw the beautiful girls wearing their brightest clothes being pushed in swings by the young men, higher and higher, lovely flowers reaching to the sky, and the older women in equally bright dress holding bright ribbons as they danced like petals around a stalklike pole. Fathers urged sons to keep the shuttlecocks in the air longer and longer, and each shuttlecock was painted bright yellow like the sun. The last ice was ceremoniously cracked, and the graves were swept, and the spirits of the dead were invited to join the festival of the first bath in the stream, where wine in buoyant cups floated from hand to hand.

I had lost track of gnomon markers. The Yu vibrations were tremendously strong, and suddenly I realized how the spirit of old wells could anticipate every command. Kuan wasn’t watching the water, she was listening to the sounds that formed it, and I discovered that if I stopped thinking and let my body react to the music of the Yu I was already in place when the scarf and clapping boards reached me. But it was too late. Already the gap had spread to ten feet and it was going to get worse unless Envy gave a bad command. I could only see his back now, far ahead, glimpsed momentarily through spray, and even at that distance he exuded the calm control of a gentleman out for a holiday paddle on a pool.

Master Li was doing the only thing he could, which was to pray. I could see him straight ahead on the high raised prow with his head lifted to the sky, and scattered words drifted back on the wind: “Lady of Mysteries… Guide of Lost Souls… Blender of the Hot and the Cold, the Wet and the Dry, the Done and the Undone…” The right hand lifted and the long scarf flicked out a command. But I had already heard something in the vibrating music, something ahead, and I was ready now: down, shove up, wait… wait… down, shove, up! I could have wept in frustration. This time Kuan didn’t gain on me and we made the turn around the rock in unison, but too late, too late. Still the ten-foot gap remained.

“Lady of Highest Prime… Guardian of the Greatest Sacrifice… Solace of All That Sickens and Dies…”

We had flashed past a rock into searing sunlight that made the sky appear to be on fire. Black-funneled waterspouts lifted from frothy rainbow waves, and I saw a dragon rear up through the surface, one of the terrible ones, a kiao lung as opposed to the beneficial water dragons. Horrible creatures had claimed the left bank. On the right bank an unrelenting Yellow Wind was ripping cottages apart, and sand covered everything, and all the crops were burned and withered.

“Lady Who Grieves… Lady Who Comforts… Lady Who Guards All Living Things,” chanted Master Li.

Screams overhead made me look up to see the most terrifying of all creatures, the three winged servants of the Patron of Pestilence who had once allowed a cavalier to love her, the Queen Mother Goddess of the West. Those who know the lady would say that her claws had touched the cavalier but lightly. Now from the Mountain of the Three Dangers had come the Great Pelican bearing upon its back the Pestilential Hag, Yu Hua-lung, and the Small Pelican that carried Tou-shen Niang Niang, the Plague Queen, and the Green Bird that carried Ma Shen, Patron of Pustules and Pockmarks. The three Death Birds swooped low, screeching, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought I saw an immense tiger claw rip through the sky from horizon to horizon, but then I realized it was a claw of Yellow Wind.

The scarf was signaling and the clapping boards sounded. Down, shove, up… wait… wait… down, shove, up, and both boats made the turn evenly, with the yang boat still leading by ten feet, and my liver turned cold. That last rock was marked with yang symbols from one end to the other. It was the last gnomon marker, half a year, and the strength of yang must now give way to yin if the earth wasn’t to burn and plague and pestilence run rampant. As our boat had swung wide I’d been able to look ahead. I’d seen a white streak of sunlight cutting straight across the path of the music water, and the course narrowed as it approached the finish line, and squarely in the center, suspended in air, hung a shimmering ring. It was pi, symbol of the harmony of Heaven, seamless continual circle of yang and yin, and the tips of the two long slim dragon horns thrusting from the prows began to glow with the same shimmering light. Master Li and Envy flung both scarves wide, and drums and clapping boards pounded like giant heartbeats, and the rowers made great gasping sounds as they put every ounce of strength into their strokes.

“Lady of Solace, Lady of Purging—”

Whatever goddess Master Li had in mind had better hurry, I thought, because the rowers on the yang boat were equally strong and the gap was getting no shorter. I was flying around trying to achieve perfect balance with the oar as the boat bucked and bounced and skidded over great waves, and when the water boiled between our boat and Envy’s and something lifted from the depths I was too busy to really see it at first. Then I did see it, and in a flash I understood that Master Li had not been praying to a goddess at all. Right from the start he had been invoking a priestess, a healer, a shamanka, and lifting through the rainbow water was the head of Yu Lan.

The puppeteer’s beautiful daughter looked at me for a long moment. Her lips parted and I saw the glitter of fangs, and one of her claws lifted through spray and fell back. Two of the drops that trickled slowly down her face weren’t music-water. Then she dove. Yu Lan disappeared beneath the waves and I was never to see her face again, but I did see something else. Ahead of us and to the left the water boiled in front of the yang boat, and then a great shining fish tail lifted into the air. Harsh sunlight blazed on the scales, and it whipped around with tremendous force and smacked squarely against the prow.

For an instant the yang boat paused as though tied to a leash that somebody had jerked, and when it moved forward again the gap had gone. We were dead even, or perhaps we even had a bit of an edge in that the smooth strokes of our oarsmen hadn’t been disrupted, and Master Li began to roar like a volcano.

“On, First Doer! On, Ancestral Intelligence! On, Lungs and Stomach! Hao! Hao! Rising and Soaring, Seizer of All, Sharpener and Amputator! On, Husky Lusty One! On, Extreme and Extraordinary One! Hao! Hao! Hao!”