Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

“Well, he still seems to have a certain ability,” I said weakly.

She laughed and kicked me in the shins, and we made our way back with our bulging sacks. Master Li was waiting for us at the stables, which was a pity because we couldn't stay and watch the Golden Girls. It was their turn to perform. The great lawn was as bright as day with thousands of lanterns, and they were entertaining the guests with a hair-raising game of polo, which I had never seen before. (It had been the rage at court ever since it had been imported from India, but I was not exactly an ornament of the court.) The Captain of Bodyguards was particularly spectacular, because she thought nothing of crashing her horse into another one at forty miles an hour, and as Grief of Dawn watched them I could see that she was yearning for a sable uniform and a polo mallet. I dragged her away.

We had time to decorate toad faces with a little white paint while we waited for Moon Boy. At last he managed to pry himself away from the adoring mob, and he slipped through the shrubbery carrying a large backpack of clothes and jewels.

The toad, as everybody knows, is one of the five poisonous animals, and is the Beast of Moon and Night, and it spits Vermilion Dust that causes malaria, and is the confidant of the tortoise, the most devious and inscrutable of all living things. When toads have feasted upon Chinese lanternflies their bellies swell to grotesque proportions, and since the lanternflies are swallowed whole they continue to produce greenish flashes of light at twenty-six pulses per minute. The effect is quite startling. The effect is particularly startling when the green pulsing bellies are highlighting white-painted demon-toad faces. If one adds ghastly ghost screeches from Moon Boy, the result can be an experience that will remain with you for life.

One hundred of the hideous things hopped through the doors of the stables, and the screams of the soldiers and grooms were drowned out by the howls from the audience at the polo match. We stepped aside to avoid being trampled to death, and inside of a minute the stables contained nothing but toads and horses. We raced inside.

The exit was easy to find, because it was directly across from the king's war chariot. It was a wide tunnel, sloping downward, and we grabbed torches. Master Li hopped up on my back and we ran down the dark passage. The king would scarcely allow an open path for his enemies, of course, so the problem was going to be getting through the doors. The tunnel leveled as it started to run beneath the moat. Ahead of us was a huge iron door, and Master Li told me to stop. His eyes moved slowly over the walls.

Rows of iron shields hung there. The centers of the shields bore strange emblems, and they protruded from the smooth surfaces. The emblems seemed to concern every subject from agriculture to the zodiac, and Master Li thoughtfully chewed on his beard.

“I suspect sequence locks,” he said. “The king rides down this passage on his couch on the chariot and punches shields that form the code to open the door. It's almost certainly set up so that the wrong code will cause an unfortunate result, which means that the king can remember it even if he's drunk or half-asleep. Probably a personal horoscope, or his lucky stars. Does anyone happen to know when he was born?”

Nobody did, but Grief of Dawn said, “When he picked me up and put me on his lap I noticed the amulet around his neck. It had the planetary symbol of Mercury.”

“Good girl!” Master Li rubbed his hands happily. “If the amulet means enough to him that he wears it permanently, the code may simply be characteristics of his guiding planet. Let's see if they're all here.”

He had me walk up and down the line while he hummed through his nose and studied weird symbols. Then he had me go back to the beginning.

“We must hope he's used the Chinese system. If he's used a barbarian one we can expect a twenty-ton spike-studded iron plate to fall on our heads,” Master Li said matter-of-factly. “The organ associated with Mercury is the spleen.”

I closed my eyes. Master Li reached out and punched the spleen symbol. Nothing happened, so I timidly made my way down the line of shields while Master Li punched symbols.

The taste associated with Mercury is salt…

The color is black…

The element is water…

The parent element is metal…

The child element is wood…

The friend element is fire…

The enemy is earth…

The earthly analogue is a stream…

The celestial analogue is a bear…

As he punched the ninth symbol, the iron door slid open. We stepped through the opening to the other side, and Master Li reached out to another shield.

“And the musical note of Mercury is sixth on the scale,” he said complacently, and the iron door slid shut behind us.

“Education is a wonderful thing,” Moon Boy said admiringly. “I should have paid more attention in school.”

“Master Li knows everything,” I said proudly.

Even Master Li was baffled when we reached the next row of shields. The tunnel was sloping up to an exit outside the walls, and another iron door confronted us. I could see no pattern at all to the symbols, and Master Li was clearly puzzled.

“Strange,” he muttered. “All but three of the emblems are symbolic of nature, and those three form no pattern at all: a sandal, a fan made of feathers, and an incense burner.”

We could be of no use to him. He had me walk back and forth along the shields. “This passage is his war route,” the old man muttered. “Logically he would use symbols that would concentrate his mind on battle, but what is militant about symbols for rain and sunlight and a variety of animals?” He muttered to himself for a while. “Visualize him,” he muttered. “Shin Hu, King of Chao, riding in his war chariot upon a revolving couch with his Golden Girls behind him.”

He suddenly let out a whoop. “Ox, back to the beginning,” he said happily. I trotted back to the first shield. “I should have seen it at once,” said Master Li. “Shih Hu is remarkable in that his bulk requires him to fight while seated upon a couch, and has there ever been a mighty warrior before him who did the same thing? Yes, one. Shih Hu's idol is the great Chuko Liang, the legendary Sleeping Dragon of the wars of the Three Kingdoms, who charged the enemy while reposing upon a couch in a carriage. And how did he array his men? In the Eight Trigrams Battle Formation, which he signaled by languidly waving his white feather fan.”

Master Li punched the fan symbol. No gaping pit opened beneath our feet, so I started up the line of shields.

The first trigram is Heaven…

The second trigram is earth…

The third trigram is wind…

The fourth trigram is cloud…

The fifth trigram is dragon…

The sixth trigram is tiger…

The seventh trigram is bird…

As he punched the seventh shield the door slid open. We stepped through and Master Li reached for another shield.

“And the eighth trigram is snake,” he said, and the door slid shut behind us.

Moonlight had greeted us, and after a few more feet we were out on a hillside beneath the stars. Master Li gazed back at the huge walls of the castle.

“The grooms and guards will creep back to the stables and find nothing but indignant toads,” he said thoughtfully. “If they do anything it will be to round up and spank the bottoms of any small boys who happen to be handy, and they certainly will not interrupt a banquet to tell their king that they deserted their post because they were attacked by awful amphibians. In the morning Shih Hu should have a royal hangover. I doubt that any of us will be missed until afternoon at the earliest, and then they'll search the palace and the grounds. Night will intervene, and not until the following morning should they realize we're gone. We should have nearly two days’ head start, and we'll need every minute of it.”