Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

His eyes were cold and contemptuous as they moved across the gorge to the prince.

“He's already killed five people in order to dip his brush into the well of the stone and steal the touch of Heaven, and then paint pretty pictures and pass them off as his own.” Master Li rinsed his mouth with wine and spat it out. “Fraud and forgery,” he growled. “Paint slapped over dry rot and gilded with lies.”

The prince turned white.

“Is that what you think, old man?” he whispered. “Is that what you really think?” Now he was turning red. “My paintings are private! I do not show them! What sort of fraud is that?”

“Masturbation,” Master Li said. “In your circumstances, that still qualifies as rape.”

“My paintings are for the purpose of learning the paths of universal energy!” the prince shouted furiously. “My loathsome ancestor sought truth in rivers of blood; I seek it in harmless paint, and even the Laughing Prince could claim that his was the proper goal of philosophy! You, on the other hand, waste your time with unimportant puzzles, which is the occupation of a child!”

Master Li raised his flask and drank deeply, and wiped his lips with his beard.

“Oh, I wouldn't call the puzzle of the stone unimportant,” he said mildly. “I will, however, plead guilty to holding a certain childlike view of the universe.”

The prince's color was returning to normal. He raised the purse and drank, and leaned back comfortably.

“Childlike? No, but very old-fashioned,” he said with a chuckle. “In fact, everything you do is old-fashioned. Who in this day and age would charge all over China, even to the pits of Hell, trusting to the immediacy of experience rather than the trained objectivity of an army of investigators? You appear to take seriously the anthropomorphic folk concepts of gods and goddesses, and your concern for the stone appears to spring from a literal acceptance of fairy tales from the spurious Annals of Heaven and Earth. Li Kao, you are a very great man, but—and I say this with the greatest respect—an antique memorial to long dead concepts and practices and values.”

The prince was laughing as he lifted his stone. I realized that it was attached to a cord around his neck, and the silver cup for his painting brush that had encased and concealed it was slipped down. Master Li leaned over and whispered to me, and I surreptitiously whispered to Moon Boy.

“He says you're to prepare to bring the soul-sound from the stone. He'll yell when he wants it.”

Moon Boy's eyes were glazed and he tried to focus them. His fingers trembled as he lifted the two pieces in his cupped hands.

“Still, there are certain pleasures denied to an antique with a slight flaw in his character,” the prince said. “Such as being able to hear the simple sound of total innocence. To be fair, half the villagers and monks couldn't hear the stone either. I would think, however, that at this distance, and with the acoustic effect of the cliffs behind us—”

“Now!” Master Li yelled.

Moon Boy's lips moved to his cupped hands. His throat vibrated rapidly, and my heart leaped as indescribable beauty and yearning and hope and sadness bounced back and forth between the cliffs.

Kung… shang… chueeeeeeeeeeh…

Master Li reeled, but his reaction was as nothing compared to the stone of Prince Liu Pao. It tore loose from the prince's hands and literally flew toward Moon Boy, and the cord jerked tight around the prince's neck and pulled him forward.

I am so stupid that it wasn't until then that I realized what the prince had been planning to do to us. The gorge was only a few feet away, two hundred feet straight down to jagged rocks. Prince Liu Pao teetered at the edge, waving his arms for balance, and then he fell. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I was looking at a miracle.

The prince was standing upon thin air. He walked across nothingness, intent only upon hauling the stone back and regaining control of it. Then he looked at us and smiled.

“Really, Li Kao, didn't you think I would expect that?” he said mockingly. “And didn't you think I would learn something from the stone and my ancestor's charts and formulas? I hate to brag, but I rather suspect I know more about the energy forces of the universe than any other man alive.”

He pointed to his sandals, resting upon a void.

“That, for example, is a path of energy strong enough to support ten elephants, if the elephants could learn to see and adjust to it. I have, and I sincerely hope you are similarly capable.”

“One of us is,” Master Li said calmly.

“You mean Number Ten Ox?” the prince said. “I agree that no man alive could climb down one side of the gorge and back up the other without the proper gear, and when Ox carried you from one peak to the other, he was crossing as I am now, upon a path of energy.”

Master Li hopped up on my back, and the prince's smile grew wider.

“That's why in Hell you imagined him to show in the mirror that he was a firstborn, since walking on air can only result from absolute awareness or absolute innocence, but has it occurred to you that Ox was blinded by mist? He isn't now, and innocence cannot bear very much awareness.”

His lips touched the rim of the stone in his hands, and the sound that came from the well was so pure and powerful that I heard not suggestive notes but the actual words from the soul of a stone.

“Come… to… meeeeeeeeee!… Come… to… meeeeeeeeee!”

Moon Boy and I were dragged to the edge. I saw no path of energy. All I saw were rocks rising like shark's teeth two hundred feet below, and terror shook me like a rag doll. I had no choice. I must obey the call or die, and my foot reached out into nothingness.

Moon Boy teetered on the edge. His throat was vibrating faster than a throat could, and sweat was pouring down his face, and something extraordinary was happening. He was projecting the sound of the stone, but at the same time he was blending another sound into it. It was wind and sunlight and rain and snow and a comfortable snug cottage—it was the song that Grief of Dawn had sung for old Tai-tai, but now she was singing to me. Grief of Dawn was calling me, and I couldn't imagine how I had missed the path before. There it was, not six feet from the empty space in front of my sandal, and I turned and walked to it. I stepped confidently out into the air, opening my arms to embrace Grief of Dawn, and I was only vaguely aware of the prince's white terrified face, and the click of the rattan coil inside Master Li's sleeve and the flash of his knife as it slashed out.

The sound of Grief of Dawn had turned. Now she was behind me, calling me back, and I turned around like a sleepwalker and stepped back over a path of swirling energy that was as smooth as a carpet. Master Li rode on my back, chuckling, and he laughed out loud when my sandals came down on rock and grass. Moon Boy collapsed, gasping and rubbing his throat, and Master Li hopped off.

The sounds had gone. I came back to reality and whirled around and stared at Prince Liu Pao, who was still standing upon thin air in the center of the gorge. He no longer wore the stone, and the warmth and charm was gone, and all I saw was a sly and selfish little man who looked like a terrified monkey.

“Really, Prince, there's no need to be frightened. Did you think I was going to slit your silly throat?” Master Li detached the stone from the cord he had cut from the prince's neck. Why do people take me for a crude assassin?” he asked plaintively. “I'm not crude at all.”

The torch that Moon Boy had carried from the tomb lay on the grass. It still burned. Master Li pointed to it, and then across the gorge.

“Ox, can you put this thing through that window?”