The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

by Barry Hughart

  “‘The ways of the August Personage of Jade are subtle indeed. In Heaven there was also a flower named Purple Pearl, and Purple Pearl was even more flawed and evil than the stone. The emperor planted the flower in a barren spot beside the River of Spirits, and there it was discovered by the wandering stone. Evil attracts evil, and the stone began to bring moisture to nourish the flower. Purple Pearl bloomed and became beautiful, and her evil was exercised by the dew and raindrops of Heaven, and she fell in love with the stone. She vowed that if ever she were reborn upon earth she would shun the Sphere of Banished Sufferings and seek the Source of Drenching Grief, and tears would build up inside her, and if the opportunity arose, she would repay her debt to the stone by shedding every tear in her body.

  “‘The strange vow of a flower is of the utmost importance. The stone has been returned to earth, where it passed into the hands of Lao Tzu, who cried, ‘Evil!’ and hurled it away. It passed to Chuang Tzu, who also cried, ‘Evil!’ and hurled it away. The stone now lurks in darkness, waiting for the hand that will not hurl it away, and he who possesses the stone will be himself possessed. The stone is the Stone of Evil, and its malignancy will spread unchecked unless drowned in the tears of Purple Pearl.

  “‘Let no man interfere with the destiny of the flower, for the outcome is awaited by both the goddess Nu Kua and the August Personage of Jade.’”

  Master Li tossed the scroll on the grass. I choked on a grasshopper. “That’s all?” I said incredulously.

  “Not according to Ssu-ma Ch’ien,” said Master Li. He picked up Brother Squint-Eyes’ copy and began rapidly decoding the complete hidden text.

  “‘Red Chamber story correct about stone, tablet from Cave of Yu…. Confirmation of reactions of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu…. Have traced stone to Prince Liu Sheng…. Consumed by evil, has become Laughing Prince…. Secret hiding place…. Downstairs…. Cold room…. Tunnel to construction site…. Stone in sacristy…. Plain appearance…. Flat smooth area rising to round concave bowl shape…. Found axe…. Blow broke flat area from bowl area…. Second blow broke off small chip…. Soldiers seized, could not destroy…. Imprisoned…. Terrible sentence…. Scholars, seek Stone of Evil! …. Destroy it! …. Evil that consumes men can consume world.’”

  Master Li placed the copy beside the scroll.

  “Ssu-ma Ch’ien was a very brave man,” he said. “The question is whether or not he was correct about the mysterious stone, and he suggests that Tsao Hsueh Chin, the author of Red Chamber, may have taken the stone story from a tablet from the Cave of Yu. Do you know what that means?”

  We shook our heads negatively.

  “The legendary Emperor Yu is said to have received certain tablets from Heaven, which he concealed in a cave,” Master Li explained. “They’re called ‘Annals of Heaven and Earth’ because they supposedly deal with matters affecting men and gods alike. Now and then somebody produces an old clay tablet said to have come from the Cave of Yu. Usually the message involves something lucrative for the discoverer, but one or two of the tablets have contained prophecies that proved to be astonishingly correct.”

  He picked up the soil and plant report and waved it in my direction. The expression on his face made me very uneasy.

  “Number Ten Ox, according to this, there isn’t one damn thing wrong with Princes’ Path, just as there wasn’t one damn thing wrong with the green growing things in the south until Emperor Li Ling-chi waved his hand,” Master Li growled. “If one allows for tale-telling embellishment, there’s nothing impossible about the tangerine story. A tremendous concentration of ch’i would draw lesser life forces to it like iron filings to a magnet.” The old man’s eyes bored toward my brain. “Just after a section of Princes’ Path was destroyed, you had a dream. In it you sensed an extraordinary ch’i, a pulsing life force, coming from a small round piece of clay that was colored orange. Was your sleeping mind guiding you to the story of the emperor and the tangerines?”

  My mind was as blank and opaque as a pool of mud. I automatically swallowed my plum juice with vinegar.

  “A stone touched by Heaven?” Master Li wondered out loud. “A stone worshipped by the Laughing Prince? All we know for sure is that something destroyed sections of Princes’ Path, and a strange sound seems to be associated with it.”

  Moon Boy gulped. His eyes were wide and wondering. “I think I can tell you what the sound is,” he said in a small hushed voice.

  Confucian temples have no priests or formal worship, but they have a regular congregation of makers of bells. That’s because of the pien-chung, a row of sixteen stone bells hanging in a wooden rack. The bells have no clappers and are struck by wooden beams swinging on ropes, and to most people the sound is dull and uninteresting, but bell makers view them differently. On the wooden frame is the inscription “When the bell speaks, the stone answers,” because a perfectly tuned metal bell will produce a matching echo from a similar stone bell, and it’s the most accurate tuning device known.

  A Confucian temple wasn’t far away. Moon Boy ran his hands lovingly over the stone bells. He was in his professional element, and he was all business.

  “The ancients separated musical instruments into categories corresponding to the trigrams of Fu Hsi,” he said, and for a mad moment I thought I was going to hear another lecture on the Wen-Wu lute. “Each instrument is defined by four qualities: the material it’s made from, the cardinal point of its greatest strength, the season it suggests, and the related sound phenomenon.”

  He began fashioning a framework from pieces of bamboo.

  “The mouth organ is classified as gourd, northeast, winter/spring, and the sound of thunder. The zither is silk, south, summer, and the sound of fire. All instruments were easily classified until they came to the sonorous stone, and then the ancients became entangled in an argument that lasted nearly six centuries. They easily provided stone, northwest, and autumn/winter. The problem was the related sound phenomenon, and their final decision is still hotly debated. It won’t be easy, but I’ll try to show you why they chose as they did.”

  He lifted two of the stone bells to the bamboo frame and arranged them so the mouths were almost touching. He took two of the striking beams and swung them over so the ends were almost touching the sides of the bells.

  “Ox has tried to describe the strange sound in Princes’ Path to me,” he said. “Now Master Li has spoken of a stone that might have been touched by Heaven, and which might be possessed of an overpowering ch’i. All I know is that stone produces two different sounds, and most people have only heard the sound from the surface. The other sound comes from the soul.”

  He began to tap the beams against the bells, very lightly and rapidly. A dull stone sound filled the temple. His hands moved faster and faster. A vibration made my stomach feel queasy. Moon Boy’s hands were blurs and the vibration became a humming sound that made the temple shake. His head bent down and his mouth almost touched the narrow crack between the two bells. Moon Boy’s throat began to vibrate like a lark’s. I realized that he was somehow pitching his voice into the two bell mouths simultaneously, but all I heard was the hum. Sweat was pouring down Moon Boy’s face. His throat vibrated faster and faster. “When the bell speaks, the stone answers,” and the stones were beginning to answer. It was a nearly inaudible echo beneath the vibrating hum, gradually growing louder. Then the echo broke through, and my heart nearly broke loose from its moorings.

  Kung…shang…chueeeeeeeeeeh….

  Master Li had not been able to hear the sound on Princes’ Path, but now he looked as though somebody had smacked him with a barge pole. Grief of Dawn was weeping. “That’s it!” I cried. “The sound I heard was a thousand times as pure and strong, but that’s it!”

  Kung…shang…chueeeeeeeeeeh….

  Moon boy stepped back, drenched in perspiration.

  “The ancients,” he said, panting, “decided that the related phenomenon of the soul-sound of stone was nothing less than the Voice of Heaven.”

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bsp; “Well, well, well,” said Master Li.

  All the way back to the Valley of Sorrows Master Li kept it up. “Well, well, well…. Well, well, well…. Well, well, well….”

  I hadn’t seen him so happy in months.

  Prince Liu Pao was delighted to see us. At first I was delighted to see him too, but then Master Li introduced Grief of Dawn. The prince jumped a foot into the air and his complexion switched back and forth from pink to white and the conversation went something like this.

  “Would you care for tea?”

  “No, thank you, Your Highness,” said Grief of Dawn.

  “Wine, perhaps?”

  “No, thank you, Your highness,” said Grief of Dawn.

  “Cakes? Fruit?”

  “No, thank you, Your Highness,” said Grief of Dawn.

  “How about a few swans?” the prince said hopefully. “Cash? Lambs? Silk?”

  Since those were the classic wedding gifts, I decided I was in trouble. The prince’s reaction to Moon Boy was almost as strong, and within minutes the three of them were so close that I began to think deep thoughts about Grief of Dawn’s belief that part of the soul she shared with Moon Boy had been lost on the Great Wheel of Transmigrations. Had the wandering soul settled inside Prince Liu Pao? I asked Master Li about it, but he only grunted noncommittally.

  He had something else to think about. Now all his attention was focused upon the mysterious stone of the Laughing Prince, and he settled down in the library at the monastery and began poring over ancient records in search of any mention of an unusual stone. He asked the prince to do the same with family papers, and I was sent out to see what I could find in peasant tales and legends.

  It was something to keep my mind off the prince and Grief of Dawn. The stone stories of the old women in the village were the same ones I had heard all my life, so I tried a different kind of folk tale. Blacksmiths are surrounded by boys as flowers are surrounded by bees, so I decided to lend the village smith a hand. After I had lifted the anvil a few times and bent a few iron bars in my hands I had all the boys I needed, and within two days I was able to race into the library at the monastery.

  “A stone! A magical stone!” I shouted. Master Li looked up from the scrolls and blinked at me. “It’s a boys’ story, and very ancient,” I said excitedly. “So far I’ve only heard a vague description, but I know it deals with a hero who sneaks into a secret cavern and finds a magical stone. Know what he’s trying to do with it?” I said rhetorically. “Kill the Laughing Prince, that’s what.”

  Master Li leaned back and put the tips of his fingers together. “Well, well, well,” he said.

  Adult visitors were rarely allowed to attend meetings of the Sacred and Solemn Order of Wolf, but Prince Liu Pao was not the normal kind of visitor. The moon was very bright. I listened for a treble owl hoot and replied with two cat yowls, and a boy slipped from the shadows and led us through a maze of thick brush to the side of a low cliff. The prince and Master Li and Moon Boy and Grief of Dawn and I got down on our knees and crawled through an opening, and when we stood up we were inside a small cave. Thirteen boys, eleven to fourteen years old, greeted us formally. The occasion was the induction of the thirteenth, Little Skinhead, into the elite boys’ gang of the Valley of Sorrows, and we would be allowed to stay until they got to matters like codes and passwords.

  A single torch burned at the back of the cave. Lying on the floor beneath it was the skeleton of a boy who had been about the same age as the members of the gang. It was a very ancient skeleton, and the boy’s death had been dramatic. The rib cage was crushed, and inside it lay the iron head of an old spear. We followed the gang’s example and bowed to the bones.

  The leader was called Deer Ears. “We bow to Wolf, as have our fathers and grandfathers before us,” Deer Ears formally announced. “We gather in his honor, and our distinguished guests will be allowed to add one detail to his story.”

  The boys sat in a semicircle facing the skeleton. We sat just behind them, and Deer Ears picked up an ancient ring from the skeleton’s separated finger bones. He handed it politely to the prince, who examined it and passed it around. The ring was black iron, and engraved on the front was the head of a wolf. Master Li studied the inside of the ring with interest. There were faint lines and markings that made no sense to me. We handed the ring back to Deer Ears, and he reverently replaced it.

  There was a brief ceremony for the purification of the boy to be inducted, Little Skinhead, but sacred matters would be saved for later after we had gone. When Deer Ears began the story of Wolf I was disappointed. It was like a thousand such stories, and I could almost predict what would happen next.

  A woodcutter finds a baby in a basket at his doorstep. Around the baby’s neck is a cord holding a ring and a small clay tablet. Neither the woodcutter nor his wife can read, so they take the tablet to a priest, who reads to them: “When the finger fits the ring, take the boy to Temple Spring.” They have no children themselves, so they decide to raise the child as their own, and since the ring has the head of a wolf on it they name him Wolf.

  When the boy is twelve years old the ring fits his finger, so the woodcutter takes him to the Temple of the Spring of the Master, which is renowned for handling all sorts of strange matters. A priest searches the records and says that according to instructions left twelve years before, Wolf is now old enough to be told that he has a cousin living in Ling-chou Valley, a very clever fellow known as Ah the Artificer. Wolf is to go to his cousin, but no other information has been left to guide him. The priest also hands Wolf a simple wooden bow, which seems to be his only inheritance except for the ring, and with many tears Wolf parts with his foster parents and sets off to seek his destiny.

  Ah the Artificer is a classic villain. The greedy mean fellow accepts the boy as slave labor and works him half to death, but Wolf at least discovers that his mother died in childbirth, and his father was named Li Tan and was perhaps the greatest artificer of them all. Wolf’s father then fell under the spell of a concubine of the lord of the neighboring valley, the Valley of Sorrows. The concubine was a witch. She was a barbarian called Crown of Fire, because of her bright red hair, and she had a daughter called Fire Girl, who was Wolf’s age. The witch and Wolf’s father had attempted to assassinate the lord, the Laughing Prince, and had been put to death, but their infant children had vanished and thus were spared.

  “One day,” said Deer Ears, “a mysterious stranger appeared at Ah the Artificer’s door. They talked in low voices for many hours, and then Wolf was called in. When he saw the stranger’s face, Wolf felt a shudder of fear, because—”

  “Wolf wasn’t afraid of anything!” Little Skinhead said indignantly. He had the right spirit for a recruit.

  “Wolf felt a shudder of fear because the stranger’s face was as white as death,” Deer Ears hissed. “Sick, slimy, fish-belly white, and the stranger’s heart was so cold that his eyes had turned blue, and a red beard crawled over his face like a hairy spider, and he was—”

  “He was drunk,” Little Skinhead said matter-of-factly. “My father took me to Soochow, where there are lots of barbarians, and barbarians are always drunk.”

  “He hadn’t hit the wine jars yet, and don’t interrupt!” Deer Ears yelled. “He told Wolf he was a trader with a caravan on its way to Samarkand with a cargo of….”

  Deer Ears paused and looked thoughtfully at the guests. We could add one unimportant detail to the story, and nobody had yet bothered with the cargo. He bowed to the prince, who deferred to Master Li.

  “Slavonian squirrels,” Master Li said, intoning the words like a priestly chant. “Undressed vairs and vair bellies and backs. Martins and finches, goatskins and ram skins, dates, filberts, walnuts, salted sturgeon tails, round pepper, ginger, saffron, cloves, nutmegs, spike, cardamoms, scammony, manna, lac, zedoary, incense, quicksilver, copper, amber, pounding pearls, borax, gum arabic, sweetmeats, gold wire, wines, dragon’s blood rubies, loaded dice, and beautiful dancing girls.”
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br />   Only Master Li would have tossed in loaded dice and beautiful dancing girls, and the boys sat in reverent silence while they absorbed it. For the next ten or twelve centuries Master Li’s cargo would be part of the tale of Wolf.

  Deer Ears’ voice changed to a nasty wheedling whine. “‘What a fine boy,’ the stranger said. ‘What a clever and manly boy. I have just the task for such a boy, and he who performed it would receive six shiny copper coins.’ Wolf looked at him silently. The stranger’s face contorted with terrible pain. ‘All right, seven!’ he shrieked. ‘You see, I have a niece—a wild and ungrateful girl!—who has stolen a gem and swallowed it to conceal the theft, and she has slipped into a small cave at the end of the valley. The entrance is too small for a man, but a clever boy could squeeze inside and bring my niece back.”

  Wolf wants no part of it, but Ah the Artificer insists, so he takes his ring and his bow and a torch and squeezes through a small opening into a dark cave.

  Then the story got very interesting indeed, at least so far as I was concerned, and since it proved to be of use to Master Li, I will set down as of the important parts as I can remember.

  Wolf Boy and Fire Girl

  Wolf lit the torch and looked around. There was nobody in the cave, but there was a dark corner and when he walked over he stared in astonishment at a smooth flight of stone steps leading down. Wolf’s eyes gleamed, and he thought of buried treasure, and he strung his bow and made sure he could quickly reach his knife and started down the stairs. The steps led on and on, winding sharply downward, and Wolf began to hear the sound of running water. Finally something sparkled in his torchlight, and he realized it was an underground river in the center of an immense cavern. The water was jet black, the color of the stone bed it ran through. To his right was a glow, and he moved cautiously toward it and came to the first of a long line of torches set in brackets on the stone walls.