Eight Skilled Gentlemen mlanto-3

by Barry Hughart

  She made a commanding gesture. The Snake looked to the warden for guidance, and the warden looked at the Snake—very much the gaze of bedmates—and then the warden nodded. The pressure relaxed completely and my arms were freed. I managed to sit up and massage my neck, and the warden and the Snake and the entourage strode away. Yu Lan also turned and walked off through ranks of bandits who nervously jumped aside to let her pass.

  Master Li had arrived when Yu Lan did, and in case awe and moral superiority needed some support he’d taken a crossbow from a bandit and had the Snake in the notched sights. Now he bent over and examined my bruises.

  “Nothing broken,” he said cheerfully. “The only thing damaged is your pride, and I wouldn’t lose sleep over that if I were you. That fellow simply isn’t human.”

  “Soivnzd,” I wheezed, which is as close as I could come to “So I’ve noticed.”

  So the stage was set for our arrival in Yen-men, with Master Li and Yu Lan invited to enter the palace walls to treat the grand warden’s sick bride, and Yen Shih automatically welcomed as a puppeteer, with me as assistant, and also arriving would be Li the Cat, and waiting for us would be the Snake, and I had a powerful premonition that the combination was going to be interesting.

  9

  The palace at Yen-men was a great gloomy place complete with a drawbridge and a moat, built to withstand sieges during the wars of the Three Kingdoms many centuries ago. I was interested to see that Master Li and Yu Lan looked the place over, came to some sort of unspoken agreement, and arranged to see the grand warden’s sick wife immediately. When they emerged from the bedchamber Master Li said “Parasites?” and Yu Lan said, “Almost certainly.” Then they closely questioned the lady’s maids, following which they examined some ornamental ponds that were scattered here and there in the gardens. They prepared a vial of some odorous liquid and made sure that the sick woman drank it, and Master Li said, “That should do it.”

  “You mean that’s all?” I asked.

  Yu Lan looked at me with a faint smile tugging at her lovely lips, and Master Li laughed.

  “Ox, in terms of conventional medicine the answer would be yes,” he said. “In shamanistic terms we’ve barely begun, and I think you’ll find the next two steps to the cure to be rather interesting.”

  That turned out to be an understatement, although I was disappointed at first when it seemed that I was excluded. They huddled with Yu Lan’s father. Yen Shih rapidly wrote out a detailed script of some sort, adding a few suggestions of his own, and they announced that the warden’s wife was being attacked by exceptionally vicious demons who were trying to steal her higher soul, and they set sunrise the following morning as the time for the decisive battle with the Agents of Darkness. I was told to collect a bag of rice and a sack of bees (I had no idea what they were for) and to ride out into the hills and gather huge amounts of poppies. Yen Shih let me help him fix various puppeteering equipment in the grand warden’s audience chamber, but after that all I was allowed to do was play the drums, and I was forced to admit they were right. I would have lost my head and done something foolish if I’d been in a more responsible position, and in my defense I will offer the following description.

  The Doctors and the Demons

  SCENE: The palace audience chamber at dawn; curtained, almost airless, heavily shadowed. Torches flank a table placed upon a dais at the end of the room, with heavy hangings on three sides. Incense burners send thick fragrant smoke into the air, and the smell of poppies is overpowering. A bat wobbles erratically through the air and collides with a burner, flaps upside down around the room, and lands on the floor—under the impression it is the ceiling—and clings to a chair leg, giggling. A drum begins a slow monotonous beat, and a parade of dignitaries led by the Grand Warden of Goose Gate enters. Silence, except for the drum. Coughing and shuffling offset. More silence. More coughing and shuffling. The drum slows: da-dum, da-dum, da-dum… dum… dum… dum… Dead silence, then the grand warden and the dignitaries leap three feet into the air.

  VOICE FROM NOWHERE: Bring… the… afflicted… to… me…

  Dignitaries leap aside to form a path as the grand warden’s wife is carried in on a silken litter. She is a young woman, not bad-looking, powerfully built, with a commanding presence but clearly ill. The litter is carried up the steps to the dais and placed upon the table facing the audience. The carriers bow and back away through the side curtains. Silence.

  VOICE FROM NOWHERE: The Demons of Sickness, in the days when they lived as men and women of this world, committed the 9,999 Offenses. For their sins they are linked to the Nine Darknesses. Their foul souls have fallen into the sufferings of the Thousand Ages, and to gain warmth and light they seek pure souls to serve as lantern and hearth in the Domain of Eternal Night. Ye who would steal the soul of this woman, I command thee, show thyselves!

  Silence. Then a snickering sound is heard, malicious laughter, and points of bright light flicker in the shadows to the right of the litter. A child’s face appears, but an evil child with teeth like those of a rat, and horrible eyes. More children appear until there are seven of them. They laugh as they approach the litter, menacingly.

  VOICE FROM NOWHERE: The Hag of the Nine Hollow Hills sends her grandchildren, but fears to show herself? So be it.

  A blinding flash of light is followed by a loud bang and a cloud of smoke, which clears to reveal Master Li standing to the left of the litter. He wears a tall winged hat covered with stars, indicating the path he takes when consulting the gods, and in his right hand is the Horse of Night he rides to visit the underworld. When not in use the horse takes the form of a cane with an iron horse head at the top and an iron hoof at the bottom. In his left hand is the Magic Tambourine: top side shows sunrise, two blackbirds, two horses, and the bear’s tooth; bottom side shows the birch tree, two frogs, seven nests, seven maidens, and the Mother of Fire. His long white robe is covered with bells, dolls, bones, icons, and the twenty-eight metal discs symbolizing the Palaces of the Moon. He levels his cane at the demons.

  MASTER LI: In the name of the Supreme Born-of-Chaos Lord of the Tao of the Five Transcendents and Seven Luminaries, I bid thee begone!

  The evil children laugh at the shaman. Their mouths gape wide, wider, impossibly wide, and great clouds of poisonous bees pour out and buzz in a deadly cloud toward Master Li. He opens his own mouth wide, and as bees buzz in he transforms them into grains of rice and spits them back out. More and more bees attack. Piles of rice cover the shaman’s feet, but suddenly he must fight on two fronts at once because there is another blinding flash, another loud bang, another cloud of smoke, and beside the demon children stands the Hag of the Nine Hollow Hills. Her face is blue, her wings are black, her arms end in raptor’s claws, and she hurls the poisoned arrows that form her feathers. Master Li catches arrows on the shield of his tambourine, but he cannot also defend the patient on the litter as the demons move closer.

  MASTER LI: O Lady Immortal of the Mysterious Supreme, Flower of the Middle Original, Bearer of the Sword and Girdle of Supreme Purity, heed this cry of your servant and come in thy anger and glory!

  A third flash, and a third bang, a third cloud of smoke, and Yu Lan stands behind the litter. She is absolutely breathtaking. Her hair is woven like a cloud over the silver tricorn Night Moon Crown in the Primal Daybreak, and then allowed to flow freely down her back like an ebony waterfall. Her cape of kingfisher feathers bears the Seven Sapphire Flowers. On her vermilion silk caftan is the Grand Ribbon of the Phoenix Pattern, and around her waist is the Fire Jade Girdle of the Six Mountains. Suspended in a silver scabbard is the Sword of Fluid Yellow and Pulsating Phosphors, and her boots are embroidered with the steeds she rides into shadows or sunlight: Blood Horse of Day, Pearl Horse of Night.

  YU LAN: Back to your hole, Hag! No innocent soul shall light the blackness nor warm the bone-chill of the pit to which you were sent by the Celestial Venerable of the Sacred Jewel and Nine Breaths!

  HAG OF THE NINE HOLLOW
HILLS: O Winged Ones! Fanged Ones! Clawed Ones and Horned Ones! Fly to me! Fly! fly!

  A horrible horde of demons with edged wings like swords and beaks and horns like spears shrieks down upon Master Li and Yu Lan, who counter with sword and iron cane, and the clash-clatter-clang-bang sounds like six simultaneous blacksmith conventions. The creatures swoop high out of range and then dive in sneak attacks, and Master Li holds out his cane at arm’s length and shakes it as he shouts words in an unknown tongue, and suddenly a great horse is standing there. He leaps on its back as Yu Lan stamps her left boot and cries out in arcane language and lo! her foot is bare and the Blood Horse of Day receives her lithe leap. The shaman and the shamanka ride up into the air, and the battle rages overhead. Master Li’s tambourine releases the carnivorous Horses and the terrible Bear, the eye-pecking Blackbirds and the poisonous Frogs. Yu Lan battles the demons swarming around her with the Sapphire Flowers that turn into blue tigers, the Grand Ribbon that becomes a dragon, and the Fire Jade Girdle that explodes with sheets of flame and bubbling lava.

  HAG OF THE NINE HOLLOW HILLS: Fight, my lovely ones! Fight!

  The Hag is wiser than her advice. She slips from the fray and swoops down toward the litter where the patient lies, and when she flies up and away she has something warm and shining in her claws. Master Li is routing the demons by reversing his tambourine to release the Trees, the Nests, the Maidens, and the Mother of Fire, and Yu Lan wheels her great horse around and sees the Hag. The shamanka jerks her tricom crown free and hurls it, and it is the whole glorious moon that spins toward the Hag, who screeches in fear. The small shining light of a soul slips from her claws and flips and flops wildly away, and then disappears. Master Li and Yu Lan pursue the Hag and the last of the demons, and then they too disappear, and their voices are heard here, there, and everywhere.

  MASTER LI: O soul, come back!

  In the east are giants a thousand fathoms tall,

  And ten suns that melt metal and dissolve stone.

  YU LAN: O soul, come back!

  In the south the people have tattooed faces and blackened teeth;

  There coiling snakes devour men as sweet relish.

  MASTER LI: O soul, come back!

  In the west the Moving Sands stretch for leagues;

  You will be swept into Thunder’s Chasm and dashed to pieces,

  And beyond lies a desert with red ants huge as elephants.

  YU LAN: O soul, come back!

  In the north is the Frozen Mountain of the Torch Dragon,

  Its eyes glaring red, with serrated teeth and wild mad laughter,

  And the sky is white and glittering and rigid with cold.

  MASTER LI: You cannot climb to Heaven above, O soul,

  For leopards and tigers guard the gates,

  And slant-eyed wolves pad to and fro.

  YU LAN: You cannot descend to the Land of Darkness,

  For there the monster lies, nine-coiled;

  Three eyes has he in his tiger’s head, and his body is a bull’s.

  Smoke rises around the litter. When it clears Master Li and Yu Lan are flanking the patient, heads and hands lifted toward the stars.

  MASTER LI: O soul, we call to guide you, standing by your body to lead you back in.

  The quarters of the world are full of harm,

  But here in your old abode are high halls and deep chambers.

  Stepped terraces, storied pavilions.

  Warm breezes bend the melilotus, and set tall orchids swaying,

  Sending scents through chambers of polished stone

  With ceilings and floors of vermilion.

  YU LAN: Many a rare and precious thing awaits in your chamber;

  Braids and ribbons, brocades and satins,

  Bedspreads of kingfisher feathers, seeded with pearls,

  While damask canopies stretch overhead

  Lit by bright candles of orchid-perfumed fat.

  MASTER LI: O soul, the food is ready.

  Rice, broomcorn, early wheat mixed with millet,

  Ribs of fatted ox, tender and succulent,

  Stewed turtle and roast kid, served with sauce of yams,

  Geese cooked in sour and bitter, casseroled duck, fried flesh of the great crane,

  Braised chicken, tortoise seethed in soup of Wu,

  Fried honey cakes and malt-sugar sweetmeats,

  And jadelike wine, honey-flavored, fills your cup,

  Strained of impurities, cool and refreshing.

  A tiny twinkling light appears high overhead, in the deepest shadows of the vaulted ceiling.

  YU LAN: Hear the musicians take their places, O soul,

  Set up bells, fasten the drums, sing the latest popular songs:

  “Crossing the River,” “Gathering Caltrops,” and “The Sunny Bank.”

  Dancers await you, attired in spotted leopard skins.

  Bells clash in their swaying frames, the zither’s strings are swept,

  Pi-pas and lutes rise in wild harmonies, the sounding drum sonorously rolls.

  The shining light glows larger and brighter as it sinks down toward the dais; Master Li and Yu Lan guide it to the liver of the grand warden’s wife, who has been observing all this with eyes like soup bowls.

  MASTER LI

  YU LAN: Your household awaits you, O soul!

  Lovers await you, O soul!

  Life awaits you, O soul!

  Come back! Come back! Come back!

  The light disappears as the shaman and shamanka ease the soul back into the patient’s liver. Master Li closes her eyelids and has her lie back and softly tells her to sleep. Yu Lan steps to the front of the dais and speaks in the general direction of the grand warden, while still maintaining the distance of the Mysteries.

  YU LAN: The sickness is gone. Life and love await,

  but forget not the Tao. Take great care in your sacrifices and prayers, for evil influences seek to return where once they have sported, and to the Three Venerables should be offered nine lengths of green embroidered silk. The Servants of Wu ask nothing, being content with the thrill of battle and the joy of triumph. Return now to the red dust of the world.

  Doors are flung open, and sunlight pours in, and the audience stumbles out. The litter is carried back to the lady’s bedchamber, while poppy fumes carry their thick sweet fragrance toward the clouds.

  I picked myself up from the floor (I was lying beside the giggling bat) and gasped deep lungfuls of fresh air. Yu Lan and Master Li were pouring pitchers of water over their heads, and Yen Shih descended from his perch on the rafters, grunting and gasping and practicing eye-focus as he stretched his arms and legs.

  “That went rather well, considering we didn’t have time for a decent rehearsal,” said Master Li.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Yen Shih said.

  Yu Lan, as was her habit, made no comment. She walked out past me: silent, graceful, distant as a drifting cloud, secretly smiling.

  “You see, Ox,” said Master Li some time later as we were walking through the palace gardens, “to a shaman the identification of a medical problem and its appropriate treatment is merely the beginning. In this case the problem was easy to identify. It was tadpoles.”

  “Tadpoles?” I said.

  “Precisely,” he said. “You’ve had a rather unfortunate encounter with the grand warden, so perhaps you can sympathize with his bride. She’s a bandit chief’s daughter, my boy, practically born on horseback and happy out in the hills where she grew up, and here she is in a gloomy pile of stones where she’s supposed to spend her time sewing and gossiping with maids. On top of that it’s her duty to present her husband with children, and one can imagine what she thinks of that shifty-eyed cowardly creature as the father.”

  Master Li stopped at one of the decorative ponds in a courtyard close to a high gray wall, where a balcony ran beneath tall windows.

  “Tadpoles,” he said, pointing down at the green water. “One of the oldest of old wives’ tales holds that a woman who swallows four
teen live tadpoles on the third day after menstruation, and ten more on the fourth, will not conceive for five years, so the poor young woman has been swallowing the creatures. They’re harmless. What isn’t harmless is the parasitic flatworms that transfer from the tadpoles to the swallower’s stomach and make her sick as a yellow monkey. Yu Lan and I gave the lady a powerful vermifuge and forbade tadpoles until further notice, and since she’s basically as healthy as a horse she’s already recovered in a physical sense.”

  He thoughtfully regarded the tadpoles, and reached into a pocket and took out a small vial with a stopper in it.

  “That,” he said, “is where conventional medicine stops and shamanism begins. What good is it to cure the body when the real damage is to the spirit? Think of the humiliation to a bandit chief’s daughter forced to swallow tadpoles, the destruction to her self-esteem! So Yu Lan and I—with the invaluable assistance of Yen Shih—made the lady feel she was the most important person in the whole world as the forces of good and evil battled for her soul. The final step to the cure is eliminating the need for tadpoles, of course. She’ll find the obvious solution to the problem of proper parenthood in due course, but no respectable shaman would take the chance of a relapse while she’s figuring it out.”

  With that he removed the stopper from the vial and pulled out the front of my tunic and dumped a live scorpion down inside. Until an official disrobing contest is held in all the major provinces, the record belongs to me. I was out of my clothes and into the pond in three seconds flat.

  “Wha-wha-wha—” I said, or something equally intelligent as I splashed scorpions away.