reservations.
“One element is noticeably missing. Where are his Monks of Mirth?” he wondered.
We had no answer to that. We entered banquet rooms and game rooms and elegant state bedrooms, and we found closets crammed with the remains of costly clothes and pantries stuffed with petrified piles of rich foods. It wasn't so much a tomb as a vast underground palace, and at the center was a huge throne room, which even had a chopping block as part of the entertainment. Behind the throne was a small door, and we entered a round room with a lapis lazuli floor, and walls and ceiling of solid gold. Two sarcophagi lay side by side. The one on the right bore the dragon symbols of an emperor, and the one on the left bore the phoenix symbols of an imperial consort.
Master Li strode between the coffins to the back wall. There in a niche was a sacristy. The two side panels of the niche were covered with the same mysterious charts and formulas we had seen in the grotto, and the center panel carried the same inscription.
In darkness languishes the precious stone.
When will its excellence enchant the world?
When seeming is taken for being, being becomes seeming.
When nothing is taken for something, something becomes nothing.
The stone dispels seeming and nothing,
And climbs to the Gates of the Great Void.
The sacristy was empty. Master Li swore angrily and whirled around and gestured for me to open the coffins. I stepped up to the one on the left. The lid was hard to move, but at last it began to slide down the grooves, and the farther it slid, the wider our eyes grew. I stepped back, panting, and we stood in silence and gazed at the burial dress of Tou Wan, the bride of the Laughing Prince.
She wore a suit that could have fed a million people for a year. It was priceless jade cut into rectangular pieces that were tightly linked together by fine gold wire. There must have been two thousand jade pieces encasing the mummy, but Master Li wasn't interested in jade. He was interested in a stone, and he let loose another volley of oaths when no stone was revealed in the coffin.
An inscription had been chiseled on the front of Tou Wan's sarcophagus, and Prince Liu Pao translated the old script for me. Apparently it had been written by her grieving husband.
The sound of her silk skirt has stopped.
On the marble pavement dust grows.
Her empty room is cold and still.
Fallen leaves are piled against the doors.
How can I bring my aching heart to rest?
It seemed to me that there was real feeling in that, and the prince shook his head wonderingly. “My ancestor was quite unknowable,” he said. “He wrote this, and then he went out with his Monks of Mirth to capture and torture a few more children.”
Master Li nodded at the other sarcophagus, and I bent to the lid. As it slowly slid down, our eyes nearly bulged right out of our heads, and when it slid all the way down I stepped back and sat down heavily on the floor. The silence was broken only by the hiss of our torches.
The coffin was empty. Prince Liu Pao sat down in a heap beside me, and I supposed that both of us were seeing a mummy dressed in jade crawling from a coffin and creeping out to join his merry monks in motley. Master Li glared down at us.
“Oh, bat shit,” he snarled. “Stop trying to catch flies with your gaping mouths and start using your heads.”
He sat down on the rim of the coffin and glared around the golden room. He was furious.
“Ox, what happened to your torch when you punched through the iron and brick?” he asked.
“Wha . . . Why, nothing happened,” I said.
“Precisely. The flame didn't jump toward the hole because there already was fresh air in the tomb,” he said. “That means there's another entrance somewhere, and it's been used recently. We're too late. The thieves have already been here, and that means we have to change our minds about their being thieves.”
That was too slippery for me, but the prince looked up with sudden
“One element is noticeably missing. Where are his Monks of Mirth?” he wondered.
We had no answer to that. We entered banquet rooms and game rooms and elegant state bedrooms, and we found closets crammed with the remains of costly clothes and pantries stuffed with petrified piles of rich foods. It wasn't so much a tomb as a vast underground palace, and at the center was a huge throne room, which even had a chopping block as part of the entertainment. Behind the throne was a small door, and we entered a round room with a lapis lazuli floor, and walls and ceiling of solid gold. Two sarcophagi lay side by side. The one on the right bore the dragon symbols of an emperor, and the one on the left bore the phoenix symbols of an imperial consort.
Master Li strode between the coffins to the back wall. There in a niche was a sacristy. The two side panels of the niche were covered with the same mysterious charts and formulas we had seen in the grotto, and the center panel carried the same inscription.
In darkness languishes the precious stone.
When will its excellence enchant the world?
When seeming is taken for being, being becomes seeming.
When nothing is taken for something, something becomes nothing.
The stone dispels seeming and nothing,
And climbs to the Gates of the Great Void.
The sacristy was empty. Master Li swore angrily and whirled around and gestured for me to open the coffins. I stepped up to the one on the left. The lid was hard to move, but at last it began to slide down the grooves, and the farther it slid, the wider our eyes grew. I stepped back, panting, and we stood in silence and gazed at the burial dress of Tou Wan, the bride of the Laughing Prince.
She wore a suit that could have fed a million people for a year. It was priceless jade cut into rectangular pieces that were tightly linked together by fine gold wire. There must have been two thousand jade pieces encasing the mummy, but Master Li wasn't interested in jade. He was interested in a stone, and he let loose another volley of oaths when no stone was revealed in the coffin.
An inscription had been chiseled on the front of Tou Wan's sarcophagus, and Prince Liu Pao translated the old script for me. Apparently it had been written by her grieving husband.
The sound of her silk skirt has stopped.
On the marble pavement dust grows.
Her empty room is cold and still.
Fallen leaves are piled against the doors.
How can I bring my aching heart to rest?
It seemed to me that there was real feeling in that, and the prince shook his head wonderingly. “My ancestor was quite unknowable,” he said. “He wrote this, and then he went out with his Monks of Mirth to capture and torture a few more children.”
Master Li nodded at the other sarcophagus, and I bent to the lid. As it slowly slid down, our eyes nearly bulged right out of our heads, and when it slid all the way down I stepped back and sat down heavily on the floor. The silence was broken only by the hiss of our torches.
The coffin was empty. Prince Liu Pao sat down in a heap beside me, and I supposed that both of us were seeing a mummy dressed in jade crawling from a coffin and creeping out to join his merry monks in motley. Master Li glared down at us.
“Oh, bat shit,” he snarled. “Stop trying to catch flies with your gaping mouths and start using your heads.”
He sat down on the rim of the coffin and glared around the golden room. He was furious.
“Ox, what happened to your torch when you punched through the iron and brick?” he asked.
“Wha . . . Why, nothing happened,” I said.
“Precisely. The flame didn't jump toward the hole because there already was fresh air in the tomb,” he said. “That means there's another entrance somewhere, and it's been used recently. We're too late. The thieves have already been here, and that means we have to change our minds about their being thieves.”
That was too slippery for me, but the prince looked up with sudden
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