Wei-Yong frowned. Beside her, Mau Li pricked up her ears and cocked her shaggy head up at her mistress.
"Does anybody else see that?"
Ming-Wa sighed.
"No, Wei-Yong, nobody else can count the feathers on a sparrow from two miles away. What is it?"
"Something flying."
"Flying? Perhaps it's a bird."
"It doesn't have wings."
"Then how is it flying?"
Wei-Yong looked away from the distant object to study her friend.
"I presume," she said carefully, "It involves magic."
Ming-Wa nodded.
"I see."
Stepping out of the cave, Fa shielded her eyes and looked where Wei-Yong had indicated.
"I can see it. Wei-Yong, you must be able to make out more details now. If you're done baiting Ming-Wa, perhaps you could tell us what it is?"
"Sorry, Fa."
The tall woman squinted into the sunshine.
"There's two people, sitting on something flat. I think one's a woman and the other is a man."
"The Jasmine Witch, I presume?"
Shan looked down the hillside, where thirty or forty more figures shambled slowly towards them. They'd come clawing out of the rice paddies as the women had made their way up the hill.
"Maybe she'll get tied up with them."
Fa nodded.
"Let's get down this shaft. Jing Zhou's got to be down there somewhere."
"Why not let this Jasmine Witch deal with him? That's got to be her Codex he's got."
Ming-Wa shook her head.
"No. Jing Zhou is ours. He has offended the Goddess and descrated her glory. It must be us who deliver justice. The Jasmine Witch works against the Goddess as well. If she gets in our way, we'll destroy her, too."
The other women looked around at each other. Nobody could find anything to say.
Finally Lin Lin grinned and squeaked, "So we're going down the hole? Great. I'll go first."
And with that she ran over to the circular hole that dropped away into darkness and jumped.
Head-first.
Shan, Fa, Wei-Yong and Ming-Wa used the ladder.
Lin Lin plunged downwards, and just caught a notion of the onrushing floor quickly enough to be able to curl up and roll out in a lightning pop-up to her feet, bouncing several times as she waited for her friends to climb down. The ground was hard-packed earth, and she wrinkled her nose at the briny salt-water smell.
"It smells like the ocean down here, too! Jing Zhou's gotta be down here somewhere!"
"Well," said Wei-Yong, her breath a little strained with the effort of lowering herself and the wolf draped around her neck, "If he is, I guess he knows we're coming, now."
Lin Lin shadow-boxed excitedly as her friends joined her.
"Good! You hear that, Jing Zhou? We're coming for you!"
Fa lit a candle she'd scrounged from the old man's house and held it up, shielding the guttering flame with her hand.
Around them stone walls, rough-hewn and covered in dust, stretched away on two sides, forming passages leading in opposite directions. Footsteps tramped through the dust in all directions, impossible to track, though Mau Li nosed about in an interested fashion. Fa shrugged and led them in one direction, away from the dim circle of light at the base of the shaft.
As the candle's light travelled down the meandering passage, Wei-Yong nocked an arrow to her bow and Shan kept one hand on her swordhilt. They both tensed as the rock walls came together before them, forming a small room that had once been a simple chapel to the Goddess.
Had been, but was now befouled. Ming-Wa cried out in shock and horror at the lewd scrawls on the walls, defacing what had once been humble depictions of the Goddess and Her goodness. Mau Li poked her nose towards the brownish smears and jerked back, growling. Heavy feet had ground incense sticks into the earth and kicked over the small idols, trodden offerings of rice cakes and pine fronds into the dirt.
After a quick look, Fa turned about and led them the other way. Nobody spoke.
Past the shaft they'd descended the tunnel began to rise in a slow series of irregular steps, layers of shale worn smooth by countless feet. The smell grew worse, like a tide pool too long in the sun, festering. Fa slowed as the narrow passage opened to the left, revealing a small alcove with a waist-high font that had once, presumably, distributed clean water for visitors to purify themselves with.
Now it was clogged with putrefying slime, limp drapes of green gleaming in the candle's glow. All the five women (and the one wolf) recoiled from the alcove and, except for the wolf, made warding gestures of the Goddess at the desecration. The stairs continued past the alcove and with a brief look round at the others, Fa continued on her way up.
"Put out the candle, Fa, there's light up ahead."
At Wei-Yong's careful instruction, Fa blew on the candle and they all stood silently as their eyes adjusted. Indeed, as Wei-Yong had stated, a faint glow came from up the stairs. Only barely enough to see by but as they climbed the light grew stronger and they stepped out of the rough passage into a finely-worked hall that opened into a hellish scene.
A corpse sprawled supine on a crude table, entrails strewn from the body. Other corpses splayed against the wall, held in place with iron spikes crushed through their limbs. The stink was horrific (Wei-Yong threw up again) and the images of blasphemy and foulness so unnerved the women that they could barely remain standing. Mau Li whimpered.
Ming-Wa, sobbing, turned away and found a small shrine, set up with dozens of tiny stone idols. Ancestor worship, she realised, but the idols were each defaced with a strange clay seal. Uttering a cry of disgust, Ming-Wa tore at the little stone statuettes, breaking the seals from them. Shan and Wei-Yong saw what she was doing and after a moment of comprehension, joined in.
Lin Lin stood unhappily, frowning. She rubbed at her hands and watched Li Fa go around the room, studying the desecrations and murmuring to herself.
The hall, besides opening into this chamber, also opened into two narrow hallways, both of which ended in heavy wooden doors. Lin Lin was watching Li Fa make her way around the chamber when one of the doors opened. She turned, alert and happy for a distraction.
The two rotting corpses that shuddered out the open doorway somehow carried none of the horror of those displayed in the chamber behind her. Lin Lin dropped low to the ground and spun backwards, extending one leg in a whirling kick that knocked both of the approaching figures to the stone floor. Her sai glittered in her hands as she slammed them downwards, breaking apart the half-decayed heads of her opponents. They stopped moving as Lin Lin checked herself for sprayed bits.
"Everything's okay! Don't worry."
Wei-Yong, now that the idols had been restored to their unsealed state, looked past her friend into the dark chamber beyond. Hundreds of figures pressed forward, hands reaching out, closing in on the doorway.
"I'm going to worry, all the same."