"Well, actually, we were just visiting," Shea said. "We're trying to track down Dr. Chalmers' wife, you see, and Monkey tells us he found her and sent her further on her way. So if you'll just send us to the same place, Monkey ..."
"Nay." Monkey bared his teeth, but Shea could not have said whether it was a snarl or a grin. "I find I have taken a liking to your company."
"But my wife!" Chalmers cried.
"If you aid us in coming to India," Monkey said, "I will gladly send you to the place where she is—when we have found the stupa that holds the Three Baskets."
"But the time!" Chalmers cried. "Months may have elapsed!"
"Years," Monkey corrected, enjoying his discomfiture.
"Years! But any number of things could have happened to her in that much time! She could have fallen prey to bandits, been enslaved, or ..." Chalmers swallowed heavily. "... fallen in love with another man!"
"Monkey!" Tripitaka intoned severely.
"Oh, all right!" Monkey said, disgusted. "When we have attained our goal, I will send you not only to the land where she is, hut to the time at which she arrived there! Will that suit you?"
Shea goggled. "How can you do that?"
"Magic," Monkey said, all teeth. "Will it satisfy you?"
Shea looked at Chalmers, who gave him a frantic nod, then turned to Monkey with a sigh. "Why, sure. Monkey—anything you say. Which way is India?"
India was south and west, of course, and they did take a long time on the road. It seemed considerably longer because, though Tripitaka had a horse to ride, the rest of them were expected to walk, in spite of Monkey's knack with magical clouds. Shea kept trying to console himself, and Chalmers, with the spectacular scenery they were seeing, but their enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by the encounters they had along the way. For example, fairly early on, they started to cross a river, but wound up running away from the dragon that surged out of the waters. Everybody got to safety except Tripitaka's horse, which the dragon gobbled up as an hors d'oeuvre, then turned his attention to the rest of the band, intent on a five-course banquet. Monkey killed his appetite with a running fight, but had to go to Kuan-Yin for help. She changed the dragon into the spit and image of the horse he had gobbled up, and commanded him to go with the expedition, to help protect Tripitaka. Monkey almost forgave the Goddess for that.
Kuan-Yin had been foresighted, it seemed—she had sent ahead two spirits who had sinned against the Jade Emperor of Heaven, commanding them to wait for the Pilgrim Monk, then to accompany him, protect him, and learn the Way of the Buddha from him. The first had been locked into the form of a humanoid pig for his sins; his favorite weapon was an iron muckrake, and he and Monkey had an epic running battle before Monkey finally thought to mention whom he was protecting, whereupon Pigsy surrendered and joined up for the duration.
The other monster was an even harder case. They met him at the River of Flowing Sands, where he was accustomed to collect travellers trying to cross the river and having them for lunch. He was an Expressionistic monster who wore the skulls of his nine victims around his neck. Even with Chalmers' and Shea's magic assisting Monkey and Pigsy, they could barely fight the monster to a draw. Shea volunteered to keep the monster preoccupied while Monkey went for help.
Shea managed to get the monster involved in a philosophical discussion about whether or not he was a cannibal. Shea's case was that eating human beings made him a cannibal, but the monster replied that since he was not strictly human, the people he had been eating were not his own kind, so he was only a carnivore.
Meanwhile, Monkey went to ask help of Kuan-Yin. She came and converted the monster, who was a fallen spirit like Pigsy. He repented, swore off eating people, and joined the expedition, transforming himself into the likeness of a human being. Since he was the Monster of the River of Flowing Sands, they nicknamed him Sandy. He became a pious monk and a vicious infighter.
Meanwhile, they had been travelling farther and farther south, and though they were not near the foothills of the Himalayas yet, they had travelled much farther west. Shea could tell how far south they had gone by the heat and the size of the mosquitoes.
"You can tell the physics of this universe are magical," he grumbled as he lay down on a straw pallet in the guest room of the monastery at which they had just arrived. "Something that big could never fly, where we come from."
"Come, now, Harold," Chalmers sighed. "They're not nearly as bad as some of the nurses who take blood samples at the Institute."
"Bad! Doc, have you looked at these critters? Ever since we crossed the border into this Kingdom of Crow-Cock, they've been like Dracula in insect form! The last one that buzzed my ear was the size of a B-29!"
"Then if we need to fly," Chalmers sighed, "we can just borrow their wings. Do go to sleep, Harold."
"Why? So they don't have to deal with a moving target?"
"Oh, be still, Xei," said Monkey. "Be glad you have the roof and walls of the Treasure Wood Temple about you tonight, rather than the grasses of a riverbank."
"It's all right for you to say," Shea growled. "They can't get their needles into your granite hide."
"If the Master can bear it, so can you."
"Tripitaka? I don't see him in here. He's a full-fledged monk, after all—he gets better quarters."
"You think the Zen Room is more comfortable? You forget that he is sitting in meditation all night."
"Oh, is that what he's doing?"
"Yes—just sitting," Monkey sighed. "Good night, Xei."
"Oh, good night," Shea griped. He cast a last accusing glare at the snoring bulk of Pigsy and Sandy, mere outlines in the gloom, then closed his eyes and tried for sleep.
"Wizard Xei!"
Shea sat bolt upright, his heart hammering. "Who the hell ...?"
"Closer than you think," the visitor snapped.
He was tall, severe, and drenched from head to toe. In fact, the water was running off him and pooling on the teak floor.
Shea reached for his sword and dagger and came slowly to his feet with both on guard. "Monkey! Pigsy! Sandy! Doc! We've got company!"
But the forms of his companions lay still in the moonlight, except for the slow rise and fall of breathing. Shea realized that he could not even hear Pigsy's snores.
"They will not hear you," the wet man said impatiently. "Now tell me—where is your master?"
"I have no master—I'm a free man."
"Do not bandy words with me, slave!" the man shouted. "Tell me the whereabouts of your master, and that quickly!" The apparition stepped closer.
Shea brandished his sword. "Hold it! Cold steel, remember?" He hoped that what worked on European elves might work for Chinese haunts.
Apparently not. Contemptuously, the man stepped right up to let the tip of Shea's sword disappear inside him. "Now tell me—where is the monk!"
Shea felt a chill pass over him—he knew which monk the man meant, but was not about to give any clues. "We're in a monastery. There are a lot of monks—just take your pick."
"Fool!' the man shouted, and swung a back-handed blow at Shea's head. Shea ducked and lunged—and stumbled straight into the apparition. There was a gust of icy wind; then he straightened up, to find himself lacing the man's glowing back.
Slowly, the apparition turned, glaring. "What manner of monk are you, who bears a sword?"
"Not a monk at all," Shea said bravely, "just a traveller who has decided to join a holy man and his disciples for mutual protection."
"Yes! That is he—the Pilgrim Monk!" The apparition's eyes lit, glowing in the dark. "That is whom I spoke of! Where is he?"
Shea's eyes narrowed. "Why do you want to know?"
"Insolent cur!" the man shouted. "Vile peasant!