Synopsis: From the flaps of the St. Martin's Press first edition: "Against the exotic backdrop of China thirteen-and-a-half centuries ago - a land as filled with magic as Tolkien's Middle Earth - two odd companions seek the Great Root of Power. Number Ten Ox is a strong and eager, but rather naive, young peasant; Li Kao is a wily old sage with a slight flaw in his character and weakness for rice wine. Together, they undertake a perilous quest to save the children of Ox's village from death by poison. The path they take leads them to a homicidal matriarch, the cruelest duke in history, monsters both visible and invisible, men more deadly than monsters, treacherous labyrinths, pleading ghosts whose pleas are incomprehensible, and the gradual realization that before they can accomplish their task they must complete another one: solve a baffling mystery that occurred a thousand years before they were born."