Imperial Fire (44 page)

‘It’s empty,’ Wayland said.

‘The earthquake that blocked the river must have destroyed it.’

‘It’s been deserted for longer than that. The monks told me it’s been years since the villagers crossed the pass. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t rebuild it.’ Wayland pointed towards the other side of the gulley. ‘That must be Oussu’s temple.’

It stood in lofty isolation on a bluff under a cliff eroded into fluted columns and honeycombed with caves. From this distance it appeared intact. Tattered prayer flags on its roof fluttered defiance to demons at the four corners of the world.

‘You’ll never reach it,’ Zuleyka said.

Where the lips of the gorge almost met, a bridge had once stood, its ends marked by stone pillars erected on a foundation of slabs and timber. The span was less than thirty feet and, so far as Wayland could tell, the bridge had been the only connection between the villagers and the rest of the world. He advanced to the edge and looked over. The view into the abyss made his head spin. Working over aeons, the river had cut down through the rocks at different angles and was now invisible below the crooks. Wayland couldn’t even hear it.

He made his way back to Zuleyka. ‘We’ll camp here tonight. Tomorrow we should be below the treeline.’

In the evening he sat watching the temple recede into shadows. A flock of wild sheep inched down a cliff behind the village.

‘Supper’s ready,’ Zuleyka called.

‘In a moment,’ Wayland said.

He tasted bitter dregs of disappointment at being balked so close to reaching the temple. Less than thirty feet, damn it.

‘Wayland!’

Stars formed a mesh of quicksilver. The moon had risen. Wayland slapped his knees and rose. ‘Coming.’

Dawn light set fire to the peaks as Wayland and Zuleyka strapped the pack saddle onto Waludong. Where they stood the light was a cold and cheerless blue. A breeze shivered the stunted bushes. The wild sheep were filing back up the cliffs.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Zuleyka said.

Wayland tightened a cinch, then stopped, looking towards the gorge. On this side, the two pillars that had once formed a gateway onto the bridge still stood. On the other side only one remained standing.

‘I’m going across,’ he said.

Horror swept Zuleyka’s face. ‘But there’s nobody there.’

‘I’m looking for something.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. A Christian hermit once lived in that temple. I told Hero I’d try to find out who he was and why he came here.’

‘Hero wouldn’t want you to throw away your life.’

Wayland indicated the gorge. ‘It’s not much more than twenty feet. In my youth I could have jumped it.’

‘But how?’

‘I’ll make my own bridge.’

He took a spool of twine from his pack, cut two notches in an arrow – one above the tip, the other below the fletching – and tied two sixty-foot lengths of twine to the notches. He led the twine tied to the blade end of the arrow over the stave of his bow, nocked arrow to string, glanced at the pillar on the far side and tried to lob the arrow behind it. The trailing lengths of twine skewed his aim. He retrieved the arrow and tried again, attempting to drop it so that the strands fell on each side of the pillar. He couldn’t do it. In flight the lines drew together. He must have made thirty attempts before he landed an arrow ten yards behind the pillar, the lines lying on top of it.

He jiggled one line and established that it was attached to the tip of the arrow. Holding the free end, he walked out to his left until the line slid off the top of the pillar. He tried to ease the other line down the right-hand side and almost succeeded before it snagged halfway down.

He went back to the left-hand line and drew it in, teasing the arrow around the pillar. When it was free, he pulled it back across the gorge. To the end of the other line he lashed a yak-hair rope about a hundred feet long. He dragged on the left-hand line, drawing the rope across the gorge and around the pillar. It was too high. He rolled it as if it were a whip. It fell another couple of feet and there it stuck.

‘That’s as good as I can get it.’

He hauled the rope back across the gorge. Once he’d retrieved it he spliced the ends together and tossed the loop over one of the pillars on his side. The joined rope dangled into the gorge, the left-hand side several feet lower than the right-hand side.

‘You’ll never get across on that,’ Zuleyka said.

‘I haven’t finished.’

He took another rope, spliced one end to the rope encircling the pillars and drew on it to pull the second rope around the opposite pillar and back to his side.

‘Do you see what I’m doing?’ he asked Zuleyka.

‘No.’

As with the first rope, he spliced the ends together and threw it over the pillar on his side. Now two pairs of ropes about three feet apart bridged the gorge.

His work wasn’t done. The ropes were too slack and he tensioned them by winding them up with a stout pole salvaged from the foundations of the bridge.

Zuleyka watched him with her arms crossed over her chest. ‘Don’t do it.’

Wayland was less confident than he appeared. The ropes were by no means symmetrical and under strain they would stretch and chafe against the pillars. He wiped his hands, took hold of one of the paired ropes and prepared to step onto the other.

‘Here goes.’

‘Please, Wayland. If you die I’ll never forgive you.’

He shuffled off the edge of the gorge. Under his weight, the rope on which he stood dropped and only his hold on the other saved him from falling at the first step. He stayed where he was, flexing the rope under his feet, getting the feel of it, and then he began edging across.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ Zuleyka said.

Inch by inch Wayland shuffled across. The rope stretched much more than he’d anticipated, so that by the time he reached mid-span he was hanging seven or eight feet below the rim of the gorge. He rested a while and before he set off again he looked down into the abyss. A glance behind showed Zuleyka watching through splayed fingers. To climb out he had to transfer most of his weight and effort to the upper rope. He was only a few feet from the other side when it slipped down the pillar and he fell, his feet coming off the lower rope. He managed to cling on, found his footing again and hung between the ropes at a steep angle, his face slick with sweat.

Only another few feet to go. He did it in one effort and fell to the ground. He kissed it and wormed around.

Zuleyka stood weeping on the other side. ‘You could have died. You might still die.’

Wayland swallowed bile. ‘If I don’t make it back, I’ve sewn money into the sheath of my target bow. It should be enough to get you home.’

Snow devils spiralled up the gulley, almost as if they were leading him on. Brushing death had made him acutely aware of being alive. Climbing to the temple he noticed everything – an alpine plant that smelled of strawberries when crushed underfoot, snow pigeons circling the settlement on rocking wings, the scent of juniper borne on the breeze.

A high wall surrounded the temple. Wayland circled it and entered the precinct through a breach. The building was more substantial than he’d expected. Two recumbent stone lions guarded its entrance and the door was barred from inside. On one side of it panelled wooden shutters painted with wrathful gods wearing necklaces of skulls sealed a small window. One of the panels was missing. Wayland inserted an arm and unlatched the shutters.

‘Sorry,’ he said to the guardians before dragging himself through the opening.

Only the light from the window lit the interior. Wayland waited for his eyes to adjust. On the other side of the chamber three gilded statues of the Buddha seemed to float in space. Below them and to one side another statue sat enthroned on a dais in front of an altar. Beside the altar stood a hideous figure with bulging eyes in a black face and a mouth gaping in rage. In front of the seated statue was a basket containing effigies trapped in what looked like a web of coloured silk. Brass trumpets and cymbals glinted on the floor. Butter lamps stood on almost every available surface

Scarcely breathing, Wayland lit one and advanced. The effigies in the basket were made of dough joined by coloured threads. He raised the lamp and gasped. The figure seated on the throne wasn’t a statue. It was the mummified corpse of a lama holding ritual instruments – a
dorje
or thunderbolt in one withered hand, a bell in the other.

Wayland held the lamp out, illuminating the lama’s features. In death if not in life he’d found serenity. If he
was
dead. Yonden had told him there were holy men who by profound meditation could induce a state of suspended animation. Wayland didn’t dare touch the lama.

A door slammed somewhere and he spun.

‘Who’s there?’

Only the wind, moaning through gaps in the windows. Wayland explored the chamber. One wall was lined with cubbyholes containing books wrapped in wooden bindings. Hero might have been able to make sense of them, but Wayland didn’t know where to start. He passed on, images of gods and demons emerging in the light of the lamp and then sinking back into the dark. Wayland shivered, unable to shake off the thought that he was waking the dead.

He stopped, peering at a
thanka
– a painting that depicted a god or saint seated in a meditative posture, one hand raised in blessing and a rainbow forming a halo around his head. What struck Wayland was the saint’s appearance. It didn’t look oriental. Long reddish hair curled down each side of his pale face and his melancholy eyes were rounder than the eyes of the saints portrayed on the other
thankas
.

Wayland looked behind him before removing the painting and rolling it up.

The shutter slamming made him jump. The urge to escape into sunlight and fresh air was almost overwhelming. He resisted it by thinking of Hero, imagining him at his side peering through the shadows, his sharp mind compensating for his dull vision.

A ladder led to a gallery that ran round the ground floor. Wayland climbed it. Up here the gods seemed to be deities from an older age, more malevolent. The images drifting past in the lamplight were vengeful demons trampling on the dead, copulating with the damned in the depths of hell.

Wayland crossed himself and in almost the same moment he cried out and stabbed at a monster that leaned forward to engulf him. His knife drove deep. The yellow claws around his head didn’t make contact. Something grainy sifted from the wound, trickling onto the floor with a noise that sounded like the sands of time running out. Forever fixed in an attitude of frightful menace, a stuffed bear loomed over Wayland.

He’d had enough. Knees knocking he descended to the ground floor and was back at the window before he realised that he hadn’t explored the whole temple complex. He steeled his nerves and lit another dozen lamps. By their buttery glow he saw three doors leading off the main chamber. He tried them one by one, heart in mouth. From the moment he’d entered the temple, something had told him he wasn’t the only living occupant.

He opened the first door on a room containing ceremonial robes and headdresses that suggested shamanistic rituals. The second was a chapel furnished with an altar and three gilt statues seated on lotus flowers. The third door creaked on its leather hinges as he opened it. A sigh of relief escaped him. The room was a kitchen, stacked with cooking paraphernalia.

He was closing the door behind him when he heard a rustle from inside. Probably a rat. Then it occurred to him that if rats infested the temple, they would have eaten the dough and butter effigies. He forced himself to open the door again and went in, negotiating the clutter. A pot clattered on the other side of the room.

‘Don’t be scared,’ Wayland said. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

He tiptoed towards the far end. It was blocked by a pile of clay vessels. He swept them aside, gasped and jumped back. ‘Holy Christ,’ he said, hand on heart.

A man deranged by fear cowered against the wall. He was elderly and spindly and completely defenceless.

‘I’m sorry I frightened you,’ Wayland panted. ‘Forgive me for breaking into your temple. I thought it was empty.’

The poor fellow shook and gibbered.

‘I’m a pilgrim,’ Wayland said in Tibetan. ‘I came here because I heard that a Christian hermit once studied in the temple. His name was Oussu. Do you know the name?’

The little old man showed no comprehension. Whatever wits he’d possessed, Wayland’s invasion had unstrung them.

Wayland unrolled the
thanka
. ‘Oussu,’ he said. ‘Is this him?’

The man stopped shaking. He looked from the painting to Wayland, reached out a tentative finger and made the sign of the cross. ‘Oussu.’

Relief flooded through Wayland. ‘Thank God!’

The shutter flogged in a strengthening wind. He took the man’s arm. ‘Do you mind if we talk outside. I find the atmosphere inside overwhelming.’

He unbarred the entrance and went out, dragging gusts of air into his lungs. His legs felt so sappy that he had to sit down on the temple steps.

‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here on your own?’

The man was the temple’s sacristan. He’d stayed on to serve the lama after an earthquake destroyed the village four years ago. The lama had died two years later, but the sacristan hadn’t deserted him. He wasn’t left entirely solitary. Each summer a few villagers brought him food and other provisions. He pointed at a trail curving around a mountain shoulder. They came that way, over a pass open for only a few months in summer.

‘Why don’t they come by the main valley?’

‘Closed,’ said the sacristan. ‘A mountain fell on it.’

Wayland put aside this disturbing news. ‘Who was Oussu? Where did he come from?’

The sacristan couldn’t say – only that the saint had travelled from India.

‘How long ago?’

‘One thousand years.’

Wayland smiled. ‘That can’t be right. The man who founded Oussu’s faith and mine died a thousand years ago.’

The sacristan was insistent. ‘He came in the reign of Nyima Kesang, the second lama. Wait.’ He went into the temple and returned with a book. He opened it and pointed at a line. ‘Nyima Kesang.’ Running a finger down the pages, he recited the names of the lama’s successors to the present day. There must have been more than fifty of them. He closed the book and held it to his chest. ‘One thousand years.’

‘I was told that after Oussu’s death Christian pilgrims visited the temple.’

The sacristan nodded and made the sign of the cross again.

‘How long after his death did they come?’

‘Not long. One hundred years.’

‘Why did they come?’

‘To worship at the place where their master found enlightenment. They wanted to take away relics, but the lama wouldn’t part with them.’

‘Where did the pilgrims go?’

The sacristan gestured down the main valley. ‘They died when a bridge collapsed.’

‘What did Oussu study here?’

The sacristan pointed at a cave in the cliff behind the temple. ‘The
dharma
, the laws of Buddha
.
He meditated for many days and nights and when his spirit was clear, he left to spread the light.’

‘Where to?’

The sacristan pointed west. ‘Home.’

Wayland eyed the cave. ‘Can I take a look?’

The sacristan was too frail to accompany him. Wayland reached the cave up a staircase tunnelled through the rock and emerged into a room-sized chamber with a stone sleeping platform. From the entrance he could see a narrow, ice-scabbarded peak hidden from the ground. Niches hacked into the walls of the cave contained scrolls. Wayland pulled one out and unrolled it.