The Forbidden Temple (3 page)

Following the line of the ropes, he could see Bill fighting his way up. That was the way he climbed when he got tired, always fighting. He would hammer his axes in, spraying ice everywhere, using strength not skill to move himself higher.

Somewhere off to the right, Luca heard a noise and a small collection of rocks, some the size of a man’s head, came clattering down the cliff-face. They were far enough away not to be any danger, but the sight of them bouncing off the granite wall in puffs of dust was unnerving. Even rocks that size would splinter straight through their helmets.

Luca saw Bill tilt his head up to watch the rock-fall and for a moment their gazes met. Neither said a word. Playing these kinds of odds was a choice they never spoke about.

Sending a cloud of frosted breath out into the air before him, Luca looked up, allowing himself a rare moment to check their progress. They had been climbing fast and were nearly two-thirds of the way up the face. A few more hours and they would be under the summit ridge.

As the afternoon dragged on, he felt the pace starting to slow even further. He could hear himself grunt each time he pulled his body upwards and his forearms felt swollen and numb. There was a strange, cramping spasm in his right leg that he knew wasn’t from the cold. He wondered, almost clinically, how much longer his body could bear it.

Longer, he knew, than Bill’s could. Over the course of the last few hours, as Luca had tried to move forward, the ropes would often snap
taut at his waist, jerking him to a standstill. He would wait for a minute, allowing Bill to catch his breath, but when he tried to press on, they still wouldn’t budge.

Fifty feet below, Bill could feel sweat mingling with the thin veil of ice across his face before running down into his eyes. Beneath his jacket, his chest rose up and down in ragged bursts and, whenever he stopped to try and steady his breathing, he was hit by a protracted bout of coughing which left him feeling even shakier. He tried to kick in his crampons and get a better grip, but his legs felt wooden and unresponsive, his front points just scraping over the smooth ice. In each hand, the axes felt unbearably heavy, and as he swung against the wall he knew his movements were becoming increasingly desperate.

He stopped again, bracing himself for another fit of coughing. Looking up through his fogged goggles, he could see the outline of Luca waiting above.

‘You all right?’

As the words floated down to him, Bill went to respond, but another bout of coughing tore through him. After nearly a minute it finally subsided, leaving Bill panting for breath. He tilted his head back and, clenching his jaw in anticipation of the pain, yelled out a single word.

‘Rest.’

Even from the distance, Luca could hear the strain in Bill’s voice – you didn’t climb for seven years with someone without being able to instantly gauge their level of discomfort. Judging by the jerky rhythm of the last hour or so, Luca guessed that Bill was now running on empty.

About twenty feet above his head, Luca had spied an outcrop of rock that might be big enough for the two of them to sit on. He had been working his way towards it for the last half-hour. Waiting for enough slack in the rope, he climbed the last few feet and, with trembling arms, hauled himself over the lip. With his back wedged against
the ice and his legs dangling over the edge, he heaved back on the rope to take some strain off Bill.

‘Fifty feet more,’ he yelled down. ‘We’ve got our own private balcony up here.’

For hours Luca had had his nose pressed against the mirror of ice, totally absorbed in the climb. Now he sat back in the sunshine, blinking at the world that was spread out beneath him.

Every view was different and no matter how much he climbed, the experience of having a new perspective was always breathtaking. As the sheer scale of the surroundings came into focus, his personal struggle with the mountain seemed to fade, shrinking him to what he was: a tiny human, clinging to a giant aberration of land.

Except that this time the aberration had a strange sense of order to it.

Luca squinted in the bright light, trying to take it all in. To his right stood a ring of snow-capped mountains, flawlessly aligned. His eyes followed the peaks as they curved round in a perfect circle. It was the symmetry that was so extraordinary, as if they had been positioned with a pair of compasses. At the centre lay a blanket of cloud, impenetrably thick.

As he watched, the cloud started to shift. It began to part slowly, changing and reforming, before something began to take shape at its centre. Luca felt his grip slacken slightly on the rope as he leaned forward involuntarily.

Light poured in through the gash in the clouds, illuminating one side, then the next. As the shape beneath finally broke free of its swirling cover, Luca realised that he was staring at a pyramid so perfectly proportioned it had to be man-made.

Except that it couldn’t be. Surely. What else could be in the middle of the Himalayas except a mountain? Looking out across the horizon, he realised it was smaller than the surrounding peaks, but only fractionally. That would make it nearly seven thousand
metres high. Absurd to think that humans could build anything so big.

A trembling hand appeared over the ledge beside him.

For a split second Luca just stared at it, his thoughts still on the pyramid mountain. Then, shaking himself awake, he lunged forward to grab Bill’s wrist. He pulled as hard as he could while Bill struggled to gain purchase, his crampons clawing over the dark rock. Long seconds passed before he managed to worm his way far enough on to the ledge. Then he collapsed, flat on his back, the only sound the heaving of his chest.

‘Mate, are you OK?’

Even behind his goggles, Luca could see the sick exhaustion in Bill’s eyes. He looked pale and utterly spent, as if each hour’s climb had gradually leached a little more colour from his blood.

‘You OK?’ Luca repeated, automatically gathering up the last few coils of rope. Already he felt his gaze being drawn back to the pyramid. ‘You’ve got to check out this mountain, Bill. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Bill opened his mouth to answer, but was suddenly hit by another bout of hacking coughs. Luca turned back in time to see his head loll to one side, a string of bloody spittle stretching from his lips. The lack of oxygen in his blood had started to turn his lips mauve.

‘Shit,’ said Luca softly, and then as he saw Bill slowly close his eyes, he raised his voice.

‘Bill . . . you have to stay awake.’

Bill remained motionless, his eyes shut tight.

The throbbing in his head was unbearable, even the smallest movement threatened to split his temples, paralysing him with pain. For hours he had tried to fight it, but now even his vision was starting to blur.

‘Head is killing me,’ he managed. ‘The altitude . . . we’re climbing too fast.’

‘How bad is it?’

It took Bill a few seconds to muster the energy to speak. When he did it came out as little more than a murmur.

‘I can’t see so well.’

Luca swore before turning and looking up the sheer wall of ice.

The summit ridge was no more than half an hour’s climb above them. The weather was absolutely perfect – low winds, good visibility. This expedition had been months in the planning, and now here they were in the perfect position – the mountain was offering itself on a plate. For the last few hours he had known he was going to have to make a choice, have to decide what mattered most. As he stared up at the summit he realised with absolute certainty that it was within his reach, was his for the taking.

‘Bill, listen. I’m going to tie you to the ledge just here, only for an hour or so, and go for the summit. You’ll be all right, I promise.’

Somewhere in his exhausted brain, Bill processed these words. He raised his head to speak then another bout of coughing convulsed through him, his chest rising and falling like a fish thrown on to dry land.

After a moment his body went limp and he slowly turned his head aside to spit a thick globule of phlegm on to the nearby rock.

‘You . . . can’t leave,’ he hissed.

He opened his eyes, squinting through the pain.

‘Don’t . . . fucking . . . leave,’ he repeated.

Bill tried to focus through the fog of his thoughts. He had to stay awake, had to fight the crippling lethargy. The seconds stretched. He felt his consciousness dip and the darkness drag at him. For the longest time, nothing happened. All he could hear was the noise of his own chest, heaving up and down. There was nothing except the blackness clouding the edges of his vision, slowly sinking in on him.

‘Luca . . . please.’

Bill’s voice was nothing more than a pathetic murmur, his last thoughts fading on his swollen lips. Then, somewhere through the
haze, he saw Luca’s silhouette move closer until he was standing directly overhead. Bill felt a hand on the front of his climbing harness and his body being hoisted forward towards the edge of the cliff.

He reached up, trying to grab on to Luca’s arm. He was balanced right over the long drop of the cliff beneath.

When Luca finally spoke, frustration thickened his voice.

‘Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

THERE WAS NO
natural light, only a collection of squat candles connected by long rivulets of syrupy wax. From their flames came a low aureole of light, illuminating the outline of five seats carved directly into the stone walls.

The seats were arranged in a semi-circle, following the natural shape of the chamber. All but the middle one was occupied by a cross-legged figure dressed in highly ornate robes. The fabrics were all dyed in rich contrasting colours and wrapped in complex folds so that only the right arm of the figure remained bare.

On the other side of the circular chamber, a small collection of personal effects had been laid out neatly on the stone floor. There were five of each item, prayer wheels, beads and miniature golden bells, stretching away from the candlelight.

One of the figures leaned back, pulling aside the yellow cowl that covered his face.

‘The divinations were correct,’ he said in a voice cracked by age. ‘The boy has been found.’

The others turned to look at him, their elderly faces creased in surprise.

‘You are certain of this?’

‘I am.’

Another of the monks leaned forward in his seat, arranging his red robes around him.

‘How did you find him so soon after His Holiness passed away?’

The monk in the yellow robe smiled. ‘It was indeed a marvellous thing. The smoke from the cremation blew south-west, confirming exactly what the Tshangpa oracle said. After only a month of searching, we found the boy in a small village called Tingkye.’

‘A month?’ another monk interrupted dubiously. ‘How can
he
be found in only a month?’

‘If the divinations are correct, you should do nothing but rejoice that we have found him so fast.’

‘And the boy – what is he like?’ asked another, slightly younger monk, his green robes glinting in the candlelight as he leaned forward eagerly to address the others.

‘He is only nine years old, a peasant with no learning or education. Yet as soon as I cast eyes on him, I saw he possessed a spirit that was identical to his predecessor’s. When I showed him the personal effects, he did not hesitate for a moment. He chose His Holiness’s personal prayer wheel, then the golden bell that he only used in his private chamber. Presented with five different prayer beads, he cast his hands over each before settling on the one that can only be used by His Holiness – the beads made of jade and silver that are the mark of Shigatse. The boy took them into his pocket and then looked at me curiously, saying, “These are mine. Where did you find them?”’

As the old monk finished speaking the other three bowed their heads in awe. The search could take years, even decades, and yet in only a few weeks the boy had been found.

Eventually one of them raised his head.

‘And what of the golden urn?’

‘It was he who was chosen. With each trial, it soon became clear to me that he did not even know he was being tested. The movements came to him naturally, as if he were following a dream he had already experienced. Such things could not have been taught.’

There was another long pause as each monk considered the
significance of what they had been told. Then the younger one in the green robes glanced round the semi-circle, his eyes bright.

‘We must inform Shigatse that their new leader has been found.’

The monk in the red robes shook his head abruptly, sending shadows flickering across the chamber’s walls.

‘No. We must tell no one. The boy’s identity must be concealed at all costs. If such news were ever to leave this room, there are many more powerful than us who would seek to control him. We must act quickly, brothers, or suffer a terrible fate.’

He turned his head slowly so that his gaze fell on each of them in turn.

‘This is the most important secret we will ever have to keep,’ he said, raising his finger towards the ceiling of the chamber. ‘The very fate of Tibet now depends on us.’

THE CLIMB DOWN
was relatively easy.

Luca began by using the ropes to lower Bill down from the ledge, but almost as soon as they started the descent, he began to feel better. The profound lethargy that had crippled him further up the mountain dissipated with each new lungful of thicker air. As the hours passed, and they abseiled quickly downhill, strength seeped back into each tired muscle.

Soon he was climbing down at almost the same pace as Luca. By the time the pair of them reached the lower slopes where they had built the snow hole, the only ill effect that remained was an occasional rasping cough.

Bill’s mood, however, had darkened. He knew that what he had experienced up there were the first signs of a full-blown pulmonary oedema. Both he and Luca had witnessed it once before on the north buttresses of Mont Blanc. A solo climber had got himself stranded high on the mountain, cut off by the darkness and high winds. Bill and Luca had turned back earlier that afternoon and reached the safety of the Cosmiques refuge, nestled on the ridge above the towering pinnacle of the Aiguille du Midi.