The Ninth Buddha (39 page)

“I care for you,” she said, drawing close lest the wind would snatch her words away.

“I love you.”

As soon as she spoke the words, she knew she had sealed her fate.
 
Whether he heard or understood or remembered, it would not matter.
 
If they succeeded in escaping Dorje-la, those few words bound her to him more intimately than any of her childhood vows had ever bound her to the Lady Tara or the dharma or the Buddha.
 
She belonged to him now as she had never belonged to anyone, least of all herself.

They made it back to the hatchway, battling against a head-on wind.
 
Inside, with the hatch closed and the ladder stored away, they stood together in the silence.

“We have to get to my room,” she said.

“There’s a passage near here that will take us there without being seen.”

“And then?”
 
he asked.

She hesitated.

“I’ll .. . explain that when we get there,” she said.

If Tsarong Rinpoche had been worried before, he was now quite beside himself.
 
The pee-ling had killed his guard and managed to get out into the monastery.
 
He could be anywhere.
 
If he succeeded in making his way to the woman’s room, she might find some way of hiding them both until the right moment came.

At least he might be able to do something to prevent that.
 
The gun that Zam-ya-ting had given him was still in his pocket.
 
He fingered it gently, sensing its mute perfection against his fingers.
 
It was a message from another world, speaking to him of the possibilities inherent in earthly power.
 
There was a mastery in it that he had sensed in nothing else.
 
He remembered pulling the trigger when he killed the Nepalese boy on the pass: the thrill of that moment still lived with him, urging him to repeat the experience.
 
Not even tonight’s hangings had brought him such a rush of raw excitement.

But, for all that, the presence of the gun in his pocket filled him with apprehension He had broken every vow he had ever made.

If there were other lives beyond this, he would pay a terrible price for the things he had done.
 
He hoped Zam-ya-ting was right and that this life was the only one a man had.
 
He had staked everything on that.
 
Otherwise, what he was about to do would bring such suffering on his head that five hundred lifetimes would not suffice to bring him peace again.

He loosed the safety catch and set off in the direction of Chindamam’s room.

They wasted no time.
 
Chindamani’s secret passage ran from a small chapel dedicated to Tara directly to her room.
 
Only she and Sonam and Christopher’s father had known of its existence: it had been built centuries ago to allow the Tara incarnation to pass between her own quarters and her private chapel without being seen by anyone else.
 
For Chindamani as, no doubt, for many of her predecessors it had played more than just an ancillary role to her devotions, providing as it did easy access to other parts of the monastery.
 
From the Tara chapel, other passages connected with different floors: one to the main Lha-khang, where there was a curtained chamber from which the Tara incarnation could watch the services; one to the old temple-hall, now rimed with ice and frost, where Christopher had first met his father; and one to the gon-kang, in case the Tara trulku ever wanted to commune with the dark yet benign protector deities.

The passage led to a door concealed behind hangings on the wall of Chindamani’s bedroom.
 
When she and Christopher emerged, they found Sonam and the two boys exactly as Chindamani had left them.
 
William was sitting on the couch.
 
Samdup was seated by the old woman, trying to comfort her while she wept.

“Ama-la,” said Chindamani, “I’m back I’ve brought Ka-ris Tofeh, the Dorje Lama’s son.”

At the sound of the younger woman’s voice, Sonam glanced up.

Her old eyes were red and filled with tears.
 
In the act of weeping,

her distress had deepened and become potent, like a drug in her ancient veins.

“Little daughter,” she cried, ‘they’ve killed the Dorje Lama.

What are we to do?”

“I know, ama-la,” Chindamani whispered.

“I know.”
 
Now that the moment to leave had come, she felt sick and guilty.
 
How could she leave Sonam here with Tsarong Rinpoche and his followers?

The old woman had been like a mother to her.

She sat down beside the old woman and put one arm around her.
 
Then she turned to look at Christopher, but he had already gone to his son, hugging him tightly, whispering words of reassurance and comfort.
 
As she looked at them, she felt a sudden, unexpected pang of jealousy, an emotion she had never experienced before.
 
It unsettled her to discover how she resented the child’s claim over his father.

Suddenly, there was a sound of footsteps in the corridor outside.

Christopher leaped to his feet.
 
He looked round desperately for somewhere William might hide: having found him at last, he would die before he gave his son up again.

The door opened without a knock and Tsarong Rinpoche entered, closely followed by the monk who had been standing guard outside.
 
The Rinpoche could not believe his luck.
 
It occurred to him in a flash of inspiration that, with the man and the woman eliminated and the English boy in his hands, he really had no need for Zam-ya-ting at all.

“Sit down!”
 
he ordered, addressing Christopher.

Christopher stepped towards him, but the Rinpoche took a gun from his pocket and jerked it menacingly in his direction.

“You’ve seen this gun before, Wylam-la,” he said.

“You know what it can do.
 
Please sit down on that chest and keep quiet.”

The monk closed the door firmly.
 
The draught caught one of the butter-lamps and set it flickering, sending oddly-shaped shadows across the faces of the two men.

Christopher was in no mood to sit.
 
Since coming down from the roof, he had felt a sense of purpose returning.
 
Chindamani had given him something like hope to hold on to, and William had made the hope seem real and tangible.
 
He had started to believe it might be possible to get at least as far as the pass beyond the walls of the monastery.

“How many will this be?”
 
he asked the Rinpoche.

“Enough to keep you crawling about in mud for the rest of eternity, I should think.”

“I told you to keep quiet,” the Rinpoche snapped.
 
He could feel his confidence evaporating already.
 
This would not be easy.
 
Killing one of them alone would not have been difficult.
 
But the two of them together, in the presence of the boys and the old woman .. .

Suddenly, everyone froze.
 
In an uncannily high-pitched voice, old Sonam had begun to mutter the words of what sounded to Christopher like an incantation of some sort.
 
He saw Tsarong Rinpoche turn pale and grip the gun as if to crush the metal in his bare hand.
 
The old woman’s voice continued to rise and fall, quavering yet quite inflexible, filling the little room with curious echoes.

“Shut up!”
 
Tsarong Rinpoche yelled at Sonam.
 
Christopher noticed that the guard had blanched as well and was stepping back towards the door.

“Ama-la, please!”
 
Chindamani urged, pressing the old woman’s shoulders in her hands.

“Stop reciting.”
 
But the little nurse paid no attention.
 
Eyes fixed on the Rinpoche, she went on with her incantation, pouring the words out implacably into the shadows that hung about him.

“Be quiet!”
 
the Rinpoche shouted again, stepping towards the old woman and waving his gun loosely in the air.
 
His eyes were wild and staring.
 
Christopher could see that he had been gripped by some kind of superstitious dread, although he did not understand a word of the rhyming lines that the old nurse was reciting.

He guessed that it must be a curse of some sort and that Tsarong Rinpoche took it very seriously.

“Please, Sonam, don’t,” Chindamani was pleading.
 
The boy Samdup sat frozen to the spot, his eyes fixed on the ancient figure, watching in horrified fascination as her wrinkled form rocked backwards and forwards in a steady rhythm, echoing the stanzas that rolled from her lips.

“Stop her!”
 
the Rinpoche shouted.

“Or I’ll kill her.
 
I swear I’ll kill her if she doesn’t stop!”

“Stop it, ama-la,” Chindamani pleaded.
 
She had recognized the pain in Tsarong Rinpoche’s voice and knew he would indeed pull the trigger if Sonam went on much further.
 
She knew why he was frightened.

But nothing would shut the old lady up.
 
She was into her stride now, spitting the dark words of her curse out as though they were poison and could kill.
 
Perhaps she thought they could.

Tsarong Rinpoche fired his revolver.
 
A single shot, then the gun hung limply from his fingers.
 
The bullet hit the ama-la in the throat.
 
There was a terrible choking sound.
 
She did not fall back, but went on sitting as though unhurt.
 
But the bullet had entered through the front of the throat and exited again by the back of her neck, severing the top of the spinal column.
 
A plume of blood sprayed out from the wound.
 
There was a choking sound.
 
Bright red blood foamed on her lips.
 
Her old eyes glazed over and a moment later her body went limp and she fell back into Chindamani’s arms.

Nobody said anything.
 
The room was filled with a dreadful silence that stretched into more than a minute.
 
Outside, a gust of wind fell heavily against the window and rushed away again.
 
It was as if it had come to take another soul from Dorje-la and carry it to the mysterious realm of Bardo.

The first person to move was Chindamani.
 
There was a cold rage in her eyes that had never been in them before.
 
She let go of Sonam’s body, lowering it to the bed, then stood up slowly, her gaze fixed on Tsarong Rinpoche.
 
The lama’s face was twitching.
 
A nerve was working in his right cheek.
 
The hand that held the gun shook uncontrollably.

Chindamani began to recite the curse from where Sonam had left off. She spoke in a voice that was almost a whisper, but it carried clearly to the man at whom it was directed.
 
She raised a finger and pointed at him and her voice trembled with anger.

As though mesmerized, Tsarong Rinpoche stood frozen for a moment, then his hand began to move.
 
He raised the gun slowly and pointed it at Chindamani.
 
It shook terribly and he set his teeth together, forcing his nerves to grow still.
 
Then, just as slowly and just as deliberately, he turned the gun until it was pointing at his own face.
 
The weapon was heavy, his fingers weak, drained of strength.
 
He opened his mouth, then rested the edge of the gunbarrel on his lower teeth.
 
His whole body was shivering now.

Chindamani’s voice filled the world.
 
He wanted to cry out, to scream against the incantation, but his limbs were paralysed.
 
Only his finger moved, tightening against the cold metal of the trigger.

Christopher watched in horror, unable to understand what was happening.
 
The lama was terrified beyond measure.
 
But surely the power of superstition alone could not be responsible for his unreasoning fear of the incantation.
 
Tsarong Rinpoche had committed every sacrilege there was.
 
And yet a few words from an old woman had been enough to undermine him completely.

Christopher held William’s face tight against his stomach.
 
The boy had seen enough horrors already.
 
Chindamani’s voice sounded in his ears, hard and relentless as a scalpel cutting through skin.

Tsarong Rinpoche closed his eyes.

The explosion blew most of Tsarong Rinpoche’s skull apart.
 
Blood marked the walls of Chmdamani’s apartment with bright, angry drops.
 
A great shudder went through all the limbs of the Rinpoche’s body, then he toppled and fell backwards Chindamani faltered and closed her eyes but remained standing.
 
Samdup cried out in horror and threw his hands over his eyes.
 
William, who had heard but not seen the explosion, clung to his father tightly.
 
The monk who had entered the room with Tsarong Rinpoche was drenched with blood.
 
Without a word, he dropped his weapon and ran through the door.

Christopher shuddered.
 
For what seemed an age, he stood there holding William, looking at Tsarong Rinpoche’s bloodied corpse, at the blood streaming across the naked wall.
 
Slowly, he became aware that Chindamani’s voice had faded away.
 
He turned his head and saw her, still standing in the same spot, her arm outstretched, her finger pointing at the empty space where the Rinpoche had been standing.