The Ascent

Chapter 17

1

I WASN’T THERE WHEN IT HAPPENED. BUT I CAN SEE

it nonetheless: the Italian countryside, cool in the stirrings of an early summer that promises not to be too overbearing.

The vehicle appears as a glinting beacon over the farthest hill. David is behind the wheel, donning ridiculous driving goggles, racing gloves, and a worn bomber jacket. Hannah is in the passenger seat, wearing a lambskin jacket and a cream-colored jacquard pantsuit.

She laughs, though I cannot hear her. It as if I am watching all this on television with the sound turned all the way down. Her hair is short, curling just at her jaw, and appears the color of new copper in midday.

There is a sound like a clap of thunder as the motorcar’s undercarriage collides with a mound of dirt in the road. David looks startled, and Hannah grips the dashboard, turning to David to examine his expression. David senses her unease and turns to her, offers a complacent smile, and perhaps even places a hand on her thigh. “It’s okay, love,” he says. “It’s not a—” “David!” she shrieks. David jerks his head back to the front. But it is already too late.

2

I OPENED MY EYES TO FIND MYSELF IN A SMALL.

ill-lit room in what appeared to be a clapboard hut. I lay on a bed of straw covered with a blanket of cheesecloth. My goose-down pillow was soft to the point of near nonexistence. Candles flickered from every corner of the small room, and a fetid, moldering smell—curdling goat cheese, perhaps—permeated the air. At the opposite end of the room facing my bed, there was a doorway with no door, but aside from a straw mat halfway down the hallway and walls the color of sawdust, I could see nothing.

Above my head and tacked to the exposed wooden rafters hung various thangkas painted in bright colors. The one directly above me depicted one centralized, bronze-skinned figure whose black hair was wrapped in a bun and surrounded by a halo. The figure was flanked on either side by smaller figures, one of them white as a ghost and wielding a flaming sword, the other pale blue and multiarmed.

An attempt to sit up sent a red-hot burning sensation through my torso. I pushed aside the cheesecloth blanket and found I’d been dressed in white linens. A tiny red star—blood—stood in the center of the linen shirt. I lifted the shirt to find the puncture wound below my belly button had been sewn shut with stiff-looking black thread. Gingerly I fingered the wound. I felt nothing; it was numb.

Footsteps approached from the hallway. I dropped my shirt as a great looming shadow fell on the wall of the hallway just outside my room. It grew larger as the figure approached. A large man dressed in black robes ducked beneath the low doorway and entered the room. He paused, his surprise at my consciousness immediately evident, then continued over to a small table laden with various vials and instruments spread out on a velvet cloth.

“You’re awake,” said the man, his back to me.

“I know you,” I said. “Your name’s Shomas. You were outside my cabin that night before we left for the Godesh Ridge.”

Without turning to face me, Shomas said, “Lie back down. You are still healing.”

I eased myself down onto the pillow. My eyelids felt heavy, but I refused to fall asleep. Instead, I trained my gaze on the thangka above my head.

When Shomas appeared at my bedside holding a vial of amber fluid and a syringe, he followed my gaze to the tapestry. “That is Shakyamuni in the center. He is flanked by two bodhisattva. The one with the sword is Manjusri, and the one with many arms is Chenrezig, also called AvalokiteŘvara, the redeemer of samsara.”

“What’s samsara?”

“Reincarnation.” Shomas plunged the syringe into the vial of amber fluid. Once he’d withdrawn a sufficient amount, he withdrew the syringe and gripped my left wrist with his free hand.

“Hey,” I stammered, “what’s that?”

“This is medicine to help you heal.” He jabbed the needle into my arm. “You have suffered the mountain sickness, dehydration, and hypothermia. Also, curiously enough, you were poisoned.”

“Poisoned,” I echoed, my eyes growing distant.

“Some sort of heart accelerant, apparently. Rather unusual.” He steadied my arm, his grip tightening on my wrist. “The cat may have nine lives, but man has only three. Three is the magical number. You have used up one of yours on this trip, my friend.”

“Two, actually,” I corrected him, thinking of the cave in the Midwest. “I’ve used up two.”

He did not look at me.

“Where am I?”

“Safe,” Shomas said. He emptied the syringe into my arm, then pulled the needle out. “You are in the village in the valley of the Churia Hills.”

“How … how did I get here?”

“We rescued you from the Godesh Ridge.”

“But … how?”

Shomas shuffled over to the table and set the vial and syringe on the velvet mat. From within the folds of his dark robe, Shomas produced what appeared to be a small silver button that he held between his thumb and index finger. It pulsed once with a strobe of white light.

“This,” he said, “is the tracking device I put inside your coat. I had just come from your room when you returned that evening.”

“A tracking device,” I muttered. “Why would you do that?”

“It isn’t the first time.” He dropped the silver button into one of his many pockets. “Occasionally we get people who wish to traverse the Godesh Ridge in search of the Canyon of Souls. If we fail to sufficiently warn them away, we always take … alternative measures.”

A young girl dressed all in white with straight black hair appeared in the doorway, holding what appeared to be a bowl of soup. She paused, her head down, and waited for Shomas to address her. I understood none of what they said. The girl nodded and entered the room, her footfalls silent on the wooden floor, and set the bowl on a hand-carved table beside my bed. She stole a glimpse of me from the corner of her eyes. When I smiled, she spun away, her long hair twirling, and disappeared out the door.

Shomas pointed to the steaming ceramic bowl. “You should eat that, even if you are not hungry.”

“I’m starving,” I said.

“It is hot.”

The ceramic bowl was on a cloth. I sat up and leaned against the wall, then used the cloth to transfer the bowl into my lap. The soup was colorless. Barley leaves and cubes of what must have been tofu floated in the broth. I brought it to my mouth and sipped. It was excruciatingly hot and as tasteless as boiling water.

“The Godesh Ridge is a sacred place.” Shomas stood at the footof the bed, his hands folded behind his back. “Many years ago, our measures for ensuring it remained untouched by mankind were much more final than our current methods.” He raised one eyebrow to make sure I understood him correctly.

I nodded to express that I did.

“For various reasons, we have adapted to current conditions and now operate in the fashion you see now.” He spread his hands to indicate the room as well as the implements on the table with the velvet cloth. “Crossing the Godesh Ridge in search of the Canyon of Souls is no different than a foreigner setting foot in the Vatican only to relieve himself in the entranceway. It is a sign of disrespect for our culture and our beliefs.”

“I had no idea. It was never our intention to—”

“Intentions aside, our hidden lands have a way of protecting themselves. They do not show themselves to those they deem unworthy. Also, many are killed in such foolish pursuits—they become injured, stranded, lost, and without communication with the outside world. So we have developed a way to rescue these doomed souls and bring them back from the mountain. Despite our efforts, however, our success rate is quite slim. It is a difficult mountain to cross, and the rescue of individuals from the ridge poses innumerable difficulties. Still, you are among the lucky few.”

“I had a friend. John Petras. He was in a cave in the—”

“He, too, has been recovered.”

The word recovered did little to clarify my friend’s condition. “What exactly does that mean?”

“He is growing strong and healthy in this village, just as you are,” Shomas said.

My gaze wandered about the room, briefly lost in the flicker of countless candles. “And Andrew?” I heard myself say. “Andrew Trumbauer?”

“You and your friend hidden in the cave were the only two recovered from this mission.” Hands together, Shomas nodded in

my direction. “I am sorry. But you were warned.”

Like a phantom, Shomas drifted across the room. Just as he bowed his head in the doorway, I called to him. He paused and turned toward me, his face expressionless. His eyes glittered in the candlelight like embers sprung from a fire.

“I’ve seen the Canyon of Souls,” I said.

Shomas seemed to smile, but it was such a minute gesture I couldn’t be sure. “No,” he said quietly, “you only saw what the land let you see.”

3

THREE DAYS LATER. I WAS STRONG ENOUGH TO

venture out to the wooden hut where John Petras recuperated.

He smiled faintly from his bed in a room remarkably similar to mine. “How do I look?”

“The truth? Like you fell off a mountain. How’s your shoulder?”

“They bandaged me up pretty good, killed the infection. Your tourniquet saved my life.”

“Did they explain to you what happened? How we were saved?”

He nodded. A wave of pain or nausea must have stuck him then, because he closed his eyes and his nostrils flared with each exhalation.

I waited for the moment to pass.

Finally, when his eyes opened, they were glossy and soft. “Andrew? What—?”

“Andrew’s dead. This whole thing was a setup, a sick plot of revenge.” I was sitting in a wicker chair beside Petras’s bed. I rubbed my face and leaned one elbow on his mattress. “We were played. From the very beginning. All of us.” Across the room, I glimpsed Hannah’s image. But when I looked up, she was gone. It had most likely been a trick of the candlelight. “He wanted me dead because I let someone he loved die,” I said in one long, pent-up breath.

“Your wife,” he said, the inflection in his voice telling me this wasn’t a question.

“He loved her.” I smiled. My face went hot. “I did, too.”

“Was it your fault?” he asked.

I thought about it for a long time. “Some things were my fault,” I said finally. “Some of it. I tried to fix things, but I was too late. She went away and never came back. And I can either blame myself for the rest of my life and keep wandering by myself through dark caves waiting to disappear … or I can accept my role and move on. Anyway,” I said, glancing across the room to the darkened space where I thought I saw Hannah just a moment before, “I think she’s forgiven me.”

One of Petras’s hands slid from beneath the cheesecloth blanket to pat one of my own. He smiled wearily. He looked ancient, a hundred years old.

I cleared my throat and swiped away tears with the heel of one hand. “So why’d he bring you here? What’s your sin?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” His weak, pained smile widened. Out of nowhere he reminded me of my father.

Ten minutes later, I was back out by the road watching the sun burn behind the mountains while the trees glowed like fiery ember. Shomas approached. He was dressed in a heavy woolen coat that hung past his knees. A wool cap was pulled low over his ears. “Your friend is feeling better?”

“He is, yes. Thank you.”

“You both will be leaving soon.”

“Right.” Behind him, I watched the sun continue to set. In less than a minute, it would be dark. “You haven’t asked me what happened up there. Why is that?”

“Because I know what happened.”

I looked at him. I tried to read his face but found it an impossible task. It was like trying to sense emotion from a tombstone. “What do you mean?”

“The mountains are a dangerous place. Your friends suffered unfortunate fates. Accidents,” he said, his voice lowering, his eyes steady on me, “have a way of happening.”

I was about to say something—anything—but he continued before I could open my mouth.

“These lands are sacred lands,” said Shomas. “We do not need people coming here to investigate matters. We do not need people coming here to learn what happened. The Godesh Ridge does not need more foolish explorers marking the snow with traitorous footprints.”

Expelling a gust of breath, he turned and trudged up the side of the road. Where he went I could not tell; the sun had already set, covering the world in a blanket of darkness, and I lost him somewhere around the bend.

4

ONE WEEK LATER, WE DEPARTED FOR LONDON ON

the same flight. Petras slept, and I thumbed through various magazines as well as a newly purchased copy of the George Mallory book I hadn’t finished. Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, disappeared while climbing the northeast ridge of Everest in 1924. His body wasn’t discovered until 1999, and although the book skimped on description, I could only imagine what would have been left behind after being lost out there in the unforgiving wilds of Everest for seventy-five years.

In London, we boarded separate planes—John Petras to Wisconsin, me to Baltimore-Washington International. Petras’s plane left first. At his gate, we embraced, like brothers about to part.

“There’s one thing we haven’t discussed yet.”

I knew what it was. I nodded, rubbing my forehead with aching fingers. “I know. What do you think?”

“I think we can go back and tell the truth,” he said. “Call the police,

tell them what happened. Tell them everything about Andrew.”

“Then there’s the other option.”

Petras raked his fingers through his beard and down his neck. “It was all an accident, a horrible accident. Just like the Sherpas said.”

“I don’t have it in me to go through all that right now,” I said. “I may never have it in me.”

“Then it was an accident.”

“And Andrew?”

“Another accident, just like the others. Andrew Trumbauer went over the cliff. End of story.” One hand on my shoulder, he squeezed my aching muscles and smiled. Then he turned and shuffled through the doors and down the gangway to the airplane.

You only saw what the land let you see, I thought.

I remained at his gate until the plane taxied down the runway, my nose nearly pressed against the window, my eyes as vacant as twin chunks of ice.