The Hunt for Shambhala

PROLOGUE

In the safety of his tent, Captain James Langley of the British Army fumbled with a box of ammunition and spilled some of the bullets onto the floor. He took a deep breath and mumbled a prayer as his trembling fingers reloaded the heavy Webley Mk IV in his hand. This gun had already saved his life twice in South Africa — first during the Battle of Elandslaagte and the second when he fought Boer commandos in the Western Transvaal. With the six rounds safely in the service pistol, he weighed it in his hand and hoped it would save his life one more time.

Stepping outside the tent he almost collided with a man running fast toward the front line. “Mr Stanhope!”

Arthur Stanhope came to a sudden stop and apologized. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “Just wanted to get a look from a better perspective.”

Rifles crackled in the air a few hundred yards away as the British and Tibetan forces fired on each other once again. The British expedition to Tibet was sent here by Lord Curzon to push back against Russian plans to expand into the east, and today they were paying a high price for that push.

“You are a civilian with the British Geological Survey, sir,” Langley said. “You have no place on the front line — and what’s that in your hands?”

Stanhope looked sheepish for a moment and then raised the book he was holding so the captain could get a better look. “Just my journal, sir. I was hoping to make a few sketches of the enemy.”

Langley shook his head and turned his attention away from the young geologist and over to his men. They were constructing revetments along the garrison wall in preparation for the battle ahead. In the distance to the north he saw smoke coming from a number of sangars, or temporary forts, that the Tibetans were using as they too prepared for the fight. They were dwarfed by the mighty Himalayas rising behind them and filling half the sky.

It had been several weeks since Colonel Younghusband had crossed the Jelap La and made his way into Tibet. Just one week after the incursion they had reached Phari Jong and seized the fort there without firing a single shot. After this, the Colonel had crossed the Tang Pass and stationed four companies of the Twenty-Third Pioneers on the bleak Tuna Plateau.

The Pioneers were the Norfolk Regiment’s machine-gun section and there they stayed, at an elevation of over fifteen thousand feet for three months while the rest of the force was led back to Chumbi by General Macdonald. They had left the garrison on the plateau to show the Tibetans they were not retreating, but it was a tough place to pass a winter. Here, the temperature had dropped so low it had frozen not only the oil inside the soldiers’ rifle bolts but also the Maxim guns.

Langley and Stanhope had joined the garrison later, travelling into Darjeeling and replenishing their supplies under the jagged snow-overed ranges of Sikkim. They had made their way out of Siliguri along an old military road and followed the river as it snaked toward Tibet. Travelling in a small convoy full of ekkas and bullock-carts, the days were long and hard and the nights lit with exotic fireflies. They zig-zagged their way up into the mountains along lethal donkey tracks that wound ever higher beside blizzard-whipped precipices. In the summer these passes were lined with thick plumes of bracken and ferns but now there was nothing but a gaping void scarred with snow and ice driven by the howling mountain winds.

At Gnatong they were met by a contingent of the Eighth Gurkhas. The area was full of decrepit houses with cold, empty hearths and holes in the roofs, mostly leftover from the previous war. They had both held their breath as they stared out over the bleak, devastated landscape, grey and cold, barren and hopeless. Nothing but broken rocks and shale and the bitter remnants of war.

They had reached Jelap La as the blizzard began to subside, and found at the summit the shredded praying-flags of the Buddhists. As the final snows blew out to the west, Langley had looked below into the valley and saw Tibet for the first time. To the west was Nepal, and to the east was Bhutan but it was Tibet that stretched out before him. The valley was straight, but just like the wars in Afghanistan, he knew a handful of riflemen along the ridges could wreak havoc among a column marching through it.

Now, Langley was looking into the pleading eyes of Arthur Stanhope as he awaited his permission to move to the front line, but before the words formed on his lips, the battle started without warning, and both sides were firing on one another.

From behind the cover of the stone wall, the Tibetans fired their ancient matchlock muskets. Langley dived for cover behind one of the revetments beside the cliff edge and only narrowly avoided taking a musket ball to the head.

“Take cover!” he yelled, and his men obeyed the instruction happily.

The smoothbore, muzzle-loaded firearms used by the Tibetans were antiquated decades ago, but they were still lethal, and he was more careful the second time he raised his head above the revetment to survey the enemy’s position.

Stanhope ran toward the same cover, but was struck by the enemy on the top of his arm. The geologist tumbled over the wall and fell down the side of the mountain. He screamed as he went and frantically tried to grab hold of anything to slow his fall, but there was nothing but loose rock and scree and he had no chance.

Stanhope regained consciousness in a small stream which was partially frozen at the sides. A thin veneer of ice encroached a few inches from the banks toward the centre of the running water. His head pounded and the coppery tang of blood was strong in his mouth. Worse, his left eye seemed to be so badly smashed it was puffed up like a peach and impossible to open, but the bullet had caused only a minor flesh wound on his arm.

He managed to open his good eye and the first thing he saw was a sharp, black crack in the rocks at the bottom of the ravine. High above, lost in the misty shroud, the battle raged on — but it sounded more distant now. He winced as the gun shots crackled and zipped and the wounded cried out in terror. Another few dozen men had been mown down by the Maxims, he supposed.

It was later now, and even through the swirling storm clouds he was able to see the sun had moved several degrees to the southwest. By his estimation he had been unconscious at least an hour. How far the river had taken him in that time was probably less than a mile, judging by the sounds of the battle, but he knew one thing for sure — he was lucky to be alive.

Desperate for shelter, he scrambled out of the frozen river and up the rocky bank toward a narrow aperture in the rock face a few yards away. At least he would be safe in here. Safe away from the bloodshed and insane carnage being meted out by the gods high above his new home.

And then he saw it.

A low, sparkling glow coming from the far end of the cave.

He heaved himself up from his knees and staggered to his feet. He noticed for the first time that the river had swallowed his right boot, and cursed its absence as his foot pushed down into the gravelly chips on the bottom of the cave. He also saw his ankle was starting to swell. Hiking back to the regiment was going to be even more work than he had previously estimated.

But the strange, white glow at the rear of the cave captured him once again, and drew him toward it like a moth to a flame.

His breathing became irregular as he approached the phenomenon. As a geologist for the British Geological Survey he had travelled all over the world, from the prairies of Canada to the African veld, but never in his thirty years had he ever seen anything like this before.

Its eerie sparkling bewitched him — but what was it? He had to get closer to know more about it, and forgetting his safety he moved forward into the dark cave — lit only by the light of the captivating anomaly. It danced in his eyes like fireflies, and he absent-mindedly pulled his sodden journal and pencil from his pocket and began to make notes. He barely looked down as the Chinese graphite struggled to make a mark on the water-damaged pages of the journal, so transfixed was he upon the spectacular sparkling glow before his eyes.

Closer now he saw the phenomenon was contained within a gentle stream that was flowing under a fissure in an otherwise impenetrable wall at the back of the cave. Reaching down, he scooped some of the water in his hand.

He had thought perhaps the glow was coming from some bioluminescent algae on the rocks of the riverbed, but he was surprised to see it was the water itself that was sparkling and glowing. It looked a little like the new electric lamps running down the street outside his home in Kensington, but there was something almost magical about this. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Tracking the flow of the river up to the wall at the back of the cave he realized the glow was stronger the closer the water was to the wall. He wondered what was beyond the wall with a heavy heart. It was solid, and the crack at the base allowing the water into the cave was no more than a quarter of an inch high.

He sighed, finished his notes and slipped the journal back in his pocket. An hour or so beside a regimental campfire should have its pages — and his clothes — perfectly dry again… but that was presuming he could find the regiment. He pushed himself up on his one remaining boot and readied himself to leave the cave, and that was when he saw them.

Right before his eyes on the cave wall, a yard or so above the silvery, glowing water were dozens of the strangest symbols he had ever seen. Someone had carefully carved them into the rock wall and their diligent turns and flourishes could almost be described as art.

“What’s this then?” he said, peering in closer.

Too dark.

He lifted another handful of the water up to the wall and illuminated the symbols. He knew they weren’t Chinese or Hindi, but other than that he didn’t recognize them and had no way of making an identification. “Old Langley might know,” he said, and pulled his journal out one more time.

Beneath the description and drawings he had made of the cave and river, Stanhope noted the coordinates of the area, and then he carefully copied the symbols on the cave wall until they were reproduced inside his journal. After slipping the leather bound book back inside his jacket pocket, he turned and faced the entrance to the cave.

Outside it was raining, and a fog was descending into the valley. He made sure he had all of his things before trudging back along the riverbank with his swollen ankle. He would only know how far he had travelled when he was regaling his friends back at the regiment — presuming they had won the battle.

And presuming he ever found them again.