The Kingdom

29

JOMSOM, NEPAL

Packs settled on their backs, they retraced their footsteps past the Land Cruiser, then followed Pushpa along the wall, first south, then east, around the village to the foot of the anthill cliffs.

“I suddenly feel very small,” Remi said over her shoulder to Sam.

“Very.”

Upon their first seeing the cliffs, both distance and the fantastical geology had combined to make them seem less than real, as though it were a backdrop from a science-fiction movie. Now, with Sam and Remi standing in the anthills’ shadow, they were simply awe-inspiring.

At the head of the line, Pushpa had stopped, waiting patiently until Sam and Remi finished gawking and taking pictures before setting out again. Ten more minutes of hiking brought them to a fissure in the rock that was barely taller than Sam. One by one, they slipped through the opening and onto a tunnel-like path. Over their heads, the smooth rusty brown walls curved inward, almost touching, leaving only a sliver of distant blue sky above.

Ever eastward the path zigzagged and spiraled until Sam and Remi had lost track of how far they’d traveled. Pushpa called a halt with a barked word. Behind them at the rear of the line Ajay said, “Now we climb.”

“How?” Remi asked. “I don’t see any handholds. And we don’t have any gear.”

“Pushpa and his friends have made a way. The sandstone here is very fragile; standard pitons and rock screws cause too much damage.”

Ahead, they could see Pushpa and Karna talking. Pushpa disappeared into an alcove on the left side of the cliff, and Karna picked his way back down the path to where Sam and Remi were standing.

“Pushpa is going up first,” he said, “followed by Ajay. Then you, Remi, followed by you, Sam. I’ll bring up the rear. The steps look daunting, but they’re quite sturdy, I assure you. Just go slow.”

Sam and Remi nodded, and then Karna and Ajay changed positions.

Ajay stood at the head of the line, neck craned backward for several minutes before he too stepped into the alcove and disappeared from view. Sam and Remi stepped forward and looked up.

“Oh, boy,” Remi murmured.

“Yep,” Sam agreed.

The steps Karna had mentioned were in fact wooden stakes that had been pounded into the limestone to form a series of staggered hand- and footholds. The ladder rose a hundred feet up a chimney-like slot before curving out of sight behind a hanging wall of rock.

They watched Ajay scramble over the rungs until they could no longer see him. Remi hesitated for only a moment, then turned to Sam, smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and offered a cheerful, “See you at the top!”

With that, she mounted the first rung and started climbing.

When she was halfway up, Karna said over Sam’s shoulder, “She’s a dynamo, that one.”

Sam smiled. “You’re preaching to the choir, Jack.”

“Much like Selma, then, right?”

“Right. Selma is . . . unique.”

Once Remi had rounded the bend, Sam started upward. Immediately he could feel the solidity of the rungs, and after a few test movements to compensate for his pack’s weight, he settled into a steady rhythm. Soon the walls of the chimney closed in around him. What little sunlight had filtered its way to the path below dimmed to twilight. Sam reached the hanging wall and paused to peek around the bend. Twenty feet away, above and to his left, the rungs ended at a horizontal wooden plank nailed to a row of stakes. At the end of this plank was a second, this one angling behind another hanging wall. Remi was standing at the junction; she gave him a wave and thumbs-up.

When Sam reached the plank, he found it not nearly as narrow as it had looked from below. He boosted himself onto the platform, found his footing, and walked toe to heel down the plank, then around the corner. Four more planks brought him to a rocky shelf and an oval-shaped cave. Inside, he found Pushpa, Ajay, and Remi seated around a Jetboil stove supporting a miniature teakettle.

The water had just started boiling when Karna slipped into the cave entrance. He sat down. “Oh, good, tea!”

Wordlessly, Pushpa dug five red enamelware mugs out of his pack, passed them out, then poured the tea. The group sat huddled together, sipping the brew and enjoying the silence. Outside, a gust of wind occasionally whistled past the entrance.

Once everyone was finished, Pushpa deftly packed away the mugs, and then they set off again, this time with their headlamps on. Once again, Pushpa was in the lead while Ajay brought up the rear.

The tunnel curved to the left, then the right, then stopped suddenly at a vertical wall. Straight ahead, a chest-high archway was carved out of the limestone. Pushpa turned and spoke with Karna for a few seconds, then Karna told Sam and Remi:

“Pushpa understands that you are not Buddhists, and he understands that our work here may be a bit complicated, so he won’t ask us to observe all Buddhist customs. He only asks that when you first enter the main chamber, you circle the perimeter once, in a clockwise direction. Once you’ve done this, you can move about as you please. Understood?”

Sam and Remi nodded.

Pushpa ducked through the archway and stepped to the left, followed by Remi, Sam, and Ajay. They found themselves in a corridor. Painted on the wall before them were faded red-and-yellow symbols unfamiliar to Sam and Remi, along with hundreds of lines of text in what they assumed was a dialect of Lowa.

Whispering, Karna told them, “This is a greeting of sorts, essentially a historical introduction to the cave system. Nothing specific to the Theurang or Shangri-La.”

“Is all this natural or man-made?” Remi asked, gesturing to the walls and ceiling.

“A bit of both, actually. At the time these caves were constructed-about nine hundred years ago-the Loba in this area believed that sacred caves were revealed by nature in their embryonic stage. Once the caves were found, the Loba could excavate them according to their spiritual will.”

Following Pushpa, the group continued down the corridor, walking stooped over until they reached another arched entrance, this one a few inches taller than Sam.

Over his shoulder Karna said with a smile, “We’re here.”

At first glance, the main chamber seemed to be a perfect dome, ten paces in diameter and eight feet high, with the ceiling tapering to a rounded point. The wall opposite the entrance was dominated by a mural that stretched around the chamber and from the floor to the domed ceiling. Unlike on the mural in the corridor, the symbols, text, and drawings here were painted in vibrant shades of red and yellow. The contrast against the mocha-colored walls was startling.

“It’s magnificent,” Sam said.

Remi, nodding, stared at the mural. “The detail . . . Jack, why is the color so different here?”

“Pushpa and his people have been restoring it. The pigment they use is a long-held secret. They won’t even share it with me, but Pushpa assures me it’s the same recipe that was used nine centuries ago.”

Standing at the center of the chamber, Pushpa was gesturing toward them. Karna said to Sam and Remi, “Let’s make our circuit. No talking. Head bowed.”

Karna led them clockwise around the space, stopping again at the archway. Pushpa nodded to them and smiled, then knelt by his pack. He pulled out a pair of kerosene lanterns and hung one from a peg in each side wall. Soon the chamber was filled with an amber glow.

“What can we do to help?” Remi asked.

“I’ll need the disks and some quiet. The rest I must do myself.”

Sam dug the Lexan case containing the Theurang disks from his pack and handed it to Karna. Armed with the disks, a spool of string, a tape measure, a parallel rule, an architect’s compass, and a directional compass, Karna stepped up to the mural. Pushpa hurried forward carrying a rough-hewn wooden step stool, which he placed beside Karna.

Sam, Remi, and Ajay took off their packs and sat down, their backs against the entrance wall.

For almost an hour, Karna worked without pause, silently measuring symbols on the mural and jotting in his notebook. Occasionally he would step back, stare at the wall while muttering to himself, and pace back and forth.

Finally he said something to Pushpa, who had been standing to one side, hands clasped before him. Pushpa and Karna knelt down, opened the Lexan case, and spent a few minutes examining the Theurang disks, fitting them together with the flanged outer ring in various patterns before finding an apparently satisfactory configuration.

Next, Pushpa and Karna placed the disks over certain symbols, measured distances with the tape measure, and murmured to each other.

Finally Karna stepped back, hands on hips, and gave the mural a final once-over. He turned to Sam and Remi.

“Selma tells me you two are fond of good news/bad news scenarios.”

Sam and Remi smiled at each other. Sam replied, “Selma’s having a little fun at your expense. She enjoys those; us, not so much.”

“Go ahead anyway, Jack,” said Remi.

“The good news is, we need go no further. My hunch was correct: this is the cave we needed.”

“Fantastic,” said Sam. “And . . . ?”

“Actually it’s good/good/bad news. The second bit of good news is we now have a description of Shangri-La-or at least some signs that will tell us if we’re close.”

“Now the bad news,” Remi prompted.

“The bad news is, the map offers only the path that the Sentinel Dhakal would have taken with the Theurang. As I suspected, it leads east through the Himalayas, but in all there are twenty-seven points marking the path.”

“Translation, please,” said Sam.

“Shangri-La could be at any one of twenty-seven locations stretching from here all the way to eastern Myanmar.”