Tulku

16

WHO KNEW ABOUT the failed escape? Everybody? Nobody? It was impossible to tell. Sumpa had vanished – but had he run away? Was he hiding? Was he prisoned in one of the hermit-caves? Was he dead? Again there was no clue. Tomdzay came to their room next morning to ask if they were comfortable and apologize for their treatment at the guest-house. Then, still speaking as though it were an ordinary matter, he said that as soon as the festival was over Lung and Theodore would be given money for their journey and escorted to either India or China, whichever they might choose. Lung lay face down on his cot throughout the interview and gave no sign that he had heard a word, but Tomdzay didn’t seem at all put out, though Theodore noticed that his eye was caught by the monk’s robe, still pinned to the beam by the sword. An unreadable expression flickered across his face but his voice didn’t falter. When he had left Lung groaned, raised his head and let it fall back again on to his pillow. His misery so filled the room that Theodore could not bear it for long, and left to wander round the monastery.

The whole great maze was humming with preparations. In the main courtyard the steps of the great temple were being extended to left and right with wooden staging at various levels; new banners and hangings fluttered from archways or dangled in gaudy streams down the fronts of buildings. It was all very well for Major Price-Evans to claim that the dances were unrehearsed, but now there was hardly an open space that didn’t swirl with troupes of performers or echo with strange music; passing one of the kitchens Theodore saw through an open door a rickety scaffolding at whose centre was a weird grey bulbous mass, over ten feet high. Two men were perched on the scaffolding painting the object, which seemed to Theodore wholly out of place in a kitchen until, some time after he’d walked on, he realized that what he’d seen had been an early stage in the creation of the dough-giant which in a few days’ time Yamantaka, Death and Slayer of Death, would hack to pieces and fling to the attendant worshippers to eat. An echo of human sacrifice, Major Price-Evans had said, and also an echo of the Lord’s Table. Theodore shuddered, not at the blasphemy but at the dough giant itself, cretinous, cold, grotesque, a parody of flesh. He decided to go early for his call on Major Price-Evans.

Usually Theodore didn’t argue with the Major about Buddhism – it didn’t seem polite, for one thing; for another, as Lung had found, there was no way of winning such arguments; and for a third, till now Theodore had felt ashamed to pretend he held his beliefs with the through-and-through simplicity of the Major’s faith. There was always that numbness and emptiness at the centre, which had been there since the Settlement had been destroyed and Father had died. He was not in his heart sure that he had been doing any more than acting his belief, in the way Mrs Jones had said she was acting hers, or that his prayers and Bible-reading had been anything other than habits. But in the last week, since that spurt of faith when he had answered ‘Yes’ to the Major’s question about the gods, he had changed. He felt he was moving, just as the whole life of the monastery was moving, towards a turning-point. Of course until last night this turning-point had seemed to be the escape from Dong Pe, but though that had come to nothing the sense of movement was still there. Perhaps it was this which made him tell the old man not simply that he had seen the dough giant but what he had felt about it.

‘See what you mean, me boy,’ said the Major affably. ‘You’ve got to remember that flesh is illusion, so old Yidam’s only an illusion of illusion. Perhaps that’s what you really felt.’

‘No it isn’t. And anyway flesh isn’t an illusion. My Father said that everything God made is holy, so how can it be illusion?’

‘Ah, well, perhaps that’s true too – only another way of looking at it.’

‘Something’s either an illusion or it isn’t. To say anything else is nonsense – the words don’t mean anything.’

‘Now that’s where we differ. I don’t like saying anything’s nonsense, because when you think about it a bit more it often turns out to be sense. A lot of what you’re saying is just what I used to think, but then I found I was wrong about one thing, and then another thing, and so on, and now I’ve given up judging. Judge not that you be not judged, don’t you know.’

(The Major was a great quoter from the Bible, which he knew just as well as Theodore. But he also knew the Koran, and the Talmud, and a lot of other sacred books.)

‘Jesus was talking about judging people,’ said Theodore.

‘Quite right, me boy, but all these things mean more than just one thing, you know.’

‘Look, if you’re not allowed to say something’s nonsense – not allowed to think it even – it means you can believe anything you want to. The Earth’s flat! The moon is green cheese! Pigs fly!’

‘I heard about a lady the other side of Tibet who could turn herself into a pig. Abbess of one of the great nunneries. I don’t know whether she could fly, but some of them can levitate, you know.’

‘Oh, sure!’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘In any case, supposing it’s true, what’s it all for? These tricks they say they do are all so useless. Floating about in the air, or sitting by a frozen lake drying out towels with your body, just to prove you can do it!’

‘Jesus walked on the water.’

‘He had to. His disciples were scared. They thought the boat was sinking. He didn’t like doing miracles, and he didn’t do them to show off. They were useful. He fed people. He healed people.’

‘Lot of Lamas do healing, you know. But it’s interesting, isn’t it – shows a difference in attitude. Wheels, now. In the west we talk about the invention of the wheel as a great thing because it’s so useful. Here you aren’t allowed to use it at all. Same with miracles – I don’t think the Lamas would want to do them if they were useful. They are spiritual exercises, you know. They prove the Lama’s mastery over illusion. That’s one of the reasons we know we can believe what the Lamas tell us.’

‘My father saw men walking on live coals,’ said Theodore. ‘Do you mean he ought to have believed them if they told him the moon was cheese?’

‘I don’t know about that – seen that trick meself, you know, in Java. Wish I’d had the nerve to try it, too. But if a fellow like that started talking about the way the mind and the body fit together, I’d be interested to hear what he had to say, at least. Hey?’

The argument rambled on for a while, getting nowhere near any conclusion but covering all the amazing feats the Major had heard of Lamas achieving – prodigious marches over pathless country in impossible times, vast leaps, healings, trances – and then on to other countries, rope tricks, year-long burials, strange digestive feats, water-walking, and so on. The visit fell into its usual routine, and Theodore left as soon as the oracle-priest came to perform his morning ritual.

Having nothing better to do, Theodore took the trouble to cook the midday meal with special care, but Lung would not touch it; he lay huddled on his cot, groaning from time to time, and once or twice beating his clenched fist against his thigh. In the afternoon Theodore took Sir Nigel for a ride along the mountainside; the superb creature, fully rested now and used to steep places, moved with a sprightly energy and took Theodore further from the monastery than he had ever been, down among the tiny meadows where men and women toiled stripped to the waist in the surprising warmth, and right to the steep woods which clothed the lower flanks of the Dome of Purest Light. But all the time Theodore could feel Dong Pe calling him back; it was not safe to be so far away; something had still to happen.

Once back he longed to be away. Lung’s fury and grief filled the little room like smoke, and that night the monster Yidam Yamantaka blundered through Theodore’s dreams. At one point he woke, convinced that the dough giant was actually in the room, and saw a weird shape, dim in the moonlight, against the far wall. It took several frozen seconds before he recognized the thing as the monk’s robe which Lung had pinned to the beam with his sword. He tiptoed across the room and took it down, but when he returned from exercising the ponies next evening he found that Lung had summoned the energy to replace it.

The third day followed much the same. A visit to the Major in the morning, a long ride in the woods in the afternoon. All this time Lung ate nothing – didn’t even stir from his cot while Theodore was in the room, and appeared not to notice when, that evening, two monks brought a large basket of food in and explained in broken Mandarin that it would have to last until the festival was over.

The fourth morning began with the steady beat of a slack-skinned drum, parading through galleries and courtyards, a noise more like the pulse of a large but bloodless creature – Yidam Yamantaka, for instance – than any music. Voices called, feet padded and scurried, and the drum thudded into the distance, returning and fading as it wandered through the maze. As Theodore lay and listened to it, he came face to face with the fact that he was frightened. It was no use saying that he had seen the masks being painted and the dough-giant being constructed, and knew quite well that they were only wood and cloth, flour and water and coloured dyes. He also knew that at times something breathed power into these stupid things, so that their stupidity began to live and became horrible. He did not want to be there when it happened, so he decided that this morning, at any rate, he was going to stay in the cell. Even Lung’s misery would be more tolerable than the things outside.

He rose, lit the primus and started to make his breakfast. To his surprise Lung heaved up on his cot and stared, hollow-eyed, at the purring violet flame beneath the kettle.

‘It is the day,’ he croaked.

‘Yes. Did you hear the drum? I guess that means the Festival is starting.’

‘She will come down from the mountain. She has had three days to consider. All that time she has not seen the soul-stealer.’

‘Honest, I don’t think . . .’

‘No. If he had not been sure of her he would not have left her so. I must eat.’

Lung seemed to have lost all his fastidious neatness. He slurped his tea so hot that it must have burnt him, spilling much of it but instantly gulping again. Crumbs of the dark, sour bread strewed his cot, but the moment he’d finished eating he threw himself back on the mess and lay staring at the ceiling. Theodore started to tidy the food away.

‘Leave me, Theo,’ whispered Lung.

‘I’d sooner . . .’

‘I must be alone. Now. Alone.’

Lung seemed to sense Theodore’s intention to refuse, because now he half-rose from the cot, glaring at Theodore with a suddenly focused madness, as though Theodore were the cause of all his misery.

‘Go!’

The word was like the grunt of a wounded animal. Lung was still rising when Theodore picked up his rough Tibetan coat and backed through the door. For a moment he stood hesitating, wondering what to do, how to get help. It was as though one of the horrible powers of Dong Pe had come and instead of giving weird life to a masked dancer had actually invaded the body of his friend. He moved a pace along the gallery and standing on tip-toe peeped over the sill of the small window into the cell. Lung was lying on his cot, face down now, apparently exhausted with the effort of driving Theodore from the room. Perhaps he was right, and all he needed was to be alone. The fact that he had eaten was encouraging . . . Theodore moved away, shaking his head. He decided to go and check that the old groom hadn’t forgotten to feed and water the horses in the morning’s excitement. Then he could weed Mrs Jones’s garden for a while – a dreary and disconsolate task without her – and then come back in an hour or so and see whether Lung was all right.

The quiet courtyard where they lived was full of sudden life, as monks thronged through the arch that led towards the temples. Theodore turned against the flow of men hurrying in the same direction along the gallery and made his way to a stair that would bring him out in the courtyard by the monastery gate, but reaching the gallery above it he saw that he would not get out that way. The crowd at the entrance was like hunched waters pressing to pass a sluice; anyone trying to move against it would be in for a battering, and might even get trampled underfoot. So he turned back and, moving with the stream now, made his way through the maze of galleries towards the little side-gate; he had meant to avoid the gallery that ran along the east side of the main courtyard, but a door that would have let him through by a back way was for some reason closed and bolted, so he had to retrace his steps. To his surprise the gallery was almost empty. Monks were lined up along the balustrade, but there was plenty of room to pass behind them, and gaps through which it was possible to see the scene below. This was so amazing that despite his intentions Theodore stopped at one of the gaps to watch for a moment.

When the people of the valley had gathered in that courtyard for the ceremony of the oracle, Theodore had thought it an immense crowd, but compared to the crush he saw now it was little more than a sprinkling. It seemed impossible that there could be room for more, but still men and women, monks and peasants, were jostling in through several archways, setting up pressures in the mass below which made it move in ponderous eddies.

‘You have come to watch?’ said a voice in Mandarin beside him. ‘To be part of the ceremony you must be down there.’

Theodore turned and saw the oracle-priest. He answered with a grunt – he was only watching. He was not part, and never would be. His eye was caught by a rush of movement on the staging at the temple steps to his right – a monstrous figure, surrounded by demons, was swaggering about while a dancer all in black and riding a black hobby-horse, came tittupping on. The dancer abandoned his horse, took a bow from his shoulders and began to perform his dance, moving in wide swoops, with arms stretched so that his black robes fluttered round him. The monstrous figure, who wore a green mask and a towering crown, came nearer to the dancer, who suddenly stopped his fluttering swoops, stood straight and mimed with the bow. Imaginary arrows sped towards the monster. At this point Theodore recognized the story, which Major Price-Evans had told him – it was about a King of Tibet a thousand years ago who had tried to suppress the Buddhists; and how a Buddhist hermit had appeared in front of the palace riding a black horse and wearing the dress of a black magician, and there had performed a magical dance, which the King had come out on to his balcony to watch; then the hermit had taken his ritual bow, shot the King dead and galloped off towards the river; the King’s guard had rushed in pursuit, but no-one on either bank had seen a black rider on a black horse because the hermit had turned his cloak inside out as he rode through the river, which had washed the black paint off his horse, so all any witness had seen was a white magician suitably mounted on a milk-white steed.

Theodore was inquisitive to see whether the dancer would change colour, and if so how, so he stayed, telling himself he was only watching. The monster-king danced his death; a line of men in blue-green robes, waving a long blue cloth to make the waves, appeared on the other side of the stage; the hermit picked up his hobby-horse and sped towards them, pursued by demons; the dancers in blue closed round him for a moment, hiding him completely, then opened out and there he was all in white on the far side, beginning to dance his triumph while the demons prowled for their prey, unable to see him. It was cleverly managed, but Theodore was surprised to notice that the crowd below scarcely responded – indeed many were not even looking in that direction.

‘Why don’t they watch?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t that why they’ve come?’

‘They are waiting for the Lama Amchi to appear,’ said the oracle-priest.

‘Is that more important than the dances?’

‘To these simple people, yes. It was he who found the Lama Tojing Rimpoche, and now it is he who has found the Mother of the Tulku. He was already a great one in their minds, and now he is greater still.’

‘When will he come?’

‘When the dance of Yidam Yamantaka is about to begin. First there will be some singing, then another dance, then more singing and then the dance of Yidam Yamantaka.’

Now, knowing what to look for, Theodore could indeed perceive that the crowd was thickest at the foot of the steps that zigzagged up to the two houses and the caves beyond. The sense of patient waiting, of adoration, of awe, struck him like a wave. All for this one man . . .

‘But when the child is born . . .’ he muttered.

‘He will be a child for many years,’ said the oracle-priest. ‘A Tulku does not come into his powers at once, so the Lama Amchi will guide him. And even when the child is a man . . .’

He gave a cynical little chuckle, and shrugged as if to show he was not a monk through and through, but had once been a yak-driver and seen other lands. It was a relief to hear him speak so, to share a moment of disbelief at the centre of this factory of appalling faiths. Perhaps Theodore’s feelings showed on his face, because the oracle-priest smiled and shook his head reprovingly.

‘The Lama Amchi is a truly spiritual person, and of great wisdom and power,’ he said. ‘And the child that is born will be the Tulku. Through my mouth the oracle spoke.’

‘How do you know?’ cried Theodore. ‘How do you know it isn’t all made up? You can’t remember anything you said!’

The oracle-priest looked at him for a moment with the same reproving smile and was just about to answer when a change came over him. He seemed to be having a fit. He shook. The smile became a snarl, and his coppery clear skin suffused red and purple, while the veins of his forehead swelled until they were like knotted roots of trees. He took one staggering pace towards Theodore and towered above him.

‘Go to your room, Theodore,’ he whispered. ‘Go to your room and wait.’

The voice was not human, a rasping sigh coming from a great distance, but it seemed to Theodore as he flinched back that the words were English. Once only in his life, when Theodore had offended, Father had used those exact words; and the voice, through all the distortion of distance, spoke with Father’s exact tone.

Theodore’s cringeing movement away from the swollen creature became a stagger and collapse as the shock struck him. He picked himself up and scuttled, cowering, until he collided with the back wall of the gallery. There he turned and ran, hunching his shoulders, not daring to look behind him; he twisted through a dark opening, scuttled down a corridor and out on to the gallery of a small courtyard, thronging with folk below him. Two more turns and he was lost. Yesterday he had known almost every winding of this maze, but suddenly all that knowledge was wiped away; his flight became like a journey in a dream, a panic rush through familiar country whose parts no longer fit together. He stopped at the entrance to another dark corridor and stood shaking his head, as though trying to clear the chaos from it, but all the time he heard the rasping whispered words. A monk glided out of the dark and spoke to him in Tibetan.

‘My room. My room,’ whispered Theodore.

He spoke in English, but the monk seemed to guess his need and took him gently by the elbow and guided him like a blind man through the maze until they reached a familiar gallery and a familiar door. At the touch of the latch Theodore’s wits came back to him, enough to make him mutter his thanks to his guide before darting through the door and heaving it shut. He drew a deep breath and turned to face Lung, but the room was empty.

Perhaps even in his terror Theodore had been unconsciously bracing himself to face his friend’s snarl of fury and rejection, and now, finding there was no need, he let a long sigh shake his body as that strand of tension slid away. The process did not stop, but ran on and on all through the web of fear, and self-pity, and self-distrust, loosing first the tautness of the morning’s nightmare and then ravelling on through ancient knots and cords that had shaped his nature.

The process was timeless, his whole life, two or three breaths drawn a pace inside the door. There had been a pool in the ravine in which Father baptized his converts. Out of a place like that Theodore stepped into the middle of the room, where he stretched and sighed, as if waking from a dream.

I am re-born, he thought. He said the words aloud.

‘I am re-born.’

Ideas came to him, fully shaped, not needing to be thought out but already solid in their rightness, things he could hold in his mind and inspect and accept like an object held in the hand. The words which the oracle had spoken had been Father’s, but they had not been spoken in anger. He had been sent back to this place to receive this blessing. The whole prodigious landscape centred on this point, this hidden room. Mountain, forest, meadow, the packed maze of the monastery, the Lama Amchi, Mrs Jones – they were all waiting for a birth, and perhaps it would come. But for Theodore it had happened now and here. If only he had had more faith he would have known it would be so – he too had been given signs, but he had failed to read them, confused by his own fears and longings, and the passions and expectations around him. Only a few days back, when he had given that vehement ‘yes’ to the Major’s question about the gods he had at once felt that it had meant much more than he could grasp; no wonder, since it had been a signal as sudden and strong as the kick Mrs Jones had felt from the child in her womb . . . He remembered the many times in the past weeks when he had been conscious of the hovering presence of the expected soul, the being for whom the peasants and the monks, Lama Amchi and Mrs Jones all waited. Perhaps it had been the weight of their longing which had made him aware of it; but all the time the soul had been his own. The birth had happened here.

Theodore didn’t for a moment think or hope or fear that he might himself be after all the Tulku of the Siddha Asara. That other birth might or might not happen, with results which those who longed for it might or might not expect. That was something else. But now, here, he was fiercely conscious of himself as Theodore, of the central numbness flooding with life, the broken roof rebuilt and the cold hearth glowing. He had heard Lama Amchi talk of those moments on the path to enlightenment when the soul seems to leave the body and soar free, and of the agony of its return to clogging flesh. Theodore felt the exact opposite. The return was the ecstasy. He was whole, and body and mind and soul sang at their healing.

He sat on the edge of his cot, staring at a patch of brilliant green and absorbing the greenness of it. There was no need to say prayers – it was better to sit with mind and soul spread out and relaxed, like a bather after a long swim who lies on a smooth rock and lets the sun dry him while its warmth purrs through nerve and muscle. Though he could have sat like that for hours, he felt the nature of his inner peace altering as his energies gathered to meet some as yet unknown need. The green patch stopped being only an embodiment of green and became a scroll-like leaf at the edge of a painting of the sacred lotus; the room took shape in detail so clear that to look at any object was to accept a blast of vision. He found himself staring at a few crumbs and a still-damp tea-stain on Lung’s cot, seeing them in a way that let him experience, without any pain but with total understanding, the depth of Lung’s desolation. Lung’s absence built itself into his vision, an emptiness as strong as if it had been a presence. With a shock of sadness he remembered that Lung needed help far more than he did. At the same moment he was aware of another absence. The hunched outline of the robe, pinned by Lung’s sword to the far wall, was no longer there. The sword had gone too.

His mind accepted the meaning of this with the same clarity as that with which his eyes were seeing. Lung was wearing the robe and carrying the sword. He had eaten that morning for the first time for three days, and as if it were a duty. He had driven Theodore from the room. Then he had disguised himself as a monk, and now he was walking through the maze of the monastery with his sword hidden beneath his robe. He was going to kill somebody. The Lama Amchi? Mrs Jones? Himself?

So Theodore must find him. Where? How? Ordinary reason began to work with agonizing slowness, but in his new calm Theodore accepted that there was no point in rushing from the room until he had made some plan. As if to appease his body’s itch for action he rose and crossed the room to inspect the place where the robe had hung, but as he passed Lung’s cot his foot touched something solid, hidden under the tumbled bedclothes; he scuffed them aside and saw the sword, and beside it the little embroidered cap Lung always wore.

Relief lasted only for an instant. He picked the sword up, and as he stood weighing the lean, dark blade in his hands an image sprang into his mind – this blade hanging on the wall of the guest-house, where Lung had hung it, with Mrs Jones’s rifle slung crosswise over it.

His calm was chillier as he turned to the pile of baggage. The flat rifle-case was there beneath a blanket roll. It was fastened, but as soon as he pulled it clear he knew by its weight that it was empty. Yes. A rifle could be hidden under a robe almost as easily as a sword. It was a much more dangerous weapon. There was no question now of Theodore risking lives by looking for Lung on his own. He must warn the monks. But they were all busy with the festival. The oracle-priest . . .

Theodore hurried along the galleries and corridors. His shock-trance was gone, his nightmare over, and the monastery had reassembled itself into known shapes and routes. By now the courtyards were almost empty as the promised appearance of the Lama Amchi and the dance of Yidam Yamantaka drew the inhabitants towards the central arena. He could hear drums and bells without accompanying voices, which meant that a dance or play was being performed. He had no way of measuring how long he had spent in his room – the enormous change had happened in a sphere in which time had no meaning – it could have been minutes or hours. Singing, the oracle-priest had said, then another play, then more singing, and then Lama Amchi would come down the steps to watch the Lord of Death slaying the dough-giant.

The gallery above the great courtyard was fuller now, with massed ranks of choristers lining the balustrade, but leaving a narrow passage where one could pass behind them. Theodore strode along, studying the robed backs, looking for a close-cropped dark head which wasn’t wearing one of the gold cockscomb helmets. It had been under this arch, surely. None of the backs was right. He tapped a shoulder. The monk turned, patient and unsurprised.

‘Where is the oracle-priest?’ Theodore said in Mandarin.

The monk answerd in Tibetan, then pulled at a sleeve beside him. An older monk turned and Theodore repeated his question. The monk frowned, shrugged and said, ‘I will ask.’ More heads turned. There was a brief discussion in Tibetan. ‘Gone,’ said the old monk. ‘That way. Down.’ His hands made the movements of feet descending a stair. The other monks were smiling and nodding and echoing the gesture when from the courtyard below one of the long horns began to snore, a chime of bells rippled along an erratic scale and a drum thudded. The monks turned from Theodore. He saw their backs swell as they drew breath for the first crashing syllable of the chant. So the play was over and the second lot of singing had begun.

Theodore ran now, down the gallery behind the chanting ranks, to the stair that circled down in the corner of the courtyard; he stumbled and almost fell down its dark steepness, but clutched at the railing and caught himself, then picked his way down to the hallway at the bottom. This space, lit only by the archway into the courtyard, was thronged with monsters. The dough-giant, painted and grinning, towered on its sledge by the arch, surrounded by the team of black and scarlet demons who would haul it on to the stage. Beyond them the voice of the solo chanter gargled its strange deep note while the bells tinkled and clanked. The oracle-priest was not here. Urgently Theodore turned to a group by the foot of the stair.

‘Who speaks Chinese?’ he said. ‘A man is going to shoot the Lama Amchi.’

A vast shape wheeled round and the monster Yidam Yamantaka glared down at Theodore. He spoke his question again, almost shouting now, to the eye-slits in the chest. The creature took a pace towards him, making shooing movements with its arms, which protruded roughly from its hips. Several of the demons came crowding round, speaking in hissing whispers, no doubt telling him not to interrupt the ceremony but producing a noise both bloodless and furious, such as a brood of snakes might make if they could talk. Theodore retreated a couple of steps up the stair and made his plea again but was answered with more hisses and gestures of dismissal. Now, round the shoulders of Yidam Yamantaka and over the heads of the demons, he could see the solid crush of watchers in the courtyard – there was no possible way through there to warn the Lama.

As Theodore climbed the dark stair the image of the monster Yamantaka and the hissing demons was strong in his mind, not as creatures of terror, but as something else, a sign, a warning. He had been appealing for help to the wrong Gods. He must find Lung himself.

This was not a conscious decision, but as he strode back down the gallery, searching the heedless backs for one that might be the oracle-priest, his reason was asking, Where would Lung go? Where? The pulse of the chant was changing now, with the rise and fall of the deep horn-notes coming faster, like waves clustering closer together; the pitch of the voices and the other instruments held a tension, as if the outward discipline were about to burst under the pressure of the inner excitement and become chaos – a tingle like the fringe of foam that rims a wave just before it breaks. Soon, now, soon the music would end, and then the Lama Amchi would leave his house and glide down the steps to the last platform above the crowd. A perfect target.

From where?

The answer formed in the same pulse as the question. Theodore saw the image of the Lama moving down those steps as if floating an inch above them. He heard Lung’s hiss – ‘He is a sorcerer! Look, he is flying!’ The roof of the temple of the oracle, where Lung had turned from mending the windmill and seen the Lama on the steps. There!

Theodore broke into a run, racing along to the far end of the gallery and hurling down that stair and out into the courtyard. Here, at the furthest corner from the stage, the crowd was not quite so dense and it was possible to shoulder and twist a way through. The people, inured by now to jostling, seemed barely to notice him as they craned towards the steps that led down from the mountain. The soloist was chanting a phrase which Theodore recognized as the regular formula which came at the end of many different chants. In a few seconds the choirs would answer, echoing the phrase seven times, and the chant would be over.

He came to a barrier. The steps of the temple of the oracle were massed with watchers. They would not, or could not, yield at all when he tried to press through, though still they seemed not to notice him, drugged with the expectation of the Lama’s appearance and the dance of Yidam Yamantaka. He got half on to the lowest step, slipped off and fell, then stayed at that level and squirmed through the forest of legs up the steps and at last to the temple doors. He had half expected to find them closed, but they were open and the pressure of the crowd had pushed a number of spectators right back into the familiar glimmering dark. They made room for him as he rose to his feet and pressed through. He couldn’t see Major Price-Evans, but there was no time now for explanations – and if he could deal with Lung alone, and not let any of the monks know . . . He tried to move fast without attracting attention, reached the door in the far right corner where the sacred books were, opened it and slipped through into the little room beyond. The trap-door in the ceiling was open, but the ladder was gone.

He darted back into the temple and dragged out from the hanging on the back wall the ladder he had used for cleaning the idols; as he took it through the door the swing of the rear end caught a great bronze dish and sent it to the floor, where it landed with a clashing note like a struck gong. The singing in the courtyard was over, and in the silence of expectation the clatter made the people at the temple door turn and stare. A monk among them frowned and started to stride across, but already Theodore was into the little room and using the momentum of his rush to swing the ladder straight up into the trap.

He scuttled up the rungs, thinking that if Lung had taken all the ladders he would have to pull this one up after him, but he came through the trap and saw one ladder lying across the floor and another still in place. He was already on it when a voice called out in Tibetan and the ladder below rattled as the monk tried it for safety. Then he was through into the third room, rushing up the last ladder and out under the open sky, his lungs gasping for the harsh thin air.

A solitary monk was standing at the parapet, his cowl over his head, gazing out across the courtyard. The windmills clacked in the silence, perhaps hiding the sound of Theodore’s arrival. But now, drowning all noises, a slow, rumbling gasp rose from below, like the sound of the avalanches they had heard when crossing the highest pass, but which he knew was the sigh from unnumbered throats as expectation was answered and the patience of waiting ended. The Lama Amchi had appeared.

The monk knelt, lifted the rifle he had been cradling against his robe and settled it into his shoulder, steadying his left wrist on the parapet. Holding his breath Theodore stole towards him. The kneeling figure tensed. Its thumb pushed at the safety catch.

‘Lung! Stop!’ Theodore croaked.

The cowled head turned and Lung’s face, drained grey with tension, stared at him for a moment, almost unrecognizable. It cuddled back to the stock.

Theodore launched himself at Lung’s shoulders, reaching round at the same time to clutch at the trigger hand. As he struck he heard a shot snap through the humming silence, and then he was half off his feet, staggering against the parapet, grasping the gun-barrel now with the strength of panic as he felt himself beginning to tumble back into space. Lung was yelling and wrenching at the gun with both hands, hauling Theodore back on to the roof as his grasp was breaking. Theodore stumbled to his knees. He found Lung’s leg in front of him, wrapped his arms round it and pulled. A shot banged as Lung staggered, steadied, and kicked at him with his other foot. A huge blow thudded into the side of his head, making the world black and full of whining pain. Far off he heard screams and yells, and nearer a voice shouting. He lay, conscious only of pain, and then of the slightly tacky surface of the tarred roof, and then he was fully aware, hearing grunts and thuds near by. Wincing at the mountain brightness he opened his eyes to see Lung and a monk wrestling near the parapet. The robes made them seem like a single, threshing figure, but suddenly the monk had the upper hand and was forcing Lung sideways towards the drop. Lung bucked and wriggled ineffectively. Theodore rose and staggered towards the pair, tugging at the monk’s robe and shouting ‘No! No! No!’ Vaguely he saw that the crowd below had changed colour, with every face now staring up at the fight. Distracted by Theodore’s arrival the monk lost his grip for a moment. Lung twisted sideways and clear, then flung himself flat on the roof and lay there, sobbing.