Tales of the Shadowmen 1: The Modern Babylon

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

Rush they did, and in seconds, a fierce melee had erupted between the Punjabi and the thuggees.

  Judging that there was still not enough chaos for them to make a discreet exit, Green took a handful of copper coins from his pocket and threw them into the air, shouting, “Gold!”

  At that point, real pandemonium broke loose.

  “I think you’ve just started a riot,” said Whateley.

  “Good! That’ll make it harder for them to catch us.”

  Grabbing Whateley by the arm, Green began running away through the narrow aisles of the street market, looking for the convenient refuge of the houses beyond.

  “I bet that never happened to you in Harvard Square,” he said.

  “I accept that you were correct, but we’d better save our breath for running. Some of them seem to still be after us.”

  This time, Whateley was right. Two of the thieves had not lost sight of their prey despite the commotion. They had managed to slip by unscathed and were now running after the two westerners. In their hands were long kris knives, and the expressions on their faces plainly showed that if, before, their intent had been to get the map from Whateley dead or alive, that had now been updated to simply dead.

  Green grabbed a rather vulgar statue of the god Ganesha from a stall.

  “Isakii kyaa kimat hai? (How much does this cost?)” he asked the seller, who quoted him a wildly inflated figure. The strong man did not haggle and told Whateley, “Pay him!”

  Then, using the statue as a club, he waited for the two thuggees. He quickly disposed of one of them with a massive swing of the statue, but the other managed to avoid the blow.

  While Whateley was paying the merchant (“Dhanyavaad!” said the grateful man who had never dreamed he would ever get his asking price), the other thug approached him with murderous intentions.

  Whateley escaped the deadly swish of the native blade by stepping aside with a dancer’s grace, and kicked the man hard in the crotch. The thug fell to the ground, writhing in agony. Green temporarily put him out of his misery by hitting him on the head with the statue, which he then gave back to the merchant, who blessed the gods for having put these two generous strangers on his path that day.

  “That’s a side of you I’ve never seen before, Professor, and I have to say it surprises me.”

  “It comes from growing up in a rough neighborhood, Mr. Green.”

  “Let’s go before the others come,” said Green.

  “But I need a receipt!”

  Taking a number of detours through the small, grimy streets to mislead any followers, Whateley and Green finally reached their hotel, or rather what passed for a hotel in Gezing. In reality, it was more of an inn, a rest stop for caravans en route northward to Mongolia and beyond. The place was managed by an old couple and their two boys; it had seen better days in the 6th century.

  “Those thuggees coming after my map proves that it’s authentic,” said Whateley.

  “What makes you think that’s what they want? Maybe they’re common thieves.”

  “You don’t believe that yourself, Mr. Green. In any event, we’re not any closer to finding Dahoor, and it will probably make our job more difficult.”

  “If you’d let me organize a proper expedition back in Bombay instead of rushing to get here, I could have found as many reliable guides as we wanted.”

  “Yes. Sometime next year.”

  “What’s the big hurry? If K’n-yan exists, it isn’t going anywhere. Let’s have a drink and figure out our next move.”

  The inn came with its own bar attached, where locals and travelers mixed and dealt in various commodities in its suitably smoky and darkened atmosphere. As the archeologist and his companion sat at a table, one of the innkeeper’s sons came to take their order.

  “Any messages for me? Professor Whateley?” Whateley expected a letter from the University and had left the inn as a forwarding address in Bombay.

  The boy did not answer. A look of total, uncomprehending blankness washed over him.

  “Professor...” said Green, tugging at the archeologist, who had his back to him.

  “A minute, Mr. Green. I’m trying to ask this boy if I’ve got a message.”

  “It can wait,” said Green, forcing his colleague to turn around.

  Whateley then saw what had caused such stupor in the waiter. The six thuggees who had chased the two men in the souk were framed within the doorway. Some of them exhibited nasty bruises and their clothes were partially torn. Consequently, they were all in a particularly foul mood. They looked like a pack of hungry wolves. Their daggers were out, and only God knew what else they had hidden within the folds of their kaftans.

  The boy vanished as if by magic. The few other patrons meticulously absorbed themselves in the contemplation of the bottoms of their glasses.

  The thug leader stepped forward, grinning evilly, his hand extended.

  “Map, now!”

  Green sighed. There was going to be a massacre. It could no longer be avoided as he had hoped. The question remained, whose? The odds were far from good and he now wished he had enlisted several of his friends to come with him on this trip. Still, it was too late for regrets.

  One of his hands lie deceptively quietly on the chair in front of him. He calculated that he could swing it to hit the first man, then use the pieces to keep the others at bay, until he could reach for his gun...

  Before he could move, there was a sudden and amazing change of expression on the thug’s face. The sneer of rapacious savagery was replaced by pure, unadulterated fear as quickly as the tide erases a drawing in the sand.

  Green immediately saw the cause of such an astonishing metamorphosis.

  A Herculean figure, dressed in an incongruous white tuxedo, had just stepped out of the backroom of the tavern, undoubtedly summoned by the servant boy.

  “Well well if it isn’t my old friend, Ali. Come here, you son of a dyspeptic camel!” said the newcomer.

  Ali–no fool he–stayed rooted in place, but the stranger stepped forward and proceeded to grab him in what is appropriately called a bear hug. Green looked up in admiration. Whateley, on the other hand, could not prevent himself from wincing when he heard an ominous crunching sound.

  Ali, to his credit, remained silent, but after being released, collapsed on the floor like a rag doll. The other thuggees looked properly impressed–and properly scared.

  “I think my business with Ali is done for today,” said the newcomer amicably. Then he barked an order: “Take him away and don’t come back!”

  The thuggees nodded as one as fast as they could. They scurried away, carrying the body of their unfortunate comrade.

  The huge man, beaming a cheerful smile, grabbed a chair and sat at the table.

  “I understand you were looking for me. I am Dahoor. I believe you’ve received my map and seek the lost city of K’n-yan, hmm?”

  High in the skies above Tibet flew the Albatross. The prodigious craft was a true clipper of the clouds, with its 37 masts, each equipped with two propellers driven at prodigious speed by powerful engines, the secret of which was known only to its captain–and inventor.

  That man was presently going by the name of Robur. He was of middle height and weight, with a surprisingly large round head. At the least opposition, his grey eyes would glow like coals of fire. He was dressed in a leather aviator’s uniform, including gloves and boots. He sat in the luxuriously furnished control room, comfortably ensconced in a leather armchair, sipping a cup of Darjeeling tea while engaged in conversation with another man.

  His guest had soulful, ageless eyes, green with specks of gold. He was dressed in an odd mixture of European and Oriental clothing. His high forehead was partially covered by a white silk turban. His name was Sâr Dubnotal.

  “No one else but you could have successfully guided me to this spot,” said Robur.

  “I’m happy to be of service to such a distinguished friend of our mutual acquaintance, Mr. Strange. I trust he is well?”
/>
  “Meldrum’s under a great deal of pressure these days. Apparently the Kun Yin are staging a comeback. I thought the British had wiped them all out, but you know what they say, the bad penny always turns up. One of his agents stumbled across a survivor of the Iron Temple in London. Even though he was half out of his mind, what he said was enough for Strange to ask me to come here and, er, take care of the rest, if you see my meaning.”

  “I assume you’re referring to the Crown of Genghis?”

  “Yes. But Strange didn’t have time to fully brief me. He said you’d fill me in.”

  “Cast your mind back seven centuries. The Great Khan has come out of the desert and used the Crown’s powers to conquer China. Afterwards, he chose to cast it aside and entrusted it to Marco Polo to be delivered into the protective hands of the Yian Ho, the Wise Men of K’n-yan. There was no better place to keep it safe, away from the evil ones who would use it for their own ends. And in K’n-yan it has remained ever since.”

  “Strange believes that the Kun Yin are after it.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. The Hour of the Scythe approaches. If they get their hands on the Crown before then, they will travel to the Heart of Chaos and release the Guardian of the Gate.”

  Robur stood up and pressed a button. Seconds later, his first mate, a burly American named Tom Turner arrived on the bridge.

  “I’m going to leave the Sâr in charge, Mr. Turner. You will obey his every order, in every respect, no matter how... draconian, you understand?”

  “Completely, sir.”

  Robur walked to a cabinet, pulled out a harness attached to a backpack and began strapping it on.

  “I know I can trust you to do what’s necessary if I fail to stop them, Sâr Dubnotal.”

  “The Abyss is dangerous only for those who look into it, Robur.”

  “If you say so.” Then, he addressed Tom, who now stood at the controls.

  “Release the hatch, Mr. Turner.”

  With a whooshing sound, a circular shaft slid open in the metal walls of the Albatross, letting in a gust of frigid air and a streak of bright blue-white light.

  “The rest is up to me,” said Robur.

  He jumped into the shaft.

  A couple of hundred feet down, his pack opened, releasing a delicate, origami-like structure that grew into an ingenious, ultralight glider.

  The scientist-adventurer began his safe descent towards the ground.

  If Robur had been able to scan the far side of the peak over which he currently flew, he might have seen a small, ant-trail line of people slogging laboriously through the eternal snows of the Himalayas. The expedition was comprised of Dahoor, closely followed by Professor Whateley and Mr. Green, while four sherpas hired in Gezing closed up the rear.

  “Without you, Dahoor, we wouldn’t have been able to mount this expedition on such a short notice,” said Whateley.

  “Your gratitude is greatly appreciated but sadly misplaced, Professor Whateley. Indeed, it is I who an indebted to you. In exchange for my miserable find, your munificent American Museum has provided me with ample funds to pay for all of this. And believe me when I say that I expect to earn a handsome profit from your discoveries.”

  “But, surely, anything that we uncover belongs to science,” said Whateley with a certain intensity.

  “Certainly, certainly, but how it gets to the scientists is where I make my money. After all, you will not be able to take everything away with you, eh? There will be enough wealth from this expedition to last me a lifetime. So you see, Professor, the gods indeed smiled upon me when I sent you that map.”

  The expedition began a slow and perilous descent into a sharp, craggy ice canyon. Green thought that the ice itself appeared to be sculpted in sinister forms, but he attributed that to the same human reflex which makes us see animal shapes in the clouds. He did notice, however, that the four sherpas looked increasingly anxious.

  “It all seems so–mercenary.” The Professor and Dahoor, seemingly unaware of the eerie decor, continued their discussion on the professional ethics of archeology.

  “Well, wealth is good,” said Dahoor laughing. “What else is there?”

  “Knowledge. The origins of man. Life. Everything.”

  “Words don’t fill hungry bellies, Professor.”

  “So you would loot Ubar or Ys?”

  “Just so. If I knew where they were.”

  “But the knowledge of K’n-yan could lift your country to new heights... It could be your Holy Grail...”

  Suddenly, the sherpas became extremely agitated and gestured for Dahoor’s attention.

  “Shahajjo! Rakkhosh! Mi-Go Khokkosh!” they shouted.

  The lead guide walked back to confer with his anxious men.

  “What is it? Ki? Ki?” he asked.

  The sherpas all began talking at the same time while gesticulating wildly. Dahoor’s face became a worrisome shade of purple as he began screaming at the men. More shouting followed, until finally, the big man pulled rolls of coins from his bag.

  “What’s going on?” asked Whateley.

  “One of them claims to have seen a Mi-go,” replied Green. “A Yeti. They’re scared. They want to turn back.”

  “What? They can’t do that!”

  “Actually, they can. But Dahoor is taking care of it. He’s offering them more money. It’s going to cost you an arm and a leg.”

  “Hmf. He should have talked to me first.”

  “Stop it, Professor! He’s only doing what’s necessary.”

  After the labor unrest had been successfully dealt with by the transfer of cash from Dahoor’s pockets into those of the reluctant sherpas, the expedition continued its arduous trek, deeper into the grim, windswept, icy canyons. It finally came to a stop when it reached the bottom and came face-to-face with what looked like a barren wall of ice.

  “We seem to have come to a dead end,” said Green. “With all due respect, have you been reading that map correctly, Professor?”

  Whateley walked to the wall of ice on his right and began attacking it with his knife. He kept chopping away until he uncovered an ancient sculpted post that had been buried under the ice and was barely visible from the surface.

  “Yes. We’re where we should be. Look.”

  Green helped Whateley finish excavating the post.

  “What are those symbols?” he inquired.

  “They’re Yian-Ho gate markers,” replied Whateley.

  “Good luck signs?”

  “No. More the ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ type.”

  After excavating an identical post on the left, the men were directed to use their picks to dig between the two. Soon, a crack appeared in the ice wall, between the two posts. With a thundering sound, the remaining ice collapsed, revealing gaping darkness behind it.

  “The entrance to K’n-yan,” whispered Whateley.

  “Congratulations, Professor,” said Green. “You’ve led us where no modern man has been before.”

  For hours, the expedition had traversed a maze of underground caverns, deep inside the Tibetan peaks. Without the map, which enabled Whateley to locate and decipher the sculpted posts that acted as markers, they would have been hopelessly lost in the Stygian complex of caves. As it was, finding their way was not their only challenge, they had to remain vigilant for chasms that suddenly appeared unexpectedly beneath their unwary feet or sudden rockfalls from above.

  Green felt his hackles rise several times. A mysterious sixth sense told him they were not alone in the dark. He peered through the darkness every time he heard–or thought he heard–a distant shuffling. It was a sound that reminded him of the silken, deadly tread of a jungle cat before he pounces, a noise that few explorers lived long enough to recognize more than once.

  Suddenly, a gut-wrenching scream tore the darkness like the slash of a razor. More terrifying was that the scream had been cut short, as if by a guillotine putting an abrupt end to its victim’s suffering.

  The sc
ream was followed by a gun shot and a series of curses. Green recognized Dahoor’s voice.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Dahoor, his gun raised, squinted into the darkness. “A Mi-Go I think. He got Cibi. But I hit him...”

  Unexpectedly, a pair of red eyes shone in the dark.

  “Or maybe not...”

  Without warning, several pairs of red eyes flashed in the night, accompanied by low, feral noises, intermingled with bits of what could best be described as an inhuman tongue.

  “Or maybe he has friends,” said Green.

  Whateley was starting to panic. “We can’t retreat now,” he said stubbornly. “We’re so close.”

  “Then let’s make a run for it,” exclaimed Green.

  The six men began running through the caverns. They could hear the distant sounds of their pursuers. Except for the blood-red eyes and the occasional, spectral sight of a clawed hand that briefly emerged from the obscurity, as it tried to grab them, their attackers remained cloaked in darkness. Dahoor covered the rear, stopping several times to fire at the ravening creatures, but with no apparent effect.

  “I’m sure I’m hitting them, but it doesn’t seem to stop them,” he said, frustrated.

  Out of breath, one of the sherpas stumbled and fell. Before any of the others could even think of coming to his aid, something indescribably hideous had already fallen upon the man, whose screams of terror were mercifully brief. Green tried hard to not hear the awful sounds of chewing that followed.

  “The exit should be just around the next bend,” said Whateley, panting.

  Indeed, they had reached the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, although it was only a pallid, wan light that cast bleak shadows on the carved rocks surrounding them.

  They emerged into a small, circular valley surrounded by the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. On its opposite side, carved into the very side of the mountain, was a strange, intricate, portal. The valley itself was a giant graveyard, littered with bones, human, animal and possibly other creatures’ as well. It was almost sunset and the light was fading.

  “K’n-yan! I’ve found it!” Whateley exclaimed, pointing to the sculpted entrance at the far end of the circle.