Kingdom

by Tom Martin

  By daybreak I had reached the top of the pass, and ahead of me lay the vast expanse of a plateau that the King had so accurately described as being like the surface of the moon. It was in fact the worst possible surface on which to attempt to walk at high speed; it was strewn with potholes and rocks ranging in size from that of an apple to that of a human head, and I was now feeling exceptionally weary. As a morale-booster, I allowed myself to pause for a few moments and look back down the ravine. The view was good, I could see the last seven or so miles of my climb and I could not see any signs of anyone following me, which meant that if the monks set out now, I would have at least a twelve-hour or so head start.

  ‘Spurred on by the greatest motivator of all – fear for my life – I now realized that the main dangers lay ahead and not behind me. I had very little idea where I was, or where I was going. I suspected I was somewhere west and south of the Litang gompa, in the folds of the massive mountain range, probably more than one hundred miles from the Tsangpo valley. But such distances are meaningless in the Himalayas. No journey ever proceeds in a straight line. Endless zigzagging up and down mountainsides, and through high passes is required simply to get from one valley to the next. How many valleys lay between me and Pemako I did not know, but I suspected it could be as many as ten, and in addition to ten or eleven mountain crossings there would be an unknown number of plateaux like the one that lay before me now, and also an endless variety of other obstacles: unfordable, freezing rivers, impassable gorges, snow-jammed heights, a thousand ways to sprain an ankle or break a bone . . . And all I had was a compass, the stars above by night, about ten litres of water, the powder and the tsampa.

  ‘In such situations, it doesn’t pay to start calculating the odds. It is much better just to get going and concentrate on the hard work of finding the quickest path. At least the powder was starting to take effect. I had been feeling pains in my legs and my feet were bruised from stumbling over rocks, but now my bodily pain began to ease off. Also, despite the challenges of my situation, I kept catching myself daydreaming, a sure sign that the hallucinogens were beginning to take effect. By noon, I felt as if I had drunk a bottle of champagne very quickly. My spirits were high, my pace was fast, my head was almost empty of thoughts; all I had to do was remember to take more powder at dusk. How long I could keep this up I had no idea, but I knew I was going to keep going, until finally, I would either stumble into a village somewhere or I would drop dead on the mountainside.

  ‘The sun fell from the sky, in a slow arc, the moon climbed high into the night and then vanished again like an actor walking off-stage. Then the sun reappeared, shimmering over the rocky plateau. I struggled down gorges and around massive boulders. I came across a huge stone circle that reminded me of Stonehenge or Carnac in Brittany. I sat with my back to the biggest megalith and imagined the people who might have built it long, long ago and felt indescribably lonely and bereft. The landscape was so very vast, I advanced like an ant through the massive canyons of rock and the endless swathes of sky. The sun set in a bath of blood.

  ‘How many days I continued thus, I do not know. I crossed a great steppe, picked clean as a bone by the howling wind; I descended into a ravine that I thought would disgorge me into the depths of hell itself; I climbed mountain after mountain and crawled through pass after pass until finally, half dead with exhaustion, I crashed down a hillside and reached the edges of a lush valley forest. Where I was, I had absolutely no idea, but there were roots and bark to eat and small streams trickled down from the glaciers, their chilled waters burning my dry mouth. Finally, nearing total exhaustion, I saw the most extraordinary sight I have ever seen, even more shocking in its way than the King of Shangri-La himself, or the ghastly cage that was to be his funeral pyre. I was high on a windswept plateau, but in the distance I saw what I thought in my enfeebled, delirious state must be a scarecrow. A lone figure, thin as a rake, standing completely motionless, seemingly oblivious to the wind and heat. I approached, shouting and waving. Nothing, no response. I walked right up to the man. A monk, a lone hermit, a madman – God knows what he was doing out there, miles from anywhere. He was standing on one leg in the crane position, his hands joined in prayer, his right leg straight and his left foot tucked up into his groin. I could scarcely believe my eyes. I went right up to his face and tried to draw his attention. Perhaps he had some food or water, or perhaps he could tell me where I was. But I could get nothing from him. Nothing! I begged, I shouted, and finally I wept at his feet but not once did he respond. He just chanted mournfully through his nose. He might have been there for days or weeks, it was impossible to know. He had not a single crumb of bread on him and not a single grain of tsampa and not even a water bottle. He had nothing at all, just the rags he was wearing.

  ‘Perhaps he thought I was a demon or a hallucination, he very well might have done. No one ever crossed this plateau, particularly a white man. To him I did not exist. I took this all to be a sign that humanity had abandoned me. It even occurred to me that perhaps I was actually dead and that was why he didn’t see me. I was doomed to wander like a ghost for ever more and no one would ever learn of my fate or my discovery. Then I had one last idea, or rather the idea appeared directly in my head, or more accurately still, a hexagram appeared, answering my question of myself: “What should I do?”

  ‘It was the Oracle talking to me. You see, I no longer needed the yarrow stalks, or the Book. I was in tune with its forces and it now spoke to me directly and I knew from years of practice exactly what the hexagram intended me to do. I took out the bone trumpet and wrapped my Trib ID around it and then delving into my bag, I found a pen. I had lost my journal and I did not even have a single scrap of notepaper but luckily, right at the bottom of my bag, covered in metok chulen powder, I discovered one last little picture of the Dalai Lama. I always travel with pictures of the Dalai; they make perfect gifts, as any rendering of his image in Tibet is banned and thus they are all the more prized. On the back of the picture I scribbled a few last words. By now I suspected that a replacement must have been found for me in Delhi, and it was only natural for me to assume that it should be you, Nancy Kelly, and that is why the bone was addressed to you. Dan Fischer always promised me that he would take my advice.

  ‘But as soon as I realized this, in a flash I understood why I had been watching over your career all these years. I had assumed that it was because I thought you were a fine journalist, a perfect candidate to one day replace me in my own post. The truth was that the Oracle intended you to be my Queen, and as ever it had begun its machinations far in advance, using me to manoeuvre you and letting me think it was my own free will. But surely I had failed it? Surely I had now ruined its careful plans? I would die here in the wilderness and you would never make it to Shangri-La.

  ‘Then I applied a secret hand-hold that I had learnt from studying the ancient Ba Gua. I touched the monk’s neck just below his left ear and uttered my command: “Take this bone to the Dalai in India for he will know what to do, he will pass it on to the police.” The Ba Gua’s suggestion techniques are hugely powerful, but whether they would penetrate this mad monk’s hypnotic state I did not know. But I had to try. Then, on the point of finally breaking down, I turned and headed onwards across the blasted, baking plateau, my limbs crying out with pain, leaving the crazy monk still standing there, all alone in the wilderness of rock and heat.

  ‘I was in a grave situation. My body had consumed all its reserves and my muscles were shrinking by the hour. Even the powder from the metok chulen no longer seemed to have an effect. Yet, in my darkest hour, there was a reprieve. Scarcely knowing where I trod, I fell through a patch of undergrowth into a clearing. In the centre of the clearing, to my absolute amazement and joy, were the slumbering remains of a fire. I had fallen heavily into the clearing, and once on the ground I could barely muster the energy to raise myself on to all fours and crawl over to the fire, but somehow I managed to do so. I collapsed forward and then rolled over onto my
back and prayed that the owner of the fire would return before I died.

  ‘Some time later I awoke to find two figures standing over me. They were both dressed in filthy yak’s-wool tunics and yakskin boots. They were not Tibetans; they must have been members of one of the many indigenous tribes that still live in the remote valleys, pursuing ancient animist religious beliefs and existing in raw savagery. When they saw my eyes open, they immediately grabbed their kukris from their belts, and waved them towards me. I cowered in fear; I could see out of the corner of my eye that this made them relax. They began to mutter to each other in a strange language that I didn’t recognize at all, and then the older of the two put down his knife and unclipped his water skin from his belt and reaching out to me he said something I didn’t understand. I made myself smile, even though this most basic of gestures caused me great pain, and then I gratefully poured some water down my throat. The old man watched me closely, and when he saw that I had finished drinking, he tried to communicate again, this time in very poor, heavily accented Chinese.

  ‘“Good?”

  ‘ “Better now, but not good. Please, where is Litang gompa?”

  ‘This prompted another bout of clicking and tutting between the two savages and then the old man tried out his Chinese again.

  ‘ “You have gold? Salt?’

  ‘“I have nothing. But take me to Litang. I will pay you when we get there.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if they understood me at all. Again they fell into discussion. Then they went over to the fire and poked it with their kukris. What they were planning, God only knew. The older of the two returned to my side. They had come to a decision on what to do.

  ‘“We listen to the bone,” he said mysteriously. “Bone will tell us.”

  ‘I nodded to show that I understood, and thought ruefully to myself how happy I would have been to have the Oracle with me now. What I would have given these past few days to be able to call on its advice. Perhaps I would never have ended up in this ghastly predicament if I had not decided to leave it in Delhi after the last and final positive message it gave me, urging me to leave at once for Shangri-La. But then I wondered – I confess that in my plight I doubted the wisdom of the Oracle – why had it sent me there? What was it hoping to teach me? Except perhaps the wrongness of my obsession, the unnatural level of my pride?

  ‘Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the two men stoking the fire and placing twigs on the glowing embers. Once the fire was burning merrily, one of them carefully placed a spearhead into its middle. They sat on their haunches in silence for several minutes, watching the fire, waiting for some symbol or sign by which no doubt they would seal my fate. Then, using a long stick, the elder of the two dragged the spear tip back from the fire onto the earth, and with much clicking and tutting in their strange language, they succeeded in slipping the spear shaft into its clasp.

  ‘What happened next is hard for me to describe, not because it was in any way unbelievable or incredible but because it made my heart stop with fear. The younger of the two men reached into his satchel and withdrew an object from inside, an object that at any other time of my life would have had absolutely no significance for me at all, but on this day, at this time, after the horrendous ordeal that I had been through and after the nightmarish stories that I had heard from the mouth of the mad King, sent a spasm of pure fear through my brain.

  ‘It was a tortoise shell.

  ‘He placed this tortoise shell on the ground, with the patterned side facing up, and then held his right hand above it and muttered a few sentences. The other man, who was now brandishing the spear, then tapped the left-hand side of the shell firmly with the red-hot spear tip. I heard a distinct crack and the two men peered down at the disfigured object. The elder of the two cleared the dead leaves and forest detritus from the earth next to his feet, and then to my eternal horror proceeded to scratch a symbol onto the ground – it was, without any doubt, a hexagram.

  ‘And this is where my story ends, for in that moment, all strength ebbed away from me and I lost consciousness and did not wake up again until many days later when I found myself tied to this stretcher being carried through the jungle by a party of Bon monks.

  ‘And the first thing that I did when I awoke was cry bitter tears, because I knew then that I had never been the author of my own destiny, that all these years I had been a pawn in a vastly larger game, and that the King of Shangri-La spoke the truth: the Book of Dzyan had directed my every action, it had conducted me through all the years of my life, and what I had always thought was a benign tool of prophecy was nothing less than a gateway to purest evil.’

  53

  Nancy felt as if she was awaking from a long, long sleep. In the darkness of the Cave of the Magicians, Anton Herzog was repeating a single word, until his voice tailed off into nothingness.

  ‘The Oracle. The Oracle . . .’

  Nancy found she was shaking her head. She felt a deep sense of sadness. It was all so very strange, and dreamlike. Surely she had dreamed, she thought; it could not really be that Herzog had been lying there talking for so long, unfurling this story. She thought perhaps he had spoken and then she had slept, and everything had mingled: reality and dream, madness and sanity. As she heard him drawing air into his lungs, his breathing laboured and irregular, she thought that for all his talk – if he had genuinely been talking all this time – he remained immeasurably unknowable. And was it true? Any of it? Did Shangri-La really exist? And the Book of Dzyan, the Oracle – could they really be the same thing – an evil force that had been in their midst all along, sucking them in, one by one – controlling all their destinies, controlling history, moving nations, starting great wars?

  She imagined him lying there, like an idol, his breath rattling in his throat. His heart was cold, she thought, and this thought held her in its grip. Events in his life had cut him off from humanity, and so he had sought meaning in the dream of a retreat, a place far beyond the grasp of ordinary men. He was a victim of the war; he had not been physically wounded, but he had been psychically damaged. She wondered if it was this – that he was cold and damaged and everything he said had simply been speaking of this and nothing more. But she knew it was more than that.

  Jen was the first to speak, his voice sounding strained and weary.

  ‘So we all had access to the Book of Dzyan all along, all these years. It is the Oracle. And you believe it has been controlling us all this time? All of us . . .’

  Herzog coughed feebly.

  ‘Yes, absolutely. Anyone who opens its pages and asks it a question instantly falls under its spell. We have been driven by the Oracle, each to this point. It causes wars and upheavals, it drives whole nations and it drives single men and women. The King of Shangri-La spoke the truth: World War Two, all the great events in the history of mankind, have their origins in the kingdom of Shangri-La, brought into being by hidden masters working with the Oracle. The Oracle controls all who look into her.’

  ‘So you are saying the Oracle brought me to Tibet, that it was the Oracle and not you who summoned me?’ said Nancy.

  ‘You know the answer to that better than I do, but I can tell you that it was the Oracle that made me send you the bone, it was the Oracle that told me to recommend you to Dan Fischer as my replacement in the event of any unforeseen events. The Oracle made it clear that was what I must do. It summoned you, it advised you; it knew you would play a part,’ said Herzog.

  Now Jack, with an edge of panic in his voice, tried to refute the dying man.

  ‘Herzog, this is all madness. What you are saying defies truth. The world cannot work like this. Shangri-La doesn’t exist, there is no secret kingdom that controls the world and you have no proof that the Book of Dzyan is the Oracle. You never had time to look for it; you never saw it. And besides, your story does not even make sense in its own terms. Even if we accept – for the sake of argument – that Shangri-La does exist and that the Oracle is the Book of Dzyan and that it conducted y
ou there, then why would it let you escape? Why would it let you refuse the destiny that it had created for you? Do you not see? The Book of Dzyan has failed, even from your own testimony?’

  A weak and fading voice whispered back in the darkness.

  ‘You’ve missed the whole point. Everything I have said.’

  ‘No, you’ve missed the point. You’ve failed to comprehend your own story, Herzog. You’re ailing and confused and you can’t distinguish dream from reality.’

  The skull face creased again into a grotesque leer, and Herzog’s ravaged hands moved in the flickering light. ‘I am both of these things. Yet about this I have absolute clarity. The Oracle knew I would fail. It knew my weaknesses long before I did. It knew I would try to evade my destiny, that I would escape from Shangri-La. Of course it did, it sees everything long before we can even imagine it. And so it summoned Nancy, with the bone, and through Nancy you were brought here – the only man in Delhi who could have helped her find me. It knew that Nancy would take the bone to you. And this man Jen has been conducted by the Oracle to bring you the last miles of the route. You have all been controlled, in order that you will save me, that I will be given one last chance, for I am the chosen one . . .’

  ‘The chosen one.’ Jack Adams repeated his words, his lip curled, half in contempt and half in fear.

  ‘One chance to do what?’ said Nancy, though even now she feared she knew the answer.

  ‘To return to Shangri-La. To correct my error. For I am now certain I was in error, that my escape was a terrible thing to have done. These last days with the monks I have had time to think, time to sift the wheat from the chaff, time to understand. I had it all wrong. The Oracle is our mother and father, no use running from it, there is no use trying to evade its plans. And besides, we would never be happy if we were to do so. I realize now the truth. My path is clear. I must return there; the prodigal son.’