by Talbot Mundy
Tom signaled to Elsa: “Beats me how that Bön magician got in here unchallenged. He wears a Japanese dagger. I saw the hilt. Think he must have told Mu-ni Gam-po he is Lobsang Pun’s protégé. Perhaps has a forged document. I bet he’s laying for Lobsang Pun. You’re going to see some magic. Fold that blanket so that you can spread it wide in a second, then wrap it back on your shoulders.”
Noropa whispered again. He thought Tom hadn’t heard; he seemed more excited than ever. The second hymn ceased. It was time for the homily. Mu-ni Gam-po should have delivered that, but Lobsang Pun seemed to be stealing the show. One of his attendants brought him a sacred book and laid it opened on his lap.
There fell a silence so intense that there seemed to be no wall to deaden the splashing of rain. Lobsang Pun leaned forward in the teacher’s attitude, one elbow on his knee, and read a long text from very ancient scripture. Mu-ni Gam-po perceptibly shuddered. The very last word of the text, pronounced slowly, distinctly, with an even stress on each syllable, was like three distinct words of command:
“The name of him whose spoken word in Thunder Dragon Gate shall move men’s minds and stir their hearts, so that these things shall come to pass, shall be like unto the Holy Spirit that directs his sayings: THÖ-PA-GA! (wonderful-to-hear.)”
He paused. At the far end of the chapel some one opened the palanquin. The leaves of the double door banged sharply against the sides. Every head in the chapel faced suddenly in that direction. Within the palanquin, motionless, looking like a dead man except that his eyelids moved, sat Thö-pa-ga. The devil-dancers had not ceased swaying. Their monotonous motion emphasized Thö-pa-ga’s stillness. Two monks directed flash-lights at Thö-pa-ga’s face. His eyes shone like dark jewels.
Mu-ni Gam-po stood up. Tom gripped Elsa’s hand to signal to her. There was all the electric suspense that precedes sudden bloodshed. A sensation of resented sacrilege, increased and heated by Lobsang Pun’s air of triumph.
Lobsang Pun hove himself up from his throne-chair. Be fore Mu-ni Gam-po could forestall him by dismissing the monks to their cells as he seemed to intend, Lobsang Pun stole the thunder. His magnificent voice rang through the chapel. In the name of His Holiness the Tashi Lama he proclaimed Thö-pa-ga the Keeper of the Thunder Dragon Gate, the Mouthpiece and the Voice of Prophecy, the Sender-forth —
Even he had to cease. Even his beaked, belligerent, triumphant face froze. Not a doubt of it: he wasn’t pretending. He was struck dumb. Horror. Amazement. All eyes followed his.
A gasp of fear struck like a gust of wind and died away into ghastly silence. Three hundred prayer wheels were snatched from girdles and set whirling. Three hundred monks backed away in a wave toward the wall that faced the gallery. The rear ranks kicked and struck at those in front to save themselves from being crushed.
A shang-shang was on the chapel wall, midway between Thö-pa-ga and the far end of the gallery. It was motionless, except that its mandibles moved. Elsa’s hand clutched Tom’s.
He signaled: “Opportunity!”
The brute was hugely bigger than the one that had escaped from Dowlah’s house. Its livid green body was about three feet long. The spread of its hairy legs was not less than ten feet, perhaps twelve. In the basket it must have curled them in under itself. Crab, spider, octopus, all three, and devil features added. Its eyes were horrors of the size of tea-plates, motionless, without irises. They looked like opalescent sores. Its snout was a foot long; the moving mandibles beneath it seemed to be wiping one another in preparation for a meal.
About a hundred monks threw themselves prostrate on the chapel floor. Old Abbot Mu-ni Gam-po was the first to break silence. He began to chant a mantram. His voice broke, but two hundred monks took up the mantram. In a moment the roof was booming to the chant. It appeared to annoy the shang-shang. It moved like a spider up and down the wall, then suddenly, almost too swiftly for eye to follow, it shot sideways, and became still again directly over Thö-pa-ga’s head. Thö-pa-ga didn’t move; he was like a man in a trance. Some fool blew a radong. Two monks turned their flash-lights on the monster.
The flash-lights seemed to drive the brute crazy. It began to scamper all over the walls, making no sound whatever. It passed along the wooden front of the gallery with the tips of its upper legs over the rail. Tom jerked Elsa away, but the brute had passed before they could step backward. Noropa fled into the gloom, upsetting benches. The shang-shang leaped to the floor of the chapel. It made two or three short starts in different directions and then scooted toward the high altar, climbed that and continued upward over the great image of Chenrezi to the gloom of the wall above. There it became motionless again, visible only by its eyes that reflected the chapel lights like pale danger signals, one above the other.
Lobsang Pun stood his ground. So did Mu-ni Gam-po, but he changed the mantram; Lobsang Pun stuck to the first one, and about half the monks did the same, so that for at least a minute there was a babel of voices, and two tunes. Noropa came sneaking back and Tom seized his wrist. Lobsang Pun was looking up at the gallery. Tom began to drag Noropa toward the far end of the gallery.
“Stay where you are!” he commanded. But Elsa followed. Tom didn’t know it, because Noropa began to resist and to try to break away. Tom hit him hard enough to slow him up:
“You fool, here’s your chance!”
But Noropa became panicky. He struggled. He wouldn’t be dragged, he was useless. Tom knocked him out of the way and hurried forward. Elsa overtook him.
“Damn you,” he said. “Obey orders!”
But she wouldn’t obey. There wasn’t time to argue. He couldn’t treat her like Noropa.
The Bön magician was coming toward him, followed by his novice and the shaman. They seemed in a hurry, but they hesitated. Behind them, the other four men were carrying the big black baskets, one basket empty with the lid half-open. The Bön magician had his hands inside his black robe, getting something ready in the line of sharp-edged, very likely poisoned magic. Tom hesitated, too. He glanced back at Elsa:
“Damn you, run! There’s a shang-shang in that other basket! I’m going to turn it loose. Get the hell out of here!”
“No,” she answered. “Go ahead. I’ve a blanket in case you need it.”
Tom had learned combative magic on football fields. The magician cannoned backward into his novice. The novice crashed into the shaman. They both fell. Tom leaped them and bucked the basket-bearers. The empty basket and the man who carried it went reeling away over upset benches. The three who held the other basket dropped it, to put up a fight. There were ends of benches in the way that tripped them. One of them stopped a hay-maker that cracked on his jaw like the blow of a meat-ax. There was an awful din be low the gallery, but no time to guess what caused it. Tom heard Elsa’s voice:
“They’re taking Thö-pa-ga away !”
No time to look. He hove up the big black basket and balanced it on the gallery rail. It stank foul. He tore off the waterproof cover and it stank worse. There was an iron hasp and a big iron padlock — no key. He wrenched the hasp until it tore loose from the cane into which it was threaded and wired. Then he opened the lid and hove the basket over, to the floor below. It spilled a shang-shang. The awful brute crept out and spread itself on top of the basket. It was even larger than the other, but it looked sick — or perhaps it was stiff from close confinement.
“Tom! Help!”
Elsa’s stifled scream, from down in the dark on the gallery floor. Flash-light. The shaman and the Bön magician’s novice were trying to gag her with her own blanket. Two of the basket-porters stood in Tom’s way. They were as easy as ninepins. But he stumbled over the legs of an upset bench and didn’t kick the shaman hard enough. The shaman, Bön magician, novice and all the rest of them fled from the gallery, slamming the door. Noropa nowhere to be seen, perhaps hiding among upset benches.
“Hurt?”
“No, not much.”
“Good girl. They’d have pulled that off, if you’d obeyed me.”
They returned to the rail. Sudden silence had fallen again. A monk’s foot rutching on the chapel floor was an explosion of noise. Four monks, running into the gallery with flash lights, made a prodigious din as they stumbled over upset benches. Elsa’s fingers signaled on the back of Tom’s hand:
“The devil-dancers were trying to drag Thö-pa-ga away.”
No sign of them now. Thö-pa-ga sat quite still. All the monks were crowded back against the far wall, but the devil-dancers weren’t there any longer. They might have fled under the gallery, out of sight. One shang-shang was still on the wall above the high altar. The other was on the floor in mid-chapel. It pulsed up and down on the tips of its wide-spread legs as if flexing them. The monks in the gallery turned their flash lights on the monsters. Tom signaled Elsa:
“Unless Noropa lied, they’ll fight. They’re cannibals. That’s why they’re rare.”
The brute on the wall dropped to the altar and poised it self, hanging over so that its eyes, on top of its body, looked straight at the other brute. The one on the floor began to pulse up and down more violently. Stuff that looked like froth bubbled on the end of its snout. Suddenly it launched itself toward the high altar. The other fled up the wall. The big one gave chase. Lobsang Pun’s voice broke upon the breath less silence, booming scripture:
“Blessings create blessings in an endless cycle. Evil creates evil until evil-doers perish. For the devils shall destroy them selves and one another, and their dupes shall perish with them.”
The shang-shangs vanished, up amid the shadows of the roof beams. The flash-lights discovered them. One dropped to the floor — a fifty-foot drop on to stone that made hardly a sound. The other followed, flourishing its legs in mid-air. It missed its pounce by a yard. The first one fled to the altar, leaped it and crouched with its body resting on Chenrezi’s head. The other followed, not so fast now, stalking, crab-wise, with a kind of see-saw movement. It stood still on the altar platform between the Abbot and Lobsang Pun. Slowly it approached the altar, climbing it crab-wise, in short, almost imperceptible movements. When it reached Chenrezi’s feet the other pounced on it. The chapel seethed with its congregation’s gasp of horror.
The brutes fought in Chenrezi’s lap and all over the altar, knocking altar vessels to the floor with a crash that broke the spell that had held the monks motionless. Some of them ran and hustled Mu-ni Gam-po away from the altar platform. The competent fellow with the sharp stick ran and tried to belabor the brutes. He was joined by taper-on-a-pole. They prodded, whacked, and hit nothing except the altar and Chenrezi’s statue, for several minutes. But they were gallant fellows. They stuck to it. The shang-shangs fought like wolverines, dragon-flies, octopuses, tearing, leaping, gnawing off each other’s legs. They were as quick as lightning. The only sound they made was of rending flesh. They were tearing each other to pieces in a lather of vile froth. One had torn the other’s eyes out before the brave man with the stick hit one of them at last. He skewered the blind one. Then he beat the other. It had only three legs left. It dragged itself toward him. Lobsang Pun picked up a heavy charcoal brazier and crushed the brute. Then he laughed — his big laugh from the depths of his huge belly:
“Oo-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!”
The monks swarmed around the altar. Tom seized Elsa’s wrist. He didn’t signal, he spoke:
“Come and talk to Thö-pa-ga. It’s trespass, but I guess he needs us.”
No sign of Noropa. They hurried out of the gallery and down the stone stairs. That brought them into the courtyard. They had to run in the rain around a stone building and its long buttresses to the chapel entrance. Double door. Dark vestibule. Another double door — it swung open against them.
Tom caught a glimpse, against the light within the chapel, of grinning devil-masks and of Thö-pa-ga between the Bön magician and the shaman, coming on the run toward him. Something struck him on the head. He lost consciousness.
CHAPTER 24. “Sign your name as representative plenipotentiary!”
TOM didn’t remain long unconscious. He was alone in the vestibule, in almost total darkness. There was a lot of noise in the chapel. He could feel his scalp was bleeding, but not too badly. He had evidently been hit on the top of the head with a cudgel. He felt dazed. When he stood up it took him a minute or two before he could steady himself. Then he went out into the rain and doused his head under a gush of water from a dram-pipe off the gallery roof. After a minute of that he was wet to the skin, and sore-headed, but in full possession of his senses.
As fast as he could run he crossed two courtyards to the monastery gate. The monk on gatehouse duty came out of meditation rather resentfully, spinning his prayer wheel.
Yes. A number of people, including the Bön magician and some devil-dancers and others, had passed out through the gate about fifteen minutes ago, and good riddance to them. The Bön magician had produced a document that bore Lobsang Pun’s signature. Forgery? Nonsense! Who would dare to forge Lobsang Pun’s blessed name? In all there were probably thirty people, but he wasn’t sure, he hadn’t counted. There had been others waiting for them outside, he didn’t know how many. To the Powers of Darkness with such rogues. He had locked the gate behind them and returned to his prayers.
No, he hadn’t noticed Elsa, nor any one who looked like a European woman. No, he hadn’t seen Thö-pa-ga; didn’t know what he looked like; didn’t wish to know. Yes, they had all seemed to be in a great hurry, but in no greater hurry than he had been to see the last of them. He didn’t know what had come over Mu-ni Gam-po of late, that he should admit such people to the monastery. Those devil-dancers, for instance: not like good Darjeeling devil-dancers. Dissolute, bold, ill-mannered fellows, recently from Tibet, where they must have been corrupted by political and religious quarrels.
The rain ceased. No, the monk wouldn’t open the gate for Tom — not unless he had an order from the Abbot. It would have to be in writing. Yes Lobsang Pun’s written order would be all right, because Lobsang Pun was a high dignitary, even higher than the Abbot. No, if Tom should try to climb the wall, he would summon the watch, who were armed with cudgels. The gate would be opened again at sunrise, and no sooner. Then respectable people could walk out with the holy Abbot’s blessing, and might the blessing go with them wherever they should set foot.
Tom returned to the inner courtyard. All the monks had poured out of the chapel. Mu-ni Gam-po looked deathly sick; he was being supported by his four attendants. Tom wasn’t allowed to approach him. A monk thrust a spluttering torch so close to Tom’s face that it singed his eyebrows. He said the holy Abbot might be dying. If so, he mustn’t be interrupted; otherwise his spirit might be hounded away by shang-shangs and prevented from reincarnating at an early moment. None but holy men who knew how to deal with shang-shangs should come anywhere near him; but if he didn’t die Tom might speak with him to-morrow. Several other monks were of the same mind. It was no use trying to approach the Abbot.
Faggots. At least a hundred monks were bringing them. They were building a big pyre in the center of the court yard, spreading it evenly, waist high. Others were carrying a big black sheet out of the chapel, holding it by the four corners. They were surrounded by monks with twirling prayer wheels, all chanting a mantram. Other monks were blowing horns. On the sheet lay the bright green remains of the two shang-shangs, looking smaller than when they were alive, because most of their long legs had been bitten off while they fought and they had been swept into a heap.
Behind the black sheet marched Lobsang Pun, exorcising. He was closely followed by his personal attendants, all singing at the top of their lungs and whirling prayer wheels. With his dorje in his right hand Lobsang Pun described magical signs in the air. He had a great reputation as an exorcist. He looked the part. The torchlight crimsoned his big, beaked face. His swaying gait lent something even more than dignity. He looked victorious, triumphant. He, not Mu-ni Gam-po, had quoted the scriptural text that set the shang-shangs to slaying each other — evil destroying evil
! He believed that. There wasn’t a scrap of insincerity about him. His was faith militant, triumphant.
They laid the shang-shangs, desecrated black curtain and all, on the pyre. The wood was dry. A dozen torches plunged into the faggots. The flames leaped, crimsoning the surrounding walls. The wet courtyard paving resembled a lake of liquid fire, on which shadowy, two-dimensional monks stood twirling prayer wheels, throwing shadows in their turn that made flickering waves of wet light. The monks pitched their chant against the roar and crackle of the flames.
Tom watched Lobsang Pun until he turned away from the scene, but that wasn’t until Mu-ni Gam-po’s four attendants had half-carried the old man up the gallery stairs. It appeared that Lobsang Pun didn’t exactly crave the Abbot’s company or conversation just then. He showed no sympathy for the Abbot — none whatever — no concern about him. He walked down a narrow passage off the courtyard. Tom followed. A door was slammed in his face. He thrust and kicked it open before there was time to shoot the bolt. He was inside before any one could prevent him.
A four-square stone-walled room. Lobsang Pun. Seven monks. One sturdy wooden bed. A heavy table. Benches. An imported oil lantern. Six or eight candles and a little oil lamp in a niche in the wall. Some heaps of corded luggage. All seven monks had Mauser pistols; each man’s loaded pistol lay in its holster on the table, with belt attached. When Tom entered they buckled on their pistols in a hurry, beneath their robes.
Not a word. Tom and Lobsang Pun stared at each other. With his right thumb, like a London policeman directing traffic, Tom indicated the seven monks, one by one, then the door. Lobsang Pun nodded. He, too, gestured. The monks filed out. Tom shot the bolt in the door behind the last one.
“Tum-Glain! Tum-Glain!”
“Your Eminence?”
Silence again. Lobsang Pun spoke in a challenging tone in Tibetan:
“Your wanting what?”
Tom answered in Tibetan. He didn’t dare to be misunderstood. He knew more Tibetan than Lobsang Pun knew English. But he hadn’t time nor mood to adorn his language with the phrases, of humility and reverence, that ought to have preceded and loaded every sentence. The structure of his phrases was as nearly English as the Tibetan speech would permit. It was crude, but it didn’t make Lobsang Pun laugh.