Shadows of Shambhala

by Tony Simmons

  Tally and Pasang searched another body. “What about those chindi — the ghost walkers?” Tally asked. “Don’t tell me I imagined them.”

  Argo grinned. “This is a strange place. Keep your eyes on the shadows. Those aren’t ghosts — they’re some kind of trick the Vril masters have learned. But remember, shadows are cast, so look to where the shadow might be cast from and target that point.”

  The six of them huddled at the intersection. Argo passed Tally the rifle he’d pilfered from the armory. Zed held two of the guards’ short swords that he scraped together, then flipped in the air, catching the hilts; he nodded to himself, satisfied they were proper weapons.

  “We have enough ammo for these,” Johnny said, displaying a pistol in each hand.

  Pasang had a sword in her grip and a dagger in her belt. Doc just made a fist.

  Argo handed Doc the cigarette case. “I think this was yours.”

  Doc grinned. When he opened the case, the smile dissolved; the case was empty.

  “Kenston must be halfway to the temple by now,” Argo said. “As we go, I’ll fill you in on what I’ve learned.”

  “Which way?” Johnny asked.

  Argo turned the lantern, adjusted its shutters into a beam. He focused the light on a patch of blood, then farther along the hall at another dark spot.

  “This way,” Argo said.

  ***

  Mount Meru, the Tibetan Himalayas

  One week earlier

  From Doc Riley’s Journal:

  The first day of our climb, a slow trudge uphill along marked paths of rock and pack ice, provided wondrous vistas of blue skies and distant mountain peaks shrouded in mist. Argo allowed me to join the trek at Pasang’s urging, leaving only Wings, Sparks, and Cactus Bill with our airship deflated below the village to await our return.

  “There may be injured at the city,” Pasang had argued. “And we may need a medic on the climb.”

  Friendly talk along the early hours of the journey soon deteriorated to a determined silence as the way became ever more difficult. At our first camp, we shared a group tent to conserve our body heat and other resources. The stars disappeared behind clouds that night, and we awoke to a light snowfall from low gray billows that obscured the summit. The snow, once it started, never relented, growing heavier as the day wore on, occasionally mixed with sleet that rendered the exposed rock treacherous, but for the steel crampons strapped to our boots.

  That second night, hunkered in the tent, I thought I might never fall asleep because of the howling wind buffeting the canvas walls of our shelter. It sounded sometimes like a lone wolf’s call, and sometimes like the baying of a banshee. There was little talk among us, except for Argo questioning Pasang and swapping mountaineering tales.

  “The English occultist Aleister Crowley searched these mountains from 1902 to 1905,” he said, and I recalled reading something about Crowley’s sex-magick cult or such rot. “He was the first Westerner to try Chogo Ri, but his party met foul weather and turned back at about 22,000 feet. In aught-five, he lost four members of his party to an avalanche on Kangchenjunga and turned back again.”

  I was so bone tired that his low voice lulled me to sleep. At some point in the night, I stirred to discover Pasang snuggled beside me under my blanket, her nose in the crook of my neck. Her hands crept inside my overshirt, and she snored lightly. I drifted off again, breathing in the smell of smoke in her hair.

  The next day, we lashed ourselves together on a rope and marched on. Pasang led us, followed by Argo, then our sharpshooter Tallahassee, Johnny-D, myself, and the hulking Brit, Zed. Our nimble guide took us along paths no one had mapped or marked, through weather no experienced climber would tempt. We used an anchor system, with Pasang setting an anchor pole; the rope fed through its top ring, and each of us clipped past the anchor as we reached it, with Zed collecting the pole at the end.

  At length, we faced an escarpment of ice and granite. Now, I am a man of seashores and wave, and the prospect of scaling such a thing made my freezing bowels curdle. I thought about Crowley’s failed expeditions and wondered if it was too late to return to the airship. But little Pasang took a handhold in a crack my eyes would never have found, and she climbed. At some point, she set a cam in a crack, hammered it tight, and fed rope through it. Argo belayed to that position as she climbed higher, setting another cam and repeating.

  In this way, without looking down, I followed in my place in line. My feet, hands, and face burned from the cold, despite the modern mountaineering gear we wore. I was entirely outside my element. An errant gust, a failed anchor, a lost grip — any of these would mean death for myself and probably Zed below me as well. I wondered if I’d made a gigantic mistake joining Argo’s crew. I’d probably wind up like my brother — a memorial marker over an empty grave, my body never recovered. And this time, it would be my own fault for urging him to take me up the mountain.

  We reached the top of the wall before nightfall and set up camp once more. That night in the tent, Tally remarked upon the wind: “It sounds different tonight. Is that because of the elevation?”

  “That is not wind,” Pasang said. “Or, not only wind. The Yeti come down from the peaks with the snow. They are nocturnal hunters.”

  Argo posted Johnny on watch for the first shift. I got the last, after Zed, sitting with Argo’s Webley revolver at the closed tent flap and trying to distinguish wind noise from the approach of something else. I lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the dark. That morning, while the others still slept, Pasang made coffee on our portable camp stove and brought me a cup. We sat quietly to watch the sun rise.

  “Tell me about your city,” I said. “Shambhala.”

  She leaned close, gauging my meaning. She didn’t try to convince me that we weren’t taking her home, and she didn’t ask me how I’d guessed her origins; if she had, I would have told her it was evident to me from the moment I saw her that she came from another world.

  “The City of Light lies both deep in the earth and in another plane of existence, inside a beautiful valley warmed by the Eternal Sun and split by the sacred River Alph,” she said. She clasped both palms to her cup, letting the warmth penetrate her skin. “The people seek beauty, harmony in all things. And they practice a kind of meditation that frees them of their personal darkness.”

  “So why did you leave?”

  “The darkness took over. The Vril masters, our leaders and healers, were corrupted by a false prophet, Dr. Alla.”

  Argo’s voice carried from the far side of the tent, where the others were stirring to wake. “And what makes you think now is the right time to return?”

  Pasang glanced at Argo, then stared into my eyes. Her lips twisted up in a hint of smile. “Because you are here, of course.”

  ***

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Under the Earth

  23 September 1932

  Sanskrit Month of Asvina, Buddhist Year 2475

  From Doc Riley’s Journal:

  T

  he trail of blood spatter and corpses we followed took us deeper into the earth. Rough rock walls gave way to passages carved smooth as marble, with decorative friezes cut into the stone near the dead crystals. With the corridors in darkness, only our lantern illuminated the shapes by casting shadows into the carvings. The weird angles of light and darkness gave the graven images a sepulchral aura.

  “These show tales of the Kalacakra Tantra, the Wheel of Time,” Pasang whispered as we passed them. “They tell of the Siddhi, the sun worshippers who founded the City of Light, and of the palace of the god Indra, and the final form of Vishnu — Kalki.”

  “Kalki, the destroyer?” Argo asked.

  “Destroyer of Filth,” Pasang said. “He will usher in the golden age of Satya Yuga, judge the righteous and unrighteous, and nothing with the shadow of evil will survive.”

  Zed grunted. “Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Kalki will have to kill everyone on the planet, if that’s the case,” Joh
nny-D said.

  Tally shouldered her rifle, put one hand on Johnny’s back as they walked. “We better hope he keeps busy elsewhere.”

  Argo came to a halt, and we gathered close. A black cloak and wide-brimmed hat lay on the floor of the corridor. Argo picked them up and handed them to Pasang.

  “These were Kenston’s,” he said. “Any idea why he’d leave them?”

  She shook her head, her eyes wide in the lantern light. Her fingers found bullet holes in the fabric of the cape.

  “Wait. Is it getting brighter?” Zed asked.

  Argo switched off his lantern. We stood in the dark for several seconds, waiting for our vision to adjust. I couldn’t tell a difference, but Argo declared he saw a glow along a narrow passage to our left. Switching the lantern back on, he led us along its sloping floor, which became stairs as we descended. After a sharp turn, even I could see the glimmer of light ahead.

  We made another pair of turns and found ourselves at the foot of the stairs, congregated upon a wide observation deck with a floor of jade stones the size of platters and a railing of ivory and pearl. The deck overlooked a vast, green valley. Little white cottages lined a sparkling river that ran toward distant mountain ranges lost in mist. The sounds of jungle birds and wildlife carried on the warm breeze — a macaw flew past, and the deep rumble of a lion’s roar rose from the distance.

  Above us, at the apex of a cloudless blue sky, a white star glimmered and warmed our faces. Pasang stripped off her wooly overcoat, and Zed tossed his coat aside, flexing his arms in the sun.

  “We can’t be on the surface,” Tally said. “We were going deeper into the mountain all this time.”

  “We are inside Meru,” Pasang answered.

  “That sky vaults too high,” Johnny said, craning his neck. “This valley, that artificial sun — wouldn’t fit inside the mountain.”

  “We are also not inside Meru,” Pasang said.

  Directly below the observation platform rose the walls of what appeared to be a temple complex. Seven concentric circles of white stone walls were separated by dry moats and bridged by narrow paths. One of those paths met a stair leading down from the viewing platform. Standing at the compass points on the fourth circle, ivory towers capped in the Eastern style with brass or gold gleamed in the white light of the star. Bridges joined these towers near the apex, like a stone halo surrounding a ziggurat that rose at the center of the complex.

  A step-pyramid as might be found in ancient Babylon, the structure was topped with a mirrored totem of some sort that spun clockwise, reflecting the starlight in all directions. The beams penetrated under arches and around columns — shining light into all corners of the valley.

  As we watched, a legion of figures in white robes gathered at the foot of the ziggurat. With them stood bare-chested guards in blue turbans, armed with ancient spears, swords, and modern guns. Other people dressed for farming or fishing poured out of the river village and milled behind the guards, who turned on the newcomers. The guards formed a defensive line at the base of the pyramid and brandished their weapons to warn the growing mob to keep back.

  From this distance, we couldn’t make out details, but we could hear rhythmic chanting and the occasional shout from the gathering crowd. One of the robed figures started up the steps, his right hand pulling on the bound wrists of a woman in a crimson drape. She swayed drunkenly and ascended the ziggurat with him, followed by a dozen or more other white-robed men and women — the priests and priestesses of Shambhala.

  Pasang pointed at the leader. “Dr. Alla,” she said. “And his sacrifice.”

  Argo sprinted down the winding stair toward the valley, taking the steps two and three at a time with his long strides. We rushed to catch up. About the same time Dr. Alla and his followers reached the pinnacle of the ziggurat, we crossed the bridges to the fourth ring of the temple grounds. Pasang directed us up a winding stair inside one of the towers, which took us to the “halo” ring — actually, a gallery level that appeared to be designed for worshippers to view events unfolding at the mirrored totem. Dozens of black cloaks like the one Kenston had worn dangled from hooks in an alcove by the passage opening.

  Argo raised an eyebrow at Pasang and she explained, “Ceremonial garb for those in the viewing gallery.”

  We each took a cloak. Argo placed Kenston’s battered hat on his head.

  “I think I’m getting an idea,” he said, and I grinned to image him playing the role of Kenston.

  The sounds of chanting from the processional of priests rang clear. We paused and watched as the crowd of robed men and women spread out in a circle around Dr. Alla, near enough now to see the daggers, swords, and firearms many of them carried. Her drape having fallen to pool on the stone around her, the sacrifice was on her knees before the mirrored totem; her slack countenance suggested she was drugged or perhaps mesmerized. Above her, the totem rotated slower and slower, while far below, the people of the river village massed, and the line of defenders backed onto the lowest steps of the pyramid.

  The hooded man Pasang had identified as Dr. Alla raised his hands high, and a hush fell, broken only by the wind in the valley. His thin fingers grasped the edges of his hood and drew it back, revealing a face tanned and lined by hard years, the high brow and pointed nose of a man of breeding, and eyes like granite lodged in bruised sockets that made them seem alight with blue fire.

  “Kenston,” Argo said.

  Having never set eyes on Kenston before, I was slow to realize what he meant.

  “Kenston is Dr. Alla,” Pasang whispered. “I wasn’t sure until now.”

  A chill settled in my gut. I’d heard of hysterical neurosis, but was no expert. My trade was flesh, bone, and blood, not the workings of the mind. But I also knew history was replete with so-called “exchanged personality” cases — what the superstitious once thought of as demonic possession, or regression to past lives. It certainly explained Kenston’s crazed laughter in times of stress.

  “The war broke his mind — I assumed he had shellshock,” Argo said. “He told me Allan Kenston had many names and identities, but I never thought—”

  Pasang nodded. “He tried to put himself back together here, through the power of the Vril.”

  “But learning to command his own shadow-self,” I said, “must have further dissociated at least one of his personalities. He became his own enemy. One, using darkness as a weapon against the other.”

  Argo squatted out of sight of the ziggurat and motioned for us to huddle. He whispered, “I don’t believe Kenston knows he’s fighting himself.”

  “Can’t his followers recognize him?” Tally asked.

  “A Vril master can cloud men’s minds,” Pasang explained. “We must be careful when we’re in his presence.”

  “I don’t plan to get that close,” Argo said, checking his gear — a length of rope and ammo for his pistol on his belt, a Bowie knife sheathed in his boot. “Tally, I want you to set up here with the rifle. If we’re going to get to Dr. Alla, we have to go through his armed followers — and we will not allow him to kill that woman. The rest of you, spread out along the gallery at the compass points.”

  He paused to be sure we were listening closely. “Pull up your hoods. We each are Kenston now. We want Dr. Alla to have to face himself, so we’ll laugh like damned hyenas, take turns revealing ourselves and firing into the crowd.”

  “He won’t be able to process it,” I said. “Dr. Alla could lose control, and Kenston might take over again.”

  Argo nodded. “Tally, we need to take down the guards and priests before they can rally against us.”

  “What about the villagers?” Pasang asked. “I believe they will try to join the fight — against Dr. Alla. We must protect them.”

  Zed slid his sword blades against each other, making them sing. “I’ll take care of that.”

  Argo locked eyes with each of us in turn, allowing us a moment to acknowledge him or pose more questions. None were asked, except from Pasa
ng: “What about me?”

  “Stick with me,” he said, “and be ready with your doo-dad.”

  We split up, racing along the pathways between the towers to find a position that would allow us to be seen in the archways and galleries. I hadn’t reached my place yet when I heard the laughter echoing in the distance, carried over the open air and distorted through the curving corridors. The sound was unnerving, even though I knew it was Argo’s voice. I took a deep breath and cackled in reply.

  A gun shot rang in the passageways, and I glanced through an opening to see a priest topple near the totem. Blood soaked into his white robe. The kneeling woman flinched but didn’t run. Dr. Alla shouted in an unknown tongue.

  The mirrored column barely turned now, and the sky was notably dimmer than when we first saw it. The star above flickered like a failing bulb.

  Far across from me, on the opposite side of the gallery, a man in a black cloak and slouch hat stepped into the open and fired his pistol, then dropped back behind the archway.

  “Kenston!” shouted someone atop the ziggurat. “Shadow-man!” another yelled.

  The laughter came from all directions now. We were all laughing. I stepped into the open, tittering and exposing myself, raising an empty hand like a pistol. A man fell in the crowd just as I heard Tally’s rifle bark.

  The entire valley went black for a terrifying second as the totem stopped rotating and the sun above turned dark. Then, like a switch being thrown, the light returned with a blinding flare. Shadows danced on the walls for a moment before the mirrored column whirled and light rays erased them all.

  Johnny-D stepped into view, fired his pistol, and slid back under cover. Someone in the crowd of followers screamed, several flattened on the floor, and others scattered to run down the sloping stair on the side of the pyramid. From below came shouts of “Kalki!” and “shadow-man!” The murmur and outcries couldn’t drown our laughter, but Dr. Alla’s voice cut through the noise.