But it wasn’t the appearance of the pillar that astonished them. It was the fact that it seemed to be floating in the air, around four feet above the floor of the cavern. They flashed their torches along its length and above the pillar, to see if it was somehow suspended from the ceiling. But they could see nothing—the pillar was apparently not anchored to either the floor or hanging from the roof of the cavern.
They flashed their torches around the cavern. More pillars came into view; scattered around the cavern, frozen in the air at different heights above the floor.
Vijay looked troubled. ‘Something’s wrong.’
‘Agreed. A cavern with the night sky for a ceiling and now levitating columns. Not my idea of normal,’ his friend responded.
They approached the pillar closest to them, hoping to discover its secret once they examined it closely.
Abruptly, Colin grabbed Vijay’s hand and jerked him back. His torchlight played along the floor, below the pillar, and Vijay realised why, even though the pillar was around three or four feet away from them.
Barely a foot from where they stood, the floor of the cavern plunged sharply and disappeared. One step more and Vijay would have dropped off the edge. Colin had spotted the break in the floor in the nick of time.
Beyond the edge of the floor, the light from their torches glinted off something black and wet.
‘A subterranean lake?’ Vijay was mystified. He flashed his torch before him and Colin did the same.
The pillars were all suspended in mid-air above the water which seemed to stretch away as far as they could see. The water was black and still, not a ripple disturbed its surface.
‘What is this place?’ Colin wondered. ‘This looks like an artificial water body to me.’
‘It does,’ Vijay agreed. ‘But there must be a source of water to keep it filled over the centuries. Perhaps there’s an underground spring that empties into the lake.’
‘Now what?’ Colin looked at Vijay. ‘We can’t go forward. And we can’t go back. This is a fine mess. And I feel like any moment Gollum’s going to pop out of the lake, hissing “my precious.”’
‘Why would the Nine create an alternate entrance to the cavern, make those nine archways which only someone familiar with their thinking could get past, only to lead to a dead end?’ Vijay frowned as he tried to search for an answer. ‘We’re missing something here.’
‘I think the answer is connected to the suspended pillars. There must be a logical explanation for this illusion.’
Vijay grabbed Colin by the shoulders. ‘That’s it,’ his eyes were shining with excitement. ‘Thank you, buddy. I never thought I’d ever hear myself say this, but you’re a genius.’
‘Huh?’ Colin looked bewildered.
‘I think you may have just helped us find the answer to this puzzle.’
Eerie Stillness
The commandos had come to a sudden halt. They had apparently detected movement ahead. Or a presence.
Radha kept close to Imran, following his lead, though she wondered how much experience he had in operations like this.
She looked around. The teams that had flanked them on the journey, all but invisible in the darkness of the forest, had disappeared. Something was afoot. She shivered and Imran smiled at her reassuringly.
A man suddenly screamed from somewhere up ahead, shattering the stillness, making her jump. There was a flurry of sharp claps followed by silence.
The team of commandos escorting them signalled that they should move forward.
As they advanced, Radha understood the reason. Her heart leaped as she discerned the X Trail standing behind six Ford Endeavours. Bodies lay scattered on the ground around the cars, LeT men who had been taken out by the commandos.
Radha averted her eyes from the sight of death and concentrated instead on praying that her father, Vijay and Colin were safe.
The commando to her right signalled again, asking them to move forward and they continued their trek through the forest.
44
Day 11
Sitagarha Hill
‘What d’you mean?’ Colin stared at Vijay as they squatted on the rough floor of the cavern.
‘Illusions. Remember Uncle’s emails? He mentions illusions twice. We had tried to interpret those lines without luck and given them up as junk that had been added to confuse the reader of the emails, in case they fell into the wrong hands.’
Colin thought hard, trying to remember. ‘I remember only one reference to illusions. The fourth email.
If something happens to me, you must seek out the Nine. If you look for a deeper meaning, you will find it. Two thousand years of history, which I have safely guarded for the last 25 years, is yours to unlock. Follow the path of truth and you will find your way through any illusion.
‘There was another reference. In the second email.’ Vijay repeated the line from the second email for Colin. ‘“In an ocean of maya there is always an island of satya”. One meaning of Maya is illusion. So, for example, the world is an illusion, everything material is maya. And satya means truth.’
‘Right.’ Colin got it now. ‘So this cavern is maya, right? The stars, these suspended pillars; a magnificently created illusion. So where’s the island of truth? And the path of truth that we’re supposed to follow to find our way through these illusions?’
‘There,’ Vijay pointed across the water into the darkness. ‘I’m betting there’s an island in the centre of this lake.’
Colin grinned at Vijay, despite their circumstances. ‘You’re kidding. What d’you think, the island is invisible?’
Almost as soon as the words left his mouth it struck him as well.
‘Holy crap!’ He looked at Vijay. ‘You could be right. After all, these are the guys who have the secret of invisibility hidden away somewhere in this hill.’ He looked around in awe. ‘It certainly explains the illusion of the pillars. They aren’t suspended—their lower portions must be shielded with an invisibility cloak. And it is possible that there is an island out there that is also shielded so we can’t see it.’
Vijay grinned. ‘You got it, kid. An island of truth hidden behind an illusion of invisibility. See, my brilliance is beginning to rub off onto you.’
Colin scowled at him. ‘Okay Brainy One, how do we get to the island then? Figure that one out.’ He held out his hand. ‘No wait, I think I’ve got it. There should be an invisible bridge over the water if our theory is correct.’
‘Our theory?’ Vijay put on a mock indignant expression.
Colin grinned happily at him. If they were right, this cavern wasn’t so much of a mystery after all. ‘We find this invisible bridge by following the pillars. Some of them must be supporting a path across the water, right?’
‘Let’s go,’ Vijay started towards the nearest pillar. It hung above the water two feet out from the shore. He extended his leg and felt around for a bridge over the water.
Nothing.
Vijay looked at Colin. ‘Guess it isn’t going to be all that easy, huh?’
They went to the next pillar that was nearer to the shore but fared no differently. The next four pillars all yielded the same result.
Just as they were beginning to feel that they may have been wrong about the invisible bridge, Colin found it and stepped onto it. He looked down at his feet. It seemed uncanny, standing on what seemed like thin air, with the dark waters of the lake clearly visible directly below his feet. ‘This invisibility shield really works, doesn’t it? Farooq wasn’t kidding. No wonder he wants it so badly.’
Slowly, painstakingly, they made their way over the water, testing the space around them before taking each step until they suddenly came to what seemed to be an invisible wall across the bridge.
‘It feels like plastic,’ Colin remarked as he felt along the wall. ‘Wait a minute, what’s this?’ He felt around what seemed to be a receptacle in the wall. ‘I think there’s a slot here for the key.’
Vijay cursed. The key would most p
robably open this door as well. But it was lying in his room in the hotel in Patna.
‘Don’t fret, dear boy,’ Colin grinned at him as he took the key out of his pocket. ‘You forget that you are in the company of a genius. Knowing that we were coming to the den of the Nine, I was pretty sure we’d need it somewhere.’
Concentrating hard, he tried to fit the key into the invisible doorway, until the key slid home with an audible click. He turned the key clockwise and, suddenly, a doorway appeared before them, as if materialising out of nowhere.
‘Open Sesame.’ Colin grinned at Vijay, thrilled that they had been right. He stepped through the doorway onto a rectangular metal platform enclosed on all sides by a metal wall that towered at least 30 feet above them. The floor and walls were all black like the pillars, no doubt forged from the same metal that had been used to craft the metal disk.
Vijay followed Colin inside and they flashed their torches around the room. Eight pillars, each two feet tall, stood in a tight circle in the centre of the room. The metallic walls were bare.
‘Now what?’ Vijay asked.
As if in response to his question, there was a loud groaning sound followed by a grating sound of metal scraping against metal. The sound seemed to come from above them and they trained their torches on the ceiling.
To their horror, the ceiling, studded with long black iron spikes, was descending towards them.
Almost simultaneously, the metal platform that formed the floor of the room jerked sharply. Through the doorway they had used to enter the room, they saw the suspended pillars outside, above the lake, begin to move upwards.
‘Another illusion?’ Vijay frowned and then the realisation hit him. ‘Shit! This is no illusion!’
Colin threw him a panic-stricken glance. ‘The island is sinking into the lake!’
They looked at each other in horror. The room was descending into the lake and the ceiling, with its spikes, was collapsing on them. If they weren’t impaled alive, they would surely drown.
‘There has to be a way out ,’ Vijay muttered, looking around. ‘The Nine wouldn’t allow someone with the key to enter here only to die.’
‘The pillars,’ Colin strode swiftly towards the eight columns in the centre of the room.
They split up and began examining the pillars, running the light from their torches along the length of each column, looking for inscriptions, a slot for the key; anything that might indicate how they could extricate themselves from this predicament.
The platform continued to sink into the lake and the ceiling continued its inexorable descent towards them.
They completed their examination of the columns.
Nothing.
Both men fought to keep panic at bay. They had to stay calm if they were to find a means of escaping a sure death in this cavern.
‘Think. Think,’ Vijay said. ‘There’s got to be something that works.’
He looked up. The sharp ends of the spikes, gleaming in the torchlight, were now barely two feet above their heads now.
Colin flashed his torch on the floor. ‘Water’s coming in,’ he reported on the thin film of water on the floor of the room, which had drawn level with the surface of the lake.
In a few minutes the spikes would descend all the way.
Or the chamber would fill up with water from the lake.
Either way, they were rapidly running out of time.
‘Wait a minute,’ Vijay said, his mind grasping at straws. ‘Why are there eight columns and not nine?’
‘This is no time to be thinking about the number of columns, man,’ Colin’s voice was strained.
‘Think,’ Vijay urged. Everything we’ve seen so far has revolved around the number Nine. Because that was the number of people in the brotherhood. Why change the pattern now? And why eight? What’s so unique about the number eight?’
Colin was thinking fast now. He realised that Vijay was possibly onto something. In any case, they were out of options. ‘Didn’t Radha say something about the wheel of law having eight spokes?’ He suddenly recalled the conversation they had had when they discovered the key embedded in the painting in Vikram Singh’s study.
Vijay beamed at him. ‘Brilliant. I swear I’m going to give up joking about your intelligence. You’ve got it. The wheel of law.’
Colin hadn’t figured it out yet. ‘Okay, so I agree I’m a genius. And I like the oath you’ve just sworn. But how is it going to help us?’
Vijay glanced upwards.
The spikes were now inches away from their heads.
They would have to get on their knees to do this. He knelt and asked Colin to do the same.
‘Here’s what I think. If the Nine have replaced their favourite number with the number eight for no other reason than to depict the wheel of law, then there’s only one thing that this circle is here for. It’s a wheel, and a wheel should move.’
‘That sounds logical.’ Colin perked up.
Both men grasped a column each and put their shoulders against it, straining to move the columns in a clockwise direction.
Nothing happened.
The water in the room was now a foot deep and the spikes were almost touching their heads.
If this didn’t work, they would be impaled on the spikes before the water claimed them.
‘Try counterclockwise,’ Colin panted.
They tried applying force in the opposite direction.
This time, with a loud grinding noise, the columns moved. As soon as the wheel, formed by the columns, began moving, the grating noise of the descending ceiling ceased and the platform, the room was built on, stopped jerking.
The two men looked at each other and heaved again. The wheel of columns moved again, reluctantly, complaining at being disturbed after 2,000 years.
It was hard work; moving the columns while on their knees, their clothes soaked with the water flooding the room, but Vijay and Colin kept at it. This was their only hope.
As they pushed, they realised that the platform had begun jerking and shuddering again, but water wasn’t flooding into the room any more. They glanced upwards and saw that the ceiling, too, had begun retreating upwards.
‘Keep pushing!’ Colin shouted above the din made by the columns and the ceiling. ‘We have to get it back to the original position. Only then will the invisible bridge be at the same level as the floor of this room.’
Vijay nodded. Their hands and shoulders were sore from pushing against the columns, but they kept going.
After what seemed like eternity, the circle of columns shuddered and stopped moving.
Both men sat back, leaning against the columns, gasping.
‘I’ll say one thing,’ Colin grinned at Vijay, having recovered his composure and good humour, now that their ordeal was over. ‘This beats bungee jumping in New Zealand.’
‘Agreed,’ Vijay grinned back. ‘Let’s get out of here before something else happens.’
‘But what do we do now? Go back to Farooq?’
Vijay shrugged. ‘Frankly, I don’t know if there’s anything else we can do.’
They rose and made their way out of the open doorway. They didn’t stop to celebrate their freedom but raced up the tunnel, overjoyed at being free after what seemed like a lifetime.
As they emerged from the tunnel, their breaths coming in gasps, Colin grabbed Vijay’s arm and pointed at the second archway, the one they had earlier rejected as useless. Something had happened while they were in the cavern of illusions. The second archway was no longer carved into the rock. The arch now framed a yawning gap. There was an entrance here to another tunnel; an entrance that, somehow, had been concealed earlier and was open now.
‘D’you think that the turning of the wheel had something to do with the opening up of this archway?’ Colin wondered aloud.
Vijay nodded, excited now. ‘I don’t know what happened, or how, but clearly the only way to get this archway opened was by going through that cavern. This was another test by the Nine
to ensure that their secret was protected.’
They entered the second archway. The tunnel they were now in was broad but unfinished. It turned at sharp angles and soon they had no sense which direction they were heading towards. After a while, the passage began sloping upwards then abruptly ended in a small rocky chamber which had a stairway carved into the rock.
Cautiously, they moved forward, wary of any surprises, flashing their torches around the chamber, which was bereft of any adornment or carvings.
Was this the last stage of their journey to find the secret?
With mounting excitement, they made their way up the staircase, uncertain of what they would find at the top.
Disappointingly, they emerged into yet another tunnel that was blocked at one end by a sheer wall of rock.
‘I’m sick of being underground,’ Colin grumbled.
Vijay grimaced. The awareness of being deep below the surface of the earth wasn’t a pleasant sensation. But they had no choice. They had to move on.
To their immense surprise, they had barely taken a few steps when the passage came to life with a dim light.
They looked at each other, barely able to contain their excitement. Both spoke at the same time.
‘This is the passageway Surasen described in his text.’
‘This is the passageway that leads from the opening in the hill to the cavern of the Nine.’
Both men laughed as they realised how close they were to discovering the secret of the Nine.
‘Race you there. Bet I can beat you.’ A rush of adrenalin had revived Vijay’s energy, buoyed by the thought that they were finally within reach of their goal.
Both men were-well matched in physical prowess and together burst through an archway that lay at the end of the tunnel.
Skidding to a halt, they gazed around, awestruck. They were in an enormous cavern that was lit up by the same soft light that had illuminated the passage. The roof of the cavern soared high above their heads, probably three or four hundred feet above them. The depth of the cavern was immense. It stretched away from them on all sides, in all likelihood running the length of the hill. Whether it was manmade or natural they couldn’t tell, but it took their breath away.
The Mahabharata Secret Page 27