Jake Atlas and the Quest for the Crystal Mountain

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  Engines revved, and I was vaguely aware of snowmobiles speeding closer. I had no idea who had caught us, just that we were caught. There was no escape, not now.

  As the lights rushed closer, I stared up at the Crystal Mountain, this vast lump of rock and ice that meant so much to so many people. With my last scraps of energy, I reached into my pocket, dug out the paper with the translation of the Drak Terma, and read what it said in the searchlight glare. Then I tore it up and tossed the pieces into the wind.

  I whispered two words. I’m not sure who they were for: my family, Tenzin, or maybe just for the mountain.

  “I’m sorry.”

  35

  Marjorie had to be careful.

  Her guide – the smiling but silent Tibetan she had hired to take her to Mount Kailas – had driven as far as he said was possible. She knew how sacred this mountain was to the people of this land; the guide had told her at least a dozen times on the journey from Lhasa. He had been particularly pleased when she claimed she was a pilgrim making a holy journey to Kailas. Each time they passed prayer wheels by the roadside he’d suggested they stopped to pray, but she’d always refused and eventually the man had grown suspicious. Why would a pilgrim not pray? She had tried to placate him with false sentiments – “my heart only lies at Kailas,” or “only at the Crystal Mountain may I seek forgiveness for my sins” – and they had worked for a while. But after three days, the guide had decided that she was up to something, that it had nothing to do with religion, and that he wanted no part of it.

  He would leave her at the next village, twenty kilometres from Kailas. She had hoped to convince him to take her further – she really did not want to walk twenty kilometres in this snow – but when they arrived they discovered they could not go any further.

  Something was happening at Kailas, the villagers said.

  Something strange, they said.

  They had seen helicopters – huge, black beasts – and jeeps, and men that looked like the army but they did not think were the army.

  Marjorie knew then that the Atlas family had been caught. She had no idea how, or by whom. Perhaps a hunter had bagged the reward, or maybe Lord Osthwait had succeeded where she had failed. It didn’t really matter. Jake was there, at the mountain. So that’s where she was going too.

  She paid a villager for an extra shawl so that she was eight layers deep against the freeze. Then she set off on the hike, her hands shoved in her pockets as much for warmth as to grip the phurba knife with which she would kill the boy. Reaching him wouldn’t be easy, but if Lord Osthwait had been too busy to cancel her credit cards, perhaps he had also failed to inform the mercenaries that she had been removed from the operation. They might not know. She might have a chance.

  But, still, she had to be careful.

  36

  “Jake Montgomery Atlas.”

  That was a low blow, using my middle name, but I didn’t react. I sat staring up at the cone-shaped mountain as moonlight gleamed off its plunging glaciers, frozen waterfalls and wind-polished rock. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, as if Kailas’s vast western face was studded with crystals.

  But despite how far I had come to reach this place, I wished I were anywhere else. To make it worse, I had to listen to this idiot.

  Tall, posh and English, he spoke like one of the Royal Family. He’d arrived in a military helicopter, along with forty mercenary goons dressed in black snowsuits, parkas and winter boots.

  The guy wore a stupid hat with spaniel earflaps, and the biggest fur coat I’d ever seen. It looked like he’d skinned a bear. The weight of the thing troubled him, and he leaned on a trekking pole to stop himself from toppling forward. He’d managed to find a spot on the coat to pin a brooch. It was the same ornament the Snake Lady wore: the emerald snake eating its own tail. He was one of the People of the Snake – not a goon; someone senior.

  He cleared his throat and wiped a drip of snot from his nose with a mitten. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  I shook my head vaguely.

  “Do you know why you do not know who I am?” he asked.

  I shrugged even more vaguely.

  “Because we are a secret organization,” he continued. “Top secret. Now, do you know how I know who you are?”

  I sighed. “I really don’t care.”

  I think he had a speech planned, to make sure I knew I was caught. It wasn’t necessary. I knew. I was broken, bleeding and exhausted. The mercenaries had handcuffed me to a rail on one of their helicopters at the base of the slope to Kailas. It must have been past midnight, and I’d not rested properly in days, but I couldn’t sleep. For at least an hour I’d sat staring out of the helicopter’s open side, up the steep slope to the mountain. Now this guy was in the way.

  “I am going to ask you two questions,” he said. “How you are treated from this point will depend on your answers.”

  “Don’t bother,” I muttered. “I’m not going to tell you what the Drak Terma said. Where’s Marjorie, anyway? She was way better at this stuff than you. She was properly scary. You look like an awkward teddy bear.”

  “Number nine has been removed from this operation.”

  “Number nine?”

  “Marjorie.”

  That was weird to hear. I hated that woman, but what my sister claimed was true; I had become obsessed with her, or with beating her to the end of this hunt. She was the face of our enemy, but now she wasn’t even here.

  “What’s your second question?” I asked.

  “Where are your family?”

  Whoa. Now he had my attention. This whole time I had thought they had been caught, but that obviously wasn’t the case…

  “Where are they?” he demanded. “Tell me.”

  I got the feeling he was used to people answering when he barked at them. I leaned closer, as far as I could with the handcuffs.

  “Disneyland,” I replied.

  “I… What?”

  “I wanted to come here, but I was outvoted, so they went to Disneyland.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Disney World? Which one is in Florida?”

  “You’re not as clever as you think you are.”

  “I don’t think I’m clever at all. You wouldn’t either if you lived with my parents and sister.”

  I shifted, gazing past him to the operation centre that his mercenaries had set up across the slope, a hundred metres from the base of the mountain. Those goons may have been slow at catching their enemies, but they could set up a high-tech military-style field headquarters in no time. They’d pitched tents, rigged lights and generators, and positioned satellite dishes. Holospheres projected 3D images of Mount Kailas, which seemed unnecessary with the real thing right above them.

  None of it mattered; without the Drak Terma they had no idea where to look for the Hall of Records.

  I shifted to see in the other direction, hoping I might see Tenzin on the hill to Chiu Gompa. Had he left, or was he still there, by the ruins of his chorten? I remembered his excitement when we left his village, how proud he’d been to be on a mission to rebuild his monastery, and how happy that I was joining him. Now he knew that had been a lie. I wanted to talk to him, but I couldn’t let this old guy know I knew him; he might use that against me. And, anyway, what would I say? I had a new mission, and once again it didn’t involve helping Tenzin.

  From the moment I heard my family were free, I had to escape. If they were still being hunted, I had to help them. If I could beat the People of the Snake to the end of this quest, I could use whatever I found to make this guy call off the hunt. First I needed a few minutes to think.

  I’d read the Drak Terma before I was caught. The pilgrim who translated it had scribbled just two words: ENTER TEETH.

  It was strange, but made a sort of sense. I remembered Pan’s lesson about sacred Buddhist symbols that represented parts of the body. There had been a symbol for teeth – a conch shell. So the Drak Terma was guiding me to a conch shell in the mo
untain, or something that looked like a conch shell…

  I’d spotted it already. Beyond the mercenaries’ camp, at the top of the slope, there was a cave opening into the base of Mount Kailas. The cave mouth was shaped like a conch shell – or maybe an upside down teardrop – with a sliver at ground level, just a crack in the rock, rising to a larger opening above.

  Maybe I’d read the clue wrong, but my family had solved a few secret codes recently, and I was beginning to get an instinct for them. Somehow I just knew; that cave was my destination. Inside it I would find a way into the mountain, to the Hall of Records.

  “So what now?” I asked him.

  He snorted in an I-think-that-should-be-perfectly-obvious sort of way, but then looked confused, as if on second thoughts he wasn’t sure either. He’d been desperate to catch me, but didn’t have a clue what happened next.

  He dug his trekking pole harder into the snow. “We have ways to make you talk,” he said. “You have no idea of the resources we have to—”

  “I do!” I cried. “I do have an idea! I know all about your resources. I just don’t care. You’ve caught me, see, handcuffs! It’s embarrassing to stand around gloating. I’m not going to give you the Drak Terma and I’m not going to give up my family. So just carry on with whatever it is you’re doing. I’ll sit here and look at the mountain.”

  He sneered at me a few times and huffed a little, but then pulled his coat tighter and trudged off to one of his operation tents. I waited until I was sure he wasn’t looking and then got busy trying to escape.

  37

  This had been easier than she expected. Not the journey, which had been difficult enough, but getting in among the organization’s operation. It had been a doddle.

  It felt strange, though. She had approached with confidence, so any mercenary who knew she had been ousted from the council might be disarmed simply by her presence. Fooling these thugs didn’t take much effort. Rather, it felt strange because this was no longer hers. As she approached the first operation tent, Marjorie wasn’t scared. Rather, she was overcome with loss and anger. She was a mother watching someone else raise her children.

  It was the anger that burned the brightest. This moment, this culmination of everything she had worked for – everything she had sacrificed – should be hers. She reached into her coat pocket and gripped the phurba, letting its blade sting her skin. But one pain did not soothe the other. This should be hers and it wasn’t, and that was all the fault of—

  She stopped beyond the tent. A few mercenaries spotted her and began to work harder, flicking through files on a holosphere. They were attempting to impress her whilst at the same time failing spectacularly at their job. She barely noticed them. Her gaze was fixed on something else, something beyond the tent, fifty metres away by the frozen lake.

  A helicopter.

  Sitting in it, caught and cuffed, was Jake Atlas.

  And the rage roared louder.

  She kept moving, her hand so tight against the blade that it sliced her palm and drew its first blood.

  38

  I tugged at the cuffs until skin tore on my wrist and blood slid from beneath the steel shackles. I’d hoped they had been built for adults, and a skinny-wristed kid like me would be able to wriggle free. But it was as if they had been made especially for me.

  If I couldn’t get out of these cuffs myself, maybe someone else would do it for me. The People of the Snake needed me alive for the information I had on the Drak Terma. If I could cause a fire or an explosion, they’d be forced to release me. I had no idea how I’d reach the cave – I’d have to get right through their camp – but I could worry about that once I was free.

  I shifted as far around as the cuffs would let me, scanning for anything in the helicopter that might cause a fire. There was a control panel in the wall, knobs and dials that meant nothing to me other than that they might explode. I yanked again at the cuffs, gritting my teeth as their metal edge dug into my skin. My boot heel was inches from the panel; surely a few hard kicks would do the job…

  “I would not do that if I were you,” a voice said.

  I froze, my heel hovering an inch from the panel. It was as if I’d been shot by one of the mercenaries’ stun guns, causing every muscle in my body to tense and stop working – paralyzing me.

  “Hello, Jake,” the voice added.

  My mind drained of every useful thought, every clever plan. Right then, all I knew was a name.

  Slowly, I turned my head.

  “Hello, Marjorie,” I croaked.

  39

  He looked remarkably healthy, considering the journey he must have had. A few bruises, many scratches and a cut on his arm that needed stitches. That wasn’t a bad return against an open hunt across one of the wildest landscapes in the world. She had always admired that about the boy – he was a survivor.

  But, oh, his face when he saw her! It was like he had been hit by a snowball in the middle of the summer: shock and confusion. Marjorie clenched her jaw to stop herself from grinning.

  Wait until he sees the knife.

  Her hand remained tight around the weapon hidden in her coat pocket. Still, she was a little disappointed. Jake’s plan to escape seemed to involve vandalizing the helicopter and little else. She had come to expect more from the boy.

  “That panel is the automatic door seal,” she explained. “If it fails, the helicopter door will close, trapping you inside. I’m not sure that would aid your escape.”

  He swore at her, which was unnecessary, and then spat at her, which was just crude. Was this really the same boy she had once hoped to recruit into the organization?

  “What do you want?” he snapped. “That old guy said you were gone.”

  She gripped the knife handle even tighter. This was a tricky situation. Jake had shifted back, so she would have to climb into the helicopter to use the knife. He was well positioned to stop her with his feet, which he seemed eager to use. But if she could get him away from this place, she could take her time.

  40

  Come on… Come closer, you witch.

  My legs were tensed, ready to strike. Just one hard kick to her nose. It wouldn’t help me escape, but it would be a tiny bit of revenge for everything this woman had done to my family. I could tell she was fighting a smirk, and I wanted to boot it off her face. But she stepped back, shoved her hand into her parka and pulled the coat tighter against the cold. Frost glistened in her snow-coloured hair. It surprised me to see her shiver – this seemed the perfect place for an ice queen.

  She sighed, a cloud that shimmered in the moonlight. “You are right,” she said. “I have been removed from this operation.”

  “Good riddance,” I grunted. “Who’s that posh guy that spoke to me?”

  “Lord Osthwait? He is here?”

  “Yeah. He actually caught me, which you never could.”

  “Because I didn’t want to.”

  I lowered my legs, aware they looked silly hovering in the air.

  “Darling Jake…”

  “Oh, stop it,” I groaned. “Stop it with your ‘darlings’ and sugary talk. You’re a cold-hearted cow, Marjorie. You’ve tried to kill my family a dozen times.”

  “Yes. Each of those was, I believed, heartbreakingly necessary. An end that justified its terrible means. Your actions put the organization’s entire plan at risk. There was no other way of stopping you.”

  I sat up, yanking against my cuffs so that I faced her. She had probably been sent to talk me into revealing the Drak Terma, so I needed to watch my words. She was far smarter than me. I had to keep insulting her until she gave up and went away, so I could concentrate on getting to that cave.

  “Your ‘plan’ involved killing millions, Marjorie.”

  Her eyes seemed to turn black, like a snowman’s, as if she’d been injected with rage. She blinked, and breathed another frost cloud.

  “Controlled depopulation,” she admitted. “It is controversial, yes.”

  “Con
troversial? That’s like Hitler saying the First World War was a ‘bit dodgy’. You’re crazy and we’re going to stop you.”

  “Second World War.”

  “What?”

  “Hitler. The Second World War.”

  “Oh, shut your face and get lost. Go tell Lord Snooty that he’s not getting the Drak Terma no matter who he sends over.”

  “Jake, listen to me.”

  “No.”

  “I want to help you.”

  “Then go jump in a crevasse.”

  “I want to help you escape.”

  41

  That got him. He had been doing so well. She had felt proud of him. His attitude was vulgar, but his defiance was admirable. Of course he was scared – that was clear from his eyes and the tremble in his voice – but he’d tried to hide it.

  His family were obviously his chief concern. Marjorie guessed that he still hoped to save them, probably by finding the Hall of Records in this mountain. But he couldn’t escape alone. He could spit and swear all he liked, but he needed her help.

  “I want to help you, Jake,” she repeated.

  He swore again, but his eyes flicked past her to the operation tents as if checking if the mercenaries had heard. He was confused. She needed to press her advantage.

  “Jake, listen to me.”

  “No, you shut your—”

  “Just listen to me for once. Everything you said is true. Controlled depopulation is wrong. I was part of a council, the leaders of the organization, but I turned against them. I came to realize that the end didn’t justify the means. They couldn’t pick and choose who lived and died.”