Jake Atlas and the Quest for the Crystal Mountain

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  Wind howled into the cave.

  He had this coming. He always had to win, always had to fight. He never gave up, no matter what the cost. He had taken everything from her, and he didn’t care at all. He didn’t care about anything. Even now he was about to blast his way into a sacred mountain. He deserved this.

  She slid the blade from her pocket.

  Jake turned.

  The stun gun trembled in his grip as he stared at her, and then at the boy monk who had helped them reach this cave.

  The gun clattered to the cave floor.

  His voice came out soft, but also like steel, a strength that caused Marjorie to limp back a step. She had listened to Jake for hundreds of hours on recordings from bugs planted in his house. She had heard him shout at his parents and scream at his sister, but she had never heard such strength or certainty in the four words he now whispered.

  “I can’t do it.”

  She stopped, her hand and the blade frozen.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I won’t do it,” Jake said.

  He looked again to the boy monk, whose head rose from between his knees. A toothy smile rose across the boy’s face, and Marjorie realized that they were friends.

  “Manchester United?” the monk whispered.

  “I broke my promise to you, Tenzin. But I’m making it again, and I’m sticking to it. This is as far as I go.”

  Marjorie stared, struggling to understand. This wasn’t possible. He wasn’t about to surrender to avoid damaging a mountain. He had collapsed a mountain in Honduras!

  She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind or the snow.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Your family…”

  “They wouldn’t want me to,” he replied. “I can find another way to help them.”

  No! No, he couldn’t do this! This was Jake Atlas, the destroyer – of treasures, tombs, lives and plans. He was a villain.

  “I can’t do it,” Jake repeated.

  A tune began to play in Marjorie’s head. She heard it even above the wind and the storm, and the cries of the mercenaries outside the cave. La Bohème.

  All the things she had lost. None of that was this boy’s fault. He was just a boy. Why had she even come here?

  Her arm slumped, and the phurba fell to the rocks.

  “Neither can I,” she whispered.

  45

  OK, I got it.

  I understood the moment I saw the knife shaking in Marjorie’s hand. She had planned to kill me. I wasn’t angry, or surprised. In fact, I felt sorry for her as she slumped to her knees in the middle of the cave, and the last of her strength came out in a long, frost-cloud sigh.

  I had always known there was a connection between us, a mad rivalry. My sister had said I was obsessed with her, and I’d denied it, while knowing she was right. But I realized then, as I stood over Marjorie in that frozen cave, that I didn’t even know her. I knew her name, but almost nothing else other than this one fact: I had reduced her to this. She had an obsession too – she had been in charge of an operation. That was taken from her because of me, and she had wanted revenge.

  But now she had given up on that too. All she had left was this cave and this storm and her broken dreams, and a tune she began to hum as she slumped to the ground and curled up, shivering.

  I pulled off my coat and laid it over her as a blanket. I wouldn’t last long without it in this cold, but I didn’t need to, anyway – the mercenaries would storm this cave soon and I’d be caught.

  Tenzin had stayed silent, watching this strange moment. I hadn’t told him about her, and it didn’t seem right to now. It didn’t feel like a victory, and not just because we were still under siege. Too many people had lost for anyone to say they had won. Tenzin had lost his home, Marjorie had lost everything, and I had lost this hunt. But I had found something, too, along the way.

  Tenzin leaned closer and nudged me with his shoulder.

  “Now you see, Manchester United. No need for your smarty-goggles.”

  He never explained that comment, but he didn’t need to. He had told me we saw things differently, and in many ways we still did. But I was beginning to change.

  “Never gonna like yak butter tea,” I replied.

  Tenzin grinned, and I think we might have hugged, but Lord Osthwait bellowed at us from outside the cave. He’d found a megaphone and sounded more pompous than ever.

  “Jake Atlas!” he boomed. “Marjorie Smith! There is no escape.”

  Marjorie Smith? I wouldn’t have thought that. Tenzin and I tried to help her stand, but she just slumped into our arms. In the end, we sat her upright against the frozen wall. If part of her still wanted to see me get hurt, she had a great view.

  “Jake Atlas!” roared the annoying aristocrat. “Your time is up!”

  “You keep saying that!” I yelled. “But I’m still here and you’re still there.”

  I was trying to sound cool, but my hands were shaking as I picked up the stun gun from the ground. Any moment now, they would storm this cave.

  “Tenzin,” I said. “If these guys realize we know each other, you’ll become their enemy too. So don’t say my name. Just act scared and they should leave you alone.”

  “But, Manchester United, you are my friend. I will not say I do not know you.”

  “You have to, Tenzin.”

  “I will not.”

  More shouts from outside. Lights from smart-goggles beamed through the cave entrance as the mercenaries stalked closer.

  I aimed the stun gun at the sliver of night. I doubted I’d be able to put up much of a fight, but after everything I’d been through I wasn’t walking out of here. They were going to have to drag me out.

  “Just so you know, Tenzin, I’m going to fight.”

  “Do you have to?” he asked.

  “Not really, but I don’t want to surrender, not to these guys.”

  One of the mercenaries charged through the cave entrance. Light from smart-goggles dazzled my eyes, so it took me a second to react. I pulled the trigger on the stun gun, but nothing happened. I tried again, knowing already that the weapon must have broken in the explosion. The mercenary roared as he sprang at me in full attack.

  If he’d got his hands on me he’d have dragged me from that cave in bloody pieces. But he didn’t even touch me, because right then there was a flash of crimson, a flap of robe. A foot shot past me and connected with the mercenary’s face, shattering his smart-goggles and breaking his nose with a sickening snap. A hand grabbed the guy’s shoulder and he flipped over. His legs flew up and his head struck the cave floor. He lay on the rocks, groaning and dazed. Tenzin stood over him in the coolest fighting pose ever. My friend’s jaw was set, his eyes sharp and narrow, and there was no trace of his usual smile. He had just taken this mercenary out with the coolest ninja moves I’d ever seen!

  At first I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “I… I thought you didn’t fight?” I asked, finally.

  Tenzin’s jaw unlocked to let a smile rise across his cheeks. “Do not does not mean cannot, Manchester United. Shaolin Kung Fu. We are sworn to defend Kailas.”

  “I… Why didn’t you help me earlier, then?”

  “Fighting is last resort, Manchester United.”

  “So you waited for me to get blown up until you joined in?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  I could hardly believe it. This whole time Tenzin was an expert fighter? It was good news, because Lord Osthwait was roaring orders again outside the cave.

  “Can you fight forty of these goons?” I asked.

  “I do not think so. But only two can fit through this entrance. So we fight one each.”

  “But one each twenty times?”

  “Get ready,” Tenzin said.

  Outside the cave, torches flashed and boots crunched over snow. Tenzin got into his fighting pose, ready for action. I ditched the broken stun gun and tried to copy him, but I’m not sure I looked half as co
ol or confident. My hands trembled. My heart thumped faster, and my vision blurred with nervous sweat even in the freezing cave. One of my arms was so badly swollen that I could barely move it.

  “Here they come!” I warned.

  But they didn’t. No one came.

  We waited, ready for the attack. But no one entered. I glanced at Tenzin, who shrugged but didn’t break his fighting stance. The wind settled for a second, and in the quiet I heard a grunt and a thud. Someone cried out, and a black-gloved hand flopped through the entrance. One of the mercenaries had collapsed outside the cave. Something had taken the goon out. Something was taking them all out.

  “Manchester United? What is going on?”

  “I think it’s the guardian,” I hissed. “It’s the guardian of the mountain.”

  I felt cemented to the spot, a statue. It wasn’t just fear that stopped me moving. Forty mercenaries scared me, but the creature that had followed me across Tibet, that had taken out Kyle and Veronika Flutes, and that was now outside this cave – that was pure terror.

  “Have no fear,” Tenzin whispered. “The guardian only hunts those who seek to enter this mountain. You are no longer its enemy, Manchester United.”

  Wasn’t I? Was I sure? I did want to honour my promise to Tenzin, but part of me still wanted to reach the end of this hunt, to find out where the emerald tablets led…

  “What if I’m not one hundred percent on that?” I asked.

  “Then it will probably attack you, just in case.”

  “What?”

  “Be calm. It is coming.”

  46

  Outside the cave, the fighting had stopped. Wind screamed through the opening in the rock, and then silence, other than the rasping of my frantic breaths. The black-gloved hand that had fallen through the entrance slid back as something dragged the mercenary’s body away from the cave. It was clearing a path to reach us.

  “Get back!” I wailed. “Get back or I’ll—”

  “Jake?” a voice called. “Jake, is that you?”

  “Mum?”

  I heard my dad call out too, and then my sister, and a second later they all rushed into the cave. There was no guardian monster out there – it was them!

  I fell to my knees. My body turned from concrete to wet paper, and I dropped, totally spent. Mum rushed to catch me and wrapped me in a hug. Dad hugged me next, and I think Pan did as well, but I was too dazed to be sure. Of course I was delighted to see them, but also relieved that a monster hadn’t stormed into the cave, and that Tenzin and I were no longer alone.

  They had come for me.

  About time, too.

  I could see from the storm of bruises down Mum’s face, Dad’s black eye beneath his broken glasses and the cut across Pan’s nose that their journey here had been just as tough as ours. Seeing my family like that reminded me how much I’d missed them. It hurt to think they had been in danger and I wasn’t there.

  Not that they needed my help. I found out later that they had guessed I’d been caught, and made the same decision to reach Kailas, to save me. But I didn’t understand how they had found me in this cave without the Drak Terma.

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked.

  Mum smiled and wiped dirt off my cheek. “We just followed the chaos.”

  Pan looked baffled by all of this. She swept the torch on her smart-goggles around the ice walls, and then at Marjorie, who smiled weakly at us from the side of the cave.

  “Why is she here?” Pan asked. She shifted her glare to Tenzin. “Or him?”

  “Tenzin helped me get here,” I rasped. “He saved my life. About ten times, I think.”

  Mum couldn’t help herself – she grabbed Tenzin and hugged him too. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Welcome,” Tenzin said.

  Dad already had his serious face on as he paced the sides of the cave, examining the thick ice that covered the walls. “So this cave leads into the mountain?” he asked.

  “According to the Drak Terma,” I replied. “Maybe there’s a door behind the ice. But this is as far as we can go.”

  Dad nudged his glasses back up his nose and looked at me through their shattered lenses. “What?”

  “We can’t enter this mountain,” I insisted. “It’s sacred.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, and then looked at Mum. They had another of their silent exchanges, only this time it ended with them smiling.

  “So you weren’t here to find the Hall of Records?” Mum asked. “You were here to defend the mountain.”

  “I guess so,” I muttered.

  “Manchester United was brave,” Tenzin said.

  Pan looked at Tenzin as if I’d told her he was our bitter enemy. “So, what, you have a new partner now?” she asked me. “He’s not your twin, you know.”

  “I know, Pan.”

  She shrugged and redirected her torchlight at the rear wall of the cave. “So, let me get this straight. All this time we’ve been after the Hall of Records, and now all that’s in our way is a little bit of ice, but we’re not even going to look?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  Pan shrugged. “Cool.”

  “So, what now?” I asked.

  Mum stopped smiling. Her face went all serious – narrow eyes and tight jaw – and she touched the amulet around her neck, a sure sign of impending trouble.

  “There’s something you should see,” she told me.

  Tenzin and I followed them out of the cave and into the night. The wind had calmed, and fires flared around the slope where slicks of oil still burned from the explosion. Zigzag lines of flame cast orange flickers across the snow. Around them, mercenaries lay unconscious where they had been taken out by my family.

  Only Lord Osthwait had escaped. He was charging downhill, slipping over and staggering up, waving his arms and calling for help.

  Further down the slope, near the lake, other lights moved. At first it seemed like a wall of light coming towards us – but they were different lights, moving together. Some were headlights of snowmobiles or ski tanks, others super-lumen beams of smart-goggles. Engines roared, crawler tracks churned up snow, and gruff voices barked commands as the silhouette army marched towards us up the slope.

  “They’re not just mercenaries, are they?” I asked.

  “They’re hunters,” Dad said. “About fifty of them. We met a few on the way here, but news spread and now they all know where we are.”

  “They all want that billion dollars?”

  “No,” Pan replied. “They all suspect something big is hidden in this mountain. Most are coming for that. We’re just a bonus.”

  I turned and looked up at Mount Kailas, a black giant that seemed to sway gently as puffy grey clouds drifted past its sheer cliffs.

  “We can’t let them,” I said. “I promised Tenzin I’d protect this mountain.”

  “I know,” Mum agreed. “We’ll do our best.”

  “I’ll help,” Tenzin added.

  “Tenzin’s a ninja,” I explained.

  Dad glanced at him, but didn’t look too surprised. “We ran into Kyle and Veronika Flutes on the way here,” he said. “They were unconscious. Was that you?”

  How could I answer that? Just the memory of what I’d heard outside Chui Gompa was more terrifying than this whole horde of hunters. None of my family would believe me, and, anyway, I didn’t even know what had taken Kyle and Veronika out. I hadn’t seen anything, after all.

  “No,” I said. “That was something else.”

  “Another hunter?”

  “No. Just … something else.”

  I shielded my face as a searchlight beamed from one of the hunters’ vehicles, picking me out in front of the cave. Other lights shone on Tenzin and my family as the hunters stalked closer, black against the glare of their own lights. They looked like a proper nasty bunch.

  “There’s still time to flee if we want to,” Dad suggested.

  He sounded hopeful, and I didn’t blame him �
� running would be the easier and less painful option. But these hunters weren’t coming for us. They were coming for the mountain I’d promised to protect.

  “Remember,” Mum said, “this doesn’t have to be a fair fight. Use whatever you can to take them down. They’ll underestimate you because you’re young. Use that against them. Go for them wherever it hurts.”

  I glanced at Pan and then Tenzin, and we all grinned. It was funny, we had been on this hunt for what seemed like for ever. I had been so obsessed with winning, but right now we were about to lose and it somehow felt right. We were about to fail for something we believed in. We were making a stand.

  “May I join you?” a voice croaked.

  Marjorie crawled alongside us. She looked shattered, her trembling hand barely able to hold her own knife. She wouldn’t be much help, but I nodded.

  “Good to have you with us,” I said.

  Weirdly, she started to cry. That lady had a lot of issues, but I didn’t have time to worry about them.

  Now the hunters were coming.

  We should have been focused on the danger ahead, but Tenzin turned and stared at the rock ledge above the cave. “Manchester United? I think someone else is coming to join us.”

  That did not sound good.

  “Oh, God…” I whispered.

  “What is it, Jake?” Mum demanded.

  “Remember the lama warned us about the guardian spirit of this mountain? That’s what took out Kyle and Veronika.”

  “It is OK,” Tenzin assured us. “The guardian is on our side. We are all protecting the mountain, so we are safe.” He was grinning now, wider than I had ever seen him – and I’d seen him grin a lot. “Now these hunters are the ones in trouble.”

  I turned back to face the hunters. I could see their faces, slavering like wild dogs closing in on a kill. I guessed they had agreed to catch us first and then combine forces to find the secret in the mountain.

  I remembered something the lama said at Yerpa Gompa: “In this land legends are not always just legends.”

  Above me I heard bare feet on rock, the thumping feet of something far heavier than a human. There was a grunt and a snort, and then the same sound I heard as I hid at Chui Gompa – that savage, spitting roar. It came from above, and I saw its shadow before I saw what caused it, before it leaped from the ledge and over our heads – before the guardian of the mountain landed in front of us in the snow.