by E. J. Blaine
“Come on,” said Jack with a grin. They gave Padger a tour of the ship, and he was clearly delighted by it, peppering them with questions about every mechanical detail and expressing polite disbelief about the Daedalus’ range, speed, and ceiling.
Jack managed to direct enough questions back at Padger to satisfy his own suspicious nature. Padger had flown in the war, then come over to India with the RAF’s No. 20 Squadron and flown patrols along the Northwest Frontier. Eventually he’d mustered out, bought his Bristol as surplus, and had been making a meager living ever since flying mail, cargo, and the occasional passenger among the region’s hill stations. Jack decided he liked him.
After the tour, they ended up at a bar Padger recommended, enjoying an excellent meal of curried chicken and talking shop. Eventually, the subject of why they’d come to Almora came up. Apparently, Doc and the others had decided they could trust Padger as well. Doc told him about the Silver Star, the poison that they were searching for, and about the missing Dr. Rhys.
“Well that’s a hell of a story,” Padger said when she was finished. “I met your friend Rhys a couple times. Brought in some packages for him. Seemed a good bloke. This Silver Star lot, though, they sound like trouble.”
“That they are,” Jack agreed. “Not people to be trusted with a deadly poison, to say the least.”
“You said they’re about magic and spirits and all that mumbo-jumbo, eh.” They were drinking ale from large earthenware mugs. Padger tipped his back and soaked his mustache with foam. “Now, did you say that fellow up at the station mentioned the Servants of the Nine?” he asked.
“That’s right,” said Doc. “You’ve heard of them?”
He grinned at her over his ale. Jack had noticed Padger couldn’t seem to resist flirting with Doc. “You fly around these hills long enough, my dear, and you hear a little of everything. There’s hardly a village around these parts doesn’t have a couple yobbos puffing themselves up claiming they’re connected to the nine unknown men somehow.”
“Nine unknown men?” Doc asked.
“Old legend. Goes way, way back.”
Jack could see Padger relishing his role as the center of attention.
“Started with old Emperor Ashoka, they say. He’s sort of India’s King Arthur. Unified the land and ruled a golden age long ago, that kind of thing. The story goes that he collected philosophers and scientists at his palace, and they discovered all kinds of things. Ashoka figured a lot of it was stuff the world just wasn’t ready for. Way beyond even modern science. Real Frankenstein stuff.”
Jack and the others traded looks around the table.
“So he appointed nine wise men to guard the secret knowledge,” Padger continued. “And to develop it for a time when the rest of us were ready. And as time went on, they chose successors and followers, and the traditions got handed down. Eventually it turned into a kind of secret society. Like I said, these days, somebody wants to sound bigger than he is, he starts hinting how he’s tied to the nine men. Fairy stories, all of it. But even if it’s nonsense, sounds like something that would catch the attention of your Silver Star fellows, doesn’t it?”
The rest of the table agreed it did. It was the first thought that had occurred to Jack as well. Legends of an ancient secret society guarding mysterious knowledge would be like catnip to Crowley and his followers. And if the Silver Star was sniffing around these mountains, who knew what they might have found?
“You know the local stories and customs, Padger,” Doc was saying. “Doctor Rhys’s notes claim he got a sample of the medicine we’re looking for from a healer and mystic of the Bhotiya people. Do you know anything about them?”
“Ah, he probably means the Long Walker,” said Padger as he scooped up another serving of rice and curry. “The Bhotiya are hill nomads. A little more settled these days, but still doesn’t take much to shake them loose, send them roaming back through the mountains. The Long Walker’s one they still tell stories about. Old fellow. Supposedly been places no other man’s ever seen. Has magic of his own, some say.” Padger laughed. “If you had to pick someone to be one of old Ashoka’s nine wise men, he’d make the list for sure.”
“Do you know how to find him?” Jack asked.
Padger shrugged. “Never met him myself, but there’s a village way back in the high valleys. He lives on a hilltop near there, unless he’s taken off again. The locals bring him food and the like. There’s no landing a plane anywhere near, and it’s a rough journey by land. Now with something like your airship though…”
Jack grinned. “If you wanted a ride, Padger, all you had to do was say so.”
“Wouldn’t mind it at that,” Padger said happily.
Chapter 9
The following morning, Padger joined them at the airstrip with a battered leather bag slung over his shoulder. The Daedalus took off into a clear blue sky and flew north, higher into the mountains. Padger paced the command deck behind Jack, looking over the comms and navigation stations, or simply gazing out the panoramic windows. Jack could tell he was delighted by the airship, though he tried to hide it as he teased Jack about his “flying parlor” and joked about “real piloting” in his Biff.
Jack noticed the ship becoming less responsive as they rose, an effect of the thinner air. But they were still well within the Daedalus’ operating envelope. He marveled at the landscape they passed over. The land was folded into one steep ridge after another like a sheet of paper. At first these were steeply terraced, with narrow strips of cultivated land in rows all the way to the top. But soon the terraces were gone and there was nothing below but ridge after ridge of thick forest.
Padger guided them seemingly by instinct, with occasional direction to turn more to the east. But after an hour or so of climbing into higher elevations, Jack spotted a cleared area ahead with a small village along a ridge.
“Right, that’s the place,” said Padger.
Jack brought the Daedalus in low over the village. It was a maze of narrow paths lined by high stone walls. Buildings crowded on top of each other on the few pieces of flat land. From the looks of it, the locals had laboriously built even those flat spaces by packing earth behind thick retaining walls.
The most likely landing spot was a packed dirt clearing a few hundred yards outside the village. Jack brought the ship in and set her down. After Duke and Rivets moored the Daedalus, they got out and looked around. There was no sign of the excited crowds that had welcomed them in Almora. They left Rivets to watch the ship while Padger and the rest of the crew headed into the village.
“This far back, they likely don’t speak English,” said Padger. “But I can get by in the local lingo.”
“I speak a smidgen of Hindi, as it happens,” said Duke. “Enough to get myself in trouble at least.”
“Might help,” said Padger.
They entered the village by a winding path between two high walls leaning outward from the path itself. Multi-storied stone dwellings loomed over them, dotted with windows and connected by ropes flying brightly colored pennants. Jack spotted someone looking down on them from an open window high above. He waved, but the face vanished, and the window quickly shut.
The path brought them to a small central plaza crowded around with more tall stone houses. There was a fount of fresh water at the center of the plaza, but the place was deserted.
They spread out, studying the buildings and examining the well. Jack tried knocking on a door, but the only answer was the sound of shuffling footsteps inside.
“Shy, are you?” Padger muttered. “Well, we’ll see about that.”
He sat on the stone shelf at the lip of the fount and rooted around in his bag, coming out with a glass jar sealed with a rubber strip. Inside was a milky white liquid. He tossed the jar to Jack.
“What’s this?” Jack asked.
“Chhaang,” said Padger. “The local beer. They claim it’s a cure-all, but they say that about everything around here. Drink up, and I’ll get them out to chat.”
&nb
sp; Jack opened the jar as Padger shouted something at him in the local language. Doc and the others looked on curiously.
The chhaang had an unusual taste, but Jack felt a rush of warmth through his extremities. It must get cold up here in the winters. He could see how this would be a popular drink.
“What are you saying?” he asked Padger.
“Apologized to you,” Padger said as he opened a second jar. “Told you I’d heard they made really good chhaang here, but I guessed it wasn’t true after all, and that out of town stuff I gave you must be the best there is. They won’t stand for that, I wager.”
Jack grinned as a door creaked open and a bald, middle-aged man poked his head out. The man studied Padger for a moment, then shouted something at him.
Padger shouted back and brandished his jar of chhaang at him. A moment later, the man emerged with an earthenware jug and crossed to the well. Jack looked on in amusement as they argued in the local dialect, then traded vessels and drank. Within a few minutes they were fast friends, sitting side by side, drinking and laughing.
Gradually, other faces appeared at windows. Doors opened. Jack waved at a little boy in a doorway and got a shy smile in return. A few more people stepped out into the plaza with jars of their own. Apparently a consensus had been reached that, if the strangers were starting a drinking party, they must not be all bad.
“Village healer lives over there,” Padger announced, gesturing toward a wooden door at the far end of the plaza. “My mate here says he’ll introduce us.”
He led Jack, Doc, and Padger to the door, where he knocked loudly and called out. The door opened slightly, and there was a quick round of discussion through the crack. Eventually, the healer silently welcomed them inside and led them into a small room lined with wooden cabinets and shelves, studded with tarnished brass fittings. The varnished black wood looked ancient, long since rubbed smooth by countless hands over the years. Dusty jars were stacked in every open cubbyhole and atop the shelves, almost as high as the rough-hewn roof beams. Sunlight filtered through a window and fell on a low, round table in the center of the floor. They sat around this on cushions and their host brought tea in a polished brass pot.
Padger translated as Doc thanked him for seeing them. She told him she was a healer from America. There was a strange poison killing people there, she explained, and she had heard of something called the Mother of Medicines that might protect people and save many lives.
The healer’s expression grew grim as Padger translated, then he spoke, gesturing to his cabinets.
“He says the Mother of Medicines would have helped, sure enough,” Padger translated. “Deadly poison itself in its pure form. But the old healers knew how to combine it with herbs or treat it with metals, make different medicines for just about anything.”
“You said ‘would have helped?’”
Padger and the healer conversed quietly for another minute. “He says it’s gone now,” Padger explained. Says it was hard to grow around here. Needed the help of the spirits, and the spirits don’t talk to man anymore. Everything’s about spirits up here. They just used it all up if you ask me. Anyway, he says there was still some about in his father’s day, but even then it was hard to find. Now,” Padger shook his head. “No more.”
Doc took this in and nodded. Jack understood her concern. Whatever the Silver Star was using to make their poison, they didn’t seem to have any shortage of it.
“Does he know where we can find the Long Walker?” Doc asked finally.
Padger asked. “Half hour up the trail to the west. He says the old fellow has a hut on a hillside up there. If we see him, we can’t miss it.”
Something about the phrasing bothered Jack. “Is that how he said it? If we see him?”
Padger turned back to the healer and confirmed it. “He says not everybody can find him. But he’s very wise. If we see him, he can help us.”
Jack wanted to ask what that meant, but the healer was rising, as were Padger and Doc. The interview was over.
They thanked the healer, and Doc gave him a set of steel forceps and a bottle of sterile alcohol from her kit. Then he showed them out again.
The party in the plaza was in full swing as they emerged. The villagers’ former reserve had vanished, and Jack realized they were teaching Duke and Deadeye the local drinking songs and laughing uproariously at their efforts to keep up.
Jack nudged Padger. “You’re a useful fellow to have around,” he said.
Padger grinned back. “Kind of you to say so. You’d be amazed how many doors you can open with a handy bottle of hooch. Worked pretty much the same way with officers back in the Flying Corps too.”
They headed out of the village along a narrow trail. Steep slopes rose to their right. Jack was amazed by the deep green of the foliage. Beyond that lay the imposing mountains, a jagged wall of gray stone and snow. Gradually they fell silent and listened to the cries of distant birds echoing across the hills. Doc was the first to spot the sturdy wooden hut perched on an outcrop high above. They’d seen no signs of human habitation since they left the village; this had to be the place. Jack wasn’t sure how it avoided sliding down the hill in the first strong wind, but it looked homey enough.
Then he heard a thin, reedy voice calling from the distance.
“Hello!” It called in English. “Come and sit. I brought khaja. There’s plenty to share.”
They all looked around, but it was several seconds before Jack made out a tiny figure sitting atop a flat rock by the side of the trail. The figure waved, so Jack waved back.
“You think that’s him?” Doc asked.
Padger shrugged. “If he isn’t, he probably knows him.”
“What’s khaja?” asked Doc.
“Means eat and run,” Padger answered. “Snacks. Could be most anything. Let’s find out!”
The speaker was a wizened old man, Jack saw as they came closer. He wore tan trousers and a tunic with a heavy mantle draped over his shoulders the color of the mountains. A white skullcap was perched on his shaved head. He grinned and beckoned them over.
“Come and sit with me. Have some tea and tell me about your travels.”
“You speak English!” said Doc. They stepped up onto the smooth, worn stone and settled down in a circle.
“A wanderer taught me, long ago,” the old man said.
“Are you the one they call the Long Walker?” Doc asked.
He grinned and opened the flap on his leather bag. He pulled out a ceramic jug and unstopped it. A tuft of steam drifted out with the smell of tea.
“They’ve called me all kinds of things,” he said. “I used to wander myself when I was younger.”
“And you’re just sitting here waiting for us with tea and khaja?” Padger asked.
The old man produced a stack of small, engraved brass cups—four of them, Jack noted—and poured them each some tea.
“Lucky for you I am,” he said with a smile. He tossed his head in the direction of the hut. “Otherwise you’d have to climb all the way up there.”
Padger nodded and accepted his cup of tea.
Over tea and a tasty mixture of roasted beans and dried fruit, they answered the old man’s many questions about the places they’d been and their adventures. Jack noticed Padger was taken aback by their stories of clashes with the Silver Star. He could see him wondering whether he should believe them or not.
“Such busy lives,” the old man said, refilling their cups. “We’ve nothing so interesting here. Whatever brings you to such a quiet place?”
Doc once more told the story of the poison, and how they’d heard it might have something to do with the Mother of Medicines.
He looked them over for more than a minute, studying each of their faces in turn and saying nothing. “We are each made of flesh and spirit,” the old man said at last. “Both must be in balance for us to live and be well. Flesh and spirit too, are made up of different elements. Different tissues form the body; different energies for
m the spirit. All must be in balance or we grow ill in body or spirit. A healer’s art is to sense imbalance and correct it. If an energy is too weak, stimulate it with medicines. If it is too strong, stimulate its opposite until balance is restored. You are a healer. You have seen this too, yes?”
Doc nodded politely over her tea.
“That is what the Mother of Medicines was for. It comes from a plant that once grew here. It was hard to grow. Harder still to use properly. In its pure form, it stimulates all the energies, all the tissues. It’s too much. The patient is overwhelmed and the result is only death. So the medicine must be tamed, its strength channeled so it stimulates only what is weak and restores the patient’s health.”
“But it doesn’t grow here any longer?” Doc said.
“It does not,” said the old man. “But it was never the true medicine.”
Jack and Doc traded a look. “What do you mean?” Doc asked.
“What grew here was only a shadow of the true medicine,” the old man said. “It only comes into its full strength when grown in the eye of the world.”
Doc leaned forward, fascinated. “Eye of the world?”
“Where this world and the spirit world overlap. That is where the true medicine was found.”
Jack set down his cup. “This world…and the spirit world?”
“There must be such a place,” the old man said. “How else could the spirits reach our world? Many things are possible there. The true medicine could do even more. But even it is just a shadow. The ancient scholars spoke of a way to temper the pure medicine so it fuels all the energies in balance, yielding bodily perfection and spiritual enlightenment. Beside that, what is curing sleeplessness or gallstones? Trivial.”
“So people sought this place out,” said Doc, “and brought the medicine back.”
“But it grew poorly away from the spirit world, and its medicine was weak. Eventually it died out and was gone.”
“You went there, didn’t you?” Doc said, fixing him with her eyes. “You brought it back.”
“I wandered many places when I was young,” he said. “I saw many things. I’m old now. Now I stay here and tend my chickens. It’s nice to have visitors.”
