by Alex Archer
* * *
THREE HOURS LATER, they sat in groups at the campsite around fires that burned low in the darkness. Protected behind brush and boulders situated to hide the glow of the flames, Annja sat with Klykov and Rao. The monks gathered in two groups around other fires and talked among themselves in voices that sounded more like songs than conversation. Annja envied them their language. She was good at languages, but she hadn’t learned much of the Cambodian dialects.
Although they had brought MREs in their packs, the monks had foraged as they’d walked to the jungle. The result was a nice collection of wild vegetables they’d used to make a hearty soup, also flavored with spices they’d taken from the local flora. Klykov had taken the soup, but he had wanted meat, as well. Annja had reminded him that the MREs weren’t known for their tasty choices and pointed out that the soup was fresh and hot. He’d eaten his fill.
Finished with her second helping, Annja scrubbed her bowl and spoon clean with a towelette and set them aside to dry. She cleaned Klykov’s and Rao’s bowls and silverware as well, then burned the towelettes in the fire.
With her back against a rock, Annja positioned herself so the glow coming from the fire played over her journal. She detailed the trip through the jungle in shorthand she’d learned and created for herself over the years.
“What are you writing?” Klykov asked. He capped the ibuprophen bottle he’d just taken capsules from.
“Notes, mainly.”
“About what?”
“Our trip. What I’ve seen of the mountain.”
“You’ve also been sketching.” Klykov extended a hand. “May I see?”
Reluctantly, Annja handed the journal over. She didn’t let many people look at her private thoughts, but Klykov had come a long way with her and been through a lot to be with her.
Klykov flipped slowly through the pages, taking his time with the ones that had images. “Why do you draw things if you carry a camera?”
“Because when I draw something, I feel it more than I do when I simply take a picture. Drawing is more…intimate.” That was the best she could explain it. She also liked to have two different views of important sites and artifacts.
“That is a very good likeness of you,” Rao said, nodding at a sketch of Klykov standing at the Seventh-Kilometer Market. The other page had a drawing of Fedotov. The man appeared even more bear-like in the image she’d drawn.
“I look old.” Klykov frowned for a moment, then he smiled up at Annja. “I am joking. I know I am old.” He laughed. “This is a very good picture of Fedotov. You should send him a copy.”
“When this is over, maybe I will.”
“Da. He would be very proud of such a thing.” Klykov returned the journal and lay back with his hands behind his head. His latest pistol lay beside him on a towel.
Annja worked for a little while longer on her journal, letting her mind wander. Even though it was dark, it was still early for her. Apparently it wasn’t too early for Klykov, though. The man was asleep within minutes and softly snoring.
Rao smiled. “He is tired.”
“We’ve been on the run since New York.” Annja put her journal away. “I suppose you have been, too.”
“Yes.”
“Are the monks posting guards?”
“Throughout the night, yes. We do not wish to be…surprised.”
“I’ve had enough surprises.”
“Sequeira is not a man to give up on something he wants. If we have not lost him, he will be here.” Rao fed small sticks to the fire.
“I think so, too. I can help with the guard detail.”
Rao shook his head. “The monks will not allow it. You are to be watched.”
“They’re still having trust issues?” Annja grinned to show she had no hard feelings.
“If you watch, you do not have to trust.” Rao folded his arms around his knees and looked relaxed. “This temple is important to them.”
“And to you?”
“Yes, but not as important as it is to them. They have been looking for it much longer than I have. I only hope that we are fortunate enough to find it.”
“We’ll find it,” Annja replied. “It’s out here.”
“How do you know?”
Annja paused, trying to think of the best way to put her thoughts into words. “I just feel it, Rao. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Then I hope in the morning you will feel your way to where the temple lies. The longer we take, the more time Sequeira or someone like him has to catch up to us.”
“I know. There’s something else that’s bothering me, though.”
Rao looked at her inquisitively. “Yes?”
“The monks that hid the temple went to a lot of trouble to move it here. They wouldn’t have left it here without defenses.”
“No, I don’t think they did either.” Rao fed a few more sticks to the fire. “We will be careful when we find it.”
Chapter 39
By midmorning, Annja was covered in sweat despite the chill that clung to the mountain. The grade had increased and the going was more difficult. Even the monks, seemingly as nimble as mountain goats, struggled with the climb. What Klykov lacked in finesse and youthful vigor, he made up for in determination and managed to keep pace. From the brightness in his eyes, Annja knew the thrill of discovery was pushing him on, as well.
Even though she’d been looking, Annja hadn’t noticed the stone that potentially marked the temple’s hiding spot until she’d climbed above it. Standing on a small ridge to sip water and rest for just a moment, she’d gazed down over the jungle hundreds of feet below and spotted the marker.
Catching it in that moment, in the right light, from the right angle, and looking for something, anything really, she saw it.
“Annja?” Klykov’s voice held a note of concern. “Are you all right?”
“I am.” Annja smiled as the adrenaline surged through her with the promise of secrets yet to be revealed. “We found it.”
“We did?” Klykov looked around.
Annja pointed down at the outcrop. “There. What do you see?”
Hesitantly, not liking the sharp edges of the mountain so much, Klykov peered over the edge. “Rocks. Trees. Brush.”
“Exactly. The rocks.” Annja fished in her backpack and took out her camera. She snapped a picture, certain that the magnified digitized image would better reveal what was so cleverly hidden from the human eye—yet was there once a person saw it.
She showed the captured image to Klykov, then to Rao, who had come over to join them.
“What do you see now?”
Klykov’s face lost some of the tiredness that framed it when he realized what he was looking at. “It looks like the top of an elephant’s head.” He shook his own head. “But surely that is just a trick of the light. Or our imaginations.”
Annja put the camera away and took out a metal stake. She looked for a good, stable place to hammer the stake into the rock. “That’s not a trick of the light. That’s the back of an elephant’s head. Look at how the ears are flared out. And it’s an Indian elephant, not African. The ears are small. This is it.”
She hammered the stake into the rock as the word spread to the rest of the monks, who immediately ringed the cliff’s edge. Rao helped her tie a rope onto the stake, then helped her rig her harness for the climb down the mountain.
Excitement swept through Annja as she positioned herself at the edge of the drop. She kept her body perpendicular to the steep rock face as she walked backwards down the mountainside, paying out the rope as she needed to. The elephant’s head, not neatly carved at all but showing tool marks now that she was almost to it, was only slightly larger than she was. The tool marks were revealed in sharper relief on the underside of the rock where hundreds of years of rain and direct exposure to the elements hadn’t worn them away.
Pausing beside the elephant, which she now saw was fully eight feet tall, Annja took pictures with her camera, then tucked
it back into her backpack and began inspecting the elephant head. She was certain of the carving, and feeling the edges beneath her fingertips, she grew even more convinced of her find.
However, there was no immediate clue about what she was supposed to do next.
She looked up at the monks, Klykov and Rao clustered together, all anxiously awaiting whatever news she had to give. “Rao, can you lower the tool bag?”
Rao secured the bag fast to a rope and lowered it to her, tying it on at the appropriate length so it would hang beside her.
She reached inside the bag and took out brushes and cleaning tools to work on the elephant, hoping there would be further clues about how to proceed on the carving.
“I am coming down,” Rao called out.
“Come ahead.”
Rao dropped a line on the other side of the elephant head and made the descent quickly and carefully. In a couple minutes, he hung beside her in his harness.
“May I help?” Rao offered.
Annja handed over another tool and brush. They worked together, hanging on the side of the mountain as the wind pried at them with chill fingers and the sun made them sweat inside their jackets.
Her efforts revealed the eye and the tusk that lay alongside the trunk, which was curled under the massive head. As the details became cleaner, she couldn’t help but think of the sculptor who had worked with the existing rock. Whoever that had been had clung to the rock much as she was doing. Now that the head was more revealed, she saw that it had been cut out of what had been a much wider outcrop.
“Whoever did this spent a lot of time getting this right.” Annja brushed at the eye, getting more dirt out of the recessed area.
“Do you know what the Damrei Mountains are known colloquially as?”
Annja answered without hesitation. “The Elephant Mountains.”
Rao smiled and nodded. “At first I thought that the elephant statue was a random choice, or one dedicated to Shiva.”
“Or Ganesha,” Annja said.
“Perhaps. Then, finding this, I wonder if the elephant was made for the mountains or the mountains were named for the legend about the elephant.”
“Maybe we’ll find out once we locate the temple.”
They worked in silence for a few more minutes. Only the scraping of the tools and the brushes interrupted the near-silence of the wind. Small debris continued to fall down the mountain and the wind carried the dust away.
“Annja,” Rao called. “Look at this.”
Carefully, Annja paid out more line so that she could scramble under the elephant head and join Rao. Clinging to the line and to the elephant’s chin, she peered up at four small holes along the elephant’s jaw behind its ear. The holes were so small that even her pinky would not fit. None of the holes was equidistant, and she knew what Rao was going to ask for next.
“You have the elephant?”
Annja dug the statue out of her backpack and held on to it tightly, knowing that if she lost it they might look for days before they found it in the jungle below.
If the fall didn’t destroy it.
“I tested these holes.” Rao inserted a narrow scraping tool that barely fit. “I detected movement in all of them. Something is in there.”
Gingerly, Annja grasped the elephant and turned it so that its feet pointed out from her hand. For the first time she realized the elephant was shaped so that none of the legs were the same length. The rounded stomach threw off the lengths.
“There is an old saying about the Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul,” Rao said in a quiet voice. “The legend goes that you must whisper into the elephant’s ear to find the temple.”
“Elephant whisperer, then.” Slowly, Annja eased the elephant’s legs into the holes. She leaned in closely and listened as thin scrapes echoed from within the rock. The tone of the scraping led her to believe that somewhere within the massive rock carving there was a hollow spot, and that made her excitement grow.
She moved the elephant several times, and was beginning to think that whatever was supposed to happen within the rock had gotten too old to ever work again. She hated to think about resorting to explosives, and hadn’t even thought about finding any, still she was betting that Klykov could have worked out something.
A series of clicks suddenly came in rapid syncopation. The elephant head no longer simply resonated with the clicks, now it vibrated.
“Watch out.” Annja readied herself to kick away, thinking the elephant head might fall away from the side of the cliff.
Instead, a section of the cliff below the elephant head recessed and revealed an opening nearly six feet square.
“The gateway to the Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul can be found in the shadow of the Elephant of Ishana,” Rao said.
Annja grinned at him. “Might have helped if you had mentioned that earlier.”
Still astonished, Rao shook his head. “The shadow could have been anywhere, or meant anything.”
“Evidently it meant exactly what it said.” Annja let out more line and dropped down to the opening. Sunlight penetrated the darkness for only a few feet, but enough illumination got inside to show a long tunnel lay on the other side of the entrance.
* * *
CAPTIVATED BY WHAT was taking place on the computer screen, Sequeira stared as Annja Creed clambered inside the opening beneath the rock outcrop where she had been dangling. Within minutes, she had made her line fast and the people with her started climbing down after her, bringing with them packs of equipment.
Sequeira called his second-in-command. “Nicolau.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get the men ready to move out. Annja Creed has found what we are looking for.”
“Yes, sir.”
It would not take them long to fly to the mountainside, and they could easily be lowered to the cliff by the helicopters. However, Sequeira resented the fact that Annja Creed was the first person to enter the lost temple after he had been looking for it for so long.
Whatever was there, though, he would have. He told himself that was all that mattered.
* * *
HOLDING THE MAGLITE LED flashlight in front of her, Annja followed the severe incline leading into the heart of the mountain. The bright light pushed back the darkness, but the remaining shadows made the steep steps cut into the stone difficult to judge. They walked in single file, Rao after her and Klykov after the monk. The others followed the Russian.
The cold air held a thick, dusty musk and came up from whatever lay ahead. The opening acted as a chimney flue, drawing out the stale air. Annja just hoped there weren’t any surprises lying in wait. In the narrow tunnel, the small space would be a problem.
Nearly a hundred and fifty feet into the mountain, the tunnel ended, opening into a large cavern. Six feet from the tunnel’s mouth, a sudden drop-off offered a long fall, the bottom invisible in the darkness.
“Here,” Rao called. He tracked his flashlight beam to the right to reveal steps cut into the wall. He flicked his light over the wall to illuminate the figures carved into the stone.
The mythic figures celebrated stories from the Hindu tales of the gods. Annja recognized Palden Lhamo, the goddess, and the only female of the Eight Guardians of the Law. The carving had been tinted to replicate her more fully. Her skin was deep blue and her hair was as red as freshly spilled blood. She rode a white mule and carried a scepter that drew down lightning from the sky above. In her other hand, she carried a human skull as a drinking cup filled with blood. Her three eyes were fierce and uncompromising.
“These people worshipped demons?” Klykov asked.
“Palden Lhamo isn’t a demon,” Annja said. “She is one of the Eight Guardians, or wrathful deities. They’re the flip side of the bodhisattva, the enlightened version of the same being. They look demonic because they’re supposed to influence mankind to make proper decisions.”
“And nightmares,” Klykov commented.
Annja took a picture with her camera. The fla
sh eliminated the darkness for a moment and they all paused till their vision recovered.
She headed down the steps and noted the figures on the wall-carved-in bas-relief.
Annja kept walking, spotting more of the Tibetan influence on the images as well as nagas and other creatures.
Senses spinning, listening to the shuffling of their feet and their voices echoing within the vast chamber, Annja tried to take in all the art but found it too overwhelming. She only remembered bits and pieces of it as she reached the cavern floor.
On solid ground now, she took a glow stick from her backpack and placed it at the foot of the steps leading back to the opening at least a hundred feet above them. They were still somewhere in the heart of the mountain.
The monks started speaking quickly, alerting Annja to the fact they had seen something she had not. When she turned around, she saw that their flashlights had focused on a path created by cut stone and laid together to form a walkway.
Annja stepped forward, drawn by the mystery of what lay ahead. The cavern was huge and the walkway seemed to go on forever. But it stopped when her flashlight beam revealed the outer wall of the hidden temple.
Chapter 40
Excitement thrummed through Annja as she surveyed the Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul. She knew at once the structure could be no other. It stood at least forty feet tall at its center, but the outer walls stood over twenty feet high.
The center dome structure reflected the beehive appearance most observers thought it was most like, but it was really meant to resemble a mountaintop. The walkway became a bridge a short distance from the temple, and the bridge spanned a moat twenty feet across. Judging from the cut edges that showed along the moat, the waterway was a manmade construction.
Annja couldn’t fathom the years or the number of people it had taken to build this shrine.
“I don’t know what I expected,” Klykov said beside her, “but I didn’t expect this. I thought the people who moved the temple here were in a hurry. I guessed that they had merely found a place to dump everything they wanted to hide from invaders.”
