Kingdom

by Tom Martin

  ‘“From here in the lamasery we do our best to aid willing pilgrims. We send out psychic messages to alert them to our existence, much as one might send a radio broadcast. Of course, few people these days believe that such powers exist, so even when they receive our communications in their dreams they dismiss them as being just that: dreams and nothing more. But there are always some sensitive people who are awake to their intuition and instinct, and naturally these are the people we seek: people of tremendous psychic power and ambition; people who wish to change the world. Throughout the last millennia of human history we have again and again received visitors from the coming races of men. We have received emissaries from Babylon and Egypt, from Greece and Rome, and more recently from Britain and from revolutionary France and more recently still, from Nazi Germany.

  ‘ “You have distinguished yourself. You have found the way to our kingdom, and through decades of mental exertion and a journey that brought you almost to the point of death, you have finally made it to our table and consequently, in the hallowed traditions of our brotherhood, you are a worthy successor to the throne of Shangri-La.”

  ‘I could hardly believe my ears. It appeared to me that I must finally have lost my mind. This Abbot, this old man seated before me, sipping tea from a priceless porcelain cup, seemed to be suggesting that I would now become King of Shangri-La. I simply did not know what to do or say. Clutching at my original intentions, intentions that now seemed naive and foolish, I tried to formulate some sensible demands. I had no idea what to say to this man but I had an urgent need to say something – to seize control of my destiny.

  ‘Finally I managed to say, “I have come all this way in search of the lost Aryan knowledge. This is all I seek. And I would like to know how I may leave this place. I am grateful to you for your hospitality but I simply cannot impose on you. I merely wanted to visit and to see such a place, and now I am satisfied.”

  ‘The Abbot dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin.

  ‘“The knowledge that you speak of is contained in the sacred Book of Dzyan, which has been handed down for millennia and is kept within the citadel walls. You will be able to see the book tomorrow after your coronation. In fact, then you will have access to anything that you wish, for you will be King and you will be able to do whatever you please. But you cannot leave. You are the appointed successor to the throne, and your destiny lies here, in your kingdom.”

  ‘The old man could see that I was completely horror-struck by this news, and he tried to reassure

  me.

  ‘“Do not be alarmed or depressed. We have everything that you might want here. People who arrive from outside are usually at first inconsolable – it seems no one can bear the initial prospect of giving up their lives in the outside world. But I promise you that after the first few years you will be very happy, in fact you will realize how lucky you are to be removed from the chaos of human life. From our experience, there is no one, no matter what their attachments to the outside world, be they love or material possessions, who has not become gratefully resigned to their new fate over a number of years. The passions and rewards of the outside world pale into insignificance alongside the knowledge and power that we possess here.”

  ‘His words merely enhanced my feelings of panic and horror. I had to leave. No matter what this man said, I had to leave immediately. There must be a way – there must be some possible route out. Yet I also wanted to see the Book of Dzyan, but without having to undergo my coronation. Desires battled in my head; I had to secure an escape route.

  ‘“But how do you supply yourselves with necessary goods, even with this beautiful china we are drinking from, if you maintain your isolation from the outside world?” I said.

  ‘ “It saddens me that you are clearly still hoping that you might be able to find a way out of here. I can assure you that it is not possible. But to answer your question, every five years a caravan arrives at the high pass above the monastery and deposits for us such goods as we require. We leave payment in advance. There is no contact with the caravaneers, and even if one of our number were to reach them, they have specific orders not, on pain of death, to communicate with us, let alone help us.”

  ‘I could no longer maintain my calm, and my posture slumped. My head fell into my hands, such was the crushing weight of my despair and fear. The Abbot tried to console me.

  ‘“Do not worry. You must believe me when I say that you will come to love your time here.”

  ‘There was something about the phrase “your time here” that disconcerted me, and a ghastly thought suddenly occurred to me that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  ‘“And if I am to be the new King, can I ask: what happened to the old King?”

  ‘The Abbot averted his gaze from me and stared into the bottom of his delicate teacup.

  ‘“The present King will be relieved of his office tonight. As will his Queen. The King always has a Queen, normally a Chinese or Tibetan woman, but in rare cases another race. But tonight is the end of their reign.”

  ‘My heart missed a beat.

  ‘“What? Why? Who is the present King?”

  ‘“The present King is a German man. One of a party of five who visited us many years ago, seeking knowledge and power. He is of course an old man now – though due to our climate and our practices he is still in good health. But our custom dictates that when a new pilgrim arrives, the old King must step down.”’

  ‘I felt I was going to be sick. All I could think of was the cage and the bonfire. My head was pounding as I struggled against the realization – I tried to divert myself:

  ‘ “How can he still be alive? He must be over ninety years old.”

  ‘“Yes – but he appears to be much younger. You will think that he is in his mid-fifties. Our Tantric practices that lower human metabolism, combined with the unique climate of this valley, have the effect of delaying the natural ageing processes. We have several lamas here who are over one hundred years old.”

  ‘“And the other four who came with this German man? His companions? Where are they?”

  ‘The man looked up at me through limpid eyes and said:

  ‘ “They were all kings before him. It is the law that where there are several prospective kings, each will reign only for a decade. They had their allotted time upon the throne and now they have departed.”

  ‘“What do you mean they have departed? Departed where?”

  ‘“Departed to join our Masters in the higher worlds.”

  ‘I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. The Abbot was insane. The entire kingdom was a bastion of black magic and evil. I thought of the warning of the kindly man in the valley below. How right he was, and how foolish I had been to ignore him. The Abbot, with all his craven gravitas, conducting himself as if this was a perfectly holy enterprise and as if he was a spiritual man rather than a savage butcher of lives, rose to leave.

  ‘As he bowed to me, he said, “Thank you for listening so patiently to my explanations. It is always disconcerting for new arrivals here. It appears that you are managing very well. I suggest that you return to your room and get some rest. The abdication ceremony takes place at nightfall. As the King-to-be, your presence will be required.”

  ‘With that he left the room. I was completely terror-struck. I could barely even think. I was trapped in a medieval monastery, surrounded by a brotherhood of monks whose moral sense was so wildly out of line with any civilized norm that they were apparently about to burn a man alive.

  ‘And yet part of what he had said rang true: I understood some vestige of his descriptions of psychic summoning, of messages sent in dreams and at dimly resonating levels of human consciousness. After all, I had clung stubbornly to the idea of Shangri-La for years without even a shred of proof that it existed. I had felt a calling, in my dreams and even in my waking hours, an insistent siren song had taunted me. All that time, I knew that Shangri-La existed and I knew, just as the sun rises in the e
ast, that one day I would arrive there.

  ‘My gullet rose at the thought of the bonfire and the cage: I too would meet that fate. That was the inevitable implication: they were going to burn me alive. If not tonight, as I had only moments ago feared, then one day in the future when some other poor soul struggled across the Himalayas and against all the odds found their way to Shangri-La. Then I too would be sent to join the Masters, as the crazy Abbot put it. I too would be forced to abdicate.

  ‘A few minutes later, after I had been escorted back to my room in silence, I tried to regain a hold on my wits. I sat down and forced myself to breathe slowly and deeply and then I struggled to assemble the facts. The lamas of Shangri-La had no intention of ever letting me leave again – that much was clear. Felix Koenig had told the truth when he said that his expedition had reached their goal; that too was obvious and furthermore, according to the Abbot, one of Koenig’s companions was not only still alive but was actually now the King of Shangri-La, though given the fate that befell all monarchs of this evil place, it was not at all clear if that meant anything other than that he had been imprisoned here for years with a sentence of ultimate death by burning upon his head.

  ‘But then there was one other equally incontrovertible fact that provided at least a faint glimmer of hope: Felix Koenig had escaped. He had made it back to India; he had been seen again, and so it was not true that there was no way out at all. Sure, by the time he had reached Bombay, he was raving mad and he never completely regained his mental equilibrium, but the war was also to account for that.

  ‘The fact was that the descriptions that Felix Koenig had passed on, though vague and strange, seemed to be of the same place. The longing to fly down to the emerald valley that he described was almost conclusive proof to me. I could easily picture myself, as the condemned King, pacing the battlements, yearning to be back in the emerald valley, and instead waiting grimly for my successor to tug on the thread below.

  ‘And there were other thoughts that came to mind: Haushofer and Hess had been right about Tibet and the Book of Dzyan. But did they gain anything from their contact with Shangri-La? Did Koenig’s companions ever exercise their authority as kings in any decisive way, or had they been merely summoned by the lamas as sacrificial offerings, chosen from amongst the German race at the height of its powers as fitting physical and psychic specimens? And had the lamas instigated the dreams of Wotan and sown the seeds of the upheavals of the war? Had they been using their awful knowledge to cultivate, in the garden of Europe, a breed of men of such will-power and self-belief that they would be fitting heirs to the barbaric throne of Shangri-La? Or were the rest of Haushofer’s beliefs also true? Was the Book of Dzyan an Aryan artefact left over from the destruction of an Aryan civilization in the Gobi desert, a civilization that itself had risen from the ashes of Lemuria, the lost continent of the Pacific?

  ‘All these question whirled in my brain. If I resigned myself to my fate, and accepted the imprisonment and certain death of my reign as King, then I would be able to seek answers to these questions. It was ironic, I thought, that I would gain much of what I had desired – access to the Book of Dzyan, knowledge of the deepest mysteries of the psychic carnage that had devastated Europe. But the price would be my own incarceration, my own violent death. And it seemed to me at that moment that I cared much more about life than all these questions. I had to find a way out of this ghastly place. I had to discover the escape route that Felix Koenig must have discovered before me. He at least was proof that it was possible, whatever the High Lama said . . .’

  43

  First light came early, just after five thirty a.m. As Nancy came blearily into consciousness, she could hear that at least one of the sherpas was already up, making breakfast. She rolled over onto her elbow, and found that she was alone in the cramped tent. In the struggling daylight, she saw Jack’s things folded neatly, everything ready for departure. She slipped out of her sleeping bag, her chilled breath issuing from her mouth in great plumes. She put on her walking boots and the chuba and then wrestled her arms into the sheepskin coat and crawled out of the tent.

  Breakfast was a hurried affair, everyone standing in silence eating tsampa out of tin mugs and drinking butter tea. As soon as the tents were packed and the mugs had been washed in the stream, they set off again; the serious climb was about to begin. Step by step, the going got more difficult. Nancy’s lungs no longer acted automatically. She had to force herself to breathe with every step in order to get enough oxygen into her veins to propel her forward. After half an hour of this, she had almost lost sight of the two sherpas. Jack was some ten yards in front of her and the other sherpa was bringing up the rear, alert for danger, she assumed. Even though Jack was just within talking distance, the idea of even attempting to exchange words was out of the question. She needed all her energy simply to stay upright.

  For hour after hour they ascended like this; even when they took an occasional break for water and butter tea, Nancy said nothing, parsimonious with words because she was so exhausted. The temperature edged a little lower until it was well below freezing and the scree slopes were peppered with snow. At the back of her mind was the possibility that the pass might in fact be entirely snowbound, in which case they would have to descend again. That would shatter morale, she thought. The other concern was altitude sickness, for that too would bring to a speedy end her chances of getting into Pemako. The instant it set in, and it could come any time, they would have to get straight back down to a lower altitude. She would have to hope that she was lucky, that they were all lucky.

  By midday, they were approaching the top of the pass. The slopes were spartan at this height; only the lichens and mosses still managed to flourish. A mist had enveloped the path and was billowing around the rocky crevasse up which they were ascending towards the Su La. Nancy was aware that she was getting a headache, and she seemed to be losing the ability to tell whether she was hot or cold, although it was well below freezing. This troubled her deeply, and she tried to resist these signs that her body was not coping, to push them away.

  The sherpa following behind came up level with her and tried to offer encouragement. He seemed to be indicating that they were near the top. She tried to smile but couldn’t manage it, and then all of a sudden she slipped and everything went dark. The next thing she knew, she was sitting inside the tent and someone was trying to pour hot tea down her throat while someone else was rubbing her back through the sheepskin and the chuba. For a moment she couldn’t speak; she was disoriented and her head was pounding as if she had received a blow. Jack said, ‘OK, now, have some more of this,’ and forced the tea towards her lips again. She took a sip.

  ‘Am I all right?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes. We are going to rest. Drink more tea. Your body needs the heat.’

  ‘Is it the altitude?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s more likely to be exhaustion . . .’

  She tried to explain that she was fine, that they should simply press on, but then she must have fallen asleep again. How long she slept she did not know, but she awoke feeling somewhat better. When she opened her eyes, the image that presented itself to her was so surreal that she thought for a second that she must be dreaming. Jack was lying next to her and the three sherpas were squatting over them both, their backs pushing out the canvas of the tent wall. They looked like doctors in an operating theatre.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Nancy, you’re awake. Good.’

  ‘What happened? Why is everyone in here?’

  ‘We’re talking – and keeping warm.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s morning.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Er . . . no. A day and night have passed since you went to sleep.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘A bit better I think. Listen, I’m sorry about this . . .’

  ‘No need. Let’s try and get some breakfast down you and t
hen see if we can get going. It’s only few hundred yards more to the top. We were lucky you called the break here – it’s quite sheltered.’ He began to untangle himself from his sleeping bag, and as he did so the sherpas slipped out of the tent doors and into the snow, like seals slipping through a hole in the ice.

  ‘I’ll come back in a moment with some breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘Tsampa?’

  ‘Oh yes. Don’t you worry, tsampa is always on the menu at this hotel.’

  She managed to laugh, though hoarsely as she watched him disappear through the tent door. She was feeling a bit better. It had been so intense, the feeling of exhaustion; it was as if she couldn’t go on – in fact she hadn’t gone on, she reminded herself. Her body had just called time on the whole escapade; it had independently decided enough was enough, no matter what her mind wanted it to do.

  The tent was already much colder, now that the three men had all left. Jack reappeared and passed her two tin mugs, one of tea and one filled to the brim with tsampa.

  ‘The orders of the hotel stroke hospital tent are that you must finish both of these, no complaining, and then we’ll reassess your case.’

  This wasn’t so bad, she thought with a smile; being relatively snug and warm, whilst Jack waited on her hand and foot, even if it was moist sawdust that he was serving her. He must have been worried about her. Sure he was, losing the pay packet on a hazardous mountain, hardly the sort of thing he wanted to do. Always keep your sponsors alive – that must be his basic mantra. But perhaps that was unfair. He might have been genuinely concerned about her; he wasn’t, she was coming to realize, quite the mercenary that Krishna had advertised him as.