Mammoth stone statues loomed around the swelling congregation, rock, fashioned into elephants, lions, demigods and demons; ornate monstrosities, half-human, half-animal, some surely erupted from the mind of madness.
Torches were lit over the balconies, affording a clearer view to the three onlookers who stared, transfixed, from their tiny perch high above and to the rear of the scene. Below them, the mystery cult began bowing toward an enormous altar at the far end of the temple. Separating them from this altar was a crevasse—it looked partly natural, partly carved and shaped—from which the dull red light emanated, out of which sulfurous wisps of smoke and steam rose until they were sucked away up some nether tunnel by the moaning, baying winds.
The altar itself, on the far side of the crevasse, was roiled in smoke, obscuring its precise shape. As the ceremony continued, robed priests emerged from this miasma, carrying pots of incense, clearing the air around the altar as they came forward to the far edge of the crevasse. Soon, the incense dissipated; a giant stone statue appeared on the altar, its back to the far wall, standing partly within an enormous, domed niche carved into the stuff of the rock.
It was Kali—the hideous protectress of the temple, the malevolent, bloodthirsty goddess who was the object of all this devotion.
She stood twenty feet tall. Carved snakes curled up her legs, while girdling her hips was a skirt of hanging human arms. The statue itself had six arms: one held a saber; one grasped the severed head of a giant victim by the hair; two supported her on the altar; two, outstretched, dangled a flat, iron-mesh basket on chains.
Around her shoulders were draped necklaces of human skulls.
Her face was vile, half mask, half ghoul: a loathsome miscreant. Her eyes and mouth glowed with molten lava from the pit below, scorching her stony fangs black; there was no nose, only a deformed hole; her headdress was carved with ancient markings that bespoke great evil.
The priests gazed up at the deity reverently. The worshippers chanted louder, in a growing passion of foul cravings.
Up in the wind tunnel, Willie shivered. “What’s happening?” she whispered. It made her feel cold, hollow; shaken.
“It’s a Thuggee ceremony,” said Indy. “They’re worshipping Kali.”
“Ever seen this before?”
“Nobody’s seen this for over a hundred years.” He was excited, on edge. What an incredible discovery he’d stumbled upon! An extinct religion, its rituals and totems as alive now as they’d ever been. It was as if he were viewing the reanimated bones of a lost tribe.
Suddenly they heard a wailing from behind the altar—inhuman, but all too human.
“Baachao; muze baachao. Baachao koi muze-baachao.”
“What’s that?” muttered Willie.
“Sounds like the main event,” Indy replied. “He’s calling ‘Save me, someone please save me.’ ”
Grimly they watched as the ritual continued.
A huge drum sounded three times; the chanting stopped. Only the wind sustained a relentless groan. In the chill of its echo, another figure stepped forward onto the altar. This was the High Priest, Mola Ram.
His robes were black, his eyes red and sunken. He wore a necklace of teeth. On his head sat the upper skull of a bison, its horns curling out like those of the devil incarnate.
He walked to the edge of the crevasse, facing the crowd. Just on the other side of the pit, facing the High Priest, Indy noticed a familiar figure sitting. “Look,” he said quietly to Willie. “Our host, the Maharajah.”
“Who’s the guy he’s lookin’ at?” Willie nodded.
“Looks like the High Priest.”
To Short Round, he looked like Frankenstein.
Mola Ram lifted his arms above his head. Again, a pitiful scream rose from behind the altar, as if it were coming from the statue of Kali herself. Quickly the true sound of the scream became identifiable: a struggling, ragged Indian was dragged out onto the altar by priests and tied to the rectangular iron frame basket that hung from Kali’s arms, just above the stone floor.
All watched in silence.
Mola Ram walked over to the bound victim, who was writhing helplessly, spread-eagled on his back atop the hanging frame. The man wailed. Mola Ram uttered an incantation. The man sobbed. Mola Ram extended his hand towards the bound man; his hand pierced the victim’s chest.
Pierced it, sank into the poor, squirming torso . . . and ripped out the Indian’s living heart.
Willie covered her mouth.
Short Round’s eyes opened wide. “He pulled his heart out. He’s dead.” Emperor Shou-sin used to remove the hearts of sages, Short Round had heard, to see if it was true that the heart of a sage is pierced with seven holes. This man’s heart had no holes, though, and that priest wasn’t Shou-sin. To Short Round, it looked like they’d fallen into hell.
There were ten hells, ruled by the Yama Kings. At various levels, a person might be buried in a lake of ice, bound to a red-hot pillar, drowned in a pool of fetid blood, reincarnated as a Famished Demon; many tortures were there.
This was certainly the fifth hell, in which the dead soul’s heart was repeatedly plucked out.
Short Round did not want to be here.
Indy didn’t believe in hell. But he believed in what he saw. And what he saw now was more unbelievable than any hell he’d ever imagined. He stared, rapt, at the man being sacrificed.
“He’s still alive,” murmured Indiana.
Indeed, the man still screamed, and his bloody heart maintained a steady beat in Mola Ram’s hand. Mola Ram lifted the heart above his head. Once again, the worshippers began to chant:
“Jai ma Kali, jai ma Kali, jai ma Kali . . .”
The sacrificial victim kept wailing, very much alive. There was no evidence of a gash on his chest, only a reddish mark where Mola Ram’s hand had entered.
The priests added chains to the iron frame, upended it, then reversed its orientation so that the man was suspended face-down, suspended above a massive stone door in the floor—a door that began rolling away with a sonorous rumble, to reveal the same pit below him as the one at the bottom of the crevasse: bubbling, crimson lava.
And then the iron frame was lowered into the pit.
The victim saw the fiery magma slowly rise to meet him. His heart continued to beat in Mola Ram’s hand. The crowd kept chanting, the wind continued to howl: these were the last sounds he heard on this earth.
His face began to smoke and blister as the lava flared closer to his lowering body His flesh sizzled, peeled, charred. He tried to scream, but the noxious fumes filled his lungs; the superheated vapors seared his throat.
His hair burst into flame.
Finally, the frame submerged into the boiling molten ore.
Up in the tunnel, Willie closed her eyes; Indy watched in horror; Short Round looked, and turned away, and looked again. He appealed to the Celestial Ministry of Fire to deliver them from this hellish domain.
Beside the altar, Mola Ram held the heart high: still beating, dripping blood, it began to smoke. Then it, too, burst into flame. And then it disappeared.
The iron frame was raised, on its winches, out of the chasm by priests who turned a great wheel at the side of the altar. The metal glowed red, like a brand, but there was no trace of the sacrificed victim. He’d been completely incinerated.
The multitudes chanted. “Jai ma Kali, Jai ma Kali, gho-ram, sundaram . . .”
The wind railed.
Indy, Willie, and Short Round stared, glassy-eyed, at this thing they’d just witnessed.
Mola Ram left, behind the altar. Three priests emerged from the shadows, carrying cloth-wrapped objects toward the altar.
Willie began to cry.
“Quiet,” whispered Indy; but Short Round looked on the verge himself, and hugged Willie close.
The priests carefully unwrapped three conical pieces of crystallized quartz, bringing these tokens to the base of the statue of Kali. Mounted between the statue’s legs was a four-foot-tall
stone skull, its eyes and nose hollow. The priests brought the three crystals together in front of the skull. The stones began to glow with a burning, incandescent radiance. The priests pulled the stones apart; the glowing stopped. They brought them together once more, nestling them in the three waiting skull sockets. The stones glowed brightly.
Indiana watched in mounting fascination. “They knew their rock was magic. But they didn’t know it was one of the lost Sankara Stones.”
“Why does it glow in the dark?” Short Round trembled.
“Legend says that when the stones are brought together, the diamonds inside them will glow.”
Willie wiped her eyes, pulled herself together. She almost laughed, from fatigue and tension. “Diamonds?” She nudged him with renewed interest.
The Sankara Stones shimmered brilliantly, seducing all caught in the web of their luminescent power. The three bearer priests bowed repeatedly to the crystals, finally backing out on their knees, into the dark space behind the altar.
The other priests followed. Then the entire crowd started dispersing. In a couple of minutes, the cavern was empty once more. Only the wind cried at the horror.
Indiana turned to his friends. “All right, now listen: you two wait here and keep quiet.”
Short Round nodded. He was in no hurry to go any closer. He handed Indy the bullwhip and shoulder bag. Willie didn’t look so sure.
“Wait. What’re you doing?” she demanded. She just wanted to get out of here.
Indy peered down the sheer drop from the mouth of the wind tunnel to the stone floor far below. “Going down there,” he advised her.
“Down there? Are you crazy?”
“I’m not leaving without those stones.” They were the find of the century; they’d touched him with their glow; he had to have them.
She was suddenly furious. “You’re gonna get killed chasing after your damn fortune and glory!”
He looked at her with real warmth in this dank place: she cared for what happened to him. “Maybe, someday,” he smiled affectionately. “Not today.” Today, he was going to own those magic stones.
Without waiting for her reply, he lowered himself meticulously out the mouth of the tunnel.
There were plenty of footholds and handholds in the pocked stone. With skill, Indy was able to maneuver himself over and down to one of the monumental supporting columns near the rear of the cavern. Once there, he inched down the pillar, hanging on to stone cobras, sculpted lions, carved dancing maidens. After what seemed a long time, he made it all the way to the bottom.
Quietly he ran across the length of the chamber, stopping when he came to the crevasse. He looked down. Fire bubbled there, like the liquid soul of the temple. Its fumes stung his eyes and nostrils; he had to step back.
Across the gulf stood the statue of Kali, and, before her, the three Sankara Stones. It was too wide to jump across. Indiana looked from side to side; no way around, either.
Then he noticed two columns on the far side of the abyss, on top of which stone elephants perched, flanking the altar. Indy uncurled his whip and, with master precision, let it fly.
The bullwhip cracked. Its end wrapped tightly around the tusk of the closer stone elephant. Indy tugged on the whip handle, pulled the thong taut, took a deep breath . . . and ran.
At the edge, he leaped. The whip snapped tight as he cleared the lip. Then he was arching down, then up, across the fiery breach.
He landed on his feet, near the towering goddess. The wind rose, in a mocking warble. Indy released the whip end from the elephant’s tusk.
Short Round waved to him from the elevated wind tunnel: all clear. It was hard being a bodyguard long-distance, but Shorty took the job seriously even at the outposts. Indy nodded, recoiling the whip onto his belt. He turned toward the altar. There the three stones continued to glow. Cautiously, Indiana approached.
He stooped to examine them closely. The middle stone—the one stolen from Mayapore village—had three lines painted across it. They glimmered intensely. Indy touched it: it didn’t burn. Carefully, he lifted it to his face, peered into its glowing matter.
A magical diamond sparkled within the substance of the rock. Its light was ethereal, hypnotic. Beautiful. Rainbow light. Star light. But as soon as it was away from its niche a few moments, its light dwindled and died. Indy brought it near the other two again; again, they all glowed intensely. Apart, dark; together, bright.
He put the jewels in his pouch.
All of them touching, in the sack—it was like a tiny, cool sun.
Willie and Short Round apprehensively watched Indy bag the three Sankara Stones. He pulled the drawstrings tight, sealing off the emanation.
Kali, too, watched.
Indiana backed off, looked up at the horrific statue. Kali looked down on the puny mortal . . . and spoke.
Indiana jumped back. The demonic face seemed to laugh at him, to echo, to mumble, accuse . . .
Wait. The sounds were coming from behind the altar, not from the mouth of the statue. Indy chuckled at himself—though not too loudly—and walked around behind the altar to see what the noises were.
Willie and Short Round grew immediately concerned as Indy disappeared from sight beyond the altar.
“Oh, hell, now where’s he going?” she whispered harshly. She did not like being left alone.
The wind was moaning again. The note in their tunnel began to quaver slightly, though, to shift its pitch in a series of funny staccato modulations. Short Round turned to see two shadowy figures moving down the tunnel toward him: their bodies moving through the wind tunnel altered the tone, creating the eerie harmonics.
Short Round froze.
“What’re you—” Willie began—but then she saw.
In another second the two huge Thuggee guards were lunging at them. Short Round drew his dagger in time to slash the closer Thug’s hand. The man fell back, in surprise and pain. The other guard grabbed Willie.
She’d been wrestling with goons like this one for as long as she’d worn lipstick, though. With a well-practiced move, she brought her knee up sharply into his groin. He groaned, and sank to his haunches.
The other guard was now cautiously closing in on Short Round. Willie jumped up on the lug’s back, wrapping her hands around his face, going for the eyes. He swung around, slamming her into the wall. She slumped to the ground, the wind knocked out of her. In that moment Shorty stuck the guard in the leg, then backed off again. He and the wounded guard circled.
The other Thug started crawling toward Willie. When he was a few feet away, she scooped up a big handful of dirt and hurled it into his face. The man clawed blindly at his eyes as Willie stood up.
“Run, Willie! Run!” Short Round called. He still kept the other guard at bay: like Dizzy Dean, holding the runner at first.
Willie ran ten yards up the tunnel, then stopped and turned. Shorty swung his dagger in tight arcs, keeping his distance from the assassin. Suddenly the guard shouted something in Hindi, and dove, knocking Short Round off his feet. The knife clattered to the dirt. He grabbed Shorty by the ankle, and dragged the boy, kicking, to him.
Willie hesitated. The other guard was stumbling to his feet. This wasn’t working.
“Run!” screamed Short Round. “Go get help!”
Willie ran back up the tunnel. The last thing she saw was Short Round being lifted bodily by the throat, until his little feet dangled helplessly above the ground.
Meanwhile, Indiana entered the darkened chamber behind the altar. The only illumination came from two places: the smoky red light from the inferno in the temple, streaming in here around the gigantic silhouetted statue of Kali; and, up ahead, a dim cylindrical shaft of yellowish light rising from what appeared to be an enormous hole in the ground.
Indy slowly crossed a narrow stone bridge toward the hole—a bridge over what, it was too dark to tell. Presently he reached the other side, though. As he neared the great cavity, he began to hear voices, and the clink of metal aga
inst rock. The ground was inordinately dark; he crept toward the precipice with extreme uncertainty, ready to run on short notice. He reached the edge, and looked down.
What he saw was a wide, deep pit, around the sides of which concentric paths spiraled leading off into numerous narrow tunnels. Crawling in and out of the burrows, scrawny children lugged sacks of dirt and rock. Other hollow-eyed kids, mostly chained, pulled these sacks to mine cars parked on rails that crisscrossed the excavation.
It was a mine.
Torchlight cast weird dancing shadows across the walls. Beyond the farthest tracks in the main excavation site, a vertical stream of water hugged the cavern wall, filling a massive cistern that overflowed into a sparkling dark pool. Machines whined; exhaust fumes hung in the stagnant air; black fires erupted from vents in the rock; sparks billowed out of holes where iron grated on stone.
Children were whimpering or silent, according to inclination; none were other than miserable, though. Sadistic Thuggee guards lashed at them, or beat them mercilessly. Some laughed.
Indy saw several children slip and fall while straining to lift a bag of rocks into one of the mine cars. Guards kicked them. One child didn’t get up; fortunate soul, he had finally found his only escape from this travail in hell.
Indiana edged around the pit. It was ghastly, a scene so grotesque as to defy comprehension. He couldn’t fathom what to do. This was beyond anything involved with even the most ghoulish rites of the most pagan religion.
He hefted the bag of stones on his shoulder. They burdened him now with choices: he could leave, if he wanted, with the Sankara Stones in his possession, priceless artifacts to be studied and prized for centuries yet to come.
But he could hear the pleading of a child. He looked down to see a huge, burly, bare-chested guard cruelly beating the pitiful little slave. The fury welled up in Indiana without release. He clenched his fists; he ground his teeth.
The guard seemed to feel the intense pressure of Indy’s stare on his back. He stopped beating the child; looked up at Indy looking down. Their gazes met, locked, wrestled. Slackly, the guard smiled: he was enjoying himself.
The Adventures Of Indiana Jones Page 28
