Dragon in the Snow

by Forrest Dylan Bryant

  In the morning, Nenn made contact with a fellow renegade living in the International Settlement. He wanted to see where he stood, determine just how much time he had before they could track him down. And what Nenn discovered amazed him: he was not hunted at all. Indeed, nobody had yet realized anything was amiss.

  The Black Dragon had returned from the Da Ching temple and immediately set out for his flying ship and the long journey home. He did not wait for his remaining men to follow, and did not even leave instructions, so consumed was he by his prize. It was presumed that Nenn and his partner were to make their own way home by airplane and bring any prisoners with them. Their prolonged absence had gone unremarked: nobody had any reason to suspect treachery, and civilian air traffic had been grounded until morning anyway, due to the storm.

  Hearing this, Nenn concocted a plan. It was risky — there was always the possibility of a trap — but with no time to waste they had to try it. Nenn and Djali drove the band of adventurers out to Lunghwa Airfield, where Golden Star Export maintained a small fleet of aircraft, German-built Junkers planes specially designed for long distances and high altitudes. All was calm at the hangar: as Nenn’s colleague had said, there was no sense of heightened alert, no extra guards or scrutiny. So Nenn drew no suspicion or resistance as he loaded his “guests” and cargo onto one of the planes, had it rolled out to the tarmac, and took off. They were away by midday, chasing the Black Dragon across the broad expanse of China.

  They were a band of ten now — the seven Americans, plus Nenn Si-Lum, Bartholomew St. Cyr and Djali — and arrangements were cramped in the boxy airplane. But at least the cabin was pressurized, which made things somewhat more comfortable. Even Hank seemed at ease, although he did loosen his necktie and dab at his forehead with a handkerchief from time to time. Rosie, who had discovered similar reservations about flying during their time in the Shanghai Clipper, commiserated with Hank and tried to avoid looking through the plane’s tiny porthole windows.

  Sonny and Djali had struck up a friendship based on their shared love of fine clothing, fast automobiles and adventurous employers. Sonny suspected that Djali’s relationship with Bartholomew St. Cyr had a somewhat different cast than his own devotion to the Baroness, but it didn’t faze him; he’d seen it all before. The chauffeur and the valet spent most of the trip playing dominoes and swapping old stories, trying to keep their minds off the dangers ahead.

  Nenn and the Baroness took turns in the pilot’s seat, but whichever one was not flying at the time huddled with Sid and St. Cyr near the front of the cabin, trying to put together a plan of action. Only Nenn had ever been to Shangri-La, of course, but St. Cyr’s knowledge after a quarter-century of study was considerable. Yet no matter how much they knew, the stark fact remained that they would have to improvise: no assault on Shangri-La had succeeded in more than six hundred years. On top of that, they were ten amateurs going up against a brutal, brilliant enemy with an entire army at his disposal. And not even Nenn Si-Lum knew just what it was the Black Dragon was building in his mountain lair.

  Captain Doyle and Professor Armbruster were back to their usual routine: when they weren’t insulting each other, they fiddled with the Captain’s radio-beam device, which wasn’t nearly so intimidating as the fluorospectrocitor had been. The scientists still hoped to gain some measure of control over the singing stone and its tremendous energies. If they were to have any chance of standing up to the Black Dragon, they would need an ace in the hole.

  The eighteenth singing stone, thought lost for centuries and unknown even to the Black Dragon Wo Then-Liang, sat by itself at the rear of the cabin, its golden glow bright enough to light the entire interior. As the plane flew ever farther westward, following the great Yangtze River from Shanghai to Wuhan, then cutting overland to Chungking and up towards the high plateaus of Tibet, the stone’s humming grew louder and more dynamic, a strangely calming tone that slid up and down the scale in serene undulation, like the song of a distant angel. Nobody yet knew what the stone’s golden aspect represented, but they could all feel its power throbbing throughout the plane. If they could only crack the code in time, it would be a powerful weapon indeed.

  Next to the stone sat the amulet of Ando Chee, a carved bauble in the shape of a bird with outstretched wings, glowing like the cylinder but in a light purple hue. If the stories were to be believed, this too would be useful. Ando Chee claimed the wearer could move heavy objects with only his mind, but St. Cyr had never been able to duplicate the feat. The amulet was also said to be a ward against monsters such as yeti, but this ability had obviously not been tested.

  * * *

  They flew on, stopping only when absolutely necessary for fuel, food or maintenance, making a marathon run of over two thousand miles. The ground gradually transformed below them, as rolling emerald hills gave way to brown scrubland, rocky crags, and finally majestic, snow-covered peaks. The mountains stretched skyward like the towers of Manhattan, only staggeringly, impossibly large. The air grew colder and thinner at each brief stop, and it began to have strange effects. Accustomed to life at sea level, the adventurers tired quickly and became giddy when separated from the pressurized cabin of the airplane, while the cold seeped in even through the thick parkas they found in the plane’s cargo hold.

  As they soared over the highlands of Tibet towards the hidden mountain ranges that sheltered Shangri-La, Nenn, Sid, St. Cyr and the Baroness began to discuss how they would enter the hidden country.

  “Chenggi-Lai has three walls,” Nenn explained. “The first is mountain. The second is illusion. The third is fire. If an invader should breach the high mountains, the second wall shall drive him mad. If he breaches the second wall, the white flame shall consume him.”

  “That sounds lovely,” said the Baroness, dryly. “How do we get through?”

  “There are two choices,” St. Cyr offered. “The easiest is for Nenn Si-Lum to fly us directly in. This is one of the Black Dragon’s planes; it can pass through the walls unharmed. But if we fly straight up to the royal palace compound, we may well find ourselves in a fight for our lives the moment we land. It all depends on who’s there to greet us.”

  “Right. That’s not so good,” said Sid.

  “The other way is to land outside the border and cross over on foot. If we do that, we’ll be able to sneak in quietly. They won’t know we’re coming. But we’ll have to face all three of the walls: the rigors of the mountains, the madness of illusion, and the white flame. And that’s before we even set foot in the country. We’d still have to make our way to the palace without raising the alarm.”

  “That’s worse,” said the Baroness.

  “And the overland journey will be perilous even for you strong young things. For someone my age, I’m afraid it would most likely be fatal.”

  “Well, that settles it,” proclaimed Sid. “We’ll have to take our chances flying in.”

  But it was not Sid’s decision that settled the matter; it was the stormy whims of the Himalayas. Nenn was just beginning to negotiate the first wall, performing a difficult maneuver into a cluster of high peaks which marked the hidden entrance to Shangri-La, when the plane was caught in a sudden, swirling updraft.

  They had no chance. Blinded by snow, pushed and pulled by competing winds, the plane was snatched from the air and dashed towards the ground as if from pure spite. Nenn’s fearless jockeying kept them from being smeared across the rocky mountainside in a smoldering wreck, but even he couldn’t keep the craft airborne. Diving wildly, the plane nicked its wing on a crag, spun out of control and collided with a deep snow bank, finally skidding to a muffled stop in a sheltered pass between two of the peaks.

  There was no possibility of taking off again.

  Chapter XXVII

  THE FIRST WALL

  —

  THE AIRPLANE’S CABIN was a mess, with debris and groaning bodies strewn everywhere. The singing stone had been hurled from the rear of the cabin all the way up to the cockpit door, which
now bore an ugly dent from the impact. The stone was undamaged, but even more miraculous was the fact that it hadn’t killed anybody in its cannonball trajectory. Nobody had been killed at all, which was the only good thing that could be said.

  “Over here, Miss Rosie! I think his leg is broken!”

  Sonny, who had a nasty-looking lump on the side of his head, had found Bartholomew St. Cyr sprawled next to one of the seats, clutching awkwardly at his leg and moaning. The others were all in a dazed state of self-assessment, tenderly touching bumps and bruises but finding no major damage. Nenn had handled the doomed plane as well as anybody could.

  Rosie climbed over the wreckage of seats and personal effects to St. Cyr and Sonny, examined the leg, and determined that the elderly scholar had been lucky: he’d gotten away with only a sprain. But that was still bad news. There was no way anyone, much less a seventy year old man, could hike across the highest mountains in Asia on a bum leg.

  Sonny appeared to have a concussion. Like St. Cyr he was in no particular danger from the injury itself, but traversing the mountains in such a state would be difficult if not impossible.

  Later, after the rest of the group had pulled itself together, taken stock of the situation and ruled out any possibility of repairing the airplane, they began to think about moving on. It was St. Cyr who volunteered what nobody else dared to suggest.

  “We’ll stay behind,” he said. “Mr. Hampton and myself. The plane is well sheltered, and there are adequate supplies to keep us warm and fed for a few days at least; long enough for you to reach your goal. If you succeed, you can send help. If you fail, then we shall join you in the great beyond. I regret that after all these years, I am still denied the chance to see Shangri-La with my own eyes. But it is the only way.”

  This speech comforted no one, but it was logical enough. St. Cyr was not fit to travel anywhere on that ankle. Djali refused to leave his employer’s side, so he would remain as well. Sonny felt like a traitor, deserting the Baroness in her moment of greatest need, but he could barely walk the length of the cabin without becoming dizzy and nauseous. He had to stay.

  “I’d better stay too,” said Rosie. “I think they’ll be all right, but I can’t be sure yet, especially about Sonny. If things get worse, they’ll need me.”

  Sid began to protest. He couldn’t be without his Rosie, not now...

  “Shhh. Don’t worry, Mister Writer Man. You’ll move faster without me. I ain’t limber like the Baroness. And the faster you get there the sooner you can send help back here.”

  Sid thought Rosie was being foolish. What if the rest of them ran into trouble and someone needed medical attention? But she had made up her mind. Her instincts said she had to stay with the injured, where she was needed now.

  And so it was six people, not ten, who would contend with the walls of Shangri-La and the great dangers beyond. With Nenn Si-Lum leading the way, the shaken but intrepid band marched away from their wrecked airplane, marking its location as best they could, and trudged into the howling winds of the mountain pass. All were bundled up in thick parkas and heavy boots. Hank did the heavy lifting, with the singing stone stowed in his oversized pack and the amulet of Ando Chee slung around his neck.

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for Sid to understand how Shangri-La had remained unmolested for so many centuries. The real question was how it had ever become inhabited in the first place. Who on earth would look at this grim, inaccessible mountaintop and think: “Say, that looks like a swell place to raise a family!”

  It was fortunate that they had arrived by airplane. They were on a horizontal shelf of rock; the worst of the climbing lay somewhere behind them. From here it was less a matter of going up than of finding the right path through the rugged terrain. And the trek was becoming easier as the hours wore on: the storm had abated, and now there was only a light snow falling upon the ground, although the echoing winds still screamed in a fearsome, hollow howl above their heads.

  Breathing was a chore. The air was somewhat thicker than it should have been at this altitude, well above twenty thousand feet, but it was too thin for comfort all the same. The Captain and the Professor were having the most difficult time. Neither man was in particularly good physical condition to begin with, and the lack of oxygen tired them out quickly, slowing down the group as they stopped to rest every ten minutes or so. But Nenn was in his native element and never seemed to tire, and the Baroness, surprisingly enough, stayed right with him, her keen eyes helping him pick out the path and avoid hidden dangers.

  Hank and Sid held the chain together by filling in the middle space between the fleet-footed leaders and the dragging scientists. Hank, big and strong as a bear, moved inexorably forward, not quickly but with stubborn determination and deep reserves of stamina. But Sid, while fitter than he looked, was feeling the effects of the altitude. His head swam. And as his mind drifted into a walking slumber, Sid’s body seemed to move of its own volition.

  It moved the wrong way.

  The six hikers had become spread out as they sidled around a curving ledge, overlooking a deep crevasse. Nenn had sprinted ahead to scout the path, and the Baroness relayed his verbal instructions back down the line: stick to the ledge; he says it reverses a little ways ahead. Just a few hundred yards more and then we’ll be clear. Hank dropped back to pass the message to the scientists.

  Suddenly, Sid found himself alone. The Baroness had slipped around the bend in front of him, and Hank had not yet reappeared round the one behind him. He stopped and stared, watching the falling snow, only dimly aware of his surroundings as he gasped in the thin air. He couldn’t even hear the wind anymore, though it howled all the same. Before him was the deep crevasse. He saw someone on the other side. It was Nenn, who had followed the ledge around its hairpin turn and was now standing directly opposite Sid.

  For a moment, Sid forgot the crevasse was there. He didn’t see the hundred-foot drop at his feet, only the falling snow, so beautiful and silent, and the figure of Nenn the Chenggi in the distance. Go that way, he thought. Follow Nenn. He saw the tall man waving his arms, but he mistook the warning for a beckoning. Follow Nenn. He stepped forward, and walked right off the ledge.

  Sid was aware of an abrupt forward lunge as the ground disappeared under his left foot, then a jerk and a twisting heave as a massive, gloved hand clamped onto his arm and yanked him back. He lost his balance, tumbling backwards onto the cold, hard ground, and looked up to see Hank, wild-eyed and panting, looming above him. The detective’s face was lit from below by an eerie purple glow: the amulet of Ando Chee was blazing furiously.

  “Sid! Whaddaya doin’? You almost cashed it in, kid! Wake up!”

  There was a hard slap that made Sid’s right cheek sting, and then he realized what had just happened. They were all above him now, the Baroness with a pleading look, Doyle and Armbruster in open-mouthed distress, Nenn running back along the ledge to make sure everyone was still alive.

  From that point on they kept the group tightly bunched, nobody more than six feet away from the others. They made it around the ledge without further incident, and passed into a dark tunnel carved into the ancient rock face. Here was the first indication of life Sid had seen: surrounding the arched tunnel entrance was a carved inscription, written in the same obscure script that ran around the circumference of the singing stones. They were on the right path.

  A few minutes later, they emerged into another world.

  The snow still fell, but the wild roar of the wind was gone. The air was still, serene. And warm! Just minutes before, they had passed a thick snowdrift beside the tunnel entrance. But on this side of the cliff, the flakes melted as soon as they touched the rocky ground.

  A valley was spread before them. A steep, rocky decline on their side led to scrubby fields below. Beyond this they could see gently rising tiers of hills. They were green, alive with lush grasses. It was “climatologically impossible,” as Professor Armbruster exclaimed aloud. But there it was.
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  The first wall had been conquered. They had reached the outer borders of Shangri-La.

  * * *

  On October 1, a most unusual telegram was delivered to the White House in Washington D.C.

  The President of the United States receives hundreds, sometimes thousands of telegrams each day. They come from heads of state, concerned citizens, and deluded cranks alike. A dedicated staff exists whose sole job is to sort through this unsolicited correspondence, most of which is of no great significance.

  The clerk on duty had just handled an urgent missive from Iowa, alerting the President to the alarming presence of foreigners in that part of the country and demanding to know what the government planned to do about it. That one went into the crank pile. The clerk rubbed his eyes with a sigh and moved on to the next telegram, which had no point of origin listed. That was unusual.

  The message was short and cryptic. It contained a date, a time, a set of map coordinates and the following eight words:

  WATCH AND LEARN. YOUR CITIES WILL BE NEXT.

  It was unsigned. The clerk read it again, and looked back at the top of the form and the envelope, trying to figure out where it had been sent from. There was nothing. The clerk’s hand hovered over the crank pile for a moment, but he changed his mind. This strange message felt like more than a simple prank. He put it in the “Important” basket, and rang for a page to take it upstairs.

  Similar telegrams appeared the same day in London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo. They all indicated an event coming at midnight, Greenwich time, and all gave identical coordinates. The location matched an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean, not far from Micronesia. The island was called Ranatiwi.

  WATCH AND LEARN.

  There were three witnesses: an aircraft dispatched from a U.S. Naval base, a Japanese patrol boat, and a British steamer. At 12 o’clock noon — which was midnight, Greenwich time — all were within sight of Ranatiwi Island, a dormant volcano jutting up from the water like a coolie’s hat. Binoculars focused on the island and scanned the flat horizon. There was nothing to see.