The Ninth Buddha

by Daniel Easterman

  Chindamani interrupted.

  “I always assumed they were left in the Chqje’s own room. Or perhaps in the old temple hall where he goes to meditate.”

  Sonam shook her head.

  “That’s what most people think. But they’ve been somewhere else all the time. In a small chamber just below the gon-kang.”

  She looked up into Chindamani’s eyes. The girl could see the fear in the old woman’s glance, quite unmistakable now, steadying its grip on her. She felt it herself now, naked, tangible, calling her to itself.

  “To get to the tunnel that leads to the stairs,” the ama-la said, ‘you have to pass through the chamber in which the Oracle treasures are kept. Do you understand? You have to go through the Chqje’s chamber.”

  “Ama-la, I don’t understand,” pleaded Chindamani.

  “What’s wrong with going through the chamber? I won’t touch the Chqje’s jewels. We’ll leave them exactly as they are. We won’t even look at them closely. The gods won’t be offended. What danger could there be in our just passing through the chamber?”

  The old woman shuddered. Chindamani felt her own flesh creep.

  What was the ama-la frightened of?

  “Don’t you see?” Sonam pleaded. Her voice had become whining, trembling with fear.

  “They put a guardian down there. Long ago, when they put the treasures there, they set a guardian over them.

  It’s been there for more than five hundred years. It’s still there.”

  “What sort of guardian?” Chindamani asked, struggling to fight down the sensation of nausea in her stomach.

  “I don’t know,” Sonam protested. The old woman had frightened herself more than she had expected.

  “Does it matter? It’s down there, whatever it is.”

  “How does the Chqje get his regalia? He has to go down there three times a year, doesn’t he? Why doesn’t this guardian harm him or his assistants?”

  “I don’t know. He must have some power over it. He has magical powers. More than you, my Lady. And more than that Tsarong Rinpoche.”

  “I don’t have magical powers, ama-la. I have told you that often enough.” Nor did she believe that anyone else possessed them; but that was an opinion she kept firmly to herself.

  “Tell me, Sonam,” she went on, ‘does anyone know what this guardian looks like?”

  The old woman snorted.

  “Of course. The Chqje knows. The abbot knows. At least .. .”

  she halted, remembering the news Chindamani had just brought.

  “At least he did know. And the Chqje’s assistants know. That’s all.

  I’m sure that’s all.”

  Chindamani sighed. She had no wish to distress the old woman further; but she had already seen the bodies of the Chqje and his three assistants among those hanging from the ceiling in Thondrup Chophel’s room.

  She made her mind up.

  “We’ll have to risk it,” she said.

  “If the Chqje and his assistants could go in there without coming to harm, so can we.”

  The old woman put her face in her hands and began to moan, rocking backwards and forwards.

  “Please, ama-la,” pleaded Chindamani.

  “There isn’t time for this.

  Trust me. The Lady Tara won’t let me come to harm.”

  But the old woman paid no attention. Her moaning was becoming more intense as the reality of their situation mingled in her mind with a lifetime’s fantasies about the supernatural horrors of the universe she inhabited.

  Chindamani turned to Samdup.

  “Samdup,” she said, ‘please look after the pee-ling boy. Try to tell him not to be frightened. And look after Sonam as well. Tell her there’s nothing to worry about. Ask her to help you get our clothes and equipment ready. I’ve put everything in that large chest. Take it all out and sort it into piles. There won’t be time to waste later.

  I can’t help you: I have to go to find Ka-ris To-feh.”

  But the boy just sat rigid on his seat, staring at her.

  “What’s wrong, Samdup?” she replied.

  “I’m frightened,” the boy said.

  “I don’t want to go to the gonkang tonight. And I don’t want to go through any tunnels.”

  Chindamani went across and sat down beside him.

  “I’m frightened too, Samdup,” she whispered.

  “But we both have to be brave. It’s very important for you to be brave tonight. Like you were when you tried to get to Ghaloring with Tobchen Geshe.”

  “But I wasn’t brave then, Chindamani. When Tobchen Geshe was lost, I got very frightened and cried.”

  “I know,” she said, putting a hand on the boy’s head.

  “But you had reason to be afraid. You were alone and in very real danger. If Thondrup Chophel had not arrived when he did, you might have died.”

  “But Thondrup Chophel frightened me more than anything!”

  “Only at first. After that, you were just unhappy. But you weren’t in danger. Now, tonight you are in danger. No-one’s going to try to kill you, you’re worth too much to them. But a time may come when they decide it would be in their interests to get rid of you. That’s why we both have to get away tonight. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I see, but .. .”

  “There’s nothing to be frightened of in the gon-kang.” She leaned across and whispered quickly in his ear, “And I wouldn’t worry about old Sonam’s story. It’s just an old tale; there’s nothing down there.”

  But privately, she was worried. It might not be the sort of horror the old nurse imagined, but someone could have prepared a nasty surprise for them.

  She squeezed Samdup’s hand tightly and smiled. The boy smiled back hesitantly. She went over to William, wishing she could say even a few words in his language to reassure him. All she could say was his father’s name, Ka-ris To-feh, but she could not be sure that he understood what she meant. She smiled and kissed him lightly on the forehead. He tried a small smile in return, but he was still frightened.

  She crossed the room to a large lacquer chest. Inside, she kept the things she had put away for their journey: clothes for the four of them, a tent, food and a bag of fuel stolen from the kitchens, and money. She had never used money in her life, but she understood its purpose and knew it would be safer to carry than gold or jewels, the only other form of portable wealth she possessed. The money had been obtained through Sonam, who had ways of laying her hands on just about anything.

  Chindamani put on a heavy man’s robe that still allowed her some freedom of movement, unlike a chuba. She said a few more reassuring words to her old nurse, smiled at the boys again, and went to the window.

  Once, long ago, when she was a little girl, she had discovered that a narrow ledge ran along the side of the upper storey, just below the windows. She had tried walking along it to a room nearby, where one of her teachers lived, but had been discovered and severely punished by Sonam. Now she prayed for enough balance to make it as far as Christopher’s room, which was on the same side of the gompa as her own.

  The cold bit into her face and hands like slivers of ice burrowing beneath the skin. Slowly, she lowered herself down to the ledge and found it nearer than she had expected: she had forgotten to make allowances for the couple of feet she had grown since her last venture outside But if the ledge felt nearer, it also felt narrower much narrower than the bridge to the lab rang and hard up against the wall.

  The wind was worse than the cold. It blew across the face of the monastery, as it hurtled through the pass out of nowhere and into nowhere. The dark and cold and wind conspired against her, to blind and numb and snatch her away into the void. Within seconds, the light and warmth of the room had become a distant memory, and one that she had to drive from her mind by an effort of will. All her energies, all her thoughts were concentrated now on one thing, how to survive the next few minutes.

  She moved inches at a time, never allowing her feet to leave the ledge, sli
ding across to the left, hands flat against the wall. The stone was uneven: plaster had fallen away in places, making it difficult to judge the surface. The wall and the ledge and the black void at her back had become the entire world for her. There was no other world, neither in memory nor in prospect. She edged her way along the ledge for no other reason than that she was there:

  all other reasons, all other motivations had vanished.

  Suddenly, her left foot slipped and she started to topple sideways. For long moments she hung poised, all her weight on the right foot, desperately fighting against the awful pull of gravity that was trying to bear her down and give her to the wind. Her frozen fingers clutched at bare stone, blindly searching for the tiniest crack to hold on to.

  Part of the ledge had given way. Perhaps it had always been that way she could not remember how far she had got the last time. The problem was: just how wide was the gap? Six inches? A foot? Ten? She was carrying nothing with which to test the distance. In the pitch dark, she could see nothing. If she tired and misjudged, she would lose her balance and fall to her death on the rocks below. If she returned for something to measure the gap, she knew she would lose her nerve and be unable to climb back out again.

  Gingerly, holding her weight on her right leg, pressing hard against the wall for maximum balance, she edged her left foot out again, feeling for the resumption of the ledge. The wind whistled in her ears, distracting her. It tugged at her body, trying to tear her away from the wall. Her heart shuddered inside her chest.

  Her weight was already beginning to shift, and she still had not found the next stretch of ledge. She wanted to bend her right knee, to bring her torso lower, but that would only push her out further from the wall. Sweat poured out of her. On her face and the palms of her hands, it turned almost instantly to ice. She shivered and felt herself teeter on the edge of balance. Still nothing. She could not be sure just where to put her left foot down. The muscles of her right leg were pulling badly. A vicious pain shot up her thigh;

  the leg felt as though about to go into cramp. Still nothing. She wanted to scream, to break the tension somehow, to relax her muscles.

  She moved her left arm just a fraction, then her right. She stretched another inch left wards with her foot. Still nothing. Inside her brain, an insidious voice was repeating: “Let go, let go, let go!”

  She wanted to drop, to let the void solve all her problems. Why not?

  The Lady would find another body. Still nothing.

  In another fraction of an inch she would have reached her limit.

  And already she was frightened that, without realizing it, she had passed a point of no return, where no effort on her part would rectify her state of imbalance and return to her starting position.

  Her right leg was screaming in agony, it could not possibly support the strain of moving back. She moved the final fraction. Still nothing. She moved again.

  She felt her balance go. One second she was static, just holding on; the next she was out of control, moving, lurching into the darkness.

  Her toe caught the corner of the ledge and held. Just. She hung there, between life and nothingness, mentally letting go, forcing herself to strain every muscle until she had balance again. Her heart pounded as if about to burst. The darkness seemed to vanish, and she was alone in a world of light. Then the light faded and she was back again on the cold ledge, shuddering and on the verge of panic.

  She fought down the rising terror and edged her left foot up on to the ledge, praying it would hold. Somewhere in her mind, the Tara mantra was being recited, but she had lost all sight of the goddess within herself. Her senses were the only things binding her to reality now. The feel of her foot on the hard ledge was bliss beyond any bliss that prayers or offerings could bring.

  Gradually, her heartbeat and her breathing slowed and life began to come back into her right leg. She moved her left foot along just far enough to leave room for the right, shifted her balance towards the left, and crossed the gap. That was it. She knew she could never face that a second time. If she could not find a way back into the monastery from here, she would either freeze to death or fall out of the world forever.

  By her calculation, Ka-ris To-feh’s room should be the fifth along, but it was difficult to make out anything clearly in the dark and she was terrified that she would make a mistake and go past unwittingly. She prayed his shutters had not been closed since the morning before: she could not remember how they had been earlier that night when she had gone to his room to waken him.

  She was grimly conscious that time was passing quickly. Fear urged her to panic and hurry, but she forced herself to move slowly, inch by inch, willing time itself to slow down and keep pace with her.

  Her fingers had become a problem. If she remained outside much longer without caring for them, she could contract serious frost-bite. Already, feeling had gone from them and she was able to use them only by an effort of will.

  She felt that hours had passed by the time she reached the fifth window. To her joy, she could make out the glow of a dim light coming from inside the room. Once she was positioned right underneath, she reached up and peered through the window, using the heels of her hands, then her elbows.

  She looked inside. Christopher was not there.

  Tsarong Rinpoche was growing more worried by the minute. With the help of the Buriat Zam-ya-ting, he had taken control of Dorjela at last. Zam-ya-ting thought he was in charge, but he would soon show him who had the final say in things here. He was more worried by the woman, Chindamani. She represented the goddess Tara, and Tara was extremely popular among the monks, just as she was with the people. Given time, the bitch could undermine all his efforts by a direct appeal to the loyalty of the trap as couched in suitably emotive language. She would have to be eliminated and that would take some subtle arranging if it were not to backfire.

  The Englishman Wy-lam had served his purpose. By bringing him to the monastery, he had helped implicate the pee-ling abbot in the machinations of the British. Zam-ya-ting had known a lot about Wy-lam and had been able to persuade the monks that both he and his father were involved in some sort of plot together.

  Perhaps they had been. But it didn’t seem to matter now.

  What did matter was that Wy-lam could prove more of a threat than even the woman. The office of abbot was not hereditary. The Englishman could not claim to be a trulku, nor did Tsarong Rinpoche fear he would. But everyone at Dorje-la knew the words of the prophecy found in an old terma book: “When Dorje-la is ruled by a pee-ling, the world shall be ruled from Dorje-la’. And they knew the sentence that followed it in the book: “In the year that the son of a pee-ling’s son comes to the Land of Snows, in that year shall Maidari appear. He shall be the last abbot of Dorje-la, and the greatest.”

  The Englishman would not know any of that, of course; but he was sure the girl would make him aware of it and use it to help them rally support within the monastery. All it needed was for Wy-lam to persuade his son to co-operate by playing whatever role the girl suggested for him. The Rinpoche could not be sure of most of the monks yet. A little push might send them running in another direction.

  That would have to be prevented at all costs. He did not know what plans the Burial had for Wy-lam or the woman. But his own were unambiguous: the girl and the Englishman must be killed tonight.

  The catch on the window gave without much pressure. It had not been designed to keep anyone out from the pass, it was impossible to climb anywhere within one hundred feet of it. Chindamani dropped down into the room. It felt warm. Christopher had been here since she last saw him. His outdoor clothes the ones in which he had come to Dorje-la were gone. He must have been brought back here, dressed in them, then left again. Just what was going on?

  She stepped cautiously to the door. Her heart was still beating hard from her nerve-racking passage of the ledge outside, and her hands hurt as the circulation tried to return to normal. More than anything, she longed to throw herself on the bed
and sleep. To escape all this in dreams seemed to her the most desirable of all things at this moment.

  The door was partly open. Holding her breath, she opened it further. A man was lying on the ground about a yard away, not moving. A long halberd from the gon-kang had fallen from his hand and lay near him. Chindamani walked to the man and bent down. He was dead. As far as she could tell, someone had broken his neck. Was the fighting still going on? Or had Ka-ris To-feh done this in his determination to escape?

  If it had been Ka-ris To-feh, he would be trying to find a way out of

  the monastery. And the quickest way he knew was over the roof- the way

  they had gone together when she had taken him to see the boys in the

  lab rang But if he hoped to escape that way he was making a stupid

  mistake: the roof led nowhere. And the bridge only led to the lab

  rang

  She set off rapidly in the direction of the hatch through which she and Christopher had got on to the roof. The monastery had fallen silent again, but tonight it was a threatening silence, not the meditative quiet to which Chindamani was accustomed. Before, she had moved quietly when she went abroad at night out of respect for the sleep or the prayers of the monks in their cells.

  Tonight, she did so out of fear for her life.

  When she got to the hatch it was closed. But the ladder had gone, and she guessed Ka-ris To-feh had pulled it up after him in order to delay any possible pursuit. Without it, there was no way she could get out through the hatch. The only other possibility was a second hatch nearby, a private hatch used by the abbot whenever he wanted to go to the lab rang or just spend time on the roof watching the clouds pass.

  The ladder to the second hatch was in place. It was a matter of moments for Chindamani to get out on to the roof. She prayed no one would come and find the ladder and the open hatch, but there was no time to waste covering her tracks.

  The cold seized her with vicious fingers, jealous of the time she had just spent out of its clutches. On the rooftop, the wind blew unimpeded by any obstacles. Pieces of dry snow whipped across her face out of the unrelieved darkness. The roaring of the wind combined with the pounding in her chest to blot out any other sounds. Like a swimmer swimming in green depths amid a terrible silence, she opened her mouth and called his name but heard nothing. The sound of her voice was swallowed up in the general din, thin and futile. Again and again she strained to be heard, shouting his name aloud in steady measures, a repeated mantra unheard and unheeded. He was here somewhere, there was nowhere else for him to go.