It seemed to Kate that she was witnessing an unbelievable drama. The scene was unreal: the ruined chamber wrapped in thick white fog; the scattered remains of centuries-old statues and broken columns; the patches of snow and frost in the rough spots of the floor. The people were as theatrical as the setting: the enormous monk with a Mongol warrior’s body and face of a saint, with the tiny Borobá teetering on his shoulder; the stern General Myar Kunglung, several soldiers, and the pilot, all in uniform, as if they had dropped in by accident; and finally the king, whose serene and dignified presence was imposing even in death.
“But where are Alexander and Nadia?” the grandmother asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Prince
ALEXANDER WAS IN THE LEAD, following the indications on the video and the GPS, because the prince did not understand how they worked and this was not the moment to give him a lesson. Alexander was by no means an expert, and these mechanisms were also the last word in technology, used only by the United States Army, but he was familiar with electronic devices and it had not been difficult for him to figure out how to operate them.
Dil Bahadur had spent twelve years of his life preparing for the moment he would walk through the labyrinth of doors on the lowest floor of the palace, open the Magnificent Door, and one by one overcome the obstacles on the way to the Sacred Chamber. He had memorized the instructions, confident that if his recollections failed him, his father would be at his side until he was able to do it alone. Now he had to face the test with only the presence of his new friends, Nadia and Alexander. At first he stared, unconvinced, at the small screen Alexander carried in his hand, until he realized that it was guiding them directly to the proper door. Not once did they have to turn back, and they never opened the wrong door, so soon they found themselves in the room with the golden lamps. Now no one was guarding the Magnificent Door. All traces of blood had been cleaned from the floor. The guard who had been killed by the Blue Warriors, as well as the body of his wounded colleague, had been taken away and no one had replaced them.
“Wow!” Nadia and Alexander cried in unison when they saw the door.
“We must turn the correct jades; if we are mistaken, the system will lock and we will not be able to go in,” the prince warned.
“All we have to do is pay close attention to what the king did. It’s all here on the video,” Alexander explained.
They watched the video twice, until they were absolutely sure, and then Dil Bahadur turned four jade pieces carved in the shape of a lotus flower. Nothing happened. The three young people waited breathlessly, counting the seconds. Slowly the two panels of the door began to move.
They found themselves in the circular room with nine identical doors and, as Tex Armadillo had done days before, Alexander stepped upon the eye painted on the floor, opened his arms, and turned at a forty-five-degree angle. His right hand pointed to the door they should choose.
As it swung open, they heard a hair-raising chorus of laments, and were struck by the foul odor of the tomb. They saw nothing, only unrelieved blackness.
“I will go first, because my totemic animal, the jaguar, is supposed to be able to see in the dark,” Alexander offered, stepping inside, followed by his friends.
“Do you see anything?” Nadia asked.
“Nothing,” Alexander confessed.
“This is the time it would be helpful to have a totemic animal a little humbler than a jaguar. A cockroach, for example,” Nadia said, and laughed nervously.
“Possibly it would not be a bad idea to use your flashlight,” the prince suggested.
Alexander felt like a fool: He had completely forgotten that he was carrying his flashlight and his jackknife in the pockets of his parka. As he snapped on the light, they saw they were in a corridor, along which they moved with hesitation until they came to the door at the end. They opened it with extreme caution. The stench was much worse, but there was enough light to allow them to see. They were surrounded with human skeletons hanging from the ceiling and swinging in the air with a macabre clicking of bones; at their feet seethed a revolting living carpet of snakes. Alexander yelled and tried to back out, but Dil Bahadur seized his arm.
“The bones are ancient; they were put here centuries ago to discourage intruders,” he said.
“And the snakes?”
“The men of the scorpion sect went past them, Jaguar; that means that we can do it, too,” Nadia said encouragingly.
“Pema said that those men are immune to insect and snake poisons,” Alexander reminded her.
“Perhaps these snakes are not poisonous. According to what my honorable master Tensing taught me, the shape of the head of dangerous serpents is more triangular. We go ahead,” the prince ordered.
“Those snakes don’t show up in the video,” Nadia noted.
“The camera was on the king’s medallion, so it filmed only what was ahead of him, not what was at his feet,” Alexander explained.
“Which means that we must be very cautious regarding what’s lower and higher than the king’s chest,” she concluded.
The prince and his friends pushed aside the skeletons and, treading on the snakes, stumbled to the next door, which opened into an empty, shadowy room.
“Wait!” Alexander called. “Here your father did something before he stepped in.”
“I remember! There is a pineapple carved in the wood,” said Dil Bahadur, feeling along the doorframe.
He found the button he was looking for, and pushed. The pineapple yielded, and immediately they heard a terrible rattle, and watched as a forest of lances fell from the ceiling, stirring a cloud of dust. They waited until the last lance buried itself in the floor.
“This is when we need Borobá. He could scout the way. Well, I will go first, because I am the lightest and thinnest,” Nadia decided.
“It occurs to me that possibly this trap is not as simple as it seems,” Dil Bahadur warned them.
Slithering like an eel, Nadia slipped past the first metal rods. She had gone six or seven feet when her elbow brushed one of them, and suddenly the floor opened before her feet. Instinctively she grabbed the nearest lance, where she clung, kicking above empty space. Her hands slipped down the metal as her feet searched for some kind of support. By then Alexander had reached her, unmindful of where he was stepping in his haste to help her. He hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her up, holding her tight against his body. The whole room seemed to shudder, as if there was an earthquake, and several more lances fell from the ceiling, but none close to them. For several minutes the two friends didn’t move, arms about one another, waiting. Then, very slowly, they moved apart.
“Don’t touch anything,” Nadia whispered, afraid that even the breath they exhaled would provoke a new danger.
They reached the other side of the room and signaled Dil Bahadur to follow, though he had already started, because he had no fear of the lances: He was protected by his amulet.
“We could have died like a butterfly on a pin,” Alexander commented, cleaning his glasses, which were fogged over with sweat.
“But that didn’t happen, did it?” Nadia reminded him, though she was as frightened as he was.
“If you take three deep breaths, let the air flow down to your stomach and then let it out slowly, possibly you will feel better,” the prince advised.
“We don’t have time to do yoga. Let’s keep going,” Alexander interrupted.
The GPS indicated which door they should open, and, as soon as they did, the lances rose and the room again seemed empty. Ahead of them were two rooms, each with a variety of doors but free of traps. They relaxed a little and began to breathe normally, but were as cautious as ever.
Ahead of them everything was dark.
“You can’t see anything on the video, the screen is black,” said Alexander.
“What can it be?” Nadia inquired.
The prince took the flashlight and shone it on the floor, where they saw a leafy tree filled with
fruit and birds, painted with such mastery that it seemed to rise tall in the center of the room, firmly rooted in the earth. It was so beautiful and so innocent-looking that it invited them to come closer and touch it.
“Do not take a single step!” Dil Bahadur cried, for once forgetting his good manners. “This is the Tree of Life. I have heard stories about the dangers of stepping on it.”
The prince pulled out the small bowl he used to prepare his meals, which he always carried with him, and threw it on the floor. The Tree of Life was painted on a length of delicate silk stretched across a deep pit. One step forward would have launched them into the void. They didn’t know that one of Armadillo’s men had perished in that very place. The bandit lay at the bottom of a deep well where rats were picking his bones.
“How do we get by?” Nadia asked.
“Perhaps it would be better for you to wait here,” the prince indicated.
With great caution, Dil Bahadur felt with one foot until he found a narrow lip along the edge of the wall. It was invisible, because it was painted black and blended into the color of the floor. With his back pressed against the wall, he inched forward. He moved his right leg a short distance, tested his balance, and then moved the left. In that way he reached the other side.
Alexander realized that for Nadia that would be one of the most difficult tests, because of her fear of heights.
“Now you must call on the spirit of the eagle. Give me your hand, close your eyes, and focus on your feet,” he told her.
“Why don’t I just wait here?” she asked.
“No. We’re going together,” her friend insisted.
They had no idea how deep the hole was and did not mean to find out. The man who had fallen into the well had slipped before anyone could catch him. For an instant he had seemed to float in the air, held in the branches of the Tree of Life, spread-eagled, flapping in his black clothing like a giant bat. The illusion lasted only the blink of an eye. With a scream of absolute terror, the man disappeared into the black mouth of the well. His companions heard the thud of the body when it touched bottom, then a chill silence. Fortunately Nadia knew nothing of that. She clung to Alexander’s hand and, step by step, followed him to the other side.
Upon opening another door, the three friends found themselves surrounded with mirrors. Mirrors not only lined the walls, they were also on the ceiling and the floor, multiplying images to infinity. To add to the illusion, the room was tilted, like a cube sitting on one corner. They couldn’t walk, they had to crawl, clinging to each other, completely disoriented. They couldn’t see the doors because they, too, were mirror-covered. Within a few seconds they felt nauseated; they felt that their heads were bursting and that they were losing their reason.
“Don’t look to the side, concentrate on what’s ahead. Follow me; stay in line and don’t let go,” Alexander ordered. “The direction is mapped on my screen.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here,” said Nadia.
“If we open the wrong door, we could activate a lock that would trap us here forever,” the prince warned with his habitual calm.
“We have the most modern technology to help us,” Alexander said comfortingly, although he could scarcely control his own nerves.
The doors were all alike, but thanks to the GPS he knew in which direction to go. The king had paused in several places before he opened the correct door. Alexander rewound the video to check the details, and noticed a distorted image of the king reflected in a mirror.
“One of the mirrors is concave. That’s our door,” he concluded.
When Dil Bahadur saw himself fat and stumpy, he pushed; the door yielded and they were safely out. Now they were in a long, narrow corridor that spiraled back on itself. It was different from other areas of the palace in that there were no visible doors, but they had no doubt they would find one at the end, for that is what the video showed. Here there was no place to get lost, it was simply a matter of going forward. The air was thin and filled with a fine dust, which glittered like gold in the light of the small lamps hanging from the ceiling. On the video they could see that the king had moved along quickly, without hesitation, but that didn’t mean they were safe, since there could be dangers the video didn’t record.
They walked into the corridor, looking all around, not knowing where the next threat would come from but aware that they could not drop their guard for a second. They had gone a few steps before they became aware that they were sinking into something soft and springy. It was like walking on a long strip of canvas that gave under the weight of their bodies.
Dil Bahadur covered his mouth and nose with his tunic and desperately signaled his friends to do the same. He had realized that they were moving across a series of bellows. With every step they were pumping out the dust they had noticed on entering. Within a few seconds the air was so saturated that they couldn’t see a foot ahead. The urge to cough was unbearable, but they controlled it as best they could, because when they breathed their lungs filled with the dust. The only solution was to try to reach the exit as quickly as possible. They began to run, trying not to inhale, which was impossible considering the length of the passage. They feared a lethal poison, but they thought that since the king had passed through it more than once in his life, it couldn’t be deadly.
Nadia was a good swimmer, because she had grown up in the Amazon, where life is lived on the water, and she could stay under for more than a minute. That allowed her to hold her breath longer than her friends, but even she had to gasp for air a couple of times. She figured that Alexander and Dil Bahadur had inhaled considerably more of that strange powder than she had. With four long strides she reached the end of the passage, opened the only door, and pulled the others toward it.
Without a thought for the dangers the next room might hold, the three friends burst out of the corridor, falling over each other, choking, gulping air, and trying to brush the powder off their clothes. They saw nothing menacing on the video; the king had moved through this room as confidently as he had through the corridor. Nadia, who was in better shape than her companions, signaled them not to move while she checked out the room. It was well lit, and the air seemed normal. There were several doors, but the screen clearly indicated which one to open. As she moved forward a couple of steps, she became aware that it was difficult to focus: Thousands of brilliantly colored dots and lines and geometric figures were dancing before her eyes. She held out her arms, trying to keep her balance. She turned back and saw that Alexander and Dil Bahadur were staggering, too.
“I feel sick,” Alexander muttered, suddenly sinking to the floor.
“Jaguar! Open your eyes!” Nadia shook him. “The effect of that dust is like the potion the Indians gave us in the Amazon. You remember? We saw visions.”
“A hallucinogen? You think we’ve been drugged?”
“A hallucinogen?” asked the prince, who was still on his feet thanks only to his unusual control of his body.
“Yes, I think so. Each of you is seeing something different. It isn’t real,” Nadia explained, taking her friends’ arms to help them forward, never imagining that within a few seconds she would plunge into the hell of the drug.
Despite Nadia’s warning, none of the three suspected the terrible power of the golden dust. The first symptom took the form of a psychedelic labyrinth of colors and iridescent figures whirling at dizzying speed. Making a supreme effort, the three kept their eyes open and lurched forward, wondering how the king had averted the drug’s spell. They felt they were losing contact with the world and with reality, as if they were dying, and they couldn’t contain their moans of anguish. By then they had come to the next room, which was much larger than the previous ones. When they saw what was ahead, they panicked, even though a part of their brains kept telling them that the images were the fruit of their imaginations.
They were in hell, surrounded with monsters and demons circling like a pack of snarling beasts. On every side they saw mangl
ed bodies, torture, blood, and death. A horrifying chorus of cries deafened them, hollow voices called out their names, like ghosts hungry to claim them.
Alexander had a clear vision of his mother in the claws of a powerful, black, menacing bird of prey. He reached out to try to rescue her just at the moment the bird of death bit off her head. He screamed at the top of his lungs.
Nadia was standing on a narrow beam on the top floor of one of the skyscrapers she had visited with Kate in New York, fighting to keep her balance. Thousands of feet below, everything was covered with red-hot lava. The vertigo of death invaded her mind, erasing her ability to reason, as the beam tipped more and more. She heard the fatal temptation of the call of the abyss.
As for Dil Bahadur, he felt his spirit separate from his body, race through the skies like a lightning bolt; it reached the ruins of the fortified monastery at the exact moment his father was dying in Tensing’s arms. Then he watched as an army of bloodthirsty creatures attacked the defenseless Kingdom of the Golden Dragon. And the only thing standing between them was himself, naked and vulnerable.
The visions were different for each of them, but all were atrocious; they represented what each most feared, their worst memories, nightmares, and weaknesses, their personal journeys to the forbidden chambers of their own consciousnesses. However, it was a much less arduous journey for them than it had been for Tex Armadillo and the Blue Warriors; because the three young people had good souls, they weren’t carrying the weight of the others’ unspeakable crimes.
The first to come around was the prince, who had had many years of practice in controlling mind and body. With sheer will he broke away from the evil figures attacking him and took a few steps into the room.
“Everything we’re seeing is illusion,” he shouted, and, taking his friends by the hands, he pulled them toward the exit.