The Ascent(87)

2



I OPENED MY EYES TO FIND MYSELF IN A SMALL.

ill-lit room in what appeared to be a clapboard hut. I lay on a bed of straw covered with a blanket of cheesecloth. My goose-down pillow was soft to the point of near nonexistence. Candles flickered from every corner of the small room, and a fetid, moldering smell—curdling goat cheese, perhaps—permeated the air. At the opposite end of the room facing my bed, there was a doorway with no door, but aside from a straw mat halfway down the hallway and walls the color of sawdust, I could see nothing.

Above my head and tacked to the exposed wooden rafters hung various thangkas painted in bright colors. The one directly above me depicted one centralized, bronze-skinned figure whose black hair was wrapped in a bun and surrounded by a halo. The figure was flanked on either side by smaller figures, one of them white as a ghost and wielding a flaming sword, the other pale blue and multiarmed.

An attempt to sit up sent a red-hot burning sensation through my torso. I pushed aside the cheesecloth blanket and found I’d been dressed in white linens. A tiny red star—blood—stood in the center of the linen shirt. I lifted the shirt to find the puncture wound below my belly button had been sewn shut with stiff-looking black thread. Gingerly I fingered the wound. I felt nothing; it was numb.

Footsteps approached from the hallway. I dropped my shirt as a great looming shadow fell on the wall of the hallway just outside my room. It grew larger as the figure approached. A large man dressed in black robes ducked beneath the low doorway and entered the room. He paused, his surprise at my consciousness immediately evident, then continued over to a small table laden with various vials and instruments spread out on a velvet cloth.

“You’re awake,” said the man, his back to me.

“I know you,” I said. “Your name’s Shomas. You were outside my cabin that night before we left for the Godesh Ridge.”

Without turning to face me, Shomas said, “Lie back down. You are still healing.”

I eased myself down onto the pillow. My eyelids felt heavy, but I refused to fall asleep. Instead, I trained my gaze on the thangka above my head.

When Shomas appeared at my bedside holding a vial of amber fluid and a syringe, he followed my gaze to the tapestry. “That is Shakyamuni in the center. He is flanked by two bodhisattva. The one with the sword is Manjusri, and the one with many arms is Chenrezig, also called Avalokite?vara, the redeemer of samsara.”

“What’s samsara?”

“Reincarnation.” Shomas plunged the syringe into the vial of amber fluid. Once he’d withdrawn a sufficient amount, he withdrew the syringe and gripped my left wrist with his free hand.

“Hey,” I stammered, “what’s that?”

“This is medicine to help you heal.” He jabbed the needle into my arm. “You have suffered the mountain sickness, dehydration, and hypothermia. Also, curiously enough, you were poisoned.”

“Poisoned,” I echoed, my eyes growing distant.

“Some sort of heart accelerant, apparently. Rather unusual.” He steadied my arm, his grip tightening on my wrist. “The cat may have nine lives, but man has only three. Three is the magical number. You have used up one of yours on this trip, my friend.”

“Two, actually,” I corrected him, thinking of the cave in the Midwest. “I’ve used up two.”

He did not look at me.

“Where am I?”

“Safe,” Shomas said. He emptied the syringe into my arm, then pulled the needle out. “You are in the village in the valley of the Churia Hills.”

“How … how did I get here?”

“We rescued you from the Godesh Ridge.”

“But … how?”

Shomas shuffled over to the table and set the vial and syringe on the velvet mat. From within the folds of his dark robe, Shomas produced what appeared to be a small silver button that he held between his thumb and index finger. It pulsed once with a strobe of white light.

“This,” he said, “is the tracking device I put inside your coat. I had just come from your room when you returned that evening.”

“A tracking device,” I muttered. “Why would you do that?”

“It isn’t the first time.” He dropped the silver button into one of his many pockets. “Occasionally we get people who wish to traverse the Godesh Ridge in search of the Canyon of Souls. If we fail to sufficiently warn them away, we always take … alternative measures.”

A young girl dressed all in white with straight black hair appeared in the doorway, holding what appeared to be a bowl of soup. She paused, her head down, and waited for Shomas to address her. I understood none of what they said. The girl nodded and entered the room, her footfalls silent on the wooden floor, and set the bowl on a hand-carved table beside my bed. She stole a glimpse of me from the corner of her eyes. When I smiled, she spun away, her long hair twirling, and disappeared out the door.

Shomas pointed to the steaming ceramic bowl. “You should eat that, even if you are not hungry.”

“I’m starving,” I said.

“It is hot.”

The ceramic bowl was on a cloth. I sat up and leaned against the wall, then used the cloth to transfer the bowl into my lap. The soup was colorless. Barley leaves and cubes of what must have been tofu floated in the broth. I brought it to my mouth and sipped. It was excruciatingly hot and as tasteless as boiling water.