The Cloud Maker

hundred yards he rounded the corner, looking for the piece of chocolate on the staircase he had come down. It wasn’t there.

How could he have turned the wrong way?

Ahead of him the corridor branched off into two narrower passageways and he stopped, wondering which to choose. To his left, a large metal chain was wrapped over a circular wooden wheel and bolted to the wall. He moved closer to one of the flaming candles and tried to think, but the sizzling noise of the wick burning through the candle was growing impossibly loud. Luca stared at the dancing yellow flame as a long plume of black smoke belched out on to the wall above.

As he stared at the light, his jaw slack and his eyes wide open, his mind started to fill with strange, swirling images. It was that smell… It was making him feel faint. His eyelids were getting heavier.

He heard footsteps, then voices. They were drawing closer. Light from around the corner appeared on the wall. Luca shook his head, trying to snap himself out of it, when his eyes came to rest on the metal chain reaching down to the floor. He looked more closely. It was a trapdoor, cut into the stone floor below.

With a dull metal clank from the chain, he heaved open the trapdoor and shuffled down the wooden ladder, drawing his lighter from his pocket but not sparking it.

Beneath, there was absolute darkness.

There was a padding sound above him as a procession of felt slippers walked over the timbers of the trapdoor, then eventually silence. Luca waited a moment longer, listening to the sound of his own strained breathing, before finally rolling his thumb down the flint of the lighter.

As the flame sparked, the outline of a terrifying figure exploded out of the darkness. Luca jumped back, pressing himself against the wall, and accidentally let his thumb off the gas, sending the space ahead into pitch blackness. It took a moment for him to steady his nerves and realise that the figure was nothing more than a painting on the wall of the narrow tunnel he now found himself in.

With the lighter held high above his head, he took in the picture. It was of some strange god with blue skin and flaming orange hair. Its lips were pulled back, snarling ferociously with great incisor teeth and yellow eyes that stared accusingly ahead. In its hands were dozens of naked human figures, which were being crushed and burnt in the fires all about its hideous body.

The figure was part of a mural that stretched the entire length of the corridor, from floor to ceiling, reaching back into the darkness. Luca slowly edged his way along, eyes transfixed by the scenes before him. There was just an overwhelming array of colour and form.

‘What is this place?’ he whispered.

In a deep alcove off the main stem of the tunnel, his lighter picked up another figure. It was statue of the Buddha, about four feet high and raised on a plinth. As he slowly approached, the surface of the statue seemed to shimmer in the light. He moved closer still, reaching out his hand and letting his fingertips brush across its hard surface.

The entire statue was encrusted with thousands of tiny gems. Even through the haze of his headache Luca grasped the significance of what he was seeing and for a long moment, just let his hand linger on the cool brittleness of the stones. As he moved the lighter in front of the statue’s eyes, two huge diamonds danced and flashed before him.

Finally he tore his gaze away, looking further down the corridor. He could see other alcoves set back from the tunnel. In the closest, another statue was shining in the darkness. How many more were there? And what other treasures were to be found, sealed away in this vault?

A sense of wonderment spread over him. Surely this was what the fortune hunters had been searching for all those years — the hidden treasure that the professor had said was just a myth.

Studded into the plinth of the statue were long lines of metal nuggets, each no bigger than a human finger. There were hundreds of them. He picked one up at random, turning it over in his hand. The metal was coarse and dull, and at one end he could see a circular mark had been branded into it, with eight points merging into a central triangle.

He had seen that mark before — in the thangka Jack had given him. It was the exact same symbol the priest had held in his open hand.

Running his own hand over the studded surface, Luca finally understood what these were. They were seals, used to brand letters with the official mark of Geltang. They didn’t look valuable, but they would at last be some kind of tangible proof that the place actually existed. Plucking one from the lowest part of the plinth, he slipped it into his pocket.

As Luca looked up again and into the white diamonds of the statue’s eyes, he heard a loud groaning. He froze. The sound was so close, hidden somewhere just beyond the statue.

Then it came again.

Waving the lighter from side to side, Luca tried to peer further into the darkness. The flame blew sideways, struggling to stay lit.

‘Who’s there?’

Nothing.

‘Answer me!’

He shuffled forward, passing round the front of the statue. The alcove opened up into a dark well and on the far side was the grey profile of a human figure, its outline vague against the stone wall. Luca stopped dead, feeling his insides turn to water.

The figure was contorted into the lotus position, head bent low, chin almost touching its chest. The legs were bent across each other and hands folded back, palms facing upwards. Tight leather straps ran right around its body, crisscrossing over the thighs then back across the shoulders, forcing it to remain unnaturally rigid.

‘Holy shit,’ Luca breathed.

At the sound of his voice, the figure’s head suddenly jolted upwards, revealing pale eyes that glowed in the half-light. The apparition wailed, a pitiful, strangled sound that sent Luca leaping backwards in fright. He bumped into the far wall, nearly toppling the statue. Somewhere in the confusion, his thumb slipped from the lighter wheel, plunging him into darkness once again.

He ran back, hemmed in on both sides by the tight walls of the tunnel, his hands brushing against them. Then it came again — the howl from the darkness. He fumbled with the lighter, and a few sparks flashed before the flame finally caught. Hurling himself up the ladder, Luca used his shoulder to barge open the heavy trapdoor into the corridor above.

For a second he stopped there, his hands on his knees, staring down into the black void as he tried to catch his breath.

‘Don’t panic,’ he said to himself, trying to steady his breathing. ‘Just don’t panic…’

Then he shook his head. Screw that. This was exactly the time to panic.

Sprinting off down the corridor, he reached the gilded door of the ante-chamber from where they had taken the monk. It was shut, with no light coming from underneath. Ahead was another stairway. Luca pounded up the steps, taking three at a time. Reaching the top, he bent down and fumbled across the tread.

The piece of chocolate was there! He was on the right track. Feeling a new surge of energy, he started running again, the sound of his boots dulled by the heavy stone walls.

On the lower level by the trapdoor, in a corner hidden from the light of the candle, a figure stood motionless. It listened, senses well attuned to the dark. Concealed under the hood of blue monastic robes, clouded pupils stared out sightlessly, instinctively following the noise of Luca’s retreat along the level above.

Then, without a sound, the figure turned, fading back into the shadows.

Chapter 39

At the base of an enormous cliff, Captain Zhu stood with a thick-weave blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It was early-morning and a heavy mist hung in the cold air. He had taken the blanket off one of the yaks and the lingering smell seemed to seep through every pore of his skin, worsening his already foul mood.

Five hundred yards from where he stood, the patrol’s tents were arranged in a semi-circle around a low fire.