The Sacred Vault

‘No, unfortunately.’ He smiled. ‘My work doesn’t give me a lot of time for pilgrimages. Perhaps some day.’

‘Do you have an atlas?’

Kit found a book and opened it to a map of the northern half of the Indian subcontinent, the contours of the Himalayas in greys and purples above the greens and browns of the rest of India. Tibetan China was above it at the top right of the page, Nepal sandwiched between the two much larger countries. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing at a spot above Nepal’s northwestern corner, near the disputed Indo-Chinese border. ‘These two lakes are Manasarovar and Raksas Tal - both holy places. Drinking the water of Manasarovar is meant to cleanse you of all your sins for a hundred lifetimes.’

‘Might be worth me having a swig,’ said Eddie.

Mac cocked his head. ‘Just the one?’

‘Mount Kailash is north of them,’ Kit continued. ‘Lord Shiva supposedly meditates at the summit.’

‘Waiting to end the world, according to Khoil,’ said Nina.

‘And begin it again,’ he reminded her.

‘Maybe so, but for all its faults, I’d kinda like to keep the one we have now.’

‘Exactly what did Khoil tell you about this plan of his?’ Mac asked.

‘Not enough,’ she sighed. ‘Although I think he may have given away more than he intended when he was showing off how he’s rigged the Qexia search engine. He used India and Pakistan as an example of two countries that would only need the right spark to go to war - maybe that’s already part of what the Khoils are planning.’

Mac nodded. ‘Both countries have nuclear weapons. If they started throwing them about, things would escalate beyond just the two of them very quickly.’

‘But what would the Khoils gain from that?’ asked Kit.

‘Global collapse,’ said Nina. ‘Pramesh wants to force the world into the next stage of the cycle of existence - end the Kali Yuga, and start a new Satya Yuga. A new golden age,’ she added for the benefit of the two puzzled British men.

‘That’s rather arrogant of him,’ said Kit thoughtfully. ‘The Kali Yuga is supposed to last over four hundred thousand years, and Shiva is the one who will end it. Not a man.’

She smiled darkly. ‘Arrogance is about his only personality trait, unless you count nerdiness. But he said he has to have the Vedas from the Vault of Shiva for his plan to work. Without Shiva’s teachings to inspire them, people will just stay in the gutter.’

‘So what if he doesn’t get these Vedas?’ Eddie asked.

‘I don’t know. If he believes in them that much, maybe he won’t carry out his plan at all.’

‘Well, then. We get them before he does. Problem solved!’

‘Easier said than done. We don’t know where the Vault is.’ Nina looked at the map more closely, brow furrowing as she trawled through her memory of everything she had learned from the Talonor Codex. Some clue was tantalisingly close to revealing itself, but without access to the translation she couldn’t pin it down. ‘And . . . I’m not entirely sure that the Khoils do, either. Something isn’t right. Do you remember what I was telling you about Talonor - when you realised that what he was writing was a tactical report?’

‘Some of it. What about it?’

She tapped a finger on the map. ‘Something about Talonor’s journey. He visited a temple where he met the Hindu priests - who showed him the key to the Vault of Shiva.’ She lifted the replica, tilting it so light picked out the reliefs of Shiva and the five goddesses. ‘He said the Vault was one day away from the temple. Or rather, one day to get there, and one hour to get back.’

‘How’s that possible?’ Mac wondered.

‘Khoil thought they might have come back by river,’ said Nina. The Himalayas were riddled with blue lines running down from glaciers, so that didn’t narrow the possibilities. ‘But Talonor said he went away from the river to reach the temple. And then . . .’ She snapped her fingers. ‘From there, he carried on northeast until he discovered the Golden Peak.’

‘The Golden Peak?’ asked Kit.

‘The site of an Atlantean settlement.’

He was surprised. ‘There was an Atlantean settlement in Tibet? I’ve never heard that.’

Nina realised she’d made a gaffe. ‘Oh . . . yeah. It’s something we kept out of the public record for security reasons, because it contained the . . .’ She tailed off and glared at her husband, who was making a show of holding his head in his hands. ‘Knock it off, Eddie. Uh, things I can’t tell you about. Sorry.’ She gave Kit an apologetic shrug.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Every organisation has its secrets - I should know!’

‘How does that help us, then?’ Eddie asked. He indicated an area above and to the left of Mount Kailash. ‘This is where the Golden Peak is, more or less.’

‘To the northwest of the sacred mountain,’ Nina pointed out. ‘Talonor said he continued northeast.’

‘There couldn’t have been a translation error?’ suggested Mac.

‘No, not for something that basic. That means the Vault of Shiva can’t be at Mount Kailash.’ She checked the map’s scale. ‘The Golden Peak is almost a hundred miles northwest of there. Talonor was the greatest explorer of his time - he couldn’t possibly have made such a huge navigational error. But Khoil doesn’t know that. He’s working from all the information Qexia has trawled from the internet - but nothing about the Golden Peak has ever been publicly released.’ A triumphant smile. ‘Guess computers can’t do all the work for you after all.’

‘So if it’s not there, where is it?’ Eddie moved his finger diagonally over the map. ‘If he went northeast to reach the Golden Peak, the Vault’s got to be somewhere southwest of it.’

‘Yeah . . . but the Codex specifically said that he met the priests at a temple on a holy mountain. Kit, are there any other—’

‘Kedarnath,’ Kit cut in, his expression suggesting he was chastising himself for not having thought of it earlier. ‘Kedarnath, of course! Here.’ He indicated a particular peak on the Indian side of the disputed border. ‘Lord Shiva lived on Mount Kailash, yes - but he had a second home on Mount Kedarnath.’

‘So he had a holiday cottage?’ said Eddie. ‘I’d pick somewhere a bit nearer the sea myself. But then, I’m not a god.’

Nina grinned. ‘You just think you are. So what’s the story of Kedarnath?’

‘There are three, actually,’ said Kit. ‘The great Hindu texts have many different ways of telling the same stories. One of them is that two of Shiva’s followers, Nar and Narayan, performed great penance before a lingam of Shiva - a symbol of the god,’ he clarified for Eddie and Mac. ‘Shiva was pleased and granted them a boon - a wish. They asked if he could make a home closer to his followers than Mount Kailash, and he agreed. In another, five brothers followed Shiva there to beg forgiveness for having killed their cousins in a war. He gave it, and told them he would live there to watch over them.’

‘And the third version?’

‘Shiva’s wife, Parvati, thought Mount Kailash was too far from India - she wanted to be nearer the people she loved. So she asked Shiva for another home that was closer to them.’

Eddie laughed. ‘That sounds familiar. The bloke has to move house because his wife wants to be somewhere she thinks is nicer.’

‘Are you telling me you liked living in Blissville?’ said Nina, of their move out of Queens back into her native Manhattan five months earlier.

‘It was a lot cheaper, I’ll give it that.’

She huffed, then turned back to Kit. ‘What else can you tell me about Kedarnath?’

‘Not much. I’ve never been there. But there is a temple there - one of the oldest and holiest in India. It’s dedicated to Shiva.’

‘How old?’ Eddie asked.

‘I don’t know, but very.’

‘Old enough to have been there when Talonor visited,’ Nina said thoughtfully. ‘Everything fits: Talonor thinking that Shiva, with his trident, was the same god as Poseidon; the temple being southwest of the Golden Peak; the entire site being considered a sacred mountain, the home of a god.’ Her expression brightened. ‘And Khoil’s looking in the wrong place. He’s started from a false premise - that the sacred mountain mentioned in the