Kit was equally amazed. ‘How can it never have been found? We’re only a few kilometres from one of the holiest sites in India -
‘Nothing to see from up there,’ Eddie realised, pointing skywards. ‘We’re on the north side of the ridge, so it’ll never get any direct sunlight.’ He peered at the topmost tier. ‘The cliffs overhang it at the top. You probably won’t know there’s anything down here even if you’re looking right over the edge.’
‘The Vault of Shiva must be here, somewhere,’ said Nina, awe changing to excitement. ‘How long is the valley, do you think?’ ‘Only one way to find out,’ he said, gesturing along the canyon’s length. ‘Go and see.’
They started up the valley. The wind howled mournfully high above them. As they advanced, new features emerged from the gloom: lines strung across the canyon connecting the different levels. At first they were just single ropes, drooping under the weight of snow, but then more complex crossings appeared - ones with lines to support both feet and hands, and even actual rope bridges, swaying in the breeze high above.
Eddie regarded one dubiously. ‘No way
‘You think someone’s been here more recently?’ Kit asked.
‘Looks like it.’ Nina went to one of the arched openings, examining the carvings beside it before shining the flashlight inside. ‘Most of these inscriptions are in Vedic Sanskrit . . . but there are others in Classical Sanskrit, which didn’t come into use until some time around four hundred BC.’
She entered the chamber, finding it piled high with the trash of centuries. The ground-level rooms would flood during the spring thaw, so anything left in them was apparently considered worthless by the valley’s inhabitants. Much of what she saw in the torch beam had rotted beyond recognition, but she caught a glint of metal and carefully extracted it from the garbage. ‘And look at this.’
‘A sword?’ said Eddie.
‘A scimitar, or what’s left of one.’ She examined the corroded hilt. ‘And there’s text on it - it looks Arabic. Parts of India were conquered by Muslims from the thirteenth century onwards, so this has to date from at least then.’
‘I didn’t think they came this far into the Himalayas,’ said Kit.
‘It might have been an expedition, looking for a trade route to China - or even searching for the Vault of Shiva. Who knows? But they obviously got this far.’ She returned the sword to its place, and they continued up the canyon.
More ropes crossed the valley overhead, and Eddie also spotted other lines hanging down between levels and across gaps where the stonework had broken away. Even as the place fell into ruin, it was clear that somebody had still been living there. But nothing they saw could provide a clear idea of when it had finally been abandoned.
That line of thought soon left their minds, though. The valley’s far end loomed through the murk, a near- vertical wall of dark rock three hundred feet high. A huge stone staircase had once risen to the height of the uppermost tiers, but the structure had now almost completely collapsed into a vast pile of rubble. The only way up to the jutting stub remaining at the very top was by navigating the intact sections of ledges along the valley’s sides, criss-crossing back and forth on the ropes and bridges to reach places where one could climb up to the next level. A three-dimensional maze, where one slip would result in a fatal plunge back to the start.
But what waited at the finish suggested that the journey would be worth the risks. ‘It’s Shiva,’ Nina gasped.
At the top of the ruined staircase was a broad ledge . . . and standing at its back, beneath the overhanging rockface, was an enormous statue of the Hindu god. Two-legged, but four-armed, the colossal figure was poised as if dancing. The sculpture, hewn from the rockface, stood sixty feet tall, towering over the bizarre settlement below. Its head was cocked at a steep angle, lips curved into a teasing half-smile that suggested it knew a secret . . . and was challenging onlookers to discover it.
Kit bowed his head in respect to the giant. ‘I would say we’ve found what we were looking for.’
Nina hurriedly took off her backpack and groped inside it. ‘Where’s the damn thing gone . . . here!’ She retrieved the replica of the key and held it up. ‘Look! It’s the same face, the same expression. This really is the key to the Vault of Shiva! We’ve
Eddie surveyed the crumbled tiers. ‘Do you really want to risk climbing across on those ropes?’
‘There might be another way up, something we can’t see from the ground.’ She pointed at the ruins of the stairway. ‘See, we can get up to the second level on that, then we can get at least one floor higher if we use the carvings to climb up to that gap in the next ledge.’
‘And what if the whole lot comes down as soon as we put any weight on it?’
‘We’ll just have to hope Shiva was listening to Girilal when he asked him to look out for us.’
‘If Shiva really was watching out for us, he would have made it a nicer day.’ Eddie took in the dark grey sky above the canyon, snow-bearing clouds still scudding overhead. ‘And we’ve got less than an hour before it gets dark.’
‘I’m not going to just sit here,’ Nina said impatiently. ‘Let’s at least see how far we can get, okay? We’ll come back down before it gets dark and set up camp.’
‘All right, Christ!’ They headed for the base of the stairway. ‘Stick the rucksacks in that room there so we don’t have to lug them with us.’
Nina put the replica key in the inside pocket of her coat; then, the packs stowed, they started to ascend the rubble. It only took a few minutes to pick their way to the ledge on the second level. The carvings Nina had pointed out were an elaborate latticework with images of animals like bulls and elephants worked into the design. ‘It won’t be an insult to the big man up there if we use these as footholds, will it?’ Eddie asked Kit.
Kit smiled inside his fur-lined hood. ‘We’re here for a reason that will honour him, so I don’t think Lord Shiva will mind.’
‘Great. I like having God on my side.
Nina came next, breathing heavily with the exertion. Eddie helped her up, then did the same for Kit. ‘Okay, so now where?’ she said. The gap in the ledge through which they had climbed was too wide to jump, but it looked possible to climb across using the wall carvings to reach some dangling ropes further along.
Eddie tested the carvings, then picked his way carefully across the gap. The stone face of a cow crunched alarmingly when he stood on it; he hurriedly found an alternative foothold and completed the crossing. Avoiding the weak spot, Nina and Kit followed. By the time they were both on the other side, Eddie had tested the ropes to see if they would hold his weight.
‘Are they okay?’ Nina asked.
‘Too okay, if you ask me,’ he replied.
‘You think someone has been here recently?’ said Kit.
‘Yeah. In the last few years, definitely.’
‘Then somebody knows about this place,’ Nina said. ‘Girilal! That’d explain why he was trying so hard to persuade us not to come up here. He was worried we’d find it.’
‘He had the perfect cover,’ Kit mused. ‘He could watch everybody who came to Kedarnath or Gaurikund, and nobody would give a second thought to a yogi in either place.’
‘But he didn’t do anything to stop us, did he?’ said Eddie as he shimmied up the hanging ropes. ‘He could’ve killed us in our sleep if he’d wanted.’
‘Maybe . . . maybe he was
Eddie looked down at her. ‘About what?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, we were in enough physical danger finding this place, but . . .’ She tried to dismiss the thought, and climbed up after Eddie.
Another room carved out of the cliff awaited her on the next tier, stone figures framing the arched entrance. As Kit climbed up, she shone her flashlight inside. It was considerably deeper than the ground-level chamber. Bundles of wood were stacked haphazardly near the doorway . . . but further back, the torch beam found something more regular.
Wooden boxes.
She advanced inside, bark fragments crunching under her boots. The boxes were old, the rough wood discoloured and mouldering, but the utilitarian construction was unmistakably the product of the industrial era. And
