the insistent pull that had dragged Mallory to Salisbury where he had first encountered Sophie.
‘It’s difficult to get your head around the fact that you’re special,’ Mallory said as he futilely attempted to warm himself beside a raging campfire.
‘I do not consider myself special,’ Shavi replied. ‘I believe we have been given the tools to do a job on behalf of humanity. It is our duty to carry out our task to the best of our abilities. In truth, we are not special, we are servants. We act with humility, not arrogance. We accept sacrifice and suffering. That is our lot.’
Mallory jabbed a branch into the depths of the fire, watching the sparks fly up to meet the falling snow. ‘And is that it? We have to accept misery? There’s no cake when we get to the end of the road?’
Shavi smiled wryly. ‘Happy endings, Mallory? You do not seem the type.’
‘Yeah. Maybe you’re right. I’m an old cynic. But I do have barely repressed romantic leanings.’ Mallory pondered Shavi’s words for a moment, then said, ‘Not so long ago I was told that I come from another world that doesn’t exist any more. Somehow reality changed. My world disappeared, and this world is what we have in its place. Do you think that’s possible?’
‘I think we live in a universe where anything is possible. The only reality that truly matters is the one inside here.’ He gently tapped the position of his third eye, in the middle of his forehead. ‘Something is troubling you. Would you like to talk about it?’
Mallory was surprised; he always guarded his true thoughts and feelings carefully, but Shavi had seen inside him effortlessly. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so taken aback. The initial elation when the gaps in his memory were filled had faded and the knowledge had developed a gravity that was gradually sucking all of his other thoughts into it.
Mallory told Shavi about the Fabulous Beast and Jenny, the woman who had been possessed by it, or had become its avatar, or some other relationship he couldn’t quite understand. Shavi was both surprised and excited by Mallory’s account.
‘I feel this is very important,’ he said. ‘A bond established between human and Fabulous Beast. It could be a very good omen.’
‘The girl told me that I died in the last world… blew my brains out.’
‘I am sorry.’ Shavi was not being glib; he looked truly upset by Mallory’s bald statement.
‘But I died, do you understand? And now I’m here, alive. This place doesn’t look like heaven. It looks a lot like hell, but I don’t think it’s that, either. You visited the land of the dead on one of your transcendental super-jaunts, so tell me… what does it mean to die? Do you just carry on in some other place, like me? Or is all this some illusion playing out in my dying mind?’
‘Perhaps this world is the Bardo Thodel of the Tibetan mystics, the place between death and birth.’
‘They missed that bit out when I was doing my studies at Salisbury.’
‘The Bardo is central to the Tibetan concept of the afterlife,’ Shavi said. ‘The word means “intermediate state”. The Tibetan mystics believe that all of Existence is nothing but a series of transitional states, which they called Bardos. In the Bardo Thodel, there are three distinct stages between death and rebirth. The Chikai Bardo includes the process of dying and the break-up of the elements that make up the physical body. The Chonyid Bardo is next, with visions of gods, heaven, hell, judgment and so on.’
‘That sounds familiar.’ Mallory found Shavi’s information disturbing in the light of his experience.
‘Finally there is the Sidpa Bardo,’ Shavi continued. ‘During this, the consciousness chooses a new body into which to be born.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘I believe there are many, many paths and that we must all be detectives, searching along them for any clues that might help us.’
‘There’s got to be some reason for all this misery,’ Mallory said. ‘If it’s all just the result of some random chemical reactions at the dawn of time, it would be so crushing.’
‘The search for meaning is the greatest quest of all.’ Shavi’s smile suggested that he knew much more than he was saying.
‘When I was in Salisbury training to be a knight, I had to study a lot of Christian philosophy.’ Mallory continued to prod the fire, watching the sparks leap heavenwards. ‘There’s a philosopher called Hicks — you’ve probably read him. He says that this world is basically a school for souls. All the struggles and hardships we go through, all the evils we face, are designed to challenge us and shape us until we develop our souls and become more like God.’
Shavi said nothing.
‘There are a million explanations as to why we’re here, putting up with all this shit.’ Mallory was entranced by the fire, almost talking to himself. ‘Where do we look for answers? Science or religion? Are there any answers? Or should we just stop wasting our time thinking about it and get on with it?’
‘The answers are inside us,’ Shavi said softly. ‘We all know the truth instinctively. Many have forgotten how to listen to that part of themselves. We need to relearn.’
‘If we don’t know what’s expected of us…’ Mallory flailed around for the right words. ‘How are we supposed to know whether what we’re doing is right?’
Shavi could see the distress that lay behind Mallory’s questions and moved quickly to calm him. In soft tones, he said, ‘Consider, then, Hindu beliefs. To Hindus, the universe is a vast place filled with immeasurable numbers of thinking beings, gods and demons continually being born, dying and re-born. The time-scale is vast: three hundred billion years for the entire wheel of existence to turn. How can humans, so insignificant in this big picture, so powerless, make decisions about how to live? The Hindus find their answer in the Sanskrit word dharma. It is defined as each person’s unique path in life, and the knowledge of how to find it. Dharma is always there to be discovered, and it is the answer when faced with something too immense to comprehend.’
‘But how do you find dharma?’
Shavi smiled. ‘That is the simplest path of all. To find dharma, you must be yourself, as fully as possible. All the information you need lies within you. Recognise that each human consciousness is unique, that each is an experiment in seeking the eternal truth.’
‘Just be myself? I’m lucky to get across the room if I do that.’
This time Shavi laughed heartily. ‘Mallory, your self-deprecation belies your true essence. I can see it. Allow yourself to see it.’
Mallory nodded, but the question he really wanted answered died on his lips. He wasn’t concerned about himself. His desperate need to know the meaning of life and death, and whether death itself was an ending, was driven by Sophie. Was there hope for her, somewhere beyond the world? Would he ever meet her again?
They travelled for as long as they could, but the cold forced them to take regular breaks in any shelter they could find. At Barnsley House, Mallory searched for the Fabulous Beast and Jenny at Shavi’s insistence, but they were gone. Yet there was still a faint echo of their presence in the air, like the intense atmosphere in a cathedral.
Somehow they made it across the freezing wastes without dying from the cold or starvation. They had come across many people frozen in their homes, their last fuel now ashes in the fireplace, their cupboards bare. After the Fall and the plague, humanity was barely clinging on; the new ice age was a crisis too far.
As they neared Oxford, they became distracted from the humanitarian crisis. Not far from the outskirts, Mallory reined in his horse on a ridge to survey a curious sight: a row of figures moving across a field in the wan, late-afternoon light. At first he thought they were residents of the nearby village, but their regimented actions made little sense.
‘They are not human,’ Shavi said quietly, as if he could read Mallory’s thoughts. His head was back, his eyes closed so that he appeared to be either listening intently or smelling the air. ‘I feel
… despair. It rises off them like smoke from a bonfire. They are all empty… shells given animation. Their humanity twisted, perverted.’
Shavi’s words confirmed what Mallory thought he could see: weapons protruding from the bodies of the figures themselves as if they had been implanted by some horrific surgical technique. ‘The enemy,’ Mallory said, recalling his encounter with them at Cadbury Hill. He scanned the area. ‘Advance troops.’
‘They are encircling Oxford,’ Shavi said. Mallory didn’t think to ask how he could possibly know this. ‘That is where the last stand will take place. And the enemy wants to make sure that no one will leave alive to drum up any further opposition.’
