Chapter Twelve
With a terrified cry Yangke twisted about, his arms thrashing, desperately grabbing at the narrow rail with one hand but inexorably sliding downward. There was only one stair step past the end of the tunnel, though the rail extended another two feet to give the illusion of a flight of stairs. For four hundred feet down there was only air.
Shan thrust his staff forward. A firm hand closed around his belt at the small of his back. As Hostene gripped him from behind, Shan reached out for Yangke with the pole. The younger man seized it and Shan pulled. Then a downdraft hit Yangke and pushed him outward. It was as if the mountain were wrestling Shan for him. Shan and Hostene pulled together, Yangke got a foot on the single step, and with a final heave they managed to pull him inside.
The three men sat on the floor of the tunnel, gasping. “I–I lost it, I lost the bag,” Yangke confessed when he had regained his breath.
It took Shan a moment to understand. Yangke’s bag had slipped off his shoulder, his staff had fallen out of his hand. He had lost the kit that every pilgrim needed to survive on the mountain.
“You’re with us,” Shan said, hoping he was conveying more confidence than he felt. “We have enough to share.”
He held the lamp high as he retraced their steps, chiding himself for not having noticed how the rock walls and floors had changed in the last hundred feet. The rock had been chipped away, not worn by water. Shan pointed to the fresh white chalk marks that highlighted the words from the death ritual.
“Abigail!” Hostene exclaimed.
Shan walked to the point where the floor changed and began tapping the walls with the end of his staff. He discovered a section that was hollow. A wooden panel had been painted to look like rock. Hostene found an edge and starting pushing. The dry iron pintles hidden inside the panel’s edge groaned and it swung open. They were back in the course of the waterway.
As the panel swung closed behind them they lit the other two lamps and began following a twisting passage where the water had once followed a seam of softer mineral. But where, Shan wondered, was the snowmelt that had once rushed through the tunnel?
They emerged onto a small plain, surprisingly flat, sheltered by low ridges of rock, with smaller rocks scattered across the open ground, the dark summit looming above, closer now. Shan pointed to a nearby shelf of rock that overlooked the plain. “We should rest and study the slopes above while it is still light,” he suggested. He heard no argument from his exhausted friends nor a syllable of surprise when they discovered another painting on a sheltered wall behind the shelf.
Yangke, suddenly full of energy, paced along the width of the painting. “This one is different,” he declared and looked up at Shan. “Astrologers have painted this.”
The central figure was called the astrological tortoise, its head that of a fiery demon, its clawed feet holding ritual implements. At the top was a cluster of flames-to the right an iron sword, to the left a tree, at the bottom waves, indicating water. In the belly of the tortoise was a circle divided into nine spaces by two pairs of perpendicular lines, each space with a number.
“Looks like a word game,” Hostene said over Shan’s shoulder.
“It’s called a mewa square,” Shan said, then explained its significance to the Tibetans, beginning by translating the numbers in the nine spaces. Four, nine, two were the numbers in the top row, then three, five, seven, and finally eight, one, six at the bottom. Whether added up horizontally, vertically, or diagonally each row totaled fifteen. “It’s used to tell the future,” he said. “It depicts perfect symmetry. The base of three times the central five equals fifteen. The central five is midway between the numbers on either side and above and below it. But nine is its most important number. The central five times nine yields forty-five, which is the total sum of all the digits in the square. Nine is the perfect number. Any number multiplied by nine creates a number the sum of whose digits is invariably a multiple of nine. The square is used to calculate horoscopes.”
“Which must be why there are nine segments,” Hostene remarked.
Shan followed the Navajo’s gaze. He saw what had drawn Hostene’s eye. The smaller rocks that seemed scattered from the lower perspective could now be seen to have been arranged deliberately. There were not a lot of them, so their placement was not obvious, but from where the three men stood now the stones clearly defined nine separate squares.
Shan and Hostene stared from the plain to the painting, examining the tortoise again, watching as Yangke climbed down and began walking among the squares.
“The Emperor Yu,” Shan murmured as Yangke wove an erratic course through the stones.
“Emperor?”
“It’s an old story, from before history. The Tibetans borrowed many things from India and China, where the early astrologers wrote on tortoiseshells and bones. The mythical Emperor Yu received a tortoiseshell from the deities, inscribed with the magic square. He then traveled the nine provinces of his kingdom in the sequence of the numbers.” Shan traced a finger over the tortoise’s belly to demonstrate, pointing to the script that looked like an Arabic number three leaning to the right, then to another Tibetan digit that resembled a three with a tail. One, then two. It’s called the Nine Paces of Emperor Yu. My father told me the pattern is used in the West also, but there it is called the Seal of Saturn.”
“But we can see what’s before us. It’s obvious we have to keep climbing to the summit,” Hostene said, leaning on his staff. “And there is only one trail up,” he added, pointing to a long thread of shadow on the ridge to the east of the plain. “Why waste time walking zigzags on these squares?”
“Because the devout do not question their prescribed fate,” Shan replied as he started to climb down to the plain. “Because all life is a zigzag.”
“Abigail is up there,” Hostene said to his back but his protest had no energy.
“A teacher of ancient religions would recognize the square, and she would have done what was intended,” Shan countered.
Hostene followed Shan out onto the plain.
Assuming that the top of the square would lie to the north, Yangke led them to the section corresponding to the number one. He dropped to his knees, extended his arms, and lowered his body to the ground, then pulled forward as he folded his body up.
“I don’t understand,” Hostene said.
Shan watched the Tibetan and gave a hesitant nod. “Yangke is right. We must be pilgrims in all respects. The pilgrim would proceed by prostrations.” He saw the frustration on Hostene’s face. “Some pilgrims still travel hundreds of miles this way, taking months to reach a shrine. We,” he said as he dropped to his knees, “only need repeat the Nine Paces of Emperor Yu.”
It was a slow, laborious process. On the third square, Yangke sneezed as he inched up from the dust of the reddish gravel that was scattered about the square. On the fifth square Shan paused for a moment to look at the white dust that suddenly appeared on his hand. At the edge of the last square, where their prostrations finished, there was an small overhanging shelf of rock that, from the perspective of someone walking by, would have obscured the words painted on the flat wall underneath. But they were prostrate pilgrims, and saw it. Om nidhi ghata praticcha svaha, they read.
“A mantra used in offering rituals,” Yangke said. “It refers to the sacred treasure flask.”
“But we could have just come here directly. It is the only way,” Hostene complained as they joined the short steep path that led to a bulging rock formation in the broad shape of a treasure flask.