Awestruck, Nina followed him into the darkness of the Vault of Shiva.
25
The space behind the doors was huge, on a scale to match the statue guarding it. The echo of Nina’s and Shankarpa’s footsteps as they moved through the entrance quickly disappeared, lost in a vast cavern.
There was something inside the doors. As Nina’s vision adjusted to the darkness, it revealed what she at first took to be two stone blocks, about five feet high and three feet apart, before realising they were merely the ends of larger constructs. Together, they formed the two halves of a steeply sloping ramp that rose a good thirty feet at the far end, dropping almost to floor level before rising back up; the comparison that leapt instantly to her mind was a ski-jump.
There was no snow inside the chamber, though. So what was it for?
An answer came as she and Shankarpa moved further into the cave, the others following. Something was perched at the top of the ramp, slender parts extending out to each side like wings . . .
Not like wings. They were wings.
‘It’s a glider!’ Nina cried, completely forgetting the threat of the guardians as she ran for a better look. ‘Khoil told me about the stories in the ancient Indian epics where the gods had flying machines. I thought they were just legends - but they were true!’
‘The vimanas,’ said Girilal. He laughed. ‘My father told me those stories when I was a boy - and I told them to my own son. Do you remember?’
‘I remember,’ said Shankarpa, amazed.
Nina started to climb the ramp, eager to see the craft at the top. ‘What Talonor said in the Codex all makes sense now. This is why it took the priests one day to get up here, and only an hour to get back - they flew! They released the glider, it slid down the ramp, then hit the ski-jump at the end and flew out down the valley.’ She examined the stone slide; it was smoothly polished, with a small lip at the outer edge to guide a runner on the glider itself.
Eddie looked back through the doors, seeing the cliff at the far end of the canyon. ‘They’d have to pull up pretty sharpish when they took off. Cock things up, and you’d smack into that wall.’
Nina shone her flashlight at the glider. It had an organic appearance, the wings formed from gracefully curved wooden spars. The wood itself was dark and glossy, given some kind of treatment to strengthen and preserve it. Between the spars, the fabric of the wings was still stretched taut. It appeared to be a fine, lightweight silk, covered in dust and yellowed with age.
‘This is incredible!’ she said as Shankarpa ascended the other ramp. ‘The ancient Hindus had actual, working flying machines before the Greeks even came up with the myth of Daedalus. And it took until the sixteenth century before Leonardo designed anything similar.’ The glider’s undercarriage was made from the same wood, a trapezoidal frame with ski-like metal runners attached. These weren’t as corroded as she would have expected; the cavern was dry as well as cold. The craft seemed designed to carry at least two people, lying prone on a slatted platform beneath the wing.
Girilal grinned up at her. ‘Well, it is often said that we Indians invented everything.’
‘Who says that?’ Eddie asked.
‘We Indians,’ Kit told him.
Nina directed her light along the ancient aircraft’s fuselage. At the end of the slender wooden body was a fan-shaped tail. There was something affixed beneath it, a long black cylinder protruding out past the end of the glider’s frame. At first she was puzzled as to what it might be . . . before a cord hanging from its end gave her a clue: a fuse. ‘Here’s something else you might have invented before anyone else,’ she said. ‘Rockets.’
‘You’re kidding!’ said Eddie. ‘I thought the Chinese invented them.’
‘I think they’ll be very annoyed when they find out someone beat them to it. They came up with gunpowder around the ninth century, but our friends here were using it thousands of years earlier. It must be how they got up enough speed to launch.’
Below, Girilal walked round the base of the ramp. ‘Look here,’ he called.
Nina aimed the flashlight down to find him prodding his stick at a stack of more black tubes. ‘Careful, don’t poke them! They’ve been here for who knows how long - they might be unstable.’
Eddie had a different opinion. ‘More likely they won’t work at all. Depends how they made the gunpowder - if they didn’t corn it properly, the different ingredients’ll probably have separated by now.’ He caught his wife’s surprised expression. ‘I did explosives training in the SAS - it’s handy to know this stuff if you’re going to blow things up.’
‘Well, either way, let’s not put any naked flames near them.’ She descended the ramp. By now, her eyes had become more accustomed to the low light. ‘Oh, wow. This isn’t the only glider - the place is more like a hangar.’ To one side were several more vimanas. Other mysterious objects lurked in the darkness. ‘This flashlight isn’t going to cut it,’ she said. ‘We need something bigger.’
‘This might do,’ proclaimed Girilal. The old yogi had wandered a little further into the cavern, and was standing by a metal brazier on a stone pedestal. Nina illuminated it - and discovered that a narrow groove had been cut into the floor behind it, leading deeper into the chamber. She followed it with the light until it split, and tracked one of the arms until it divided again, eventually reaching another brazier some distance away. There was a liquid at the bottom of the channel, but from Girilal’s excitement she knew it wasn’t water.
She went to him. ‘It’s oil,’ she said, stirring away the covering of dust with a fingertip and sniffing it. ‘A lighting system. Start one fire, and it spreads through the whole cave to light the other braziers.’
‘I thought we didn’t want to start any fires,’ said Eddie, looking at the pile of rockets.
‘We’ll be safe as long as nobody knocks this thing over. Let me get my stuff.’
She retrieved her pack from outside, finding a box of waterproof survival matches. ‘Shall we take a look?’ she asked Shankarpa.
‘Light it,’ he ordered.
She struck the match and touched it to the line of oil. It took a moment to ignite, but when it did the results made everyone flinch back. A line of fire raced away down the groove, splitting again and again at each branch as it spread through the cavern. Something hissed and fizzed inside each brazier in turn as the fire reached it - small packets of gunpowder catching light, the heat spreading to the tinder and coal above them. Flames began to rise.
The great chamber filled with a flickering amber light. Objects gradually took on form, incredible treasures; golden statues of gods and men and animals; elaborate carved friezes decorated with jewels and precious metals; beautifully painted frescos and gorgeous embroidered silks showing scenes from the lives of Shiva and his wives. Amongst the artworks were strange machines, as mystifying in the glow from the braziers as they had been as shadows. A giant wheel with dozens of leather pouches hanging from its rim; a great wooden framework, hundreds of glinting metal arrowheads protruding from it; a massive stone roller studded with long, thick iron bars. Not far from the ramp was what resembled a miniature palace, cupolas picked out in gold. Connected to a circular ring around its top was an enormous fabric bag, which stretched away, deflated and flaccid, almost to the Vault’s side wall.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Eddie. ‘Shiva’s got a big garage.’
‘This is amazing,’ Nina whispered. ‘What are all these things?’ She went to the little palace. It had a gate in one wall; she gingerly pushed it open to reveal another brazier inside, as well as several straight-bladed swords in a rack on one wall. ‘It’s like a dollhouse.’