‘Like getting married,’ whispered Mrs Jones. ‘Here comes the bride.’
At last they reached the space in front of the altar where the two chairs faced each other, and at a sign from Tomdzay Mrs Jones settled on to the smaller one. Lung and Theodore stood behind her. There was a longish pause. The line of prayer-wheels tinkled monotonously. The crowd stirred and muttered until, at no noticeable signal, a noise began, a heavy, continuous groan at so deep a pitch that each vibration was a separate pulse. Theodore saw the monk at the back of the vast horn opposite blowing fat-cheeked into the mouthpiece, but when at last he drew breath the sound continued, rumbling on from the horn behind Theodore, rising in volume like a slowed wave; as it began to dwindle the first monk put his lips to the mouthpiece again and started to blow, creating another wave. It was impossible to imagine a deeper note that would be a sound at all. When a bass drum began to thud, its boom seemed light by comparison. Now cymbals clinked and flutes twittered. There was no tune, but the noise was not formless, because the underlying vibrations from the big horns held it together, as if the other sounds were building themselves out of that groundswell and dying back into it. Theodore thought it was somehow like the noise you hear when you hold a sea-shell to your ear, but enormously louder and richer, the hum not just of the distant ocean but of the whole universe, purring along its unimaginable nerve-lines.
At the peak of the music a monk danced out of the temple swinging a brass bowl on a chain. Pale blue smoke poured up from the bowl, swirling into wreaths as the monk pranced and postured round the altar, but before he had finished his dance Theodore was aware of the focus of the crowd’s attention shifting towards the back of the courtyard. The music throbbed into silence. The dancer disappeared through the temple doors, but at the same time two other monks appeared carrying a long, pale robe and a tall forward-curling hat. As they came round the altar to the steps the Lama Amchi glided out from the aisle between the massed monks. He let one of the men put the robe round his shoulders, then walked up the steps, round the altar and up to the temple doors, where he stood for twenty seconds with his hands above his head, palms together. Slowly he knelt, bowing to the invisible idol until his forehead touched the stone.
A monk began to chant in a bass monotone which echoed the wave-pattern of the now hushed horns. Bells clinked. The massed choir of monks in the courtyard answered with a booming swell of voices, and as that sound died the monks lining the gallery took up the chant. The pattern of solo, bells, response and echo continued while the Lama Amchi rose and disappeared into the temple, then reappeared, had his tall hat placed on his head, and settled into the chair opposite Mrs Jones.
Now the huge horns started their droning and the other instruments joined in, working up to a surge of sound at whose climax four soldier-monks carried a man out of the temple and placed him on the central throne.
If Theodore hadn’t been expecting to see the oracle-priest he wouldn’t have recognized him. He was wearing a gold helmet rising to three spikes, a breast-plate covered with jewels and ornate fretwork, under the breast-plate a heavy brocade jacket reaching to his knees and with full long sleeves, and boots of orange leather, very massive, with enormous soles. He lolled on the throne, inert, eyes closed, like a clumsily manufactured doll.
When the roaring of the horns ceased the choir-leader began another chant, interrupted as before by bells and responses. At the clink of the second lot of bells the oracle’s eyes opened and for a moment he was the man Theodore knew, staring around but not seeming to see anything. The muscles of his face bunched into a grimace, making him unrecognizable again. He sat quite still, staring pop-eyed over the heads of the congregation, while the rhythm of the chant increased and horns and drums and cymbals joined their sounds. Slowly he began to quiver, as if he too was an instrument vibrating to the beat of the universe. Shaking more and more violently, but with his massive boots rooted to the stone, he rose to a standing position. The soldier-monks who had carried him out moved forward to hold him by the arms and prevent him from falling, and an old monk hobbled out from behind the Lama Amchi’s chair and started to wave what looked like a folded sheet of paper in front of the oracle’s face. The noise increased. People all over the courtyard were shouting, even screaming. The group round the throne convulsed. The oracle seemed to toss aside the four men who were holding him so fiercely that one of them fell flat on his back with a thud which Theodore could hear through the uproar. He dashed towards the altar, snatched up a sword and stood there, his face dark purple and snarling, like the rabid ape that had once attacked the Settlement and bitten two people before Father had shot it. Now he darted from the altar, swinging the sword in both hands, slashing with definite aim as if at targets only he could see. The boots and the clothes bulked him out, but even allowing for them he seemed to have grown both taller and broader than the calm and unremarkable man who had chatted with Theodore about the tracks into China.
All the while the uproar in the courtyard rose. The screams of the people steadied to a shrill and wavering wail which wove through the unvarying chant of the monks and the boom of the big horns, rattles and thunders from the drums, the clink and clank of bells and other hoots and twitterings. Theodore discovered his throat was sore because he was yelling with the rest. He clamped his mouth shut and shook his head in violent refusal, breaking the hypnotic tendrils that had begun to bind him into the ceremony.
Thus freed he could see that the soldier-monks were advancing on the oracle-priest in a wrestler’s crouch, ducking under the whirling blade, scuttling away crabwise when a darting lunge came their way. The priest charged suddenly down the steps, causing one of the retreating soldier-monks to stumble against the Lama Amchi where he sat impassive on his throne, but the other two seized their moment and leaped like tigers at the priest’s back and clung there, each gripping an arm. The sword clanged to the stone. The priest spun round. One of the men lost his grip and was hurled against the steps, but at the same time the first two closed in. In a series of convulsions they forced the priest up the steps, round the altar and back to his throne where they held him, one at each arm, one at his legs, and one using both hands to clamp the priest’s head to the back of the throne. The spasms that shook his body dwindled. The purple flush left his face, fading like a healing bruise through vivid yellow to chalky grey. Theodore realized that the shouting had ceased some time back, and the chant and the music were now softening towards silence.
The old monk who had waved the paper came hobbling up the steps again, this time carrying what looked like a writing-slate with a jewelled frame. He stood beside the throne and bent his body forward so that his ear was close against the priest’s mouth. In total silence and steadily increasing tension the whole courtyard waited until the monk with the slate nodded his head a couple of times and started to write; then a low sigh of release breathed into the mountain air. Theodore couldn’t see whether the priest’s lips were in fact moving because the old monk’s head screened them. Less than a couple of lines had been written when the monk straightened, backed away, bowed and returned to his place. A murmur of comment rippled round among the watchers and then the horns began their boom and the chant of invocation rose once more.