Temple of a Thousand Faces (2 page)
Read Temple of a Thousand Faces Online
Authors: John Shors
| ALWAYS LEARNING | PEARSON |
For Allison
One of the architectural and spiritual wonders of the world, Angkor Wat is a legendary temple located in Cambodia. At the time it was built almost a thousand years ago, Angkor Wat dominated the city of Angkor, which was populated by as many as a million people and was one of the largest and most advanced cities on earth. The local people, known as the Khmers, were skilled artisans, warriors, and scholars.
For centuries, the Khmers fought the Chams, who flourished in what is now central Vietnam, for the spoils of Southeast Asia. Forces from both sides crossed borders, plundered treasuries, and captured slaves. In 1177, the Cham king, Jaya Indravarman IV, sailed up the Mekong River with a massive army and sacked Angkor, destroying much of the city and subjugating its citizens. A Khmer prince and his beloved wife avoided capture, vowing to retake Angkor.
The events surrounding
Temple of a Thousand Faces
are based on historical fact. However, most details of this remarkable clash of civilizations have been lost through the trials of time. Only one surviving eyewitness account of the Khmer Empire exists, written by a Chinese envoy in the thirteenth century. Therefore, through necessity, I’ve created many elements of this novel. For the sake of the modern-day reader, I’ve also simplified the names of the people who fought and loved so long ago.
Angkor Wat is believed by most scholars to be the largest religious structure in the world, a sprawling complex built by fifty thousand Khmer artisans and laborers with the help of four thousand elephants over a forty-year period. The temple, which was fashioned from five million tons of gray sandstone, is something I’ll never forget—seemingly too wondrous and immense to have been conjured by human minds and hands.
What is known about Angkor Wat’s history is as remarkable as the sight of the temple itself. More than three hundred years before Columbus set sail, a series of betrayals and battles, deeds and sacrifices, decided the fate of one of the world’s greatest empires—an empire that was lost, but found again.
One can live in a cluttered house. One cannot live with a cluttered heart.
—
KHMER SAYING
Three: Searching for Yesterday
Six: The Pain and Joy of Truth
Nine: The Forging of Alliances
Thirteen: Flight Through the Jungle
Twenty-two: Fight on the Shore
Twenty-three: When Banners Fall
Readers Guide: Temple of a Thousand Faces
Angkor, Late Monsoon Season, 1177
he temple of Angkor Wat had been designed to house the Hindu Gods but looked as if it had been built by them. Rising from the top of the massive, terraced temple were five towers shaped like lotus buds, the central and tallest of which stretched upward for two hundred feet. These towers symbolized the peaks of Mount Meru, the core of the Hindu universe, where the Gods resided and from where all creation sprang. The wide, square moat surrounding Angkor Wat represented the cosmic ocean, and the walls near the moat were meant to remind Hindus of the mountain ranges at the distant edges of the world.
Dedicated to the God Vishnu, Angkor Wat could hardly have been more imposing. Each tower was tiered and tapered, coming to a point at the top and as wide as a tree’s canopy at the base. The towers were situated on the highest of three rectangular terraces, each stacked on top of another. Though visible from miles away, the towers weren’t the only element of Angkor Wat to inspire visitors. Large swaths of the temple were rich in carvings
depicting heroic images of Vishnu and Shiva, as well as of the king who had ordered the temple built and everyday Khmer people. Many of these bas-reliefs were painted. Others were covered in gold.
Though Prince Jayavar was Buddhist, the sight of Angkor Wat filled him with pride. At fifty years of age, he was old enough to remember the temple’s creation. Many of his early memories were dominated by the sights and sounds of sandstone being carted and chiseled. Now, as he stood on the causeway leading to the main entrance of the complex, he watched Hindu priests sweep the slabs of sandstone with thatched brooms.
Jayavar’s gaze drifted to his chief wife, Ajadevi, who stood beside him. In the fashion followed by most Khmers of either sex, her hair was pulled back and wound in a knot atop her head. Like everyone else, she was naked to the waist. A silk skirt cloth was wrapped around her hips and tied in the front below her belly button. The skirt cloth, which fell to her shins, featured a floral design of white irises against a blue background. Encircling her fingers, wrists, biceps, and ankles were golden hoops and rings. A chain of jasmine flowers hung from her neck, resting between her full breasts and infusing the air with a sweet scent. Both the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands had been dyed red. As was customary among her people, she went barefoot.
Almost a decade younger than Jayavar, Ajadevi still retained some features from her youth. Her skin was mostly unlined and the color of teak. Her eyes, wide and dark, remained sharp and restless. Her angular, proud face reminded Jayavar of a boat’s bow. Like most Khmer women, Ajadevi’s body was thin, the result of a diet of rice, fruit, vegetables, and fish.
Husband and wife leaned against a balustrade of the sandstone causeway. The stonework was rounded at the top—the midsection of a
naga
, a seven-headed snake, which formed the
balustrade and was thought by Hindus to be a deity of the ocean and mountains.
Though Jayavar and Ajadevi did not know it, they would be fleeing for their lives before the morning ended.
“Your father is weakening,” Ajadevi said, lifting the jasmine flowers to her nose. “No one dares to say it, but everyone sees it.”
Jayavar nodded, still watching the priests. Nearby, four slaves carried a high-ranking official past them on a palanquin held aloft with gold-plated poles. “Can no one find the strength to walk?” he asked softly, his right hand on the hilt of a sheathed sword that hung from his side. He was dressed like his wife, though his hip cloth fell only to his upper thighs. His face was round and pleasant, made memorable by full lips and a broad nose. The softness of his features contrasted with the rest of his body, which was dominated by muscles and scars. His hair, also gathered in a topknot, was streaked with gray.
“Last night,” Ajadevi said, “a vision came to me.”
“What sort of vision?”
“The river was red. The red of both birth and death.”
Jayavar turned away from Angkor Wat, looking to the northeast, toward the land of their enemy, the Chams. “Father shall stay strong enough,” he replied. “He’s always been of stout mind and sound body.”
“Always is an assuming, imperfect word.”
“But nothing of war looms. Our spies are as silent as stones. And our army is ready.”
“You should take care to be even better prepared. The visions tell me that we’re not alone. When the river runs red, it can mean only that war descends upon us, as it has so many times before. We don’t want it, but like the wind, it cares nothing of what we want.”
He thought about his father, who rarely emerged from the
Royal Palace. Jayavar’s mind then shifted to the whereabouts of his army. Many of his men were helping to strengthen levees outside the city, as the monsoon rains had been stronger than normal and increased the chances of catastrophic flooding. “What else do your visions tell you?”
“That you love me.”
“You need no visions to tell you what you already know.”
“True enough,” she answered, then closed her eyes.
He wondered whether she was praying. Though most Khmers were Hindus, she was a Mahayana Buddhist, more devout than anyone he had ever met—a seeker of signs. As he watched her, an elephant trumpeted somewhere in the distance. Because of the depth of its voice, Jayavar knew that it was a war elephant, not a working elephant; only the largest of elephants could make such a sound. Somewhere a group of his men was training for battle.
Only when she opened her eyes did he speak again. “I would rather tend to our people than wage war.”
“How shall you tend to them?”
