The Avatari (5 page)

‘Diane?’

‘Yes?’

‘I think I’m missing something here. Why in Cadbury, of all places?’

‘Archaeologists say it’s the most likely site of Camelot, dear.’

He sensed the merriment in her voice.

Later, he tried the number Diane had given him. The call was answered by a receptionist who put him through.

‘Uncle Ash! What a surprise!’ Tim exclaimed. ‘Still making the free world a safe place to live in?’

After all these years in England, Tim hadn’t lost his American accent.

‘Not really,’ Ashton replied. ‘Gave that up a while back. I’ve moved back to the village, in Yorkshire.’

‘Ah, the country squire! You do so fit the bill. So what made you call me? Need some holistic healing, by any chance?’

‘No, thanks, Tim. Wanted to pick your brains on something.’

‘Sure.’ Tim sounded curious.

‘May I come over?’ Ashton asked hesitantly, ‘Possibly tomorrow?’

They had been friends, but he hadn’t spoken to Tim since college.

‘That would be great!’ the voice on the other side said immediately, sounding genuinely pleased. ‘Let’s see now. From where you are – Yorkshire – if you start early enough, we could have lunch and then talk about whatever you want to. I’ll keep a bed for you, so you can spend the night.’

‘Thanks, Tim. I’ll take your offer.’

Ashton started early next morning. Duggy did not accompany him; he had other things to attend to. Ashton drove mostly along the M5 and branched off to the right from the A357 after crossing the Cale River. It was another fine day. Driving through light traffic was a pleasure and Ashton was in the village by noon. He stopped to make a call to Tim from the post office and received precise directions from him.

Ashton drove on and turned right towards Cadbury Castle, when he reached the branch Tim had told him about and saw the signpost that said: ‘The Retreat – 3 Miles’. He followed the gravel road and came upon a sprawling Edwardian mansion, its silhouette barely visible through the screen of oak trees surrounding it. As the car moved up the driveway, Ashton saw a small bus parked there. Its passengers, festooned with cameras, were gathered under a marquee on the lawn. With them were three persons in dove-grey cassocks – evidently, Tim’s staff – presiding over some kind of ceremony.

A tall, spectacular-looking redhead, whose soft cassock followed her curves, met Ashton on the driveway as he stepped out of his car and informed him in dulcet tones that the Master was inside and had requested Ashton to join him for lunch in his personal quarters. As he passed through the hallways, he smiled back at other members of the staff, similarly attired, all female and all equally eye-catching.
Old Merlin hadn’t changed!

Tim greeted him effusively. Ashton noticed that he had filled out somewhat. His beard was peppered with grey and the thick mop of hair had thinned out a bit, but Tim was, otherwise, in the pink of health. Ashton thought his friend looked a little like an inflatable toy which could do with some air being let out.

‘You look well, Tim,’ he observed.

‘Too well, I’m afraid’. Tim grimaced. Then his face broke out in an irrepressible grin. ‘Comes with the job, I guess. But you haven’t changed much. Just a bit of grey. Still straight as a board. It’s been, what, thirty years?’

Lunch was a quiet affair. This wasn’t, Ashton mused happily, one of those places where they served organic veggies and spring water. By the time he had wiped the crumbs from the splendid apple crumble off his moustache, he was feeling quite in the mood for the nap his host had suggested.

While the plates were being cleared, Tim leaned forward and asked, ‘You wanted to see me about something, didn’t you?’

‘It might take a while,’ Ashton told him. ‘Do you want to go into it now?’

‘I thought that once you have rested a bit, we could go for a walk up to the castle late in the afternoon, say around four. We’ll still get about three hours of daylight.’ Then Tim came back to his question. ‘Just a broad hint of what it’s about would do – just to give me something to ruminate over.’

‘I wanted to ask you about something called the Burqan Qaldun.’

Reluctant to carry Ru San Ko’s letter with him, Ashton had memorized the name. He had also decided to refrain from asking Tim about the ‘Gates’ and the ‘Jhagun’; he did not want to give out more than he needed to.

Tim Grahams looked at Ashton, his eyes narrowed in thought. Then he let out a low whistle. ‘Not the average question, one might say,’ he observed. Looking intently at Ashton, he asked, ‘You’re not going to explain the context, are you?’

‘It’s just a research project,’ Ashton replied blandly. ‘The name came up. It would take me a week to get something from the library. And you could give it to me on a platter in an hour.’

‘Sure thing,’ his friend replied, his tone equally bland.

They parted and Ashton was shown to his room by the same young woman in the grey cassock who had met him on the driveway.

Around 4 p.m., after he had had a short nap, Ashton climbed down the same stairs that led up to the guest rooms to find Tim waiting for him. They set off at a brisk pace through the fields.

‘Burqan Qaldun means “sacred mountain” in Mongolian and, I believe, in Tajik,’ Tim began. ‘I’m talking about Central Asia, where high mountains abound and the sea is a thousand miles away in any direction. Here, many of the mountains are considered sacred.’

‘But it could also refer, couldn’t it, to one particular sacred mountain which is more special or important than the others?’ Ashton asked.

‘It could,’ Tim replied with a smile. ‘There was, in fact, one particular sacred mountain which deserves special mention. Its romance has endured through antiquity. It is the mythical kingdom or monastery of Shambhala.’ He gave a half shrug. ‘That is its Tibetan name; in the Tibetan scheme of things, kingdoms and monasteries were often one and the same. So it could be either. The Mongols referred to Shambhala as the Burqan Qaldun.’

Ashton felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
Shangri-La!
The images were clearer now
.
He was walking up the winding mountain track, clutching his robes around him; he could hear the muted sound of horns and drums from far away.

‘Shambhala was probably James Hilton’s inspiration for
Lost Horizon
,’ Tim said, turning and looking at Ashton closely. ‘You all right?’

‘Just fine,’ his friend replied quickly. ‘So what do we know about Shambhala?’

‘Well, it’s supposed to be somewhere in Tibet, which is a vast swathe of land. Remember, in the old days, anything west of the Yangtze and east of the Karakorams was Tibet. Some locations have even been given in the Altai Mountains. In the interests of ecological preservation, I would say it’s fortunate that Shambhala has never been found. So no one knows where it is – or if it exists at all.’ Tim paused. ‘I did know something about it. And after lunch, I read up a bit more. So if you’re interested, I could give you the grand tour.’

‘That would be great,’ Ashton told him.

‘In an era that pre-dates recorded history, Tibet was ruled by kings who followed the Bon faith, an organized religion more than twenty-five thousand years old. We know very little about the Bon, deriving most of our sparse knowledge from translations from their language, Zhang Zhung, which is not fully understood even to this day. The Bon were animists, the original shamans who delved deep in the occult.

‘Then around 800
CE
, under Guru Padmasambhava, Buddhism began making forays into these lands. It travelled to China and spread upwards along the Silk Route, even reaching the steppes of Mongolia. The Buddhists were able to convert the kings of Tibet to their faith and the country’s official religion thus changed from Bon to Buddhism. But unlike Christianity and Islam which would follow in its wake, Buddhism did not attempt to conquer, change or destroy, but absorbed the prevailing traditions of the lands where it spread. This, in fact, enhanced its singular appeal. Tibetan Buddhism retained, therefore, a strong influence of Bon occult practices. There were many areas of similar interface, resulting in a sharing of traditions. One of them was the mystical kingdom or monastery of Shambhala.’

‘So what made Shambhala a more special “sacred mountain” than the others?’ Ashton enquired.

‘Three things,’ Tim replied holding up three fingers. ‘First, it was rumoured that the kingdom or monastery, supposedly the richest in all of Tibet, held boundless treasures like El Dorado. This inspired every band of robbers or small-time steppe-nomad chief to search for it.’

They had reached a small grassy mound where they sat down. Tim, who had picked up some pebbles on the way, began tossing them around absent-mindedly.

‘Second,’ he went on, ‘Shambhala was supposed to hold the complete and unabridged Kalchakra, roughly translated as “the wheel of time”, a tantra or collection of verses containing knowledge that encompasses the past, the present and the future – in other words, destiny itself. Knowledge of the Kalchakra would make a ruler invincible. The purpose of Shambhala was to preserve the Kalchakra in its pristine form so that it could guide the resurrection after the inevitable
pralaya
or apocalypse. It was like a very large time capsule which needed to be opened only by the right person, a righteous ruler or
chakravartin
who would rise in the future.’

‘That must have made a lot of kings want to find Shambhala?’ Ashton asked.

‘I guess so. They say Kublai Khan wanted to get there. He was the one who referred to it by its Mongol name – Burqan Qaldun.’

The two men got up and began walking back, taking a different route this time. The hillock marking Cadbury Castle stood out in the distance, magnificent, with the sun setting behind it.

‘Tell me about it,’ Ashton urged, trying not to sound too eager.

‘You’re familiar with Marco Polo, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but my memory will need a lot of refreshing.’

The path had narrowed and the men were now walking one behind the other. Ashton had to lean forward to hear what Tim had to say.

‘Well, to start off, somewhere in the 1270s,’ Tim continued, ‘Marco Polo, along with his father and his uncle who were basically Venetian merchants, travelled along a land route to China, where they were given audience by the then emperor, the Mongol Kublai Khan. Their journey was quite unprecedented, since no white man had, till then, ever ventured out to China. What is more surprising is that they found favour with the Mongol, who gave them high official positions. The emperor also appointed them emissaries for his kingdom, making them journey as far as India and Burma to carry out his missives.’

The path had begun to climb and Tim paused to catch his breath. ‘It was on one of these royal errands that the Polos joined the quest for the fabled Burqan Qaldun.’

‘Why? To find treasure or to unearth the secrets of the Kalchakra?’

‘Patience, old chap. Allow me to ramble on a little,’ Tim said grandly, with a wave of his hand. ‘Kublai Khan was the grandson of Genghis Khan, whose hordes had carved an empire from the steppes into Persia before turning east towards China. The Mongols under Genghis Khan did not have an organized religion at the time, just a pagan set of beliefs and traditions handed over from one generation to the next. With Buddhism holding sway as China’s predominant religion, Kublai Khan sought to establish a more permanent empire by trying to persuade the Mongols to adopt the Chinese way. Leading by example, he and his courtiers converted to Buddhism. This marked a distinct departure from his grandfather’s decision to avoid conversion altogether. Genghis Khan believed that adopting a faith whose main tenets were steeped in the principles of non-violence would lead the Mongols to lose their martial prowess and soldierly attributes.’

‘So how do you know all this?’ Ashton enquired. ‘I mean, the fact that Kublai Khan had sent Marco Polo to search for Shambhala or the Burqan Qaldun?’

‘Much of the information is available in Marco Polo’s own manuscripts – whatever English translations I could get hold of, that is. Remember, printing was still two hundred years away. So everything was copied by hand. There are, therefore, many versions of the same story.’

‘And did Marco give an account of his journey to this Burqan Qaldun?’

‘He never found the sacred mountain,’ Tim replied with a shrug, before falling silent.

They had reached the Retreat. Tim seemed tired from the walk; Ashton guessed he didn’t take many of them.

‘Why don’t I tell you the rest of the story over dinner?’ Tim suggested.

‘That’s just fine with me,’ Ashton replied.

‘I think we can dine on the terrace. The weather seems to be holding up.’

Dinner was as lavish as lunch and the weather had, indeed, held up. It was a perfect, balmy south-western summer evening. Through dinner, Ashton and Tim reminisced about their time in college. They talked briefly about Hilda.

‘Brandy?’ Tim asked, after the plates had been cleared.

‘All right.’

Ashton didn’t drink all that much, but it looked as if Tim wanted to talk and he didn’t mind giving him company. Tim filled their goblets from the decanter on the table.

‘So why did Kublai Khan go in search of Shambhala?’ Ashton asked, taking an appreciative sip of his brandy.

Tim looked at him over the rim of the goblet in his hand. ‘Do you believe in immortality?’

Ashton was taken aback. His friend had spoken softly, but Ashton could make out that the question had not been posed in jest; nor was it a rhetorical one. He inclined his head, half smiling, and waited. He sensed that an answer was not expected. Not yet. He was right, because Tim took a sip and continued.

‘Individually, we do not lose much sleep over it, because the vastness of eternity is too frightening to contemplate or comprehend. It is a mistress sought out in the shadows of our own fantasies and rejected in rational thought. History, however, has shown that when a civilization reaches its zenith, with empires established and its Alexanders weeping that there are no further worlds to conquer, it inevitably turns its thoughts to immortality. It has been the stuff of legends, of Arthurian Knights and the Holy Grail, of Ponce de León and his search for the Fountain of Youth; perhaps even the quest for Atlantis was part of that dream.’ He paused. ‘And yet, none of these quests were driven by real and absolute belief.’ Then looking straight at Ashton, Tim asked, ‘Do you know why, Henry?’