The Temple Dancer (17 page)

Maya looked up in time to see a hail of stones pouring from a ledge
above. She pushed Lucinda beneath what was left of the ruined roof and
shoved her to the floor, then threw herself across her. The stones rained
down, snapping against the howdah floor, thudding when they struck the
back of the unprotected elephant.

A stone the size of a loaf of bread hammered Maya's left shoulder. She lifted her head as in a dream. Her arm, she noticed calmly, was useless-she
could not move her hand.

Around her the action seemed to happen far away. The shouts of the
soldiers and the roar of their guns might have been a mile off. She looked
up and saw bandits above her: there were two of them. They were dancing.

One pattered backward, arms lifted forward, until he stepped back
where she could not see. The other bandit burst upward, spun on his heel,
and then leaped into the air, one hand extended outward, the other hand
pressed against the hole blown through his chest. Not dancing, Maya realized. Dying. The bandit dove past the elephant in a graceful arc. Then his
head struck the edge of the road, and he spun like a pinwheel as he dropped
into the fathomless chasm.

But the elephant heaved and Maya spilled backward before she could
see the bandit land. Spooked by the attack, the beast lifted his front feet
from the ground and waved them in the air. The mahout tumbled into the
howdah beside Lucinda. Behind the broken roof they again heard Slipper
call for help.

Balanced on his hind legs on the narrow road, the elephant began a
slow, colossal turn until he actually faced the side of the mountain. His
front feet crawled along the mountain wall, as if he hoped to climb up its
face.

"He's trying to turn around, but there's no room!" the mahout
shouted. And as if to prove this, the beast lurched backward, and his left
rear foot stepped off the road and slipped into nothingness.

Flailing with his forelegs, the elephant crashed down. In the howdah,
they tumbled and clung desperately. The women and Slipper screamed.

Somehow the elephant managed to break his fall, and now he clung
desperately to the road. But at this place, the road pushed away from the
cliff, and so the elephant's hindquarters could find no purchase. His head
and forelegs pressed against the mountain face, while his rear legs hung
off the road and pedaled uselessly in the empty air.

Maya, without even thinking, scrambled from the howdah, slid over
the beast's gray shoulders and fell on the broken road.

There was nothing to hold the elephant from sliding off the road.
Though his legs churned in the air, his hindquarters slowly dropped into
the chasm. Only the bulk of the beast's belly against the road's edge slowed his slide. His forelegs pawed the sheer black stone of the chasm walls like a
dog scratching a door, but found no place to cling.

The howdah had pitched forward and leaned on the beast's great head
like a broken hat. "Hurry! Come, come! Hurry!" Maya screamed, reaching for Lucinda, for the mahout. The mahout tried to push Lucinda to
safety, but she clung desperately to the howdah's broken railing, looking
into the chasm in horror. More gunshots cracked the air. The elephant
struggled, and the road's edge crumbled beneath him. He slid backward,
squealing like a puppy, eyes wide, trunk straight with terror.

The howdah disappeared. Maya shrieked.

But the elephant did not fall. Somehow the beast managed to hang on
with his forelegs, though his belly was following his hindquarters into the
chasm. His chin rested on the road between his forefeet, and his trunk
swept wildly near Maya, as if he might hold on to her to stop his fall.

Maya could not tell what had become of the howdah. She managed to
peer over the road's edge and saw that somehow the howdah still clung to
the elephant's back, suspended by a single strap. And she saw Lucinda,
Slipper, and the mahout still clinging to it.

Maya staggered forward. The mahout, head bleeding, began to climb to
her. Clutching the elephant's bell strap in one hand, the mahout then
reached back to Lucinda with the other.

Maya stepped up to the road's edge, between the elephant's right front
foot that slipped and struggled, and his gold-banded tusk. "Stop moving!"
she told the elephant.

Taut as a bowstring, the mahout strained to lift Lucinda to Maya's
waiting hand. The elephant seemed to sense the moment, and let off flailing
his useless rear legs, holding breathlessly still.

But just when their hands were inches away, the howdah's straps gave
way and Maya, in horror, watched Lucinda spill off into the endless air.

But Lucinda did not drop to her death. Instead she struck an outcropping
of rock-not enough to stop her, but enough to slow her down. From there
she slid in a hail of gravel to the rock shelf they'd seen earlier. Lucinda collapsed a few feet from the bodies of the scouts.

Maya's thoughts were broken by the cries of the mahout. He was standing on the very edge of the howdah platform, whose straps had tangled at
the elephant's rear knees.

Looking tinier than ever, the mahout was struggling to lift Slipper to
safety. The eunuch scrambled mindlessly upward, feet nearly knocking the
mahout from his precarious perch. Maya leaned over :he chasm, taking the
elephant's tusk in one hand for leverage, and reaching as far as she could
with her other, still numb from the falling rock.

"Give me your hand!" screamed the eunuch.

"I can't move it!" she cried. "My arm is broken."

For all his size, Slipper shinnied up the elephant's neck, grabbing rolls of
gray skin in his pudgy fists. With the mahout pushing him from below, he
climbed with unexpected vigor. His tiny eyes nearly popped from his head.
The eunuch reached the great beast's neck and grabbed Maya's numbed
hand.

As he twisted and pulled, feeling returned to Maya's shoulder, and her
arm exploded in agony. Pain seared through her and darkness swarmed
across her eyes. Somehow she managed to hold on. Slipper, scrambling past
her, stepped on her leg when she fell to the ground.

The elephant at that moment gave a small lurch backward, as though
something were tugging on his tail. His eyes gaped so wide Maya saw them
ringed with white. He let out a tiny sound, like the sigh of a frightened child.

"Hurry!" Maya called, grasping the tusk once more and leaning toward the mahout. "Hurry now!" The mahout stretched to his full length,
reaching his hands toward her.

But at that moment, the elephant slipped again, his forefeet and chin sliding backward just an inch, and on his back the mahout staggered, grabbing a
gray ear to break his fall. "Please!" Maya shouted, reaching toward him.

But the final slide had begun. The elephant's tusk began to move, and
Maya herself dropped to the ground to keep from falling with it.

She watched as the elephant's wide eyes softened, then closed. Then he
slipped backward, slowly but smoothly, until only the tips of his forefeet
and his trunk remained on the road, like a child peering over a table. Hopelessly Maya reached toward the mahout, and he for her.

Then the elephant dropped silently into space, his huge legs waving
slowly as he hurled downward through the open air. The mahout pressed
his cheek against the elephant's gray head, and looked at Maya as he fell.

She turned away so she wouldn't see the end, and covered her ears so she
would not hear. When at last she stood and looked around her, she heard
Slipper's high-pitched whimper, and also the shouts of the men. They were
pointing to the ledge where Lucinda had fallen.

A bandit on a skinny mountain pony rode along that ledge. How had he
gotten there? He looked up to the guards and gave a loud, taunting laugh,
then wheeled his pony to where Lucinda lay. He jumped off and pressed a
hand against her heart. Satisfied that she was alive, he threw her over the
pony's back, and leaped on the saddle behind her.

A bowstring twanged, and an arrow clattered against the stones just
inches from the bandit's head. "Put up your weapons," Da Gama screamed.
"You might hit the girl!"

The bandit's laugh turned into an animal-like howl. He pushed his
pony toward the edge of the ledge. Maya screamed, and the bandit then
looked up at her. She saw his eyes gleaming like a demon's. Then he
jammed his heels into the pony's flanks. There was a kind of a trail down
the chasm walls, nearly impassable, but somehow the bandit twisted and
turned his pony along it in an endless slide.

When he reached the stream at the bottom of the chasm, Lucinda's
white dress looked like a dot of paint in the shadows.

The bandit waved in triumph as he galloped off.

Lucinda dreamed she was back in the nursery, rocking.

Sometimes she dreamed herself cradled in Helene's warm arms; sometimes she dreamed she rode her painted hobbyhorse. The constant rocking
rhythm felt so comforting.

She woke to find herself slung across the back of a sweat-foamed pony.
A thick arm curled around her waist. Her head bounced against the pony's
flank and with each footfall pounded with exquisite pain. Somehow she
managed not to cry out. Some undiscovered part of her, desperate for survival, warned her.

She tried to gather her wits. Where was she? What had happened? The
last thing she remembered was clinging to the broken howdah as the elephant slipped from the road. The haze around that memory began to clear: before that, she recalled, bandits cast stones upon them from above. But
hadn't their attackers been shot?

For a moment she imagined that she was being carried to safety.

Then at one particularly rough step, she let her head flop as if unconscious, to face the rider's leg. The saddle and the stirru told her all: cracked
leather and dry wood, the saddle of a bandit, not the tended livery of the
horsemen of the caravan.

Lucinda kept her head down and bit back the pain. That her captor did
not know she was awake was an advantage, she reckoned, and she would
need every advantage she could muster.

They traveled slowly now, scarcely faster than a man might walk,
thrusting through high grass that grew along the bank of the brown, turbulent stream. It occurred to Lucinda that it was the same stream she'd seen
from the chasm's edge. If she'd fallen from that height, it was no surprise
that her head hurt.

The pony's chest thrust the grass aside, but with each step the blades
snapped back and stung her face. The rider slapped the pony with a long
switch, digging his heels furiously into the animal's flanks; even so, the animal could hardly go faster. The rider whipped the pony only out of hatred,
Lucinda sensed.

I am lost, she thought. Her head throbbed. Nearby, Lucinda heard the
rushing stream, and realized how thirsty she was.

Suddenly the man leaped from the saddle without waiting for his pony
to stop. He tied the reins to a nearby tree and strode around the small clearing. Lucinda feigned unconsciousness and watched.

He was small and squat with a filthy turban and a scraggly beard. A
long knife hung from the sash of his dust-stained robe.

Two more men appeared, also dressed in filthy clothes, so similar they
might have been a uniform. One had long mustaches instead of a beard, but
otherwise they resembled each other. Maybe all three were brothers. They
spoke oddly accented Hindi, not what Lucinda was used to, but she could
make out enough to understand.

The rider fell to his knees before the others. "It was horrible," he wailed,
his voice cracking, "Hamfist and Rat Tail got killed. I nearly died myself.
Where are the others? Don't tell me they're dead, too?"

"Take it easy. We'll recover soon enough. Then we'll get revenge," the
mustached one said.

"Was there no treasure?" snarled the other. "What have you brought
there on your pony?"

"A farang woman. I captured her."

"She's not dead?"

"Not yet. We can ransom her."

"Or take revenge," the mustached one suggested.

"Or both," said the other.