Part 8 (1/2)

”I explained to them my search, and at first I met with resistance They had seen no one After a ry the infant was, and that it was their grandchild, whose mother had died the previous day when the child was but a ive them sufficient assistance for the child, but that they must help me as quickly as possible I placed severalto his feet, told the old woman to stay where she was He e and infir in a low voice as we descended The boy followed hi, filled with large wildflowers that glistened in the ht In the center was an ancient banyan tree Fro a variety of votive objects-even ordinary pots and pans-all brought there in honour of the dead Suddenly, the boy left the old man's side and cli a silver disc The boy turned it slightly, then jumped down and returned to the old man

”Your friend is not far away, but by now it is too late This is the udyana, the pleasure garden of our ancient kings Your friend has gone to the Tridivam, the treasure house of death, from which he cannot exit He is dead by now and will not return”

The words he used chilled Holmes's blood, for in the archaic form in which they issued from his mouth, they were very close to the ancient words in the inscription of Manadeva It was apparent that Levi, unable to contain his desire to know, had waited until dark and set out on his fateful journey alone He had followed the path of the ancient king Dhar the look of despair on his face, the old man drew Holmes closer to the tree There, in the dark, he could see that there was a shrine built into its trunk A stone ie of the God Vishnu, in the form of one of his avatars, the Wild Boar, stood astride the universe, a figure of the Goddess Earth sitting in comfort on his shoulder

”This is the pleasure garden, the udyana of the ancient kings,” the old man repeated ”Below it is the Tridivam, the other world, or heaven, where their treasures are stored In ancient tis kne to enter and how to leave, for as soon as one person enters, the entrance closes and can only be opened from within The secret was passed froht people, fro Dharmadeva entered often, but, for reasons we do not know, one day he did not return And so the secret areedy for the treasure that lies inside, have come to understand how to enter, but none has ever returned They have all died within Your friend entered He too has not returned I know, for we showed him how”

”Then show me how he entered, for there is no time to waste,” Holmes admonished

The old man obeyedto the figure sitting on Vishnu's shoulder

Holure with his hand It moved upwards at his touch, then of itself fell back in place There was suddenly a deafening noise, as if a giant spring had been released by the reat statue of Vishnu ly of its own accord, swinging rapidly inward to the left, leaving a sh for one man to cran into

The old man pointed to the black hole

”That is the path to the Tridivam, to the treasure house, and to death, the path of your friend,” he said ”If you follow, the opening will close as soon as your head passes within Even if I open it again, you will not be able to return by this path The return is by another way I entered once, but out of fear I climbed out before my head was covered I escaped, but Vishnu bit er remembered how to return”

For a moment, Holmes was taken aback by the speech of the old man, for, with his own fear of the Gods, the old man's words would have filled any ordinary mortal with terror

”My dilemma was immediately apparent, Watson,” said Holh time I would be able to extricate myself froe what lay below, nor how much time I would have before I succumbed either to lack of air or water or soed by the bloodthirsty and greedy despots of the past No sound emanated from the dark space below, and I presumed that Levi was either dead, too weak, or too far away to be heard Should I enter or should I report back what I then knew to the Maharajah?”

As he stood there in thought, he noticed that theto hit the teh the leaves of the tree, struck the disc As if by ic, it fell reflected onto the third eye of the statue of Vishnu and then the figure of Ganesh, striking his right hand The astronoht and day, struck Holmes, and he suddenly realised what he had to do in order to understand theof the second line of the inscription He took out Levi's notes and read the cryptic line backwards, froht to left It read in perfect clarity: bahirvishnupravesha bhitraganeshanivesha which h the Vishnu outside; Leave by the Ganesh inside”

If not a full explanation, at least it provided a clue that exiting had so to do with a statue of Ganesh inside Holmes looked around He was alone The old man had taken the opportunity of his distraction to disappear The opening was still there

”At that ht be wrong, that I did not knoith any certainty hoould escape if the opening closed above h narrow escapes before, and that my brain had at the last moment saved me”

He peered into the abyss, then lowered his feet into it and slowly let go He fell only a short distance onto a dirt floor He could still see theabove He was now in soe statue of the God Ganesh stood inside where he had entered Holmes s had closed, and he heard the idol of Vishnuback to its earlier location

Holmes peered into the darkness There was a corridor in front of hi All else was darkness He walked slowly towards the light The corridor ide, and the ceiling high enough for hih he could touch it if he extended his arm upwards The air was damp and stale

As he approached, he could see that the light emanated from a small tuki, or oil lamp, placed on the floor well ahead of hiure of a man As he neared, he saw that it was Levi, alive or dead he did not know, but he was there aold, jewels, precious stones, sculptures, and i in the flickering flaot close, Hol slowly and coe sheaf of papers Holmes was amused with his scholarly dedication, for rather than worry about finding his exit, he had begun to describe and record what he saw The sheets that he had filled ell over fifty, and he had fallen asleep with exhaustion, his pen still in hand

Holmes took a moment to examine what he saw There were treasures, to be sure, everywhere, jewellery, coins, ies, manuscripts in abundance But his eye was immediately taken aback by a skeleton seated on a throne, covered in now cruold tiara on its skull This was presu Dharmadeva, who had entered never to return, eloquent testi the lamp, he examined the walls and floor of the roo, save the bones of others who had wandered in but had not been able to exit

As he finished his preliminary examination, Levi stirred and awoke Holood to see you! I must have fallen asleep How clever of you! When did you arrive?”

”Only a few o,” said Holmes, ”but I must tell you frankly that I am most anxious to test my idea of how to exit”

Holmes explained to hi he had been able to follow hi the inscription on his desk as his chief clue Holmes's tone of voice was one of irritation, for he made it clear that his quest had inconvenienced the them their lives

Levi smiled and stood up ”You need not worry, Monsieur Kaul I am not nearly as brave as you I ae risks You see, I was almost sure how to leave before I entered Granted, I took some chance, but I was very certain I have already been out twice this very night The air in this small space is limited, and I would have been asphyxiated by now But look, I have completed a preliminary inventory of what is here-there are over one hundred ancient sculptures alone, and the manuscripts number in the hundreds Just a few reet Henri, the Prince of Orleans”

Levi spoke the last feords with a grin, and Holmes had no recourse but to wait until he had finished his tasks As he wrote, he continued to speak: ”There is a third person of i Dharmadeva, who sits there, dead for almost fifteen hundred years I examined his remains very carefully He was murdered, Monsieur Kaul, but before he died he wrote out his own account of what had transpired It is a long tale of intrigue, but more of that on our way back”

Levi pointed to a manuscript of birch bark that lay near his papers He then carefully packed his notes and thethe lamp, he motioned to Holmes to follon the corridor whence they had come As they approached the end, Levi took froht hand of the large statue of Ganesh that Holmes had seen when he entered

”The key!” exclai object would work”

Loud reverberations were heard, and the sky appeared in an opening above their heads Levion the shoulders of Ganesh, he pulled hih hole Levi followed quickly Within seconds, they stood breathing the fresh early- from which they had exited had disappeared without a trace into the temple wall

It was just dawn, and the sun was about to rise Nepal was covered by a thick silver mist Unnoticed in it, they made their way back to the Prime Minister's palace, which they reached just as the mist burned off in the sun On the way, Levi explained his discoveries

”You see, Monsieur Kaul, I had available to me the entire text of the inscription now, due to the excavations that had been perfor clears up many of the difficulties This enabled me to translate to the end It also enabled ”

In his last feords, peculiar in their intent, Holmes realised how Levi had learned what he knew, and how he had kno to escape frouessed the sa the treasure house

”You mean that the entire inscription is also what the ancients called a rama shabda, a composition that can be read in two directions, one that, therefore, can also be read froht to left I surmised this, just as I entered,” said Holmes

”Indeed, Monsieur, that is precisely what I mean It came to me as I worked atanything to ister it in my notes This inscription is a brilliant work, written by a poet who had coe of the Sanscrit poetic syste to the right, one has one reading Reading it in reverse gives you a totally different but corammatical, coinning of the inscription had been buried for centuries Read in the usual way, froht, one had the public account of events Read froht to left, from the end forwards, one had the private account of what had happenedand the secret of how to leave the treasury”

”And as the poet who composed this and how did he come to knohat he knew?”

”We do not know his name so he remains unknown In answer to your second question, he was obviously someone well placed at the court, someone who knew the royal family inti their suspicion Obviously of the Brahmanic caste, he may have been a teacher in the royal palace The first line of his work immediately struck me: Enter by the Vishnu outside; leave by the Ganesh inside It was a clue to theof the whole and as all I needed to have the courage to enter Once there, I saw lying in the dust at the feet of Ganesh a great key I placed it in the space in his hand made for it, and suddenly the way out appeared I had tested the an the examination of this secret treasury It was alure of Dharmadeva seated on the small throne to one side He had in his hands a birch bark ives in detail his own account of what happened at the court, and how he found himself trapped in the treasury”

Holave his account

”'Dhar whose sole interest was in justice and in non-injury to living things As he grew older, he becaht closer and closer to Buddhisan shi+ftingof tean to waiver and he grew estranged from his wife, Rajyavati, whom he had once loved but now treated with respectful distance Rajyavati, of a different character from that of her husband, had a love of royal power that was not shared by her husband One day, Dharive up the throne and announce his abdication He had decided to become a monk and to enter a monastery He expected her and their son, Manadeva, to follow hiave her consent, but decided secretly that Dharmadeva must be re, and she would rule through her son, who followed her every whi walked in the royal teift of gold to the God Vishnu She requested that she and their son be allowed to enter the treasury since this would be the last visit before they entered therevealed to them the secret of how to leave He showed the father fro him unconscious They left him for dead and returned to the palace Dharmadeva awoke to find hi that his fate was sealed, he wrote as fast as he could an account of what had happened, an account that was unknown and unread until now”

Levi stopped for a ht ”And, as luck would have it,” he said, ”Manadeva had dropped the key on his way out Had he known that it was there, Dharmadeva could have excaped his fate Too fearful to return to the scene of patricide without the key, Manadeva issued a royal edict forbidding entrance to the treasure house”

”An incredible tale,” Holmes remarked

”Yes I shall write it up in the Journal Asiatique and send you a copy”

”I shall enjoy it immensely,” said Holood-bye to M Levi, and returned to his hotel

The next roup of soldiers arrived from the Maharajah's palace, deputed by him to accompany Holmes to the Indian border As he had promised, Gorashar came part of the way They left around ten and a short tiiri pass Holood-bye to the valley of Katht hiaze southwards, towards the plains of India

I found