Douglas Child - The Wheel of Darkness

Once this was translated, the abbot turned and looked at him, his eyebrows slightly raised. There was a hesitation. Then the abbot began to speak. Tsering turned to translate. “The abbot say you are correct, it is not over. It is not the end, but the beginning. He ask me to tell you certain important things. Please, sit down.”

Pendergast seated himself, as did the abbot.

“After you left, we discovered who released Agozyen into world, and why.”

“Who?” “It was the holy lama in the wall. The ancient one.”

“The immured anchorite?”

“Yes. Jordan Ambrose fascinated by this man and speak to him. The lama let Ambrose into inner monastery, talk him into stealing Agozyen. But not to cleanse the world. Lama have other reason.”

“Which was?”

“It is difficult to explain. Before you arrive in spring, his holiness the Ralang Rinpoche die. He is eighteenth incarnation of the Rinpoche who founded this monastery long time ago. We cannot continue as a monastery without our incarnated teacher. And so, when a Rinpoche dies, we must go out into world to find his reincarnation. When we do, we bring child back to the monastery and raise it as next Rinpoche. This has always been our way. When the seventeenth Rinpoche died in 1919 Tibet was free country, and it was still possible to go out and find his reincarnation. But now the eighteenth Rinpoche is dead, and Tibet occupied. Free travel for Tibetan monks is very difficult and dangerous. Chinese arrest Tibetan monks on missions like this, beat them, sometimes kill them. The holy man in wall knows many deep things. He knew of prophecy that say: when we cannot go out and find new Rinpoche, then new Rinpoche will come to Gsalrig Chongg instead. We will know this Rinpoche, because he will fulfill the prophecy written in our founding holy text of the monastery. It say:

When the Agozyen walks the Western Sea,

And darkness upon darkness wheel,

The waters shall rise up in fury,

And batter the great palace of the deep,

And ye shall know the Rinpoche by his guardian,

Who shall return with the Green Tara,

Dancing across the waters of the Western Sea,

From the ruined palace of the deep.

“So to test prophecy, holy man release Agozyen into the world to see who will bring it back. Because man who bring it back is the guardian of the nineteenth Rinpoche.”

Pendergast felt an emotion rare to him: utter surprise.

“Yes, friend Pendergast, you have brought the nineteenth Rinpoche to us.” Tsering looked at Pendergast with a slightly amused expression. And then he focused a pointed gaze on Constance.

She rose. “The guardian of the . . . excuse me, are you saying

I’m

the reincarnation of the Rinpoche? But that’s absurd—I was born long before he died.”

The monk’s smile deepened. “I do not speak of you. I speak of the child you carry.”

Pendergast’s surprise redoubled. He turned toward Constance, who was looking at the monk, an unreadable expression on her face.

“Child?” Pendergast said. “But you went to the Feversham Clinic. I thought—I assumed . . .”

“Yes,” Constance replied. “I went to the clinic. But once there, I found I couldn’t go through with it. Not even . . . knowing it was

his

.”

It was Tsering who broke the silence that followed. “There is an ancient prayer. It say:

Lead me into all misfortune. Only by that path can I transform the negative into the positive.

”

Constance nodded, one hand drifting unconsciously across the slight swell of her waist. And then she smiled: a smile that seemed half secretive, and half shy.

A Word From The Authors

The Preston

-

Child Novels

We are very frequently asked in what order, if any, our books should be read.

The question is most applicable to the novels that feature Special Agent Pendergast. Although most of our novels are written to be stand-alone stories, very few have turned out to be set in discrete worlds. Quite the opposite: it seems the more novels we write together, the more “bleed-through” occurs between the characters and events that comprise them all. Characters from one book will appear in a later one, for example, or events in one novel could spill into a subsequent one. In short, we have slowly been building up a universe in which all the characters in our novels, and the experiences they have, take place and overlap.

Reading the novels in a particular order, however, is rarely necessary. We have worked hard to make almost all of our books into stories that can be enjoyed without reading any of the others, with a few exceptions.

Here, then, is our own breakdown of our books.

The Pendergast Novels

Relic

was our first novel, and the first to feature Agent Pendergast, and as such has no antecedents.

Reliquary

is the sequel to

Relic

.

The Cabinet of Curiosities

is our next Pendergast novel, and it stands completely on its own.

Still Life with Crows

is next. It is also a self-contained story (although people curious about Constance Greene will find a little more information here, as well as in

The Cabinet of Curiosities

).

Brimstone

is next, and it is the first novel in what we informally call the Diogenes trilogy. Although it is also self-contained, it does pick up some threads begun in

The Cabinet of Curiosities

.

Dance of Death

is the middle novel of the Diogenes trilogy. While it can be read as a stand-alone book, readers may wish to read

Brimstone

before

Dance of Death

.

The Book of the Dead

is the culminating novel in the Diogenes trilogy. For greatest enjoyment, the reader should read at least

Dance of Death

first.

The Wheel of Darkness

, which you presently hold in your hands, is a stand-alone novel that continues to follow Pendergast and takes place after the events in

The Book of the Dead

.

The Non-Pendergast Novels

We have also written a number of self-contained tales of adventure that do not feature Special Agent Pendergast. They are, by date of publication, Mount Dragon, Riptide, Thunderhead , and The Ice Limit.

Thunderhead

introduces the archaeologist Nora Kelly, who appears in most of the later Pendergast novels.

The Ice Limit

introduces Eli Glinn, who appears in

Dance of Death

and

The Book of the Dead

.

In closing, we want to assure our readers that this note is not intended as some kind of onerous syllabus, but rather as an answer to the question In what order should I read your novels? We feel extraordinarily fortunate that there are people like you who enjoy reading our novels as much as we enjoy writing them.

With our best wishes,

Copyright © 2007 by Splendide Mendax, Inc. and Lincoln Child

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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