Patrick Woodhead - The Cloud Maker (2010)

Chen murmured a silent prayer, willing his grip to hold. He could see the rubber on the sole of his boot buckling to one side from the pressure.

There was another jolt on the rope as Xie’s other leg dipped down into the water.

Chen couldn’t hold it. He was going to be dragged down too.

On the shoulder strap of his webbing was his survival knife. With one fluid movement, he reached up and unclipped it from its sheath. His hand curled round the cold metal of the handle, while the steel blade gleamed in the darkness.

At the sudden movement of the knife, Xie froze.

‘ Please . . . ’ he whimpered, staring into Chen’s eyes. His arms had stopped flailing and hung pathetically by his sides. Underneath the line of the rocks, his legs were bent back on themselves, knees skimming the surface of the rushing water.

Chen held his gaze for the briefest moment. Then, bringing down the knife, he pressed it against the rope. The line was under such pressure it felt as rigid as steel. He had to saw down on it, drawing the blade back and forth with sharp jerks of his wrist.

‘ Plea— ’

Xie did not have time to finish the word before the blade finally cut through and the fibres of the rope tore in two. Immediately he was sucked down into the heaving mass of icy water with just the frayed end of the rope trailing behind him like an umbilical cord. The raging noise of the river was all around him, the cold driving the breath from his lungs as if his whole chest had imploded. Then there was a crack as his neck struck against stone and everything went black.

Chen stared at the empty space beneath the rock for a few moments. Then slowly raising himself to his feet, he slid the survival knife back into its sheath. He remembered the overwhelming sickness he had felt when shooting that boy all those weeks ago. How he had spent the time since trying to banish the terrible guilt.

There was none of that now. No pity, no remorse. For a moment he wondered whether he had lost all feeling; whether this mission had finally got to him, making him as ruthless as the others. But somewhere deep within him, he already knew that wasn’t the truth. The fact remained that Xie had been nothing more than a rapist and a thug. If he hadn’t panicked and pulled on the rope, he would still have been alive now.

‘ So long, ’ Chen muttered under his breath. He turned, walking back along the boulder towards the marking he had seen on the way up. That was the key to finding their way out of this maze, he was sure of it.

Chapter 47

‘Please, Mr Matthews, we must hurry.’

Dorje padded down the corridor with Luca following a few feet behind. The monk’s arms swung briskly by his sides, the hem of his robe wafting behind. He glanced over his shoulder, checking on Luca’s progress, then swept down yet another staircase.

‘I have been instructed by His Holiness the Abbot to take you to see Miss Shara immediately,’ he said, eyes fixed ahead in search of the correct door.

‘Shara?’ Luca said, hurrying forward. ‘But you said we were going to see Bill. What’s going on, Dorje? The Abbot gave me his word on this.’

‘Plans change!’ Dorje exclaimed, raising his hands into the air. ‘You will get your wish, Mr Matthews, but not everything in this monastery revolves around you.’

Luca stared at the perfectly shaved back of Dorje’s head, wondering what had made him so agitated. He had only ever seen Dorje meander through the monastery, his pace infuriatingly slow, yet today he was striding forward as if his life depended on it. The habitual sense of calm had vanished, and for the first time since Luca had met him, Dorje looked decidedly flustered. Luca paced behind him, wondering what could have rattled the monk so badly.

Eventually the corridor came to an end with a large wooden door barring their way. It was ornately carved and, after a moment, Luca recognised it as the same door he’d found on the night he’d broken out of his room. It led to the chamber filled with books and piles of parchments – the one he’d guessed was the monastery library.

Dorje strained to get the heavy door open, waving away Luca’s attempt to help before he finally succeeded in drawing it back on its hinges. In front of them stood the same long line of bookshelves. This time, however, the room was brightly lit by the line of iron candelabra that stretched back along its immense vaulted ceiling.

In the light, Luca could now see just how vast the room was. It must have occupied a huge proportion of the entire monastery. But despite its obvious size, the main part of the chamber was concealed beyond the line of the bookshelves.

‘Wait here, Mr Matthews,’ Dorje said sternly, and quickly paced forward. At the end of the shelves, he turned left into the main chamber and disappeared from view. Luca was leaning against the wall watching him go, when he heard a soft murmuring sound. It was faint, almost imperceptible. He listened harder. It sounded as if someone was murmuring an unintelligible stream of words. Then he realised – it wasn’t just one person speaking, there was a whole cross-current of voices.

The noise was coming from somewhere past the endless line of books. His eyes traced across them, at the spines running back in a crooked sea of colour. Most were weighty tomes, inches thick, with decrepit old covers that had long since seen better days.

What was that noise?

Luca guessed the top of the shelving was about twelve feet high. With the toe of his boot pressing down on the first row of books, he suddenly sprang upwards, reaching his right arm up and over the top. His fingers gripped the dusty wooden surface before he swung his left arm over as well and pulled himself higher. The top of his head slowly craned above the line of the shelving and he was able to look down into the room behind.

About thirty monks were seated at individual writing desks spaced neatly in rows across the central part of the room. Each of them sat with a huge book open in front of them and an old-fashioned quill pen in their hands. Some were at the beginning of their volume while others were on the final few pages, but all of them had their eyes half-closed and were rocking back and forth in their seat, their pens scratching across the pages in continual movement.

As their pens moved so did their lips, working in time with the soft undercurrent of murmuring. They were all saying different things, each one reciting his own endless monologue. Luca pulled himself a little higher, staring down at the monk closest to him. His pen moved in a constant flow, only stopping for a second as his left arm whipped across the desk and turned the page to begin once again. There were no spaces in the writing, no large gaps or punctuation. The words were coming out as if melded together by memory.

Luca could feel his muscles straining, but knew he could hold the position for a little longer and resisted the gentle tremor in his forearms. His eyes passed from monk to monk, watching their heads sway up and down. It was as if they were all in some kind of trance. For the entire time he had been watching, not a single one of them had paused to draw breath.

What were they writing? And how could they keep going without a moment’s hesitation?

As he was about to lower himself back down, he suddenly caught sight of Dorje standing over one of the desks. For a moment he saw Shara’s long black hair swaying in time with the others, then Dorje placed his hand on her shoulder and she seemed to break out of the spell. She stared up at him, confused, then slowly put down her pen and took the scroll that he was offering. She read it in front of him then briskly stood up, following him along the line of desks and out towards the bookshelves.