Darkness Chosen: Into The Shadow Part 3

"Last night? You were ill?" She stared him right in the eyes. "Thatas why you were out visiting your girlfriend?"

He cast a resentful glance at Mingma. "Yeah, I didnat . . . I mean, I was looking for someone to help me get better so I could work today." He used a damp whitish handkerchief to dab at the sweat that dripped off his broad forehead.

"One more chance, Phil. One chance, or youall be kicking s.h.i.+t down the road." Karen jerked her head toward the site. "Now go to work."

She didnat watch him leave, but she could hear him shrieking orders as he descended the slope.

Standing, she walked over the edge and looked down on the site. The workers swarmed like ants, moving the boulders loosened by the blast. The backhoes moved the largest stones, while huge black-and-white yaks lumbered after their trainers, dragging rubble into a pile.

When she had been a little girl in her bedroom in Montana, dreaming of princesses and happily-ever-afters, this was not the life she had envisioned.

Mingma joined her on the edge, and the two women stood in silence.

Finally Karen asked, "How is Sonam?" One of her workers had been moving a boulder with his yak when a huge rock had tumbled down the slope, hit his shoulder, then bounced up and struck his yak. Sonamas collarbone was broken, his yak was dead, and he was terrified.

"His bones are mending." Mingma puffed on her cigar, and smoke eased from between her lips. "But he will not come back to work. You seek to build on the heart of evil."

Karen had heard that so many times since coming here. The heart of evil. Everyone seemed to know what it meant. Everyone except her, and she didnat want to know. By remaining ignorant, she hoped to beat Mount Anaya.

Now, driven by the same defiant impulse that made her meet every challenge life and her father flung at her, she lifted her arms to the mountain. "You canat chase me away so easily!"

Mingma threw the cigar to the ground. "Donat, miss! Donat anger Anaya. We are already in mortal peril."

A cold wind blasted down the slopes.

Karen staggered backward, chilled by the ominous reply. "What makes this place evil? Itas more than just Mount Anaya. Itas the whole place, Nepal on one side, Tibet on the othera""

"That is truth, miss." Mingma lit another one of the slender cigars she smoked. "And Warlord is mighty."

"Warlords donat exist anymore. Not in the civilized world. But maybe here . . ." Drugs flowed through this area. Slaves, tooa"male slaves to work deep in the Siberian mines, female slaves to serve their masters. Although the governments protected the trekkers, sometimes a raid occurred on a particularly rich party. And from across the border in Tibet, rumors floated through the air of battles between the Chinese troops that controlled the area and insurgents.

"We all want money." Mingma looked up at the mountain and blew an appeasing puff of smoke in its direction.

"Not you." Karen smiled at her.

Mingma stared solemnly and repeated, "Money is evil, but we all want it. Because it is Mount Anaya which pulls like a magnet all the bad people of the world."

"Why? It doesnat make sense."

"But, yes, miss, it does. A thousand years ago a village abided below the mountain." Mingma gestured toward the valley. "They dwelled in the suns.h.i.+ne, growing the crops, herding their yaks." Her powerful voice dropped to a whisper. "Then the Evil One came."

"The Evil One?"

"The Evil Which Walks as a Man. One by one he corrupted the villagers, promising power and glory if they would guard his treasure. They sought to obtain all he promised, and more, and so they agreed to sacrifice their heart."

"Their . . . heart? They had only one?" Karen wasnat mocking.

But Mingma frowned, her tanned skin wrinkled by long exposure to the sun. "It is a legend."

"Yes, but somehow it must be true." Karenas gaze swept the site. Here even the sunlight was tinged with gray.

"Then listen." Mingma pressed her hand to her chest. "They made their cruel sacrifice, and when their heart had ceased beating, then they realized how the Evil One had tricked them, for they had all the power they sought, but without a heart they were no longer living beings. They became one with the mountain, tainting the sky it pierces, the flesh of the earth around it, the stones that are its bones. Since that day the mountain has been cruel, destroying all who strive to live in its shadow, all who try to tame its heights. The mountain holds the heart and the Evil Oneas treasure, burying them deep, protecting them from all who seek it. The people of the village are forever alone, cold and cruel, and that is their punishment."

"Heartless." Inevitably, Karen thought of her father. "Yes, I understand how being heartless can take your humanity, but I donat know if a village can become one with the mountain."

"At night do not you hear the sobs of the mothers who have lost their children? Do not you hear the husbands mourn their wives?" Mingmaas voice lowered to a whisper once more. "Do you not hear the wails of the lost babies, forever d.a.m.ned?"

If only Karen could be amused about Mingmaas quaint superst.i.tion, but in the night she had heard it alla"and then in her dream she fell. She always fell into nothingness. "I wish I had never come here." She paced away.

Mingma joined her, making one round between the viewing point and the fire before squatting beside the pit. "You had no choice. Your destiny was set the day the creator first thought your name. There is no escaping it."

"My destiny? I have a destiny?"

"As do we all." Mingmaas slanted brown eyes watched and weighed Karenas impatient movements.

"Yeah, but right now mine sucks." Karen paced back, picked up her cup, and poured herself some tea. "So I take it weare digging close to the place where the villagers buried their heart?"

"The heart of evil. The mountain will protect it against the machines, the mena"and you."

Karen had trained herself not to be sensitive. With a father like hers, to be sensitive was to ask to be hurt. But right now, as the problems multiplied and she lost her apparently feeble hold on sanity, this felt very personal. She lifted her resentful gaze to the mountain and rose to her feet. "Weare almost finished with the site prep, d.a.m.n you, and I sweara""

Mingma leaped to her feet. "Donat, miss, donat swear, donat provoke thea""

An inhuman scream pierced the air.

The two women raced to the edge overlooking the job site.

The men were running, scattering like rodents away from a trap. One man fell getting out of his excavator. He crawled a few yards, looked behind him in obvious terror, scrambled to his feet, and fled.

Phil was yelling at them, gesturing wildly, trying to herd them back to work.

They paid him no heed.

As Mingma watched the panic, her face was still, carved from stone. "So. It has begun."

Chapter Four.

"Stay here." Karen started down the rough path.

Mingma caught her arm and swung her back around. "Donat, miss. Donat go down there!"

But duty called, and Karen always answered. "I have to."

"Run with me. If you come now, I can save you!" Desperation filled Mingmaas eyes.

"Itas all right. Iall be fast." Karen shook her off.

Mingma unlooped the string of bells and wound them around her own wrist. "Miss, I must leave. Please come with me!"

"Go on, then. Itas okay. Iall catch up with you!" Karen scrambled down the rugged path as quickly as she could, hearing the chime of the holy bells as Mingma fled in the opposite direction.

As she reached the first pile of rubble, Phil met her. "For s.h.i.+tas sake, itas just an old burial. A mummy, it looks like."

"An archeological find?" Karenas heart sank.

An archeological find was the bane of commercial construction. It meant work had to stop while they called in the authorities to determine its importance and excavate the remains.

"If we donat tell anybody, we can dispose of the body and keep buildinga""

She gave Phil a withering look. "Like n.o.bodyas going to hear those men screaming their heads off."

"I can shut aem up," he said sulkily.

"But can you make them return to work?" She walked toward the still-running backhoe and turned it off. The situation was obvious now. The operator had lifted one of the huge boulders out of the way, and there, nestled in a hollow, was a cloth-wrapped bundle.

The skull was clearly visible, and that must have set off the panic. "Turn off the rest of the machines," she told Phil. "We canat waste the gas. Itas too hard to find and way too expensive."

As Phil obeyed, she went and knelt beside the body.

It was the body of a child, maybe five years old, curled up and resting on its side in a hollow in the stone, with its hand tucked under its cheek as if asleep. The high, dry, cold air had dried its skin, stretching it across the bones, giving the body personality.

It had been a pretty child. Its fine woven clothing was still intact, with only a few holes and frayed edges, and Karen could see faded colors that decorated its robe. A hammered gold necklace hung around its neck, gold earrings pierced its ears, and a bracelet wrapped its . . . her narrow wrist. Another cloth lay under the body and protected her from the cold stone.

A beloved child. An important child. A child interred with love and carea"and brutally sacrificed.

For among the wisps of pale brown hair that still clung to her head, a hole cleanly pierced the childas skull.

"Ah." Karenas eyes filled with tears. "You poor thing." She knew she shouldnat touch ita" when the archeologists arrived, they would scold her mightily. But something about the girl called to her. Something about that long-ago murder broke her heart.

Reaching out a trembling hand, she laid it gently on the childas heada"and the child opened her eyes.

They were aquamarine, like Karenasa"like Karenasa"and the girl looked at her. Karen clearly saw the wealth of sorrow that filled those eyes before they closed againa"and the body crumbled to dust beneath her touch.

Karen knelt, frozen, disbelieving, knowing what shead seen and knowing it was impossible.

She glanced wildly around her, wanting someone close, another living human, but there was only Phil, sitting in the seat of the excavator, cursing the engine as it sputtered and moaned.

She looked again at the shrunken clothes, the gold glistening in the dust of the body.

And in the place where the head had rested, where the bones of the childas head had held it, was a square white tile a few inches across. Carefully Karen lifted it from among the remains. With a gentle hand she brushed it clean, and gazed at it.

It was an icon, a stylized painting of the Virgin Mary of the type that had hung in Russian homes for over a thousand years. Her cherry red robe and glittering halo made the icon a precious work, yet it was Maryas large, dark, sad eyes, looking at right at Karen, and the single silver tear that traced her cheek that brought answering tears to Karenas eyes. This was the Mary of sacrifice, the mother who had given her son to save the world.

Karenas gaze s.h.i.+fted to the dust of the child slaughtered in obedience to the devilas command.

Had her mother cried as they drove the pick through her skull?

The village had sacrificed their heart . . .

High above her, the mountain groaned, and again Karen would have sworn someonea"or perhaps somethinga"watched her.

She looked up Anaya.

The peak lifted itself toward the sky, and it seemed to have grown, swelling from the inside, the fires of the underworld pressing it upward.

She looked arounda"and saw him.

A strange man, dressed all in black, poised on the cliffas edge overlooking the building site. He stood perfectly still, a living statue betrayed only by the wind that blew his long black hair and beard.

He stared.

She stared.

Neither moved.

Who was this man who watched her with such ferocity?

Then Philas voice, directly behind her, made her jump. "Hey, whatas that?"

His hand reached over her shoulder.

She jerked the icon back to her bosom.

But he plucked the gold necklace out of the dust of an ancient tragedy. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h, what do you think this is worth?"

"Donat!" She wrapped her hand around his wrist.

"Why not?"

"The archeologists will be furious that you toucheda""

"Itas not like you were waiting." His fat finger flicked the icon she held.

"It wasnat like that!"

"Yeah, right." He grinned into her face, all white teeth in a round, pink face. "You grabbed what you wanted fast enough."

He was completely, utterly obnoxious, a greedy worm of a man . . . the kind of guy the evil mountain drew to itself.

Maybe he was at home here, but she was not. Shead seen that childas eyes open. She knew now that the old legends were true. And for all that she had trained herself to be tough and strong, she knew better than to challenge the devil. "Iam getting out of here," she whispered.

The earth trembled, rattling like old, cold bones beneath her knees and feet.