uneven terrain. His driver parked it in the lee of boulders close to steps leading up to the monastery's foreboding entrance, covered it with a tarpaulin, finally came erect and saluted.
Chang Lun nodded his curt approval, turned and bowed from the waist to the string of red-robed priests where they stood stock still, arms folded, patiently waiting.
There were six of them; they indicated that the Major and his driver should take their places centrally in the line.
And with three priests leading and three bringing up the rear, the string set out at what was to the Chinese soldiers an awkward, unmilitary shuffle, climbing the steps single-file to the yawning stone mouth that formed the entrance to the monastery. The leading priest held his left arm tucked into his waist at the elbow, with the forearm held stiffly out in front. His jogging motion caused tiny golden bells to chime where they were stitched into the seam of his robe's extended sleeve.
And so into the Drakesh monastery. As they entered, Chang Lun looked back. In the middle distance, glowing yelow where glancing rays of sunlight struck through the shade in the lee of ragged mountains, a nameless city stood gaunt and deserted behind high fortress walls. If it weren't so remote the place would make an excellent military base, but what purpose would it serve to station soldiers in a region as barren and inhospitable as this? The southern borders with Nepal, Bhutan, and India were no longer in dispute.
Then a portcullis of massive timbers was lowered, shutting off the view and Lun's thoughts both. The tinkling of the bells receded, along with the soft flutter of monkish robes; darkness settled; the silence was near-absolute. And as the Major's eyes began to adjust, he saw that he and the Corporal were alone ... if only for a moment. Then:
'Welcome to Drakesh,' said a voice as dark as the surroundings. It spoke a sibilant Chinese but yet without a trace of dialectal accent. 'You have entered of your own free will - or rather, at the command of your superiors! Well, so be it.' The voice held a none too subtle sarcasm.
Abruptly, a torch was lit; the shadows were at once thrown back, and flickering fight ilumined the face and form of Daham Drakesh.
Chang Lun had met him before but the physical appearance, the presence of Drakesh, never failed to impress him. At sixty-eight inches in height, the Major himself was taller than average for his race, but he felt dwarfed in the presence of Daham Drakesh. The man must be all of six and a half feet in height! But thin to the point of emaciation, he looked almost skeletal where the light of his torch showed through his shift and silhouetted his pipestem body. His hands were freakishly long and tapering, their pointed fingers tipped with thick yellow nails hooked into claws; his shaven skull was thin at the front and lantern-jawed, long at the back and bulbous as the head of an insect on a scrawny neck.
But for all that Daham Drakesh seemed fragile as porcelain, his eyes - eyes luminous and yelow as molten sulphur - gazed on Chang Lun and the Corporal, and seemed to gaze through them, as if they were the ephemeral ones, not he. They felt paralysed by that gaze, until finally
Drakesh's lips cracked in a ghastly smile and he said:
'Come. I have prepared a room for your man in the left eye of the carven face. There he may enjoy the daylight, forbidden to me and mine, sip tea, break bread, take his rest - and wait for you, of course. We require no underlings to attend our discourse.' He smiled a mirthless sideways smile down on the Major and moved silently, flowingly ahead of his guests, leading them through the labyrinth of rock-hewn halls, galleries and tunnels which was the monastery.
'Alas, you and I may not rest, Major,' (again his loathsome smile, directed at Chang Lun). The wicked are not permitted to rest, ever - by which I mean that we have matters to discuss, of course.'
'Indeed we have,' the Major snapped, feeling (as he always felt) intimidated by this creature in this place and determined to regain the upper hand. 'Grave matters, which have brought me here on the orders of my superiors!'
'Aye, and your timing - or the timing of your masters in Peking - is faultless,' Daham Drakesh answered, as he rushed his visitors along gloomy stone corridors, with